Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/06/japanese-students-recreate-hir.html
…
3 Likes
I recently visited the site and museum, a somber and moving experience.
But came away with an unexpected understanding of China and Korea.
in the museum, the stated reason that the US dropped the bombs
on Japan “because the US government had spend so much money on it
they had to justify the cost to the American people” - (not that an invasion would have cost
hundreds of thousands of US land millions of Japanese lives) and that Japan
had to give up “our colonies(!!!) in Korea and Manuchuria” - seriously?!
Totally get Chinese and Korean complaints about Japanese blind spots in history after this trip
14 Likes
Well, “colonies” are part of the US national myth too…
3 Likes
Next up, a VR simulation of the rape of Nanking.
8 Likes
Got that right. Then maybe an anime recreation of Unit 731.
2 Likes
Followed by the Black Hole of Calcutta.
Trouble is, on the one hand, sensitively done, these types of things could be highly educational; on the other hand some twat will be along any moment to exaggerate, distort, sensationalise, dramatise, monetise. (Nice things? Well, it’s a nice concept.)
1 Like
Yeah i’ve heard that to this day Japan likes to play coy about them having any fault for their role in WW2
1 Like
Hadn’t heard of that. But it is a good example of the future that awaits us when/if VR becomes a mass attraction. Personally, I suspect it may fare better than 3D TV, but will still remain ‘niche’. Whether niche enough to return an investment on such historical ‘porn’, remains to be seen. (Though the actual porn industry might have a field day with certain historical situations, perhaps.)
I’d feel bad about what my country did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, except for the fact that the Empire of Japan was willing to bomb the civilians of Nanjing and Canton in 1937. I guess if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.
WWII was a really dirty war in all theaters (Pacific, Western Front, and Eastern Front especially), with significant firebombings targeted against civilians. The Blitz (Unternehmen Loge), Operation Barbarossa (essentially step 1 of a failed genocide against Slavs), Operation Gomorrah (firebombing of Hamburg), Bombing of Dresden, Bombing of Tokyo, as well as Pforzheim, Darmstadt, Kassel, Kobe (Japan), Warsaw, Würzburg, Chongqing (China), Osaka (Japan), Aomori (Japan), Taipei (Taiwan), Duisburg, Belgrade, Rangoon (Burma), Leningrad, and Stalingrad.
The “sword” is a seriously outmoded metaphor for these weapons.
A million swords, or one car-sized bomb. Since ancient times we’ve had a world where a few powerful people can order the deaths of thousands of people. The mechanism by which those orders are perpetrated is almost irrelevant.
2 Likes
Point taken, except the thrust of your “live/die by the sword” comment has to do w/ “what comes around goes around” rather than exploitation of the many by the few.
When people don’t overthrow oppressive regimes, oligarchies, dictators, despots, and fascists they put themselves in serious jeopardy.
We reap what we sow.
1 Like
War…war never changes.
1 Like
Yep, this would be a good place to list all the American, Allied, and Japanese service personnel and the Japanese civilians who died in Operations Olympic and Coronet, the invasions of Japan.
Here is the list.
I used to think we could have talked them into surrendering on the terms they eventually did, but I was wrong.
I still think area bombing of civilians is a war crime. Nuke or conventional is a meaningless distinction.
But, the bombing saved millions of Japanese lives, if they hadn’t surrendered, we were in the process of switching to attacking their transportation network, which would have meant the rice harvest would have stayed in the north, and all the cities, which were in the south, would have starved, as it was, they came very close.
“Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire” by Richard B. Frank used all the stuff we declassified in 1995 to get a new, much deeper, look into what everyone was thinking at the time. We were not going to invade, only McArthur still wanted to, but they would have starved.
1 Like
Yeah, that’s one of them.
I always preferred the board game myself.
1 Like
