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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHiroshima - quit lying to yourselves
There is no justification for incinerating hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, many of them women, children and babies.
None, and it takes a special kind of arrogant, shameless inhumanity to try to do so.
And save the "it was the only way to end the war" propaganda. Japanese were already talking surrounder, this is now well established. And even that aside, why bomb a largely civilian island? Why not just drop a nuke on one of Japan's many uninhabited islands as a warning?
The bottom line is this was nothing but America's way of declaring our place as the new ruling empire by way of mass murder and terror of the most evil kind.
You can try to justify it until you're blue in the face, you're only kidding yourself.
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tumtum
(438 posts)If not for the dropping of the bombs, I might not be here writing this, so take your revisionist history bulls**t elsewhere.
I'll never believe otherwise.
BTW, Hirohito's own words:
The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization." http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/the-emperors-speech-67-years-ago-hirohito-transformed-japan-forever/261166/
They were not ready to surrender, every man, woman and child in Japan were being trained to resist and kill Americans, children were being trained to use bamboo staffs to skewer troops.
The vote to surrender after the 2 bombs were dropped was 3-3, it took Hirohito to break the tie.
...your life is worth more then a baby born elsewhere.
'Murica
tumtum
(438 posts)to destroy and enslave us.
The Japanese were especially cruel and barbaric during WWII.
Take it as you want.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...only warlike leaders.
To place guilt on the civilians killed by those bombs would be like placing guilt on your kids after they were killed by a suicide bomber because of Bush's war crimes.
tumtum
(438 posts)and kill as many American troops as possible, women and children were being trained on how to use bamboo spears to skewer American troops.
The Japanese were ready to fight to the death of every man, woman and child.
You can try to condemn the atomic bombing all you want, it won't change my mind on the decision to use the bombs to hasten the end of the war and possibly save my dad's life.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)And of course the effects of the radiation on generations unborn at the time.
Interesting that the core of your argument is that the people of Japan were prepared to defend Japan from an invading force - with wooden melee weapons!
Did you have a granddad in the seventh cavalry circa 1890, by chance?
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Sometimes a country needs to be invaded and their gov't brought down. The debate is who and when. I submit that Germany and Japan in 1945 needed forcible regime change, even at the expense of massive civilian casualties to each country.
BTW - Little Big Horn was in 1876.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)We're talking about the logic you're using to justify annihilating hundreds of thousands of civilians. We had to destroy them, you say, because if we didn't, you say, they would have stabbed people with pointy sticks.
And I was referring to Wounded Knee.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)The only way to remove the gov't was by occupying their country. So we are talking about changing their gov't, just as we changed Germany's gov't.
Ed Suspicious
(8,879 posts)barbaric as you want it to. I'm pretty sure if the shoe were on the other foot and you were protecting your home and your community from invasion you might react similarly.
hack89
(39,171 posts)they then willing went to work to feed and arm the military machine. They were not innocent bystanders.
Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)out of fear.
By your logic leveling Detroit along with all the women and children and grannies would have been a justified strike by Germany had they developed atomic weapons first because we built war hardware there, not buying your cowardly sociopathic bullshit.
Really such hatred of civilian populations is disgusting and your statement makes me want to puke and have you tested to see if you are a psychopath as well as a sociopath.
hack89
(39,171 posts)Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)hack89
(39,171 posts)Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)davidpdx
(22,000 posts)You should really take your garbage and go else where.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)We only do good, right?
How ridiculous can you get?
hack89
(39,171 posts)to damage our war making capabilities. They simply didn't have the means. By 1945 all sides were attacking each others cities.
Bake
(21,977 posts)Explain that one.
Bake
hack89
(39,171 posts)a lot different from actions four years into a war.
ET Awful
(24,753 posts)It was a response to the US embargo of oil to Japan. Japan need oil both for domestic use and to fuel it's war machine. The US placed an embargo on the oil which (among other things) triggered the Pearl Harbor attack.
If another nation cut off all US access to a necessary resource, it's highly likely that the US would stage an attack to regain access to that resource.
hack89
(39,171 posts)we can play chicken and egg all day long. If Japan did not initially harbor dreams of empire and invade China with the resultant deaths of millions, there would have never been war in the Pacific and ultimately no need for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
ET Awful
(24,753 posts)If a nation blocked access to a resourced needed by the US in response to our aggression in the Middle East, do you think the US would balk at attacking that nation?
There was no need for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to say it was "needed" is nonsense.
Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)We are supposed to support our troops even though we know they are killing innocent people who will risk their lives to save their people. Children of the 40's collected scrap for our war machines, and adults bought war bonds. I think there could and should have been another way to end the war. We are barbaric.
hack89
(39,171 posts)whether by conventional weapons or by disease and starvation.
And lets not forget all those innocent civilians dying under brutal occupation in all the countries Japan conquered. Japan killed nearly 10 million civilians in China and SE Asia from 1937 to 1945 - slave labor, deliberate famines, war atrocities, etc. No - it was the Japanese that were barbaric.
It is time to put up. Tell me a way to end the war that takes in to consideration all those other innocent lives, not just the lives of those living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tell me how the war was going to be ended without killing even more Japanese civilians. No mushy moralizing, no "I think" - give me a detailed scenario rooted in actual history. Perhaps you can succeed where everyone else has failed.
rl6214
(8,142 posts)With all of the drone strikes he is every bit as guilty.
Nanjing to Seoul
(2,088 posts)the Meiji Restoration. Dying for the Emperor was an honor.
You ignorance of the time period is mind blowing.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)Nanjing to Seoul
(2,088 posts)There were women and children there too. I guess Japanese lives mean more to Americans because the A-Bomb took them out. Chinese lives are meaningless because the Japanese killed them.
Revisionism is amazing. So is ignorance. You have no idea about this era. Don't bother responding, I will "ignore" you instantly.
My Chinese wife saw your reply to me and asked me why Americans think Chinese lives are so meaningless? Japan EARNED the A-bomb! No sympathy for any one of them during that time. They started the war. . .we finished it! Case closed!
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)WHERE THE FUCK DID I SAY "Chinese lives are so meaningless"???
FOR FUCK'S SAKE.
This kind of fucking self-centered attitude is why we keep having fucking wars.
Nanjing to Seoul
(2,088 posts)I got it. I am tired of hearing how wrong the Americans were for Hiroshima. . .Japan STARTED the damn war in 1932 by invading Manchuria and the 1934 bombing of Shanghai, then used the Marco Polo Bridge incident to continue an aggressive war and genocide of Chinese civilians that had no ability to defend themselves.
Then they lead massacres in Nanjing, Singapore, Parit Sulong, Sook Jing, Manila and Bangka Island (to name a few). On top of that, they used Chinese as human lab rats in Unit 731 in Harbin.
In 1941, they attacked the US. . .the reason: They were angry we stopped supplying them with the materials that wanted and felt they deserved for their aggressive war in China, a war the US was working to end! So they attacked us to scare us into giving them what they want. They started the war. . .we ended it.
Again, Japanese lives mean more than American lives or Chinese lives. I am so sick of revisionism.
And did I hit a nerve? World War 2 was horrific, and the two major aggressors (Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) are the reasons.
Why should I have sympathy for them for that time? I will not condemn Japan today for the actions of yesterday, but for the time period between 1932 - 1945, I have absolutely no sympathy for them. The started the war. . .they got what their earned!
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)but "Japanese lives mean more than American lives or Chinese lives. I am so sick of revisionism." is just not where I am coming from.
Of course war is horrific. And we will keep on having wars when we dehumanize our opponents.
OBVIOUSLY the Japanese did terrible things to China. I am not arguing that.
My whole point is that we should be better than them.
Nanjing to Seoul
(2,088 posts)Japan needed to be taken down...going to their level two times proved they should not commit genocide.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)
Response to NoMoreWarNow (Reply #461)
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boomer55
(592 posts)Great read here...
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1930
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)What, by not selling them the steel and oil they needed to carry out their campaign of rape, slaughter and subjugation in China? Fucksake.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)to attack.
One_Life_To_Give
(6,036 posts)it was a question of When Japan attacked not If. Philippines were clearly in their sights long before the embargo. Along with some of the Aleutian Islands. FDR wanted an excuse to get us into the war while we would still have allies. Fighting all three Axis powers by ourselves would have been very lonely.
Nanjing to Seoul
(2,088 posts)BTW. . .again, I will ask you. . .American A-bomb Hiroshima = bad? Japanese raping 20,000 women in and killing 300,000 civilians in an unarmed, defenseless city = who cares?
You are sick in your "blame America" for everything" revisionist history.
boomer55
(592 posts)Ever since World War II Americans have generally believed, because that is what they were told to believe, that America was just peacefully minding its own business when Japan, for no reason at all other than their own aggression, came out of nowhere to attack America. In other words, that America was an "innocent victim". This is not the case, though. The Japanese were being provoked and baited by the FDR administration because even though FDR knew it was essential to enter the war against the fascists, the political opposition from American conservatives was too strong. There were supporters of the fascist actively working in the US to keep America out of the war.
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/war/fdr_provoked_the_japanese_attack.htm
we made up a list of things to do to piss off the Japanese and goad them into attacking us. That list was followed and they attacked.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)The Japanese had been at war in China since 1931 and by 1941 had killed many millions of Chinese. Japanese aggression would have led to war in any case even absent economic sanctions.
I don't know how wilfully ignorant you have to be to somehow believe that Japan was the injured party.
dionysus
(26,467 posts)
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)Did anyone force them to ally with the Third Reich? It is one thing for them to fight the west separately, even though none of that would excuse their murder of 22 million Chinese.
22 Million,
That's more than 3 Holocausts !
But in addition to killing 22 Million Chinese, they allied with Hitler.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And there's no hard evidence that Japan's alliance with them made any significant difference in the length of the European conflict.
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)and they are still furious.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)But that didn't make the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cities of no military importance, collectively responsible. It didn't mean it was there for acceptable to irradiate anybody who simply happened to be a Japanese citizen.
The real purpose of dropping those bombs was to keep the USSR from declaring war on Japan(it had designs on some northern islands claimed by Japan)and to fire an early warning shot in the Cold War.
oneshooter
(8,614 posts)Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)Killing other soldiers in a war while protecting oneself is one thing, that's what soldiers on both sides sign up for.
Only a coward and a thug would wish to be protected behind mountains of civilian women and children corpses (a true soldier would not wish such a thing)
This little girl was not a soldier and I doubt your father would shoot her out of fear, yet you apparently would, disgusting really...
tumtum
(438 posts)I don't give a hoot.
I stick by my statement, I'm probably here today, and my dad came home because of Truman's decision to use the bombs.
You don't like it, don't read it.
Response to tumtum (Reply #154)
Post removed
tumtum
(438 posts)it's not important to me.
Dollface
(1,590 posts)Casualty estimates were based on the experience of the preceding campaigns, drawing different lessons:
In a letter sent to Gen. Curtis LeMay from Gen. Lauris Norstad, when LeMay assumed command of the B-29 force on Guam, Norstad told LeMay that if an invasion took place, it would cost the US "half a million" dead.
In a study done by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April, it was estimated that a 90-day Olympic campaign would cost 456,000 casualties, including 109,000 dead or missing. If Coronet took another 90 days, the combined cost would be 1,200,000 casualties, with 267,000 fatalities. (Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyūshū, was scheduled for November 1, 1945. Fourteen US divisions were scheduled to take part in the initial landings. The objective would have been to seize the southern portion of Kyūshū. This area would then be used as a further staging point to attack Honshū in Operation Coronet.)
A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.
The Battle of Okinawa ran up 72,000 US casualties in 82 days, of whom 12,510 were killed or missing (this is conservative, because it excludes several thousand US soldiers who died after the battle indirectly, from their wounds.) The entire island of Okinawa is 464 sq mi (1,200 km2). If the US casualty rate during the invasion of Japan had been only 5% as high per unit area as it was at Okinawa, the US would still have lost 297,000 soldiers (killed or missing).
So best case was about a million dead. Worst case was 14 million. Mr. Truman didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)Yes, but then we would have the moral clarity of not having dropped a nuclear weapon. Killing 7 and a half million people with iron bombs and bullets is apparently kinder than 1/60 that many with nukes -- or something.
COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)is just beyond silly. Historical revisionism at best, flame-baiting at worst.
Catherina
(35,568 posts)tumtum
(438 posts)meaculpa2011
(918 posts)the Battle of the Bulge. He was preparing for duty in the Pacific when the war ended.
I'm conflicted about what happened, but I'm glad I was not the one to make the decision.
Hey... between the failed Operation Valkyrie and the fall of the Reich, 12 million died.
If only that briefcase had not been moved....
Condolences for your parents. I lost my Mom a few months ago and I don't think I'll ever get over it. I'm sure my Dad won't.
cab67
(2,990 posts)...it's a matter of many thousands, or even millions, of them.
Dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima killed a great many civilians, including children. This is deeply tragic, and each one should be mourned. But had we invaded the Japanese main islands, the number of civilian casualties would have been far, far greater. This isn't just a mental experiment - the Allied military had direct empirical evidence that this would be so.
There weren't many battles in the Pacific Theater that were blacked out from media access for much of the action. One of them was the Battle of Saipan, and another was the Battle of Okinawa - and in both cases, the rationale included the horrific number of civilians being killed. (This wasn't the only rationale - just one of them.) We didn't have smart bomb technology, and civilian, military, and industrial targets tended to be linked more tightly than in most Western countries. Plus, many civilians were committing suicide rather than deal with surrender. The decision to drop the A-bombs and end the war before an invasion was necessary was based - not entirely, but in part - on a desire to minimize civilian casualties.
A couple of other factors contributed to the large number of civilian deaths at Hiroshima. First, most US military planners assumed civilians would head for shelter when the bombers showed up, thereby being spared the worst of the blast. But the people of Japan had seen US bombers come and go for many months by then. One or two bombers was a recon mission, weather observation, or maybe delivery of propaganda leaflets - not exactly good, but not really a threat, either. Bombs were dropped by large formations of bombers, not the two or three that would have been involved in the A-bomb attack. So civilians didn't hide when the Enola Gay and the observation planes arrived.
Second, most of the scientists involved assumed (incorrectly) that the radiation resulting from the bomb would be washed out of the soil in a relatively short amount of time.
As for "the Japanese were ready to surrender" - not entirely. Some were, but wanted conditions. There were others in power who really did want to fight to the end.
I do think the Soviet invasion of Manchuria played a role, but not as large a role as others believe, mostly because the scope of the invasion may not have been fully understood at the time of surrender. And anyway, why would being chased out of Manchuria lead to a surrender when being chased out of the Pacific, including islands they'd held since before the war (e.g. Marianas), did not?
My 0.02. I take no pride at the fact that my country stands as the only one, to date, to have used nuclear weapons against another country. But given the mindsets at the time and the reality of what an invasion would have done to all sides, I can accept the rationale behind it.
