Okay but they didn't punish Hirohito, he lived on as a nominal emperor until 1989. They wanted to humiliate the Japanese people, not punish a war criminal. In fact, I'd absolutely give legal amnesty to a war criminal if it meant a peaceful surrender without nuking two cities.
the early japanese peace attempts also wanted to have self-supervised disarmament and war crime prosecution. if there was a plain choice between emperor and nuking keeping hirohito would be the correct choice, but it was really closer to 'maintain the japanese empire pre-1936' or continuing hostilities.
I mean, I certainly agree but I think most people do not; as evident by the fact that throughout history and to this day mass violence and murder is perpetrated in the name of faiths widely held in high regard and unquestioned in their divinity by the larger global community.
E: I don't want this to come off as argumentative so I'll explain a little more. With Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. we don't force them to accept their god isn't divine. We (assuming you're a faithless heathen as well) carry on about our lives with this knowledge, but we don't force the major faiths of the world to confront this truth. I think quite a few people would call that some kind of cultural genocide or something if you tried. I'm not defending the Shinto Nationalism (or whatever the proper term is for it,) just saying that it's kind of unprecedented to just demolish an entire faith like that.
people might view getting away with mass murder on the pretense of 'divinity' as unacceptable as well
Okay but they didn't punish Hirohito, he lived on as a nominal emperor until 1989. They wanted to humiliate the Japanese people, not punish a war criminal. In fact, I'd absolutely give legal amnesty to a war criminal if it meant a peaceful surrender without nuking two cities.
the early japanese peace attempts also wanted to have self-supervised disarmament and war crime prosecution. if there was a plain choice between emperor and nuking keeping hirohito would be the correct choice, but it was really closer to 'maintain the japanese empire pre-1936' or continuing hostilities.
I mean, I certainly agree but I think most people do not; as evident by the fact that throughout history and to this day mass violence and murder is perpetrated in the name of faiths widely held in high regard and unquestioned in their divinity by the larger global community.
E: I don't want this to come off as argumentative so I'll explain a little more. With Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. we don't force them to accept their god isn't divine. We (assuming you're a faithless heathen as well) carry on about our lives with this knowledge, but we don't force the major faiths of the world to confront this truth. I think quite a few people would call that some kind of cultural genocide or something if you tried. I'm not defending the Shinto Nationalism (or whatever the proper term is for it,) just saying that it's kind of unprecedented to just demolish an entire faith like that.
secular states are not religioualy inert. forcing people to abandon religion as the guide for government does change religious belief imo.
and the us did force the japanese that way