In order for the nuclear deterrent to have any meaning someone in the command structure of the nuclear power must have the authority to launch the weapons. There can be no assurance that such a person will continue to be a rational actor and will not have an episode of madness. That will continue to be the danger we are living under.

Perhaps? But then Stalinism was still just a perceived threat; nuclear bombs and massive firebombing was the hard face of unbearable reality!

Besides the nuclear bombs were allegedly dropped more for Stalin's benefit as anything else; given there was a conditional Japanese surrender on the table, and the firebombing was more destructive, with greater loss of life!

Moreover, America was never ever going to sacrifice a million lives, just to get an unconditional surrender out of the then truly hated implacable Nipponese military!
Rhrosty.

A little re-writing of history here? Not a lot of notice can be taken of this article without some actual evidence of what the writer claims.

It was Russia that beat Japan...Doh!!

Hiroshima for Dummies?

Ever since the atomic bombs were exploded over the two Japanese cities, historians, social scientists, journalists, World War II veterans, and propagandists have engaged in intense controversy about the events of August 1945. It was a constant in the ideological Cold War- were they the prelude to the Cold War? The continuing controversy has revolved around such questions as:
• Were the two atomic bombs necessary primarily to avoid an invasion of Japan in November 1945?
• How decisive were they to the Japanese decision to surrender?
• Was the Soviet declaration of war and the Red Army sweep through Manchuria decisive in compelling Tokyo to surrender?
• Did Truman authorize the use of atomic bombs for diplomatic-political reasons-- to intimidate the Soviets--or was his major goal to force Japan to surrender and bring the war to an early end?
• If ending the war quickly was the most important motivation of Truman and his advisers to what extent did they see an “atomic diplomacy” capability as a “bonus”?
• To what extent did subsequent justification for the atomic bomb exaggerate or misuse wartime estimates for U.S. casualties to invade Japan?
• Did President Truman make a decision to use the bomb or did he inherit an irreversible decision that had already been made?
•
• If the United States had been more flexible about the demand for “unconditional surrender” by explicitly or implicitly guaranteeing the emperor would Japan have surrendered earlier than it did?
• Was the bombing of Nagasaki unnecessary? To the extent that the atomic bombing was critically important to the Japanese decision to surrender would it have been enough to destroy one city?
• Was the dropping of the atomic bombs morally justifiable?
The release of masses of hitherto classified/secret documents and the extensive debates of historians have not conclusively resolved all these issues. The sequence of events is fixed and we cannot remove any to speculate on another outcome. But we can be certain that it would have been different if the Soviet Union and not US had occupied Japan.

Yes/No/Maybe Leslie

Your leftwing rhetorical questions fail:

Truman made the right decision in authorising the dropping of both Bombs - on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. https://youtu.be/ZBmSTK8JALk

And thank Christ Stalin did not get the opportunity to bestow his genocidal talents on Japan

Leslie, they are reasonable questions to ask. They have in fact for the most part been answered, thanks primarily to the release in recent years of previously classified documents. Like so much we were taught about WW2 growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, the then official reasons bear little relation to reality. We now know for example that Japan was willing to surrender in 1944 and through its embassy in Moscow wanted to negotiate. The only condition they imposed was retention of the emperor, which of course the Americans allowed.

Neither bomb was necessary to end the war. Their purpose had much more to do with demonstrating to Stalin that they had such weapons. The two bombs were in fact very different and the Americans wanted a demonstration of their effect on real populations. They were prepared to sacrifice tens of thousands of civilians for that purpose.

These two bomb attacks were among the greatest of crimes perpetrated, and only the morally and ethically bankrupt rejoice in their use.

Dear Leslie and James

Yours and Putin's database - courtesy of Pravda "Truth"

http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/16-02-2015/129837-revising_history-0/

Aye chappies :-)

Plantagenet. Your cheap shots have no place in a serious forum. My information is drawn from formerly top secret "Magic" summaries of intercepted Japanese communications and translations from the Japanese of accounts of high level meetings and discussions in Tokyo leading to the Emperor’s decision to surrender.
:“Magic’ – Far East Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, no. 508, August 10, 1945
Source: RG 457, Summaries of Intercepted Japanese Messages (“Magic” Far East Summary, March 20, 1942 – October 2, 1945), box 7, SRS 491-547
Documents 77A-B: The First Japanese Offer Intercepted
. “Magic” – Diplomatic Summary, War Department, Office of Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, No. 1233 – August 10, 1945, Top Secret Ultra
Translation of intercepted Japanese messages, circa 10 August 10, 1945, Top Secret Ultra
Source: Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency/Central Security Service, “Magic” Diplomatic Summaries 1942-1945, box 18
The first Japanese surrender offer was intercepted shortly before Tokyo broadcast it. This issue of the diplomatic summary also includes Togo’s account of his notification of the Soviet declaration of war, reports of Soviet military operations in the Far East, and intercepts of French diplomatic traffic. A full translation of the surrender offer was circulated separately. The translations differ but they convey the sticking point that prevented U.S. acceptance: Tokyo’s condition that the allies not make any “demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler.”

