The most tasteless and insensitive museum exhibit ever.

[molly bloom]

The point is, surely, that the 'Enola Gay' isn't simply 'an aircraft'. Its fame comes not from being a prototype or being the first jet engine equipped aeroplane, or the first biplane, or a 'Spruce Goose' white elephant, but from being used in a theatre of war to deliver an atomic bomb. If the museum makes that clear (which it seems to) I fail to see why it should have some trite blurb about the suffering of Japanese civilians. In war everyone suffers, and the atomic bomb is no different in this regard from the Burma Railway or the Japanese army cannibalizing allied prisoners.

It would be like a Byzantine exhibit ignoring military use of Greek fire. Or pretending it was a method of making kebabs.

However the Japanese have never had to confront the sheer unmitigated horror of the exploits of their politicians, emperor and armed forces in occupied Asia and during World War II.

My Singaporean friends told me of the shocked Japanese tourists bursting into tears at displays in Singapore relating to atrocities committed there during the Japanese occupation- because it had been expunged from history as taught in Japanese schools.

The equivalent would be German schholchildren seeing references to Oradour sur Glane, Lidice, Kharkov and the death camps for the first time, in trips to the Imperial War Museum in London, the Ukraine and France.

[Boris Godunov]

At least German school children get to see that stuff in Germany, though.

[notyoueither]

I think that's the point. I have to wonder if these people would have made this trip if they had been well informed of what had gone before. I'd like to think that they are aware of what their own side did, but I fear that is not the case.

[Boris Godunov]

Since the denial/whitewashing of atrocities is a feature of Japanese public school text books, I doubt it. Every Japanese person I've known here in the states has had to have their own little rude awakening as to the extent of Japanese aggression in WW2. To them, it's portrayed as an attempt to liberate Asia from Western influence...

[Drake Tungsten]

To them, it's portrayed as an attempt to liberate Asia from Western influence...

Actually, it's not really portrayed at all. The reasons behind it, at any rate.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

The central question is whether the Japanese would have surrender with the ONLY condition that they would have retained their emperor.

Perhaps, perhaps not... but why would we take a 'conditional' surrender? Did we really want a repeat of WW1, where you still have vestiges of the old regime still around stiring up trouble (Ludendorff being a part of the early Nazi movement)?

We ended up with a conditional surrender, the same conditional surrender that was earlier possible.

The big advantage of a conditional surrender would have be to forestall a Soviet entry into the war.

The second big advantage would have been the tens of thousand of Japanese civilian lives saved.

[Patroklos]

There was a very important reason why we needed an unconditional surrender, even if we gave them the one conditon they wanted anyways. It needed to be shown that regimes like Germany's and Japan were criminal and in no position to negotiage with us. They had to admitt that theit authority, even to make peace, was nonexistant.

-Pat

[Ned]

August 6, 1945 is a day that shall live in infamy - more so than December 7, 1941. We ended that war about as badly as we could have.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by atawa
Did you read the thread?

Yes. Have you done so? You posts so far haven't shown it.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Since the denial/whitewashing of atrocities is a feature of Japanese public school text books, I doubt it. Every Japanese person I've known here in the states has had to have their own little rude awakening as to the extent of Japanese aggression in WW2. To them, it's portrayed as an attempt to liberate Asia from Western influence...

Which actually makes it worse, maybe. The protesters are survivors. They didn't learn this stuff from history books. They have never been told in any meaningful way, even while their country was occupied by people who had an interest in pointing it out.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Ned
August 6, 1945 is a day that shall live in infamy - more so than December 7, 1941. We ended that war about as badly as we could have.

You could have lost...

[Patroklos]

August 6, 1945 , The day the Japanese race lost a finger to save the body.

-Pat

[Q Classic]

15 aug. a day that shall be remembered as victory--and liberation for the numerous peoples under the jackboot of the japanese occupation. the day when koreans and chinese would finally be able to say **** you to the japanese and not be confined to a 3x3x3 box walled with nails.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Patroklos
There was a very important reason why we needed an unconditional surrender, even if we gave them the one conditon they wanted anyways. It needed to be shown that regimes like Germany's and Japan were criminal and in no position to negotiage with us. They had to admitt that theit authority, even to make peace, was nonexistant.

-Pat

Pat, well, in the end, we did accept a conditional surrender because despite all we did the Japanese STILL would not surrender unconditionally.

As to the demonstration that they were war criminals, etc., there was absolutely no talk of that at the time as a reason why we would not accept a conditional surrender of Japan. If that were so G-D important, then we should not have accepted their conditional surrender when we did but should have told them that it must be unconditional or else the A-bombs would continue to fall.

[notyoueither]

What was conditional about the Japanese surrender?