Got an interesting one from JP re: Tokyo air raids.
Worth looking at - particularly in the light of recent Dresden commemorations.
Anyway, here's good 'ol JP:
"It always amazes me that it isn't brought up more often, given how often Hiroshima and Nagasaki make the headlines. I think the Tokyo bombing killed more* than either of them, and many other Japanese cities** (made of wood and paper) were incinerated in firebomb raids - surely relevant facts to a discussion of the moral dimension of the Atom bombings.
JP
*maybe not if you include longer-term fallout victims.
**Actually the people of Hiroshima thought they were receiving divine protection, as the mass raids never touched them, and on the day the A-bomb fell they looked up, saw just a single plane, and were relieved they were going to be spared again."
1 comment:
Originally posted by Seb: (moved here by Dan)
Also relevant to the A-bomb debate, and more so if you're considering whether it was justified or not, would be the casualty figures for the Okinawa invasion, which featured such fun stuff as local people being forced to act as cannon fodder/human shields and even commit suicide in their thousands by the Japanese Imperial Army.
As to why the A-bomb gets more publicity, the fact that the Japanese Foreign Ministry cabled the Embassy in Sweden immediately after the bombings to instruct them to get maximum PR advantage hints at some reasons why this might be the case.
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