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all 83 comments

[–]phantominthebrain 46 points47 points ago

My grandmother, who was around 5 during the war, told me about a time when a bomb landed right in front of her house, rolled down the street and blew up the house next door...scary shit man

[–]zimulator 22 points23 points ago

Where was this, Japan?

[–]phantominthebrain 33 points34 points ago

Sendai, Japan. She lives in Kobe now, though.

[–]Brad_1 7 points8 points ago

Quick question. What sort of blast radius would one of these bombs have?

[–]phantominthebrain 12 points13 points ago

I personally think what she saw was an incendiary bomblet from an M-69 lighting the neighbor's house on fire, and she mistook the fast-igniting flames as a bomb. I'm not sure her house would been safe if it was a standard explosive.

[–]_delirium 10 points11 points ago

If it was a 500-lb bomb (common during WW2), they have surprisingly small blast radiuses, especially if they explode on the ground. Typical figures quoted seem to be 10-15m for the blast, with shrapnel flying out to 40-50m. So you really could survive one hitting the next house over, especially if there was a wall between you and the bomb to block the shrapnel. One reason they dropped such huge numbers of them, because each bomb hit only a small area and targeting was ridiculously imprecise.

That said, if it really destroyed the next house but did no damage to your grandmother's, the incendiary-bomblet theory sounds plausible.

[–][deleted] ago

[deleted]

[–]Brad_1 2 points3 points ago

Where I'm from, houses come in many sizes.

[–]Danielcdo 10 points11 points ago

Hard to imagine people survived these bombings

[–]rhinoanon 2 points3 points ago

I love how the bombing of a city full of civilians can be viewed as 'strategic'. War makes people do very rash things.

Sarcasm people, it's called sarcasm.

[–]Hansafan 5 points6 points ago

How is it "not strategic"? I don't like the idea of terror bombing, as it's a morally questionable practice at best, but it is most definitely a strategy. It's about crippling your enemys morale, primarily by reducing the general populace's belief in victory, more than anything.

[–]rhinoanon 0 points1 point ago

I'm not saying it's not strategic. I'm just saying it's pretty sad how WW2 got so nasty that it the war ultimately came down to tattering the general populace. Many i'm sure who didn't even agree with the war in the first place.

[–]Hansafan 3 points4 points ago

I just reacted to your comment, as it implied mass bombing was not a strategy at all, more a move motivated just by plain sadism. I do not believe that was the motivations of allied commanders.

Terror bombing is a strategy, whether or not it's a good strategy is another question altogether.

[–]tiyx 1 point2 points ago

Those actions at the time are understandable. Kill the civilians who are soon to be soldiers.

[–]HuronSerenity 1 point2 points ago

Japanese industry was spread out throughout the cities, so there really was no other way to go after their industry.

[–]Decency -1 points0 points ago

Oh it's strategic for sure. It's also probably a war crime, but the US won so they don't really have to deal with much of that.

[–]kitatatsumi 0 points1 point ago

Your comment implies that German or Japanese commanders or Politicians were (in contrast to the US) accused and convicted of war crimes based on the strategic bombing of population centers? What were their names of these defendants? What were the charges? Were they convicted?

[–]AidBySpt 1 point2 points ago

Curtis LeMay himself said so.

"...he once remarked that had the U.S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes..."

[–]kitatatsumi 0 points1 point ago

Fully aware of that.

The point was that the post-war war trials did not include bombing as a crime.

[–]Decency 0 points1 point ago

Of course not, the US were the ones who decided what constitutes a war crime. It's pretty easy to avoid convicting yourself of something when you get to define what's illegal and what's not after the fact. See Charges of Victor's Justice.

When the war began on 1 September 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the neutral United States, issued an appeal to the major belligerents (Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Poland) to confine their air raids to military targets, and "under no circumstances undertake bombardment from the air of civilian populations in unfortified cities."

Either something is a war crime or it is not. This is not subject to convenience or legitimate due to its retaliatory nature.

[–]kitatatsumi 0 points1 point ago

So who was actually charged with bombing civilians as a war crime?