Giday Leslie

Denialists always have terrific documentation. One can deny the Holocaust quite documentarally.

It depends on what information, sorry "evidence", you want to believe.

Do you have ALL the MILLIONS of Top Secret decrypts from all sides?

Was Wilfred Burchett a fine fellow?

Have you fully taken on board the Japanese Warlords (War Faction) training of Japanese schoolgirls to use sharpened bamboo sticks against the invaders down to the last Japanese?

Mass starvation in Japan during 1945?

We will never surrender?

Leslie, you are wasting your time debating with Plantagenet. There was a time when he made an effort to contribute to the debate, but as you observe, all that is left are the cheap shots. If you disagree with his particularly idiosyncratic world view you are a "leftist" a "conspiracy theorist" a Putin acolyte or some other poor substitute for rational thought.

As you know there are a number of reputable historians that have ploughed though the "millions" of documents that he refers to. The evidence is now largely understood, and it does not accord with his logic and fact free version. Keep making your views known. I at least benefit from them.

President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met at Quebeck in August 1943 and agreed that an atom bomb(s), when developed, would not be used without the full consent of Great Britain. They met again in September 1944 and agreed that the bomb(s) would be dropped on Japan.
Earl Mountbatten, commander-in-chief of the British Army for the Far East, kept a diary. It was made into a book and published. He said that he had a business to fly back to London several days before the Potsdam Conference began. He made a stopover in Cairo, where he received an instruction from Churchill to come to Potsdam. In Potsdam he was told that an atomic bomb(s) would be dropped on Japan and that the war would be over in August. I had a photocopy of the page but it is missing; otherwise I could have quoted the passage verbatim.
Joe O'Donnell was a photographer attached to President Truman. He was on Wake Island when the President met General MacArthur in October 1950. Coming out of the hall where he talked with the General, he suggested to O'Donnell that they would walk together. Walkig some distance, the President took a piss, and then O'Donnell asked, "I just wondered do you have any regret for the bomb being dropped. (And) he had (a) very red face and said it was not my decision. It was Roosevelt who said just drop the bomb, not me, so don't blame me." Mr. O'Donnell's interview with NHK or Japan Broadcasting Association was on air on January 14, 2008.

Mr. Lea-Henry mentioned Kuniaki Koiso who replaced Tojo as Prime Minister. That is right. Tojo did not resign voluntarily; he was not able to hold on to premiership because of mounting oppositions. When did Hitler resign because of oppositions? ”General　Koiso had no public stature to rely upon. Unlike Tojo, he had not arrived at the premiership from an important cabinet post, and being on the reserve list he could not function as an army leader. Yet dissatisfaction with Tojo was so strong that anyone who had not been associated with the outgoing cabinet would have been welcom (Ben-Ami Shillony, Politics and Culture In Wartime Japan, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981, p68.)" Tojo was simply put on the retired generals
list. When was the German dictator put on the retired lunatics list?
Mr. Lea-Henry did not refer to Admiral Kantaro Suzuki's cabinet, which came into being in April 1945. From the line-up of the ministers like Shigenori Togo (not Tojo) as Foreign Minister and Mitsumasa Yonai as Navy Minister, those in the know about Japan and Japanese politics like Joseph Grew knew at once that the new cabinet was the one to lead Japan to surrender. Mr. and Mr. Suzuki were very intimate with Mr. and Mrs. Grew while the Grews were in Tokyo. And the Suzukis were very intimate with Hirohito. Suzuki's life was attempted in the famous 2・２６　failed coup d'eta; radical right-wing young officers attempted his life for their presumed reason that he gave wrong advice to Hirohito.

Shigenori Togo was Foreign Minister of the Tojo cabinet. Tojo wanted to eschew war with the United States, and solicited Togo, a noted dove, for the post of Foreign Minister, and go on with the negotiations with the United States. Since there was a slim possibility of arriving at understanding with the United States, Togo, a patriot, accepted the post. But he was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment at the Tokyo International Tribunal; the reason was that he was Foreign Minister in the Tojo cabinet.

At Yalta it was President Roosevelt who asked Stalin to start war on Japan within three months after Germany's defeat on condition that Russia would take over Japan's concessions in Manchuria, this without
asking Chiang Kaishek; the two leaders also promised that the decision would not be conveyed to China for the moment. The President also agreed that Stalin would take Japan's northern islands.
Japan had asked the Soviet Union to work as an intermediary with the Allied Powers for surrender. At Potsdam Stalin said to President Truman that it would be the best poolicy to keep Japan believing that its request for Russian intermediation, and the President concurred.

Visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki. You'll find that the cities are full of desires and prayers for the nuclear bombs being used never again anywhere in the world. There is none of vindictiveness.

US ambassadors Roos and Sweet Caroline visited the Peace ceremonies in Hiroshima on August 6 and in Nagasaki on August 9. No Japanese yelled at them, and no Japanese threw eggs or tomatoes at them.

