We've been studying WWII in my World History class, and we're coming up on the dropping of the A-bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki... There was quite a bit of dispute over it at the time, and apparently, there still is! How do you feel about it?Why? It's a Poll, so just vote.
I think that the fact that atomic weapons were used was fine. By showing the impact the weapons have, I think the use of early and lower powered bombs may have helped prevent later useage.
As an extension of the mass bombing of civilians in World War II, it's just as moral or immoral. At the time, the bombing of civilians was seen as a viable weapon of war by all sides, and the technology of the time didn't allow for precision that would prevent it. Given the nature of a war with Japan, it's understandable why Truman would make the call to try and end the war.
The atomic bombings were a reasonable extension of what was seen as a necessary and legitimate way of waging war.
Polonius wrote:I think that the fact that atomic weapons were used was fine. By showing the impact the weapons have, I think the use of early and lower powered bombs may have helped prevent later useage.
As an extension of the mass bombing of civilians in World War II, it's just as moral or immoral. At the time, the bombing of civilians was seen as a viable weapon of war by all sides, and the technology of the time didn't allow for precision that would prevent it. Given the nature of a war with Japan, it's understandable why Truman would make the call to try and end the war.
The atomic bombings were a reasonable extension of what was seen as a necessary and legitimate way of waging war.
The truly bad idea was Dresen, in my opinion.
Very nice post, polonius That's basically how I feel about it too, in more words than I would have had the patience to write.
Firebombing was much worse, as far as environmental damage is concerned, as well as being excruciatingly painful for those caught in it's midst. As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky. I guess you could call it the politest form of death
The discussion on the issue really depends on what type of question you're asking. However, my view on whether it was a good idea to bomb Hiroshima is an unequivocal "yes."
Nagasaki gets a tentative "yes," because there is some question about the timing of the issue and whether Japan should have been given additional time to surrender. However, it's likely that Japan wouldn't have agreed to an unconditional surrender without Nagasaki.
The damage dealt (in both deaths and amount of the city destroyed) by the atomic bombs over Japan pales in comparison to the strategic bombing raids conducted elsewhere with conventional weapons. The damage due to lingering radiation has been significantly less than expected, which makes it hard to oppose the use of atomic bombs in light of the late-war firebombing campaign over Japan.
Compare the quick end of the bomb, versus the firebombing campaigns and you will see that the A-bomb was actually pretty merciful. One might say that attacking Japanese civilian populations was wrong. However if you look at the war atrocities the Japanese regularly committed then you will see why a swift end was needed.
At the time I think it was the best decision. We hadn't discovered what radiation does to us and so you just thought it was a big bomb. Attacking civilians was a common practice by all sides so I don't think that was wrong.
If a similar situation occured now I would be against using it. Now that we know what A bombs do to the planet we should try not to use them. The radiation just lasts too long. The deaths from the blast and immediate radiation sickness aren't that bad but irradiating a large area for the forseeable future isn't a good idea.
It was unnecessary. The Japanese no longer possessed any way of striking back against the Americans. Does that make it immoral? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky.
No. It was painless if it landed on your head. The resulting burns and radiation sickness from those caught on the edge of the blast, or in slightly covered locations were horrific. Seriously. Go and read some accounts of the resulting symptoms. This was only excaberated by the levelling of 2/3's of Japans housing by incendiaries, and lack of supplies. People died in extreme pain writhing in their own excrement as a result of those bombs.
Ketara wrote:It was unnecessary. The Japanese no longer possessed any way of striking back against the Americans. Does that make it immoral? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky.
No. It was painless if it landed on your head. The resulting burns and radiation sickness from those caught on the edge of the blast, or in slightly covered locations were horrific. Seriously. Go and read some accounts of the resulting symptoms. This was only excaberated by the levelling of 2/3's of Japans housing by incendiaries, and lack of supplies. People died in extreme pain writhing in their own excrement as a result of those bombs.
'Politest form of death', it was not.
You're right. We had already defeated them catastrophically in the battle of midway, and they were probably ready to throw in the towel anyway... We sunk four carriers in the BOM. FOUR. That's almost half of our current selection of carriers! What can they do after that? Just about nothing :3
I'll take your word for it. I was basing that off opinions I've heard from the people around me, not on fact I think the standard opinion is probably "painless, yeah!"
