Viewers are divided over whether the film should have shown Japanese victims of the weapon created by physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Experts say it’s complicated.
Being so far removed from the use of his discovery and put of the loop now the army was done with him is a crucial character moment in the film, and we as the audience are following his story. Having scenes of the bombing, the aftermath of the victims would have undermined that.
The US is in complete denial of the genocide they did dropping two nuclear bombs in two different cities with mostly just civilians. Everybody else in the world see the pictures of the Japanese aftermath when we study the second world war.
I saw those pictures in school. We know that Truman signed off on dropping the bomb on two civilian cities and it was a horror that had never been seen in the world before or since.
Dude, we talk about our atrocities all the time. The current push to whitewash Native American genocide and slavery is actually getting a huge pushback, because we talk openly about this stuff in the US and it’s only a minority that tries to silence it. We talk openly about the atrocities during the Vietnam War, and about the invasion of Iraq, and about prosecution for war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
You can say a LOT about the US, and even the amount of denial we have about our standing in the world, but you can’t call us in denial about stuff like that. We’re in conflict within ourselves about it, but it’s a well known and well discussed thing in the US.
And wait… are you from lemmygrad? The tankie server?
Talk is cheap in a country that has a history of blood on its hands. Pushback on rhetoric isn’t the only thing worth being proud about nor is it very productive. Just as another user pointed out, there’s no material solutions being offered to the remainders of a group that was victim of colonialism, that is still prevalent today.
Every great nation has blood on its hands. The Japanese aren’t exactly Mother Theresa’s themselves. Oh and they shouldn’t have attacked us if they didn’t want to deal with the consequences. They had no problem killing or injuring thousands of our service men and women. Oh……THAT. Give it a rest.
That’s not remotely true. American students learn extensively about the dropping of the bombs and their aftermath.
I was gonna say… where is this US denial narrative from? Just stop it.
That isn’t a genocide.
Well of course it’s not, the us government wants to remind everyone that the bombings were a ‘nessicary evil’ that bs is still taught in schools. Not being a conspiracy guy but I cant imagine a high budget highly publicized movie would rock the boat like that. If you want to hear about sloughing go listen to the last podcast on the lefts 6 part magnum opus on the Manhattan project.
So not to sound like I fully support the bombings, but they did touch in the movie about why it was a good thing. To save not only hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who would have invaded mainland Japan, but also the (potentially) greater amount of Japanese soldiers and citizens that would have died too. Millions to die because conventional war tactics weren’t enough to scare the Japanese.
They were hard-core. They took the fire bombings (which had killed many more than the nukes) in stride. They raped Nanking with unimaginable horrors. Countless human atrocities in the name of “science”
The Japan of today in not the Japan on WW2. There’s a good amount of people who would say the nukes were a merciful way to end the war. The US, in prep for the mainland assault, made the amount of purple hearts they thought they would need for just the wounded. Since the assault never happened, we still hand them out to this day
Most of the current US naval command at the time later said the bombings were completely unnecessary. Your rhetoric is unsupported historical revisionism with the purpose of providing rhetorical cover for war crimes.
Ok but what about nanking?
Oh, Japanese soldiers that the victims of the bombings had no control over doing war crimes surely means the victims of US war crimes had it coming.
So, you’d rather send in an all out invasion like they were planning on doing?
I’d rather the US just let them surrender on the condition that the emperor remained, as that is what ended up happening anyway. All those deaths between the offer being rejected and the unconditional surrender were pointless.
The story is not about bombing Japan.
Yes, that was a war crime. Yes, that was terrible.
But if you know the story of Oppenheimer, or seen the movie, he did not decide anything. The military took over at that moment in time.
So if it was a movie about the military, this had to be shown. But it is about him. So a suggestion (as is clearly in the movie for about the last hour or so) is more than enough of you ask me.
He decided to make the bomb. He knew what bombs are used for.
Agreed, but that is not what the movie is about.
He did say (no one knows what he believed) that just having the bomb would mean world peace…
Then he was a fool who’s actions contributed to the murder of hundreds of thousands.
Used on a nation who’s army’s actions led to the murder of millions
You can’t use a weapon on a nation, you can only use a weapon on a nation’s population.
Look up projected casualties for Operation Downfall
Look up most of the contemporary US pacific command saying the bombings were unnecessary. I know Asian people are just ants to people like you but Jesus, the pathetic rationalizations.
Ants is a pretty apt comparison to Japanese culture at the time. All expected to become soldiers and die for the hive. Seriously, shit was crazy. They were not going to surrender otherwise.
Firebombings were daily killing more than the bombs did as well.
Ants is a pretty apt comparison to Japanese culture at the time.
Okay, thank you for proving my point and admitting you’re a virulent racist so publicly.
Sure show the Japanese victims, but then you need to show why they were victims in the first place. So you need to show Japanese Imperialism that committed atrocities in Nanking and the attack on Pearl Harbour.
Maybe we could go further and show that Japanese Imperialism was driven by the existential threat of Western Imperialism, which does not in any way lessen the horrors committed by Imperial Japan.
Sometimes the whole story can’t be told in a single film. Not all of it is important to the message or topic the author, director and producers wish to send or examine.
