Should Obama apologise?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Well, here is the link.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100017037/is-barack-obama-going-to-apologise-for-hiroshima/

How do bloggers here feel about this?

I think Obama is within his rights to say that the deaths of so many innocent cildren in the two cities was a tragedy. But the dropping of the bomb did shorten the war and bring peace.
he probably won't - because it would put his hosts in a bad position , and the worst thing you can do to people out there is make them 'lose face'.

Even so, he should phrase it in such a way as to make it clear that Japan could and should take responsibility for what happened at Pearl Harbour.

It should acknowledge that the attack was launched without sufficient warning of it's intentions , and indeed, hoped to knock out the American carriers stationed there as part of it's oeverall strategy.

He may also like to point out that one allied soldier died for every sleeper laid on the Burmah Railway in the infamous and illegal POW camps that the Japanese ran in order to build it. The Japanese may also like to apolgise for that at well.

Oh, and I am sure the Chinese would like to hear an apology for the orgy of massacre and rape that the Japanese Imperial Army committed at Nanking.
The 'comfort women' from Korea and elsewhere should also be remembered, and receive some sort of apology and recompense for what they suffered as well, I reckon.

However, I don't see Obama taking a tough line, either at home or abroad, on any of these issues. There is nothing to stop the British ambassador to Japan stepping up to the mike and sticking it to the hypocritical, whiney, Japanese public, with a personal message from our PM - but I don't think that will happen either. We only get presidents and premiers like that in the movies.

The Japanese make the best cameras, the best mopeds and the cheapest gadgets in the world. Therefore they will never be asked to account for their vile atrocities commited in the past.
Not even diplomatically.

Comments

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

No because it'll explode the televisions with conservative 'omg bowing to our enemiez' even if it is the moral thing to do.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

How can it be ' moral' if anyone goes and apolgises to a nation that was clearly in the wrong on so many things they did in the past?

[korean-guy-01.livejournal.com]

Japan should lead by example, apologizing for Pearl Harbor & the colonization of Korea to a sufficient degree.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Not a biggie, but could you pls remove the friend protection? Thanks in advance.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

The request fell on deaf ears.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

To be honest, if the United States does something morally right as regards a country which has been morally in the wrong for half a century I fail to see how that makes it a bad thing. If anything it makes graphic the difference between the Allies and the Axis, even 65 years later.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

To make my point a bit clearer before someone questions it-the Japanese unwillingness to admit their own bastardliness comes across as a lot worse when the USA is frankly admitting its own. The USA issued a formal apology for the Indian Genocide back under GWB. Japan will admit the same as regards the Ainu when Hell freezes over.

On a deeper level I fail to see how "They do X wrong so it's all right if we do it" passes muster for logic. Even when it's something I'd agree with otherwise.

[ygrii-blop.livejournal.com]

Every time this discussion comes up, I picture a cartoon in my mind:

Caricatures of national symbols, all of them with forked tails and cloven hooves, stand over a bubbling cauldron full of innocent civilians. The conversation goes as thus:

the British lion: Say, Uncle Sam, you should apologize for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Uncle Sam: I'll apologize for that when you apologize for enslaving the entire Indian subcontinent for 150 years!

the British lion: I'll apologize for that when Ivan here apologizes for murdering 20 million of his own people in the gulags!

the Russian bear: I'll apologize for that when Pierre here apologizes for his colonial adventurism in Africa!

the French poodle: I'll apologize for that when Claude over there apologizes for the same thing!

the Belgian waffle: I'll apologize for that when Hans here apologizes for starting two world wars!

the German, I don't know, blitzkrieg: I'll apologize for that when Tojo over there apologizes for...

Well, by now you certainly get the idea.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That would be an eagle for the German state, but this sums it up about right, yes. It is interesting to note that *all* the New World Euro-American societies in both North and South America were born of genocide but nobody asks Bolivia to apologize for its genocides.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

The Universe was born out of a Big and violent Boom. Someone should apologize for that violence too.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I blame Azathoth hiccuping in his sleep. :-).

[dwer.livejournal.com]

so rather than living up to our own standards, we should step down to theirs?

Gotcha. And if you don't go shopping, the terrists win.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Seems to be the rationale today's conservatives believe. Also to some extent a rationale among progressives explaining why Bush's imperial Presidency was a dictatorship waiting to happen but Obama's continuance of that has no such implication whatsoever.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

"But the dropping of the bomb did shorten the war"

It could have been shortened much earlier and with less loss of life had the US been willing to entertain anything less than an unconditional surrender, as Japan had by that point been attempting to get a negotiated surrender for some time.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

For that matter so could the war in Europe have been. The USSR had extended offers of peace to the Nazis and if they had been given free reign to do so when victorious after say, the 1944 plot......