Nobody. yes, it would have been hypocritical for the Western Allies to charge Germany for the Blitz and then not charge themselves for doing the same. I agree.

But my point was, instead of charging just Germany or Japan, they charged no one.

Thats it.

You made it sound like Germany was charged but no one else. Which, as we know is not correct.

Did everyone do it?

Yes.

Was it still immoral?

Probably.

[–]Decency 0 points1 point ago

I didn't intend to imply that anyone was charged with bombing civilians, I meant simply that as the US decided the conditions of what was "war crime" after the war, those conditions were not subject to actual logic or morality.

So many of the commanders responsible for the Blitz were convicted of other things such as orchestrating a War of Aggression. The US didn't need to doubly convict them and by not doing so they could protect their own. "Strategic Justice" if you will.

[–]kitatatsumi 0 points1 point ago

Well put, but I don't agree that the decisions were made without actual logic or morality.

In today's terms, perhaps.

[–]torpid -2 points-1 points ago

Yeah it does. Human life was just worth less back in the day.

[–]Clovis69 8 points9 points ago

Those are incendiary cluster bomb units.

[–]B-Train 11 points12 points ago

Because most of the buildings in Japan were made of wood they would use these with devastating consequences

[–]stajway 27 points28 points ago

This is beautiful. I mean, war is horrible and what's happening is horrible, but the picture is very visually pleasing.

[–]CoitusSandwich 16 points17 points ago

That reminds me of what one Japanese anti-war activist said of his own experience as a victim of the bombing campaign in another major city:

This is in Osaka, a picture of Osaka city, from 15 June 1945. I was there, inside the smoke. When you look down on this, in a sense it’s a beautiful scene. But if you were there, it’s a kind of hell in the smoke, and people died there. I was there. So this was my own experience. This kind of situation I experienced three times. So I began to think of war: War means this kind of destruction and slaughter. We didn’t have any power to resist.

Source

[–]jdepps113 6 points7 points ago

They had anti-war activists? Please don't think I'm trolling. I have never heard of this. I thought all Japanese at this time believed their Emperor was God and there was no dissention or debate on the matter of the war.

Please tell me more about this.

[–]EastenNinja 11 points12 points ago

A post-war anti-war activist.

[–]CoitusSandwich 3 points4 points ago

Well yes, Oda only became an activist after the war, but don't believe that public opinion in Japan during the war was so monolithic. History is never, never that simple, and I hope you remember that!

While I don't know too much on the subject, I would say the Japanese socialists/communists would have posed some opposition to what they saw were imperialist wars. By the time of WW2 though, most of their elements were driven deep underground as a result of the government crackdowns on left-wing groups. So, while there may have been some small number that were openly opposed to the war, they were most probably imprisoned or executed immediately.

Aside from that, I thought it'd be worth noting before the militarisation of Japanese society that led to the Pacific War, the 20s saw a flourishing of the liberal democratic movement in Japan. Along with this was the emergence of liberal intellectuals like Minobe Tatsukichi, whose work on the role of the Emperor suggested that "the emperor’s right of supreme command over the military needed to be carefully limited by the Diet of Japan if Japan were not to end up with a dual government in which the military would become completely independent and above the rule of law and unaccountable to civilian authority". He and many other academics and politicians were attacked during the 30s, with their works being officially discredited and banned in favour of those advocating emperor deification and right-wing nationalism.

So, we know that there were Japanese who openly protested against the wars; they were locked up and killed. We know about the Japanese intellectuals that were silenced because they wrote critically of the Emperor or the militarist government. On the level of the ordinary Japanese people, I have no doubt that public opinions would have varied tremendously, even as they went along with, and were complacent about, everything the government proposed. I can imagine that doing anything else would have felt futile at the time. Again, from Oda Makoto:

[A]t the end of the war, Japanese people were supposed to weep. Our family didn’t weep at all. Many people didn’t weep. Look at those pictures of people crying in front of the [Tokyo imperial] palace. But count the numbers: It’s so small, 100, 200, something like this. [laughs] So the entire population didn’t weep, so exhausted we were. My mother’s reaction was the typical Japanese common people’s reaction: "Oh, they started the war and they ended the war."