Ketara wrote:It was unnecessary. The Japanese no longer possessed any way of striking back against the Americans. Does that make it immoral? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky.
No. It was painless if it landed on your head. The resulting burns and radiation sickness from those caught on the edge of the blast, or in slightly covered locations were horrific. Seriously. Go and read some accounts of the resulting symptoms. This was only excaberated by the levelling of 2/3's of Japans housing by incendiaries, and lack of supplies. People died in extreme pain writhing in their own excrement as a result of those bombs.
'Politest form of death', it was not.
That preposterous. The Japanese could have surrendered at any time. Further, and here's the fun part, the Japanese could have thought about it before the whole invading China/ Malaysia/Vietnam/Thailand/Cambodia/Laos/Burma/Phillipines/Solomons/attacking the US thing and its millions of dead.
I lost one grandfather to the Japanese. Odds are I would have lost more relatives if Operation Olympic had to be carried out. Estimates on Japanese civilian casualties alone were in the 1MM + range. It ended the war and those people survived.
Phototoxin wrote:Mass murder of innocents. But its ok 'cos the US is doing it.
Do you have any ideas what atrocities Japan committed to the Chinese? Or the fact that it was estimated that we would suffer over 1 million casualties invading JUST the mainland. Nevermind the outlying island bristling with weapons on top of the fact that we lost over 400,000 men already. They believed their Emperor to be a god. And man, woman, or child would have picked up a gun, or even a rock or a stick and fought back. I agree that atomic weapons are nasty and should never be used again, but it WAS merciful compared to the alternative.
Well, their last and greatest battleship had just set off to attack the Americans without enough fuel to make a return journey. Two thirds of the place had been levelled in incendiary bombs. Their army was in ruins, their airforce non-existant, and what was left of their Navy did not possess the fuel for concerted actions anymore. They were outnumbered, outgunned, outmanned, and out of supplies.
However, they hadn't surrendered. And American commanders were estimating large numbers of deaths in assaulting mainland Japan. Whilst they had the possibility of levelling the place even further with regular bombs, and hoping the Japanese surrendered, despite horrific casualties, starvation, and hardship so far, the japanese government and people showed no sign of doing so. At least, to my knowledge of the affair.
The Americans thought to a) test out their new weapon, and b) see if the promised destructive power would push the Japanese over the edge, or allow for rapid annihilation. They couldn't leave until they'd forced a Japanese surrender, yet were terrified of the possible consequences it would take to do by conventional means. Aerial power alone clearly did not suffice, despite the switching from incendiaries to the new Napalm bombs. Japan was already in ruins and starvation, and that alone did not induce surrender.
So they dropped the A-bomb. It was horrific. Everyone was taken aback, the Americans included. The American government, realising what a powerful weapon they had on their hands, decided to drop another, and keep making and dropping them until the Japanese gave in or were obliterated beyond recovery. The Japanese ate another bomb, and Hirohito announced his surrender, recognising that there was no 'honourable death' to be gained by having a lump of explosive uranium dropped on your head.
Like I said, it was unnecessary, the Japanese were no longer a threat. Could surrender have been induced in another way? Perhaps. But the bloodthirstiness of the Americans had been raised by the events of Pearl Harbour, and they would tolerate nothing more than complete surrender, or continuing hostilities. There was no question of their forces withdrawing for a period to negotiate a peace settlement that would allow the Japanese Government to save face, or just maintaining a perpetual blockade.
Ketara wrote:It was unnecessary. The Japanese no longer possessed any way of striking back against the Americans. Does that make it immoral? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky.
No. It was painless if it landed on your head. The resulting burns and radiation sickness from those caught on the edge of the blast, or in slightly covered locations were horrific. Seriously. Go and read some accounts of the resulting symptoms. This was only excaberated by the levelling of 2/3's of Japans housing by incendiaries, and lack of supplies. People died in extreme pain writhing in their own excrement as a result of those bombs.
'Politest form of death', it was not.
You're right. We had already defeated them catastrophically in the battle of midway, and they were probably ready to throw in the towel anyway... We sunk four carriers in the BOM. FOUR. That's almost half of our current selection of carriers! What can they do after that? Just about nothing :3
I'll take your word for it. I was basing that off opinions I've heard from the people around me, not on fact I think the standard opinion is probably "painless, yeah!"
I weep for the future if thats your knowledge base-educate yourself young man!
