If you want the descriptions of what it was like just after the Atomic bombings in Hiroshima, the source I read got their excerpts from "To hell and back: last train to Hiroshima." [I think it's factually fine. The original book got retracted but I haven't seen anyone object to the second printing, and most of the issues related to the stories of the Enola Gay or the science and not the stories of victims].
As I was reading these horror stories, there was something in my mind that kept just weeping. This was a terrorist attack. Not just against the Japanese but against the whole world. Hundreds of thousands of people died, either instantly vaporized or agononizingly slowly over the course of hours to years. Elderly, women, children, disabled, and even Korean victims of Japanese slavery. All of that was done so the US could intimidate the world [more specifically, the USSR]. It wasn't an unfortunate sacrifice, it wasnt a mistake. It was an act of pure and unfettered terrorism, that gets justified in schools and propaganda outlets.
And they wanted to do it again. Douglas MacArthur wanted to drop 50 along the Korean-chinese border, Eisenhower (or people in the government associated with him at least) essentially threatened the chinese with the same thing. The soviets were threatened on a scale of thousands of hiroshimas before the Cuban missile crisis.
The way I felt when I was reading the accounts of these attacks was the same way I felt when reading about the Nanjing massacre. Almost incomprehensible horrors.
I get not a lot of people will disagree with me here but I just had to get it out because fuck I'm depressed
Edit:I forgot to add. I know this wasn't the worst crime during the war. I don't feel like ranking crimes against humanity but the crimes committed during the Holocaust and the Japanese war of aggression in China were obviously worse. I just wanted to say that because occasionally I get accused of being one of those "Japan [as a whole] is a victim" people
It's mind numbing how many people still support the bombings under the pretext of "an invasion would kill more people." Like that's just a blatant lie and misinformation but it's taught in US history classes as if it's an indisputable fact.
It's really the most succinct example of how freedom of information is a farce in the US. Sure you can come across information that leads you to the truth, but every vector of soceity a normal person will come into contact with, reinforces the narrative of the bombings necessity. And when you disagree with people on this point, you can see in their eyes how they feel you are naive and ignorant,as if they are special for knowing the narrative that's shoved down all our throats since childhood.
The thing that gets me is the fact that when you prove that your more knowledgeable on the subject then those people, who only repeat what they learned unce and never investigated further, those people don't change their view. They'll say, "oh I didn't know that but-" and come out with some other bullshit.
More recently people will say "do you know what Japan did during the war?" It's seriously baked into a lot of Americans that a nation's people are somehow collectively responsible for their leaders actions. They say that people shouldn't suffer for a government's choices but immediately fold into that kind of thinking, even with people who I know are trying to be genuine, it's this reflexive behavior that I assume is really difficult to unlearn. I was blessed enough to grow up Muslim after 9/11, so this behavior had a harder time sticking to me.
I mean it when I say blessed honestly. I wouldn't trade my experience for the false comforts that whites have, as I know I'd be frustrated by how difficult it is to untangle your thinking from some of these things.
These are all the easiest lines to attack as well
if the bombings prevented more life, are we saying the US would have killed 200,000+ civilians in a land invasion (they would have) and if so what does that say about the US
do you know what the US did during its wars? (No they don't). Does destroying 94% of structures in DPRK and reducing them to a population of cave dwellers mean you deserve to be nuked (yes they do but not for that reason, and their kids sure as hell don't)
USians are allergic to critical thinking or learning history. No wonder they're getting owned by AI tbh