Ever wonder why anime always has a veritable ton of these single warhead nukes? Ever wonder why they never used MIRV (multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle) missiles instead?

So in my last post I made a ruckus about Hideaki Anno and his anti-foreign statements. Suffice to say many took exception at hearing that I was trying to suggest America good, Japan bad. As a US citizen I know full well how many times we have tragically fucked up. However I don’t believe we are the sole source of all that is evil nor is there ever such a thing as a righteous country, though Sweden and Denmark come damn near close.

Anno’s comments did rouse my ire because he is, in my opinion, totally unqualified to make such an accusation. I think that it does bear merit to see how Japan came to have resentment to US deployments in what she considers to be her territory (Okinawa or the Ryukyu Islands were once an independent state, most US deployments are in Okinawa) and why she feels the way she feels about the use of atomic weapons. To say that anime is immune to soap box preaching is essentially false they do get preachy on somethings and the big bad American Empire is an often used allusion. It does warrant some discussion on the origins of this xenophobia because it is not limited to the US, the outside world is not spared China seems to be the next whipping boy for being the next bully of Japan.

I firmly believe that the troubles of this world do spill into literature, movies, television, and anime. World War I created a distinct clique of authors who were deeply affected by the First World War, the Dadai movement was an out growth of the nihilism and cynicism in the post war period. Expressionism and Surrealism are thought to have been out growths of Dadai. The poem In Flanders Fields was written by an officer after seeing his friend die a horrible death. The Vietnam War had a profound affect on all levels of society in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, the United States, Vietnam, and other participants. For Japan one such trauma included the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Note: This is a very controversial discussion that does touch on racism, politics, history, and makes no pretense at being nice. You have been warned. Also I am off the heavy pain killers and just on antibiotics and over the counter ibuprofen, I am mostly sane now.

How much damage can one B-29 do? Do you know the significance of this particular B-29?

World War II for Japan was an unmitigated disaster, since the Russo-Japanese war she had fought conflicts nearly continuously. Her male population was drafted and sent to war far and wide these men were that survived were fathers, brothers, uncles, sons, and grandfathers to those who would become a part of anime studios. To say they have had no effect on any of them is at the least a stretch and the pinnacle of ignorance at worst. As soldiers go they tell their sea stories whether in triumph or defeat. Suffice to say atomic weaponry and other WMDs have made many appearances in anime.

More often or not their use is rarely tactical, and much less strategic. It is rather a weapon of terror and destruction for the sake of destruction. Worse it is used as a means of first strike capability and seem to be as common as bullets in Gundam Seed Destiny. As the only country to have suffered the only two military uses of nuclear weapons it has made an enduring impression. So strong was the trauma of being visited by two nuclear armed B-29s that anti-American and indeed anti-foreign sentiment remains an undercurrent in Japan. The fact that Anno is party to blaming America is proof that there are still those who remember a version of those terrible times.

The current state of the balance of power in East Asia is a direct result of the Second World War like any Japanese citizen Anno has his own views of how things ought to be. His dogged insistence on having a military in name despite the de-facto situation of having the Japanese Self Defense Force is in my opinion an out growth of his nationalism. The truth is that the current American administration wants Japan to provide more resources towards securing US deployments in hostile territory. To say that the US wants to keep Japan militarily impotent is simply not true. Japan’s current navy is vastly superior to all other regional navies save the US. Given Japan’s current state of economic affairs the expenditures required to achieve create a force big enough to match the US is simply not feasible if the current standard of living is to be upheld.

For most Japanese the bomb was a terrible even that should never happen again and these weapons ought to be destroyed. However the fateful events of 1945 will never be forgotten and with WWII games being a dime a dozen we will be reliving it far longer than WWII itself. Being victims of the bomb however has allowed Japan to play victim and harp upon, rightly or wrongly, Hiroshima and Nagasaki as if it were a more tragic event than the Holocaust. I have been and still am an enthusiast of WWII miniature gaming and the entailing analysis on these events from a more dispassionate and perhaps cold military perspective. One of the favorites many armchair generals like to debate upon is the decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan. Even there disagreements are present, and in the US military the decision to use these weapons is still a matter of debate.

This picture says a lot about black humor, actually make that morbid humor…in bad taste. Here’s a hint look beyond the pun.

