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https://www.amazon.fr/Slow-Death-Days-Radiation-Sickness/dp/1942993544 read this. It’s a book about the slow death of a Japanese guy who got exposed to high doses of radiation after an nuclear accident. The book follows his battle that lasted 83 days. There is a picture of him on his last days and you don’t want to see that. It’s horrifying. On a side note, radiation sickness is fascinating. What it can do to the body is terrifyingly interesting.
I find it unfortunate that Bodega didn’t give more credit to scholar and author W. David Marx (aka Marxy), who wrote the definitive book on Ametora, called... wait for it… Ametora! The article shamelessly rips a lot of its substance from the pages of his amazing book.
Highly recommended reading. Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465059732/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_xHFsCbB3PYVTQ
Edit: more than half way through he gets two mentions, one of which calls his book the Bible of Ametora, so I revised shameful to unfortunate.
I've not come across any good youtube history channels. They all have the same problems that televised history has, they editorialize a lot and don't give much context, if any.
The only half decent ones are always about battles and simply report "that happened, then this happened". Which doesn't give much insight.
Really, you need to crack ~~a~~ book(s) open to learn history. A general history is fine for periods you just want an overview of. But there's tons of books that will go into more detail for those areas you might be more interested in.
In this particular case:
https://www.questia.com/library/history/asian-history/japanese-history/japan-postwar-period
And
https://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Defeat-Japan-Wake-World/dp/0393320278
Yeah WWII has so much that you can read about, not just from history books, but also first hand accounts. A good place to start is "With the Old Breed" by E.B. Sledge. You're never really done discovering stuff about WWII once you start diving into all sides of the conflict.
I tried to read this book, The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang. I couldn't finish it.
Iris Chang later committed suicide. Whether it was due to her constant exposure to this subject, depression, or a combination of the two will never be known.
Eugene sledge wrote With the Old Breed and it is a fascinating read.
Reading the book the HBO Pacific series seem tame compared to reality from a grunts perspective.
Here's a great book about it. Compelling.
https://smile.amazon.com/Rape-Nanking-Forgotten-Holocaust-World/dp/0465068367/
I spent most of the summer reading WW2 memoirs, including Eugene Sledge's <em>With the Old Breed</em>.
I feel like WW2 stuff is the base of so much of the modern meme around needing a new warrior class.
What rules about this meme, and the general mindset that we need for a better society is Strong Men creating Good Times through war, is it ignores the part where the Strong Men who managed to make it through with all their limbs still attached suffer decades of nightmares and panic attacks and broken marriages and emotions they cannot control.
Hmm, well my point is that Western outlets definitely play up the Weird Asia angle when covering it. That extends throughout the region. My local paper has a piece at the moment about Taiwan running out of toilet paper, for example, and reporters were obsessed with North Korean cheerleaders, Kim Jong-un's sister, and "garlic girls" this month in Korea. Treatment of Japan has been the worst, it's true; most people who study Japanese do so because of anime, and you can't have a Japan-related thread here without hearing about tentacles, people refusing to have children, body pillows, or World War II. But as someone currently living in the West who pays close attention to Asia and how it's covered, coverage of the whole region definitely favors the weird.
A big part of that is insecurity and ethnocentrism, a fear of admitting one's own weaknesses, and John Dower's book <em>Embracing Defeat</em> (about Japan immediately after WWII) spends some time talking about the transformation, in the American mind, from Japanese men being depicted as animals and savages during the war to being imagined as soft and effeminate. I suspect that still plays a role in how the region is imagined.
Actually I keep meaning to read Downfall. https://www.amazon.com/Downfall-End-Imperial-Japanese-Empire/dp/0141001461/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=operation+downfall&qid=1623177568&sr=8-3
In "The Fog of War" McNamara admits that he could have been prosecuted as a war criminal for fire bombing Japan, but we won the war so he got away with it.
Frankly, look at any war and both sides commit criminal acts, e.g. murdering people. But wars seem to have differing standards when it comes to criminality.
