PSX5Central
Non Gaming Discussions => Off-Topic => Topic started by: THX on February 10, 2004, 02:24:54 AM
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Avatarr\'s post in the Godzilla thread reminded me of a recent discussion with my fahja. He was explaining how though the yonger Japanese generation is in love with America and its culture, the older generation still remembers the A-bomb and how much destruction we caused.
My dad is a retired naval officer and he\'s been to Japan many times. One of his last visits in the 70\'s he clearly remembers speaking with Japanese college students about WWII. He was shocked to find out they thought America just dropped the a-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to state our power and dominance in the east. They pretty much has ZERO knowledge of what happened at Pearl Harbor.
He later explained this was so because although Japan isn\'t really a communist country or dictatorship they have an emperor (now Akihito) that can say what he wants or doesn\'t want in Japan\'s history books. How much of this do you think is true? I know American history books aren\'t unbiased by any means (a lot of the Vietnam war is left out) but to totally omit something as big as that is really unfortunate.
I\'m pretty sure they left out what Japan did to its neighbor countries like China and Korea. :thumbd: I wonder how much German schoolbooks talk of Hitler and nazism.
How well do you think your country\'s history schoolbooks represent the past? Wouldn\'t it be surreal if all countries went by one big, authoritative source?
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Let me quote Braveheart:
"History is written by those who have hung heroes" (or something similar). :D
/tries to make more people reply ;)
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Originally posted by Samwise
Let me quote Braveheart:
"History is written by those who have hung heroes" (or something similar). :D
/tries to make more people reply ;)
Quoting a gay movie is not the best way to get someone to reply..
Damnit, I replied.
:(
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Originally posted by Living-In-Clip
Quoting a gay movie is not the best way to get someone to reply..
Damnit, I replied.
:(
Hah, my evil plan worked. :p
But now you must die for talking smack about Braveheart... sleep well tonight! :evil:
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I\'ve heard about oddities in Japan\'s view of their own history before. I seem to remember there were a series of novels popular in Japan a few years back that described an "alternate" history. Sort of like "what if" the Japanese Navy had not been destroyed, but had actually conquered the entire Pacific, and invaded north america.
My understanding was that these novels were popular because readers were already prepared to accept them by their education. In their schools, WWII was presented as a war of aggression by the United States. :rolleyes:
Of course, those Japanese college students you referred to did have a point about the A-Bomb attacks. We didn\'t absolutely have to use those weapons against cities. They did serve a purpose as demonstrations also.
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Japan didn\'t have to destroy Pearl Harbor
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Originally posted by mjps21983
Japan didn\'t have to destroy Pearl Harbor
Well, the motive behind declaring war on us is qustionable, but they also didn\'t annihilate Honolulu; they just sank some of our ships.
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you mean most of our ships.
The only reason we dropped the bombs is because we simply couldn\'t beat the Japanese without loosing crazy amounts of soldiers.
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Originally posted by Living-In-Clip
Quoting a gay movie is not the best way to get someone to reply..
Why is it a gay movie?
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Originally posted by ViVi
you mean most of our ships.
The only reason we dropped the bombs is because we simply couldn\'t beat the Japanese without loosing crazy amounts of soldiers.
Actually, no it wasn\'t most of our ships. All eight of the largest Battleships were heavily damaged, but only the Arizona and Oklahoma were total losses. The other six were repaired and rejoined the fleet later in the war. The Battleships were outnumbered by a great many smaller vessels in the harbor on that day, including destroyers and cruisers that emerged relatively unscathed. I\'m not saying it wasn\'t a heavy blow, but the day of the battleship\'s primary role in naval warfare was already over at that time. The japanese themselves proved that the era of the aircraft carrier had arrived, and we were very fortunate to have no carriers in the harbor on 12/7/1941. Those would have been the primary targets if they had been there.
http://www.pearlharbor.org/ships-and-aircraft.asp
Also regarding your statement about "The only reason we dropped the bombs..." That is the common story repeated in OUR history books, and it should not be blindly accepted. The Japanese were already on the verge of capitulation at the time Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked. All they needed was a functional demonstration of our weapon to allow them an honorable way of conceding defeat. We could have tested it on a less populated area, with the same final outcome. We didn\'t have to kill 210,000 civilians.