The Russo-Japanese war is largely considered to be the first major conflict of Japan with the West. While Japan is largely considered the victor the picture is not that clear cut. The casualty figures for Japan were staggering. At the time the Japanese were unquestionably victorious at sea, however the picture on land was decidedly different. The Japanese threw infantry right into the teeth of Russian trenches and barbed wire, worse still the Russians had machine guns. Suffice to say using bayonets against machine guns is a costly proposition. To their credit the Russians eventually gave up, but had the war dragged on Japan could have very well been bled dry. A navy no matter how powerful cannot hold land.

Nevertheless the US negotiated peace treaty did feel like a slight since Japan felt she was owed much more for her victory. The US was in the unenviable position of trying to placate two nations who were on friendly terms with America, and suffice to say both the Russians and the Japanese felt angry and cheated. Here after Japan essentially decided to do what she wanted with little or no regard to any one else. Her victory would come back to bite the world in the ass during WWI for all of Europe and Japan in WWII. In Europe generals Allied and Central used the same tactics the Japanese had used against the Russians. The Eastern Front was a mobile war, but on the Western Front the body count was horrendous. General Douglas Haig is to have said that he “would be the one with the last 1000 men.” Japan would throw masses of infantry at entrenched Allied troops with few good results by 1943 when the Allies suddenly stopped falling back. Apparently cold hatred of the Japanese enemy proved to be a powerful tonic against surrender for the Allies.

Since Japan had “won” the war against the Russians there was no change in their doctrine. Their navy focused on having a single grand showdown, which is usually the culmination of most anime series dealing with conflict, the mother of all battles. Their army focused on using the same offensive tactics that had won them the Russo-Japanese War, emphasizing the warrior above all else. Anime sci-fi, coincidentally, focuses less on techno babble and technology instead emphasizing characters. After all has any series come close to Star Trek levels of techno babble?

The truth is that Japan did not have the political will or civilian will (note will is very different form ability) to prevent a military take over, the populace went along with it or stood with a deafening silence. The men, were to a man, party to it. While it can be argued that the Japanese military simply did what it wanted, the failure of the civilian authorities and Emperor Hirohito to stop the descent into war cannot be brushed aside so easily. After all Japan was a victor in World War I and signed arms limitation agreements which were up held until 1937. The civilians did have clout, the men were soldiers as well as citizens they had a civic responsibilities, but instead most of them elected to go off to war in China.

Was this as test?

The Second Sino-Japanese War was to Japan a cake walk. After all China was divided and ready for the taking while the West was busy trying to fight the Great Depression and preserve a standard of living for their respective peoples. Japan was hit hard by the evaporation of trade after the crash of 1929, and her solution to her domestic troubles was to create a bigger empire that encompassed the vast prize that was China and either the South Pacific or Siberia. To be fair Japan was desperate and had long ago depleted what resources she once had, so she did what any country would do with a neighbor that was unstable and seemingly crumbling. They played king maker and wanted to make themselves king.

Fortunately for China and unfortunately for Japan the Chinese were not keen to cooperate and what should have been “easy” turned into a quagmire and a stalemate prevailed. The fact that Japan which had a modern military was being stymied by Chinese forces with inferior equipment after the Battle of Shanghai should have been a warning sign that maybe they were not so good at making war as they had once thought. At Khalkhin Gol in 1939 the Soviets beat the shit out of the Japanese with better tactics, communications, and equipment. If the Soviets are slapping you around, those same backward Russians who “lost” the Russo-Japanese War, it should have been proof enough that the military was not as strong as their numerous divisions imply.

The Japanese civilian response was again a damning silence and the Japanese draftee went on an orgy of pillaging, raping, and destruction. The atrocities these men committed were numerous at the Rape of Nanking the piles of corpses choked the rivers, the local Nazi was horrified. The draftee was not some docile pile of shit that simply obeyed orders. They burned all, killed all, and looted all without orders. In fact the massacres as Singapore occurred because General Tomoyuki Yamashita had lost control of his men. They disobeyed him. In response he executed the offenders that he could lay his hands on, but the damage was done. The Japanese draftee was person with moral responsibilities. I find it hard to allow any one of them to claim that they were simply following orders, their insubordination was legendary as attested by field executions alone. If they could disobey orders to behave, what stopped them from disobeying any other order?

