Elaine Benton comments

It's funny how sensitive people here get when it comes to Japanese people killed. The cumulative deaths over bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible and tragic but how about recognizing the terrible and tragic deaths of 6 to 10 million civilians murdered by Japan? Trying to cry foul over offended sensibilities while ignoring your own far graver offenses is hypocrisy.

Thank you so much for saying this!!! For me, this crying foul behaviour is, by far, the most upsetting aspect of this dispute ... It clouds the full picture, while shutting down and shaming people who want us all to remember and talk about the lessons of the past.

Russian invasion ended the war in the Pacific. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were simply cynical live human experiments on innocent civilians. http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/

I've encountered these arguments before but thank you for citing the article as I would like to share a passage from it. The author calls attention to the fact that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings gave Hirohito two things. (1) a convenient excuse for an unconditional surrender (he was able to blame a new, miracle technology for defeat and capitulation rather than attributing failure to his own mistakes). And (2) it helped him to "appeal to international sympathy":

"Japan had waged war aggressively, and with particular brutality toward conquered peoples. It's behavior was likely to be condemned by other nations. Being able to recast Japan as a victimized nation - one that had been unfairly bombed with a cruel and horrifying instrument of war - would help to offset some of the morally repugnant things that Japan's military had done."

And I quote that in full because, in part, it describes what is happening here; covering the motive for a decision by recasting the victim and appealing to "international sympathy". The t-shirt can be seen as both a reason and an excuse for Tv Asahi's decision to exclude a Korean band from their programming. The picture on the pop star's t-shirt can take the blame for a decision that was just waiting to be made anyway.

As for the quagmire of moral questions that will, forever, be associated with the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I think that the Americans and Allies were most desperate for a winning strategy that didn't involve a costly invasion (and division of Japan) by their own and Russian forces. Judging by what happened at Iwo Jima, alone, it could have been interminable and truly horrific struggle for everyone.

Just no. By adding the mushroom cloud image to the T-shirt it is definitely celebrating the event as part of the liberation. Bit I don’t care what reason you want to arbitrarily assign to it, using the image of the a-bomb going off on a T-shirt is 100% tasteless. It is basically a picture of a hundred thousand people being killed. You cannot put a justification on wearing that as a decoration.

We just have to disagree here. I don't see "celebration", where you do, and I don't see "decoration" either. I see a factual narrative that is important in the world's history.

I'd, actually, like to apologize for having this lengthy discussion here. People in modern Japan have no blame to shoulder for what happened during World War 2 and almost every country has done something that it must atone for. There is a lot of potential trouble hovering around Korea and Japan (namely China and North Korea) so, from afar, it would be nice to see more standing together without there being unnecessary little skirmishes like this one.