I have mixed feelings on how the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are discussed on twitter. While I think the criticism towards lack of culpability from the US has merit, I feel that many people forgotten that Japan was not a mere victim of war. Japan was also a big player in world war and a colonial empire that treated their colonies terribly. In Indonesia (then Dutch East Indies) alone it was estimated that 4 million Indonesian people died during Japanese occupation due to famine and forced labour.
I feel that there should be a way to acknowledge that Japanese civilians didn’t deserve the brutal violence from atomic bombing, but the Japanese government themselves also were not a helpless victim of war. War was horrible and it has lots more nuance and repercussion even just from a single event. It’s not just about white US bullying asian Japan. I guess unfortunately in the era of social media and bite-sized information it will be much harder to convey that.