The Sun Came Up Tremendous
- Episode aired Mar 12, 2024
- 1h 19m
IMDb RATING
8.0/10
201
YOUR RATING
During World War Il, the US begins to work on a top-secret project that results in the atomic bombings on Japan - and a global conflict lasting decades.During World War Il, the US begins to work on a top-secret project that results in the atomic bombings on Japan - and a global conflict lasting decades.During World War Il, the US begins to work on a top-secret project that results in the atomic bombings on Japan - and a global conflict lasting decades.
Photos
Mary Sarotte
- Self - Author, Not One Inch
- (as Mary Elise Sarotte)
Tim Naftali
- Self - Senior Research Scholar, Columbia University
- (as Timothy Naftali)
Audra J. Wolfe
- Self - Author, Freedom's Laboratory
- (as Audra Wolfe)
Storyline
Featured review
Biased framing of the decision to drop the atomic bomb
If you know your history of this period, there aren't many massive revelations in this episode - the focus is on the a-bomb development and primarily on the reasons for dropping it and on that topic, they massively missed the mark.
As is sadly increasingly the case nowadays when discussing the reasons to drop the atomic bomb, hindsight, revisionist history, and modern morality & mores cloud the discussion with scant attempts made by the producers and speakers chosen to place themselves in the shoes of those making the decision at the time and weigh the factors as they would have seen them. Instead, it is framed and seen as evil, full stop, and fringe and unprovable revisionist history theories reign supreme and are often presented as facts - namely, that without dropping the bomb, the war still could have ended quickly and somehow without a mainland invasion and/or immense loss of life on both sides.
They never once mention the likely millions of Japanese deaths saved by avoiding invasion, not to mention continued fire bombing. Sure, Americans were more worried about saving American lives (to which avoiding mainland invasion would number in the hundreds of thousands at least) but ignoring that the bomb and resulting early end saved Japanese lives is a massive oversight.
There's no mention of the immense political pressures that accompanies saving these American lives either - Imagine the public reaction if Americans found out there was a multibillion dollar mega project to produce a war winning weapon - and yet, they never used it and instead sent in your sons or fathers to die.
How could the war have ended without the bomb? Who knows. They posit that a blockade could have been effective, and sure, it could have, but that would drag out for perhaps years likely resulting in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of slow agonizing starvation deaths of the very civilians that the documentary laments them for hitting with the bombs.
The only other way would be continued bombing but as we said and they should have emphasized when the topic arouse, that fire bombing was already as effective at killing as the bombs themselves. It likely would have required far more of that then 2 shocking bombs.
But these are all unprovable theories and ignore the evidence on the ground - that the Japanese have been fanatical in their defense of the home islands. Further, their top military advisors recognized (rightly or wrongly, but it was their "plan) that America has a "limit" for how many causalities would be acceptable to the public so they figured if they inflict enough, they could still sue for peace.
In their sanctimony, they even surface the oft cited now but actually seen less relatively at the time political cartoons depicting the Japanese as animals with the implication that the decision to drop the bomb was made partly because Americans viewed the Japanese as sub-human despite the fact, even cited earlier in the episode, that America developed the bomb explicitly to target Germany.
They greatly discuss the impact of the bombing and lament the targeting of civilian areas but never mention that bombing of cities and civilian areas was very sadly commonplace throughout the war and every single side did this. Japan included. And that at the time, the bomb was seen as a mere step-up in firepower vs a world altering weapon. We know better now but they were 6 years into a devastating world war (longer if you're China) with 60m+ dead worldwide with norms and tolerance we can't relate to. Every civilian death is sad, including those from the both, but sadly, there were a lot of them in this war.
I know this is a series on the cold war but they also frame the decision singularly on ending the war precisely because of the soviet invasion of Japanese territory. Again, highly debatable. America may have even wanted the Soviets to invade to help shorten the war.