Midway occurred in 1942. They didn't surrender until late 1945, after three more years and thousands upong thousands of American and Japanes military dead alone.
Protip: people don't realize this happened during an era in which you could smoke anywhere, lard and trans fats were everywhere, and polio was common, also, there were white and colored water fountains and bathrooms. We wanted to strike them down, we didn't know that thered be consequences like this.
Ketara wrote:Well, their last and greatest battleship had just set off to attack the Americans without enough fuel to make a return journey. Two thirds of the place had been levelled in incendiary bombs. Their army was in ruins, their airforce non-existant, and what was left of their Navy did not possess the fuel for concerted actions anymore. They were outnumbered, outgunned, outmanned, and out of supplies.
However, they hadn't surrendered. And American commanders were estimating large numbers of deaths in assaulting mainland Japan. Whilst they had the possibility of levelling the place even further with regular bombs, and hoping the Japanese surrendered, despite horrific casualties, starvation, and hardship so far, the japanese government and people showed no sign of doing so. At least, to my knowledge of the affair.
The Americans thought to a) test out their new weapon, and b) see if the promised destructive power would push the Japanese over the edge, or allow for rapid annihilation. They couldn't leave until they'd forced a Japanese surrender, yet were terrified of the possible consequences it would take to do by conventional means. Aerial power alone clearly did not suffice, despite the switching from incendiaries to the new Napalm bombs. Japan was already in ruins and starvation, and that alone did not induce surrender.
So they dropped the A-bomb. It was horrific. Everyone was taken aback, the Americans included. The American government, realising what a powerful weapon they had on their hands, decided to drop another, and keep making and dropping them until the Japanese gave in or were obliterated beyond recovery. The Japanese ate another bomb, and Hirohito announced his surrender, recognising that there was no 'honourable death' to be gained by having a lump of explosive uranium dropped on your head.
Like I said, it was unnecessary, the Japanese were no longer a threat. Could surrender have been induced in another way? Perhaps. But the bloodthirstiness of the Americans had been raised by the events of Pearl Harbour, and they would tolerate nothing more than complete surrender, or continuing hostilities. There was no question of their forces withdrawing for a period to negotiate a peace settlement that would allow the Japanese Government to save face, or just maintaining a perpetual blockade.
Thats so awesome except your not counting the thousands of planes they saved for kamikazies against the US fleet when it invaded, and the multiople divions they still had everywhere but Manchuria and the islands we had freed. You know-China/Singapore/Vietnam/Thailand etc etc right?
The Japanese would have lost but they would have done a lot of damage to the US before they did. Considering what america actually knew about atomic weapons it's understandable they chose to use them.
Japan was in no state to fight back but they would have tried anyway. Before hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed they still had high moral and were ready to fight until they were wiped out.
They had such faith in their Emperor it was only going to end with a large number of deaths whether by the US attacking them or by the A bombs. Massive casulties would be the only thing that would make them surrender- the threat of losing wasn't enough.
Either that or your generation was taught by one who needed to justify their own actions and global stance to themselves?
Make no mistake, I have no real interest either way, bar an academic one. I'm not interested in penalising America, the Japanese committed atrocities just as bad. I wouldn't put either on the level of say, the Holocaust, just the natural order of war.
The thing remains though, that Japan was out of supplies, half levelled by extensive incendiary and napalm bombing, their navy was no longer an issue, and the Americans and allied forces were capable of moving at will about the place. Those are military facts, regardless of your viewpoint.
To my mind, that would classify it as 'unnecessary', in the sense that the war was as good as over, and the Japanese no longer had any meaningful way of striking back. You are of course, free to examine those military facts I have given there, and draw a separate conclusion.
However, to simply accuse someone with no stake either way, who is indeed an academic in the field of warfare of , 'PCbs whitewashing' is bold indeed. I would appreciate academic citation if I am wrong. If you can prove that Japan was still amply supplied with ammo, soldiers, warships, aircraft, and so on, and still possessed the means and wherewithal to use it, I will accept it and draw another conclusion. So in the interests of defending your stance, discrediting the one you feel is wrong, and spreading education, please do so.
Either that or your generation was taught by one who needed to justify their own actions and global stance to themselves?
Make no mistake, I have no real interest either way, bar an academic one. I'm not interested in penalising America, the Japanese committed atrocities just as bad. I wouldn't put either on the level of say, the Holocaust, just the natural order of war.
