The U.S. bluff?

They dropped two nuclear weapons. Considering the technology and information at the time, it might as well have been the fucking rapture.

My feelings about this have gone back and forth over the years, but they’ve recently been swayed by learning the dichotomy between how the Germans teach WWII history in their schools, with extreme contrition and reverence, vs how the Japanese teach it. There’s this weird whitewashing that’s occurred in the years since WWII that pretends like Japan’s army wasn’t doing some of the most astoundingly horrific, truly unfathomable shit it’s possible to physically do to another human being, shit that would make the devil blush. Which is not to say the average Japanese person was at fault, and it’s also important to take into consideration the US propaganda at the time, as well as the internment camps, etc.

But Jesus Christ. It absolutely blows my mind to see people online wholeheartedly believe that the US decision to drop those bombs was a totally unprovoked act of cruelty, a war crime of the highest degree with absolutely no justification. When you realize and consider the level of sheer, horrifying evil that Japan’s military complex was willing to systematically commit, it puts things into sharp perspective.

Long story short, war is hell, and humans will eagerly descend into this hell, which is entirely of their own making. There are no swift answers, no two-paragraph explanations that will suffice. But acts of terror come in many forms, and it’s important to understand the breadth of this living nightmare.