Did Japan deserve the H-bomb?

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I'd like to see a Hiroshima wall shadow of Linkar, Shearer and the big black laughing lad from MOTD Top Tens one day. Possibly on the wall of, I dunno, Ewood Park or something.

[Icehaven]

Enola Gay by OMD is one of my favourites.  It wouldn't have existed but for Hiroshima.  So, it's in the balance: thousands of lives against my musical enjoyment; not an easy choice.

It might still exist, only with a different title and lyrics. Unless the music itself was inspired by the massive explosions and death toll, which you can kind of hear in the keyboard riff.

[PlanktonSideburns]

The Japanese of that period were pretty serious by comparison to any other participant.They had lads willing to kill themselves by flying a plane directly into a ship, or set off a grenade to take out as many yanks as they could instead of being taken prisoner. Hiroo Onoda continued waging a guerilla war in the Philippines on his lonesome thirty years after the war ended out of a sense of duty. You'd assume someone from Bristol probably would have packed it in after six months.

You'd have to imagine an all out total war by Japan, if it ever came to that, would have been very horrible.

Just let them have it then, if they want it that bad, we've had a go being a colonialist, time for them to have a go inni

[All Surrogate]

Unit 731 were responsible for the most hideous acts mankind has ever known. Shit beyond comprehension.

A possibly controversial question: does the fact that Japan was the victim of nuclear weapons mean that japanese culture/society/whatever hasn't confronted properly the crimes committed by the japanese military during the Second World War?

[Lord Mandrake]

Well, yes and they never will.

[Chedney Honks]

A possibly controversial question: does the fact that Japan was the victim of nuclear weapons mean that japanese culture/society/whatever hasn't confronted properly the crimes committed by the japanese military during the Second World War?

Two separate wars, in effect. Who in the west really knows what the Japanese got up to with the Chinese while Willy Hitler was goosestepping through Europe and setting up concentration camps.

Interesting how this unspoken reality was only ever really commented on in the 2001 film Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack where Godzilla represented remembrance and vengeance for all the Japanese war crimes of WW2. Needless to say it bombed.

[Lord Mandrake]

The masterminds of these atrocities casually slipped back into Japanese universities, schools and hospitals. Any meaningful research was also destroyed/lost so it was all for nothing.

[Chedney Honks]

Oh ffs, if they'd at least kept the results. What a bloody waste.

[Zetetic]

Often there's very little useful in the outputs of this sort of thing.

The most obvious example in this arena is how fucked all of Nazi Germany's research of hypothermia was by all the racist assumptions in those conducting it - this often gets rolled out as "should we use this information given how it was obtained???" and the answer is "No, we shouldn't use it because it's bollocks massively led by the biases of the people who produced it".

(It's not that easy to find examples of concerted highly unethical research that produced something of lasting interest. Swedish cavity experiments on children with learning disabilities is one I'm most aware of.)

[Lord Mandrake]

Oh ffs, if they'd at least kept the results. What a bloody waste.

The kind of invasive shit they were into cannot be replicated so yeah, they would have had some unique findings.

[Chedney Honks]

I just want to know how many people's heads can a tank drive over before the tank blows up

[Lord Mandrake]

I just want to know how many people's heads can a tank drive over before the tank blows up

Infinite.

Actually, serious answer, a lot was learned about effects of ballistics and other weapons at various ranges/conditions.

[Catalogue of ills]

The masterminds of these atrocities casually slipped back into Japanese universities, schools and hospitals. Any meaningful research was also destroyed/lost so it was all for nothing.

According to this many were given immunity by the US government in return for their data. Don't know how reliable these accounts are.

[Zetetic]

Actually, serious answer, a lot was learned about effects of ballistics and other weapons at various ranges/conditions.

You can do most of this stuff with a very high degree of accuracy with an unconscious pig.

[Lord Mandrake]

Yeah but it's more fun with pregnant by rape Chinese communists tied to a stake.

Pigs aren't even  bipedal.

[Lord Mandrake]

Often there's very little useful in the outputs of this sort of thing.