No country is so much exposed to so big misunderstandings as Japan concerning at least its modern history. I won't tell anybody any more because no one will pay me a shilling and because it's past midnight in Japan.

Yes Michi

Certainly World War Two began and ended in 1945. It was all American and Australian aggression without context.

The Japanese military overlords were true patriots and a credit to the Emperor and the people of Manchuria. Only Russia ended the War of Aggression Against Japan.

This is humbly dedicated to Japan's now aging, but attractively mystical, neo-fascists who never took, or take, responsibility https://youtu.be/vmXXB2eMNN8

Joseph Grew was the last US ambassador to pre-war Japan.

People of the West were led into delusion about China and Japan, perhaps owing to at least two conspicuous facts;China was a gigantic empire while Japan was an invisibly tiny country and Japan was invading China. For instance, the West thought in the nineteenth century that China had a rationally developed, centrarized bureaucracy extending all over the the country while Japan was divided into over one hundred feudal domains. It also thought that the Chinese literati class would be far more pliable, amenable and positively sensitive to Western modern values while the Japanese samurai class would be insensitive.
The historical outcomes were contrary. The fact, which was missed, was that the Chinese literati class had been throughout history rigorously authoritarian, treating the ruled as if slaves (read, for instance, Ralph Diamond/Ways That Are Dark), and the samurai class had been far more sympathtic with the plight of peasants; Another missed fact was that Confucianist China was essentially a male culture that dominated the country while, as is observed by literature critics and anthropologists of Japanese literature and society, Japan, though not a matriarchal society, was full of female ideas and feelings.

If still interested in a little more tidbits, I will appreciate very much if any one reads my (Yoshimichi Moriyama's) five comments on Bill Emmott/Shinzo Abe's Pivot to Asia and my two comments on Joseph Nye/The Limits of Chinese Soft Power.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/japan-history-regional-stability-by-bill-emmott-2015-06

http://www.project-syndicat.org/commentary/china-civil-society-nationalism-soft-power-by-joseph-s-nye-2015-07.

Yes Michi

China's invasion and occupation of Japan from 1931 to 1945 is something all Chinese are rightly ashamed of.

The Manchurian Crisis had a significant negative impact on the moral strength and influence of the League of Nations. As critics had predicted, the League was powerless if a strong nation decided to pursue an aggressive policy against other countries, allowing a country such as Japan to commit blatant aggression without serious consequences.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were also aware of this, and within three years would both follow Japan's example in aggrandisation against their neighbors, in the case of Italy, against Abyssinia, and Hitler, against Czechoslovakia and Poland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasion_of_Manchuria#External_impact

Keep dreamin Shinto Sunshine! :)

Poyda

Plantagenet, thank you for your interest.

Part One
I do not deny and I do not think I ever denied that Japan had an aggressive, imperialistic policy.
I think equations like the following are widely believed such as Nazi Germany=militarist Japan, Hitler=Tojo or Hirohito, German Lebens Raum=Japanese Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, or the proportional expression of Nazi Germany : Eastern Europe & Russia=Japan : China. I think these are all wrong.

General Douglas MacArthur was dismissed by President Truman in April 1951. In May he said in the joint gathering of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, "Their (Japanese) purpose, therefore, in going to war (with the United States, etc.) was largely dictated by security." I understand Chief Justice William Webb, from Australia, said much the same thing in Australia after the International Tribunal of Tokyo was over.

Part Two
Trouble, however, arose when it became clear towards the end of the war that the Germans had not, after all, developed nuclear bombs...Formally the decision was Truman's. He accepted the recommendation of his military advisers supported by Churchill's opinion that the bombs should be used and finally decided when and where to do so. He emphatically states in his Memoirs: 'Let there be no mistake. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used.' In fact, since Rooevelt had died without leaving any instructions and since Truman lacked experience and had been completely ignorant of the project until he became President, what could he do but accept advice? As General Groves remarked, 'Truman did not so much say "yes" as not say "no". It would have taken a lot of nerve to say "no" at the time.' (From Joseph Frankel/The Making of Foreign Policy, Oxford University Press, 1963, p47.)
Perhaps Churchill had post-war relations with the Soviet Union on his mind.

I may not remember details accurately because I have not a book here.
A US bomber B24 was shot down over Kure City, a little over ten miles to the east of Hiroshima on July 28 1945. A crew said in answering to interogation in Hiroshima that he was afraid of being in the city because they had been forbidden to attack Hiroshima and several other cities; something was going to happen.
No Americans or prisoners of war of the Allied Powers were lynched in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombs. One exception was an American crew, Atkinson. He was about one kilometer away from the explosion site. He was dead before the morning of August 7 and a number of Japanese threw stones at or beat the body with a stick.

