'Oppenheimer' finally premieres in Japan to mixed reactions and high emotions
'Oppenheimer' finally premieres in Japan to mixed reactions and high emotions
209 comments
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Crazy, what's next, a nazi movie released in germany?
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As a german, I wish someone made some more of these. Because people seem to have forgotten about the horrors of WW2.
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More? It feels like nine out of ten war movies focus on WW2. You can't throw a stone at IMDB without hitting three WW2 movies and a series along the way.
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The Zone of Interest was so good but even it got misunderstood
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Nothing will beat Downfall in terms of German movies on WWII
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You had one that Hitler just revived in the parking lot he died and he started talking with some people and it was chilling as fuck. Like tou are talking about how immigration is shit with a guy dressed as Fuckin HITLER!?
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There have been so many movies and series just the past few years though... many really good too, and many that go pretty far in showing how horrible the nazis were.
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So, you need more films? I guess hollywood just ran out of ideas.... What about a film of nazis in a desertish mediterranean setup, fighting natives with modern american weapons, because idk... time travel? And spoken entirely in hebrew?
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Emu documentary in Australia
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I speak for the trees and the trees speak fruckin emu. U know one of the worlds largets structures is a fence we built to contain then longer tgan the great wall of china so we may have lost the war but we did manage to put em in the worlds largets and only emu camp
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Well i'm in my mid 30s but i've seen a tv premiere of a star trek tos episode.
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The bombings has to be seen in the context of the unimaginable horrors orchestrated by the Japanese state that had to be stopped, at almost any cost.
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Almost... Another way to see it is they burdened future generations as an expedient measure to save the lives of the people now in the past. Another another way to look at the bomb is preventing another world war.
An interesting historical point is Japan had largely been defeated by the time the bombs were dropped. And they had the option to bomb an uninhabited (or very lightly) part of Japan's territory as a show of force. But, instead they specifically chose to irradiate civilians.
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It is also interesting that the movie focuses on the scientists developing the bomb over everything else. There is a removal of the protagonists from seeing the destruction of their work, but that was done on purpose by the military. Even within that, you see a discussion of morality of the bomb by its developers and that the scientists, in almost all cases, have a more nuanced understanding of the destructive power they are developing and the ethics of using such a device.
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I think that's always the way. Compartmentalisation. Though I don't blame the film for not showing the horrors taking place in those cities. At the time Oppenheimer wouldn't have access to those images, and so I guess neither do we. On the other hand - unless I miss remember - we do get to see him watching a film reel. So, maybe they could have shoehorned the scenes of destruction. But, personally, I think it's enough to see the effect it has on Oppenheimer. Any more could be classed as prurient voyeurism.
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This is of course just my opinion, but no horrors, imaginable or otherwise, that the Japanese could've possibly orchestrated at the time, with the means they had available, would've come close to the devastation caused by the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Look up the Rape of Nanking. Studying that alone made me believe the bombs were warranted. That's not even including Unit 731, and the fact that the Japanese government still will not acknowledge their attrocities.
The bombs were a sad necessity to stop the monstrosities.
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It’s fine to believe that — I’ve been wrong before, too.
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I disagree. The proliferation of Fascist ideology, in Asia alone, would've far eclipsed the devastation of two nuclear payloads.
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Of course, thats your prerogative, but then, quite frankly, you don't know enough about Japanese war crimes.
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Is there a Japanese film like Oppenheimer but from their perspective? I've seen plenty of stuff that feels influenced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including the horrors from a perspective unique to people who have first hand experience; but it's all fictional.
Like, is there maybe a movie about the dude who survived both bombs?
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I don't have a full grasp of it but Barefoot Gen (1983) is on my watch list and deals with the topic of atomic bombs
E: Ah... you wanted a documentary. This isn't it.
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Also that the alternative was burning cities with the people still in them, and they'd seen that, which was have been more horrifying and slow than a nuclear conflagration.
