The world needs an International FAFO Day.  One day to consider that if you fool around, you may not like what you find out.

Today is the 80th anniversary of the first use of an atomic bomb.  On December 7th, 1941, Japan sucker-punched America by bombing Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  That brought the US into World War II.  On August 6th, 1945, the US dropped a 15 kiloton atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.  A few days later, that took Japan out of World War II.  Japan didn’t have to fool around, but they did, and found out.

After the war, the US kept at it.  The photo above was taken a year later at Bikini Atoll.

Some still argue whether or not the US should have bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It was certainly the best outcome for Japan.

Japan intended to resist an invasion to the last man, woman and child.  Oriental single-mindedness made this very plausible.  Allied forces ordered a quarter of a million body bags prior to the invasion.  The country would have been completely devastated. 

On August 8th, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria.  During WW II, the Soviet Union was primarily resisting invasion by Nazi Germany.  They lost 10 million soldiers on that front, so were slow to engage with Japan.  When Allied troops invaded Japan, the Soviet Union was going to invade from the North, as other Allied forces came up from the South.  Whatever was left of Japan, part of the country would have been in the Soviet Union, as happened in Germany.

That is what would have happened to Japan. 

Forty years after the end of WW II, Japan was a modern Western democracy and an economic powerhouse.  In the 1980’s, it was called the Japanese economic miracle.  Japanese companies seemed to be dominating every industry.  The movie, Gung Ho, starring Michael Keaton, is about American workers in a Japanese-owned auto plant.

Eighty years since the end of WW II, Japan has it’s challenges, like every country does.  Their culture is intact, their anime is popular, their cars are everywhere and their robots are unsettling. 

Japan fooled around, and found out that invading other countries held some risks.  They learned the lesson, and have prospered ever since.

August 6th could be a day for all countries to remember to keep their hands to themselves.