The fact is the Japanese draftee could and did disobey orders to attack and die in vain. At Imphal and Kohima they retreated despite urgings by their generals to fight to the death. During their disastrous retreat from India they suffered their own death march, though it was self inflicted since the logistics of their Indian incursion had failed miserably. In that death march the draftee told officers to sod off when they were pressured to die if they were wounded or sick. They had a spine, it was there they only chose to use it selectively. For Japan to claim now that a bunch of military rogues took over the government while the civilians were forced along is simply rubbish. There is always a choice. In total war the civilians made the munitions and weapons that killed other civilians, they share responsibility for being party to the prosecution of that war.

If nothing else they were, in my opinion, moral cowards. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris who commanded the Abwehr or Military intelligence gave false documents to Jews that got them out of Nazi Germany, and convinced Franco to stay out of the war during the darkest days of WWII when the Allies were reeling. He stuck out his neck to save an agent of MI6 from the the Butcher of Prague. In the end he was humiliated and slowly strangled to death. Canaris made the Abwehr a vital resource for German resistance to the Nazis. Hans Oster informed the Dutch of the exact date of Hitler’s invasion. Deitrich Bonhoeffer, a “mere” pastor, called for Christians to resist Hitler’s anti-semitic policies and funneled money to help Jews escape from the SS. Both men would die for daring to challenge the Nazis; Hans Oster was stripped naked before being sent to the gallows. Oskar Schindler, an unprincipled opportunist, eventually expended his wealth to save Jews from extermination. All these people dared to do the right thing at great risk to themselves, but why is the list of Japanese resistance so short?

General Tomoyuki Yamashita is the one of the few people who served in the Imperial Japanese Army to try to prevent unnecessary deaths. He tried to evacuate Manila to prevent it from becoming a killing ground the insubordination of his troops and the actions of Navy troops who he had no authority over undid all his efforts and roughly 100,000 non-combatants died in the Battle of Manila. He was the exception in that he did not kill himself prior to surrendering. He chose to stand trial and the only reason why his was not reduced to a footnote was largely because of his controversial trial. He was out of political favor, but he did nonetheless call for an end to the war in China to avoid war with the US and Great Britain.

Saburo Sakai, the highest ranked Japanese ace to survive the war, was ordered to conduct a kamikaze attack but in the end he called it off since bad weather approached and all he found were fighters instead of ships. He consciously chose not to die in some vain expression of “courage” and after the war tried to reconcile with his former enemies. Upon his deathbed he railed against his countrymen for failing to accept collective responsibility to accept what had happened during those terrible times, he even criticized Emperor Hirohito to allow kamikaze attacks to continue. Yet for all their qualities and faults these men remain the exception and only gained notoriety upon their deaths.

Was this a test?

Sadly for Japan they did go to war with the West in a brilliantly conceived surprise attack on December 7, 1941. Unfortunately by not declaring war first they appeared to be deceitful and untrustworthy, and after beating up some battleships they decided a third strike would not be needed and thus the precious fuel and repair facilities remained in tact. The US Navy was bloodied but retained the means to resist. Things were going very well for Japan the British were in a life and death struggle against Germany, the Philippines were about to fall, and all of Europe was under Nazi domination and their colonies were easy pickings, and by spring of 1942 Japan seemed to be one the verge of victory. Too bad that the US let the their possessions fall rather than going for a final showdown with the Imperial Japanese Navy as Czarist Russia had done.

Here things began to unravel and by Jove did it unravel quick. At the Battle of Midway the US armed with intelligence garnered by cracking the codes used by the Japanese crippled Japan’s navy by sinking four fleet carriers and culling the cream of their naval aviation. At Guadalcanal Japanese indecisiveness allowed the Allies to halt Japanese expansion. These military failures laid bare how woefully optimistic Japan had been when she went to war; the fact that the Allies were able to read Japanese communications for most of the war proves how archaic Japanese military thinking had become. Given that they had suffered such dramatic reversals I find it hard to believe that the civilians were that powerless to criticize such failures. For any one of them to try and claim ignorance is rather suspect as those casualties had families and when the letters home stop coming something has to be up.