Sirveri
(4,517 posts)The entire Japanese war machine had collapsed. We had leveled their entire industrial infrastructure, and they had nothing left to fight with. We could have continued our bombing campaign indefinitely, they likely would have surrendered in under a month anyways. My personal view is that this attack was more a demonstration for the Soviets than it was to compel the Japanese surrender. Though it doesn't matter that much, the firebombing of Tokyo killed more people than Hiroshima did, so where is the thread for them, or the rape of nanking, or the firebombing of Dresden? Why, because nukes are special?
cab67
(2,990 posts)Their industrial base was largely destroyed, but they still had 30 effective divisions in the home islands (though I don't know how long they would have remained effective). Those who were running the war saw what happened in Okinawa and assumed that a surrender without a bloody mess wasn't going to happen. Whether they were right or wrong, that's what they assumed, given their experiences to that date.
I agree that threads dedicated to the horrific losses elsewhere during that time would be appropriate.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)They had 10,000 planes still, of which 2,000 were slated to be used as kamikaze when the invasion started. They had 900,000 army troops who were building defensive positions on Kyushu. The mountains strongly favored defense. Every male, aged 14-60 and female aged 17-40 was being trained to fight. That would be another 28 million. And we already knew from previous battles that they didn't surrender. An invasion against that kind of force would have been very, very bloody.
The alternative to an invasion would have been a blockade. That would haved starved to death millions of elderly and the very young, but the military would have taken locally grown food, enough to survive.
The alternative to the bombs was tens of millions dead.
Russia was no threat to the home islands. What were they going to do? Drive tanks under the ocean? Swim soldiers to Japan? Russia did not have any navy at the time.
Sirveri
(4,517 posts)They were already on their knees looking for a way out to 'save face'. Ego seems to be important to authoritarian leaders, which makes sense if you think about it.
Did the bombs save Japanese lives, it's certainly possible, it's also possible that they were already going to surrender on the 15th, or the 20th even without the bombs.
As for aircraft, they were out of skilled pilots, our win rate against Japanese forces in the air at the end of the war was 10:1. Nothing else would help in a blockade, and their ability to even build more aircraft was seriously compromised. So no need to actually invade, they surrender or we violently disassemble their industrial capacity and leave them to starve on their island.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)hack89
(39,171 posts)do you really believe that?
Violently disassembling their industry meant burning their remaining cities to the ground. Again, is this really the more moral choice?
Sirveri
(4,517 posts)It's possible that they were so close to surrender due to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that they were going to surrender anyways. It's not possible to say with certainty what would have occurred had we not used the bombs. The bombing of Tokyo killed more people than the use of nuclear weapons, so why would the leadership desire to surrender after their usage when they didn't surrender after Tokyo?
I still believe that they were a show for the Soviets, and possibly also a chance to see what the human health effects of using the weapons were. We still didn't know much about radiation at that time and how it affected the human body. The human health effects testing is a bit more tin foil than I like, but considering the tuskegee experiment it's certainly plausible that such a thing was a factor at some level in the decision.
I'm not sure if that makes the decision more or less ethical. Or that the bombs actually ended the war any sooner.
oneshooter
(8,614 posts)The US military, as part of the preperation for the invasion of Japan, ordered 1 million Purple Hearts in 1944. We are still issuing Purple Hearts from that order today.
oneshooter
(8,614 posts)The US military, as part of the preparation for the invasion of Japan, ordered 1 million Purple Hearts in 1944. We are still issuing Purple Hearts from that order today.
MJ66
(1 post)Truman had to balance literally millions of lives. The casualty estimates for Operation Downfall were several hundred thousand Allied and millions of Japanese. In anticipation of these casualties we ordered so many Purple Hearts that we are still issuing medals made in WWII- even after all of our casualties in Korea, Vietnam, and in the recent conflicts.
"We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means." Carl von Clauseqitz, On War
rl6214
(8,142 posts)This about explains it all with your opinion.
Gore1FL
(21,100 posts)
Grins
(7,195 posts)The Japanese killed more Chinese, Filipinos, Burmese, pacific islander men, women, and children by BEHEADINGS than Japanese were killed by the United States in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - combined. Japanese newspapers kept track of the "contenders" and published who the contest leaders were and their "head count". Japan never said they wanted to surrender, only a cessation in hostilities. Every former Japanese soldier admit this.
Go read "Unbroken" by L. Hillenbrand for a clue.
liberal N proud
(60,332 posts)
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)Yes, war is an awful thing. But what we did was target civilians, women, children and unleashed on them not only death, but a lifetime, generations of pain. We, as a society are supposed to be better then that.
What our country did was a horrible thing, they might have thought it was justified, but it was not. What if the Taliban decided to use atomic weapons on New York? Would they be justified, since we are at war with them?
Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)to such sociopaths than "the tragic dropping of a ham sandwich on the floor", in fact they may actually be upset by damage done to their ham sandwich but they would not feel a thing while observing the torture of children burned alive or fated to die slowly and painfully of radiation poisoning and cancer.
Sociopaths lack empathy, humanity, conscience and decency, the feel nothing for others, they only feel for themselves, such is their pathology.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)If the Taliban win over us, they get to claim that we are terrible for not being strict Muslims.
hunter
(38,303 posts)... and later a myth.
My thoughts:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3414264
Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)That is the most idiotic point I've seen on this subject. Massive troop movements were not done across an ocean for a bluff, especially at that late stage of the war when resources of every kind were completely drained. My dad was on one of those troop ships, and believe me, it was no myth. The trauma of simply BEING on that ship under the extreme conditions they were in affected him the rest of his life, and he was certainly not alone in that. Bluff, myth? Sure, the whole war was a myth.
This nonsense strikes me as very similar to the Holocaust deniers.
hunter
(38,303 posts)It was a huge operation and nobody was telling the people in charge, "Hey guys, don't worry about it, we have atomic weapons now."
The "massive troop movements" were a show of force, to both Japan and the Soviet Union. They were not there to invade Japan, even though that's what they all expected, that it would be the worst possible scenario.
The U.S. plan was to drop the two nuclear bombs, back off a bit, isolate Japanese forces and wait for a response. If Japan hadn't surrendered more bombs would have been dropped. If still they didn't surrender, only then would U.S. troops take the Japanese mainland, the way cleared by further atomic bombing.
The Manhattan Project was huge, built from the ground up to fight a full scale atomic war with the Nazis. It was also secret, fewer than 1% of workers knew what they were doing before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)How does that constitute a "bluff"? An actual, no-kidding invasion was planned if Japan did not surrender, with or without the bomb(s)... so how is that a bluff, much less a myth?
And if you think the bombs that were dropped didn't lessen the US casualties that would've ensued without them, then I don't know what point you're trying to make.
This is what is documented as the situation faced by Truman and his staff: their estimates of 500K US casualties without the bomb were way too low because Japan, while talking surrender, had doubled its forces on Kyushu, the invasion site.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023414088#post298
Additionally:
You are also forgetting that at that time, nobody was even sure how well those bombs would even work. Judging the past by today's perspective was not an option that people had at the time.
The fact that one bomb was not enough to make Japan immediately surrender should clear up anyone's confusion on the subject, as to whether its use was necessary.
hunter
(38,303 posts)Truman himself hadn't been told about the Manhattan Project before FDR died. He was fully briefed a few days afterwards.
Most military planners were also out of the loop.
Absolutely, U.S. servicemen headed to Japan had good reason to believe they'd be experiencing a bloody horror -- that they'd be shooting suicidal Japanese old people, women and children jumping out of the bushes with sharpened bamboo sticks, and fired upon by whatever was left of Japanese military forces.
But Japan was already in ruins. Isolation, further firebombing, and monthly atomic bomb drops would have been the end of Japan had they not surrendered. Much of their industrial infrastructure was ruined.
So the planned invasion was moot. It didn't happen. Knowing what we know now, it wouldn't have happened.
Yes, it is a myth that the atomic bomb "saved" American lives. If not atomic bombs, further bombing would have accomplished the same thing. It's also a myth that there was any great uncertainty about the atomic bombs working.
Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)The facts say otherwise.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)It was in fact planned. There are two reasons why: 1) Truman decided against dropping the bomb (which he did not know about until after FDR died in April 1945) and 2) If the bomb didn't work.
In the months prior the bombing we had no idea for sure if the bomb would even work. If you want to question that I happen to have a direct source that was alive and involved in Operation Silverplate who had technical knowledge of the bomb.
Trinity did not happen until July 1945, less than one month before Hiroshima.
Barring that the military had to have a plan. There is no way we could have continued to fight the war for at least another year.
You really think had the bomb failed or they decided not to drop it that conventional bombing would have caused them to surrender?
How about the fact that Japan still occupied Korea and parts of other countries? Are you saying the Japanese would have simply left those countries alone?
Yes, there are varying estimates about how many lives would have been lost in an invasion. That I'm willing to agree on. Japan would have lost more lives, the allies would have easily lost 250,000 or more in an invasion.
hunter
(38,303 posts)Few people realize the scale and intensity of the Manhattan project. We had the capacity to build at least two bombs a month by the end of the war, and we did. Even with some refitting of the plutonium production lines in Hanford to fix problems that had been deemed acceptable risks for wartime use, by 1950 we'd already replaced, with improved designs, the 120 "Fat Man" type of bombs we'd built after the Nagasaki bomb. The capacity of the USA to wage war was not even close to being depleted.
There was no uncertainty about the plutonium implosion bomb after the Trinity test. The Uranium bomb was such a sure thing it was first "tested" on Hiroshima.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn't about saving lives. It was about sending a message to the world, most especially the Soviet Union. U.S.A. leaders were already thinking well past Japan's inevitable surrender or further destruction.
Yep, our soldiers and sailors heading for Japan fully expected a bloody horror of a fight. But the plan had changed along the way; they simply didn't know that until the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)I've read about it in books and talk to people involved with the program. There was a possibility that one of the other bombs could have
not worked or a plan crashed. The B-29's had to use the entire runway to take off. Other plans on Tinian had crashed. To claim it was a done deal is not accurate.
Yep, our soldiers and sailors heading for Japan fully expected a bloody horror of a fight. But the plan had changed along the way; they simply didn't know that until the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
The invasion wasn't suppose to start until November (Operation Downfall) so while some soldiers and sailors may have been heading to Japan this was NOT the main offensive under the invasions. The invasion would have lasted 1 to 1 1/2 years and the casualties would have been higher than it was under the bombing of Hiroshimia and Nagasaki.
You are right that no one knew outside of a few high level people about the dropping of the bomb
Once again the revisionist history gets old. Japan was not able to surrender before even the first bombing, and certainly not until after the second. They still had their home land and countries they occupied to fight for.
hunter
(38,303 posts)In the unlikely event one or both of the planes had crashed, there were many more bombs in the pipeline, both conventional and atomic. The industrial capacity of the USA was immense and unreachable by the Japanese.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)to fight the Japanese, Germans, and Italians. The truth is you weren't there and don't know how many bombs there were. I've heard varying numbers. The planes crashing or getting shot down were only one possible thing that could have gone wrong. The number of bombs we had after the war is irrelevant.
To flat out deny that the US had a plan to invade Japan is ludicrous. You are engaging in revisionist history by saying the bombings were inevitable and that there were no other plans.
The choice was either bomb the two cities or invade with troops. You and other's can keep pushing the idea that Japan was going to surrender or that we could have bombed them conventionally to get them to surrender.
Let me be very clear in what I am saying. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki quickly ended the war with Japan.
hunter
(38,303 posts)A huge buildup.
But the people at the very top had a different play book with two goals: Give Japan the opportunity to surrender, and "Hey Stalin, look at this!"
The amoral war people, the genocidal "Enders Game" dudes essential to any real world war effort wanted to see what atomic weapons would do to a living city. There were even a few who wanted to try atomic bombs out as tactical weapons, and they were probably disappointed that Japan surrendered so easily.
Furthermore we do know exactly what our bomb making capacity was. The surrender of Japan, the abandonment of "gun-type" uranium bombs, and the safety upgrades of Hanford following the end of the war slowed production down very slightly, but it's a fact the USA could have dropped conventional bombs and atomic bombs on Japan for as long as we chose to with no invasion.
A society bombed and nuked back to preindustrial technologies was no longer a real threat. Theres nothing "revisionist" about that.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)The nuclear bombs were horrible, but so was the rest of it.
The low estimate from the bombing deaths in the first few months is around 150K, the high closer to 250K. About 300K Chinese died in the Nanking massacre alone.
The losses in the Pacific war were horrific, and most of them were civilians. The estimate for China is 4 million directly dead, closer to 20 million indirectly dead. The Bengal famine of 1943 is believed to have killed at least 1.5 million civilians.
http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/C/a/Casualties.htm
Ending the war was a humanitarian triumph. If we had been forced to invade, the civilian casualties in Japan would have been much worse.
That having been said, I do think there is justification for the use of the nuclear bombs just to prevent the casualties of the Allied soldiers.
The Japanese observed no rules of war. Their atrocities are so well documented that they should need no mention. The Japanese were engaging in germ warfare in China and had even attempted a sub attack on the US in the final months of the war. Vivisection, germ warfare on civilian populations - they needed to go down, and their leadership could not be permitted to slaughter off millions more of the Japanese population.
The children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were guilty of nothing, and the guilt of their deaths rests squarely upon the Japanese leadership of the time.
Anyone who can mourn Hiroshima and Nagasaki without factoring what happened to China, Unit 731, the diseases spread deliberately in China, and what this sub was intended to do is not my idea of an ethicist:
http://boingboing.net/2005/03/25/gigantic-wwii-japane.html
http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/unit731-part1.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-08/06/c_132606415.htm
The suffering in China is still not over, btw:
http://www.dontow.com/2009/04/japans-biological-and-chemical-warfare-in-china-during-wwii/
WWII was so hideous that we are happy and perhaps wise to forget, but we cannot forget almost everything and remember JUST the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)Had the invasion gone forward, the US would have been criticized for barbarically killing civilians in their own country.
Japan was not going to simply capitulate in the early summer of 1945. Either way, people would have died. We were in the middle of a war that had be going on for almost four years.
People can continue pushing their revisionist bullshit that we didn't have to do the bombing, that the invasion was never going to happen, that Japan was on the verge of surrendering, etc. etc.
tblue
(16,350 posts)Her home was bombed in Tokyo. Completely destroyed. And even her family wasn't taught to hate or hurt anybody. Where'd you come up with that?
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)BTW nice war toy pics.
tumtum
(438 posts)rational to me.
Those pics are the aircraft I flew during my Army career, I couldn't fit the Blackhawk in.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)We wanted an unconditional surrender.
They wanted to keep the emperor.
We got an unconditional surrender, and let them keep the emperor, which would have been the same result of accepting the conditions of surrender they had already proposed before we dropped the bomb.
