GenZedong

What drove America to commit this atrocity was trying to one up Stalin. The Russians defeated the Germans and they were coming for the Japanese next. America couldn’t have Russia win the war on two fronts, it would give the commies too much moral authority, so they used the atom bomb to show the soviets their military capabilities whilst bringing the war to a close on Americas terms.

We can mourn the loss of Japanese civilians who were immolated to further American interests in their fight against communism, and we can also mourn the victims of imperial Japans cruelty and greed in China and elsewhere. It is understandable for the victims of Imperial Japans atrocities to wish vengeance on the Japanese but the people who died were (mainly) japan’s proletariat who shared more in common with the Chinese proletariat than they did with their imperial ruling class - I.e. maybe not the right people to seek vengeance against.

Key, I think, is in emphasizing that opposing the nukes dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not about putting down US imperialists in order to defend Japanese imperialists. It's about understanding the barbarity of US imperialism and also recognizing that certain kinds of acts of war are not acceptable on principle, no matter how barbaric the enemy has been; and perhaps more importantly, that being barbaric is not necessary to win a war.

One of the main historical arguments surrounding it is this idea of whether it was "necessary" to do it, in order to end the war. But not only does the historical evidence point to the war being all but over (and they did it anyway, in spite of not needing to), even setting that aside, the presumption of the USian argument for justification (the bogus argument that if they didn't do it, a ton of USian lives would have been lost in a land invasion) implies that US lives are worth more than Japanese lives; worse, it implies that US soldier lives are worth more than Japanese civilian lives. Even if you go with some "shared responsibility" genocidal-adjacent narrative that some horrible people were among those civilians, the argument still comes out with the implication that US lives are more valuable. The argument also assumes that if the bombs weren't used, US lives lost in a land invasion would have been the only way to end the war, which sounds ridiculous on a cursory inspection, that that was the only way to make it happen when they already had air power and had bombed over 20 cities?

It's worth noting that the USian narrative in defense of its bombings does not give a single shit about China or Chinese lives. The US was not trying to save China from Japanese imperialism and it has been trying to undermine communist China since the communists gained power. The US took over for Japan in brutalizing Korea and certainly would have done the same in China if they could have.

The one thing I'm not clear on is to what extent China had already liberated from Japanese imperialism before the US brutalized Japan. If the US's bombings of 20+ cities made it any easier on those efforts, or if they'd already more or less won at home too. Because if it did make it any easier on them indirectly, I could see why someone growing up in China and knowing the horrors inflicted on their people might have trouble viewing that indirect help as a bad thing. But if liberation had already been more or less done, then I'd think at that point, it's little more than vengeance to be in favor of it; but still would not be vengeance they actually inflicted and instead would be barbarity carried out by people who would gladly be racist against them too.

I don't live in Japan, is it true that their history textbooks, education, and media keep the mentioning of the war crimes committed by Imperial Japan to a minimum? I hear it on Reddit, and I hear it from Vietnamese too.

there is no understanding 20th century history without an understanding of class struggle

Yeah this is one of those topics where you kinda just have to let it go. If someone wants to say "yeah those fuckin fascists deserved it!" it's just an argument born of emotion overpowering logic, which is a problem when analyzing events in the present and future, but not really a big deal when analyzing the past. People can be vindictive and irrational regarding shit that already happened, I don't care. As long as nobody's advocating for dropping any nukes today we're good.

(Seriously though dropping the nukes was one of the most horrific crimes ever committed)

I would make a great Old Testament God! Thank you for noticing!