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Not trying to downplay what Japan did, but I don't think that's why they dropped the bombs. Russia was closing in and the US didn't seem keen on having to divide up Japan like they did in Europe. I'd say it's more likely civilian targets were bombed to put social pressure on the emperor and government to accept defeat.
These bombs don't discriminate, so even put into context like you say, it's still not a good argument
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I love how Americans opened the "nuking of a civilian target" debate with "sometimes is justified" as their first card.
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Which Americans do that you mean?
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"If you violate the Geneva Convention, your people don't get the protections of it" seems like a pretty reasonable way to justify the bombings tbh
In any case, there are some important considerations to be made here too:
After the horrors of Okinawa, US leadership expected a million casualties to take Japan itself, to the point where the Navy wanted to simply blockade Japan into submission. Given the Japanese civilians were already eating acorns and tree bark, and the military's entire outward appearance was to never surrender, it isn't unreasonable to assume Japan wouldn't have given up.
Of course, the Japanese were refusing to surrender to the US in order to surrender through the USSR in hopes of getting a better deal (protect the emperor, no war crime trials, etc.). Of course, the Soviets invaded Manchuria and dashed all hopes of that, which, according to many people, was the real reason for Japan's surrender.
It is a bit murky, but in response to the bombings and the invasion, there was a meeting on August 9th of the highest ranks of the Japanese government where it was determined that surrender was the only option and plans were drawn up to do so. However, on the 14th, there was an attempted coup by some army officers to continue the war, which failed after several high ranking officials refused to comply, among other things.
All of this taken together is not to say "the bombings were necessary," but rather to show the situation as it developed, and how many different things could have gone wrong and dragged the war on for longer (side note: Japan still held a lot of territory and there were plans to liquidate POWs and the like in the event of surrender)
Was it right to vaporize thousands? In a vacuum, no, certainly not. But in the complex context of a war in which millions had already died and millions more still very well could have, its tough to say.
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Justifying killing citizens is crazy
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I mean, sure it's horrible, but again, understanding the context behind decisions is important to getting a full idea of why something was done.
Take something like strategic bombing, which killed more people by a country mile than the atomic bombings. Does anyone bitch on the same level about how many people were killed by regular bombing? Hell, Operation Meetinghouse (the firebombing of Toyko in March 1945) killed something like 150k people in a single raid, and nobody says a goddamned word about it outside of historical circles.
At the end of the day, the idea behind strategic bombing (in the case of the Allies) was that it was a good way to damage the enemy's war effort. The killing of civilians wasn't the objective (unlike the Germans, who explicitly employed terror bombing of civilians as a tactic). Its the cold calculus of fighting a modern war - the enemy's capacity to fight is the ability for them to make more things to fight with, so eliminating that capacity by demolishing factories and houses is a good strategy. The killing of civilians wasn't the objective necessarily - breaking the apparatus they participated in was.
In some ways it's actually better to simply leave millions homeless instead of killing them, as the enemy must house and feed these people instead of using those resources for fighting...
Either way, would you have rather the US blockaded Japan to death to force a surrender? Killing untold numbers of civilians from starvation and disease than a relatively small number of civilians in 2 places? Maybe we wouldn't have needed to if the Russian invasion was enough to scare them into surrender, but we'll never know that for sure...
What would you have done against an enemy that gave every indication they were planning to fight to the death?
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I do not wish to justify the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, if any good came out of it, I think showing the world the death, devastation and illness an atomic attack on a city can cause likely made world leaders pause before pushing the button. The Cuban Missile Crisis comes to mind. Would either party have backed down if no one had actually seen what even a relatively small bomb could do to a city?
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It's not like we didn't know nuclear bombs are destructive and violent. That's the point.
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That point makes sense, but why drop TWO bombs days apart? That’s sickening.
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The reasoning at the time was that the Japanese would not believe the U.S. could do it more than once and they would have to believe the U.S. could obliterate Japan in order to surrender.
I have no idea if that would have been true, but that was the idea. It certainly is true that the Japanese were being told to fight until every last man, woman and child on the islands died, so it was a desperate situation all around.