But the biggest thing that isn't mentioned as a Cold War Series is that the mere display of the bomb and it's power in real world scenarios may have been necessary to prevent it's future use in the cold war when thermonuclear bombs of power thousands of magnitudes stronger could have meant world Armageddon. So to dismiss this decision when it could have saved hundreds of millions down the line, yes, probably Japanese among them from Soviet eastern expansionist visions (but at least fallout), and not even mention this factor, misses the whole point.
Anyway, I know this is just one episode and I hope the rest of the series isn't so careless with facts and factors as the opening as Netflix series are watched on a massive scale and have influence - I fear this series (at least this episode) are doing so unfairly.
As is sadly increasingly the case nowadays when discussing the reasons to drop the atomic bomb, hindsight, revisionist history, and modern morality & mores cloud the discussion with scant attempts made by the producers and speakers chosen to place themselves in the shoes of those making the decision at the time and weigh the factors as they would have seen them. Instead, it is framed and seen as evil, full stop, and fringe and unprovable revisionist history theories reign supreme and are often presented as facts - namely, that without dropping the bomb, the war still could have ended quickly and somehow without a mainland invasion and/or immense loss of life on both sides.
They never once mention the likely millions of Japanese deaths saved by avoiding invasion, not to mention continued fire bombing. Sure, Americans were more worried about saving American lives (to which avoiding mainland invasion would number in the hundreds of thousands at least) but ignoring that the bomb and resulting early end saved Japanese lives is a massive oversight.
There's no mention of the immense political pressures that accompanies saving these American lives either - Imagine the public reaction if Americans found out there was a multibillion dollar mega project to produce a war winning weapon - and yet, they never used it and instead sent in your sons or fathers to die.
How could the war have ended without the bomb? Who knows. They posit that a blockade could have been effective, and sure, it could have, but that would drag out for perhaps years likely resulting in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of slow agonizing starvation deaths of the very civilians that the documentary laments them for hitting with the bombs.
The only other way would be continued bombing but as we said and they should have emphasized when the topic arouse, that fire bombing was already as effective at killing as the bombs themselves. It likely would have required far more of that then 2 shocking bombs.
But these are all unprovable theories and ignore the evidence on the ground - that the Japanese have been fanatical in their defense of the home islands. Further, their top military advisors recognized (rightly or wrongly, but it was their "plan) that America has a "limit" for how many causalities would be acceptable to the public so they figured if they inflict enough, they could still sue for peace.
In their sanctimony, they even surface the oft cited now but actually seen less relatively at the time political cartoons depicting the Japanese as animals with the implication that the decision to drop the bomb was made partly because Americans viewed the Japanese as sub-human despite the fact, even cited earlier in the episode, that America developed the bomb explicitly to target Germany.
They greatly discuss the impact of the bombing and lament the targeting of civilian areas but never mention that bombing of cities and civilian areas was very sadly commonplace throughout the war and every single side did this. Japan included. And that at the time, the bomb was seen as a mere step-up in firepower vs a world altering weapon. We know better now but they were 6 years into a devastating world war (longer if you're China) with 60m+ dead worldwide with norms and tolerance we can't relate to. Every civilian death is sad, including those from the both, but sadly, there were a lot of them in this war.
I know this is a series on the cold war but they also frame the decision singularly on ending the war precisely because of the soviet invasion of Japanese territory. Again, highly debatable. America may have even wanted the Soviets to invade to help shorten the war.
But the biggest thing that isn't mentioned as a Cold War Series is that the mere display of the bomb and it's power in real world scenarios may have been necessary to prevent it's future use in the cold war when thermonuclear bombs of power thousands of magnitudes stronger could have meant world Armageddon. So to dismiss this decision when it could have saved hundreds of millions down the line, yes, probably Japanese among them from Soviet eastern expansionist visions (but at least fallout), and not even mention this factor, misses the whole point.
Anyway, I know this is just one episode and I hope the rest of the series isn't so careless with facts and factors as the opening as Netflix series are watched on a massive scale and have influence - I fear this series (at least this episode) are doing so unfairly.
helpful•164
- historybuffjm
- Mar 13, 2024
Details
- Runtime1 hour 19 minutes
- Color
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