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Forums - Politics Discussion - Atomic bomb survivors want an apology from Obama.

Aeolus451 said:
Aielyn said:

Obama isn't just a person, he's also the foremost representative of "The American Government". His apology would not be a personal apology, but a "Governmental apology".

Kind of like how, if a CEO of a company makes a decision that harms a lot of people, then gets fired, the new CEO will apologise for what was done, despite not being involved in the decision or being in any way personally at fault.

That's idiotic. People will be apologizing til the end of time for something that happened ages ago. It's also dishonest because a person can't apologize for something they didn't do. I understand that apologizing in that way has become a trend but that doesn't mean they should keep doing that. 

No need to apologise "to the end of time". Just once. America has not once apologised for using nuclear weapons on innocent people. You are the only nation on earth who has done so.

And if you don't understand the concept of apologising on behalf of another person, or on behalf of an organisation or government, then I pity you.

Edit:

Dark_Lord_2008 said:
Japan would not surrender, if it was not for the two atomic bombs.
It could be argued that the atomic bombs saved more lives and prematurely ended the second world war. 
The Japanese government should apologise for the horrendous treatment Allied prisoners suffered at the hands of the Japanese soldiers.

That's one of those lies that America has kept telling itself - that Japan wouldn't have surrendered without the bombs, and that the bombs therefore saved lives.

There is simply no evidence to justify either of these beliefs. But even if there were, treating Japanese civilian lives as a worthy sacrifice to reduce American military casualties is an abhorrent way to view the events. The people who were obliterated, the people who were massively poisoned and suffered long, agonising deaths due to radiation poisoning, the people who lost everything because America felt they were justified in using a Weapon of Mass Destruction twice. Mistreatment of prisoners is certainly a problem, but they were military. The people who were murdered en masse in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilians. If you honestly believe that the Japanese government should *again* apologise for their actions, and that it is not appropriate for America to apologise for its abhorrent actions, then you are, yourself, abhorrent.



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Aielyn said:
Aeolus451 said:

That's idiotic. People will be apologizing til the end of time for something that happened ages ago. It's also dishonest because a person can't apologize for something they didn't do. I understand that apologizing in that way has become a trend but that doesn't mean they should keep doing that. 

No need to apologise "to the end of time". Just once. America has not once apologised for using nuclear weapons on innocent people. You are the only nation on earth who has done so.

And if you don't understand the concept of apologising on behalf of another person, or on behalf of an organisation or government, then I pity you.

Edit:

uh huh. It's never ending with today's governments. For example, every time there's a new japanese leader, every nation that was took a beating from them wants an apology from the new leader. It's redundant and it's false. Every year, everyone wants a fresh batch of apologies for the same shit. It's getting silly. 

Pity me all you want, i don't give a rat's ass. I have a differing opinion on the "apologizing" shenanigans. 



The bombs were a necessary evil. It would have taken months to pull off a land invasion and cost a lot of lives. Military, and even more civilian.

Not only that, but it was a time of war. A war the Japanese started at Pearl Harbor. There is no need for Obama to apologize.



Well a few things.
1 - Wasn't the bomb dropped based on the attack of Pearl Harbour? (Self Defence)
2 - Didn't they drop flyers all over the city saying to evacuate before they dropped the bomb?
3 - What does the apology prove?
4 - If the US apologises, then I guess the rest of the world should apologise to Germany for destroying there city. It wasn't the German people's fault that Hitler made those decisions.
5 - Didnt the USA send there best scientist over ot Japan recently to help solve there Nukeclear Power Plant issues? I think the US has done enough to show they care without saying there sorry for a War that Japan started.
I am not from the US, and there is no need to apologise. What's done is done.



Aielyn said:
Aeolus451 said:

That's idiotic. People will be apologizing til the end of time for something that happened ages ago. It's also dishonest because a person can't apologize for something they didn't do. I understand that apologizing in that way has become a trend but that doesn't mean they should keep doing that. 

No need to apologise "to the end of time". Just once. America has not once apologised for using nuclear weapons on innocent people. You are the only nation on earth who has done so.

And if you don't understand the concept of apologising on behalf of another person, or on behalf of an organisation or government, then I pity you.

Edit:

Dark_Lord_2008 said:
Japan would not surrender, if it was not for the two atomic bombs.
It could be argued that the atomic bombs saved more lives and prematurely ended the second world war. 
The Japanese government should apologise for the horrendous treatment Allied prisoners suffered at the hands of the Japanese soldiers.

That's one of those lies that America has kept telling itself - that Japan wouldn't have surrendered without the bombs, and that the bombs therefore saved lives.

