Show notes
When do spirit, tenacity, resilience and bravery cross into madness? When cities are incinerated? When suicide attacks become the norm? When atomic weapons are used? Japan's leaders test the limits of national endurance in the war's last year.
Highlighted moments
When the program was first developed, they asked military men to volunteer. And do you know how many military men did? According to anthropologist Amiko Onuki Tierney, who wrote the fabulous book Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms, the number of hard-bitten military men that said, yeah, I'll volunteer for that suicide mission was none.
“the same institutional defects that had produced Japan's irrational decision to launch the war in 1941 now prevented a rational decision to end it”
“In 1939, pretty much every major country in the Second World War decried the idea of bombing civilians. By 1945, none of those countries have a moral leg to stand on anymore”
“the emotional reactions to something like an atomic bombing when you read them today they're the ones that sound sane it's the logical decisions that seem crazy”
Transcript
Transcript not available for this episode yet.