[quote=@Sanctus Spooki]

Whether it be emotional, physical or Mental, any self-aware being requires the ability to suffer, and [b]to be[/b] suffering to commit suicide. To try and explain this in a round-a-bout manner, consider any major atrocity that has been committed, very few if any of those committing the atrocities ever commit suicide while carrying out the acts, almost inevitably they commit suicide once the [i]fun[/i] is over. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many Japanese killed themselves afterwards. Why? Well, some were clearly suffering from the physical trauma of being nuked, and simply chose the quick way over the slow one. Others chose to die rather than possibly live through the agonising pain. Others committed seppuku at the shame of surrendering. Who didn't kill themselves? The men who created the bomb. Who at the time, had the greatest understanding -any claims otherwise are attempts to cover their own guilt- of the destructive power of the atom-bomb. They fully understood what they had done. They did not suffer though. Some felt guilt afterwards, but none of them actually suffered.

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Off the subject at hand, but I want to add to this:

One of the factors over the decades that lead to bomb-related suicides was that those who survived were often physically scarred severely. So much so that these people were deemed an entire new class of human being third-rate in Japanese society. They were considered like lepers in antiquity; to be ostracized and separated from mainstream society because they were ugly and mutilated, they also represented an injury to something deep within the Japanese self-image. Telling them to fuck off and relegating them to some far-away corner of Japanese society was the best way the majority of the nuclear-unafflicted population could cope with them existing.

Of course, this means these groups got the shit end of the stick by all accounts. Taking up jobs and positions that would keep them from the public eye, not allowed in stores - or at slow or no business hours if it all - and relegated to ghettos. The problem for many of these individuals - more so the kids, who were constantly berated in school for having severely burned faces - was immense. In the years after the bombs they chose the dignified exit in suicide. The issue was so great, that Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe lamented something along the lines of, "At least Japan is a society that does not believe in the western dogma, that there's no dogma against suicide" (I'll need to find the full passage).

As for us: we chanted the same mantra over the years to validate the nukes - or the entire bombing campaign of Japan in general, the fire-bombing of Tokyo actually killed more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki - that we've convinced ourselves it was the only option and everyone from bomber command to Eisenhower stuck to their guns, aided by the safety of slowly revising invasion death tolls ever higher to support the bombing (alternatives included having simply showed off the bombs effects before a Japanese delegation alongside members of the young UN to force their hand [Japanese military command would have never surrendered to the bomb], or waiting for the Soviets to play their hand in Manchuria/have had their name on the document demanding Japanese surrender to spook them, the Japanese were ardently terrified of the Soviets). But this entire paragraph is also off the original topic; oh well.