psuedon
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Jun 17, 2026 6:26 PM
psuedon
25108
692
20
mikeatike
Should have used a picture of George Takei from Red Alert 3.
ontarioOT
RetrogradeLlama
Yep. He was ranting again this morning about how they'd better agree in a way he wants to agree to his concept of an agreement or he'll drop bombs on their heads.
yes, he used the phrase "bombs on their heads". Twice in the same tweet.
chatawillybilly
Trump read this and had an epiphany moment, aha, I can use this in a speech and MAGA's will believe I am their only chosen leader. Yes. yes. must use writes on palm of hand.
TrevReactionClicker
If only the Japanese had dropped the nukes and not the yanks. O.o
UnaccomplishedWatcherImNotaBot
I hate how old this meme is now
RenaissanceFaireMan
"We won!" - Japan
WolfgangVonTittySprinkles
lonelyrangerofthedreams
Exactly.
Iran will totally develop a nuclear weapon now that USA and Israel started this shit.
zHurk777
Japan knew (or should have known) that the war was lost after the Battle of Midway (4 IJN aircraft carriers sunk). And Japan certainly knew that the war was lost after the Battle of the Philippine Sea (almost 400 aircraft lost vs about 35 for the US). Yet, Japan kept fighting; so don't boo hoo over the atomic bombs.
albakSPrince
they raped and killed thousands of Chinese civilians because some helped American pilots. plus Ive heard they sell kids panties in vending machines so f*** them and their clean stadiums
hfctom
Who knew all Japan had to do was offer to pay America $300 Billion in Reparations for bombing Pearl Harbor.
vigilante397
He forgot to post his name at the end so we know it was him writing it
RenaissanceFaireMan
lightfoot2
Trump would have apologized to Hirohito because exploding US warships gave the Japanese pilots ear-aches.
Howlingowl
He would have given metals of honor to Kamikaze pilots because he believes only losers get captured
wadatahmydamie
Trump would have blamed Nanjing for dressing that way
CallMeMcGyver
After blaming Obama for it...
magictouch
But, but Obama wouldn’t be president for another 67 years!
bippityboppitybuttsex
Hirohito should have been prosecuted for his complicity in Japanese war crimes.
Letting him off just cuz he was rich was the shittiest take of WW2 and a slap in the face to the millions killed under his order.
SavageDrums
Historically, the rich rarely face consequences for anything
bippityboppitybuttsex
It depends, if they steal from other rich people or they are part of the out-group, then yep, they face consequences.
Wapusk
Escape prosecution? He had to renounce literal godhood. There was nothing more humiliating to Him and Japan. Even killing him would have been more honorable.
bippityboppitybuttsex
True, totally worse than the tens of millions his forces killed in Asia.
/s
Wapusk
You can only kill a man once. Publicly humiliate him, and, by extension, an entire culture? That is a more punishing punishment.
Osiricus
I feel like the movie "Emperor", despite Hollywood appeal and such, actually does a pretty good job of illustrating why the choice was made not to prosecute Hirohito.
bippityboppitybuttsex
Oh, I know why the choice was made. It was easier than having to try to pacify a population of 70M+ people... and to quote Aldo Raines, 'I'd make that deal...'
But like Aldo Raines I would make sure they couldn't seemlessly slip back into their old lives.
chefsoda
He didn’t escape prosecution because he was rich. He escaped prosecution mostly because his victims weren’t Europeans & America just wanted the war to end. There was also vastly less understanding as to the scope of his crimes at the time.
soupman17
He escaped prosecution because
1. He's viewed as a god by the Japanese people, indicting him would've been problematic
2. He wasn't involved in any of the decision making, he was a figurehead. You might as well blame Elizabeth II for the Iraq War
bippityboppitybuttsex
We executed seven individuals at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, there was no legally justifiable reason to exclude Hirohito from those proceedings.
I will note that the prosecutors wanted him tried, at the time, but Douglas MacArthur intervened and said he was essential to stability... he had 430K occupation troops which would have been insignificant against the Japanese population.
But justice matters... I would have threatened them with turning over Japan to the Soviets if they got out of line
CallMeCourierSix
So you''re a bully. A bully who would turn someone over to a psychopath so they could be tortured before being killed.
