An odd little note from out of Japan got me thinking
Japan’s defense minister resigned on Tuesday over remarks that appeared to accept the 1945 atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, dealing a fresh blow to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ruling camp ahead of a national election this month.
[…]
Kyuma’s decision to quit came after a prominent lawmaker in the ruling coalition’s junior partner had said he should “decide his own course,” a phrase that is often code for urging a politician to quit.
Abe had attempted to quell the furor by reprimanding Kyuma, who said on Saturday that he thought the atomic bombings “could not be helped.”
But opposition parties, keen to press their advantage ahead of the election, had refused to let up pressure for him to resign.
I find this story interesting as a means of comparison between the sort of accepted terms of what an American is supposed to think of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be in the mainstream and what a Japanese is supposed to think.
Flip the accepted opinion from America of “We(tm) had to do it. Damned right we dropped the bomb. They started it!” to a Japanese politician murmuring in a “gaffe” (the definition of a gaffe is often just a politically unpleasant truth) of “Maybe they have a point.”
A dozen years ago, there was this furor over the opening up of a Hiroshima and Nagasaki Exhibit, full of acrimony that relatively banal statements on the number of deaths of Japanese civilians gave too much credence to any lingering questions of that impenetrable fortress of “Damned right we dropped the bomb!” This is the opposite of that Japanese politician’s “gaffe”, though probably not as fully as that exhibit never really questioned the use of the bombs — just simply maintained that it had some rather unpleasant and unsettling effects — but an American politician wouldn’t say anything beyond that because she or he would meet up with the same fate and furor of that Japanese politician.
In college, a professor assigned the class a paper on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more or less wanting “Pro” or “Con”. I wrote a “pro” paper based on a bit of psychology that the David Horowitzes of the world would eschew in flailing on about Left Wing Professors– oftentimes a college professor will give more leeway in grading if it argues against their worldview. The only thing I will say is that Harry Truman and The Pentagon lied with their initial statements that “We Have struck a Japanese Military Base”. And yes, it is a telling lie.