The "we would have had to invade" is a false dichotomy.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)They rejected the Potsdam Declaration. They wanted an armistice that would have left their gov't in place and no occupation of Japan, no war crimes trials except by Japanese courts. That way they could have rearmed and made another try for conquest in twenty years.
And they were willing to keep fighting to the last man, woman, or child. The nukes ended that idea.
The Emperor was allowed to live but he was required to renounce his divinity and to take orders from us. We used him as a puppet for a few years.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)The Potsdam Declaration does not call for unconditional surrender.
And here's what the Japanese high command was saying to itself before the Hiroshima bombing:
Boy, that sure looks like people who were ready to lay down their arms!
whathehell
(29,034 posts)It wasn't exactly a sucker punch.
BobbyBoring
(1,965 posts)There was a faction in Japan that was going to continue to fight. Defeat and failure was not acceptable to them. That goes back centuries. It's just their culture.
Th1onein
(8,514 posts)You totally undermined your own argument with that quote. The emperor was saying that they should NOT continue to fight.
Hey, why not read a history book or two? Might learn something.
Sorry, but you FAIL.
Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)It amazes me that people who weren't even living then have the temerity to argue with people who were part of the event, and with the factual record.
Instead of popping off with second-hand revisionism, people should educate themselves first... this link discusses all of the significant works on the subject, and dissects the valid from the fake. Any nitwit can write a book, and lots of them are written by people with an agenda other than the truth (often the payoff is money, or position, "scholarship" was corrupted a long time ago).
http://www.theamericanpresident.us/images/truman_bomb.pdf
I'll slam America anytime it's deserved, but this isn't one of those times. ALL of WW2 was horrific. Check out the bombing of London sometime.
I also had a father-in-law who was on board one of the ships in Pearl Harbor, and survived. Remember that Japan didn't have to start the war with us in the first place. There is no doubt that if Japan had developed the bomb first, they would've used it. So would the Germans. So would any of the nations involved for that matter.
Yes, lives were lost and that is tragic. It's also true that lives exist now that would not otherwise. That is a fact too, that matters just as much as other facts. And yes, it is now proven. Japanese communications that were declassified in the 70's conclusively proves it. That is after the revisionism on this subject was well on its way to being accepted as a fad "truth".
PatrynXX
(5,668 posts)It's ugly but it took 2 not 1 bomb to convince them ... Japan didn't care enough for one city. It had to be two. And they still don't care about their own people with a leaking Nuclear plant 
I shall assume your from Japan. How's Sea shepherd there??
independentpiney
(1,510 posts)My Dad was MAW (Marine Air Wing) on a PBJ crew scheduled for close air support in the initial invasions. And fuck the revisionist assholes and ignorant ideologues, it was the best alternative in the totality of the circumstances at the time.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)tumtum
(438 posts)even then it was a 3-3 tie and the Emperor had to break that tie in favor of surrender.
SkyDaddy7
(6,045 posts)I just ignore the voices of those who have the privilege of 75yrs & not having any responsibility at the time as to how to end the nastiest war the world had ever seen. I would NEVER claim I knew the best way to end that war...How arrogant is that? SAD!!
"Thank-You" to both YOU & your Dad for your service!!
beemer27
(459 posts)tumtum,
My dad was going to be in the second wave of the invasion. The first wave would have had about a 100% fatality rate. The second would have had about the same. When he was part of the Army of Occupation, he saw the sharpened bamboo that you speak of. He also saw crude spears that the civilians were ordered to fight with. Had we not dropped the bombs, the blood bath would have been one of the worst in history. Not only would American troops be killed in unprecedented numbers, the Japanese population would have been killed in numbers that we can not imagine. Decimate does not even come close. The death toll would have been so large that it would have to be expressed in what percentage of the entire population perished instead of simple numbers.
It is easy for people who did not have skin in the game to "revise" history to satisfy their perception of right and wrong. The reality of what happened at that place and at that time was such that the bomb was the most effective method of bring the war to a swift end. As to the numbers of civilians killed, no one seems to remember how many we killed with fire-bombing Dresden or Tokyo. The revisionist also forget how many Chinese died at Japanese hands. War is dirty and cruel. I am happy that we won.
rdharma
(6,057 posts)Japan was finished. My RW uncle believes the BS of the time. I don't.
You don't realize the tension after the American and Soviet troops met on the bridge at Torgau. It was only "happy smiley" in the official photos.
Brickbat
(19,339 posts)Dr. Strange
(25,917 posts)
MrScorpio
(73,630 posts)Thor_MN
(11,843 posts)People can sure get worked up when a troll comes in the room and farts.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)pulled shrapnel from his chest on Okinawa.
Talking surrender is not surrender.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)Many of us posting here weren't even alive. Am I going to beat myself up over it? Not even a little bit.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)leftynyc
(26,060 posts)links to any comment that treats this as anything other than a necessary evil. Japan declared war on us and then aligned themselves with a country that was putting people in ovens. You want me to cry over Hiroshima?
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...then you have chosen country over humanity, drunk the cool aid to make life less difficult.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)How freeking laughable. I'll save my tears for those who didn't attack us and for those whose families were decimated by the Axis powers. You want to make the US into the boogieman in WWII, knock yourself out make yourself look foolish.
Unfuckingbelievable.
We're supposed to feel guilt over the bombing of Japan, a country that started the pacific war, committed untold atrocities, just because the OP says so?
As I said, unfuckingbelievable.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)whathehell
(29,034 posts)Good thought. 
closeupready
(29,503 posts)COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)
for injecting a bit of sanity into this otherwise insane discussion.GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)I refuse to feel the smallest bit guilty about what was done to Japan. Their leadership brought it on them.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)The one trying to make everyone feel guilty. I'm in complete agreement with you.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Thanks for correcting me.
Th1onein
(8,514 posts)No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
LordGlenconner
(1,348 posts)Th1onein
(8,514 posts)Geez.
DontTreadOnMe
(2,442 posts)China is still pissed at Japan for their cruelty.
William769
(55,144 posts)Or the thousands of LGBT brothers & sisters & millions of jewish fellow human beings and also let's not forget the countless Chinese lives lost. Wheres your outrage there? Thats what I thought.
War is hell and we did not start it. Say what you want this is the only time I will visit this thread and I have already trashed all the other despicable threads on this subject.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)Wasn't Pearl Harbor a "preventative strike"? Thought America is a-ok with that?
As for the other atrocities you mentioned, the entire world was/is outraged by them and took the appropriate action. But that has exactly nothing to do with America committing the largest single terrorist act in human history.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)They got what they deserved. And no - not everybody took appropriate action against the nazis. Plenty of them handed their Jews, Gypsies and other "undesirables" with no conscience whatsoever.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Phillyindy
(406 posts)...the preventative MILITARY strike on PH WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY easier then anyone could justify incinerated a few hundred thousand innocent civilians.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Phillyindy
(406 posts)
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)Isn't it odd (not) how we determined what "war crimes" were depending upon whether our side did them, or theirs did.
ETA: approximately 100,000 died in Tokyo in a single night.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)is to say that the conventional annihilation of cities by the same government was even worse?
tumtum
(438 posts)Holy shit!!!!
You actually believe that? 
I actually feel pity for you.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)Intentionally incinerating hundreds of thousands of civilians for no other reason but to terrorize the nation into surrender is the single largest terrorist act in history.
This is just a fact. The reason you don't agree is because you can't take the red white and blue glasses off. By your logic, every suicide bomber in Iraq is just a patriotic freedom fighter.
It's your warped sense of fact, not history's fact.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)What other terrorizing act in history was greater or caused more death and destruction of innocent people?
tumtum
(438 posts)how about Hitler's death camps? Millions upon millions murdered.
We could go around and around all day, in the end, neither of us are going to convince the other that our position is the correct one.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)The Jewish people not live in constant fear for their lives and that of their familys?
The definition of Terrorism is the systematic use of violence to create a climate of fear in order to bring about a political objective.
Under this definition, the Holocaust does classify as a act of terrorism.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)They weren't trying to create a climate of fear. They were trying to eliminate them.
Lancero
(3,002 posts)Doesn't have to be intentional - Only that it was the systematic use of violence that created it.
And this is what happened. The systematic use of violence, leading to a climate of fear, with the ultimate goal to be complete extermination.
Read any book about the Holocaust that has been written by either a survivor or with their input. I'm willing to bet that they will, at one point, say "I feared for my life".
Javaman
(62,504 posts)Javaman
(62,504 posts)I had relatives who lived in Nazi Germany, did you?
Did you hear or even read about the things that the Nazi's did to the Jewish, Gypsy, LGBT, Leftists populations prior to their extermination? Prior to the run up to the "final solution"?
Holy cow. My god, you simply have zero clue in this matter. Zero. None.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)Javaman
(62,504 posts)
You thinking that there is no linkage between terrorism and extermination is colossally laughable.
I can give you countless examples from history, but alas, you seem to feel that your ignorant position is correct, so I won't even try. Because rather than support your assertion you resort to droll replies.
Good day.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)I NEVER said there wasn't linkage between terrorism and extermination. You just pulled that out of your ass.
William769
(55,144 posts)Dawgs
(14,755 posts)Javaman
(62,504 posts)do you know what it was like to ride in a train car in sub zero weather to a camp knowing that you are going to die?
Or systematically watch as members of your own family get shot before your eyes but you were allowed to live because you could do work?
There are story after story of people in concentration camps that knew perfectly well what went on in the "showers" and they prayed every day that they wouldn't be picked all the while living on a diet of less than 400 calories a day, sometimes less.
my god, you really need to educate yourself.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Way easier, and far more destructive - remember a single firebombing raid on Tokyo killed more than both nukes combined.
hack89
(39,171 posts)An act that incinerated over a 100,000 people and injured another million - more immediate deaths than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)But keep on believing your version of history.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)Keep justifying our atrocities by pointing to the atrocities of others. I must have stumbled onto a conservative website.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)but raping and killing over a quarter of a million people over the span of a few months in one city isn't, I suppose? I think that you have a ridiculous lack of perspective.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...terrorist act, meaning a single act. Obviously there have worse genocides and atrocities over periods of time. But as far as a single attack, nothing touches dropping those nukes
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)ET Awful
(24,753 posts)Really? You don't think that maybe it was intended to scare Japan into surrendering? You don't think that maybe (as many leaders at the time have said) it was intended to scare Stalin?
You might want to do some more research.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)Don't just read my post. Read the whole thread.
ET Awful
(24,753 posts)There are better ways to address a response to someone who is on your side of an argument and mistakenly replied to a post out of order.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)That it wasn't done by one aircrew in one bomber doesn't make it any less a single thing. The brutal rape and slaughter of a city's civilian population by the soldiers of the Japanese Army wasn't as instantaneous but it was no less part of a single directed act of state policy aimed at terrorising the Chinese into submission.
tumtum
(438 posts)Many of us have fathers who fought in the war, have fathers who, as was mine, in the slated invasion force, so, in that context, I have no problem with Truman's decision to use the bombs to hasten the end of the war and no amount of hand wringing by such as yourself will ever change my mind.
If you don't like that, too bad.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)Dawgs
(14,755 posts)tumtum
(438 posts)
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)tumtum
(438 posts)not what you think.
Sorry if I'm being so frank, but I am what I am.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...but understand this is why current military families think the Iraq war was just.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Any other assumptions you would like to make?
I don't, and I am the grandparent of an Iraqi veteran. My daughter and her husband didn't think that way either.
4Q2u2
(1,406 posts)Lots of us do not think Iraq was just, and many of us have the scars to prove it. Your assumptions on this and other Wars shows a total lack of understanding on context, in the moment decision making.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)Am I wrong?
tumtum
(438 posts)there is no distinction in wartime.
Germany and Japan would have attacked us with nuclear bombs if they had gotten them first, we beat them to the punch, and I won't feel any guilt over it.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)It would have saved some of us a lot of time.
tumtum
(438 posts)We are talking about WWII.
rl6214
(8,142 posts)Jenoch
(7,720 posts)Your use of the word 'terrorist' by today's standards is a bit of hyperbole. Hiwever, the bombs were meant to scare the shit out of the Japanese, or to terrorize them, to convince them they lost the war and need to surrender.
The terrorists of today, by definition, are not part of an army of a national government.
godai
(2,902 posts)Sounds like terrorism to me, to shock Japan into surrendering.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)All of it
WW 2 is the closest to an actual just war...and it was partly accidental
AngryOldDem
(14,061 posts)I'd be willing to say it was the **last** actual just war.
hack89
(39,171 posts)DevonRex
(22,541 posts)dionysus
(26,467 posts) Dr. Strange
(25,917 posts)closeupready
(29,503 posts) 4Q2u2
(1,406 posts)If the Japanese were talking of surrender instead of surrounder they might have had a better chance. Bomb an uninhabited island to show the power, then what, post on YouTube for the Japanese to see and get scared?
Th1onein
(8,514 posts)MONTHS!
Go forth, educate thyself!
4Q2u2
(1,406 posts)They misspelled surrender in that post, they had it spelled surrounder. I was satirizing their righteous indignation.
Oops
Crickets
cliffordu
(30,994 posts)Oh, wait there ain't one.
Your ignorance of the reality on the ground then is matched only by your hubris.
Enjoy your stay at DU!!
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...as to what circumstances justify incinerating tens of thousands of innocent children and babies.
HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)soldiers would have died in an invasion of the Japanese home islands (and probably as many Japanese soldiers and civilians). So, while the atomic bombs may have killed many thousands of innocent civilians, the toll would have been far, far worse had we invaded using conventional forces.
So what should Truman and MacArthur have done?
Phillyindy
(406 posts)The bombs weren't to stop the war, they were a demonstration of dominance.
HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)to inform you. Some factions within the Japanese intelligence services were putting forward informal 'peace feelers' that proposed keeping the Emperor in place and a general armistice that would have allowed Japan to re-arm and forbidden Allied occupation.
The dominant faction in the Japanese military adamantly wanted to continue fighting, even after the 2nd bomb was dropped.
Your argument is belied not just by Truman's words and actions but by Hirohito's in explaining why Japan was surrendering.
GalaxyHunter
(271 posts)I don't think so!
TALK IS FUCKING CHEAP!!!
Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)http://www.theamericanpresident.us/images/truman_bomb.pdf (page 6) I highly recommend the entire link to anyone who is interested in sorting out this controversy objectively.
former9thward
(31,941 posts)He was opposed to the bomb. As was Eisenhower. It was Truman making a political decision not a military one.
"MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed....When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." As we've already seen, both Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Truman's chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, had voiced protest about using the bomb over Japanese cities.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/countdown-to-hiroshima-fo_b_3707531.html
HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)nuclear weapons, he would have had command of the invasion forces.
