Yes, gonzo, every single one of us has been pulling your leg and making up the most outrageous lies because we love melting Asians in radioactive flames with the cruel glee of a kid standing over an anthill with a magnifying glass.
How very gracious of you to pity us, that we fail to agree with you when you’re repeatedly, demonstrably wrong about almost everything you’ve asserted here.
The civilians on Okinawa and Iwo Jima didn’t flee in terror. They died in large numbers, either as active participants in the battle, as suicides, or both. Let’s be blunt about the decision to drop the atomic bombs: at root, it was the decision to kill 200,000 to avoid killing many more than that. The rest is handwaving.
http://www.zimbio.com/Hiroshima/articles/18/The+atomic+bombing+of+Japan Here is a nice article articulating the same things I am saying.
The Director of Strategic Planning for the Japanese, Sumihisa ikeda ,told the Emperor that the invincible Japanese army was nothing but a hollow shell.
I understand you will reject this too. You can not face who we have become.
You realise that the Germans used members of the Hitler Youth in the defence of Berlin, right? And that they fought against the Russians without fleeing in terror?
It comes down to this, gonzomaz - the bombs were horrific, an incredibly violent end to an incredibly violent struggle. But what else could we have done? As far as I can see, and from all that has been cited, the only way to ensure the war ended as quickly as possible (ensuring no more civilian or military deaths) was to drop the bombs. The Japanese were not on the ‘brink of surrender’, no matter how often you assert this claim as fact. Let’s start with the Soviet issue. You claim that this is evidence that the Japanese were ready to surrender.
Two things. Firstly, the Soviets had nothing to gain and everything to lose by consenting to Japanese requests for negotiations. Unconditional surrender had been agreed upon by the Big Three at Yalta. The Soviets didn’t pay a blind bit of attention to Japanese overtures for peace, or friendship:
Secondly, this ‘negotiation’ was on terms completely unacceptable to the Allies. The Japanese didn’t want a negotiated surrender, they wanted peace. With the ghastly structures of state left intact. Witness this exchange:
We had to insist on unconditional surrender, we could not allow the evil regime of Imperial Japan to remain in power - it was unthinkable.
From the Potsdam declaration. It is not as if the evil Allies wished for a nice sucker-punch to Japan. They were left with no choice, and even informed the Japanese of it. Truman drews a direct comparison after Hiroshima:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/truman/psources/ps_pressrelease.html
Even after Nagasaki the ‘Big Six’ were undecided on the issue of surrender;
All the evidence points against your claim that they were ready to surrender. All the evidence points against your claim that the invasion of a beaten down-Japan would be a ‘mop-up’ operation. What else could we do, but drop the bombs?
@ cckerberos; the Bushido mindset lead to scenes like this (the Yamato exploding, this (the aftermath of a Banzai charge, this (the USS Bunker Hill under Kamikaze attack)? Don’t underestimate what this mentality meant to the Japanese military - many of the suicide orders and coercion were no doubt involuntary, but there’s no reason to suspect that Okinawa wouldn’t repeat itself. The Japanese military still had a large presence in Kyushu and could quite easily order/force civilians to kill themselves as they did on Okinawa.
And in the same way, too: By asserting some things, and appearing to back them up with cites that are, from the article at least, non-existent.
Ah. And the Emperor listened and agreed, did he? The Emperor then, realizing their position of weakness, ordered their unconditional surrender, did he?
It must be hard to be you, Gonzomax, bravely facing the truth about ourselves while the rest of us refuse to remove our blinders.
:rolleyes:
No gonzomax, very few would run, most would die even if by their own hand. A handful would take an allied soldier with them. Most of their deaths would probably be horrific, even in compared to radiation burns: starvation, napalm, disease.
It not a matter of belief. It is a mater of knowing. The Japanese had presented themselves to us as being racially insane. You can sit there in your comfortable Monday morning quarterback chair and tell us, in face of all the historical evidence to the contrary and tell us how much better it is to firebomb, shoot, or starve millions of Japanese as well as hundreds of thousands of allies instead of killing tens of thousands with A-bombs.
It wasn’t me who needed convincing, but the people fighting the war. I can’t argue with their success, given that it worked. Again you sit in your comfy chair and tell people who sweat and died fighting a terrible regime that you know better and that using a weapon means they are too ‘warlike’ in your eyes.
If we were such an aggressive and warring society, maybe you can explain where we started World War 2?
Was he kind enough to cc Harry Truman?
gonzomax – suppose we were planning to use the bomb on Nazi Germany, if Hitler had refused to surrender unconditionally. How would you feel then?
(That’s the one major thing I do regret about the dropping of the bombs…that Hitler had already offed himself. Imagine him shitting himself, imaging what could have happened to HIM.)
I suspect what the Russians would have likely subjected him to was not far from his mind, and it wasn’t gonna be nearly as nice as an instant vaporization.
According to my grandfather, he was also thinking of Mussolini’s fate.
This particular subject is one that really upsets me if I dwell on it, so I haven’t read your comments. It’s not because I think there are easy answers or that the truth can’t be outside of what I believe. I acknowledge that the bombings may have saved lives. I’m not sure we’ll ever know.
I don’t think the number of lives saved actually matters once we are considering an act that kills 200,000 civilians. When we write about lost children and babies – about burned young girls and their lovers – and mothers rotting from radiation sickness – when we talk about vaporizing old men and their life stories – there is no counterweight to balance the other side that will ever make those choices bearable. I had rather see the throats of angels slit and their broken wings scattered on the pathway to some nasty god.
please tell me when since WW2 that we have not been in someone else’s national sovereignty or involved in a war/ that is what we do. it makes some people rich and powerful.
Timeline of United States military operations - Wikipedia You have to know who you are before you can change.
It’s an emotive subject, because the dropping of one device killed so many people. In practical terms it’s no different to the conventional bombing runs - the firebombing on Tokyo killed 100,000 civilians on March 10th.
We had to end the war as soon as possible. We had to break the enemy will to fight by any means necessary - we would have been negligent if we had not dropped the bombs, for more civilians would have died otherwise. They showed no signs of agreeing to unconditional surrender, the Soviets had just gotten involved, the only certain way to bring defeat was the same thing we did to Germany - a conventional invasion. There were no easy alternatives, that is the reality of a total war and the nationalist mindset.
Another tu quoque, gonzomax? Imperial Japan had to be stopped and destroyed utterly by any means necessary.
I thought this discussion was about WW2.
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html Another site, more aggression.
All of which is irrelevant. Acts of aggression by the United States cannot compare with Imperial Japan. Their war aims set out their policy of aggressive domination of East Asia. The Potsdam declaration set out our policy of liberation for the the oppressed and security for our own people at all costs. To say that these aims are morally equivalent is just…asinine, I don’t know what else to call it.
The problem is you accept the military analysis. I do not because our military lies to us over and over. The explanation they proffer for the bomb is as much BS as anything else they feed us. I question the first bomb. The Nagasaki bomb was inexcusable.
Heh, the World War 2 entry says “Hawaii Bombed” but neglects to mention by whom.
To everyone on both sides (or undecided) I recommend a good long look at this site:
It contains a lot of formerly classified documents that lay out the dynamics of the discussion of the development and use of the bomb. Even the summaries discuss the political, military and moral issues in great detail, and provide a comprehensive timeline of what was going on behind closed doors in the U.S., Japan and Soviet Union.
This may not change anyone’s mind, but it’s a must-read.
I am not arguing that Japan was at fault for the war. So debate yourself to your hearts content. But it is how we finished it that I think was wrong.