Not an article (sorry), but I really enjoyed this book. It does sort of lean more into the Japanese streetwear trend towards the second half of the book, but it's all around a great read if you haven't heard of it before. You could also check Heddels for their articles on the history of particular fashion brands and articles of clothing, they might have something.
There are no levels of enlightenment.
There is no "saving the Rinzai school from extinction." (Technically, such a statement is slander).
Even if there were, creating secret passwords certainly wasn't the way to do it.
But now you have LinJi's record directly and with great, researched commentary by the Buddha-loving Ruth Fuller Sasaki.
So congratulations, you no longer have any excuses.
Why not study Zen while you're here?
This, really, is what you want. Hiroshima by John Hersey. Yes, you can read it online for free; I recommend you buy it from Amazon for 8 dollars, because then you'll also get the fascinating Afterward.
This is a real classic of American journalism. You follow the lives of six people who were all living in Hiroshima at the time: what their lives were like just before the bombing; what they were like for the next few minutes, for that morning, that day, and the days afterwards. The hard copy comes with an Afterward: Hersey went back to Japan 40 years later to follow up on all six survivors.
Strongly recommended.
> some say FDR knew the attack was going to come and allowed to happen,
What shocked me was in that "Day of Deceit" book it's documented about how when Washington gave Hawaiian military commanders a warning about the attack, the Navy admiral immediately ordered all of his ships out to sea in the area northwest of Hawaii.
His fleet was stripped, and consisted of only old ships with no carriers -- all of the good ships had been ordered by Washington on another mission.
The area to the NW -- the exact area that Japan attacked from -- was the only approach to Hawaii that was not covered by commercial shipping or aircraft. It was the logical place to launch an attack from.
But Washington ordered the admiral's ships back to port! And that is where they were when the attack happened.
> the sentiment that the Japanese in WWII were absolutely evil is rather rampant,
That's because they were absolutely evil! China may have their flaws and biases, but they're not wrong about that. Which made our deal not to prosecute Japan's bio-warfare criminals all the more repugnant.
To take the original post, I think it's kinda stupid.
Let's compare the Holocaust and Hiroshima (fun!). I am not going to talk about the level of violence/cruelty or whatever because I think it's a moot point. I think we can all agree in a vaccuum both the systematic elimination of jews/gypsies/etc & the nuclear bombing of a city are horrible events in history. It really doesn't matter which one was "worse" or whatever because it's hard to quantify and really doesn't matter for the sake of my arguement.
Lets say the Holocaust never happens. What is the result? Millions of "undesirables" are not systematically enslaved/executed/tortured etc. Ok, pretty good outcome.
Now Hiroshima never happens. This results in the continued firebombing campaign by the US on the Japanese mainland, in preparation of a land invasion that projected between 1.7 million US Casualties (400k deaths, both figures on the low-end) and 5 million Japanese Casualties (also on the low end). Source = this book https://www.amazon.com/Downfall-End-Imperial-Japanese-Empire/dp/0141001461
> A study done for Stimson's staff by William Shockley estimated that invading Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.
Fun fact, the Japanese military had standing orders to execute all POWs being held if Japan was ever invaded. This was about 100k allied prisoners.
You decide which event was more or less moral.
There’s a book that goes into this too, saying the family wanted to continue with treatment is only a fraction of the story when the DRs had their motivations too.
At one point he received a stem cell transplant from his sister and was actively improving before declining again. And there were three men who were exposed to radiation. Two died, one lived.
https://www.amazon.com/Slow-Death-Days-Radiation-Sickness/dp/1942993544
That's the US specialty -- getting others to fire the first shot and then seizing the moral high ground to wage a defensive war. We do it in war after war.
> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944. The book "Day of Deceit" proves that the US carried out a deliberate, successful policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US so the US could enter WWII.
The US actively provoked and sought to enter the war.
The US was shocked and horrified at the lighting-fast collapse of France, our old WWI ally and then the world's 2nd largest empire.
It was then said that the US set about enacting a policy of provoking Japan to attack the US as a way for the US to enter the war.
> "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan." -- Harold Ickes, Sec. of the Interior, October 1941.
