8 ms·

From Burma to Nagasaki: the man who walked through hell

114 points by rdl 11y ago

rdl 11y ago
What struck me is how much better the world is today; aside from the risk of global thermonuclear war, a WW2-scale war is essentially impossible, and even smaller conflicts are becoming less frequent and shorter duration. And how he responded to all of this -- became a doctor, spent the rest of his life trying to minimize suffering in the world. And still believes dropping the bomb was right.
- waxenfigurine 11y ago
  Two contemporary factors that argue for less war making stand out for me. One is technology, already being touched on elsewhere in this thread. Militaries now command destructive power that better approximates what is required to accomplish a goal, enabled by technological improvements (i.e. footage of the JDAM guiding itself through a structure's window during the Gulf conflict). Another factor is that the age of commercial airliners and the global transport systems has made efficient global migration & trade a reality for decades now. What citizens would accept attacking their brothers and sisters in another country, attacking their trading partners with whom they make their livings? Perhaps this is now the quintessential limiting factor in making war. Um, combined with societies becoming more sex-positive, we are edging closer to realizing the mantra Make Love, Not War!
  - ak217 11y ago
    > What citizens would accept attacking their brothers and sisters in another country, attacking their trading partners with whom they make their livings? The bitter truth that Russians have to deal with is that most of the population is so susceptible to being brainwashed, they will gladly turn on their brothers and sisters after a few years of watching state-controlled media.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    > What citizens would accept attacking their brothers and sisters in another country, attacking their trading partners with whom they make their livings? You might want to take a look at the data of import / exports for countries in Europe before WWII. Being someone biggest trading partner didn't stop anyone's attacks.
- sixQuarks 11y ago
  a WW2 scale war is absolutely still possible. Back before WWI started, there were many economists that said war between modern countries was basically impossible due to all the economic trade. Not only did WWI happen, but an even worse war happened relatively shortly afterwards.
- will_brown 11y ago
  I tend to agree the world is much better today. However, to keep things in perspective I have highlight 3 recent wars/genocides: 1. The Great African War/the African World War (1998-2003): 5.4M deaths (some estimates as high as 20M); 2. Bosnian Genocide (1992-1995): 100,000 deaths; 3. Darfur Genocide (2003-ongoing?): 500,000 deaths and counting, 3 million displaced. While my examples are no where near the scale of WW2, perhaps hidden in there is a much larger human tragedy. Namely how few people are familiar with the existence of these 3 modern events that took the lives of 6M people in the last 20 years.
  - abrak 11y ago
    I agree that the amount of lives lost post WW2 have been largely ignored.. You may find this visualisation of deaths in WW2 interesting: https://vimeo.com/128373915 https://vimeo.com/128373915
    - RachelF 11y ago
      That's a great visualisation. Thanks.
  - tomjen3 11y ago
    Essentially everybody has heard about 2 and 3, as well as Rowanda, which you left out, but a quick look to wikipedia shows that most of the people who died in 1 died of disease and malnutrition and also that the conflict to place in Congo. Basically there is a place in the world that is consistently behind the rest - sub saharan Africa - where all your examples, other than the one in Bosnia, came from. And Bosnia is arguably a very important exception, at least I don't recall any other genocides in the developed world since 1950.
    - will_brown 11y ago
      What is your point? Do these wars/genocides not matter because they did not take place in the "developed world"? That war time deaths attributable to anything beyond death on the battlefield do not count? Are you saying civil wars don't count, because the US lost as many soldiers in our civil war as all other US wars combined...or is it as you point out that civil wars in the Congo don't count? If like you say "essentially everybody" has heard of these wars/genocides, then I stand corrected the great human tragedy is not that we are ignorant of what is happening in the world but apparently that we should only concern ourselves with deaths/wars/genocides in the "developed world". Edit: > I don't recall any other genocides in the developed world since 1950. How about the ingeniousness populations in Brazil, 2 of which I am aware are on the brink of extinction in the last 30 years. Yet, despite being a world top 10 economy, you/some may say Brazil is not part of the developed world, or highlight these genocides are not driven by war so much as "progress"; therefore, you may not consider these genocides.
