Curious, why do you say this?
because they exercise their right to be different than us, oppose our exploitation of them, our, expansion of our Empire, against them, resent us for 1 million reasons.
best you should ask, why should not our gluttony of this planets resources be reduced to glass?
I’m not sure that the concept of “lines” to break through accurately describes Japanese defensive practice at that point in the war. The later island defenses tended to feature multiple independent strongpoints and a honeycomb of holes and caves providing overlapping fields of fire in a defense-in-depth arrangement. The Americans could bring so much strength to bear on any single defined point that distributed defense is the only thing that makes sense. The land becomes a sponge that’s persistently lethal to a percentage of the invading troops without any actual hope of stopping or turning back the advance.
It also plays to what the Japanese war planners believed was an American weakness – unwillingness to risk individual American lives in prolonged exposure to enemy fire. Yes, a distributed defense would not have stopped the Americans. But at that point in the psychology of the war, the Japanese felt doomed anyway and wanted to go out in any way that inflicted as much suffering as possible on their foes.
I also question whether the ammunition shortage would have seriously harmed such a plan. Although there were shortages, that’s in terms of expected ammo use in heavy combat. Once you give up on stopping the Americans in a hail of bullets, and commit to individual snipers in caves and holes just trying to kill an American or three, the expected expenditure would tend to go down, I would think. It’s more of a spoiler strategy than a plan for victory, but committed soldiers can do a lot of damage even with very little resources in a spoiler strategy, and there’s no doubt the Japanese military was committed.
What’s Japanese for “improvised explosive device”, because under a no-nuke/invasion alternate history, I bet it would have become a common English term like sushi, origami or rickshaw.
Nitpick: rickshaw is not correct; the original Japanese term was ‘jinrikisha’, 人力車, or human-powered-vehicle.
If you leave out the ‘jin’ part you just have ‘powered vehicle’.
I’m not sorry. Don’t start wars if you don’t want to lose them.
No, actually more because they bombed Pearl Harbor and attempted to enslave the people of the Pacific, in alliance with people like Hitler. And some other things as well.
Because reducing us to glass because we are the largest and most productive economy on earth would be stupid and evil, as well as counter-productive.
Regards,
Shodan
No, it’s because the Taliban just killed a bunch of Medical Relief workers & justified it by accusing them of the horrible crime of evangelizing. It’s because some Afghan officials had a teenage girl’s nose cut off for running away from her family. It’s because Pakistani tribesmen ordered a girl to be gang-raped because her brother either went with or had sex with a girl from another tribe.
And I said that “my darker side” wants the green glass solution. What does my lighter side want?
To arm the women and our allies, or let everyone who wants to escape come to the US with us, and get out of that whole sewer, leaving the rest to their demon overlords.
To devote tons of private & public R&D funds for alternative energy to free ourselves of oil dependence so we have no vested interest in any of those countries.
To tell Israel, Jordan, Egypt & Turkey (any others?) that the represent the best hope for civilization in that area of the world & they’ll have all our support & protection in making the most of it- don’t screw it up.
Then, to shrug.
While many of Japan’s actions in WWII can’t be justified at all, you do realize that a primary reason Japan came into conflict with the West in the first place was because Japan made the mistake of getting late to the party in dividing up and colonizing China/Asia/Africa?
One (not the only) of the major factors in Japan’s participation in the war to begin with was the lack of access to raw materials, which were under the control of other Western powers (the US, Britain, the Dutch, the French, etc). The US’ decision to embargo oil exports to Japan didn’t help.
Japan had already gained some land in the Pacific from Germany after WWI (since Japan was a member of the winning Allies side), but these small islands did not have access to the raw materials (particularly oil and rubber) that Japan felt it needed.
One other factor that sometimes gets forgotten outside of Japan: Japan proposed a ‘racial equality’ statement to the League of Nations:
This was essentially vetoed by the US and Great Britain. Japan felt greatly snubbed by this, and not only was this one factor that turned Japan away from the West ahead of WWII, it fueled some of the anti-Western racism in Japan for decades afterwards.
Before some idiot jumps in and accuses me of defending Japan and its actions in WWII - I am doing nothing of the sort. I’m merely pointing out that the factors behind the start of the war are not all that cut and dry.
So what? They didn’t have any right to colonize the Pacific, and therefore their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity League offered no moral justification for their attacks on the US and China and the Philippines and so on.
Considering how they treated the Chinese during WWII, and the circumstances of things like the Bataan Death March, this is slightly underwhelming.
Regards,
Shodan
I get the feeling “racial equality” to the Japanese at the time meant the right to treat other people as the colonial powers treated them. Certainly their treatment of Chinese, Koreans, Malays and others they occupied doesn’t exactly seem to have been based on the equality and brotherhood of people.
Certainly that was the reason. So what? Do you feel that Japan was entitled to conquer, colonize and exploit China/Asia/The Pacific Rim simply because the Euro’s had done so in the past?
The US didn’t arbitrarily embargo Japan…we did so in response to their invasion and subsequent actions against China. Japan could have BOUGHT the raw materials they needed to industrialize (after all, that’s what they do today) instead of trying to take them. They chose to try and take them.
Got to hate that. If Japan ‘felt it needed’ those raw materials then they should have bought or traded for them, instead of trying to seize them through force of arms. Since they CHOSE to try and seize them through force of arms they pretty much were stuck with the consequences of their decision.