Journalist and WWII Navy vet Robert Stinnett researched the beginning of the war for decades. He uncovered the "McCollum memo" with a freedom of info act. The memo was from an American naval intelligence officer who was born in Japan, an officer who was the US Navy's liaison messenger between the White House and the Navy Dept. The memo listed 8 steps for the US to do to force Japan to attack the US.
The US did all 8 steps! Among those steps were moving the US Pacific Fleet HQ from San Francisco to the small backwater navy base in Hawaii. That move was so controversial that the secretary of the Navy resigned in protest of the move.
Stinnett's book, linked below, is must reading for anyone interested in this conspiracy theory.
> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944. The book "Day of Deceit" proves that the US carried out a deliberate, successful policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US so the US could enter WWII.
The US was shocked and horrified at the lighting-fast collapse of France, our old WWI ally and then the world's 2nd largest empire.
It was then said that the US set about enacting a policy of provoking Japan to attack the US as a way for the US to enter the war.
> "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan." -- Harold Ickes, Sec. of the Interior, October 1941.
Journalist and WWII Navy vet Robert Stinnett researched the beginning of the war for decades. He uncovered the "McCollum memo" with a freedom of info act. The memo was from an American naval intelligence officer who was born in Japan, an officer who was the US Navy's liaison messenger between the White House and the Navy Dept. The memo listed 8 steps for the US to do to force Japan to attack the US.
The US did all 8 steps! Among those steps were moving the US Pacific Fleet HQ from San Francisco to the small backwater navy base in Hawaii. That move was so controversial that the secretary of the Navy resigned in protest of the move.
Stinnett's book, linked below, is must reading for anyone interested in this conspiracy theory.
> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944. The book "Day of Deceit" proves that the US carried out a deliberate, successful policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US so the US could enter WWII.
One of the reasons why many disliked Brian Victorias book, "Zen at war" was that the rhetoric of Dangerous Dharma was used as a way to justify the killing of innocents.
It sort of goes like this...
"If sentient beings are not taught the Dharma, and in a wicked environment in which they cannot learn the Dharma is it then not compassion to release them from that wicked environment to find rebirth in an environment that they can learn the Dharma?"
This sort of rationale can be extended to excuse all sorts of behaviors, including slavery, rape, robbery and wholesale human crimes.
I tell people that Charles Manson was a Zen student back in the beat-nick days of proto-hippies. He came to a radical view on his own, a Dangerous Dharma. Apparently, the Aum Shinrikyo in Japan came to similar views -- to kill those who they saw as saying and spreading lies.
Of course, this is real schizophrenia psychopathic stuff.
You said that the bombs "ultimately just sped up the decision". From the beginning, I have been very clear about it being a "2 factor decision". All factors were important - after all, even the Soviet invasion and the bombs were dropped, there were still many concessions that had to be made - but the bombs were an incredibly significant one that definitely affected the terms of the surrender, rather than just helped move along the eventual terms of surrender that would have inevitably happened based solely on the Soviet war declaration alone.
As for the source, that direct quote is also referenced this book, it's just that the book isn't available online.
A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness https://www.amazon.com/dp/1942993544/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_YWFHJPMCVS0C6X1DK7WK
Here is an excellent book on the subject. It was very engrossing. One I read the first few pages, it was ON!!
Piggybacking on your excellent comment to add that Brian Victoria's Zen at War is a fascinating look at how Buddhism was both coerced from without and adjusted from within to appeal to the Imperial Japanese state's expectations of a "good" religion
> Ukraine is already at war with Russia,
We know this. After the US refused to limit NATO expansion Russia attacked Ukraine. They were serious about their "red line."
> and here you spread more Russian, not anti-war, propaganda.
It's a simple fact. The US executed 2 coups in Ukraine, one resulting in 2008 with the US saying Ukraine could come into NATO. The Russians responded with a bluntly-worded warning of "military conflict" if NATO expansion was not stopped. We know that thanks to Bradley/Chelsea Manning's Wikileaks dumps of US diplomatic cables.
In 2014 we financed another coup which put the current regime into power. The US went so far as to pick out the first post-coup Prime Minister and also state who was not going to be in the gov't (our friends and enemies list).
To point these facts out is not "propaganda," it's just stating facts or "inconvenient truths."
