[ RadSafe ] RE: [AMRSO] On This Day( NY Times) - Observation of Moment of Silence

[Steven Dapra]

Aug. 9

         Japan has always been a very regimented nation, and during WWII it 
was a police state.  The "enablers" etc., didn't have much of a choice in 
the matter.  It was do what you're told, or else.  The "eager supporters" 
undoubtedly lost much or all of their former enthusiasm when the coffins 
and the 'we regret to inform you" telegrams began arriving.  For a 
present-day perspective, initially the Bush II war on Iraq was 
popular.  Now it isn't.

         Both individual and mass human behavior can become very 
complicated and convoluted in wartime.

Steven Dapra
sjd at swcp.com



At 09:54 AM 8/9/07 -0700, Brennan, Mike  (DOH) wrote:
>There were far, far more than just two crimes; there were almost an 
>infinite number of crimes, with most of them committed or ordered by those 
>controlling the Japanese government.  There is no justification at all to 
>believe that those committing the crimes would stop, short of such 
>overwhelming force as to kill them or break Japan's ability to continue 
>the War.  The resolve of the Western Allies (and the greed of the Soviet 
>Union) was such that Japan was going to be defeated; the only question was 
>at what cost.  The first bomb did not convince those in power.  Even after 
>the second bomb there were men in the High Command who tried to intercept 
>the Emperor's surrender message, as they were willing to fight to the last 
>Japanese person they could control.
>
>I have the deepest the citizens of Japan who had no control over their 
>government, and who only wanted to raise their families in piece.  But 
>while they were in some ways the victims of their leaders, they were also 
>their enablers, providing the soldiers, making the weapons, unresistingly 
>giving whatever was demanded of them.  They were also the eager supporters 
>of the Japanese expansionist policy, especially in the early days, when 
>the deaths of civilians happened in places like China and Singapore and 
>the Philippines and New Guinea and Korea and...  Breaking their will to 
>continue supporting the War was a necessary part of ending the War.
>
>For those who wish to improve their understanding of the War in the 
>Pacific, I strongly recommend "Japan at War: An Oral History", available 
>at Amazon 
>at 
>http://www.amazon.com/Japan-at-War-Oral-History/dp/1565840399/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-0859248-4214836?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186676568&sr=8-1, 
>and in most English language libraries.  The first hand accounts, most of 
>them from ordinary civilians and lower rank military personnel, helped me 
>to understand how tragic ALL of the War was, not just the two atomic 
>bombings, and also how, without those bombings, Japanese might be on its 
>way to being a dead language, and the Japanese culture crushed beyond recovery.