August 14-15, 2015

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has presented his statement on the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II (WWII). Much anticipated and debated, this Abe Statement included the language of statements made on the fiftieth and sixtieth anniversaries by former prime ministers Murayama Tomiichi and Koizumi Junichiro. But Abe took a different tack from his predecessors, identifying the lessons of that war and defeat, and articulating their link to Japan’s current and future ambitions.

Words matter. Four words in particular were seen as evidence of Abe’s attitude toward the past: “aggression (shinryaku),” “colonial domination (shokuminchi shihai),” “deep remorse (tsusetsu na hansei),” and “apology (owabi)”—Abe included all four phrases from the Murayama and Koizumi statements defined as markers of Abe’s intent. For those who saw the semantics as the key to success, Abe left little room for criticism. Yet opposition leaders in the Diet still found room for complaint, arguing that Abe simply quoted past statements rather than repeating them with conviction.

Abe spent some time situating his comments in the larger flow of twentieth century global currents. He opened with the broad sweep of transformation that confronted Japan in the twentieth century, beginning with the “sense of crisis” over Western imperialism that drove Japanese modernization. Noting that the international community sought to outlaw war after World War I, Abe argued that Japan’s mistake was that it became “a challenger” to the “new international order.” Japan’s economic setbacks and its “sense of isolation” separated it from other nations, implying that cooperation rather than confrontation might have produced a different outcome. Critical to his assessment of that fatal choice, Abe pointed out that Japan’s “domestic political system could not serve as a brake to stop” his country’s effort to overcome its diplomatic and economic deadlock through the use of force. Yet he stopped short of identifying who made those choices.

CONTINUED

FROM ABOVE

The Abe Statement addressed frankly the tremendous civilian suffering inflicted by Japan’s pursuit of war. From the devastation in Japan to the battlefields of China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands, he spoke of the innocent citizens who fell victim to war and his ‘profound grief’ at the devastating costs to all involved. Twice in the statement, Abe spoke to the particular suffering of women during this conflict: “We must never forget that there were women behind the battlefields whose honor and dignity were severely injured.” There was no direct reference, however, to the unresolved diplomatic issue between Seoul and Tokyo of how to reach out to those who lived through that experience.

Abe vowed never again to repeat the past, and to link the lessons learned to Japan’s current foreign policy commitments. First and foremost, he identified Japan’s commitment to never again use threat of or use of force to settle international disputes, reiterating the language of Article Nine of the postwar constitution. Second, noting that the Japanese people have “engraved in [their] hearts the histories of suffering of the people in Asia as our neighbors,” Abe restated Japan’s devotion to peace and prosperity of the region.

But Abe also spoke of the postwar tolerance demonstrated by those who suffered at the hands of Imperial Japan’s policies. He spoke specifically of the tolerance of the Chinese people and of the former Prisoners of War (POWs), expressing Japan’s “heartfelt gratitude to all those who accomplished the reconciliation that allowed Japan to return to the international community.” He reminded his fellow citizens that because of this spirit of postwar reconciliation six million Japanese returned from battlefields across Asia to rebuild their nation, that three thousand Japanese children abandoned in the chaos after Japan’s defeat in China grew up to visit Japan again, and that former POWs from the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands personally led the reconciliation effort, reaching out to those Japanese who had fought against them.

FROM ABOVE

Perhaps the most notable difference from past prime ministerial speeches, however, was his focus on the generations of Japanese who had no experience of war. Noting that eighty percent of today’s Japanese have no direct experience with WWII, he spoke of his generation’s inheritance of a postwar peace and its obligation to “face history squarely.” But he also argued that the children and grandchildren of today’s Japanese should not be “predestined to apologize.” It was time, he implied, to leave that legacy behind.

While it is too early to know what Japan’s neighbors will make of the Abe Statement, Abe clearly had his eye on Japan’s diplomacy. But no less important will be the reaction at home. Asked what his message to the Japanese people was, Abe answered that he sought to make a statement of Japan’s past and future that would be shared broadly among the people of Japan, as well as reassure those outside of Japan of his country’s continued commitment to peace. Only time will tell if Abe will succeed in bridging the longstanding differences that have to date separated the right and the left in Japan’s domestic politics.

Two minor details should not be overlooked. The first relates to Abe’s own sense of his legacy. For all of the references to his grandfather’s influence on his life, it was interesting that Abe chose to visit on the eve of his statement on history the grave of his father, Abe Shintaro. Speaking to the press afterwards, Abe expressed his desire to follow in his father’s footsteps to ensure the postwar peace and prosperity. Second, at the end of his remarks, Abe referenced the scholars and experts who had provided him with recommendations on how to consider Japan’s twentieth century history. He spoke of them as one “voice on history,” but he also implied there were other voices to be heard.

CONTINUED

FROM ABOVE

To be sure, the Abe Statement will be scrutinized – and undoubtedly criticized – in the days to come for what he did not say. Before that conversation unfolds, it would be wise to identify what he did say. First, Abe reinforced his country’s commitment to regional reconciliation and the principles of peace outlined in Article Nine of the postwar constitution. Second, he spoke of the “quiet pride” of those postwar Japanese who rebuilt their country, and outlined their continued desire for shared peace and prosperity with their Asian neighbors. Finally, he has also done what no previous prime minister has done—acknowledged with gratitude the tolerance of the very people Japan harmed most deeply in last century’s war, and credited them with his nation’s postwar recovery.

