Are you aware of Unit 731? I think the things they did surpass what I thought was the limit for human cruelty. And there’s the whole issue of how unrepentant those responsible (and the culture, from what I’ve heard) have remained after the fact.
Re: DragonAsh,
Thanks for the new perspective. Especially regarding the second bombing, my father also fully believes that the US was anxious to drop the second bomb to test the differences between Plutonium and Uranium bombs. I’m beginning to think that while the US was not clearly in the wrong, they didn’t exactly have a clear conscience either–saving lives wasn’t the only thing on their agenda.
It sure was. But this doesn’t mean that the Airforce was completely destroyed, or no longer a threat. The Japanese planned to recall planes from Korea and China to aid in the defence of the homeland;
Furthermore, there were a number of improvised airfields that could have been used in Kyushu to boost the effectiveness of the airforce.
This is very true. It would have been a one-sided battle once the Americans engaged the militia forces, but a battle nevertheless.
Yes, exactly. This is also supported by the experience on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Imagine if, even if crude weapons and a shortage of ammunition (which would have likely caused Banzai charges with bayonets) the forces stationed in the Home Islands all fought to the death.
Yes, exactly the problem with the invasion of the Home Islands. Japan hadn’t been invaded in millennia, unconditional surrender in a conventional war, unthinkable.
Nobody is saying that the Allies wouldn’t have been victorious in Operation Downfall. What we’re saying is that the timescale of victory and likely casualty estimates (especially among civilians - again look to Okinawa. How many citizens of Kyushu would kill themselves like their cousins in Okinawa?) were much greater than the casualties caused by the bomb.
No, it would have been much worse than Overlord.
And yet after Nagasaki they telegrammed the Allies agreeing to Potsdam terms plus Emperor the morning after. Togo’s notes confirm that the military was well aware of what had happened at Hiroshima and chose to hold out for conditional terms anyway.
Fat Man, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, was very similar in form and function to The Gadget tested at Trinity. Testing it again seems redundant, the US already knew its capabilities.
The Allies had agreed on a ‘Germany first’ creed, that the European theatre would, for a variety of valid reasons, take priority. I can’t cite it online, but Stephen Ambrose wrote an interesting counterfactual piece titled “If D-Day Failed: Atomic Alternatives in Europe.”. If Germany had held out in the same manner as Japan I could well imagine mushroom clouds over the central German plane.
Precisely; nobody relished using the bomb, but it was either that or pick Japan’s carcass apart bit by bit in a bloody invasion. The Japanese were finished, sure enough nobody in the Allied command structure doubted victory (and many in the Japanese command structure felt defeat was imminent - although those in power firmly believed that they could inflict so many casualties on invading forces that peace on Japanese terms could be forced), but the fact is the Japanese still did not surrender. The Imperial Rescript on Surrender, read by the Emperor to announce the end, just about sums it up:
The Japanese were the equivalent of the Nazis in atrocities. Perhaps even worse. If we lost to Japan we would have to defend American atrocities. War is an ugly shameful business. History is written by the winners.
Glory and fighting by rules is a thing for movies. Americans would have been prosecuted for war crimes if we lost.
Mr. Kobayashi, I don’t think we’re necessarily at odds on this subject. My point is that the situation on the mainland was far, far worse than people realize. Japan may have still had numbers, but what were they going to fight with? What were they eating? From the very link you posted:
Sorry for the long quote, but I think this is important for people to realize: any invasion of Japan would have resulted in far, far fewer US military deaths than the estimates that were being thrown around at the time.
It most certainly would have resulted in far, far more Japanese deaths, of course - which is why in the grand scheme of things the a-bombs were probably the lesser of two evils. As I stated before, I do not think Japan would exist as an independent nation today if the Allies had invaded.
The quote above that speaks volumes to me is ‘they didn’t know how to stop fighting’. That, to me, is the Japan I still know very well in a nutshell. When things start to go to hell in a hen basket, the Japanese are simply very, very bad at solving problems/crisis management. I’ve seen it today, at Japanese banks which are among the largest financial institutions in the world, and I have every expectation that this is exactly what was happening during the war: overall lines of communication break down when things go bad; Japan’s subordinates simply stop communicating, preferring silence over having to report bad news.
What do you base this on? From what I’ve seen, the Japanese had very successfully hidden massive coastal defenses, and also accurately predicted where the allies were going to initially land. Everything I’ve read seems to indicate that even the high end causality estimates may have been conservative. The landings alone would have been brutal. The Japanese had prepared VERY well, and the civilian population was ready to get thrown into the fire, along with everything left of their military…which wasn’t insubstantial. I think you are seriously underestimating how vicious and desperate the Japanese would have been when the home island was invaded.
Well, it might have been divided up, sort of like Germany. The Soviets were already in the act of grabbing off pieces, and in any full on invasion they would have been there. I guess Japan might have been divided into an East Japan and a West Japan, with, perhaps, a divided rule Tokyo (well, what was left of it).
I think the Japanese knew how to stop fighting. The problem is that they underestimated their opponents at a fundamental level…and they never were able to grasp how their initial calculations were flawed. To the end they felt that if only they could inflict sufficient casualties on the allies (especially the American’s), they could get peace terms that would leave their government intact, with the possibility of expansion again in the future. Their entire defense strategy was designed around killing the maximum number of allied troops to achieve this end. Their kamikaze strategy was a classic example of this, as was their almost fanatic defense of each and every island we took back. It was all crafted to instill in the allied leadership (and the folks back home) a sense that Japan would just be too costly to take, and that we should sue for terms rather than pay those kinds of prices.