So my question to the OP was, if you have a weapon that will shorten the war by many months and forestall many casualties thereby, even while it causes many casualties but you don't use that weapon, what do you do instead??
MacArthur's personal views on the bomb (seemingly after the fact) have no relevance to the question of what his orders would have been absent the bomb's use and what strategy he might have employed to implement those orders.
Response to former9thward (Reply #64)
ieoeja This message was self-deleted by its author.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Response to GreenStormCloud (Reply #240)
ieoeja This message was self-deleted by its author.
former9thward
(31,941 posts)I guess that is why Eisenhower opposed it also. Just because Truman was a Democrat. No military considerations whatsoever. Too bad we did not have you there as Pacific theater commander. The war would have been over so much sooner.
Response to former9thward (Reply #312)
ieoeja This message was self-deleted by its author.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)His comments were in the 1960s or later, when our new very close ally, Japan, was a great help in the Cold War. Plus nuclear weapons were now reviled for their after-effects instead of viewed as just a big bomb.
former9thward
(31,941 posts)He made them to the Secretary of War before the bomb was dropped. Try again.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)The quote people use from Ike is from his memoirs. Published in the 1960s. Because that one fits the story they want to tell better.
former9thward
(31,941 posts)Including Truman himself. Did any contradict the quote? No.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)We had a shiny new ally in the Cold War named Japan.
Every other option Truman had would have killed 100 times more people than the bombs. Invasion would kill tens of millions. Blockade would kill tens of millions via famine. Armistice would kill tens of millions in the next war (Japan had been launching a major war every generation for quite a while).
The nukes killed less than a million.
So yeah, clearly we should have gone with one of the other options. That way instead of having a spectacular event you can rail against, far more people would have died in easier-to-ignore clumps over years.
former9thward
(31,941 posts)All they wanted was the Emperor to remain. We rejected that and the war continued. We finally accepted that demand and the war ended. That is why Eisenhower, MacArthur and Truman's Chief of Staff Admiral Leahy were all against the bomb. There was no point to it.
And the bomb did not even end the war anyway. That is history from the U.S. side.
That is history from the U.S. side. Japanese historians say the war ended due to the Soviet declaration of war on August 7 and the invasion of Manchuria.
As Hasegawa writes in his book “Racing the Enemy,” the Japanese leadership reacted with concern, but not panic. On Aug. 7, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo sent an urgent coded telegram to his ambassador in Moscow, asking him to press for a response to the Japanese request for mediation, which the Soviets had yet to provide. The bombing added a “sense of urgency,” Hasegawa says, but the plan remained the same.
Very late the next night, however, something happened that did change the plan. The Soviet Union declared war and launched a broad surprise attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria. In that instant, Japan’s strategy was ruined. Stalin would not be extracting concessions from the Americans. And the approaching Red Army brought new concerns: The military position was more dire, and it was hard to imagine occupying communists allowing Japan’s traditional imperial system to continue. Better to surrender to Washington than to Moscow.
By the morning of Aug. 9, the Japanese Supreme War Council was meeting to discuss the terms of surrender. (During the meeting, the second atomic bomb killed tens of thousands at Nagasaki.) On Aug. 15, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. How is it possible that the Japanese leadership did not react more strongly to many tens of thousands of its citizens being obliterated?
One answer is that the Japanese leaders were not greatly troubled by civilian causalities. As the Allies loomed, the Japanese people were instructed to sharpen bamboo sticks and prepare to meet the Marines at the beach.
Yet it was more than callousness. The bomb - horrific as it was - was not as special as Americans have always imagined. In early March, several hundred B-29 Super Fortress bombers dropped incendiary bombs on downtown Tokyo. Some argue that more died in the resulting firestorm than at Hiroshima. People were boiled in the canals. The photos of charred Tokyo and charred Hiroshima are indistinguishable
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/?page=3
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)From his surrender speech of Aug 15, 1945: The enemy, moreover, has begun to employ a new most cruel bomb, the power which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would only result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation . . . but would lead also to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are we to save millions of our subjects, or ourselves, to atone before the hallowed spirits of our Imperial ancestors? This is the reason we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the Powers.
http://www.japanorama.com/surrendr.html
Further, Russia was no threat to the Japanee home islands. Russia was a land power, not a sea power. They had only a tiny navy. For them, defeating the Nazis meant they needed an army and an air force, not a navy. The Japanese troops in Manchuria were already lost to Japan as they had been isolated from Japan by the U.S. Navy. What could Russia do to the Japanese home islands? Drive tanks under the sea? Have soldiers swim to Japan?
The A-bomb gave the leaders of Japan a way to surrender without further loss of face.
former9thward
(31,941 posts)Also Trumans's Chief of Staff Admiral Leahy. They didn't have a clue.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)I will take his word for why he surrendered.
former9thward
(31,941 posts)Hirohito did not sign anything. The Japanese military command did. Hirohito said whatever he needed to say to put the best face on it. The U.S. military commanders knew best the military situation. Truman dropped the bomb as a political decision against military wishes.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)The "Big 6" of Japan's leadership was divided 3-3. Hirohito decided it was over. He recorded a speech to be played to the nation announcing the surrender. It was his decision. There was a coup that night before against him that almost succeeded. But they couldn't find the recording, which was then played to the nation the next day. That doomed the coup.
That he didn't sign anything is trivial. He was the one who ordered the surrender.
The only military commanders who had input were the ones who knew about it. Ike and the others were speaking after the fact when it was safe to say how horrible it was.
Yes, the bomb gave the Japanese a face saving way to quit. And that is not a bad thing.
What would you have done?
Blockade - starved millions.
Invasion - Millions die in the fighting.
Let the Japanese militaristic gov't continue - Fight them again in 20 years.
former9thward
(31,941 posts)Eisenhower did know about it and protested its use to the Secretary of War beforehand. Hirohito was one vote out of seven. Your attempt at bolding does not make it different. If the vote was 4-2 then the 4 would carried no matter what side it was.
What would I have done? What Eisenhower and MacArthur wanted. Wait. Japan was on the verge of surrender. They would have already but they wanted to keep the Emperor. We rejected that and the war went on. Then finally we agreed to that and the war stopped. Japan did not surrender because of the bomb. They surrendered because the Soviets declared war on August 7. They knew the Soviets would never allow the Emperor so they surrendered to the U.S.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)How could Russia invade Japan without a navy? Hirohito says they surrendered because of the bomb. He was there. So I believe him.
ProfessorGAC
(64,854 posts)4.5 years of total war on a nearly world wide basis doesn't get counted in your demand for circumstances?
An impossibly high standard. Your godlike status is a source of envy.
GAC
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...having the basic morality that says dropping nukes on civilians is wrong makes you God like.
But, this is America...
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)I am THANKFUL you were not in charge back in that time. That one instance was absolutely necessary and perfect. The bombs saved TONS of lives. It was a brilliant conclusion to the World War. Besides we were hit in Hawaii so they deserved to be paid back! Good on Truman and the other adults in the room. Phillyindy and the other children run along.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)"If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen." Japan entered that kitchen of their own free will.
"You made your bed, now lie in it" also comes to mind.
former9thward
(31,941 posts)That is history from the U.S. side. Japanese historians say the war ended due to the Soviet declaration of war on August 7 and the invasion of Manchuria.
As Hasegawa writes in his book “Racing the Enemy,” the Japanese leadership reacted with concern, but not panic. On Aug. 7, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo sent an urgent coded telegram to his ambassador in Moscow, asking him to press for a response to the Japanese request for mediation, which the Soviets had yet to provide. The bombing added a “sense of urgency,” Hasegawa says, but the plan remained the same.
Very late the next night, however, something happened that did change the plan. The Soviet Union declared war and launched a broad surprise attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria. In that instant, Japan’s strategy was ruined. Stalin would not be extracting concessions from the Americans. And the approaching Red Army brought new concerns: The military position was more dire, and it was hard to imagine occupying communists allowing Japan’s traditional imperial system to continue. Better to surrender to Washington than to Moscow.
By the morning of Aug. 9, the Japanese Supreme War Council was meeting to discuss the terms of surrender. (During the meeting, the second atomic bomb killed tens of thousands at Nagasaki.) On Aug. 15, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. How is it possible that the Japanese leadership did not react more strongly to many tens of thousands of its citizens being obliterated?
One answer is that the Japanese leaders were not greatly troubled by civilian causalities. As the Allies loomed, the Japanese people were instructed to sharpen bamboo sticks and prepare to meet the Marines at the beach.
Yet it was more than callousness. The bomb - horrific as it was - was not as special as Americans have always imagined. In early March, several hundred B-29 Super Fortress bombers dropped incendiary bombs on downtown Tokyo. Some argue that more died in the resulting firestorm than at Hiroshima. People were boiled in the canals. The photos of charred Tokyo and charred Hiroshima are indistinguishable
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/?page=3
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)that people have no concept of the opinions of that time.
Total war was why FDR imprisoned 120,000 Japanese-Americans.
Total war was why Dresden was firebombed.
Total war was why Tokyo was firebombed.
Total war was why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed with atomic weapons.
There was no holding back. No "gentlemanly" war. They did what they thought they needed to do to defeat their opponent.
Sid
William769
(55,144 posts)Were Coventry & London.
zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)Musta been a mistake I'm sure.
William769
(55,144 posts)Joking about all the people that died because the little evil a man wanted to dominate the world?
Whatever floats your boat.
ETA: for people with reading comprehension Germany was the first to start the fire bombings, they were also the first to use the V1 & V2 rockets against civilian populations. If you need more of a history lesson, I'll be more than happy to help you out.
zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)It was a list of places that WE bombed in the context of the discuss of who WE decided bomb, and why, with the first nuclear weapons. Why would you discuss what Hitler chose to bomb in that context? You really trying to induce Godwin's Law?
William769
(55,144 posts)if not for Germany & the promise they made to Japan, Japan would have never attacked.
Another little lesson for you. I have all day.
zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)Japan may or may not have attacked, their goals had little or nothing to do with their promise to Japan. And how any of that has to do with how we choose to fight a war is also missing.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)but my failing memory was only recalling the V2 rockets attacks, which were more terror attacks than city-wide damaging attacks.
Thanks for adding those to the list.
Sid
Baclava
(12,047 posts)In December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanking and proceeded to murder 300,000 out of 600,000 civilians and soldiers in the city. The six weeks of carnage would become known as the Rape of Nanking and represented the single worst atrocity during the World War II era in either the European or Pacific theaters of war
The elimination of the Chinese POWs began after they were transported by trucks to remote locations on the outskirts of Nanking. As soon as they were assembled, the savagery began, with young Japanese soldiers encouraged by their superiors to inflict maximum pain and suffering upon individual POWs as a way of toughening themselves up for future battles, and also to eradicate any civilized notions of mercy.
Filmed footage and still photographs taken by the Japanese themselves document the brutality. Smiling soldiers can be seen conducting bayonet practice on live prisoners, decapitating them and displaying severed heads as souvenirs, and proudly standing among mutilated corpses. Some of the Chinese POWs were simply mowed down by machine-gun fire while others were tied-up, soaked with gasoline and burned alive
After the destruction of the POWs, the soldiers turned their attention to the women of Nanking and an outright animalistic hunt ensued. Old women over the age of 70 as well as little girls under the age of 8 were dragged off to be sexually abused. More than 20,000 females (with some estimates as high as 80,000) were gang-raped by Japanese soldiers, then stabbed to death with bayonets or shot so they could never bear witness.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/nanking.htm
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...you ain't seen nothing...
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in response to our sanctions against Japan—sanctions imposed to punish... drumroll... the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.
hack89
(39,171 posts)markiv
(1,489 posts)on the topic of 'things i'm guilty for, before i was born'
i'm no more responsible for that, than an undocumented immigrant appealing for a path to citizenship today
Orrex
(63,172 posts)markiv
(1,489 posts)not have occured under coligula
Orrex
(63,172 posts)Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)Get over yourself. Every August 6 someone comes along with this bullshit. Stop playing armchair historian, especially since you evidently have no idea what the hell you're talking about. New ruling empire? Wake me when we live in a world where Pearl Harbor, Nanking, and Bataan never happened.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...would be perfectly justified with dropping nukes in America right? I mean, you know, we invaded them with no cause, killed tens of thousands, destroyed their country, etc...
Your children, parents, siblings, deserve to die as a result right? I mean, Iraq just wanted to end the war.
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)Phillyindy
(406 posts)tumtum
(438 posts)Your OP is nothing but hypocrisy.
Wednesdays
(17,317 posts)That's directed to everyone on this sub-thread.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)You JUST TOLD ME that it's okay for civilians to be killed in ANY WAR.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)we don't have to worry about that.
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)Actually had we done what we did in Japan in Iraq and Afghanistan, the two wars would be over and we would not have had 3000 Americans killed because of what the animals did on 9/11. It would have cost about 10 percent of the cost we ended up with and probably would not have lost a single American. Too bad nobody was for it and wanted a long war. Congress voted on going to war with Afghanistan and Iraq. UGH!!!! Two bombs would have been enough.
Response to yeoman6987 (Reply #215)
ieoeja This message was self-deleted by its author.
Can I just say that you are brilliant. Wow! I am so impressed with your historical knowledge. I wish I had 10 percent of it.
Response to yeoman6987 (Reply #344)
ieoeja This message was self-deleted by its author.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)Are you one of the mindset that wanted to, "turn the place into glass and let god sort them out"? Sure sounds like it from here.
Afghanistan tried to give Bin Laden to the US, they did not attack us either. Heroin production had been almost eradicated there before we attacked, now they are near top production again.
Why do you think that the military didn't do as you suggested? Because no one in the arms business here would make money off a quick 'war'. Why do you think it went on sooo long?
Geeze...
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)That's why Himmler, Tojo, and Saddam went to the gallows. FTW - Yes, I think all of them were guilty of horrible crimes. But I get to think that because we won.
ryan_cats
(2,061 posts)Himmler committed suicide when his disguise was discovered. He deserved to be hanged, very slowly.
Next in line in power after Hitler mistook his letter as treasonous, Goering committed suicide the night before he was to be hanged.
Besides the ones that were sentenced to death in Nuremberg and the other trials, a lot of high Nazis got away; how many ended up working for the USA is unknown at least to the general public.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)ryan_cats
(2,061 posts)Not enough unfortunately.
Although I would have left them in Buchenwald since the Nazis didn't destroy it. While it is UN-Christian of me, I think they deserved to be part of the system they set up and since the Nazis described it (gassing) as a humane way of murdering people, after the Nazi thugs were worked to near death as slave labor like the prisoners had to and starved as well, at least those that were deemed capable of work; others went straight to the gas chamber, they then deserved to take the same walk to the gas chambers millions of other innocent people did when they were no longer capable of work.
Too many got away.