Sheila A. Smith is Senior Fellow for Japan Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This post appears courtesy of CFR.org and Forbes Asia. http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/abe-focuses-on-japans-lessons-learned/

Plantagenet,
I (Moriyama)sent two comments, before your latest replies, on Gi-Wook Shin/Colonialism, Invasion, and Atomic Bombs: Asia's Divergent Histories/thediplomat.com. That will make part of my reply. Moriyama is shown by two Chinese characters. You will see three trees in the first, and three sticks standinig on a horizon in the second.

http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/colonialism-invasion-and-atomic-bombs-asias-divergent-histories

Your replies are manifold, and I am at a loss what to do with them because I shall have to write a very long answer. But I will give you a reply on a few subjects you dealt with.

Thanks mate.

I agree with Prof. Smith, "...it is too early to know what Japan's neighbors (particularly China and South Korea in Michi's opinion) will make of the Abe Statement..." I also agree that " Abe clearly had his eye on Japan's diplomacy," as the professor said, rather than "deep remorse" and "apology" in my opinion.

The Sino-Japanese relations will be at least a little bit improved. Actually the two governments have already been exchanging, at lower diplomatic levels of contact, siginals of being ready for amelioration. For instance, when Abe officially visited the shrine a few years ago, the CCP's response was a restrained one; it did not resort to its hobbyhorse of anti-Japanese demonstrations. Of course there is no reason at all to expect for China suddenly to change its overt anti-Japanese rhetoric as a Chinese intellectual said recently to a Japanese China-watchr that if Japan apologized, it would confound the CCP and rob it of its useful means of domestic and international propaganda. There is also no reason to expect a kind of Franco-German detente; differences that separate China and Japan are very deep.

Prof. Smith said, "Yet opposition leaders in the Diet still found room for complaint...," "But no less important will be the reaction at home," and "Only time will tell if Abe will succeed in bridging the longstanding differences that have to date separated the right and the left in Japan's domestic politics."

Plantagenet
From above.

Now that the legislations have passed the Lower House (of Japan), they will be enacted by September 27...But the division within Japan will remain long after the legislation is enacted and is likely to come back to haunt the Japanese government when it finds itself in the position of having to utilize the new laws. (From Yuki Tatsumi, Japan's New Security Legislation: A Missed Opportunity.)
http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/japans-new-security-legislation-a-missed-opportunity.

It is oversimplification to divide post-war Japanese politics into two camps, conservatives and opposing socialists, and like every simplification, can be misleading; and the two camps in the oversimplified picture should be subdivided for accuracy as need be.
Since conservatives' Liberal-Democratic Party had close to two third's representation and the largest opposition party, the Socialist Party, had close to a third in the Diet for a considerably long period, the simplified map will not be completely meaningless.
This division is traced back to the 1920s, when Marxism-Lenism burst into the Japanese intellectuals' circles after the Russian revolution of 1917. The massive influence remained in the 1930s' Japan even if not as apparent as in the 1920s, and even rightist intellectuals came under it; nationalists were greatly influenced and young officers that engineered radical movements in the army were found to have been swayed by it.

One very big and important difference between Japanese socialists and their counterparts of Great Britain and Germany was that the latter two groups had already broken off with Marxism in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. Such a clear-cut break did not occur in Japan, which makes schism in post-war Japanese intellectual climate far deeper.
For instance, I do not think, and most probably I am not mistaken, that no leaders of the British Larbor Party and of the West German Social Democratic Party ever went to Moscow and said, "American imperialism is the enemy that the British or German and the Russian people face in common." It was exactly what Japanese socialists did and said in Beijing.

Hi Michi

Its true "if Japan apologized, it would confound the CCP and rob it of its useful means of domestic and international propaganda."

Japanese leaders have apologised many times but the Chinese Government simply cannot accept this because China would lose a political lever over Japan.

With Chinese economic growth slowing down over the past year (and poor Chinese stockmarket performance over the last few weeks) Japan can expect more Chinese demands to (re)apologise. This will be a Chinese tactic to make the Chinese public forget economic mismanagement under the Chinese Communist Party backed Ruling Class.

Also the Comfort Women phenomenon is strange. Korean middlemen frequently participated in these women's false recruitment and ongoing enslavement. Korean organised crime also organised Korean comfort women on a mass basis to service the US armed forces in Korea for decades after 1945.

Pete

Plantagent,
Continued from above.

The division has been felt nowhere so strongly and sharply as in the issue of security or war and peace. Quite naturally. We do not want war. We do not want war for our children and grandchildren and grand-grandchildren. We can make a lot of compromises and sacrifices ourselves for them.