But the fact is that it was only a matter of time before someone developed an atomic bomb and no one has been crazy enough to use one in a war since 1945. The main reason for that, in my opinion, is that the world saw what happened.
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Oppenheimer was not as good as it was made out to be.
The plot was muddy and jumped around between multiple time periods and the dialogue was confusing at shit.
Cinematography and acting was beyond amazing though.
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This is like someone saying a book is bad because they don't understand some of the words.
All the things you mentioned were specific choices made, not failures.
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Just for the people who want to defend a nearly 100 year old tragedy for some reason. Here is a document from the US armed forces calling you a fucking idiot.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945. Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war. and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. - The United States Strategic Bombing survey (European war) (Pacific War) https://ia801903.us.archive.org/33/items/unitedstatesstra00cent/unitedstatesstra00cent.pdf
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When Hiroshima was erased in less than a second, the Japanese navy had been eradicated.
The status of their mainland holdings was irrelevant, because they were under blockade.
Their air force was out of planes, oil, and pilots.
Their mechanization program basically never happened in the first place, and their tanks were irrelevant to a military that had marched to Berlin.
Their miracle weapon programs were failures or still in development.
They'd lost 2 million troops trying to conquer China, Korea, and the Philippines and killing 20 million people in the process.
They knew from the start that victory against America alone was impossible. The warmongers just thought the filthy gaijins would surrender if they sank enough of the Pacific Fleet.
They had agreed to abide by the Geneva Conventions and then immediately broke their word.
They had already seemingly refused a conditional surrender offer.
The person writing the paper that council of academics pulled their ideas from has been repeatedly found falsifying documents and denying the Rape of Nanking.
The USA waited three days between bombings to give them time to surrender in the face of power even the most delusional could not deny.
Do you know what happened instead?
The military tried to launch a coup to stop the surrender after the second bomb, the Kyuju incident. The War Minister tried to enlist the rest of the government to help against the wishes of their literal God Emperor.
Get fucking real with your "They were going to surrender anyways."
Now if want to argue the Allies should have just starved them out instead...
Maybe. How many peasants do you think the most zealous military cult in history would have let die before admitting defeat?
How much would you have spent offering mercy to an enemy that had none of their own?
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I think the civilian target is hard to justify, but that ship had well and truly sailed in that war at that point, so it's interesting that it gets singled out. Presumably because it was only two bombs, versus hundreds of thousands. Fact is, it did happen, and plenty more besides. I think we can agree none of it was ideal.
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America's classic "bomb civilians tactic"
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"the military launched a coup". Really? The whole military? All against Hirohito himself. Musta been a Chad to single handedly stop the entire Japanese military from couping him.
What you meant to say is a cadre of young officers attempted to storm some government buildings before being put down quickly by the Japanese military.
But ya know what they say. Grain of truth and all that.
Hey, have you ever looked into the Japanese negotiation strategy for peace against the "unconditional terms" we ended up giving them? I'll save you the trouble, they are identical. The problem is that by refusing to negotiate and demanding unconditional surrender, you don't care about stopping the war and saving lives. You care about making your years of jingoistic demands seem legit. We demanded unconditional surrender not because we didn't like their terms, but because we needed to embarrass them for political points back home.
That is not worth nuking 2 cities for.
Imagine killing two urban centers worth of civilians for the sole purpose of proving a point. Scum.
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Interesting fact about this document is that from what I recall, the air force pushed hard on the idea that bombing alone would be sufficient to win in an effort to secure funding when the US military downsized post-war. I'd fake its findings with at least a little grain of salt.
Also, it's not like we could really have simply sat on our hands until December...the American public wanted results and the cost if the war was astronomical already, so adding on months of mobilization and war economy to "save the lives of a few Japs" (to use the relatively widely held stance of Americans at the time) was never going to happen. To say nothing of the toll on human lives regular strategic bombing and famine conditions would inflict...