- acdanger 11y ago
  I didn't interpret anything in the article that led me to think he believes (or believed at the time, even) that bombing Nagasaki was the right thing to do.
  - eceppda 11y ago
    I had the same interpretation. I noted that he still (understandably) doesn't forgive the Japanese, but that could be entirely separate from the decision to use atomic weapons against civilians.
- llamataboot 11y ago
  I'm not sure how you can say this with such certainty. We're less than two generations out from the last "world war", we arguably have other countries and regions that would be involved in the next world war, and resources continue to get more scarce without any sign that the globe (and the developed, industrialized countries) have learned to "share"
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure the sentiment that a large war has been made impossible, either through technology or politics or both, pre-dates the first World War. Certainly after the first World War, it was thought that war had thus become so horrible that it would never happen like that again. MAD has worked pretty well so far. It seems almost certain that there would have been a massive third World War by now if nuclear weapons hadn't been invented. But that doesn't mean it can't ever happen, especially since MAD is a lot harder to work with in a multi-polar world (there are currently nine countries with nuclear weapons).
    - RachelF 11y ago
      There is an current academic debate about this: https://medium.com/bull-market/violent-warfare-is-on-the-wane-right-99223faa45e6 https://medium.com/bull-market/violent-warfare-is-on-the-wan...
  - colechristensen 11y ago
    There are no long-term resource worries in the developed world. This goes against the folk-wisdom and fear-mongering present in a lot of popular culture, but it isn't true. In the developed world fertility rates are below unity. Oil, at it's recent peak was competitive with solar. Resources aren't going to run out, the prices are just going to change – some resources will have to be more aggressively recycled, others will have to be replaced. Billionaires are thinking about asteroid mining. Nobody in the developed world is going to start wars over shortages. There's a huge amount of arable land which is either unused or grown with only the most primitive techniques. Modern agriculture requires a fairly advanced economy, but it is orders of magnitude more productive. "Resources are scarce" is a very believable lie, and it's easy to misuse statistics to prove it's true. Remember "peak oil"? It wasn't true before and now nobody really cares that much. The best car in the world is American and electric. In a few years they'll be selling one suitable for the middle class. We don't _need_ oil for energy, but we're going to use it until the economies of developing technology overtake the increasingly more costly fossil fuels. In a generation or two people will stop fearing nuclear, and fusion will become economically viable.
- drumdance 11y ago
  The Iraq war lasted much longer than WW2, and more Iraqui civilians died than US soldiers in WW2, though granted it's still a small number compared to what Russia and others lost.
  - adventured 11y ago
    That's not accurate. The Iraqi body count project concluded 174,000 Iraqis died due to the conflict (both the invasion and civil war), between 2003 and 2013 (with between 112,000 and 123,000 being civilians). The Associated Press reached a similar number, based on the Iraqi Health Ministry. The reports claiming upwards of a million died aren't even remotely credible, and were all based on extremely small household surveys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
    - chimprich 11y ago
      That's not accurate. The Iraq Body Count project only counted cases in which individuals killed were specifically recorded in the media. By their own admission this was intended as a lower bound estimation and likely to exclude a large proportion of deaths. The only scientific peer-reviewed studies ought to be more accurate and estimate much higher numbers of deaths.
- aikah 11y ago
  > What struck me is how much better the world is today Deterrence is a good thing indeed, as long as one has nukes... But is the world really better today? > a WW2-scale war is essentially impossible, I don't think so. Mankind never learns. It's just a matter of time before we go back to 'savage' mode on a global scale. it's very easy for governments dehumanize people, and propaganda has never been as powerful as today. Once the 'ennemy' is reduced to something less than human, it's easier to make others torture,enslave or kill him. 1,1000 or 10 millions it doesn't matter.
  - marktangotango 11y ago
    Agreed, we all must be forever vigilant to the possibility we could be deceived, that the atrocities of the past could happen again. The polyanna-ish attitude of the OP is intolerable in this regard.
  - adventured 11y ago
