James Cameron options Non-Fic book on Hiroshima
- Thread starter Data Holmes
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Let's see him try to beat Grave of the Fireflies. 
And somewhere some studio salivates over making a billion-plus dollars.
I was wondering what a Nuclear explosion would look like in Full 3-D Avatar like CGI.
literally 
I had not heard of the book, but it will be on my must read list for the near future. The movie? I'll wait 5 years for the download.
I might read it as long as it doesnt turn out to be "The evil US bombed the peace loving people of Japan". Sure, the innocent dude and chick running around Hiroshima didn't do nothing to us, but their leaders started the war and refused to end it so they got a kick in the teeth. I lay the blame solely on the feet of the Japanese government.
I fear that we will get exactly that. I'd like Cameron to expand the scope of the film to show how merciless Japanese soldiers routinely cut off the heads, hands, breasts and genitals of innocent people in occupied countries.
I'd love to see a movie inside the Truman administration about dropping the bomb. Japan would've surrendered soon and even if they didn't their forces were decimated; a full scale invasion would never have been necessary. In reality Truman dropped the bomb to show the Soviets that they had the capability to create these weapons and that they better back off. Truman was always terrible when it came to dealing with the Soviet Union and this was just another example.
That said, the stubborness of the Japanese emperor not to surrender despite having essentially no army left was moronic.
That said, the stubborness of the Japanese emperor not to surrender despite having essentially no army left was moronic.
While Emperor Hirohito was not the innocent that many postwar historians have made him out to be, he also was not a strong ruler. Of the three Axis leaders, Hirohito was the weakest. the country was essentially being running by the military. After it became clear that he intended to surrender, he was nearly toppled by a military coup.
The droppiong of the bomb was primarily a political decision. It was to show Russia that the US did hasve the upper hand and would use it (Russia would have cakewalked over the US in a conventional war circa 1946). Secondly if he chose not to use and went ahead with the planned invasion, when word came out he and democratic party would have been through.
The book does not sound like an apologist book from the description and publisher note I read.
The droppiong of the bomb was primarily a political decision. It was to show Russia that the US did hasve the upper hand and would use it (Russia would have cakewalked over the US in a conventional war circa 1946). Secondly if he chose not to use and went ahead with the planned invasion, when word came out he and democratic party would have been through.
The book does not sound like an apologist book from the description and publisher note I read.
Dusty Ayres
Commodore
I believe that the dropping of the bomb spurred the Soviets on to building their own bomb, in part because they (read: Stalin) were scared of the USA and wanted a deterrent. All that America did was start an arms race that we have problems stopping.
Which is why I can't understand the veneration he and his family still get in Japan; if any monarchy deserves to be got rid of, it's the Japanese one solely for what they allowed to happen in their name (although I think Tojo was mostly responsible.)
No, it's probably a true history book like those by Howard Zinn and Studs Terkel, the kind that Americans should be reading more of.
There is zero evidence that anyone in the Truman administration or the Joint Chiefs thought that Japan was going to surrender soon or that an invasion would be unnecessary. Defeated Japanese forces in the field had yielded remarkably few prisoners, they seemed to prefer to die, and civilian Japanese subjects in Saipan had jumped off cliffs when American forces took the island, all lending to serious questions about whether the Japanese people would ever surrender.
The B-29 fire-bombing campaign was already decimating Japanese cities, and the atomic bombs were an extension of that campaign. New and far more deadly , but an extension nonetheless. Of course there were other political and diplomatic considerations, there always are, but no credible evidence has been uncovered that Truman thought that the war would end without the bombing campaign and the invasion. His biggest consideration WRT the USSR was to get Japan to surrender before the Soviets got a bigger role in the Pacific war and a bigger claim on post-war Japan.
Yeah, the Berlin Airlift, what an embarrassment!
By August '45 there were enough Japanese soldiers in the home islands for over 60 infantry divisions, though they could only effectively arm about half that amount.
The emperor deserves blame, sure, but the Japanese government at that time was a dysfunctional balance between the emperor and the military. The emperor could have been assassinated or deposed in favor of a more hardline "no surrender" member of the imperial family, and in fact there were plans to do just that and it came close to happening. The a-bombs were a drastic enough new development in the war to allow the surrender/never-surrender stalemate in the war cabinet to be broken.
--Justin
After seeing Avatar, the prospect of a 3D A-bomb experience... wow. That could be incredibly intense, and compelling cinema. I just wonder what the plot would be; the Titanic was one thing, but I'm not sure that this would allow for a mainstream against-all-odds romance...
I've been to Hiroshima. It's a nice city; there's a memorial, very solemn.
He is a morally conflicted American grunt.
She is a Japanese victim of the A-bomb.
It's Cameron doing Hiroshima, the screenplay writes itself as a magic formula for printing money.
He is a morally conflicted American grunt.
She is a Japanese victim of the A-bomb.
It's Cameron doing Hiroshima, the screenplay writes itself as a magic formula for printing money.
Operation Downfall
You tell me which was the better alternative. Nuke two cities, killing hundreds of thousands and leave radioactive craters to stop a war, or directly invade and potentially wipe out an entire country and culture while decimating the population of the invading countries as well.
I don't see a real winning strategy either way here. Don't play armchair historian and say that anyone on the Allied side knew there was no alternative. Put yourself in the shoes of the man who was given the choice: Kill tens of millions of people, both the enemy civilians and your own allied troops or kill less with a much larger threat of continued nuclear weapons and potentially save millions of lives. Politics no doubt played a part but don't even pretend that there was a better alternative given the knowledge and choices at the time.
About the previously mentioned coup attempt: Nichi Bei Times
The link has more of the story. It's very fascinating just how close we came to true, all out war on the Japanese homeland. Literally down to the minutes at one point.
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Thinking about it now, I wonder if Cameron optioned the book to use as fodder for an Avatar sequel? If he is to go an Empire Strikes Back root and have a truly depressing second act, and everyone keeps asking why the corporation didn't just "nuke the site from orbit," maybe that's what's gonna' happen.