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209 comments
I have lots of Japanese family and friends, and none of them understand the horrors of WW2. As far as they were taught, America just randomly dropped nukes on them. They're mad because they think of Japan as a victim, not a monster that needed to be stopped. They raped and pillaged everyone who wasn't Japanese.
At least Germany teaches their kids about their atrocities in hopes that they never repeat it.
Japan was definitely a monster that needed to be stopped. But to say that made it okay to drop two nukes instantly killing thousands of civilians is not okay in any case.
Well. The war took 20.000 lives daily. The bombs took about 140k if i recall right.
If the war lasted 7 more days it would even out. The bombs ended it instantly.
The Japanese doctrine was to fight to the very last man, woman and child.
The Japanese are like everyone else. Only more. They had some powerful cultural settings to be able to do what they did.
Mostly agreed. Historians and philosophers can argue ad nauseum about if the bombs were the only way to end the war, but we literally can't know. Some argue that everyone will listen to the emperor while others argue that they would fight to a long, drawn-out death, citing the coup that happened even after the Japanese saw the immense power of the bombs.
My comments just give insight into the ferocity with which they attack the movie. Japan doesn't teach their population about all of the war, the invasion of China and the Philippines, the rape of Nanjing...any of it. They are only taught that they were one day minding their own business when Americans destroyed two cities. It makes sense they don't want to consume this media.
From what I understand this is not the main point of contention among historians. That Imperialist Japan, like all Axis powers, was a cancer that demanded amputation was not the justification for the deployment of nukes. Rather, the debatable justification was their leadership's inability to surrender unconditionally.
thousands is tiny compared to how many japan killed
My understanding was they were actually attacking manufacturing for the war, it's just that an atom bomb is not that discriminatory, and that all the military-only targets had already been bombed out of existence by that point.
Not saying it was right, just explaining it wasn't as black-and-white as you express.
Interesting post. I was unaware of this "random attack" teaching. Is this present day curriculum? Japan isn't closed off to Western internet and media. It can't be that close of a secret, I mean they're watching Oppenheimer right now. Not like China where they lose you in a prison colony if you talk about certain historical facts and the internet and media are fully censored.
I'm reminded of the Japanese guy who remained encamped on some spit of jungle in the Pacific Islands until something bananas like 1975 or something, and he had been out there with two others still holding their position, and had shot like 15 locals. Even when NGOs brought them newspapers, they assumed it was an American trick because they were taught and still believed that Japan would never surrender and would die fighting door to door to the last. It must have seemed paradoxical to them. They had to bring back the guy's commanding officer fom a retirement home or something and fly him to the island to get the guys to come out. As far as I understand, that sort of rhetoric is viewed in Japan how anti semitic rhetoric is viewed by most Germans.
Personally I think those two bombs saved a lot of lives by destroying Japan's will to continue prosecuting the war, and two showed restraint that the world has continued to this day. As I understand, some in America argued for more targets, like as many as 50(?) cities? If that had happened, Japan wasn't going to be any more beaten than if they lost the will to fight and surrendered unconditionally after just two bombs, and I wonder what might have happened if that tradition of restraint didn't exist all these years. You know, if it had been fifty, sometime by now some despot would have been saying "what's the big deal, not like we did fifty."
Mines is mostly anecdotal - I grew up in Hawaii and became friends with a lot of Japanese nationals + my wife's family constantly has get-togethers in Japan or America. Thankfully there's several testimonies on Reddit and YouTube that I sadly can't reference because I'm on mobile.
I want to clarify as well, I'm not saying the Japanese are bad, I'm saying why Oppenheimer would spark outrage for Japan's general public. Some comments in this post could benefit from cultural context. It's not as simple as "haha people who got beat up don't want to watch the replay". It's tragic, and I get it.
As I said in a comment below, a country's history curriculum seems to always show the country as a winner, or the victim of an atrocity. Every country seems to be guilty of this to some degree, I just like how Germany handles it: "we did dumb shit, we're never doing it again, and here's why."
Right, just like 9/11 was justified due to U.S. imperialism.
Lol
Huh. It's almost like history is written by the victor.