Elaine Carlton comments

The worst part is the boy who wore the shirt doesn't think it's wrong to wear the shirt. And the blind fanatics (like some here) of course see nothing wrong with it. Then the company apologized out of obligation (implying ignorance of anything wrong) because some organization outside of Japan said something. And of course they think they're innocent victims being targeted just because.

You don't know what he, or they, think! Presuming, of course, that you aren't telepathic. And you don't know what the emotional and psychological fall-out might be for all of the hate that's been directed at him.

I'd never heard of BTS before this article appeared in my news feed last Friday but I feel really bad for this kid and all young people who live in this day and age of rapid internet defamation. At that age, there are very few people who have a skin that's thick enough to survive, let alone learn, through that kind of heated, public condemnation.

Were you a twenty-three year old, high school graduate, who could say "no I won't do it" to the bosses who were making or breaking your one career opportunity? Did you have perfect knowledge of historical and political issues at that age?

There are so many anonymous but keenly judgemental people commenting and roundly condemning everything that other people do; people they don't even know ... when they don't even have full knowledge of what's happening. What a world. No wonder so many kids suffer from mental illness. It's frightening.

Apparently, BTS's management company has taken responsibility, apologized for any hurt and offense caused and committed themselves to not making such mistakes in future. I trust that Japan Today will report this accurately and thoroughly, and encourage other news outlets to do the same. I'm sure that there will be just as many articles reporting this as there were articles condemning the group of twenty-something singers.

@utorsa

Speculation is irrelevant as Russian invasion ended the war. Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was simply a cynical live human experiment on hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

By all means, take the last word but, I think we are, probably, done here. You are not convinced by my presented thoughts, I'm not convinced by yours and this isn't the most appropriate place for the discussion.

The argument you are using is also speculation; a good theory that cannot be proven unless you can probe the decision-making minds of Hirohito and his henchmen. Many things happened in fairly rapid succession after a long war that had begun to go sideways fairly quickly. Capitulation could have (and did) end the war. Capture was the only other possible end and that was still somewhere off in the future. Russia invaded Manchuria. They did not actually capture the seat of power in Japan proper. To actually win the war, without surrender, the Russians and other Allies would both have needed to invade Japan as they had done in Germany and that would/could ? have cost a great many lives.

As for the generals. You can't have your cake and eat it too. They could speculate, and only speculate, on the true reasoning behind the bombings if they were not, actually, involved in the decision. If they had no influence or responsibility, were not in the meeting and didn't receive the minutes (so to speak), they were in no real position to speak authoritatively about what the balance of motivational factors was.

To say that the bombings were a cynical live human experiment is an absolutely, extraordinary statement that requires extraordinary proof. Without such proof, it is just another historical conspiracy theory.

By the way. Have you looked in other papers and online?

Is the amount of condemnation and hatred being leveled at this kid in any way comensurate with what he's actually done? Even if you think he was just dead wrong instead of careless or naive ... every major, international, and minor, local, news outlet has reported on this and people are clearly out for blood.

Journalists are playing a game of telephone with the facts. Headlines are inaccurate and inflammatory and the comments are incredibly ruthless and astonishingly angry. And this is all for the clothing choices of somebody that we don't know; somebody who may not even be making his own clothing choices.

I find this whole thing to be upsetting from many different perspectives so I went on line to look at some videos of BTS and the member who wore this shirt and, you know, if they're the bad guys, I think the world will be ok. After watching ten minutes or so, I'm much more frightened of the many, many people who are generating so much hate about them all over the internet.

Hello @utorsa

As for the quagmire of moral questions that will, forever, be associated with the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

... There is no quagmire. Nuking hundreds of thousands of women and children is morally repugnant.

Nuking people is repugnant!!! Killing people, by any means, is repugnant. So, are wartime deaths by nuclear attack worse than wartime deaths by any other kind of attack?