Even the Kamikaze pilots, who are often remembered to be the most fanatical of them all, each held very different views about the war, their government, and why they were giving up their lives: Source.

I suppose I'm just trying to highlight that in no modern society has there ever been "no dissention or debate on the matter of war". Even the lack of sustained opposition would not mean that all Japanese believed in the same single thing. Societies, and human beings, are much, much more complex than that.

[–]General_C_Gordon 0 points1 point ago

Members of the Japanese Communist Party were completely against the war. It was due to these factors, most of the members were put in prison during World War 2.

[–]Cinemaphreak 0 points1 point ago

I'm sure the residents of Nanking would say "Hey, karma's a motherfucking bitch, isn't it?"

[–]GeyserShitdick 1 point2 points ago

And the residents of Dresden would look at the dead on the beach at Normandy and say the same thing. I don't really see how that's relevant though.

[–]LOLKH -1 points0 points ago

I think you mean Nanjing.

Edit: I assumed this was a reference to the "Rape of Nanjing" by the Japanese on WWII. I probably missed whatever he was getting at.

[–]noobsincorp -1 points0 points ago

Something about this picture is Warholesque.

[–]Space_Ninja 0 points1 point ago

The fact that it's black and white and it's a picture, perhaps?

[–]cadari 11 points12 points ago

This really hits close to home for me. I have many friends in Kobe. Of course none of them or I were alive when the U.S. and Japan were at war, but to think that something like this occurred right where I have walked, shopped, laughed, and just lived my life is truly hard to comprehend. I am glad the ancestors of those who I am close to now survived this and the many other turmoils that have hurt that ever-strong, modern city.

[–]GodxofxThunder 3 points4 points ago

This just reminds me of how crazy it is that my lineage is just one billions that runs back all the way to the first man. I mean a thousand times over each one of my ancestors had to be successful in finding a mate, have a kid, then that kid had to survive to adulthood and repeat the process over. On top of it all at any point along the way a different sperm, one of thousands upon thousands could have won the race to implant itself in an egg and completely change my genetic family tree.

Of course i think of this just as i was starting to not feel bad for being single.

[–]pureweevil 0 points1 point ago

Flummoxed by this too.

[–]MatE2010 10 points11 points ago

The results were devastating. On the night of 9-10 March 1945, 279 B-29's bombed Tokyo. A huge firestorm resulted. Sixteen square miles of Tokyo were reduced to ashes and 84,000 Japanese were killed. Similar but less destructive results were obtained in Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe in the next week. Only twenty B-29s were lost. XXI Bomber Command exhausted its supply of incendiaries for a while. After they were resupplied in April, the B-29s continued the terrible raids with awesome fury. The industrial areas of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kawasaki, Kobe, and Yokohama were reduced to ashes. The aircraft engine factories were hit again with incendiary bombing. By mid-April, Japanese aircraft engine manufacturing capability had been wiped out. The incendiary raids continued through June 1945, reducing the six largest cities of Japan to ashes. Kobe was so thoroughly gutted that it was removed from the target list.

Sauce

[–]allthatsalsa 3 points4 points ago

This would be absolutely horrifying to be on the ground.

[–]stevonf 17 points18 points ago

This picture freaks me the fuck out... war is such bullshit man

[–]randy9876 7 points8 points ago

war is such bullshit man

And yet Germany and Japan have been some of the most peaceful countries on earth for the past 60 years.

[–]JohnnyMnemo 0 points1 point ago

Mostly because we took their militaries away. Their peace and prosperity rather speaks to the advantages of no militaries any more.

[–]Alphabet2 1 point2 points ago

They both have strong militaries now. I think it's more the immediate change in the public mind after the lost war. They both went from being extremely militaristic dictatorships to democracies and Germany uses it's military like a normal country now. Japan doesn't have an offensive military still because of the change in public opinion.

[–]randy9876 0 points1 point ago

We took Germany's military away after WWI as well.

[–]thumbtacforbreakfast 4 points5 points ago

The thought process is what I can't understand. Imagine waking up in the morning and making the conscious decision to bomb people homes.