The Nazi's defense was that it was all Hitler. Hitler didn't design the death camps, the gas chambers and crematoria nor did he make it seem that the victims were merely going for a delousing. They were told to neatly stack their clothes and remember where they were so they could find them after they had been 'deloused'. While Hitler was pure evil, he had no problem finding willing participants in his murderous schemes. A lot of these thugs had higher degrees and some had double PhDs, even Goebbels had a PhD.
A lot of Nazi higher ups merely removed their uniforms, had fake a ID and dressed as working men and a lot got away.
At least the Israelis found Eichmann who said he would leap into his grave laughing with millions of Jew's deaths on his conscience. To paraphrase a famous saying, I regret that he had but one life to give for his country. Israel found him guilty and hung him and he still got off easy. At least he gets to see what it's like to be in a crematoria, forever.
Every time I see a ThysonKrupp truck (they make and fix elevators) it reminds me of who the firms were that went out to the site, were told what the Nazi's needed (gas chambers and crematoria) and then these engineers sat down and designed the machinery of death. They deserved death as well, there was no way they didn't know what they were asked to design and build.
HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)to serve as sex slaves for occupying Japanese troops is the thing that puts them beyond the pale (speaking for myself personally). There's just no way to excuse that behavior under some kind of all-encompassing 'war is hell' rationale. It doesn't just violate Western cultural norms, it violates humanity's cultural norms.
cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)What's done is done.
The Link
(757 posts)Wednesdays
(17,317 posts)
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)the nature of the U-235 bomb dropped on Hiroshima would help prevent silly OPs like this one.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)just rationalize away murder? It's silly to say the atomic bomb didn't need to be dropped?
That's sick.
Orrex
(63,172 posts)Dr. Strange
(25,917 posts)surely violates the Geneva Convention.
Orrex
(63,172 posts)Damn you for suggesting otherwise.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Gosh, just the thought of that dog of a film makes me gag even now.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts) Orrex
(63,172 posts)Big fan of del Toro, though. Can't wait!
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Which means they did it right
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts) nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)it is pretty much in the theme of the Godzilla movies
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)commercials.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Hubby is a fan of the genre, so perfect for teens and grown up fans of the genre.
I enjoyed it... it was a good easy movie after covering a fire.
If you know anything about the genre all the archetypes are done well. My personal fav were the two scientists.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)We are currently waiting for 'The Walking Dead' recent season to DVD this month and just watched Ironman 3D, which was awesome!
I've gotten my 12 yo watching subtitled Asian action films!
Stay safe out there, Nadin!
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)A must watch.
Right now we are ok...
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)film for them, had forgotten about it. I see now that a remake may be in the works, not sure it could be the same or better. How do you improve such a classic?
Good to hear you are ok for now. 
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)The OP does seem to be engaged in a bit of hair splitting here. War is immoral. War is what you do after you missed all your opportunities to do the right thing. The OP seems to be trying to split out one act or another and claim it has crossed some sort of threshold of immorality.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)Fighting against military personnel is one thing, be it wrong or right, dropping nukes on civilian islands is another. There is a time for war, WWII being a prime example. There is never a time for burning a few hundred thousand innocent civilians. Ever.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)subjected to biological warfare? Chopped liver?
Your frothing-at-the-mouth support for fascists is very telling.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...they were terrorists, and we one upped them. YOUR selective outrage is telling. You're a true American.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)accomplish here but I'm happy to see it's not working in the slightest.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Dawgs
(14,755 posts)GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)In history there have been plenty of wars to annihilation. Genghis Khan did it a lot. In fact, the idea of a limited war in which each side fights like "gentlemen" is a fairly recent invention in human affairs. Until the last few centuries, victorious armies, upon taking an enemy city, were allowed to sack the city. Sack the city means the soldiers were allowed to plunder, rape, and kill as they pleased for a few days. That's what the Russians did to any German cities they took.
Nuking Japan was part of total war, and it brought about the end of the war.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)Dead is dead. Innocence is innocence.
History has nothing to do with what's right or wrong. We're not neanderthals.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...please just let me justify what we did so I can get back to American Idol.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)This suggests a second, more general conclusion.
lumpy
(13,704 posts)Seems to be a necessary ingredient.
Koios
(154 posts).... sans speculation on motive / morality:
1. It was a juggernaut, and the culmination of a huge effort ... which had legs of its own. Stopping it when it had come to fruition is itself an unlikely outcome.
2. At the time, we were losing near 10,000 US lives per month, overtures of the Japanese notwithstanding; and best estimates at the time were that via conventional means, it would have taken two more years to end the war. So the prospect of telling the families of some 240,000 dead children, that we had a war-ending super bomb we could have used two years prior, was unthinkable to all in the Truman Admin advising HST. So he gave the go to use it.
3. Truman was greatly angered that the second bomb was used without his direct orders. The military thought once they had the go-ahead, that their discretion alone was all that was needed to use the bombs where and when they wished. So Truman immediately created what we still have today: the button that only the President can push.
4. As awful as nukes are, they we not much worse, if as bad, as the incendiary bombing of Tokyo, which was truly devastating and utterly inhumane ... yet, did not result in Japanese surrender. So any with hindsight can speak to what the Japanese were saying at the time, and imagine whatever they wish. But from where the Truman Admin stood, what they saw was a Japan that would fight to the last man, woman and child, in a bloodbath that would have claimed 100s or 1000s of American lives.
So I side with Truman, and believe as awful as it was, the dropping of A bombs on Japan saved 100s of 1000s of American lives, and may have in the end, saved the lives of Japanese as well.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)Why not choose one of Japan's ininhabited islands, let them know what you were about to do as a demonstration and a final warning?
I can't believe you guys really think this was our only option. It's always the sane thing, people being led into committing atrocities because "they had no choice".
Koios
(154 posts)... because when you only have two of them, wasting one on mind games in hopes the Emperor would come around, is too risky a proposition ... which, too, was considered by the Truman Admin, and quickly dismissed. Here's why:
We'd invaded some outlying islands in the Japanese Archipelago, in bloody fighting to the last man. And we had every indication that the mother island would be even worse. The Japanese People had been fed all manner of fear propaganda, saying that if conquered, they'd be enslaved ... and it would be a fate worse then death. And it appeared, at the cost of 10,000 American lives per month, that indeed the Japanese People believed it and would fight to the death, never surrendering. Anyone can look back, and criticize. But looking forward, from where the Truman Admin was looking, was a far bleaker picture, than we see today.
And I believe wholeheartedly that what ended the war was fear on the part of the Emperor that he'd be vaporized. Nothing indicated to our officials, that he cared a bit about his People. It seemed only likely that he'd preserve his status, for as long as he had people to put between him and the American Military.
And despite MacArthur and Truman being bitter rivals, hating each other, Mac was a remarkable person to be put in charge of the Japanese Occupation, which had a benevolence that astonished the Japanese, proving the fear-mongering was entirely false. So warm relations were created almost overnight, which made the bombs seem barbaric ... in hindsight. Months before, we fear we were fighting a people, whose zealotry was unmitigated, and they'd fight to the last man, woman, child, infant, fetus, house pets ... in a bloodbath of historic proportion.
Fact. They did what they thought most moral, and I believe, within the context of when it was done, was indeed, a moral endeavor.
markiv
(1,489 posts)that's something i do agree on, drop it as close to tokyo that it can be seen and not denyed, but far enough away to not harm
then drop leaflets all over that have a pic of it with the caption
'any thoughts on where this goes if you dont surrender?'
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)But...after Nagasaki we were out...clear out. It would take months...so US troops would have had to invade with a million + estimated allied casualties. It was not just American troops...we were mostly spent. In that plan we had Mexican and Brazilian divisions set to hit the beaches on D-Day. They, together with the American divisions, were expected to hit 80+ percent casualties by day two and absent from the order of battle by day three.
Fun fact, Brazil had troops in Italy, and the Southern Atlantic front was as critical as the battle of the North Atlantic...Mexico had a combat fighter squadron in the pacific, with a high rate of kills. It joined the allies relatively late.
Koios
(154 posts)... until they went off, we were uncertain if both, or either, would work. So wasting even one for demonstration purposes, was unthinkable.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Hell, until Alamo Gordo they did not know if nature would round off.
Skidmore
(37,364 posts)Why are we obsessing about something that happened 70 some years ago? Who is planning on dropping an atom bomb this week anyway? Do we not have enough issues in the present to concentrate on?
Orrex
(63,172 posts)And check that guy's famously stopped watch.
Response to Skidmore (Reply #52)
Junkdrawer This message was self-deleted by its author.
JRLeft
(7,010 posts)super power. Do what we say or you will be next. We began pillaging countries years before the bombing but escalating US Imperialism to a massive degree since. It's 2013 and as of today US imperialism marches on without a hitch.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)They wanted an armistice. It would have left their militaristic government in power and the ability to rearm and try again in twenty years. They were ready to keep fighting to keep their gov't and not be occupied. Surrender is not something you try, it is something you do.
A warning blast? We had already burned dozens of Japanese cities, killing far more than the number killed in both A-bombs combined. At that point it was total war and had been for years.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)I didn't really grasp what he was saying, it all seemed like a movie, so far removed from my reality. After all, I was in my single digits and that was all I knew.
He finished with telling me how they finally made their way through China, with their road building equipment as the Japanese were forced to retreat.
He described having to bulldoze corpses piled 30 or 40 feet high and bury them in mass graves. It was not out of disrespect, but in that apocalyptic scene, the victims were reduced to nothing more than noisome flesh, the story of their lives and their humanity long gone.
None of that assauged my feelings of horror and guilt over the bombings, as we were regularly shown these on the dates that commemorated these events on PBS. Then one year, watching Bill Moyers with his guest that year, I was shocked out of the familiar self-flagellation ritual.
Because he was interviewing a Japanese general (admiral, whatever) that day. It was apparent Moyers was shocked by his response. Recent news stories of some of these old guys supporting the practice of rape to keep up troop morale, had to have come from this guy's generation that were in charge of things in Japan.
Moyers went into the familiar questions. Then he asked the man if he held the nuclear bombing against the American government, did he see it as a crime against humanity...
It was the elderly man's matter-of-fact answer that chilled me to the bone, and why I never forgot that program:
'If we had gotten the atomic bomb first, we surely would have used it on you.'
That threw Moyers and he had difficulty grasping it, or so I remember it. And me, having been told for years Japan was the victim in that case. But it was about their leaders at the time, not their women and children, and they didn't think the death of their people was too much to pay.
I couldn't imagine that kind of thinking process, but it was a race to destruction, who would get the atomic bomb first, just as history had said it was. WW2 amounted to the death of millions. We have the luxury of not being forced to live that reality, in those days. I think the jubiliation of the end of the war was not about victory as much as the joy of returning to peace.
It is tragic that from that desire for peace or fear of war, that we have built an establishment that feeds on war. But I am seeing the demise of that from my view, and we can aim our energies elsewhere.
Those of us with the luxury of sitting safely being behind keyboards in the world largely built by that generation, and making lofty moral statments about times they have not lived in, are indulging themselves with a flawed sense of reasoning.
These were realities most of us never had to face. May it never come again.
tumtum
(438 posts)I watched that Moyer's interview also and like you, that Japanese officer's answer chilled me to the bone.
I've no doubt that if Hitler had gotten the bomb first, NYC would have been his first target, if I remember rightly, the Nazi's were building a long range strategic bomber for just such a mission.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)And they never got it beyond a one way trip...
TeamPooka
(24,208 posts)Every man woman and child on the island was being trained to defend the country from our upcoming invasion.
Thats a fact.
You can make up stuff but that doesn't make it true.
brooklynite
(94,358 posts)What military tactics in WW 2 were acceptable to you?
HardTimes99
(2,049 posts)do and got only resounding silence. The estimate that 1 million American servicemen would have died and probably an equal or larger number of Japanese military and civilian casualties in a conventional invasion never enters the calculations.
Easy to Monday morning armchair quarterback. And you deserve compliments for boiling it down to its core.
RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)Interesting, given recent events in American history.
tumtum
(438 posts)Every man, woman and child were being trained to resist and kill as many American troops as possible, women and children were being taught how to use a bamboo spear to skewer American troops.
The Japanese were quite willing and prepared to have their population annihilated to prevent an American occupation of their homeland.
RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)The notion that not a single person amongst those thousands slaughtered was an innocent civilian is absolutely ludicrous. Your logic is no different from a terrorist radical who hates all Americans because of the actions of our corporate empire abroad.
RebelOne
(30,947 posts)If the U.S. was threatened with invasion, I am sure every "innocent" civilian would fight to the death to protect our country. I know I would.
liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)occupation. If foreign troops walked onto my property and my children and I were alone would my children and I not pick up anything we could to defend ourselves? Of course we would. I'm sure there were women and children defending themselves against foreign troops during the American Revolution.
godai
(2,902 posts)Your need to rationalize this act of terror is obvious.
tumtum
(438 posts)I don't really give a hoot what you think of me, my dad is alive today because Truman made the difficult decision to drop the bombs and force the Japanese to surrender rather than commence an all out invasion of Japan, which my dad was tasked to be in the first wave to hit the beaches.
You know what the estimated casualty rate was for the first wave? 100%.
So I really don't give a fuck what the revisionists here say about the bombing of Japan.
By the way, those 2 cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? They had important military assests in them, so they were legitimate targets.
godai
(2,902 posts)I have no anger, only huge regrets for the tens of thousands of innocent women and children killed. But, your dad's alive and, apparently, that's all that matters.
tumtum
(438 posts)I'm disgusted by some of the shit I'm reading here.
I'm supposed to feel guilt because the US dropped 2 bombs on a nation that was committed to the destruction of our nation? Was going to do it's best to kill my dad? Was committing wholesale genocide?
You're damned right all that mattered to me and my siblings is that our dad came home alive to father us.
I regret that Japan put the US in the position to have to use the bombs, I regret that Japan killed millions upon millions of people throughout the planet, but those Japanese lives weighed against my dad's life?
Sorry, but my dad's life will win out every time.
And by the way, my parents are both gone.
You may not like my answer, but guess what? I. Don't. Care.
godai
(2,902 posts)Japan did not kill millions of people (civilians). Hitler did.
tumtum
(438 posts)Japan didn't murder/kill millions of people (civilians)? Are you really claiming that?
The Chinese would beg to differ.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
You want to re-think your comment about the Japanese not murdering/killing millions of civilians?
godai
(2,902 posts)No doubt, the Japanese military was brutal. Germans, from your numbers, killed 26 million, including 6 million definite civilians. I'll never defend the Japanese military but, back to the subject, the A bombs were criminal acts against mostly civilians. Gen. LeMay (carpet fire bombing of Japanese cities) said that he would have been guilty of war crimes, had the US lost the war. Carpet bombing of German cities was just as bad.
The numbers you list include military deaths but, no doubt, many civilians. Interesting that the word 'slaughtered' is used.