    Mankind's natural resting state is peace, not violence. The extreme majority of all humans throughout history have been peaceful, not violent 'savages.' Violence by any given individual person against another is the extreme outlier, not the common. Historically death from war is the result of a very small percentage of the global population acting violently. It is not the result of a majority of people acting violently. Simple proof: what percentage of the world population belonged to the side of the aggressors in WW1 or WW2? You can apply the same premise to any historical scenario. What percentage of Cambodians were involved in the massacres committed by Pol Pot's regime? What percentage of North Koreans are involved in violently repressing their fellow North Koreans? The general answer is obvious: most North Koreans are peaceful, most Cambodians were peaceful, rather than savages. Yes, the world is getting drastically better. Living standards are much higher and continue to climb. Child / infant mortality is drastically lower. Our ability to treat, cure, or wipe out diseases is far beyond anything from 50 years ago. Large scale starvation is becoming extremely rare. War between leading nations hasn't occurred in 70 years, a record likely unmatched in recorded history.
    - ionised 11y ago
euske 11y ago
Oh my goodness. I am reading this at work and I am crying (sorry, boss). Partly because of the story itself, but also because of the realization that Japan (which I happen to be a citizen of) has learned very little since then. Thanks for sharing a great article.
- sdrothrock 11y ago
  > but also because of the realization that Japan (which I happen to be a citizen of) has learned very little since then. Could you shed some light on what you're referring to?
  - euske 11y ago
    Recent resurgence of the "national pride" thing. The forced reinterpretation of the Constitution. Unreasonable hatred towards neighboring countries (China and Korea in particular). And worst of all, we aren't taught anything about these Japanese atrocities at school. Japan is still enjoying willful ignorance.
    - sdrothrock 11y ago
      > Recent resurgence of the "national pride" thing. I agree with this. > The forced reinterpretation of the Constitution. I agree that this bothers me slightly, but concede that the Japanese government can and should be able to openly modify the constitution. Article 9 isn't and shouldn't be an absolute commandment (assuming that's what you're talking about). > Unreasonable hatred towards neighboring countries (China and Korea in particular). Outside of extremist groups, I haven't really seen this at all. It might be more accurate to say that the government, rather than the citizens, are drumming up an opposition to push things through politically. If anything, it seems like more people from neighboring countries carry a grudge against Japan than vice versa -- without getting into a talk about whether it's justified or should be forgotten by now etc. > worst of all, we aren't taught anything about these Japanese atrocities at school. This may vary depending on your curriculum and your age, especially if you're in the ゆとり教育世代. [Edit to add: Just like American adults don't really go around talking about American atrocities in daily life, Japanese people don't do that either, in my experience. But when we have had occasions to talk about that kind of thing (say, discussions about recent history, politics, Korea, or China), people have seemed to be generally knowledgeable.] I was teaching and watching classes up til a few years ago and did hear some things about the atrocities in junior high and know that most people heard more in high school, which makes sense as part of age-appropriate curriculum creation to me. I don't think Japan is anywhere near taking a step toward the Imperial Japan in the article. Vocal and consistent opposition to attempts to get around Article 9 and that people are trying to encourage Chinese tourism in fact make me believe the opposite; Japan is (very) slowly trying to move toward a more open and global state.
nicholas73 11y ago
>“Well, chance is a funny thing,” he says. “Why should I be angry about the bad things that occur and still accept the good things? I really do not understand life. I do not know what it’s all about.” Remarkable wisdom in this quote.
- gambiting 11y ago
  "This particular guard had never beaten him and had always been polite. The guard saluted Bras. Bras looked away, refusing to return the salute. “Until now, I regret it,” Bras says. “I often think of it.”" This is also very profound, it's usually things we haven't done which come haunting us through the years.
philliphaydon 11y ago
While I gather he has never forgiven Japan, what struck me was despite everything, not all Japanese believed in what they were doing. And still respected those men and offered food. There's good everywhere even in the worst of times.
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114 points by rdl 11y ago