And this leaves aside their actions during the seizing of those territories. The Japanese were and still are to a certain degree not exactly loved in Asia or the Pacific Rim areas where they attacked.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I don’t think the US was ever a member of the League of Nations, so I don’t think we had any sort of veto power at all. From memory, we were so disgusted with the direction the League was taking that it was never ratified by the Congress.
-XT
The firebombing and atomic bomb attacks on Japanese civilians were terrorism, pure and simple. Unjustified and unjustifiable. Completely evil and chickenshit campaign by a country that didn’t have the balls to fight a fair fight.
Of course, most Americans have been brainwashed to believe that it was “necessary” and will robotically parakeet the hilarious line that it “saved lives,” but the reality is that it was a disgusting, shameful way to win a war.
Speaking of brain washing, next time don’t let them use the bleach on you…it takes you from what is otherwise an interesting and rational poster and instead has you spew out a context and historically inaccurate steaming load such as the above.
-XT
I think it was necessary on the grounds that every man woman and child was indoctrinated to died for their precious Emperor and likely would have in a land invasion… in addition to the obligatory Allied losses.
I believe it was necessary also to deter the Russians enough to stop Communism spreading into the Asia pacific region any more than it did and to assert the US’ position as Superpower. God knows I would rather Australia be allied with the US through that period than Pinko Russia!
However, I too believe that there was likely an alternative to dropping the bomb, on Nagasaki at least, but that the US knew such an opportunity may not arise again and they wanted to take it. As it turns out, with all due respect to the innocents lost, it might have been a good decision given how reluctant we are to use WMDs nowadays.
I also believe in the existence of UFOs, so take my opinion for what it’s worth! 
coughPEARLHARBOR**cough* * :rolleyes:
Pearl Harbor was an attack on a military target. We intentionally attacked civilians. There’s a huge difference. We seem to have a double standard that it’s ok for America to deliberately slaughter civilians, but we get all butt-hurt and call it “terrorism” if anyone true to do it back. Israel is the same way.
Read up on the Rape of Nanking and then come back to talk about intentionally targeting civilians.
You seem to have a double-standard when attempting to talk about what was done over half a century ago and compared to what happened less than a decade ago, as well as a comprehension issue about how attitudes have changed in that time period. What was generally accepted as standard behavior during WWII isn’t acceptable today, while it was pretty much what every one did during WWII.
Man, whatever drugs you are taking, I seriously recommend that you lighten up on them, because you are starting to hallucinate badly and rant about stuff that has nothing to do with this thread…
-XT
Irrelevant. The fact that the Japanese military killed civilians does not justify US killing civilians. The civilians we slaughtered were just as innocent as the people they slaughtered.
I’m not a moral relativist. Wrong is wrong.
It’s not irrelevant. In fact, it’s completely relevant, since it demonstrates that all sides used the same basic strategies and tactics, and were willing to use the exact same means to achieve their ends. It was total war, and the concept wasn’t merely to win but to completely destroy the other sides means to fight…to, in fact, completely destroy the other side. Unconditional surrender was the only stated option (though in the end the US settled for less wrt Japan).
Then all sides were wrong, all sides were evil, and that leaves us where, exactly? Seemingly with your hatred of the US and a large case of dual standards (since you seem merely focused on what WE did, don’t seemingly care what others did, and simply want to get on your high horse. Well, and drag Israel in for gods know what reason, even though they didn’t even exist as a country until years after the war that this OP is actually about).
-XT
My grandfather and Mr. Neville’s grandfather, both of whom probably would have had to fight in an invasion of Japan, thought it was the right thing to do. AFAIK, Mr. Neville’s grandfather still thinks that.
Personally, I have a really hard time mustering much sympathy for a country that did the kind of things that the Japanese did in WWII.
I’m not defending area bombing, but it’s worth pointing out that in total-war ideology, the other side’s civilians were considered part of the war effort, and if they were in fact not materially contributing to the war effort, it wasn’t for lack of trying – most countries tried to mobilize their civilians for round-the-clock war production and/or support.
In this case the Japanese civilians in Tokyo are arguably not AS innocent as the Chinese civilians in Nanking, since Tokyo’s population is supposedly contributing to the war effort of an aggressor state and Nanking’s population was essentially just sitting there going about the business of life when Japan invaded.
Again, that doesn’t make area bombing right – I am merely addressing the conceit that both groups were exactly equivalently “innocent.”
Why is a person who supports the oppressive regime any more innocent than a conscript soldier?
I don’t know a vast amount about the bombing raids on Japan, but know a lot more about those on Germany. The purpose behind the raids, going back to their planning, was to make wars less likely and more civilized. It failed, but Britain was faced with a situation where it had no alternative method of striking back at Germany. A second front was not feasible, British morale was being savaged, and British people were close to starvation. The German people at the time were foresquare behind Hitler.
What else was Britain to do? Go into social collapse, meaning the only hope for the liberation of Europe would have been from the Soviet Union? Or start to fight back? Area bombing was the only solution as precision raids were tried and failed.
I find it utterly incredible that someone has no qualms about the killing of tens of thousands of unwilling conscripts but places factory workers who build the tanks and rifles for them into a protected category.