The thing remains though, that Japan was out of supplies, half levelled by extensive incendiary and napalm bombing, their navy was no longer an issue, and the Americans and allied forces were capable of moving at will about the place. Those are military facts, regardless of your viewpoint.
To my mind, that would classify it as 'unnecessary', in the sense that the war was as good as over, and the Japanese no longer had any meaningful way of striking back. You are of course, free to examine those military facts I have given there, and draw a separate conclusion.
However, to simply accuse someone with no stake either way, who is indeed an academic in the field of warfare of , 'PCbs whitewashing' is bold indeed. I would appreciate academic citation if I am wrong. If you can prove that Japan was still amply supplied with ammo, soldiers, warships, aircraft, and so on, and still possessed the means and wherewithal to use it, I will accept it and draw another conclusion. So in the interests of defending your stance, discrediting the one you feel is wrong, and spreading education, please do so.
Wow just wow.
I don't have to debate some loser revisionst scholar.
-When did Japanese troops leave China?
-When did Japanese troops leave Vietnam?
-When did Japanese troops leave Cambodia?
-When did Japanese troops leave Laos?
-When did Japanese troops leave Malaysia?
-When did Japanese troops leave Singapore?
-Were the Japanese working on a nuclear program?
-Were the Japanese working on their own jet fighters?
-Did the Japanese surrender Manchuria after the first A bomb? Did they ever surrender Manchuria?
-Did the Japanese surrender after the first A bomb? Did they surrender after the first A bomb and the invasion of Manchuria?
-how many millions of civilians died at the hands of the Japanese? How many were dying daily when they surrenderd?
I am not too terribly learned on the subject but IIRC the Japanese Government made a few attempts to negotiate a surrender to the U.S., not an unconditional one, but a surrender none the less. By the time the bombs were dropped it was increasingly obvious that the USSR was going to roll through Manchuria and the war was all but lost to the Japanese.
Some would argue Trueman did it to intimidate the Russians, if that is true, his plan did indeed work.
Whether or not the bombs were necessary is a tough question, as determining what would have happened if we had not dropped the bombs is pretty much impossible. Given the prevailing mindset of "unconditional surrender" was the only thing that could prevent a WW! -> Hitler like rise from happening again, it could have been the only option.
In the end, I think there is some interesting research that could be done on this topic. However, as of right now, I have to come down on the side of it being necessary.
The two bombs avoided a land fall invasion by the U.S. against virtually the entire Japanese population that would have killed so many more people that those dead from the two bombs would pale in comparison.
Frazzled wrote:Wow just wow.
I don't have to debate some loser revisionst scholar.
I'm sorry? Was that a direct insult? I'm also mildly baffled by the way you throw the term 'revisionist' around as if its some sort of offensive term, revisionism is often considerably more accurate than history written at the time, as it encompasses a fuller set of records, and less of a political or a national bias.
Nonetheless, this being your third post on the topic, you clearly DO have the time.
-When did Japanese troops leave China?
-When did Japanese troops leave Vietnam?
-When did Japanese troops leave Cambodia?
-When did Japanese troops leave Laos?
-When did Japanese troops leave Malaysia?
-When did Japanese troops leave Singapore?
You should know as well as I do having troops situated in a place does not testify to their efficacy or fighting capacity. Especially in a largely naval situation, where the topic under discussion is a set of islands. Regardless, I fail to see how asking me these questions in any way answers the polite request for references to an alternate point of view.
-Were the Japanese working on a nuclear program?
Are you seriously postulating the Japs were a threat due to being about to develop their own A bombs? If so, Then you'll need some damn good evidence to convince me of that one.
-Did the Japanese surrender Manchuria after the first A bomb? Did they ever surrender Manchuria?
-Did the Japanese surrender after the first A bomb? Did they surrender after the first A bomb and the invasion of Manchuria?
-how many millions of civilians died at the hands of the Japanese? How many were dying daily when they surrenderd?
Again, more questions that seem to be...well, irrelevant. We're talking about the capacity of the Japanese to fight back against the American napalm bombers and warships, not whether the Japanese committed atrocities or not. I know they did. Why do you keep bringing it up?
The fact that they didn't instantly surrender after Hiroshima, thus forcing the the drop on Nagasaki shows that it was not only warranted but a necessity! After several stunning defeats the Japanese proved indomitable, thus showing that their code of honor required a act of extreme violence to be satisfied.