rdl 11y ago

What struck me is how much better the world is today; aside from the risk of global thermonuclear war, a WW2-scale war is essentially impossible, and even smaller conflicts are becoming less frequent and shorter duration. And how he responded to all of this -- became a doctor, spent the rest of his life trying to minimize suffering in the world. And still believes dropping the bomb was right.

waxenfigurine 11y ago
Two contemporary factors that argue for less war making stand out for me. One is technology, already being touched on elsewhere in this thread. Militaries now command destructive power that better approximates what is required to accomplish a goal, enabled by technological improvements (i.e. footage of the JDAM guiding itself through a structure's window during the Gulf conflict). Another factor is that the age of commercial airliners and the global transport systems has made efficient global migration & trade a reality for decades now. What citizens would accept attacking their brothers and sisters in another country, attacking their trading partners with whom they make their livings? Perhaps this is now the quintessential limiting factor in making war. Um, combined with societies becoming more sex-positive, we are edging closer to realizing the mantra Make Love, Not War!
- ak217 11y ago
  > What citizens would accept attacking their brothers and sisters in another country, attacking their trading partners with whom they make their livings? The bitter truth that Russians have to deal with is that most of the population is so susceptible to being brainwashed, they will gladly turn on their brothers and sisters after a few years of watching state-controlled media.
- protomyth 11y ago
  > What citizens would accept attacking their brothers and sisters in another country, attacking their trading partners with whom they make their livings? You might want to take a look at the data of import / exports for countries in Europe before WWII. Being someone biggest trading partner didn't stop anyone's attacks.
sixQuarks 11y ago
a WW2 scale war is absolutely still possible. Back before WWI started, there were many economists that said war between modern countries was basically impossible due to all the economic trade. Not only did WWI happen, but an even worse war happened relatively shortly afterwards.
will_brown 11y ago
I tend to agree the world is much better today. However, to keep things in perspective I have highlight 3 recent wars/genocides: 1. The Great African War/the African World War (1998-2003): 5.4M deaths (some estimates as high as 20M); 2. Bosnian Genocide (1992-1995): 100,000 deaths; 3. Darfur Genocide (2003-ongoing?): 500,000 deaths and counting, 3 million displaced. While my examples are no where near the scale of WW2, perhaps hidden in there is a much larger human tragedy. Namely how few people are familiar with the existence of these 3 modern events that took the lives of 6M people in the last 20 years.
- abrak 11y ago
  I agree that the amount of lives lost post WW2 have been largely ignored.. You may find this visualisation of deaths in WW2 interesting: https://vimeo.com/128373915 https://vimeo.com/128373915
  - RachelF 11y ago
    That's a great visualisation. Thanks.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  Essentially everybody has heard about 2 and 3, as well as Rowanda, which you left out, but a quick look to wikipedia shows that most of the people who died in 1 died of disease and malnutrition and also that the conflict to place in Congo. Basically there is a place in the world that is consistently behind the rest - sub saharan Africa - where all your examples, other than the one in Bosnia, came from. And Bosnia is arguably a very important exception, at least I don't recall any other genocides in the developed world since 1950.
  - will_brown 11y ago
    What is your point? Do these wars/genocides not matter because they did not take place in the "developed world"? That war time deaths attributable to anything beyond death on the battlefield do not count? Are you saying civil wars don't count, because the US lost as many soldiers in our civil war as all other US wars combined...or is it as you point out that civil wars in the Congo don't count? If like you say "essentially everybody" has heard of these wars/genocides, then I stand corrected the great human tragedy is not that we are ignorant of what is happening in the world but apparently that we should only concern ourselves with deaths/wars/genocides in the "developed world". Edit: > I don't recall any other genocides in the developed world since 1950. How about the ingeniousness populations in Brazil, 2 of which I am aware are on the brink of extinction in the last 30 years. Yet, despite being a world top 10 economy, you/some may say Brazil is not part of the developed world, or highlight these genocides are not driven by war so much as "progress"; therefore, you may not consider these genocides.
acdanger 11y ago
I didn't interpret anything in the article that led me to think he believes (or believed at the time, even) that bombing Nagasaki was the right thing to do.
- eceppda 11y ago
  I had the same interpretation. I noted that he still (understandably) doesn't forgive the Japanese, but that could be entirely separate from the decision to use atomic weapons against civilians.
llamataboot 11y ago
I'm not sure how you can say this with such certainty. We're less than two generations out from the last "world war", we arguably have other countries and regions that would be involved in the next world war, and resources continue to get more scarce without any sign that the globe (and the developed, industrialized countries) have learned to "share"
