Current Events > For those who attended HS in the US, how was Hiroshima covered in history class?

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It should be accepted that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were arguably one of the greatest atrocities committed against civilians by the USA. This topic is not meant to debate whether the two bombings were justified. Rather, the focus is on how much attention is devoted to exploring the aftermath of the two bombings in the American education curriculum.

For example, I am pretty sure Germany drills in how reprehensible the Holocaust was to all students.

Was that your experience in school? Or were the two bombings pretty much glossed over as part of the endgame of WWII.

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Geiki Ganger posted...

It should be accepted that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were arguably one of the greatest atrocities committed against civilians by the USA.

1st one was justified. going into the 2nd one was overkill.
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I don't really remember, honestly. I think I learned more about it on the history channel before it became all aliens. I do remember seeing pretty horrific photos in my history book, though, and I went to school in Texas where things were taught with rose tinted glasses.

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it's been a long while since I've been in high school, but iirc, it wasn't taught as being an atrocity, but rather what finally ended the war with Japan and how it would have gone on longer without it.

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It wasn't really covered. But we did cover the internment ghetto camps here in Washington state. And we also covered how much of the Indian land we stole and culture we didn't mind destroying if it was I our way of progress.

I remember the pictures books they read to us in elementary school of Columbus. Made him look very noble. I really hope that's not how schools teach anymore. Than again, you can't have a group of kids huddled up together anymore.

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kingdrake2 posted...

1st one was justified. going into the 2nd one was overkill.

No it wasn't. There's no justification for dropping a nuke. But if it hadn't happened then, someone would have dropped one at some later point, because these weapons were definitely not going to be developed and then never used.

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i was taught it ended the pacific war

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They talked about The Manhattan Project and then acted like dropping the a-bombs was the only way that we couldve possibly ended the war. Then we moved straight into the stuff about what happened to Germany after the war. They didnt spend much time on how the war affected Japan. Now that I think about, they kind of rushed through the effects that it had on Germany too so that they could get right into the US becoming a super war and being in The Cold War with Russia
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My school kind of glossed over it and treated it as common knowledge, they didnt really teach us much about the hows or whys

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My history teacher for junior year spent a good amount of time (relatively speaking to prior years' history classes) discussing both the wider context of the bombings and the long term public health issues that followed.


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Not an American, but I was taught about how fucking awful Dresden was as a Brit at least. But far from the only pretty terrible thing we did in the war.
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that the civilian deaths were tragic, but it was war and america (just like any country involved in a war) doesn't give a fuck about a foreign countries civilians over its own people.

coincidentally, japan does an absolute shit job teaching about its own war atrocities. germany teaching about the holocaust is an outlier, and only really happened because the country was divided into parts for decades after ww2 as punishment.

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We had to read the book Hiroshima. It was good. It was also discussed how willing to fight and die for their homeland Japan was and how the bombs likely saved lives.

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EmbraceOfDeath posted...

No it wasn't.

i cant help it. it was what my school taught me.
bastards bombed pearl harbor.
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It was taught we did it in retaliation to Pearl Harbour and how those two bombs ended the whole war.

What wasn't taught was all the atrocities Japan was committing. Unit 731 and all that fucked up shit.
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Fuck WW2 era Japan. Literally worse than Nazis

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nooo you can't just bomb a country during a war they started!!

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Basically that they attacked Pearl Harbor, we retaliated with nuclear warfare, the end. On to the Cold War.

My school basically focused on the European portion of WW2.

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Matelite posted...

We had to read the book Hiroshima. It was good. It was also discussed how willing to fight and die for their homeland Japan was and how the bombs likely saved lives.

How old were you when you had to read that? I just read it, almost thirty now. And I thought it was great insight to the horror we created.

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CountDog posted...

How old were you when you had to read that? I just read it, almost thirty now. And I thought it was great insight to the horror we created.

I was 15.

Also, I should mention we read Hiroshima in English class. The topic asked about History class.

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Yeah, the Pacific theater was barely touched upon, in my experience.
No mention made of us mistranslating their response to our solicitation of surrender, no discussion of the extensive fire bombing campaigns we launched against Japanese civilians, no recognition that they barely had time to wrap their heads around Hiroshima before we dropped the second one on Nagasaki, and not really much reference to the role the Soviets breaking their non-aggression pact and invading Manchuria had.
Just rote parroting of Japanese nationalist rhetoric about total communal resistance that doesn't pass the smell test.

I do remember reading Sadoko and the Thousand Paper Cranes in 4th-grade. And my China and the Pacific Rim class(which the teacher made Japanese history. good move: too broad a focus for a high school class) incorporated the Japanese film Barefoot Gen, about the bombings. Literally better encapsulation of the horrors of the atomic bombings than anything else I encountered.

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We learned about the aftermath, the black rain, the tens of thousands of deaths after

But it was taught very strongly that it was a good and necessary thing that ended the war with a solid "don't fuck with America" attitude

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All I remember from school history class is that was mostly useless, and became more so as standardized testing increasingly became the whole point of public education.

