"There's a lot of shame and denial within the Japanese culture, but that does not equal ignorance."
Denial, maybe that was it. I do know that when I was working at Citizen, they sent some of their sales people over here for training in the US. They were in their mid-20s and, over some beers, got to complaining about how the US was pushing Japan down. How Japan was basically minding their own business when the US jumped them during WWII. I sort of mentioned that Japan was pretty aggressive, invading China, Korea, Australia and point in between, and they were indignant that I would claim such, it never happened. But, you could be correct, they were just denying to save face.
As far as the rest of your post, what in the hell are you talking about? What am I denying? Did the US drop two nuclear weapons on Japan? Yes we did. Did we have to? It depends on what you mean by "have to". It looks as if Japan was getting ready to surrender to the Soviets. That might have pushed the issue to the front. I can understand the military not wanting to do a conventional invasion, their experience to that point was not too good. Wholesale slaughter of civilians was definitely in the cards, taking those two cities out very well may have been the best way to drive the point home. But there isn't any way to really know. |