- mikeash 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure the sentiment that a large war has been made impossible, either through technology or politics or both, pre-dates the first World War. Certainly after the first World War, it was thought that war had thus become so horrible that it would never happen like that again. MAD has worked pretty well so far. It seems almost certain that there would have been a massive third World War by now if nuclear weapons hadn't been invented. But that doesn't mean it can't ever happen, especially since MAD is a lot harder to work with in a multi-polar world (there are currently nine countries with nuclear weapons).
  - RachelF 11y ago
    There is an current academic debate about this: https://medium.com/bull-market/violent-warfare-is-on-the-wane-right-99223faa45e6 https://medium.com/bull-market/violent-warfare-is-on-the-wan...
- colechristensen 11y ago
  There are no long-term resource worries in the developed world. This goes against the folk-wisdom and fear-mongering present in a lot of popular culture, but it isn't true. In the developed world fertility rates are below unity. Oil, at it's recent peak was competitive with solar. Resources aren't going to run out, the prices are just going to change – some resources will have to be more aggressively recycled, others will have to be replaced. Billionaires are thinking about asteroid mining. Nobody in the developed world is going to start wars over shortages. There's a huge amount of arable land which is either unused or grown with only the most primitive techniques. Modern agriculture requires a fairly advanced economy, but it is orders of magnitude more productive. "Resources are scarce" is a very believable lie, and it's easy to misuse statistics to prove it's true. Remember "peak oil"? It wasn't true before and now nobody really cares that much. The best car in the world is American and electric. In a few years they'll be selling one suitable for the middle class. We don't _need_ oil for energy, but we're going to use it until the economies of developing technology overtake the increasingly more costly fossil fuels. In a generation or two people will stop fearing nuclear, and fusion will become economically viable.
drumdance 11y ago
The Iraq war lasted much longer than WW2, and more Iraqui civilians died than US soldiers in WW2, though granted it's still a small number compared to what Russia and others lost.
- adventured 11y ago
  That's not accurate. The Iraqi body count project concluded 174,000 Iraqis died due to the conflict (both the invasion and civil war), between 2003 and 2013 (with between 112,000 and 123,000 being civilians). The Associated Press reached a similar number, based on the Iraqi Health Ministry. The reports claiming upwards of a million died aren't even remotely credible, and were all based on extremely small household surveys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
  - chimprich 11y ago
    That's not accurate. The Iraq Body Count project only counted cases in which individuals killed were specifically recorded in the media. By their own admission this was intended as a lower bound estimation and likely to exclude a large proportion of deaths. The only scientific peer-reviewed studies ought to be more accurate and estimate much higher numbers of deaths.
aikah 11y ago
> What struck me is how much better the world is today Deterrence is a good thing indeed, as long as one has nukes... But is the world really better today? > a WW2-scale war is essentially impossible, I don't think so. Mankind never learns. It's just a matter of time before we go back to 'savage' mode on a global scale. it's very easy for governments dehumanize people, and propaganda has never been as powerful as today. Once the 'ennemy' is reduced to something less than human, it's easier to make others torture,enslave or kill him. 1,1000 or 10 millions it doesn't matter.
- marktangotango 11y ago
  Agreed, we all must be forever vigilant to the possibility we could be deceived, that the atrocities of the past could happen again. The polyanna-ish attitude of the OP is intolerable in this regard.
- adventured 11y ago
  Mankind's natural resting state is peace, not violence. The extreme majority of all humans throughout history have been peaceful, not violent 'savages.' Violence by any given individual person against another is the extreme outlier, not the common. Historically death from war is the result of a very small percentage of the global population acting violently. It is not the result of a majority of people acting violently. Simple proof: what percentage of the world population belonged to the side of the aggressors in WW1 or WW2? You can apply the same premise to any historical scenario. What percentage of Cambodians were involved in the massacres committed by Pol Pot's regime? What percentage of North Koreans are involved in violently repressing their fellow North Koreans? The general answer is obvious: most North Koreans are peaceful, most Cambodians were peaceful, rather than savages. Yes, the world is getting drastically better. Living standards are much higher and continue to climb. Child / infant mortality is drastically lower. Our ability to treat, cure, or wipe out diseases is far beyond anything from 50 years ago. Large scale starvation is becoming extremely rare. War between leading nations hasn't occurred in 70 years, a record likely unmatched in recorded history.
  - ionised 11y ago