So, are you mainly disgusted against the Japanese?
tumtum
(438 posts)I don't feel guilt for Truman using the A bomb against the Japanese, you already know my position on it.
If Germany or Japan had developed the bomb before we did, they surly would have used it against us.
We were in a fight for our lives and survival and every weapon that could be used to win the war was on the table, rightly so, so don't even try to feed me that collective guilt crap.
I'm here, able to post, because Truman had the guts to use a weapon that would hasten the end of the war and save my father's life, and I will never apologize for my views.
godai
(2,902 posts)tumtum
(438 posts)You have your POV, I have mine, let's leave it at that.
Response to tumtum (Reply #430)
godai This message was self-deleted by its author.
Response to godai (Reply #405)
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kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)This reminds me of the attacks on the horrible Trayvon Martin and how he had no right to fight back against the man who was stalking him like prey. He was attacked, and had every right to defend himself (standing HIS ground) with lethal force if needed.
Here's a clue for you: Japan attacked US with lethal force, and as a result we had the right to beat them to a bloody pulp and kill them if necessary.
RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)
Here's a clue for you: Japan attacked US with lethal force, and as a result we had the right to beat them to a bloody pulp and kill them if necessary.
Thanks for the history lesson. I was unaware that Japan attacked the US. So, you're clearly okay with justifying the slaughter of of innocent civilians by citing their government's actions. Very interesting rational.
4Q2u2
(1,406 posts)How did the Japanese Government get into power? Those action of their Government were on behalf of the people of Japan.
How did all those planes, ships, and weapons get made? How did the Japanese people think these things were going to be used? Where did all the Soldiers and Sailors in the Japanese Military come from?
RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)4Q2u2
(1,406 posts)If you think they were war crimes then by all means we are all guilty. We did not as a people stop "Our Government" from doing something that we either thought was illegal and or immoral. "Our" elected representation in Congress voted to give the President that far reaching authority to engage in Military Conflict as he saw fit. We as a people failed. We failed ourselves, our members who serve in the Military, and we failed our children's future by exposing them to easier Warfare and greater retaliations.
RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)would be justified in nuking us.
I think I understand, now.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)I can't believe have the shit I read on DU someday's. It's truly scary.
4Q2u2
(1,406 posts)If Al Qaida gets their hands on a Nuke they will use it on us. They already had justification in their heads long before Iraq happened, but they will use it none the less. Point of view has always been on whose Ox is being gored.
You think you understand because your Arm Chair is so comfy and easy. When you are done with those 20/20 hindsight glasses I could use them, there are somethings in life I would love to recreate to fit my vision on how the entire world should see them.
Knock, Knock
Who's there
Apples
Oranges Who?
Aren't you glad I did not compare the two.
treestar
(82,383 posts)
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)The total death toll of the war would have been greatly reduced.
Sotf
(76 posts)Sure is easy to look back with "what we know now" with your obvious bias...
Hydra
(14,459 posts)And I have to say, the blatant hypocrisy is astounding. It's unjustified and a war crime when someone else does it to us, but it's a-ok when we do it to someone else.
Moral compass? I wonder if we ever had one...
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)The club of Americans who despise America because America isn't as perfect as they think she ought to be. The club of no matter what America does as a nation, America is wrong. If we do nothing we're wrong. If we do something, then we're wrong because we didn't do enough, or we did too much.
If the bomb has been available 6-12 months sooner, or the war lasted 6-12 months longer, then Berlin would have been the first target. Those on the Left who now condemn the use of the bombs on Japan would not have said a thing about their use on Germany. Their attitude would have been that the dirty Fascists got what they deserved.
The Nazis were executing people faster toward the end of the war in the concentration camps because they had perfected the mechanical means of the Holocaust. How many Jews, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and others might have been saved if the war in Europe had ended 6-12 months sooner?
Those scientists who worked on the bomb (many of the Jewish refugees from Hitler) did not seem to develop scruples until it was clear that Germany would no longer be the target. They knew for a fact that Berlin, and its civilians would certainly be the main target. They certainly didn’t have any concerns about German civilians being killed.
And for those who cry moral outrage I see no difference between the fire-bombing of Dresden, Tokyo and other Japanese cities and the atomic bombings. Dead is dead.
The Japanese were just as bad as the Nazis. But too many people weep tears for the “victims" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as if the Japanese did nothing to start the war in Asia. The Chinese suffered between 20-35 million casualties during the Japanese invasion of China (1937-1945). The Japanese forced Korean women into sexual slavery as “comfort women” in field brothels where the women were forced to sexually service, as many as 70 Japanese soldiers a day. In other words these women were raped 70 times a day for yeasr on end. Everywhere the Japanese conquered, they acted like barbarians toward Allied POWS and civilians. The Japanese beat, starved, tortured and executed men and women. They used living human beings as living test subjects in their infamous biological warfare Unit 731.
People these days find it easy to take some moral high-ground when they are not involved in a war to the knife for the future of civilization. Hindsight is easy.
Some Generals and Admirals in the field might have had reservations, but when Truman and his top political and military advisors met, there never was any discussion about NOT using the bomb. As soon as it was ready it was going to be used.
And here's a good post from DU2 Archives which expands on what I posted above.
The grave injustice of COMMEMORATING victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)It's interest how people are able to gloss over Japanese and Nazi atrocities.
4Q2u2
(1,406 posts)and had to do the fighting. Not the Top Brass thousands of miles away.
"The Japanese taught their soldiers that to be a U.S. Marine, you had to kill your parents. They were told a lot of very bad things. They would not surrender to the Marines. At the end of the island was a cliff, and they would run and jump off the cliff or be shot and die rather than surrender to a Marine,” Fornes said
http://www.emmetcounty.org/vic-fornes,-wwii-532/
Rex
(65,616 posts)Get over yourself, you do nothing here but stir the shit. What a waste of time you thread is.
Vinnie From Indy
(10,820 posts)Invading the home islands would have been a ghastly affair and undoubtedly led to many more deaths than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.
think
(11,641 posts)War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler. In them, Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests commercially benefit from warfare.
~Snip~
The book is also interesting historically as Butler points out in 1935 that the US is engaging in military war games in the Pacific that are bound to provoke the Japanese.
"The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles."
Butler explains that the excuse for the buildup of the US fleet and the war games is fear that "the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people."..
~Snip~
Full entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
Smedley Darlington Butler[1] (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940) was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps (the highest rank authorized at that time), an outspoken critic of U.S. military adventurism, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I.
By the end of his career, he had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to twice receive the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. In his 1935 book War is a Racket, he described the workings of the military-industrial complex and, after retiring from service, became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s...
Full entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)In 1937 and killed 20-25 million Chinese?
You're also part of the club of "Blame America First, Last and Always".
think
(11,641 posts)Sorry you find it offensive to look at our involvement as eye witnessed from this General.
I don't hold the Japanese blameless nor do I hold the US blameless.
But thanks for labeling me. I appreciate the insults....
Rex
(65,616 posts)they are talking about. History has proven war is a racket. If people keep their heads buried in the sand, they should not be too surprised when their butt gets blown off.
War is a racket.
think
(11,641 posts)While being actively anti war since my late teens I must admit it is only in the past few years that I have begun to learn the roots of war and their lengthy history.
It surely isn't taught to us in public schools in our pre-college learning experience. What little college eduction I do have did touch on the subject but that was more a perspective of one of my professors rather than the actual text that we were told to buy and read. Perhaps if I'd gone to the right college I'd learned more.
To that end I understand that posting information that contradicts what we've been told to learn tends to meet with a certain amount of enthusiastic disapproval.
As long as war is profitable it will most certainly also be a racket... (IMO)
Rex
(65,616 posts)World History. It is not covered in the textbooks in great detail...just certain, famous battles. Thankfully, most of my young students thought war was a huge waste of resources and human lives. Which told me that the newer generations know how much BS modern wars are. A good sign imo, this was back in 2007.
think
(11,641 posts)Historical Encyclopedia of American Business
Significance: The United States forcefully entered into a trade treaty with Japan in 1853 to bolster its profitable trade with China. From that time until World War II, Japan was an important U.S. trading partner, and after the war, American exports helped rebuild Japan. Beginning in 1965, Japan began to export more to the United States than it imported, raising American trade fears during the 1970's and 1980's. By 2008, Japan had become America's fourth-largest trading partner.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Japanese ports were closed to all but some Dutch and Chinese traders. However, American business interests had begun expanding across the Pacific Ocean into China, so the United States wanted to establish trade relations with Japan to gain bases for its China trade. On July 14, 1853, U.S. Navy commodore Matthew C. Perry led a squadron of ships to land at a harbor near present-day Tokyo. Perry conveyed American demands for a trade agreement to a reluctant Japanese government. He was subsequently credited for opening Japan to Western trade. Significant Japanese trade with the United States began with the Tariff Treaty of 1866, which set import and export duties, allowing only a 5 percent duty to be placed on goods imported to Japan, and permitted American merchants to deal directly with their Japanese counterparts.
~Snip~
Trade between America and Japan led to collaboration on economic policy. In 1899, Japan supported America's Open Door Policy to keep China accessible to international trade. In 1904, American banks sold $350 million of Japanese war bonds to help finance Japan's successful 1904-1905 war with Russia. In 1911, the United States accepted Japan's tariff autonomy when that country modestly raised import duties.
http://salempress.com/store/samples/american_business/american_business_japanese.htm
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)is hell.
Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)
<- Poe's law and all....
malaise
(268,706 posts)and I don't care who does it. It was genocide pure and simple.
Koios
(154 posts)... if we were attempting genocide, how can you explain the benevolence of our occupation post surrender, even allowing the Emperor to remain intact, albeit, slightly diminished (royalty, but not a god)
malaise
(268,706 posts)Innocent people were slaughtered and all the myths about peace are BS. It was fuggin' evil.
Koios
(154 posts)... albeit, Morale Bombing was the term used then.
But calling it genocide is 1) grossly overstated and patently wrong; and 2) ignorant of our post surrender occupation.
Response to Phillyindy (Original post)
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geckosfeet
(9,644 posts)an impossibly difficult decision - yes.
Koios
(154 posts)... unquestionably. Japan attacked us. That's all the justification needed, today or then. And that was indeed the justification Truman stated, unambiguously. As for whether is was moral (saved lives in the balance) that can be debated, sort of ... nay, not even. IT DID save lives, Anmerican and Japanese.
liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)But I'm sure people will find ways to justify it to themselves. It's always wrong when someone else does it, but it's always okay when we do it. We are not capable of reflecting on what we have done and admitting we are wrong.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)and I'm not sure why you think I have.
I agree that "there is no justification for incinerating hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, many of them women, children and babies."
I agree that "it takes a special kind of arrogant, shameless inhumanity to try to do so."
I've never tried to justify it.
As a matter of fact, I am aware of the fact that the United States was the first nation to develop nuclear weapons, and the only nation to use them against others.
I consider that, and our use of "dirty bombs" as well, to be not shameless, but shameful.
La Lioness Priyanka
(53,866 posts)perdita9
(1,144 posts)WWII in the South Pacific was nasty. I have an uncle who fought there and was forever damaged from what he saw.
Taking Japan with troops would have cost much in $ and lives. I don't think we have the right to judge this event -- we didn't experience that war.
eggplant
(3,908 posts)Is there any point to this thread other than having people shout past each other?
Yikes.
Stay tuned for the annual Thanksgiving blood-letting in November.
eggplant
(3,908 posts)It isn't even popcorn-worthy.
godai
(2,902 posts)eggplant
(3,908 posts)<insert comment about the pros and cons of nuking all of these threads here>
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)This
or this
Looks about the same.
JaneFordA
(141 posts)that we would lose one million casualties with a conventional invasion. Now let me see, war lover that I obviously am (for disagreeing here), what this means.
One million of our boys or a couple of bombs.
That's a simple math I favor to this day.
By the way, I shed no tears of the bombings in Germany, either. When you gate-crash someone else's party, you might just encounter some blowback.
iandhr
(6,852 posts)He was in a POW camp for two and half years under the most barbaric conditions.
More people died in the conventional bombing of Tokyo and Dresden then in the A-Bobmb attack. Most people don't know that.
If we invaded Japan it would have cost the lives of tens of thousands of Americans.
treestar
(82,383 posts)The gun people are saying you should never even take the gun out unless you are going to shoot it and that you then must shoot to kill. I guess hold ups are for TV or dumb criminals only.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Any use of a gun against a person has the risk of killing that person. Even a shot that is aimed to merely wound has the potential of killing the person. Therefore, you must NEVER shoot unless you are ready to bear the responsibility for their death. If you aren't ready for that then keep your hands off the gun.
The only reason for shooting someone is that they are doing something so evil that they must be stopped, immediately, even if they die as a result of being stopped. Stopped means rendered incapable of further agression. Since people can absorb minor wounds and even major wounds and still stay in the fight you must aim for incapacitating wounds. That means that you have to aim for center-mass.
You can only fire when you are in the gravest extreme. A warning shot, or deliberate shot to wound, is an attempt to stop by persuasion. You are trying to persuade them, by extreme means, to stop. That means that you also have the time to evaluate whether or not they have been persuaded and then to fire for effect if needed. Since you did have that much time, then you were not yet in the gravest extreme. You were not out of options. Legally, you fired too soon, and may be subject to legal action against you.
So you keep you hands off the gun until you are out of options, then shoot for center mass. Your intention is always to stop him, never deliberately shooting to kill him. If he does die, that is his tough luck.
That is the way self-defense with deadly force law works.
Mr Dixon
(1,185 posts)Too bad most people still believe the propaganda 
adicortez
(47 posts)Given the benefit of hindsight there are so many things we would change (like invading Iraq and those damned imaginary WMDs). The bombs were used- the war ended. War always sucks and I’ve been in 3 of them.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...aren't benefiting from hindsight when it comes to this particular atrocity.
Response to Phillyindy (Original post)
ieoeja This message was self-deleted by its author.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)leftynyc
(26,060 posts)You don't get to proclaim somebody a right winger because they don't agree with you. Did you or anyone in your family fight WWII? Did the nazis throw your relatives into ovens after gassing them? Take your moral superiority schtick someplace else. Nobody here is interested.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)Not because he didnt agree with me, but because his armchair tough guy kill em all attitude would be much more appreciated there.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)and this thread I'm compelled to point out that you're trying to lay a guilt trip on people who are not dancing on anybody's grave. And you didn't answer my question - did anyone in your family fight or die in WWII? On either side?
Phillyindy
(406 posts)I'm not laying a guilt trip, my post was quite clear. You can't justify nuking civilians. Don't agree, your option. The only guilt you feel is your own.