Got it.
You're no better than any other dictator committing genocide. Congrats.
crazyspelling
More than that, MacArthur used him to secure Japan as an ally with a modern democracy, and that worked out pretty good. Maybe it would have happened anyway, or maybe not.
Mostlydeadpool
by that logic our president and all of congress would be lined up and shot for their complicity for OUR war crimes in WWII against Japan. just because you win doesn't make it okay (actually, it does. but that's another discussion)
bippityboppitybuttsex
Curtis LeMay said he would be tried for war crimes if the US lost the war... and he was right.
But here's the thing, Hirohito was involved, directly, in the war in China, in the order of the killing American POWs.... not even the US ordered the execution of enemy prisoners of war...
Also, the US did charge its own people with war crimes in WW2 (it was isolated, but we did charge and convict our own people of war crimes).
RemingtonStyle
Bomber Harris begs to differ. The Allies did persecute war crimes against individuals on lower pay grades, basically scapegoats used as fig leaves. But people like Harris or LeMay were never even close to being persecuted. It was not in the cards politically and also not wanted. So it is okay for Hirohitho to get away with it for the sake of stability just the same.
GlutenFreeCocaineWaffles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_responsibility Yes, actually. We established this, established that *any* negligence in preventing or prosecuting war crimes, the commanders are culpable for those crimes *even if they weren't personally aware of them*, and General Tomoyuki Yamashita was executed on this basis. Then, as far as I can tell, we stopped taking it as seriously once it was no longer about punishing Japan.
chefsoda
War and politics are not based on legal claims. McArthur’s quite passionate insistence that Hirohito be held outside of the prosecutions, effectively granting him immunity, was openly based on his belief that such an action would bring massive civil unrest and result in years of strife, and the deaths of many Japanese and Americans.
It was absolutely an argument of Real Politik, and not absolute justice, but it had nothing to do with his wealth, and everything to do with his role.
bippityboppitybuttsex
To quote Aldo Raines, 'I'd take that deal...'
But I would ask the families of the millions of Chinese civilians slaughtered by the IJA, whose emotions echo thru to today.
chefsoda
In no way am I diminishing the crimes of Japan, not in China, the decimation of Nanking, or in Korea, or anywhere else “Imperial right” has been exercised by them, or anywhere, by any other nation I can think of.
War bring atrocity, and WWII brought far more than most. I am only stating that Hirohito’s avoidance of accountability was due to perceived political utility, not wealth.
rossimus
It wasn't because he was rich. It's because of the cultural significance of the emperor in Japanese culture and the wisdom of American leaders to understand that the legitimacy of the Post War Order in Japan depended on that tradition continuing so as not to have a Germany-Afrer-Versailles moment. It was the right call, objectively.
I'm sorry you learned about that so incorrectly.
Marsupialmessiah
Thank you. This is the same take i learned in an elective about war crimes back in college.
bippityboppitybuttsex
I knew why. But at the end of the day, we don't put the rich and powerful on trial... cuz we don't want our own leaders being subject to justice for their actions either.
Imjurbro
Yea, we conducted an entire investigation into him and concluded it wasn’t 1) politically possible if we wanted to rebuild japan and gain an ally in the long term and, 2) it was actually unclear how much power he personally had over the hardliners in the military. There was a coup in Japan towards the end that tried to kill him.
candythesquirrel
Could have done what chinese did to their last emperor. Let him work in his own palace ... as a janitor and tourist attraction.
rossimus
Your take is bad and you should feel bad
candythesquirrel
I'm a furry, I'm immune to shame.
rossimus
Nothing wrong with being a furry. Lots wrong with being an advocate for arbitrary cruelty.
I don't know much about furry culture but maybe an interest in arbitrary cruelty is just a furry thing.
TakeAChillPill16
It wasn't justice, it was pragmatism. Diplomacy is painstaking, boring, slow, and often yields results that are distasteful to both sides. But it's so much better than the alternative.