Certainly not in isolation but advances in science rarely are. From memory the hypothermia experiments certainly informed later studies, likewise Hep b and Aids and the general knowledge of physical human limitation.

[Zetetic]

From memory the hypothermia experiments certainly informed later studies

To their detriment, because they weren't conducted rigorously and the results were utterly compromised by the racism of the people undertaking them.

I appreciate it's a more exciting story and interesting talking point if this work was scientifically valid but ethically offensive - but it's overwhelmingly not true.

These places often attracted quacks with little interest in any kind of integrity, and it's unsurprising that their work reflects that.

[Lord Mandrake]

Just to be clear  I'm in no way defending or "excited" by any unethical treatment of man or beast but data across many disciplines was gathered that simply can never be replicated and some of which, however you measure it has proven useful. 

This refers specifically to the nazis and not the Japanese.

[Chedney Honks]

No bomb no Godzilla

[bgmnts]

No bomb no Godzilla

No bomb means no Godzilla means no Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult.

[Zetetic]

but data across many disciplines was gathered that simply can never be replicated and some of which, however you measure it has proven useful. 

Like what, for example?

Because the archetype is the Dachau hypothermia stuff, and by the '90s (well, really from the moment anyone looked it over the '40s) it was very clearly discredited and anyone taking it seriously as scientific work had done more harm than good.

[poo]

Not all Japanese are cruel, racist, psychopathic torturers. There was that funny one in the Pink Panther films.

[Pink Gregory]

Is it true that the US declined to prosecute/try the perpetrators of some of the medical experiments in order to obtain their research, which upon study turned out to be largely useless or scientifically flawed?

[ImmaculateClump]

No bomb no Godzilla

No "that episode" of twin peaks.
It's not just the directly related things you wouldn't have.
The force of a thousand japanese people exploding must amount to a fair few beats of a butterfly's wings.
Whether they deserved it or not, best not mess with the timeline.
Yes, things could be a lot better, but who's to say things couldn't be far worse? The Japanese? They seem to have done alright out of the whole deal.
Like you say, godzilla, although he comes with his own set of problems, must drive a lot of tourism.

[Lord Mandrake]

Forgot to quote Zetetic.


It's mostly about data rather than specific examples of breakthroughs. You could argue for example that the experience helped clearly define the ethical limitations of human research vs the logical need to establish new knowledge.

Again, data gathered in relation to infectious disease prevention and treatment, everything from hepatitis to malaria. Testing of drugs and their various applications and finding the limits of human survival - the data from which cultivated new information relating to special forces units or astronauts or firefighters. The genetic experiments, however bady motivated.

Mostly they proved what should never be done by murdering millions of innocent people but data is data and acknowledging, however small the tiniest crumbs of usefulness gained from such horror is maybe something to at least not dismiss.

[Zetetic]

The problem is that data isn't data.

Highly motivated researchers who don't work hard at dealing with their own biases by defining and sticking to rigorous procedures produce garbage, even when they're not quacks desperately trying to cultivate their own status in badly broken societies with little serious interest in or capacity to review the actual merit of their work.

[Chedney Honks]

although he comes with his own set of problems

Big laugh.

[monkfromhavana]

My brother, who seemingly has ever book ever made on nuclear bombs / power would be like a pig in shit on this thread.

Unfortunately he refuses to engage with other humans on the internet as he is of the last generation that thinks that kind of stuff is "weird".

For EG as we're both off our respective works with the lurgy, he popped around last Thursday and we watched "The Bullshitters Professionals" on the telly. It was the one about a nuke at bowling alley being detonated by white supremacists. When the bomb made it's first appearance he perked up and spent the rest of the episode pointing out the flaws in the plot, the blast radius, and all other types of nuke-related info.

Yet he won't even go a nuclear bomb forum to chat with other people with the same interest due to it being weird. That ship has long since sailed Dave.

[Chedney Honks]

He actually sounds pretty sensible. The Internet is a load of shit.

[shiftwork2]

There's a gap in the market for quite small tactical thermonuclear weapons, such as one with a blast radius of 3 feet.  I had this idea while watching BattleBots which is American Robot Wars.  It'd just totally cunt anything.