I don’t think human suffering should be allowed to have the commutative property; the suffering of one group is not negated by the suffering they visited upon others. The best we can do is to take heed from all suffering that we as a species are capable of terrible things.
Yet, it is natural that the suffering of the in-group is amplified, and its sins swept under the rug. In the most charitable characterization of this phenomena we can assume that the things not talked about are the things which bring us shame.
If I grasp your meaning you’re saying that two wrongs don’t make a right and in general I’d go along with that. The point I was trying to make, in my typically brash way, was that the American decision to drop nuclear bombs on Japan was a sort of a trolley problem proposition. The early capitulation caused by those bombs outweighed the loss of life as it would have killed less people than extending the war would. Whether you can fully morally justify this or not is moot.
The other prong of my argument is that Imperial Japan and its actions were the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany, although modern Germany at least acknowledges the war crimes, something that modern Japan seems very loathe to do.
I see what you’re saying. I will not speak of the American decision to drop the atomic bomb as I feel there are a mess of competing interests and parties involved, and I don’t know what to believe, ie: avoiding the death toll of invasion, showing the soviets the power of the atomic bomb, ending the war before the soviets could aid and therefore influence the aftermath of an invasion, etc. However for the sake of argument let’s say that it was done in a utilitarian fashion to reduce the overall death toll. If this is the case then I think we can say it was justified, while also acknowledging the horror of it.
To your second point, I think it is good to differentiate between the people and the government. The government should apologize full stop. However for those interviewed in the article, especially for those who were kids at the time, I imagine the horror of the bomb is a lot closer to them, also given they were coming out of movie about said bombs production.
Yet, I don’t know if there exists a general consensus in the Japanese population about the atrocities committed by their military during the war. I would imagine they know some of it given that Japan is a westernized country with the free press, yet often times past wrongs are left out of public school curriculum. Especially when like in the case of the Unit 731 the United States was very interested in their results initially.
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