It was covered in the most boring way possible as if it was just a nondescript thing that happened and the rest of us immediately moved on with our lives.

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Something something Enola Gay something Fat Boi something August 1945 or whatever

And that's about it.

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eston posted...

My school kind of glossed over it and treated it as common knowledge, they didnt really teach us much about the hows or whys

Pretty much this

I ended up reading a book about someone who survived the blast, though... some gruesome stuff. can't remember what the book is called, though, but he described seeing dead bodies in the river with their skin falling off.

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We actually spent a pretty good amount of time in a high school history class discussing whether or not the bombings were justified.

Though the first experience in school with the bombings was from reading "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes" in like 3rd grade.

googs19 posted...

We actually spent a pretty good amount of time in a high school history class discussing whether or not the bombings were justified.

Though the first experience in school with the bombings was from reading "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes" in like 3rd grade.

I remember reading that in I think 7th grade believe it or not for class. Very sad.

I remember learning it was a tragic but necessary part of the war. Even if it wasn't, maybe it was a necessary part for human life. Nuclear weapons are perhaps the scariest thing to think about honestly since they've only gotten more powerful since then and unlike other apocalyptic events, feel very possible.

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They don't really bring it up in any detail.

They focus more on Pearl and D-day and then just go "So we beat Germany and then nuked Japan so they surrendered. The end."

Focusing on history that makes America look bad is anti-thetical to the US schooling system. They don't even teach that the Civil War was about slavery

I mean people in the US don't even know the biggest reason we nuked Japan was fear of Russia taking it over.

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UnfairRepresent posted...

Focusing on history that makes America look bad is anti-thetical to the US schooling system. They don't even teach that the Civil War was about slavery

They did when I went
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10th grade history was basically WW2 class with a bit on the cold war.

Was taught the facts, August 6 and 9, (niice) little boy and fat man, the Enola Gay and Bockscar, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Background we were taught about the battle of Okinawa in detail and how that was viewed as a precursor to the invasion of Japan. Were taught that there was an attempted military coup the day before Japan surrendered in order to keep Japan from surrendering. We learned that the US had made 500,000 purple hearts in preparation for the invasion and when we were being taught, it had been over 50 years since the US had made a purple heart. (I think they have made some since then but haven't actually ran out of the WW2 supply yet, since they keep finding more stock piles of them).

We were taught about the Manhattan project, specifically the Hanford Nuclear Site since this was in Washington state, and how the plutonium used there was used in Fat Man. Also taught about the internment camps like the other guy said.

I don't believe we were taught that USSR invaded Manchuria on August 9, but its possible I had just forgotten about that.

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voldothegr8 posted...

They did when I went

A number of states don't.

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It's hard to say for sure since it was about 18 years ago, but the general takeaway I had was that it was unfortunate act that had to be done to save the world from the axis powers. I feel like we learned the facts but it was spun like the US had to play the role of antihero for the benefit of the world.

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Just that we bombed Japan. Took me many years after high school to find out that we had put Japanese people in internment camps though. Gotta love that. It's better when it comes straight from the mouth of a man whose parents were internees.

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voldothegr8 posted...

They did when I went

"It was about States Rights and Taxes. Most of the south didn't even own slaves! Would you fight and kill people to defend slavery? No? Well why would they!?"

Was what was promoted when I was at school. Nobody even talked about reconstruction which is arguably the absolute worst period of American history in terms of morality and ethical violations of human beings.

And we have schools named after and statues dedicated to confederate generals and political figures

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In 7th grade, we went over in detail the destruction and pain caused by the bombs, but they were considered a necessary evil.
In AP Euro, we talked about how the Hiroshima bomb was dropped a couple days before the USSR had to declare war on Japan as agreed upon at Yalta; the USSR declaring war on Japan likely would have ended the war regardless of the bombs dropping, and it could have been seen as a cynical move by the US to take credit for the end of the war.

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WW2 was not touched on in any meaningful way at my HS.

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I remember that part of my history class pretty vividly because we had a really great teacher. He was an older guy, and was around 10 years old at the time of the bombings. He of course started the section off with the basic facts and what lead up to it. Overall that part went mostly "this sucked really hard, but we felt we had to do it to end the war, and in doing so it probably saved a lot more lives than it took in the end."

It felt very generic and dispassionate for that first day. Almost deliberately so. Then I remember coming in the next day and he started the class off with some words that have stuck with me to this day. "Ok, so you know a bit about what happened and a bit about why it happened. But now I want you to understand who it happened to. Because it wasn't the Japanese military. It was people like you. People like your mom and dad. Like your brothers and sisters. Like your best friends. Imagine if everyone you know and love was gone in an instant. I won't tell you if it was justified or not. That's something you have to decide for yourself. But I want you to understand the cost."

We then spent the next 3 days reading and talking about stories from survivors.

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