3 ms·

Also, history written by the victors...convenient to convey Curtis Lemay as a war hero vs. a war criminal that signed off on a raid designed to purposefully inc

• dralley 5y ago
  History is not necessarily written by the victors, fwiw. Victors frequently end up too busy running the government to write history books whereas the losers sometimes end up with a lot of free time and motivation. See: Lots of pro-Confederate "history", lots of history from ancient times
  • caycep 5y ago
    "frequently" yes...but with the Pacific theater histories - most of what I've seen and also what's being quoted in the arguments below re "Would Japan have surrendered without the A bomb" are from books by primarily American or British historians, or even the Pentagon's own internal study. This is one conflict where I am not seeing a ton of Japanese academia weighing in. Why, who knows - maybe it isn't a hot topic for current academic research, maybe because of language barriers, engrained biases, etc, (maybe are a lot more Japanese academic works in Japan itself, but not getting a lot of traction here, who knows...) To whit, a lot of the quotes being thrown around to support the "Japan would have never surrendered without the A-bomb" seem(at least on my reading) to suggest there was a lot more debate amongst the civilian and military (Japan AND US Navy) higher ups that were assumed at the time, and who knows what would have happened had more diplomatic measures been tried?
    • dralley 5y ago
      I don't get the sense that Japan is, culturally, particularly interested in studying or publishing their WWII history.