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We should just make the Japs watch the movie Pearl Harbor.
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I bet that movie is banned there, like a book written about 10 years ago about their invasion on China during WWII called "The Rape of Nanking."
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Did you guys know that Germany was really close to being the first with a nuke?
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[ooseven mode]
Don\'t tell Dubya that or they\'ll invade Germany next
;)
I wouldn\'t find that hard to believe at all, both Japan and Germany are very industrious and hard working. Only problem is that have a habit of invading other countries and mass killing innocents when left unleashed. :eek:
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It\'s funny how us American\'s are quick to judge other countries aggresion towards others. They never learn about America\'s invasions into other countries, like Cuba and Mexico, or they just completely forget about the fact that we killed almost an entire race of people to acquire more land.
Japan\'s books are no different from our own. Missing facts that would make the country look bad.
Read "lies my Teacher Told Me\' or, "the People\'s History of the United Stats of America" if your interested in real history. That crap in history books is so loaded with patriotic bull its hilarious.
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Agree\'d. Every country leaves certain historical facts out in the history book. The best way to look at history and the history books is like this.
There is two sides to every story. You are really only reading one side .
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MMM Victory was already assured for the allies. The Soviets were poised to jump into Japan from Korea or some shit like that. My understanding is, the US used the ABomb to end the war quicker, so The Soviets won\'t have to invate Japan, hence get control of some of it. They wanted to avoid the situation they had in Germany - East and West divided.
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In retrospect, even if the reason was to prevent Japan from being divided like Germany, given what happened to East Germany and the problems that caused, and where Japan is today, it would still be a good reason. Germany is having extremely hard time integrating the east and the west while Japan, even in the current recession, is still the number 2 economy in the world. Japan came a long way since the bomb.
Also, while the deaths to American soldiers might not have been significant, to Japanese soliders AND civilians it might be. Consider this, over 100,000 people were killed in the "conventional" firebombing attacks at Tokyo. If this continued, AND was expanded, it was very likely that the death toll could\'ve been MUCH greater.
This however, is considering everything in retrospect. The truth is, no one knows what could\'ve been or how it would\'ve turned out.
And yes, history is told by one perspective. That is simply how the world works. It is always good to get other perspectives.
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Originally posted by Skyrider666
Did you guys know that Germany was really close to being the first with a nuke?
And they were developing a "stealth" bomber to use to get it to New York. Scary when you think about it.
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I can\'t believe some actually think we dropped the bomb to show our power... I also remember this argument here about the same exact thing not too long ago.
More lives were saved on both sides due to the two bombs that were dropped. The war would have gone on much longer if the US had to invade Japan. I know some of you are are in love with anime and everything Japanese, but get a grip - Japan was wrong and deserved what they got in the end. Who cares if a few old Japanese are still pissed - I am sure we can find a few vets from Pearl Harbor or some who were captured in the Phillipines to balance it out. Its amazing that people love to bring up that they talked to so and so who was living in "insert enemy country here" when the US dropped "insert weapon here", but have never talked to veteran\'s from this country about what it was like for them or how they felt.
Oh and if you look in German schoolbooks - the years from 1933 to 1945 are mysteriously absent. Nothing like forgetting to past - I wonder when they will be doomed to repeat it? It is practically illegal to talk about the Third Reich. All they know is Hitler was a naughty, naughty man. ;)
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Japan was wrong and deserved what they got in the end.
They attacked military ships and deserved the destruction of two civilian populations and lasting radioactive effects?
Pearl Harbor wasn\'t a huge loss of people, it was a small number compared to other events.
It isn\'t about the japanese being pissed, it is about using that kind of weaponry anywhere, it is just unacceptable. I don\'t care what reasons you justify it with, it is too powerful a weapon.
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NO ONE cared about civilians at the time. Not the Germans, not the British, not the Russians, not the Japanese, and yes, not even the Americans. You can\'t single out any group at the time to being morally superior to one another. Everyone\'s opinion here is all in retrospect.
[edit]Opinions that has been filtered by the changing time and changing morality I might add.
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True, but that doesn\'t make any of them right, and I wouldn\'t justify any of them now.
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The moral of the story is, wrap the gerbil in tape before you **** it, because it\'ll explode if you don\'t!