re: On this day 75 years ago...the city of Tokyo was wiped off the map

The Pacific was extremely personal. The Japanese attacked us at Pearl, The Phillipines and later at Dutch Harbor. Payback was always going to be brutal. Yamamoto knew this and had counseled in the Fall of 1941 not to attack American interests. Tojo did not listen.

Hollywood focuses on Germany and Europe because of the Holocaust and the Humanitarian outrages there, but they ignore the outrages of Japan. What they did on mainland China was every bit as terrible as things the Germans did....see the Rape of Nanking. They see our participation in Europe as a moral imperative. They don't see the Pacific in the same way

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For them it was. Their barbarism in China, particularly in Nanking, was our trigger.

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I would be surprised if that was a concern.

The China lobby was a huge player in Washington, comparable in influence to Israel now. But if we were concerned about Japanese barbarism, it was episodes like the Bataan Death March, their willingness to fight to the death, or their use of kamikazes, that would have determined our behavior.

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Amazing stories from someone, who if you passed her on the street, you would never suspect had done anything exciting in her life

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Sometimes its easy to forget that those old people hobbling up and down nursing home halls have been thru shite we can only imagine.

I had great uncle who was with Merrill in Burma and up until his last years would not talk of what he did during the war.

What was always interesting was that he said he had to make peace with what he had to do and offer forgiveness and brotherhood to his former enemies or it would have eaten him up. He became the most devout Catholic I ever met. He said embracing his religion saved his life and the lives of his wife and children because when he came back he was a real sonof a bitch. He would actually get together with former Japanese soldiers later on. I met them once when they were old men. It was not until his funeral when one of the last of the Marauders actually said the things they did. It was horrific. He was just a country boy from down the road in St Bernard Parish.

His brother,was a pilot in Europe, He had no apologies for what he did and never regreted any action, although he used to say that not having to look the guy in the eye when you are killing them changes the perspective.

Two brothers, two very different perspectives on the same war, although they used to say that it wasn't the same war

Now, granted I made it a habit of falling asleep in history class in high school. And for college I was barely there and thus I barely passed.

But why the freak does this feel like my first time hearing of this event. Sounds like a major WW2 event, but yet I dont remember it being covered much in school.

Anyways thanks for sharing OP. I actually enjoy reading and learning about history now that I dont have to take a test on it.

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Where does all of that debris go? They have to clean up the damage, but I’ve never thought about where they take it off to or what they do with it.

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they turn it into oweo threads

There's also a certain inhumanness to Japan that ironically the Nazis lacked on our western front.

There was literal action movie bullshite because the Japanese infantry would launch wave attacks on or lines and just be chewed up. Or bring attacks and artillery out of goddamned holes like ants.

We weren't fighting people there. We were fighting the prototype bug and robot army before it became a staple in sci fi.

Even with the WWI armies there's moments of human whimsy. But this was America's first legit throwdown with a people that had a "living god" and we're fully drinking the Kool aid. And that inspired them to terrible awful things, because when your god is on Earth. What is sin?

To not die gloriously for him.

The higher up at the War Dept was Henry Stimson, the Secr of War. Kyoto was selected because it was undamaged and had several universities, as well as being the ancient Imperial city. Stimson scratched it because it was too beautiful to bomb and there were other suitable targets.

Nagasaki was a secondary target the day it was bombed. Cloud cover over the primary target, Kokura, diverted the flight. Good luck for Kokura, really bad luck for Nagasaki.

The primary requirement for cities on the target list was that they were undamaged, so we could accurately assess the damage from an atomic bomb. Niigata, and I think, Yokahama were among cities also considered for destruction. Toyko was not, because we had already practically leveled it.

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Never a good thing when innocent civilians have to die to prove a point.

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Not all civilians are innocent.

If you support the war effort and are actively working to support it, you’re not innocent. Same with terrorism. I consider those that tacitly support terrorism as combatants also.