Japanese socialists are not the only opposition group to the conservatives but they make easy what I am talking about.
They deemed almost everything that the conservatives were doing in connection with war and peace and thought that the latter were trying to remilitarize Japan; that they were justifying Japan's past militarist expansion and trying again to make hegemony, a once failed idea, in East Asia without feeling any remorse; that they were trying to whitewash their bloody past by visiting Yasukuni Shrine and rewriting school textbooks; that they were trying to muster political support when they decided, even before Japan became affluent in the 1960s, to increase welfare stipends to bereaved families, suffering pecuniarily, just a pitiful pittance of money, who lost husbands, sons, and fathers.
(In passing, just to show how Marxism had great impact on Japanese. I went to Hiroshima University in 1963, eight months before President kennedy was assassinated. If you said, "I'm going to study economics," you would be usually asked, "Which economics? Marxist economics or modern economics?" Today we simply say "economics" to mean what modern economics used to stand for.)

China and South Korea "started" the unresolved issues like visits to the shrine, school history textbooks, comfort women and the contention that the Germans were repentant enough while the Japanese were not. (I think the Japanese were far more repentant that the Germans. Some other time for this.)
No, these issues were all started by Japanese lefts, and China and South Korea are capitalizing on it, because Japan is critically divided on them. China does not make gigantic propaganda, for instance, on the Senkaku Islands, because if it did it would not work divisevely but rather unite Japanese.

Plantaagenet,
Continued from above. I have been gagged not to speak for a while by Forum Rules.

The following is, unless specified otherwise, from Edwin O. Reiscahuer/The Japanese, Chapter34 Neutrality or Alignment, Charles E. Tuttle, 1978. The book is old but may give you a feel of war and peace in Japan, which was the central theme, deeply devided, in post-war politics.

"...As a result, ever since the end of the war peace has been the key concept in the minds of most Japanese. Their pacifism is deep and sincere, being supported by both emotion and rationality...
No one doubted that Japan should stay out of any sort of war and seek to avoid involvement in international disputes as much as possibe...adopting a "low posture," as the Japanese described it, and concentrating on Japan's economic recovery...But beyond this a deep controversy arose over whether Japan should seek its own security through close alignment with the United States or should cut itself free and maintain strict neutrality in world affairs. As we have seen, this became the largest issue in Japanese politics for the next two decades.
The issue was forced on the Japanese by the United States when it decided to go ahead with a separate (San Francisco) peace treaty with Japan in 1951, without the participation of the Soviet Union or China." The conservatives generally thought a separate treaty was inevitable under the prevailing international circumstances, but mass mediea and academia and socialits were generally very strongly opposed and demanded a treay which included the communist blocks.
"Even the more moderate Socialits accepted the necessity of a "separate peace treaty" and split with the left wing over this issue. The remainder of the opposition groups, however, were bitterly opposed.

Plantagenet,
"In their eyes the American had shifte from liberators to enemies by stopping further reforms in Japan in their wish to foster economic recovery and a stronger position in the cold war and had thus ruled out the possibility of socializing the Japanese economy. Their sympathies lay more with the Communist nations, which they felt were the real peace camp," resisting the capitalist aggressors. They felt that the Security Treaty (with the United States) and the American bases it permitted endangered Japan rather than giving it security, for these bases, they feared, would inevitably involve Japan in America's war and would serve as a magnet drawing retaliation from the other side. The Security Treaty and the bases, they also felt, trampled on Japan's constitutional renunciation of war, in which most Japanese took pride, and on their ardent desire to remain neutral in international conflicts.
Such attitudes had great popular appeal and were shared at least in part by many supporters of the conservative parties. While the economic record of the Lieberal Democratic party was to prove its chief strength, its foreign policy of alignment with the United States always remained its greatest weakness."

"The opposition parties in Japan from the start bitterly opposed the creation of the Self-Defense Forces, fearing a restoration of prewar militarism and pointing out that they clearly transgressed the constitution...Unarmed neutrality was always a slogan of the (Japanese) Socialists, though the (Japanese) Communists more realistically believed in national military power, so long as it was under their own control..."

"This move (the Sino-American rapprochement) opened the way for the Japanese government to set at rest one of the hottest and more divisive of all domestic political issues－namely, Japan's relations with China."

Prime Minister Murayama, known for his "sincere apology," was a socialit belonging to a very radical group of the Japan Socialit Party. The group, for instance, used to have a better liking to North Korea than to South Korea.

I am thinking of writing a little bit more later. Thank you.

Hi Michi

My main concern is to point out that each August selective anti-US activist (claiming to be scholars) decide that we all should remember Hiroshima in isolation from almost everything else. The selectives also point out the alleged sins of US decision-making but no actions of Japan prior to about 1944.

The selectives with their "nuclear war should never have again" slogan link it directly with alleged sins of the US. They are not Japanese but from English speaking countries. The leftists have an agenda of hurting their parents and other authority figures.

I suspect the selectives wilfully disregard the sins of Japan or are plain ignorant.

In Forrest Gump's immortal words:

"Stupid is as stupid does."

