While the horror of the atomic bombings of civilian centers is more obvious in hindsight, it also overshadows what was at least equally horrific at the time: the continuous and deliberate widespread fire bombings of civilian centers.
Much of what the US did in Japan would be considered a war crime if it happened nowadays. The Pacific campaign also heavily leveraged existing racist sentiments and explicitly dehumanized Asian people which carried over into the Korean War (where the US did manage to commit more war crimes than either of the two Koreas) and the Vietnam War.
This isn't to excuse Japan who to this day refuse to acknowledge the Rape of Nanjing and is orthogonal to the legitimacy of US involvement in the Korean and Vietnamese civil wars (the former of which explicitly contradicted a UN decision and presented a last-ditch effort to avoid an imminent North Korean victory). Japan was the aggressor and did horrible war crimes themselves. But that doesn't mean everything the US did was above the board and it doesn't excuse it. Opinions are still divided on the firebombing of Dresden and even by its most exaggerated retellings it pales in comparison to what happened in Japan.
Also what the article doesn't go out of its way to mention but implies: the atomic bombings were part of what led to the Japanese surrender but did not play the critical part Truman would later claim they did (while continously exaggerating the number of American lives saved by it over the years). The Soviet invasion and risk of annexation played a far greater part and surrendering to the US to stop the Soviet advance was preferable to a Soviet annexation that would have at best meant a guaranteed deposition of the Emperor if not an execution.
The Japanese Emperor was considered divine. Although the surrender ended up being unconditional the US did not hold him personally responsible and allowed him to remain in a ceremonial function. If there were no off-the-record agreements about this, it was at least a leap of faith with the understanding that the alternative was not an American occupation but guaranteed annexation by the Soviets who were known to not look too kindly on kings, gods or the territorial integrity of Japan (given the Russo-Japanese war preceding WW2). The US wasn't keen on risking the lives of its soldiers by invading the deathtrap that was mainland Japan whereas the Soviets had a reputation (accurate or not) of not fearing meatgrinders.
>This isn't to excuse Japan who to this day refuse to acknowledge the Rape of Nanjing
I have often heard that Japan denies or has never apologized for it's actions in China / Korea but there are numerous apologies that have been given. I think this is often repeated to both paint Japanese people as uncaring and also keep divisions between Japanese, Chinese and Korean people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements...
>On August 15, 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the Surrender of Japan, the Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama gave the first formal apology for Japanese actions during the war.[171]
>He offered his apology to all survivors and to the relatives and friends of the victims. That day, the prime minister and the Japanese Emperor Akihito pronounced statements of mourning at Tokyo's Nippon Budokan. Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanjing, criticized Murayama for not providing the written apology that had been expected. She said that the people of China "don't believe that an... unequivocal and sincere apology has ever been made by Japan to China" and that a written apology from Japan would send a better message to the international community.[172]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre
The allegation isn't that they denied or never apologized for "Japan's actions in China/Korea". The allegation is that they don't acknowledge the Rape of Nanjing (or the crimes of Unit 731).
Imagine Germany had at numerous times apologized for WW2 and "the actions committed" without ever explicitly acknowledging the Holocaust, the mass murders in Poland and other annexed territories and so on.
Without explicitly acknowledging what Japan had done in Nanjing (or what Unit 731 had done as "experiments"), an apology means nothing. It's the difference between apologizing for a war and for the war crimes committed during that war. It implies that everything that happened can simply be paraphrased as "actions during wartime", which understates the extent of the heinousness of the crimes.
Much of what the US did in Japan would be considered a war crime if it happened nowadays. The Pacific campaign also heavily leveraged existing racist sentiments and explicitly dehumanized Asian people which carried over into the Korean War (where the US did manage to commit more war crimes than either of the two Koreas) and the Vietnam War.
This isn't to excuse Japan who to this day refuse to acknowledge the Rape of Nanjing and is orthogonal to the legitimacy of US involvement in the Korean and Vietnamese civil wars (the former of which explicitly contradicted a UN decision and presented a last-ditch effort to avoid an imminent North Korean victory). Japan was the aggressor and did horrible war crimes themselves. But that doesn't mean everything the US did was above the board and it doesn't excuse it. Opinions are still divided on the firebombing of Dresden and even by its most exaggerated retellings it pales in comparison to what happened in Japan.
Also what the article doesn't go out of its way to mention but implies: the atomic bombings were part of what led to the Japanese surrender but did not play the critical part Truman would later claim they did (while continously exaggerating the number of American lives saved by it over the years). The Soviet invasion and risk of annexation played a far greater part and surrendering to the US to stop the Soviet advance was preferable to a Soviet annexation that would have at best meant a guaranteed deposition of the Emperor if not an execution.
The Japanese Emperor was considered divine. Although the surrender ended up being unconditional the US did not hold him personally responsible and allowed him to remain in a ceremonial function. If there were no off-the-record agreements about this, it was at least a leap of faith with the understanding that the alternative was not an American occupation but guaranteed annexation by the Soviets who were known to not look too kindly on kings, gods or the territorial integrity of Japan (given the Russo-Japanese war preceding WW2). The US wasn't keen on risking the lives of its soldiers by invading the deathtrap that was mainland Japan whereas the Soviets had a reputation (accurate or not) of not fearing meatgrinders.