There is simply no evidence to justify either of these beliefs. But even if there were, treating Japanese civilian lives as a worthy sacrifice to reduce American military casualties is an abhorrent way to view the events. The people who were obliterated, the people who were massively poisoned and suffered long, agonising deaths due to radiation poisoning, the people who lost everything because America felt they were justified in using a Weapon of Mass Destruction twice. Mistreatment of prisoners is certainly a problem, but they were military. The people who were murdered en masse in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilians. If you honestly believe that the Japanese government should *again* apologise for their actions, and that it is not appropriate for America to apologise for its abhorrent actions, then you are, yourself, abhorrent.

The refusal of Japan to surrender is not a lie it is a documented fact.  Look up Operation Ketsugo, Japan's plans for countering the invasion, and Operation Cherry Blossom at Night.  The Japanese government were preparing to have an enormous percentage of their *civilian* population fight the invasion.  Japanese casualties would have been astronomical.  They were arming civilians with spears and muskets for goodness sakes. That's how much the Japanese government cared.  Cause they wanted an armistice to save their sorry skin.  Cause they knew when they surrendered most of them were dead cause they didn't just "mistreat prisoners".  They killed, mostly without cause, over 10 *million* civilians in Asia over the course of their long, aggressive, brutal campaign; enslaved d millions throughout the Pacific; forced over 200k estimated women into sex slavery; and killed hundreds of thousands in development of biological weapons to attempt to use on the US civilian population.  Hirohito PERSONALLY approved the order late in the war for Japanese forces in China to " Kill all, burn all, loot all, resulting in the deaths of millions of civilians.  The US was not going to let those spineless invertebrates slink off with an Armistice.  Nor were they going to allow them to march millions of Japanese, many civilian, to their deaths just to force one, never mind the over a million US soldiers who would have died.  And Hiroshima and Nagasaki - especially Hiroshima - were doomed to be destroyed in the even of an invasion.  Whether by one plane carrying a nuke or dozens carrying firebombs and other heavy ordinance, Hiroshima would have been destroyed as it was the command center for all of south Japan and a base for 40,000 military personnel.  And we didn't have high precision weapons at the time.  Nagasaki was s crucial industrial center for the war machine.  Also would have been targeted in a conventional invasion.  So whether by conventional bombings or at the hands of their own government via suicidal Operation Ketsugo, most or all of the casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still would have happened.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki + the strikes by Russia were instrumented to show the Japanese gov and people that there would be no "war of attrition" to secure an armistice for them, only - as promised on the Potsdam Declaration they chose to ignore - prompt and utter destruction.



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Some poor logic based in this thread. For starters the bombs were dropped on military locations which happen to be surrounded by civilians.
So it’s easy, to win a war surround your bases with civilians and the enemy can’t attack you. Haha please, Japan deserved what they got, they started a war they couldn't finish and they were also known in supplying the Nazi’s with Supplies which is why the US cut off Oil etc. There are many theories behind this but let’s not get technical here.
Atomic bombs were new, the USA had no idea the damage they would cause after being dropped. If Japan never paired with the Nazi’s and didn’t bomb Pearl Harbour then they would have avoided the bombing in the first place, and if they surrendered after the first bomb then the 2nd bomb would never have happened. It all comes under Japan’s leaders to apologies to their own people.
The US even dropped flyers all over the cities, warning the populous that there were bombs coming.



Lefil said:

When did Japanese government officials say they demand an apology from President Obama?? The overwhelming number of Japanese people just appreciate Obama's decision to visit Hiroshima.  We are more concerned about that racist fascist warmongering bigot Donald Trump who claims that Japan should have their own nuclear weapons .

I didn't say that they demanded an apology from obama, I was saying they were pressuring him to do so ... 

Using the victim card to this day to further their own agenda rubs off rather unpleasantly ... 

Just because the US army once used WMD doesn't make Japan's sins any smaller. What right does Japan have to expect repentance when they were a part of the aggressors along with their extreme imperialist movement ?



So should USA also apologize to Germany then ? All the innocent lives killed with carpetbombing the big cities. Seeing the big picture I think the atomic bombs where the best solution back then, as an invasion would have cost millions of lives more... USA doesnt have to apologize for dropping the bombs it was the right thing to do back then and USA should not apologize for that. Obama wont do it hopefully. However there is other things USA can apologize for. For example to the some of the vietnamese people. To Iraq maybe for fucking up the country. The meddeling in the middle east brought only problems and was a waste of money.   



Do you think there is any chance Japan or Germany would not have used weapons like that if they had them?



"They think I'm crazy, but I know better. It is not I who am crazy, it is I who am MAD!"

 

 

"Bolshe, luchshe, I kruche"

Well, and I'm happily surprised to say this, Obama has apparently said he won't be apologizing.

I imagine he'll still be giving a speech about how horrible nukes and war in general is, which is fine, but he won't be apologizing to a people that were the Nazis of the east and tried to unleash plague on the North American continent. It's fairly clear Japan would have used nukes were they available.

This is why the whole "apology" thing needs to stop; it digs up old hostilities that don't even belong to us, but rather are the legacy of our ancestors. Otherwise, there's been strong relations for more than half a century now. Time to move on.