I think the only real way to look at it is that the bomb, as terrible as it was, saved lives on both sides.
As Polonius also stated it showed us how terrible of a weapon it was at a small yield compared to what exists today. That one act of dropping those bombs has scared the gak out of the world, to the point that no other nuc has ever been used in war. Better that we learned that with the small yield bombs than the monsters we have today.
This has been an issue which has torn my own opinion many times over but I've never been able to say to myself it was fully justified, so I voted no. I think the original question is to open however as its a complex issue with a lot of emotion and deserves more thought than, 'was it a good idea'.
They were a good idea at the time: to a country which had whipped itself into such a frenzy of hatred and excitement in a war where each nation was commiting war crimes/atrocities in the name of their respective 'greater goods'. The lines of morality become blurred and for the people who made the decision, for those who dropped the bombs, for a nation who was tiring of loosing its sons and daughters; I believe their need to end the war, the desire for revenge, to show strength to other nations, to survive... for them it was a good idea.
So letting Japan retain its conquered countires and kill thousands of civilians daily is ok? I proffer those countries might disagree a fair bit.
I don't understand. You claim a contrary viewpoint, then when asked for proof, back that viewpoint up by making several irrelevant reply questions, and then seem to claim victory when irrelevant questions are pointed out as being so.
This style of argument is baffling to me. Are you genuinely trying to have a discussion here, or just spouting illogicalities for fun? Please clarify now if the former or latter, just so I know how to respond.
Ketara wrote:It was unnecessary. The Japanese no longer possessed any way of striking back against the Americans. Does that make it immoral? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky.
No. It was painless if it landed on your head. The resulting burns and radiation sickness from those caught on the edge of the blast, or in slightly covered locations were horrific. Seriously. Go and read some accounts of the resulting symptoms. This was only excaberated by the levelling of 2/3's of Japans housing by incendiaries, and lack of supplies. People died in extreme pain writhing in their own excrement as a result of those bombs.
'Politest form of death', it was not.
Contrast with the "more than one hundred thousand slow roasted because everything's on fire" conventional munitions that were the other option. Nuclear weapons are scary because of their small size and massive blast radius; there are a myriad of things that cause equally or more horrific deaths than the radiation poisoning around the fringes of the blast, and most aren't even weapons.
As somebody hinted at, the immoral actions weren't the way the war was fought.
The real question is why did we demand unconditional surrender of a culture that considers surrender dishonorable and not always preferable to annhialation?
The Japanese were completely capable of fighting back, albeit in a reduced fashion. They had chemical weapons (thoroughly tested on the Chinese) and even when we broke their supply lines (a common tactic to reduce fighting capacity) they resorted to homemade weapons and even cannibalism. They had NO intention of ever stopping, even if it meant trying to sneak up on us with fishing boats and swords.
Not to mention almost half of their late-war production came from conquered areas in mainland Asia, areas we didn't even touch. So yes, they did still stand as a threat.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Contrast with the "more than one hundred thousand slow roasted because everything's on fire" conventional munitions that were the other option. Nuclear weapons are scary because of their small size and massive blast radius; there are a myriad of things that cause equally or more horrific deaths than the radiation poisoning around the fringes of the blast, and most aren't even weapons.
Why isn't there a 'die of old age in bed' option?
Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:The Japanese were completely capable of fighting back, albeit in a reduced fashion. They had chemical weapons (thoroughly tested on the Chinese) and even when we broke their supply lines (a common tactic to reduce fighting capacity) they resorted to homemade weapons and even cannibalism. They had NO intention of ever stopping, even if it meant trying to sneak up on us with fishing boats and swords.
Not to mention almost half of their late-war production came from conquered areas in mainland Asia, areas we didn't even touch. So yes, they did still stand as a threat.
......Assuming I take everything you just said at face value as the truth, you just told me the Japanese were a threat to the US carrier fleet because they had 'fishing boats and swords'. Can you say that with a serious face?
As for half of their late war production, its irrelevant for the same reason having troops in China is. To put it simply, in a largely naval conflict, taking place between islands, having assets is no guarantee of the efficacy or usefulness of them. You have to be able to move them from Point A to B to C. When in between points A and B there's a Bomber squadron, and a carrier and three destroyers between B and C, it all becomes largely academic.