We know how many people had actually died by the time that the war ended. We even have good estimates about how many people went on to die of war related wounds and starvation as well as from radiation and other sickness but ...

we will never know what the death counts would have been if the war had raged on. We don't know how long it would have been before an armistice could be reached, and we don't know how many would have died; civilians and soldiers from all sides.

In short, we will never know whether they made the right or the wrong decision when they dropped the bombs. Make no mistake, I am thinking about aggregate deaths; Japanese and Allied. Would there have been more, or less, suffering?

The generals you are quoting were (personally, or, as a group) responsible for guessing and deciding what to do ... and some of them may not have been sociopaths. So, at the end of the day, they had to live with the horrible realization and guilt associated with what they actually did ... stacked against an unknowable, un-quantifiable, "might-have-been" where, maybe, fewer people died because of their decision making.

At any rate, it's easy for us to think we can judge (even with hindsight) but, I think that, the word quagmire is apt. It could not have been an easy decision; before or, especially, after the fact.

Look at how much condemnation and hatred this kid is getting for just wearing the t-shirt.

Yes, images of the A-bombs are very important to remember it. But not to wear on a damn t-shirt. Completely tasteless. We should remember the Green River Killer, but I don't want to see his face on some band members back.

I was always ashamed to see people wearing those stupid shirts here in the US that said 'Made in America, Tested in Japan' with a image of the mushroom cloud in the background. I'm glad those shirts have pretty much disappeared.

It's something to commemorate, not celebrate.

The t-shirts you describe are, as you say, completely tasteless but not all commemorative t-shirts are . The shirt in question here, commemorates and celebrates the day that a people were liberated. It's pretty clear, if you look at it, that it's factual and, definitely, not celebrating the many deaths that occurred when the bombs were dropped. So, why are people reading between non-existent lines to try to find that meaning?

Are we rebranding what happened at the end of World War 2, as some kind of atomic tragedy perpetrated against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; something we should be so sensitive to that we can no longer commemorate the end of the war? 

You may want to take a moment to research exactly which war ended on November 11th.

Ah, Strangerland ... you're not so clever to think that someone else is unaware.

In British Commonwealth countries, on November 11th, we commemorate all who have died ... in any war. It's not just about World War 1. For our Rememberance Day, we reflect on everyone's sacrifice beginning with a minute of silence at 11:11 a.m.

That's why it was, actually, pretty galling to find this in my news feed this morning ... while I was preparing a Rememberance Day lesson for my class. The timing of this company's decision ... is unfortunate.

Why is there no photograph or context in this article? Why does it end up in news feeds around the world just two days before Remembrance Day? Are we rebranding what happened at the end of World War 2, as some kind of atomic tragedy perpetrated against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; something we should be so sensitive to that we can no longer commemorate the end of the war? Or is it just propaganda?

If I understand this correctly, some pop singer wore a t-shirt that celebrates the liberation of the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War 2. Apparently, he wore it, in Korea, on August 15, 2017. The t-shirt shows one of the mushroom clouds that ended the war in the Pacific; putting a stop to the needless slaughter of tens of millions of soldiers and innocent civilians in countries throughout the region. Many more people would have died if the bombs had not been detonated and the war had dragged on but, apparently, it's insensitive to wear a t-shirt that has a photograph of the Nagasaki mushroom cloud on it. It's a diplomatic insult to Japan and the people who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; people who were essentially sacrificed by the Imperial Japanese government that declared war in the first place; people who were no more or less dead than all the other civilians who died, in the Pacific Theatre, from lesser bombs, bullets and starvation and illness.

In 1945, people needed to celebrate the end of that war and, even, the bombs that hastened it. Seventy years later we still need to celebrate that armistice. And commemorate all of those sacrifices and deaths. We still need to remember and learn the lesson that it can't ever happen again and ... images of the bomb are, I think, very helpful in that regard.

This unnecessary t-shirt backlash is only a tempest in a teapot that merges into today's political propaganda. Pop stars, people observing Remembrance Day and the Japanese public, at large, shouldn't have to deal with it.