re: It's difficult to feel sorry for the Japanese in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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Is this the peak case of "fricked around and found out"?

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Not sure but now I want this on a tshirt

My dad spent WWII in the Navy fighting in the Pacific. Had the war not ended when it did, he was going to have to participate in the invasion of Japan. Hundreds of thousands of American lives were at risk. The bomb put an end to the war. Had it not, I may not have been born 13 years later.

The Japanese were warned numerous times both before and after the 1st bomb was dropped. They had the power to end the war before Hiroshima and Nagasaki and chose not to. The Japanese people have no one to blame but their own government and Emperor.

Harry Truman made the right decision.

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Japan was as evil as Germany and there is zero doubt.

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And they had a 40 year head start before the Nazis even came around. Their people weren’t pawns, they were complicit for 60 years before the war even started. At least three generations ingrained into them.

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The seaside massacre went on for three or four hours. The Japanese would pluck the prisoners from their hiding places and slay them on the spot, either by gunshot or by bayonet. Squads of soldiers combed the weeds in tight formation, plunging their bayonets every foot or so until they harpooned their quarry. One American who'd been caught was tortured at some length by six soldiers, one of whom carried a container of gasoline. Seeing the jerry can, the American understood his fate and begged to be shot. The soldiers doused one of his feet with gasoline and set it alight, then did the same with the other. When he collapsed, they poured the rest of the gasoline over his body and ignited it, leaving him writhing in flames on the beach.

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They were bayoneting guys down low and making them suffer. They shot or stabbed twelve Americans and then dug a shallow grave in the sand and threw them in. Some of these men were still groaning while they were covered with sand. Then the Japs started to cover the grave with rubbish from the pile where I was hiding. They scraped some of the coconut husks off, and found me lying there. Then they uncovered me from the shoulders on down. They thought I was dead, and seemed to think I had been buried by my friends. I lay there for about fifteen minutes while they stood around talking Japanese. It was getting to be late in the afternoon. One of the guys hollered it was time to eat dinner, and every one of the Japs there went off somewhere to eat. I got up and ran down along the beach and hid in a little pocket in a coral reef there.

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frick ‘em

I work with many Japanese. Understanding their culture is essential. Everything, I mean EVERYTHING is about saving face. Certain words we might use to define a problem can be taken by the Japanese as the end of the world. Additionally, they are slaves to hierarchy.

I had a company manager from Japan, someone I was working with on a project, tell me I could not fly first class on my New York to Los Angeles flight because his company president (also Japanese) was on the same flight in first class. Because I was a supporting vendor, in this manager's opinion, I was beneath his company president, and flying in first class on the same flight would be an insult to his company president and could cost me business. I flew first class, of course, but this is just an example of their mindset.

So, if Hirohito wanted to take out every last man, woman and child, the population there would have done it, as it was their duty to do so.

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No they weren't. They were way, way, way worse.

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Yep tens of millions of more stacked bodies than Hitler could ever dream of.

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As a human being I feel bad for the suffering and the innocent lives lost, however it was the right thing to do to prevent even more loss of life on both sides.

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I agree with this. Lot of innocent lives lost, but it also ended the war and saved lots of American lives.

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The Nazis in Nuremburg were the brain washers not the brain washees.

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Somehow the OP doesn't realize that

Don’t forget about Unit 731.

Many atrocities committed by them.

MacArthur let a bunch of the death penalty for their findings.

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a war that decimated them

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they bounced back well though.

The Japanese are my favorite Asians