Myself, I do not "stand with Ukraine" -- I'm an American. Ukraine should have accepted the neutrality offer they were given.
Instead the fools in Kiev let themselves be set up by the US. We wanted this war and baited a "bear trap" to get Russia involved in a costly guerrilla war. Just like Afghanistan, the Russians stepped into our trap. Now we'll fight until the last dead Ukrainian.
That's what we do best -- set others up to commit the first act of war. It keeps our white horse nice and pretty.
> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944. The book "Day of Deceit" proves that the US carried out a deliberate, successful policy to provoke Japan into attacking the US so the US could enter WWII.
Submission statement: Replete with photos and links, this article covers the basics that FDR had foreknowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
A controversial conspiracy theory, this theory has been gaining more traction over the years. Robert Stinnett, a WWII Navy vet who served on the same aircraft carrier as George H.W. Bush, did some groundbreaking work on the conspiracy theory that FDR sought to provoke Japan into attacking the US. After the war Stinnett became a journalist with a focus on WWII and Pearl Harbor.
Stinnett uncovered the US gov'ts "McCollum Memo" with a FOIA request. That memo was written by a mid-level Navy intelligence officer who born in Japan and functioned as a liaison between the Navy Dept. and the White House. That memo listed out 8 steps the US would have to take to provoke Japan into attacking the US.
Stinnett's findings were covered in his book Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor.
> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944.
Robert Stinnett, a WWII Navy vet who served on the same aircraft carrier as George H.W. Bush, did some groundbreaking work on the conspiracy theory that FDR sought to provoke Japan into attacking the US. After the war Stinnett became a journalist with a focus on WWII and Pearl Harbor.
Stinnett uncovered the US gov'ts "McCollum Memo" with a FOIA request. That memo was written by a mid-level Navy intelligence officer who born in Japan and functioned as a liaison between the Navy Dept. and the White House. That memo listed out 8 steps the US would have to take to provoke Japan into attacking the US.
Stinnett's findings were covered in his book Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor.
> "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war." -- Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, 1944.
Robert Stinnett, a WWII Navy vet who served on the same aircraft carrier as George H.W. Bush, did some groundbreaking work on the conspiracy theory that FDR sought to provoke Japan into attacking the US. After the war Stinnett became a journalist with a focus on WWII and Pearl Harbor.
Stinnett uncovered the US gov'ts "McCollum Memo" with a FOIA request. That memo was written by a mid-level Navy intelligence officer who born in Japan and functioned as a liaison between the Navy Dept. and the White House. That memo listed out 8 steps the US would have to take to provoke Japan into attacking the US.
Stinnett's findings were covered his book Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor.
I feel that the types of books like the one you sent are simply arguments. They do cover real-world topics, but interpretation can be fallacious at times. Nonfiction is supposed to cover facts usually in the form of a story.
Books like this are what I am talking about, which gives a more accurate depiction of the truth of what happened. Here, Hersey tells you the simple facts without room for debate except for a couple of gray areas here and there. Still, it's elaborated enough for it to be undeniable.
> Alternate Translation: https://www.amazon.com/Record-Nanzan-Library-Religion-Culture/dp/0824833198
>I just don’t see in Buddhism
Zen at War by Brian Daizen Victoria
A compelling history of the contradictory, often militaristic, role of Zen Buddhism, this book meticulously documents the close and previously unknown support of a supposedly peaceful religion for Japanese militarism throughout World War II. Drawing on the writings and speeches of leading Zen masters and scholars, Brian Victoria shows that Zen served as a powerful foundation for the fanatical and suicidal spirit displayed by the imperial Japanese military. At the same time, the author recounts the dramatic and tragic stories of the handful of Buddhist organizations and individuals that dared to oppose Japan's march to war. He follows this history up through recent apologies by several Zen sects for their support of the war and the way support for militarism was transformed into 'corporate Zen' in postwar Japan. The second edition includes a substantive new chapter on the roots of Zen militarism and an epilogue that explores the potentially volatile mix of religion and war. With the increasing interest in Buddhism in the West, this book is as timely as it is certain to be controversial.