As for chemical weapons, again, even if I take that as a threat at face value, you run into difficulties producing it as a credible threat. Namely, the lack of a delivery system. The Japanese air fleet was largely trashed, and spraying the decks of American ships with chemicals won't do much damage (the people are inside, largely sealed away). The Japanese did not posses missiles. There were no real viable targets, and no reliable way of delivering them.
So letting Japan retain its conquered countires and kill thousands of civilians daily is ok? I proffer those countries might disagree a fair bit.
I don't understand. You claim a contrary viewpoint, then when asked for proof, back that viewpoint up by making several irrelevant reply questions, and then seem to claim victory when irrelevant questions are pointed out as being so.
This style of argument is baffling to me. Are you genuinely trying to have a discussion here, or just spouting illogicalities for fun? Please clarify now if the former or latter, just so I know how to respond.
The proof is to you that it wasn't a good idea. As you never answered whether Jpana had pulled out of thoise countries prior I'll accept that as a "they didn't."
You have to actually present a reason for the US not to have done it, and what alternatives were available. Especially as thousands, perhaps millions of lives were on the line.
Lets compare on the Eastern front. The Soviets have succesfully employed Bagration and pushed the Nazis back to Germany. Much of Central Europe is still in Nazi hands.
Polonius wrote:It's also arguable that the atomic bombs, coupled with the threat of Russian intervention, prevented Japan from being divided with the communists.
In this regard, we were perhaps doing Japan a favor (in a weird sort of way) by not accepting a normal surrender. This is total hindsight and I know the guys on the ground wern't thinking this, H+N might have been a better alternative to either a divided or 100% USSR controlled Japanese state.
I live in eastern Germany, I can see the problems the whole "division" thing created, both physically and culturally.
Ketara wrote:
......Assuming I take everything you just said at face value as the truth, you just told me the Japanese were a threat to the US carrier fleet because they had 'fishing boats and swords'. Can you say that with a serious face?
You are twisting my words to feel better about losing the argument. I believe I said
They had NO intention of ever stopping, even if it meant trying to sneak up on us with fishing boats and swords.
They had more then that. I CLEARLY said thats what would happen if it came down to it. Either way the US and probably the USSR would have lost more soldiers/marines, and the Chinese would have lost thousands more civilians due to the "scorched earth" policy enacted. If the japs can't use it, they utterly destroyed it.
Frazzled wrote:
-Were the Japanese working on their own jet fighters?
No, they weren't.
They were done already!
Oh, and they could at least have been given some time after Hiroshima. It just feels as if the second bomb was rushed "just because they [the US] could".
So letting Japan retain its conquered countires and kill thousands of civilians daily is ok? I proffer those countries might disagree a fair bit.
I don't understand. You claim a contrary viewpoint, then when asked for proof, back that viewpoint up by making several irrelevant reply questions, and then seem to claim victory when irrelevant questions are pointed out as being so.
This style of argument is baffling to me. Are you genuinely trying to have a discussion here, or just spouting illogicalities for fun? Please clarify now if the former or latter, just so I know how to respond.
The proof is to you that it wasn't a good idea. As you never answered whether Jpana had pulled out of thoise countries prior I'll accept that as a "they didn't."
You have to actually present a reason for the US not to have done it, and what alternatives were available. Especially as thousands, perhaps millions of lives were on the line.
Lets compare on the Eastern front. The Soviets have succesfully employed Bagration and pushed the Nazis back to Germany. Much of Central Europe is still in Nazi hands.
You're Stalin. Do you stop?
Yup, Stalin would not have stopped, regardless of casualties. In retrospect, the bombs saved Japan from communism.
Frazzled wrote:
You have to actually present a reason for the US not to have done it, and what alternatives were available. Especially as thousands, perhaps millions of lives were on the line.
Lets compare on the Eastern front. The Soviets have succesfully employed Bagration and pushed the Nazis back to Germany. Much of Central Europe is still in Nazi hands.
You're Stalin. Do you stop?
Ah, now we start to get to the marrow of your bone of contention.
Firstly, you're fundamentally misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm saying it was 'unnecessary'. Not that they needed a reason NOT to have done it, rather that they COULD have opted not to do it with no real effect on the outcome of the war.
The Japanese had lost. The US could have maintained napalm bombing and the blockade for another month, and the effect would have been the same. People were going to die regardless. The Japanese had lost the war regardless. The US need never have set foot on mainland Japan to bring that home. The Japanese were no longer a threat to the US.