The problem was, the US was fully prepared, at that time, to pay whatever price it took. And the Soviets were ALWAYS ready to throw away men like grains of rice. Their entire strategy was built on foundations of sand, because they just couldn’t understand the motives of either the allied leadership OR of the people back home.
Given what happened on Okinawa, and the sheer numbers involved I don’t think that the US casualties would have been all that light. There were still hundreds of thousands of troops even without factoring the poorly-equipped militia.
Speaking of Okinawa, it might even have been a worse situation in terms of the ‘fight to the death’ mentality.
From the wiki.
On the mainland this factor is eliminated. Add in the terrain and you get, like Normandy, close quarters infantry combat leading to high casualties on both sides.
This is also why we needed to end the war as soon as possible, it was not more humane to keep up the blockade and bombardment leading to these harsh civilian conditions.
From the statement of the Emperor, and what you’ve said, and all the previous cited sources, it seems that the bomb gave them a ‘way out’, made it obvious to all but the most hardline that this was the time to stop. In a conventional war, who knows when this time would come? Probably after the deaths of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians in Operation Downfall.
But the emphasized part of your text is accurate, AFAIK. The Japanese don’t have any legal liability to compensate the comfort women because the issue of war reparations was settled in a 1965 bilateral treaty between Japan and South Korea under which the South Korean government accepted legal responsibility for compensation to individuals.
Whether the Japanese still have the moral responsibility to do something is another question, of course.
a) Japan was hardly the first or last country to utilize military-run brothels. Germany and France did the same during the First and Second World Wars, for example. I also recall reading that the US army itself apparently used brothels set up by the Japanese government during the Occupation.
b) The whole issue is easy emotional fodder for politicians outside the country to bash Japan around - but gosh, Japan isn’t really alone on this issue. Should the US government compensate Native Americans? It was only recently that the Senate urged President Obama to officially ‘apologize’ to Native Americans - and lawmakers were careful not to include anything resembling or opening themselves up to compensation claims. Apparently, according to the US government, individual Native Americans don’t deserve compensation. It took Australia decades to apologize to the indigenous Aboriginal population for past abuses - but no compensation. According to the Australian government, individual Aborigines don’t deserve compensation.
c) In any event - what in heck’s name does the comfort women issue have to do with this? Japan has issued apologies for the war and for the comfort women issue. I’m not sure what you’re arguing here.
It’s an example of how Japan’s apologies have been self serving and meaningless. Especially in light of such things as the revisionism in official text books.
Fortunately, by July we knew that the Japanese had correctly anticipated our strategy and that they had organized a much greater defense than we had thought possible. With that in mind, it’s virtually unthinkable to me that we would have just gone ahead with the invasion as planned even if the atomic bombs hadn’t come along. We would have altered the invasion plans or pursued a different strategy to end the war.
I don’t think it would ever have been that bad. IIRC, the Soviets only planned on getting most of Hokkaido, the Kuriles, and Sakhalin. I think Truman would have strongly resisted giving them anything more (unless there were actually Soviet boots on the ground in Honshu, of course.)
I think it’s similar to the thought process that got them into the war in the first place… that it’s better to try and lose than just concede. The military leadership felt that any surrender terms that came after the invasion couldn’t be any worse than the unconditional surrender that was already being demanded.
As I have always read it the women in the WW1 German and French war brothels were not coerced into the job beyond the need for some kind of employment.
I’m far from a Japanese apologist - but for cryin’ out loud, stop moving the goal posts. The original post I responded to said, in effect, ‘Japan has not apologized for the war’. I noted that, in fact, Japan had done so, repeatedly.
Have you been in a Japanese class room? I have, both high school and university. In Japanese. As a regular student. Arguing about a subject that, I suspect, you have little first-hand experience, means your knowledge is based on newspaper reports, which are based on the claims of Asian nations (read: China, South Korea), that have their own domestic agenda in stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment. It is also somewhat hypocritical of those countries to object to Japan’s textbook methods, since neither China nor South Korea allow private publishing companies to publish textbooks (i.e., the government approves of a single history textbook to be used in all schools).
Secondly - the fact that the textbook issue became a controversy at all was only because one of Japan’s major newspaper dailies (the Asahi, IIRC) reported it - i.e., the newspaper thought it was something that didn’t sound right, and needed to be reported. Hardly sounds like a nationwide conspiracy to cover up Japan’s actions in the war.
I personally hate the ‘well, they did this but we did that’ kind of debating, but if you’re going to insist on holding Japan to a specific standard, make sure you’re at least consistent.
Oh, so it was actually an job creation initative, was it? Riiiight. I’m sure the Polish women were quite happy to prostitute themselves for the occupying Germany army if it meant work. :rolleyes:
Actually, no it didn’t. So there is no moving the goal posts.
The post you responded to said Japan was not repentant. To which I added that was an understatement. To which you replied that they have made all these spiffy apologies. Official apologies not backed up by actions do not repentance make. Official apologies backed up by the veneration of war criminals makes any presumption fo rependance a little doubtful to me.
And you are right, much of the information does come from those with an axe to grind against Japan. It’s hard to stay neutral when your country was occupied and brutalized for years, or when you were a guest of the Japanese as a POW, only to be essentially told by the Japanese to stop whining. I’d prefer to take the word of those harmed over whether an apology is adequate or not than to allow you to make that determination for me.