While we can all admit that use of atomic weapons is bad its first and only use is not a simple matter as portrayed in anime. Say you were the President of the US and the war with Japan is coming to an end, their defeat is a forgone conclusion the question is how long will it last. Every day that goes by the killing continues the Chinese people endure another day of raping, killing, and looting. Every day that goes by the body count increases for the US and the other Allies. Every day that goes by some Allied POW dies in a most horrible way whether by slave labor, medical neglect, or simply because the guards did not like him. Okinawa was a bloody affair and the Ryukyuans did not greet you as liberators as you had hoped. An invasion of Japan is going to be bloody everything up until now says that Japan will fight to the last man, woman, and child. The fact that young Japanese men, some of them college educated, are crashing planes and sacrificing themselves to sink Allied ships suggests that Japan would rather die than surrender.

Given these circumstances the choice is whether to use these weapons. They have never been tested outside of controlled conditions and there is no guarantee that they will work outside of a test. General LeMay has essentially reduced Japan’s industrial base to nothing the remaining military targets are essentially gone and what you can hit are already in populations centers. Japanese war production has been relocated to workshops within Japanese residential areas. You have already asked for an unconditional surrender but still Japan fights even when backed into a corner. Do you continue to pound way conventionally and ask for the your people and your allies for more sacrifices? What would they say if they knew that you had a weapon that could wipe out cities with out the cost of a single Allied soldier? What right do you have to ask the Chinese to endure more suffering as you conduct a long campaign? By what right can you ask Allied POWs to die daily if you may have the means to shorten the war even by a day?

Now this picture ought to say more than the previous other two…

This is war and why should you care about the Japanese people who were party to this conflict? Do you allow them to fight to the death or kill a few in a most unpleasant fashion to try and compel them to surrender? Could you simply show them your new weapon and risk having it be a dud? Every physicist knew the theories and principles behind building the atomic bomb, the Germans knew it was possible, the French were stockpiling heavy water prior to the war, and the US has made it. Japan had her own physicists and cyclotron she too is aware that it is possible, could the mere threat of it make them more willing to lay down their arms?

If you want to quibble about morality which is then more moral to kill with 100,000 with a bomb or to kill 100,000 with bullets? Japan had already used WMDs in via biological and chemical warfare in China, why should they be allowed to use WMDs but not you? Is the moral high ground worth one Allied life? How about 1,000 Allied soldiers or civilians? How about 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000?

All war is cruelty you cannot refine it. War itself is conductive to immorality. War is death on an industrial scale. The decision to use the atomic bombs was not a simple matter of cold malice. Eisenhower, Nimitz, Leahy, Spaatz, MacArthur, and other Allied Commanders had argued against it, but in the end Truman did what he felt whether rightly or wrongly to use the weapon to end the war. Nagasaki did not have to happen if Japan had surrendered after Hiroshima, they had time to surrender. In the case of Nagasaki the Japanese are partly responsible for the event since foot dragging as long as they did cost them a second strike. The fact that Japanese higher ups still debated surrender and insisting on terms such as preservation of the Imperial Throne, no occupation, leaving disarmament and demobilization to Japan, and having war criminals tried internally, while Hiroshima was flattened.

Given the savagery of the war who would accept such terms of surrender? Is that really a surrender or merely a truce? The blood of the Allies was afire after years of war in the case of China nearly a decade, Japanese conduct during the war was appalling and disgraceful. The terms the Japanese insisted upon were no small matters and would have essentially amounted to truce with hostilities postponed until a later date.

The last thing that needs to be considered is how much Japan has up-played the innocent civilian line. World War II was a total war no civilian was spared in its prosecution hardship happened, death happened. Japan had attacked civilians in China with WMDs, why the heck would they expect their own civilians to be spared if they failed and refused to spare the civilians of others? Japanese civilians did contribute to war production, even survivors of the Hiroshima bombing were on their way to make munitions that would be used in war. Nagasaki had a torpedo factory and steel works. Munitions only have uses in war or towards warfare they are not civilian products unless there is an innocent use of artillery shells and ordinance during a full blown war.

