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Comment by wktra | Hacker News Reader

Go speak to someone from Korea's older generations. Ask them to tell you about the Japanese-run rape camps and "comfort women". Ask them about the human biological experimentation camps in Korea. Ask them about the mass killings. And go ask them if the bombings should have never been used.

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Japan was already defeated*, how would the bombings have prevented those crimes, since they weren't being committed anymore?

The bombings were justified for revenge?

* It was a formality, the Soviets were about to invade Manchuria, we should have just blockaded the Japanese mainland and let events play out, not evaporate 100k civilians.

(There is nothing particularly special about the use of nuclear weapons here, the bombing of Dresden is just as indefensible).

I’m sure many of them would rather see the war criminals prosecuted for their crimes over the terrors of nuclear bomb. Surely Korea could have been liberated with traditional means, just like other colonies of imperial Japan were.

EDIT: Deleted a segment which is probably untrue. Here is what I said:

~However, I don’t think the people that decided to use the nuclear bomb on cities cared that much about justice for the crimes of the Japanese army. If they had, they probably wouldn’t have given the war criminals high positions at the US army after the war.~

Where could I read more about Japanese war criminals being given high positions in the US Army after the war? The closest I'm able to find is that Shiro Ishii (director of Unit 731) managed to negotiate immunity from prosecution in exchange for data from their experiments, but he was not given any US government or military position, nor was his second in command, Masaji Kitano. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shir%C5%8D_Ishii

You are right. Sorry, I lied. I thought I had read something about it, but I must not have because I can’t find it my self. Perhaps I was thinking about Operation Paperclip, but more likely I might have read an unreliable claim on social media and not checked if it was true.

Following this line of thinking, the US did all of that and worse (slavery and Vietnam war alone). Do you believe we should drop the nuke on them?

I don't.

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