[ghoststrider.livejournal.com]

So, you want Japan to apologize for, essentially, engaging in good tactics?

A joint apology for the war would be a nice thing, I guess, but I feel that any real sort of apology (aside from us saying "Yes, we're sorrying for dropping a nuclear bomb on a civilian target") would just be sort of...weak, lame, and pathetic, not necessarily in that order.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Good tactics? What?

Japan's tactics were even dumber than those followed by the Germans. They started the war with the most powerful naval force of any of the Great Powers, and also with a well-trained veteran crew. If they'd been led by skilled leaders instead of being lions led by jackasses they could easily have beaten the USA long enough that the Axis would have won the war.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

No. Absolutely fucking not. In no way should he ever apologize. Ever. Ever, ever, ever.

1.) He isn't just Barack Obama, average citizen. He will be speaking for the United States Government.

2.) The United States Government has nothing to apologize for regarding Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The only thing we should be sorry about is we should be sorry we weren't able to drop them earlier.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If we had dropped them earlier there would have been a very different firebombing of Dresden....

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Couldn't they just bow to each other simultaneously and at the same height or something?

[rainynights.livejournal.com]

I think Obama apologizing to every Tom, Dick, & Harry is getting really old. If any one should apologize it should be Japan. Every year on Pearl Harbor's anniversary they should apologize. For us to be apologizing it makes us look weak. I do not believe we did anything wrong. I know I am an awful person we covered that lol..

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

It's not always about whether we did something wrong, it's compassion for a massive tragedy for a country. I think that we were justified in using atomic weaponry when we did, but that doesn't mean that it didn't cause massive destruction and death. Heck the whole war did.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Have the British ever apologized for their bombings of civilian targets in Germany? I do find a lot of the replies here troubling, a lot of "we fucked them back!" stuff, when in reality the justification of the atomic bombs (they weren't nuclear bombs in the later sense of the word) was the saving of nearly 250,000 Allied troops that would have been lost in the invasion of the homeland islands. It was also to keep the Soviet Union out of Japan as well.

One of the saddest stories was a victim of Hiroshima bombing, who was taken to a hospital in Nagasaki: and lived through that attack as well! Talk about a serious run of bad luck!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Not to mention all the presumptions from the crowd that believes they were unnecessary that the the IJA and IJN, having shown neither common sense nor logic in their means of fighting the war were suddenly going to do so when their backs were to the wall.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Is this President being an embarrassment supposed to shock me?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

I am not surprised that you confuse compassion with weakness.

Obama should apologize for being Obama

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

There's nothing to apologize for.

People get their panties in a wad because the word "atomic" appears before "bomb".

More people died and more of the city was destroyed in Tokyo during the fire bomb raids.

Should Obama apologize for fire?

Re: Obama should apologize for being Obama

[telemann.livejournal.com]

That's why the Japanese surrendered, because they got all confused about atomic weapons!!! The atomic bombs were more destructive compared to the fire bomb raids for a variety of reasons. Are you really this obtuse?

[kinvore.livejournal.com]

The entire world should just apologize to each other so we can go back to killing each other with a clean conscience.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

This time you earned your DQ.

[root-fu.livejournal.com]

Obama can't apologize.

The japanese attack on pearl harbor wasn't entirely un-provoked. The US was blockading japan from receiving certain supplies. And, such is sometimes considered an act of war.

Yet another important tip "historians" tend to ignore for sake of revisionism.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

The US was not blockading Japan. It was refusing to sell it some raw materials, like steal. It was "blocking" the sales. That is not a blockade, nor is it an act of war. It is, at worst, an embargo. A blockade involves setting up a cordon of warships around a nation's ports and refusing to allow ships to enter or leave.

Now, was this provocative to the Japanese? Did they feel like this was an unfriendly, perhaps even threatening act? Sure. But that doesn't mean the US didn't have legitimate reasons to act. Japanese atrocities in China were already well known.

[mybodymycoffin.livejournal.com]

American violence against foreign civilians is always justified, so no.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

I would like to apologize to everyone for every thing that has ever happened to anybody.

There. Everyone feel better now?

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

The 'comfort women' from Korea and elsewhere should also be remembered, and receive some sort of apology and recompense for what they suffered as well, I reckon.