It was unfortunate that things has transpired this way but it was by 1944 a forgone conclusion that the Allies were not going to leave the Japanese civilian alone. The first attack on Japan occurred in 1942, for Japan it should have been a wake up call to accelerate plans for civil defense. Germany had defensive measures against aerial bombing they had AA guns and fighters. For Japan to be found so lacking when the USAAF came knocking in 1944 is rather shocking, either they had underestimated the Allies or they did not give much of a hoot for defending civilian population centers.

Anime portrayals of civilians is nearly universally positive, however such is not the case in the real world. Take a look at your general location in peace does every civilian get along just fine with other civilians? Is strife completely absent? Are there no social ill plaguing your society? Do you live in a land with gum drop lined roads and have lollipops rain down upon you? I think that if you want to harp about the ugliness of war you have to show the ugliness of how civilians can behave during war. In anime Japan is portrayed as a victim rather than aggressor for the most part, the US is usually bashed as a bad guy or incompetent with the rest of the West going along with it. China is now becoming a big bad guy in Code Geass and perhaps a few other series as well. I don’t think that we can cut anime staffers slack for doing this even with an artistic license.

Dumbing things down does not take anime forward. Japanese media are not the only ones guilty of this every other country does it in varying degrees. That still does not make it entirely excusable, and anime is not an exception. As viewers of anime we must understand that there is a propaganda value in it just like any other media.

Worry not for Japan has her own savior in the form of the the father, the son, and the holy shit…

The events of August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945 were unquestionably a great human tragedy. The greater tragedy though can only be seen if you look at the context of why those weapons were used. We many never really know if it was the right decision or the wrong decision because the body count cannot be taken from the “if Hiroshima and Nagaski were not bombed scenario.” Can the righteousness of a decision even be measured by deaths alone? Having WMDs thrown around in anime without context reduces their use to mere fireworks that provokes little more than a “meh” from the viewer. We are no longer faced with the fog of war that brought about these events, but we are faced with the consequences of what happened.

Fortunately in the real world Anno need not be so vocal about rattling his finger, Prime Minister Abe is a hawkish man who shares with Anno an even greater desire to display Japanese Military Power. In fact many consider Japan to be a de-facto nuclear power given the number of nuclear power plants upon her soil. Suffice to say the future is a bit worrisome with a more hawkish Japan, a nuclear North Korea, a deteriorating Pakistan, India and China’s pending and inevitable superpower status, the increasingly cornered Taiwan/Formosa, and a re-arming South Korea. Worse case scenario we may have a Mexican standoff on our hands. As it stands three of them have it out for one country and two of them have a lot of trouble playing nice on their borders, and the last one is in trouble of becoming an international pariah. If Japan folds most if not all anime studios fold with it, even in anime the circumstances of this unhappy world do affect it. Sure does put one at ease when thinking about it, eh?

Lastly here are the answers to the real non-anime picture quiz if you actually tried to answer:

1. Enola Gay the B-29 that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Hiroshima was given the alarm at roughly 7:15 local. At 8:00 the alert was lifted as the Japanese detected not more than three planes. To conserve fuel no fighters were sent to intercept. No advisory was given to the populace to seek shelter despite the spotting of the three B-29s, the Japanese thought that it was a reconnaissance flight. At 8:15 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb in wartime.

2. Bockscar was a B-29 commanded by Frederick C. Bock. The air raid alarm was sounded over Nagasaki at 7:50 local time, at 8:30 “all clear” was given. At 10:53 the Japanese realized that there were only two B-29s, again they assumed that the planes were doing reconnaissance and no further alarm was given. At 11:01 she dropped the bomb on Nagasaki 43 seconds later it detonated the second and hopefully the last atomic weapon used in warfare.

3. The atomic cloud over Hiroshima. About 90,000 died instantly the total death toll is estimated to have been 140,000. 22 minutes later the Japanese knew something major had happened, three hours later the magnitude of the destruction was realized. 16 hours later Tokyo learns that an atomic weapon had caused the devastation.

4. The atomic cloud over Nagasaki. About 70,000 died instantly, the final death toll is estimated to have been 80,000. On August 1, 1945 the USAAF had conducted a raid on Nagasaki’s shipyards, the damage was minor and many residents were evacuated, mostly school children. Had not the raid occurred the death toll may have been higher.

5. A picture of the Hiroshima cloud at ground level 7 km NE of Hiroshima.

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