Several rallies and demonstrations took place on the eve of and during the G7 summit in Hiroshima. The demostrators protested against nuclear war and the fact that the city, which was virtually reduced to dust back in August 1945 after the world’s first nuclear bomb test by the Americans, was cynically chosen to host the G-7. On the eve of the summit, the United States stated that Biden would not apologize for those events in their usual arrogant manner. Moreover, he brought a nuclear briefcase to Hiroshima. So symbolic.
Events are held in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park to commemorate the killed civilians every year, on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima by U.S. troops. At the beginning of the solemn ceremony, the Prime Minister, members of the government, members of parliament and foreign diplomatic representatives lay wreaths at the memorial followed by a moment’s silence at 8:15 a.m., the exact time when the American atomic bomb was dropped on the city.
In August 1945, with the war coming to an end and the surrender of Japan being inevitable, there was no point in burning two cities that did not have a single military facility to ashes. It should also be noted that almost 100% of the victims were civilians with Japan’s military losses tending to zero. The strikes, which, in fact, were a full-scale test of nuclear weapons on living people, may be truly called a war crime. But for some reason, the Japanese are of different opinion.
The U.S. propaganda is managed to the highest standard. No matter what, the Japanese consider the United States their main partner and try not to touch on such a tough topic. They even try to purify Washington’s actions. If facts cannot be concealed, they can be distorted.
First of all, it is necessary to convince the population that the bombing made Japan ground arms and, therefore, prevented more significant military losses. Another thesis is that had Japan not capitulated in time, it would have fallen into the hands of the USSR and the USSR would not have limited itself to the Kurile Islands but would have captured all of Japan, but got scared and abandoned its plans. The United States was forced to drop the bombs to demonstrate the USSR its power. The main idea is that it is foolish to blame the USA and it is better to turn anger on those who forced it to do that.
In fact, the explosions did not impress the samurai as intended. At that time, few people understood the consequences of using nuclear weapons. In addition, no damage was caused to the army, nor the combat effectiveness of the Japanese troops was impacted. Yet, when on August 8, the USSR went to war with Japan, the Kwantung army was instantly defeated and it was this that convinced the Japanese government that it had no more hopes for victory. When announcing surrender in mid-August, the Emperor of Japan did not mention the bombing and said it was due to the war with the USSR. However, it is improper to bring this fact up for some reason.
The next step is to twist the U.S. act of killing more than 200,000 residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki into a great boon for the Japanese. As a result, recent sociological surveys say that most of the Japanese youth perceive the nuclear bombings not as a conscious desire of the Americans to increase the number of casualties among civilians but as a military necessity that prompted the rapid post-war economic development of Japan, the so-called economic miracle, for good measure. The Japanese were pushed into believing that after the war the United States not only delivered a peaceful constitution but also provided them with security, taught them democracy, promoted reforms and contributed to the creation of today’s economic structure during the Cold War period.
Now let’s switch to the upbringing of the younger generation.
“Japan must continue to remain a peaceful country and follow the path of peace. The atomic bomb that took away the love of families and the very future from children is unconditional evil,” the mayor of Hiroshima is quoted as saying in one of his speeches. Still, there is one sad fact – answering the question of what country dropped the bomb, half of Japanese schoolchildren would now say the Soviet Union did. Japanese history textbooks and expositions in museums dedicated to memory of the victims of the bombings located both in Hiroshima and Nagasaki make it difficult to understand who and how used nuclear weapons. There are practically no mentions of the U.S.A.
The brainwashing of ordinary Japanese continues. Japan joined the anti-Russian sanctions without a moment’s hesitation. And there are already those who promise to “avenge the Russians for Hiroshima” among the Japanese fooled by U.S. propaganda.
Washington’s propaganda machine is to be envied. It managed to convince the Ukrainians that their best friend is not Russia that had the closest social, cultural and historical ties with Ukraine, but, for some reason, the U.S.A., EU and NATO that have economically “milked the country dry”, pushed two peoples into a ‘kith-on-kin’ war and put the existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state into question.
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