You ought to look into this: http://web.archive.org/web/20070516012746/http://www.awf.or.jp/english/about/archives/1996_2.html

Though actually the money for the Asian Women's Fund was not given by the government but the hypocritical, whiney, Japanese public.

Also see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan#Apology_rebuffed

What Japan did in Asia and especially China was almost comparable to what went on in Europe and it is nowhere near as open as in Germany, but apologies have been made. China has also played politics with Japanese apologies, since Chinese nationalism is in large part based off antagonism with Japan.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this.

I was completely unaware that anything of this sort had ever happened.

But, ignorance is no excuse.
I can now accept that the japanese people were better than I took them for, and i hope that reconciliation between all nations will be possible in future, as it has been between the UK and germany since the war.

My thanks again for bringing all this information to my attention.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

i'm wondering what possible damage could happen if the United States went "you know, maybe we shouldn't have dropped a weapon with a level of devastation that great."

I'm not even saying I agree with apologizing or not. I'm just wondering what possible side-effects there would be. Japan suing us? Japan declaring war? Countries going "America is super-weak because after they evaporate entire towns they say they feel super duper bad about it over half a century later"?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

You really want my opinion?


I would like to see a world free of nuclear weapons, and yet there is a nagging feeling that wecannot trust foriegn governments to play ball. We should insist on multilateral treaties and independent varification from neutral parties to see that they are adhered to.

Having said that, if we can still agree that war is, at bottom, a really horrible business, there is more chance of peace being kept. At least, I sincerely hope so.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Ironically, Nagasaki was the city with the largest Christian population in Japan at the time.

Wow!

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

What a refreshing posting. It was like being hit with a huge barrel of fresh horse hooey. I think it's fascinating how the criminal mind operates. Thank you for sharing with us.

As for whether Obama should apologize, I think it should go something like this:

I understand that the America military has committed many atrocities in its long and sordid history. The terror raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were particularly egregious, especially since they have been rationalized by vicious elements within our nation as precipitating a more expedient settlement to the conflict. It is pretty clear that President Truman was interested in preventing the Soviet Red Army from taking over more Japanese territory and that he wanted to demonstrate to the Soviets that the US was cruel enough to use such a horrible terror device on the innocent people of those two cities. My heart goes out to the people who suffered on all sides of that unfortunate conflict.

Re: Wow!

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

It is pretty clear that President Truman was interested in preventing the Soviet Red Army from taking over more Japanese territory and that he wanted to demonstrate to the Soviets that the US was cruel enough to use such a horrible terror device on the innocent people of those two cities.

Oh, right.
Because it would have been wonderful for the whole world if the Soviets had invaded the Japanese mainland.
The Japanese capital would have had the same makeover as Berlin as the red Army went through street by street, taking out pockets of Japanese troops who surrendered at the same rate as those on Okinawa. that is to say, practically zero.
We would also have a very high Japanese death toll , too, as the authorities would ensure the forced suicide of civilians, as per Okinawa.

And post war Japan would have had the same chances of prosperity as East Germany got. I'm sure they woulda loved that.

Ok, what I've gained from this discussion so far is that the Japanese have actually apologised , many times for their war crimes in WW2.
they have even made reparations to some, if not all concerned.

the Bomb did shorten the war, and saved many lives in the long run. It also led to japan being free to develop as ademocratic nation instead of an impoverished Soviet sattelite state.

"The deaths of so many innocent people, in Hiroshima and elsewhere, is cause for sorrow and regret, and although America is pledged to fight to defend itself and its allies across the world against tyranny and oppression, we resolve to make the world a safer place by striving to free the world of nuclear weapons. We encourage other nations to join us in multilateral disarmament talks and warn our enemies not to assume that this is a sign of weakness on the part of the free world".

Yeah, that would be an appropriate message, I feel.
Say nothing bad about the Japanese attempts to use bio weapons, or America's 200 years history or its genocidal wars against Native North American peoples. just let the past rest and try to move forwards.

As a black American , any criticism of American history that Obama makes at home could carry more weight. but what is to be gained from mentioning
Wounded Knee in a land where few can find the place on a map?

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

The Japanese actually did apologize for the atrocities committed in Korea.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

as the discussion shows, they have actually apolgised for a whole shedload of issues since the war - it never made the newspapers over here, I guess.

Last time Hirohito was here on a State Visit, ex - POWs lined the streets, and when his carraige appeared, the lads did an ' about face', turning their backs on the Imperial carrage as it went past. It was done with miltary precision, and left no doubt about how British people felt, as many civilians who were too young to be in that war also joined in the protest.