After the Bomb

by ShrugLife • 3 years ago

38 22 3 years ago

American B-29 bombers dropped leaflets all over the city, warning us that Nagasaki would ‘fall to ashes’ on August 8. The leaflets were confiscated immediately by the kenpei (Imperial Japanese Army)

Yikes. Imagine living in a situation where the government of your own country has as much care for your life as the enemy.

cafard• 3 years ago

Wasn't Nagasaki a secondary target, chosen because the first was clouded over?

nvy• 3 years ago

They dropped leaflets stating "some or all of the cities named" would be destroyed in the coming days.

FirmwareBurner2• 3 years ago

What else did you expect? It was wartime.

Controlling the propaganda and information and not letting the enemy direct their narrative was something each government wanted to fully own regardless of the outcome to civilians, even the allies:

The Londoners were told that the V2 rockets landing on their heads were "gas explosions" because it was better for population morale them not know the enemy has such advanced long range strike capabilities as that would increase fear and lower morale and we're less likely to support long time war attrition with this knowledge.

Same with the Japanese, why would they parrot the enemy narrative to the population, especially that until after the bomb blast was examined, Japan didn't believe that the US already had a nuclear weapon so soon.

chmod6004• 3 years ago

"especially that until after the bomb blast was examined"

The first bomb had already been detonated in Hiroshima a few days prior. They had radio. Are you saying they still felt the threat was not credible?

chmod6004• 3 years ago

Also, that was the second bomb, so it was a very credible threat.

ecf• 3 years ago

‘What did I do to the Americans?’ she would often say, ‘Why did they do this to me?’

Seems like they don’t blame their government all that much

skulk• 3 years ago

Imperial Japan was something else, truly. I just finished Dan Carlin's six-part Hardcore History series called "supernova in the east" which covers a lot of context in an attempt to help people like us understand the zeitgeist in Japan at the time. I can't recommend it enough.

V0rtexV0xter• 3 years ago

It's crazy to think people actually lived through this.

RetroTechie• 3 years ago

Even crazier that a number of people were a victim of the bomb on Hiroshima, and a few days later also got hit by the bomb on Nagasaki.

And some of them even lived through that.

chmod6004• 3 years ago

"‘What did I do to the Americans?’ she would often say, ‘Why did they do this to me?’"

I could imagine a German thinking the same thing during conventional bombings.

foogazi• 3 years ago

Or a Jew on Kristallnacht, or Chinese in Nanjing

Affric2• 3 years ago

It’s easy to say “I was a three year old and did not deserve this” but this is what happens in a total war, 3 year olds are rarely the primary targets of bombing but when the scale of conflict is so great their moral weigh becomes a rounding error compared to those who would use them as a shield.

At the start of the war civilian bombing campaigns were unthinkable. By the end they were standard operating procedure.

There hasn’t been a daring war since. Now everyone knows the costs. No one is safe.

chmod6004• 3 years ago

"Later, we discovered that the bomb was dropped a few meters away from my sister’s school."

I suppose modern precision-guided bombs are an improvement for humanity. Wars are mostly between military targets these days.

IE6• 3 years ago

I suppose modern precision-guided bombs are an improvement for humanity. Wars are mostly between military targets these days.

Unfortunately this is not always the case - I am not sure if this is an issue with the ability of precision-guided bombs to hit a target reliably or the assumed lack of concern for the non-military victims that the bombs will impact.

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

What is the date of this Time posting?

ShrugLife• 3 years ago

Good question, and something I was wondering as well. Wayback machine says it was first indexed in 2017, so I'd go with that.

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

Right, full project this content is from https://www.1945project.com/ is a documentary project created by Haruka Sakaguchi and published on August 6, 2017.

WirelessGigabit• 3 years ago

In the source code there is a line that says

    ,"contentPublishedDate":"2017-08-05T15:26:11+00:00"

After the Bomb

Related Stories