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‘There wasn’t enough about the horror’: Hiroshima survivors react to Oppenheimer (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Film about ‘father of the atomic bomb’ finally opens in Japan after being delayed by outrage at ‘Barbenheimer’ memes

Archived version: https://archive.ph/8vjF7

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[–] [email protected] 114 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

That's probably why the movie was titled Oppenheimer and not Hiroshima & Nagasaki, because the movie was focused on the man and his work and the regrets that came from that work, while nations celebrated the end of a second World War.

This movie was the type of movie that was always going to upset someone, and while it sucks that Japanese citizens were killed, their Emperor's military might was a brutally murderous raping scourge set loose on that section of the world, while also working with some of the other worst regimes of the world. Overall Japan fucked around and attacked first, did a lot of horrible shit to many different peoples, made some truly horrible friends, and then found out in one of the most devastating ways possible, I feel bad for the innocent civilians, but it was always ever going to end the way it did, if not a lot worse.

I'm just glad Japan grew to be what it is now and that it chose better ways to engage with the world than more attempts at domination, even though Anime, Manga, video games, and more have dominated the world's hearts.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 7 months ago (2 children)

NPR played an interview with a survivor.

He said that he hoped people in Japan would watch Oppenheimer and see the excitement when the nuclear bomb testing succeeded. He felt that it showed the American point of view and that a bomb was their ticket out of a terrible war with Japan.

He also said we should discuss these things now because by the time the century anniversary comes there will be none of "us" left.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

It's interesting how differently survivors of an event feel when compared to people who only ever learned about the event through history.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I heard there was a plot to stop the emperor from surrendering, despite the massive devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It would've taken 10x as many losses from air raids and ground battles for them to concede.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Few people know about the barbaric shit the Japanese did during WW2. Some really... Really fucked up shit.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Bruh, Unit 731 is a meme at this point.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Lions lead by donkeys podcast has an episode about that, it and a few other episodes has the following trigger warning:

"Everything"

Which is apt.

Unit 731 - It is worse than you think, and keeps getting worse.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I've never had to stop reading a Wikipedia page before I read about that shit.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago

Switched strats to focus on a culture victory.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

Yeah.

And the whole horror of the bombs devastation wasn't truly realised until much later, and acknowledged, in the US? Quite a lot later, probably.

We're watching it from Oppenheimer's pov essentially, it's not a documentary.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

but it was always ever going to end the way it did, if not a lot worse.

This takeaway is mythologization of America's most reprehensible act.

While a majority of Americans may not be familiar with this history, the National Museum of the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., states unambiguously on a plaque with its atomic bomb exhibit: “The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria … changed their minds.”

The principal argument mounted to justify the use of atomic bombs — that they would quickly end the war and avoid an invasion that could result in as many as one million casualties — doesn’t hold much weight. Instead, historical evidence more strongly indicates America’s desire to circumvent the need for negotiations with the Soviet Union over the future of East Asia. The Potsdam Conference, held by Allied leadership in the summer of 1945, aimed to determine the postwar settlement in Europe. The United States did not want to be forced into similar negotiations — with the Soviets at the table — for the postwar settlement of the Pacific.

We murdered 210,000 civilians because of a perceived threat to capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Every Purple Heart that has been given out since WW2 all come from a surplus we made in preparation for a land invasion of Japan. Think about that. Had the bombs not worked, our own estimates put the casualties at hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Just US soldiers. Not even counting Japanese soldiers or civilian lives. I don't think the Soviets would have had a magical method to invade without similar casualties.

Were the bombs the right move? I don't know. It was almost 80 years ago in a complicated time that none of us discussing it now can fully understand. I think it's telling that Japan surrendered shortly after. I also think it's telling that no nuclear weapon has been used in combat since then. But based solely on our estimates of what a land invasion, either by the US or the Soviets, would cost in terms of lives lost, I do think it's a fair argument to say the bombs wound up costing less.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I don't think the Soviets would have had a magical method to invade without similar casualties.

The USSR could invade Japan from the less populated and lightly defended north and northwest, while the US would have to invade from the heavily populated and well-defended south and east. This might have helped, but of course we can't say anything for sure.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's like you didn't read either of the articles I linked to.

Also saying they were used in combat, when the targets were specifically none military, is a gross misuse of the word.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

While I'm not defending the use of the bombs as bargaining chips, Japan would have suffered the same fate as Germany under Soviet rule. North Japan and South Japan, alongside a Tokyo Wall, would have not been just a "threat to capitalism".

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So it's better to melt the faces off of hundreds of thousands of innocent people than to risk a two state solution?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

They weren't innocent, they were willing and eager subjects of a fascist state that had killed over 20 million Chinese, Koreans, and Filipinos amongst others, and there was never a chance of it being two state solution.

If there's a reason Truman dropped the bomb as an "anti-communist" measure it was to just to irredeemably prove we had them and it wasn't propaganda.

In the real world, however, Imperial Japan was an irrational state that was trying to force a conditional surrender in a war the leaders never thought they could win in the first place.

The USA waited three days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a surrender. It didn't happen. That alone proves there wasn't one coming from other circumstances.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

They weren’t innocent, they were willing and eager subjects

Just no. Tens of thousands of those killed were children and babies.

Massacring civillians using the excuse that they "all" are collectively responsible for their leadership is a war crime. You're in very bad company. Osama Bin Laden explicitly used that same excuse for 9/11. Israel is using it now for Gaza.

In the documentary Fog of War McNamara admits that him and Curtis May were essentially behaving as war criminals.

There's absolutely no reason to try to carve out this weird moral exception for the US in its slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civillians at Hiroshima and Nagisaki.

There is no shame in learning from the mistakes of the past.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Are you a willing and eager subject to the current genocide being funded with your taxpayer dollars?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

"They" were civilians. You may have had a point if they nuked strictly military targets, but they didn't, they nuked two major civilian centers and they placed the epicenter of the blast in such a position so as to cause maximum carnage.

Any argument that it was anti Soviet (and that that makes it acceptable somehow) or that it was necessary is just atrocity apologia.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It’s true. We could have proven the existence of the bombs without killing anyone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Perhaps what we were proving was our own brutality though.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Article is a bit click-baity. Many of the survivors who saw the film were okay with its depiction and understood why the film presented the atomic bombings the way that it did. The film is ultimately about J. Robert Oppenheimer, and showing the physical outcome of the bombings would have itself been a potentially crass and shocking inclusion in a relatively subdued character study of a complex and tortured individual. Everyone knows that the physical outcome of the bombings on Hiroshima are shocking and terrible and left a lasting scar on the nation, coming to define the national identity of the Japanese, and especially Hiroshima natives that survived the blast, throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. But it's sort of like The Wind Rises. Oppenheimer was a physicist, and a very talented one. That his work contributed to the horrors of war is part of the tragedy of the individual and their story, just like it was for Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the Zero.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

The Guardian does seem to be getting a bit more clickbaity lately.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

The movie was going to be difficult to get everyone to enjoy honestly. But I do think that last scene where he's infront of all the people really is done well.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

Did the journalist need to submit an article before the end of the week and dug this up from their rough draft folder?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Something is most keenly felt in its absence

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

It's the one thing I think the movie totally dropped the ball on. There was an opportunity to show what happened in Hiroshima, and Chris didn't take it.

After seeing Oppenheimer I started reading Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya, it's pretty harrowing stuff. And I was already aware through other cultural osmosis/research what conditions on the ground were like after the bomb. What a wasted opportunity.