And yes, both of my grandfathers served in WWII, and that has zero to do with the fact this was an atrocity. The fact that maybe I wouldn't be here otherwise is irrelevant to the discussion, unless I wanted to allow personal biases to shape my morality...as many here are doing.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)Personal biases ALWAYS shape morality - you pretending otherwise is so completely dishonest I would would laugh if this weren't such a serious subject. Seems you would have slept better if we had gone in as a conventional invasion - something that's been pointed out over and over again that might have killed many more people on both sides. And I feel no guilt over something that happened 15 years before I was born. Do you think the Germans alive today should be feeling guilt and shame over what their government did? Just how long should the guilt last for them?
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...you sure keep talking it a lot.
And for the last time, this post was never about guilt. I was responding to people justifying Hiroshima with my opinion that it can't be justified. You jumping on me for making YOU feel guilty can only mean you were one if them...or you just didnt comprehend the original post.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)We go through this shit every single year - there is always someone who wants to second guess something that happened decades ago thinking they're the ones who have all the morality and everyone else is a warmongering asshole. Sorry, you're simply not unique in the slightest and I find it completely nauseating that you find anything about this subject to laugh at.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...already sharpening their pens to use that same bs rhetoric to justify Iraq. Can you hear it now? "You had to be there...it was post 9-11...a crazy time....we didnt have a choice...saddam did way worse to his people then we did.." Blah blah blah. And in 50 years that will become the predominate populist opinion...and people like me who speak to its bullsh it will be met by people like you trying to bully me into submission and conformity.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)It's okay if America's the bad guys.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)shows what an immature, shallow, simpleminded thinker you are. I've wasted enough time on you.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...was the way future Anericans like you will be justifying the Iraq War and screaming at anyone who thinks it was war crime that they are "arm chair quarterbacks" and "rivisionists".
Lmao...if you listen to Americans, you'd think this poor country got dragged kicking and screaming into every war, reluctantly...that we got to be #1 in this world with troops on every continent by being the good guys, the nice guys.
That we didnt want to drop not 1, but 2 nukes on civilians but gosh dangit...we had no choice!
Wake up man, seriously.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)Your crystal ball routine is boring. And I'm a woman.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...a crystal ball to predict that in 50 years the prevailing view will be Iraq was a "difficult call in a dangerous time, and the right one"...one only needs to know Anerican history - its the same thing over and over.
Look at this thread...bunch of chest thumpers convinced we had no choice but to drop 2 nukes on civilians, our hands were tied.
Amazing really.
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)people still think saving up to a million American lives was worth it. It'll be the same in 150 years. But you're making a very false comparison. For one, Iraq didn't invade us, Japan did. For another, the only people who were against Americans getting involved in WWII were those who were making money from the nazis - that was hardly the case when there were hundreds of thousands in the streets trying to stop the invasion of Iraq. You're making comparisons where none exist and you're doing it in a foolish way (trying to predict a very unpredictable future).
treestar
(82,383 posts)that there were no WMDs. The records will be much more detailed and thorough for people at that time.
Further there is another difference. The justification for going to war, vs. a weapon used during the war (and to end it).
treestar
(82,383 posts)Troops on every continent happened after that. We were wanted there, to help defend various countries from the Commies. We were a wealthy country perceived as the good guys.
sabbat hunter
(6,827 posts)with conventional bombs dropped by the US than the atomic weapons, during WW2.
Japan was not about to surrender before the dropping of the bombs.
Using the Abomb saved both US and Japanese lives.
MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)Not only in Japan, but also in Germany?
And as for the OP.
The battles on those tiny islands in the Pacific were some of the most brutal of the war. For both sides.
Handfuls of Japanese troops held out longer than expected and fought to the death against overwhelming numbers of US troops.
Imagine our troops invading Japan proper.
It would have been a bloodbath like none we've ever seen.
And the death toll on both sides would have made the death tolls from Nagasaki and Hiroshima pale in comparison.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)and the bombing of Dresden was pretty brutal too.
There was mostly evil intent in all those bombings including the atomic bombings.
EX500rider
(10,809 posts)Last edited Tue Aug 6, 2013, 06:04 PM - Edit history (1)
What does that even mean?
We didn't wish them well with 1,000 plane raids?
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)normal rules of war. And yes, obviously, the other guys did bad stuff. But we were supposed to be the good guys, is the point.
EX500rider
(10,809 posts)The "Normal Rules of War" throughout history include the sack and rape and burning to the ground of entire cities with the inhabitants heads neatly stacked outside.
In the European Theater the targets the US 8th Air Force picked were generally targets of military value, like plane production or oil or ball-bearing plants. Most were placed in cities and bomb accuracy at the time was measured in miles. Other targets like railroad junctions, airfields, ports and bridges were usually in populated areas. Everyone just thinks it was "Target Berlin" when actually if you were at the briefing the target was actually the VKF ball-bearing plant at Erkner or the like. (not speaking about the British effort which done at night was more Target Berlin)
Even by 1944 the Germans were still producing over 3,000 combat planes a month. Do you do nothing to stop that and let them ramp up production instead? What if at 10,000 planes a month they can hold us off? In this kind of modern mechanized Total War the means of production are target #1. You can refuse to bomb them and instead have to kill 10 million German at the front in the planes and tanks you didn't bomb or plan B, you can kill a million in cities near strategic targets and 2 million at the front until they run out of planes and tanks and surrender with 7 million less dead Germans.
And with a draft inforced by the Gestapo you can't say the dead soldiers at the front were any more willing participants then the civilians back in the war plants.
Now the Pacific theater was a little different once LeMay took over, he just wanted to burn all the major japanese cities to the ground and pretty much did so. The Japanese had shifted production to cottage industry by then to decentralize production so the cities them selves had become the production centers. I think they should have stuck to strategic targets, killing civilians by accident is morally above killing them on purpose to me, even if the numbers are the same. I would have dropped the A-bomb on a fleet anchorage or large military base.
shawn703
(2,702 posts)They had five days to get their government to surrender or get the fuck out of Dodge.
EX500rider
(10,809 posts)“Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. In the next few days, some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs. These cities contain military installations and workshops or factories which produce military goods. We are determined to destroy all of the tools of the military clique which they are using to prolong this useless war. But, unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America’s humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives. America is not fighting the Japanese people but is fighting the military clique which has enslaved the Japanese people. The peace which America will bring will free the people from the oppression of the military clique and mean the emergence of a new and better Japan. You can restore peace by demanding new and good leaders who will end the war. We cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked but some or all of them will be, so heed this warning and evacuate these cities immediately.”
Nobody wants to talk about that, we even warned them 5 days before.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)...depressing. Justifying, even applauding, mass murder of thousands of innocent women, children and babies.
And just think...this is a Democrat website.
Makes you appreciate just why this country is so fucked in so many ways. Mostly a bunch of apes with IPhones.
Response to Phillyindy (Reply #225)
ieoeja This message was self-deleted by its author.
treestar
(82,383 posts)Under the bridge
Response to treestar (Reply #251)
ieoeja This message was self-deleted by its author.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)Meant that even with our technology we are basically still cavemen. How you saw racism in that says a lot about you.
Zoeisright
(8,339 posts)Pathetic.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)But, like many have said, it sadly was the least-horrible of some pretty horrible options. Even though it was atrocious, it probably saved more lives in the long run; not just from the American side, but of Japanese civilians and Chinese and Korean civilians under Japanese rule during a Soviet invasion.
The worst thing we can do is trivialize it as a barbaric act of mass murder, rather than appreciate the historical context of its use. If we simply try to write it off as a horrific act with no justification, then we're going to end up finding ourselves in a position where we may have to do it again because we failed to see the factors that led us to drop the bombs the first time.
MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)And well said.
RedSpartan
(1,693 posts)It is a Democratic website, as the name implies.
Only Republicans or trolls call it the "Democrat" Party.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Besides your ignorant rants...any day.
Response to Phillyindy (Reply #225)
ieoeja This message was self-deleted by its author.
Orrex
(63,172 posts)Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)One of the horrible responsibilities of being in charge is that the least terrible of a short list
of awful alternatives has to be picked. Men and women in charge have to do that sort of
thing, often to regrettable outcomes, and they do so in ignorance (thank god) to what
children like yourself think 60+ years later.
Response to Phillyindy (Reply #225)
Name removed Message auto-removed
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Last edited Tue Aug 6, 2013, 05:15 PM - Edit history (1)
and not use the language you use when posting on Free Republic.
DU isn't a "Democrat" website. DU is a Democratic web site.
And apparently, you need to learn math. Estimates of casualties from Operation Downfall were 1M allied casualties and 10M-50M Japanese. Including Japanese civilians.
And the Japanese high command, including the Emperor, were still seeking a brutal battle that would convince the allies to stop fighting. They were not seeking to surrender.
To claim we could just "wait them out" is to be utterly ignorant of history. Which isn't terribly surprising from someone who uses "Democrat website".
LittleGirl
(8,279 posts)this back in grade school. I couldn't comprehend how the US could kill so many people so quickly and twice! It still saddens me that our government did this to those poor people. And don't even get me started on GITMO or the torture crap from the last decade (and Manning) or the current wars and drones. etc etc. And all the republicans want to do is starve the poor while they feed the MIC.
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)
皆 の ため の 祈り
think
(11,641 posts)(I cheated and used Google to translate)
The picture is beautiful as well.
AsahinaKimi
(20,776 posts)last night..
think
(11,641 posts)reminds us what it is truly all about.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)then I started seeing all the people here that still defend that terrible action. Just amazingly sick.
Phillyindy
(406 posts)Eye opener to me. Seriously thinking about not coming here anymore. I don't know what this website is, but an enlightened, progressive site it is not.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)way more obnoxious ones than I recall from when I first started visiting
GalaxyHunter
(271 posts)How long do you think it will be before all religions in the world can "coexist"?
for thousands of years they have been at war with each other on who is right, do you believe there will be a time when there will not be any more religious wars?
I just find this "coexist" stuff funny. I personally feel that they will never "coexist" without fighting each other.
NoMoreWarNow
(1,259 posts)If I had my druthers, I would be happy to get rid of religion altogether. I am an atheist. So I agree religions are a source of much conflict, in one way or another.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Last edited Tue Aug 6, 2013, 05:16 PM - Edit history (1)
Boy, how moral of you. But hey, at least they would have died in smaller groups over 2 years.
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)wercal
(1,370 posts)For starters, the US was already killing hundreds of thousands of civilians - through firebombing.
But then look at prior experience with invading Japanese islands:
Okinawa - up to 150,000 civilians were killed, and 94% of Japanese troops were killed.
Iwo Jima - 99% of Japanese troops were killed.
What logical conclusion would this lead you to? Oh, the Japanese were on the verge of surrender? Of course not. The fighting for these two islands had been unprecedented, and we could only expect it to get tougher on the main island. Nothing points to a Japanese propensity to surrender.
Hell, they didn't even surrender AFTER Hiroshima. It took a second bomb to get a surrender.
As to the target selection, the history books paint a clear picture. We had already demonstrated that we could kill tens of thousands of people in firebombing raids...and the Japanese didn't surrender. So, the idea was to demonstrate the power of the A bomb, as a psychological blow, so they understood there was no point in continuing to fight (this by the way probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides). Deploying the A-Bomb in an empty field would not demonstrate its capabilities. Not even deploying it in a previously bombed out city would work. So, a city was picked that had been largely untouched by the war. There were still military targets within the city, but the untouched city was the real target.
Leaflets were dropped for months. And then the bomb was dropped. The bombing of Hiroshima was not extraordinarily more dreadful or deadly than other bombing runs - the fire bombing of Tokyo killed 125k in one night...and the bombing lasted many nights. The point of the A Bomb wasn't to kill more civilians than usual...it was to do it in an instant. And that's what it took to get a surrender...well it took two demonstrations.
I'm not sure why you're so convinced the Japanese would have suddenly surrendered, without an invasion. And I think you are completely discounting what the Russians may have been capable of doing to the Japanese. Doesn't it make the most sense to end the war ASAP? Well, that's what the A bomb did. Theories that prolonging it would have somehow been more humane and less deadly are the worst form of Monday morning quarterbacking.
Socal31
(2,484 posts)Or the leveling of Dresden and most of Germany?
It isn't a justification, but it seems that as we get further away from the event, it is easier to Monday morning quarterback it.
None of us here are responsible for the decision, why people get so hostile about it is beyond me. It was a sick time in history all around. Japanese Internment camps are not our most shining moment, either.
But I promise you, in the race to be the tallest midget, the Allies won in that era. The acts that Japan, Germany, Stalin, and Eastern Bloc Nazi-sympathizers committed were atrocious.
branford
(4,462 posts)I do not give much credit to the self-righteous ramblings of a historical armchair general who has no responsibility for the actual lives of real people and the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
The bombings of cities and civilian targets by all sides during the war were brutal, particularly the fire-bombings over cities like London, Dresden Tokyo. These bombing resulted in a far greater number of deaths, injuries and ruined lives than Hiroshima and Nagaski combined. The atomic bombs were not magical. We simply developed a superior weapon, and ultimately utilized it in a manner consistent with the conduct of all sides during the war, for the express purpose of very quickly ending the war and saving American and allied lives (as well as countess more Japanese lives than would have been lost in the inevitable invasion).
Yes, by today's standards, these bombing would be considered war crimes. However, it is far easy to look back with our comfortable lives and substantially evolved military rules and norms and forget the brutality of WWII - the tens of millions of lives lost, the widespread brutality of the Axis, including genocidal policies of Hitler and the Japanese, the treatment of our POWs in Asia and the lives and treasure that would have been lost in any conventional campaign to defeat the Japanese. The threat of Stalin and his capture of additional territory, and the treatment of those who would fall under his dictatorship, was also a valid military and political consideration.
By God, I hope no future president ever has to consider the factors and repercussions that confronted Truman. Nevertheless, his decision was correct.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)TO THE YALU and that Operation Olympic wasn't ready until spring 1946, and closeted talks with the Emperor could've happened way before even Operation Coronet) the biggest change of WWII (and magnified a thousandfold in Arms Race) was that no matter which human side believes it's "won" in a war, it's the machines who win and the humans lose: in the name of this or that doctrine and strategy, the soft, loving, fearing, hating creatures produce machines that can kill a plurality of multicellular life and surrender themselves to the machines: they think like the machines they create and they create military bureaucratic structures that can come to agreements that absolutely none of the members want--that, in fact, nobody on both sides wants: it produces depravities that torture cannot, and allows for fully absconding responsibility via bloodless, sanitary technocracy
machines are made to be used, and their use is their justification: you're supposed to push the Button
machines are amoral and see people as numbers
machines do not cry for those they kill: they deserved it because they're dead (not even because "they started it by not overthrowing Hitler/the Kwantung Army camarillas"
this is what drives most significant immediate postwar SF: Pynchon, Vonnegut, Kubrick (see http://books.google.com/books?id=r5p4Ko4oP2cC)
of course, I'm a historian from an Allied-Axis family, so I know about total war from all sides
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)that wouldn't surrender, period. Yeah people got killed and yes a lots were civilians. Just whom do you think was building the materials for war Santa Claus. Its not already well established Japan would surrender as you say....read up on Saipan & Okinowa they fought to the death there.