Tengenstein
Sometimes justice has to take a back seat to not having to nuke even more civilians
Problemwoodchuck
Don't take this as an endorsement as Hirohito very likely was as guilty as any member of the Imperial War Council at the Tokyo trials but it would be far more difficult to force any type of reckoning with the monarchy that didn't also jeopardize the occupation of Japan, or endanger even more lives anywhere Japanese troops were still in the field. Plus there are famines underway or looming for 1945-6, so even a slower demobilization that ties up shipping for longer probably gets people killed.
bippityboppitybuttsex
So, the primary location of Japanese troops, outside of Japan, in August of 1945 was in China... and the Soviet Army was sweeping thru it.
That being said, yes, there were holdouts on islands throughout the Pacific who would have fought till the end.
In practical terms we should have just sidelined Hirohito (and the entire imperial line) and ignored them.
bippityboppitybuttsex
I am not sure what you mean by 'shipping' there was no Japanese merchant fleet after 1945... the US Navy made sure of that.
MacArthur made sure the Japanese were fed in the winter of 45-46
Problemwoodchuck
The Allies used their own shipping to repatriate millions of Japanese servicemen and civilians. The longer that takes, the longer it would've been for the flow of goods and humanitarian aide to get to where it needed to be.
bippityboppitybuttsex
Sure, but MacArthur got food shipped from the US and using US Army prepositioned rations (for the invasion of Japan) to be handed to the Japanese people.
Problemwoodchuck
The IJA can't halt the Soviets in Manchuria or Korea but that's not going to stop them from burning Hong Kong or Singapore to the ground if they decide to. The atrocities during the battle of Manila or Nanking could've replayed in every city still held by the IJA across China and SE Asia.
bippityboppitybuttsex
So, I am confused by what we are assuming here... is Hirohito not surrendering and vowing to fight to the end? Cuz if so, all bets are off on the existence of the Japanese as a distinct people after that.
If Hirohito is put on trial in 46 or 47 after the surrender, I don't see how any foreign city is affected as all Japanese would be back on the home islands.
Problemwoodchuck
The timeline I'm talking about is earlier, 1945-6. If you're looking at later, the situation isn't that much better. After repatriation is complete, now you're talking about having 4 million Japanese servicemen in the Home Islands that might take a trial of the Emperor badly against an occupation force of about 3 or 4 hundred thousand.
Plus by that point the Allies end up re mobilizing fairly large numbers of IJA units while they eyed up reclaiming lost colonies. Same problems, smaller scale.
lightfoot2
Well that and you would be dealing with 6 million screaming islanders for life. Having him slip on a banana peel as an "out of court settlement" would have been better.
bippityboppitybuttsex
So, people seem to forget what the US was prepared to do to Japan if it had not surrendered in August of 1945... I recommend Hell to Pay, for a detailed analysis of the invasion plan for Japan and the Japanese response.... couple all that with a Soviet invasion of Manchuria and it is unlikely the Japanese would be other than a lost civilization in the 21st Century.
The surrender of Imperial Japan saved the Japanese as a people.
lightfoot2
They also minted so many fucking Purple hearts that they are still going through them and will for centuries to come. My uncles served (one at Pelelium one on a cruiser in the Solomons) and both said it would have been beyond a bloodbath.
So yeah.
bippityboppitybuttsex
Yep, the US ordered 1.5M Purple Heart medals to be minted for the invasion... if you include Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, we have incurred 105,000 battle deaths and over 320,000 wounded in action... barely scratching the surface of that stockpile of awards.
bippityboppitybuttsex
A note that this is based on a 1945 Japanese population of 72 Million people and a Japanese defense plan that was titled, '100 million shattered jewels', a plan that called for every man, woman and child to die for the empire.
Operation Coronet and Olympic meant to afford them every opportunity.
I will note, the US was producing a nuclear bomb a month and the Third Shot would have been ready to go on 19 Aug, if Truman hadn't stopped its shipment. It became known as the Demon Core.
lightfoot2
As I mentioned I had two Uncles who served in the Pacific campaign during the island landings. It would have been an absolute bloodbath.
bippityboppitybuttsex
Oh, just Operation Coronet, the invasion of Kyushu would have been the largest battle in human history... Japan had been reinforcing it for months prior to end of the war and we weren't planning operations until November of 45.
A reminder that we had carriers a few thousand meters off the coast of Japan in the late Spring and Summer of 1945 and were sending waves of fighters to strafe the countryside... and we had no effect whatsoever on the Japanese defense plan.