euske 11y ago

Oh my goodness. I am reading this at work and I am crying (sorry, boss). Partly because of the story itself, but also because of the realization that Japan (which I happen to be a citizen of) has learned very little since then. Thanks for sharing a great article.

sdrothrock 11y ago
> but also because of the realization that Japan (which I happen to be a citizen of) has learned very little since then. Could you shed some light on what you're referring to?
- euske 11y ago
  Recent resurgence of the "national pride" thing. The forced reinterpretation of the Constitution. Unreasonable hatred towards neighboring countries (China and Korea in particular). And worst of all, we aren't taught anything about these Japanese atrocities at school. Japan is still enjoying willful ignorance.
  - sdrothrock 11y ago
    > Recent resurgence of the "national pride" thing. I agree with this. > The forced reinterpretation of the Constitution. I agree that this bothers me slightly, but concede that the Japanese government can and should be able to openly modify the constitution. Article 9 isn't and shouldn't be an absolute commandment (assuming that's what you're talking about). > Unreasonable hatred towards neighboring countries (China and Korea in particular). Outside of extremist groups, I haven't really seen this at all. It might be more accurate to say that the government, rather than the citizens, are drumming up an opposition to push things through politically. If anything, it seems like more people from neighboring countries carry a grudge against Japan than vice versa -- without getting into a talk about whether it's justified or should be forgotten by now etc. > worst of all, we aren't taught anything about these Japanese atrocities at school. This may vary depending on your curriculum and your age, especially if you're in the ゆとり教育世代. [Edit to add: Just like American adults don't really go around talking about American atrocities in daily life, Japanese people don't do that either, in my experience. But when we have had occasions to talk about that kind of thing (say, discussions about recent history, politics, Korea, or China), people have seemed to be generally knowledgeable.] I was teaching and watching classes up til a few years ago and did hear some things about the atrocities in junior high and know that most people heard more in high school, which makes sense as part of age-appropriate curriculum creation to me. I don't think Japan is anywhere near taking a step toward the Imperial Japan in the article. Vocal and consistent opposition to attempts to get around Article 9 and that people are trying to encourage Chinese tourism in fact make me believe the opposite; Japan is (very) slowly trying to move toward a more open and global state.

nicholas73 11y ago

>“Well, chance is a funny thing,” he says. “Why should I be angry about the bad things that occur and still accept the good things? I really do not understand life. I do not know what it’s all about.” Remarkable wisdom in this quote.

gambiting 11y ago
"This particular guard had never beaten him and had always been polite. The guard saluted Bras. Bras looked away, refusing to return the salute. “Until now, I regret it,” Bras says. “I often think of it.”" This is also very profound, it's usually things we haven't done which come haunting us through the years.

philliphaydon 11y ago

While I gather he has never forgiven Japan, what struck me was despite everything, not all Japanese believed in what they were doing. And still respected those men and offered food. There's good everywhere even in the worst of times.

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