Pete

Plantagenet and everyone,
From above.
Socialists regarded themselves in spite of their leaning toward China, as the guardians of peace, freedom, freedom of speech, human rights and democracy in Japan. They were not anti-Americans; they were anti-conservatives or anti-pro-Americans as a former Japanese ambassador to America remarked. Sometimes it was found that they had sent a son or a daughter to an American high school or university and they were proud of it.
Concervatives were generally not anti-Chinese in spite of their option for an alliance with the United States.

People abroad have a mistaken idea from the Japanese aggression of China about the Japanese love of China that historically prevailed in Japan. To read the next passage will make you feel suspicious but it is true; "...the Chinese have never reciprocated the warm feelings of the Japanese, viewing them with distrust and more than a little contempt. The Japanese nostalgia for China has been a classic case of unrequited love (Reischauer, The Japanese, p417.)"

Two things shocked the Chinese diplomatic circle most in the twentieth century. One was the fact that the Japanese sat on the victors' side of the peace conference table in 1901 along with the white nations after the Boxers' rebellion, a status that China had never allowed and will never grant. The other was the fact that Japan had a permanet seat in a security council of the League of Nations. The Sino-Japanese relations, past, present and future, will never be understood without understanding the adoration on one part and the profound contempt on the other.

Plantagentet,
The annual gathering in Hiroshima on Aug. 6 is to pray for the victims and that never in any place in the world shall a nuclear bomb be used. They also pray for the total abolition of nuclear weapons of any and every country. It is neither an anti-American rally. Ambassador Kennedy and a high-ranking official from the US State Department were present this year. It is not the place to think back of Japan's war guilt, either.

About German repentance and Japanese unrepentance.

Chancellor Adenauer of West Germany said, "If Mr. Khrushchev should praise me, I will look back and think what wrong I have done." Khrushchev did not talk back and say anything like "The Germans have not repented." No Japanese prime ministers said anything like that.
Post-war Japan had been filled with a sense of guilt. "...Japanese ever since the war have felt a sense of guilt toward Chinese for having despoiled their country and a feeling that somehow Japan must make amendes to China for the transgressions of the past (Reischauer, ibid. p417.)"

Hitler invaded Eastern Europe and Russia. Japan wanted to get out of its prolonged and emaciating war with China, which had lasted over four years at the time of December 1941, and avoid war with the United States. I would like anyone to read my (Yoshimichi Moriyama's) five comments on Alistair Burnett/War Drums in Asia: Back to European Future?.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/war-drums-asia-back-to-european-future.

Japan had proposed and, its proposal accepted, entered into negotiations with the United States in Washington. The United States was rather provocative in the last few months and wanted Japan to fire a first shot. (I do not intend to mean by this that the United States was therefore 100% wrong.) On November 26, Secretary Hull of Department of State gave a note to two Japanese ambassadors. They knew that Japan would most probably respond by military means. The next morning, Hull said, "I have washed my hands of it, and it is in the hands of you (Stimson) and Knox, the Army and Navy."
The so-called Hull Note shocked the Japanese government and they decided to go to war on December 1 (Japan Standard Time), because it was a total negation of what the two countries had been discussing.

The Japanese ambassadors were instructed to hand the last note to Secretary Hull at 1 p.m. This note had been divided in fourteen parts and each part was sent, and as the code had been broken since October 1940, President Roosevelt, Secretary Hull and some others had read it

Continued from above.
They had read it except the fourteenth part, and so knew what the ambassadors were bringing to them.

The ambassadors were instructed to hand the note from Japan to Secretary Hull at 1 p.m. They had not been told what was going to happen at Pearl Harbor. The typing could not be left for the Americans working in the embassy and the Japanese did it, taking a longer time.
So the Japanese asked the United States to put off the appointment by an hour. The ambassadors met with Secretary Hull at 2:20 p.m. They knew when they came back to the embassy what had happened at Pearl Harbor and were flabbergasted.

One fourth of West Germans were pro-Western at the time of Adenauer; they did not mind allignment or friendly ties with the West. Three fourths liked independence, going on their own way.
The United States and other Western countries found themselves being faced with the Soviets' enormous military power. In addition, Adenauer was anti-Nazi but a formidably proud statesman. The West wanted to enlist West Germany on their side by all means; they could not afford to bother themselves with the question of German repentance or unrepentance or the question of the German past and guilt. As I once happened to read, General Eisenhower had to take back, in winning the Republican nomination for the presidential race, the harsh disparaging remarks he had made about Germany and the role that the Wehrmacht played in Hitler's war.
Of course four fourth, namely virtually all, were anti-Russian. And all of them, including the three fourth, independant, proud and "Deutschland-uber-Alles-in-der-Welt" Germans had to make compromises with the reality.

Perhaps no Germans would be alive today who lived in both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. When many were still living, an astoundingly large number of them answered they liked the Nazi Germany's time and loathed the Weimar Republic days. (I would like to continue a little bit.)