[–]XavierKeepMarching -4 points-3 points ago

If you don't have any enemies, that means you've never stood up for something.

[–]stevonf -1 points0 points ago

What exactly are you standing up for? Some situations I can empathize with... recent wars on terror and all that? Lets face it. I am Canadian and not brainwashed by American media. It's over fucking oil. It is an occupation and take over.

[–]XavierKeepMarching 1 point2 points ago

America is the most powerful country in the entire universe, you'll just never understand with your simple Canadian mindset.

[–]stevonf -1 points0 points ago

Way to totally dodge my question with some mindless bullshit. You have been watching too much CNN man.

[–]stevonf -1 points0 points ago

And my point above was that USA is the biggest invasive terrorist of them all truth be told. March in and take what we want ! Yee haW!

[–]XavierKeepMarching 1 point2 points ago

Sorry you're still upset that this is our second go at landing on Mars and you're at... zero?

[–]stevonf -1 points0 points ago

Yes you all have your priorities in line quite well. Lower and Middle class cant see a doctor but fuck yeah merika we landed on mars twice. If you were so proud of your space program why not cut military funding? America spent about 150 Billion dollars in 2010 alone above what Nasa had incurred in expenditures since its inception. Keep talking man lol.

[–]stevonf -1 points0 points ago

How is that economy treating you?

[–]lebowskisweater 64 points65 points ago

Bombs on Kobe.

I apologize.

[–]predatormode 30 points31 points ago

This is what I came here for. Thanks.

[–]Dadilikeboys 8 points9 points ago

God fucking damit, I was so ready to post "Kobe dropin' bombs on spurs" http://i.imgur.com/2HydH.jpg

[–]RemoteBoner 13 points14 points ago

I like the part where we are all dead inside.

[–]Dungrove_Elder 1 point2 points ago

At face value, a completely irrelevant comment. But the more you think about it, the more it holds relevance to any comment.

[–][deleted] ago

[deleted]

[–]lebowskisweater 3 points4 points ago

You really take reddit that seriously?

Narwhal.

[–][deleted] ago

[deleted]

[–]lebowskisweater 3 points4 points ago

...and that's why I apologized in advanced.

[–]YoMama_IsAMan 1 point2 points ago

No offense, but this a fucking fantastic top comment.

Different folks, different strokes I guess...

[–]coreyisthename 1 point2 points ago

what was it?

[–]YoMama_IsAMan 1 point2 points ago

He just didn't understand why the joke had so many upvotes. Maybe he though it was distasteful, which doesn't matter because there's no such thing as a tasteful war joke.

[–]the_keo 2 points3 points ago

I think this is the same area of Kobe today. Something about then & now comparisons always adds a bit of depth.

[–]teerav42 1 point2 points ago

My jaw literally dropped. And that happens quite rarely.

[–]Velitatio 1 point2 points ago

this was a shitty day for a lot of people

[–]lowlifecreep 1 point2 points ago

So sad, such a beautiful city

[–]buckie33 1 point2 points ago

Extra tender kobe beef

[–]Dresden_skyline 1 point2 points ago

Sometimes it's easy to forget that not that long ago people were randomly dropping bombs on people in the hopes of dealing the most carnage as possible, on a daily basis

[–]coreyisthename 1 point2 points ago

Fuck war.

[–]Lorkhi 0 points1 point ago

The picture makes me sad, my hometown was bombed during the Area Bombing Directive. Luckily I was borned decades later. An area bombardment is nothing what a human schould experience.

[–]bigjo66 -3 points-2 points ago

I've heard stories that B-29s would come back from firebombing raids with their undersides blackened by the smoke, everything stinking of burnt human flesh.

This podcast that discusses the morality and background of strategic bombing really brought it home to me. The bombing of cities that took place in WW2 was nothing short of a crime against Humanity.

[–]bigjo66 0 points1 point ago

Interested to know why there are downvotes, do people disagree that intentionally causing the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians is ever justifiable?

[–][deleted] ago

[deleted]

[–]GS540 -1 points0 points ago

Just no.

[–]Taquitomontgomery -2 points-1 points ago

Kobe my nigga I hate it had to be him!