Emperor Hirohito personally found the threat of defection of Japanese civilians disturbing, he decreed they should kil themselves first. They were low class civilians worhtless in the yes of their Emperor. Tojo the Prime Minister saw the defeat in terms of the opening of the attack on the home islands.He vews the war lost but did nothing to get rid of his cabinet. In fact the Emperor wouldn't let him resign at first. Make no mistake Hirohito was very much in control. People apologize for him he should have been tried as a war criminal, like he was, he threw away his people lives in a gambit to save his own.
My father was scheduled for the invasion landings on the mainland too. He didn't talk much other that to say the end was very bloody on Saipan & Okinowa. There were estimates of more than 200000 American casualities to invade Japan.
jimlup
(7,968 posts)That other bombings were just as bad does not justify these. (This seems to be the primary argument on DU today.) Immorality is immorality regardless of who or what else is happening.
branford
(4,462 posts)Today is not 1945. Was the bombing moral and correct in 1945 in light all circumstances and the prevailing notions of warfare and ethics?
It's easy to sit anonymously and comfortably in front of your computer today and casually dismiss the soldiers, sailors and airmen who would have given their lives in an invasion of Japan to achieve the results obtained with two bombs. The servicemen were the parents and grandparents of many members here at DU.
Do not forget that civilian attacks and casualties were the norm by all sides in WWII, unlike anything today. They had occurred and would continue to occur even if the bombs were not dropped.
More reflection and less self-righteousness would serve you well.
jimlup
(7,968 posts)Calling me "self righteous" is not indicated. You have no basis for that statement. You don't know me so you can't judge.
Perhaps you should consider the morality of dropping a bomb that kills over 100000 human beings. If that sits well with you then so be it. I don't see it ever regardless of the circumstances but maybe that's just me. If so I proudly continue to stand where I stand.
branford
(4,462 posts)particularly given the polarized opinions even on a progressive forum like DU, how else would you describe it other than "self-righteous."
I understand that feel you strongly on the matter, and I have no reason to believe you are anything but a good person who means well, but the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not a simple, black and white decision.
I hope both you and I (and any future president) are never faced with such a gut-wrenching choice!
Richardo
(38,391 posts)....or 1,000 bombs killing 100,000 people?
Why the special guilt trip because it was one bomb?
nyquil_man
(1,443 posts)Phillyindy
(406 posts)...sit anonymously and comfortably in front of your computer today and casually dismiss the women, children and babies who were burned alive to achieve America's desired results.
branford
(4,462 posts)Last edited Tue Aug 6, 2013, 08:09 PM - Edit history (2)
There were no good choices, only different versions of very, very bad. I fully understand the doubts and revulsion one could have in light of the horror inflicted by bombs. That is why it was so controversial as the polarized opinions on even this very liberal forum clearly attest. It's just the smugness and certainty, the simple black and white of your position, that I, and many others here, find astonishing. Do you really believe it should have been that simple for Truman in 1945? Who gets to decide which lives have more value; does anyone?
Both servicemen and civilians, men, women and children had died, and would continue to do so in great and possibly larger numbers, even if Truman's had decided against the use of the bomb. History would probably treat Truman as someone criminally negligent for extending the war and ruining so many allied lives if he did not drop the bombs. Probably many of your friends and colleagues, as well as members here at DU, and their own children, would not be alive today if the bombs did not fall.
Similarly, why was it worse that many thousands died because of two bombs rather that the regular and incendiary bombings that took many times the number of the atomic attacks? There simply was no option "C" where no bombs, atomic or otherwise, would have been used.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)was once a charming hallmark of Americans. Unfortunately, we turned from naiveté to mean and stupid and it no longer serves as a distinction between the people and our government.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)People can keep saying that the Japanese were going to surrender until they are blue in the face, but it is revisionist bullshit. It is also convenient to forget that not only was it about getting the Japanese to surrender, but also the fact that they still occupied part or all of neighboring countries. So when you make it about being an "empire" maybe you should think twice about it. Japan during WWII was an empire.
You are welcome to come over here to Korea anytime you want and I'll personally take you to Seodaemun Prison and show you all the other wonderful legacies of the Japanese occupation of Korea.
Warpy
(111,153 posts)that had never been bombed in order to see what their new bomb would do to "pristine" targets.
However, the devastation wasn't markedly worse than what carpet bombing accomplishes.
It was, however, a classic poker bluff. We only had the two bombs ready for deployment. The Japanese didn't know that and after the second one fell, I'm sure they all thought we had more to drop.
Yes, the high command had been talking about surrender conditions. However, the surrender was not going to happen any time soon. The threat of one of those horrible weapons on every city in Japan hurried things up considerably, of that I have little doubt, and the final surrender was an unconditional one.
The beginning of August is a time to mourn all those innocent people for me, too. As I said, the choice of two non military targets just to see what the bombs would do is a shameful thing to contemplate.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)What were the proportions for the civilian population? I haven't a clue. But the Japanese factory workers knew what they were building, knew what kind of regime they were supporting and knew the risk associated with working underneath a big fat bullseye. For the civilians who worked tirelessly to build up a genocidal regime, I feel absolutely ZERO guilt over their deaths.
To the other truly innocent civilians, I feel shame.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)Your argument is nothing more than an argument against war bombing of any kind because they all kill innocents.
Nanjing to Seoul
(2,088 posts)Manila...quit lying to yourselves
Parit Sulong. . .quit lying to yourselves
Bangka Island. . .quit lying to yourselves
Unit 731. . .quit lying to yourselves
Jiangxi/Zhejiang Raping. . .quit lying to yourselves
Giving Chinese children poison and opium laced candies. . .quit lying to yourselves
Singapore. . .quit lying to yourselves
Korean women forced into sex slavery. . .quit lying to yourselves
Bataan Death March. . .quit lying to yourselves
Sook Jing. . .quit lying to yourselves.
Carpet bombing of Shanghai after the fall. . .quit lying to yourselves.
Japanese Air Force specifically targeting civilian areas of Shanghai and Nanjing before the attack. . .quit lying to yourselves.
Apparently, no one has a problem with the horrific shit Japan did to every country it invaded, or the fact that they killed 25,000,000 Chinese civilians, compared to 4,000,000 Chinese soldiers that died.
NO SYMPATHY FOR JAPAN AT ALL!!! My wife's great grandmother was gang raped by the Japanese in 1938 and left for dead in a ditch. My wife is Chinese from a small city outside of Nanjing. NO SYMPATHY AT ALL!!!
The Japanese wanted a war. . .they got one. And everything that comes with it. Next time, maybe the Code of Bushido won't be followed and Japan won't attack China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, PI and the United States!
lynne
(3,118 posts)- who see a Discovery Channel special and think they can pass judgement on an entire generation.
No need to justify it to you or anyone else. I'm okay with it. It was horrific, it was terrible, I wish it never occurred, but it did. Ultimately, lives were saved, both American and Japanese.
The end result is that if Japan had already surrendered, it would not have occurred at all. You can chew it up and spit it out, twist it and turn it in any fashion you wish, - if, and or but it - however, you cannot change that one defining fact.
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,708 posts)I do know Harry Truman didn't have sixty eight years to think about his decision.
rwsanders
(2,594 posts)That is that there are only 2 options (in the trial case it was the cops tampered or he was guilty, when it may have been they tampered AND he was guilty).
For the war, the debate is nuclear bomb or invasion. OK why an invasion? Russia was a long term enemy, the IJN was done, etc. They could have been contained until they were forced to convince their people that surrender was an acceptable option.
I've been thinking about this a long time and I have a couple of other comments:
First, war should never be carried out against a civilian population. Is it easier? Yes, but if we are going to go for the "ends justify the means" argument we might as well join the right-wing.
Second, the U.S. was far from the "innocent victim" in the whole Pacific theater. We helped Japan militarize and convinced them to wage war on China as our surrogate. It is all detailed in the book "The Imperial Cruise" by the same guy that wrote "Flags of Our Fathers".
OK a third, to say we had to do it to save American lives smacks of the kind of American exceptionalism that corrupts the right. If we can't decide that all people have worth, again we might as well join the right. The "Imperial Cruise" book shows how we had an attitude that only we were sophisticated enough to understand democracy and had to govern over lesser groups until they were deemed "ready". You can see how this attitude is still guiding our acceptance of the imperialistic wars we are now engaged in. If the public would drop this attitude, it would be easier to see the actions of our leaders for what they are.
Our actions have long-term consequences, we need to live up to the true American ideal.
branford
(4,462 posts)If they did not prioritize American and allied losses they would have been violating their oaths under the Constitution.
This does not mean that all lives do not have equal value, only that our elected officials at the time were doing the jobs for which they were elected. The leaders of other countries, particularly Japan in the 1940's, were doing likewise.
21st century moral equivalence imposed on a WWII total war mindset is simply preposterous. Historical context cannot be dismissed so easily.
rwsanders
(2,594 posts)in the Declaration of Independence.
You are very correct about and I did neglect my thoughts on the context. While I find the actions wrong, they fit in the context of our country at the time, media and intelligence was not as sophisticated (radar was relatively new) and those in leadership at the time could never have been certain of victory.
Actually that context to me is VERY important. We did what we did, it should be recognized as horrific and regrettable. We should not criticize the Japanese for grieving, and now that we know we should insure to the best of our ability that it never happens again. Which means not being the aggressor, not exploiting or invading other countries for resources (or cheap labor), etc.
By the way, have you ever been to the WW2 museum in New Orleans? I was amazed at the lack of glorification of war in the place. They put everything in excellent context.
branford
(4,462 posts)Truman had no good choices, and I do not envy him. Would an invasion, continued firebombings, and/or a blockade have been more humane and still have achieved the same goals? Would many of my friends and colleagues have never even been borne if thousands of American servicemen died in combat in Japan when we had the capability to end the war earlier?
I certainly do not know the answers, and fervently wish no future president is faced with such impossible decisions.
I have also never been to NOLA, but I would definitely like to visit the city and museum in the near future.
Lastly, I would note that the men who served in WWII are rapidly passing away, and with them the loss irrecoverable loss of unique insights, emotions and perspectives of what it was like to serve in and live though a total war and witness first-hand the commission of unfathomable war crimes.
rwsanders
(2,594 posts)I can see how the decision was made.
If you make it to NOLA, one of the great things about the museum is they have preserved many first hand accounts. You can sit in booths and listen to 5 1-2 minute segments and there is another screen that has a full hour of accounts. The first time I was there they told me the museum could be seen in 2-3 hours. That was enough for a cursory glance at the exhibits and not much else.
I was sent back to the BP spill a second time and was able to get in for free in uniform and spend the 9-10 hours total it took to listen to all the personal accounts. Well worth the time.
The movie that is narrated by Tom Hanks is brilliant also.
If you go, check their website as they have many authors who speak and sign their books. I got to see a few included Hugh Ambrose (Stephens son) author of "The Pacific".
If you want entertainment also, they run swing dance lessons and an Andrews sisters type singing group in a dinner theater. They are also working on a restoration project of a Higgins PT the 305.
Botany
(70,447 posts)He was beaten and tortured everyday until we dropped the bomb and the next
day a Japanese sargent who had been his chief tormentor was all buddy buddy
w/him. 10s of millions people would have died if we had to invade Japan and all
of the POWs would have been killed too.
Martin Eden
(12,847 posts)Hiroshima & Nagasaki is the only time atomic/nuclear bombs have been used in the nearly 7 decades these weapons have existed.
The carnage, horror, devastation, and human tragedy on a massive scale demonstrated why these weapons must never be used again.
I am speculating that without Hiroshima, there may have been a first-time use later on (perhaps between two powers with these weapons) that wreaked destruction on a much larger scale.
Again, to be clear:
I am neither attempting to justify dropping atomic bombs on Japan, nor trying to discern the ultimate motive behind the decision.
I am speculating about an alternate history, which I think **might** have been averted by the horror of the first usage.
Response to Phillyindy (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
Mr.CT
(3 posts)I wonder how many people saying that Truman is a war criminal or the US is evil for dropping the two atomic bombs realise that they may not be here today if Truman decided to invade Japan.
Alot of Allied men and Japanese civilians and soldiers would of died if Operation Downfall were allowed to commence.Alot more than the 244,000 people who were killed in those two bombings(that figure is using the max range of casualties attributed to the bombings).
While I never want to see the use of atomic/nuclear weapons used in this particular case it actually saved lives.The math is undeniable.
iamthebandfanman
(8,127 posts)let me guess, you also think Germany/hilter would have stopped all their aggression on their own if they had only been allowed to take all of Europe and northern Africa :p
stupidicus
(2,570 posts)imo
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)... The devastation of Japan was apologized for.
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Cary-Karacas/3474
Japan attacked the US and China. If they had the capability, they would absolutely have done exactly to Seattle, Honolulu and San Francisco what we did to Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The bombing of Tokyo is what brought Hirohito to the peace process. The fact that an invasion was averted is what has enabled Japan to rebuild into a country capable of considering that kind of financial compensation.
godai
(2,902 posts)I attended the 50th anniversary ceremony, in 1995. No anger at me. It's a very solemn ceremony, for those who died.. The tone is 100% peace in the future and the elimination of nuclear weapons. I still have a strand of origami cranes given to me my some teenagers.
ryan_cats
(2,061 posts)We should thank Japan. Since they signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy which if I remember correctly only came into play if any of those countries were attacked. After Pearl Harbor, Japan was pressuring Germany to declare war on the USA. By the terms of the pact he didn't have to but he did and I forget the exact reason why although I think it was something about it not being worth the paper it was signed on if Hitler didn't declare war on the USA.
Imagine if Hitler had stuck to the terms of the pact. The USA wouldn't have had a reason to enter the European war and would have concentrated on the Japanese war although I bet Roosevelt would have clandestinely supplied arms and helped with the ship convoys.
quaker bill
(8,224 posts)it happens none the less.
You are aware I suppose that we actually killed more Japanese civilians with fire bombs than we did with the 2 nukes. WE had plenty more fire bombs to drop had they been needed, would this have been better?
I never say any act of war is justified. it is all immoral.
yawnmaster
(2,812 posts)Japan had not invaded China.
SammyWinstonJack
(44,129 posts)duffyduff
(3,251 posts)Easy to say this nonsense nearly 70 years after the fact.
I hate revisionism. It has no bearing on reality.
What drivel.
Jeff In Milwaukee
(13,992 posts)because we have decided that it's well-established. The fact that several junior officers staged an aborted coup after Nagasaki notwithstanding, the Japanese were read to surrender. Everyone knows that.
This argument gets more tedious with each passing year.