The Wehrmacht was the one important bastion of German conservatives, and German conservatives were ultra-conservative owing to German history. The Wehrmacht, like other conservatives, were not too unhappy with Hitler's expansion into Eastern Europe. Hitler gave them one victory after another. But when he began to give them a defeat after another, they began to change their minds. They tried to kill him in July 1944, because he seemed to bring Germany to ruins and aslo because in defeat, like what happened at the end of the First World War, they feared they would lose their social status and everything that went with it. Anyway, the Wehrmacht's haughty unrepentance was camouflaged without its important role in Hitler's war, its attitude toward Nazis, atrocities it did in Eastern Europe, and comfort women they had being questioned. We are made to believe as if they always treated Hitler as a corporal. Hollywood movies spread the myth.

There is a gap, unbridgeable, between what Germans think they are and what they really are. This unbridgeable gab is bridged by German romanticism and German metaphysics. German metaphysics is a form of German romanticism.
Bertrand Russell, an English mathematician and philosopher, was having tea with a colleague of his and a German professor that had come to study at Cambridge University. The German said, "You don't have a word like our Gelehrte in your language." Russell's friend was a stammerer. He said stammering, "We call him a p, p, p, prig."
Another contribution to what turned German unrepentance to enough remorse was President Weizsacker's (Weizsaecker's) famous address of May 8, 1985. He said, "Those who close their eyes to the past are blind to the present." The address was priggish; it layed all blames on Hitler Com., Ltd.

Hegel was a typical German philosopher. He laid down, like every German, uncontidionally the high-flown ethical principle that every man should be loyal to himself/herself and to nothing else; that no man should be bound by any authority or authorities but by his/her own independent morals as a free man/woman. To be continued.

Onya Michi!

:)

Pete
http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/7-problems-with-japanese-option.html

Hegel, like 99% Germans, ended up in smoothing over the unbearably contradictionary pressure between idealistic, high-flown principle and German/Prussian reality, always by justifying the German/Prussian State. It is the case of "They lived happily ever after." Martin Luther (1483-1546) set it up first in theory; religious piety was linked to political absolutism.

It is not suprising, therefore, to find that the extreme nationalist movements of the twentieth century, unable to throw up from their own ranks a philosopher equal to the task, should consciously or unconsciously turn to Hegel in their search for a theory to justify their actions. Most of the theories which have been evolved by the would-be philosophers of Fascism and National-Socialism are variations, more or less garbled by the introduction of syndicalist, racial, activist, and various other twentieth-century modifications, on Hegel's basic theme (The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Nationalism, Frank Cass and Co. Ltd, 1963, p51.)

In passing, Japan of the 1930s was not a totalitarian, fascist country though it showed some resemblances like many Western coutries. You will not know that unless you have some knowledge of how the Japanese lived their daily lives in the 1930s and 1940s.
In Germany big businesses. land lords and social highbrows, for instance, were not too unhappy with what Hitler seemed to be setting out to do, but in Japan big bisinesses and big land owners did not like the right-wing movements. For instance, Japanese big businesses were doing trade with Ameriacan and European countries and they constituted a major window, like big land lords who lived in urbanized areas and middle-class people who were engaged in jobs that required intellectual skills, which looked out on Western culture.
The radical movements had their constituencies in agrarian areas,and "Peasants and residents of the thousands of villages and small towns, who still constitued the bulk of the population, looked at what was happening in the cities with wonderment and often with disapproval (E.O. Reischauer, Japan: The Story of a Nation, Charles E. Tuttle, 1970, p180.)" But the radical movements were not necessarily anti-American or Western.

Continued from above.
I do not know exactly when China began the game of "Do not visit Yasukuni Shrine," or "Japan has not apologized" game. When the CCP began its game around 1994, it thought it could make a lot out of Weizsacker's address and began to tout it and say, "The Germans are remorseful and made enough apologies while the Japanese are not at all repentant. The so-called class A war criminals were enshrined in October 1978 and three Japanese Prime Ministers had made over twenty visits without being denounced until China began to be critical of the visits.
The two governments have been exchanging signals of playing down the game for quite some time. The latest news report in Japan said that Abe is going to visit Beijing on September 3 though he will not attend the PLA's military parade. (Abe has met Xi Jinping three times as Prime Minister. I do not remember it was the first or the second time when they met, that the Chinese government asked the Japanese, at least according to a Japanese report, to make-believe that Abe had requested it.)

You can get to yaleglobal.yale.edu/Alistair Burnett/War Drums in Asia: Back to the European Future? at the following link.
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/war-drums-asia-back-european-future.

Plantagenet,
I read your Submarines Matters. I found it too technical to understand and make a comment.

Hi Michi

Yes Submarine Matters is lovingly crafted for a technically minded audience of aesthetes, gentleman and submariners.

Pete
https://youtu.be/GgX1WBf2SjE

I said in one of my posts above that Abe is going to visit Beijing on September 3. According to a report he has finally decided not to, at least on September 3.