As such, they had the choice NOT to drop that bomb. I am not going to say it would have been better if they had not. I'm not approaching this from an ethical standpoint. I'm saying it was unnecessary because they had other options. Saying it was necessary is saying there was absolutely no other way to bring an end to the war. And based on Japanese logistics, starvation, and general inability to fight back by that stage, I would disgaree with that.
The Americans had several options, one of which was 'drop nukes until they say sorry'. They picked that one. Fair enough. It wasn't 'necessary however', anymore so than it would have been 'necessaary' to drop nukes on Saddams head 2 days before the surrender of Iraq.
Frazzled wrote:
You have to actually present a reason for the US not to have done it, and what alternatives were available. Especially as thousands, perhaps millions of lives were on the line.
Lets compare on the Eastern front. The Soviets have succesfully employed Bagration and pushed the Nazis back to Germany. Much of Central Europe is still in Nazi hands.
You're Stalin. Do you stop?
Ah, now we start to get to the marrow of your bone of contention.
Firstly, you're fundamentally misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm saying it was 'unnecessary'. Not that they needed a reason NOT to have done it, rather that they COULD have opted not to do it with no real effect on the outcome of the war.
The Japanese had lost. The US could have maintained napalm bombing and the blockade for another month, and the effect would have been the same. People were going to die regardless. The Japanese had lost the war regardless. The US need never have set foot on mainland Japan to bring that home. The Japanese were no longer a threat to the US.
As such, they had the choice NOT to drop that bomb. I am not going to say it would have been better if they had not. I'm not approaching this from an ethical standpoint. I'm saying it was unnecessary because they had other options. Saying it was necessary is saying there was absolutely no other way to bring an end to the war. And based on Japanese logistics, starvation, and general inability to fight back by that stage, I would disgaree with that.
The Americans had several options, one of which was 'drop nukes until they say sorry'. They picked that one. Fair enough. It wasn't 'necessary however', anymore so than it would have been 'necessaary' to drop nukes on Saddams head 2 days before the surrender of Iraq.
It was the swiftest way to end the war with quite honestly, the least amount of casualties. And if they kept going down the path they were, we most likely would have just razed Japan to the ground and put no effort into rebuilding them instead of helping them become the economic powerhouse they are today
Polonius wrote:The japanese held a huge chunk of China, which was a strong ally. Fighting to liberate an ally is pretty noble, I would think.
We should note we were illictly helping them before Pearl Harbor. Indeed thats the primary reason for the war. Further depracations in China resulted in an oil embargo by the US resulting in their plan for the Great December Freakout.
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Manstein wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Ketara wrote:
Frazzled wrote:And you didn't answer any I see.
So letting Japan retain its conquered countires and kill thousands of civilians daily is ok? I proffer those countries might disagree a fair bit.
I don't understand. You claim a contrary viewpoint, then when asked for proof, back that viewpoint up by making several irrelevant reply questions, and then seem to claim victory when irrelevant questions are pointed out as being so.
This style of argument is baffling to me. Are you genuinely trying to have a discussion here, or just spouting illogicalities for fun? Please clarify now if the former or latter, just so I know how to respond.
The proof is to you that it wasn't a good idea. As you never answered whether Jpana had pulled out of thoise countries prior I'll accept that as a "they didn't."
You have to actually present a reason for the US not to have done it, and what alternatives were available. Especially as thousands, perhaps millions of lives were on the line.
Lets compare on the Eastern front. The Soviets have succesfully employed Bagration and pushed the Nazis back to Germany. Much of Central Europe is still in Nazi hands.
You're Stalin. Do you stop?
Yup, Stalin would not have stopped, regardless of casualties. In retrospect, the bombs saved Japan from communism.
Or to be more humane, the bombs stopped Japan from a literal firestorm that would have wracked it stem to stern. Read up on Olympic, then read up on Jpaanes plans at resistance. Its terrifying.
Unfortunately yes, the dropping of A bombs did end the war much sooner than it would have with out them, and if it had gone on, much more deaths and damage would have occurred in Japan, and to U.S. soldiers as well. Not to mention all the Chinese the Japanese would have probably kept on killing.
Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
You are twisting my words to feel better about losing the argument.
We're having an argument? That might explain why I'm losing it then, I didn't even realise I was engaging in it!
I believe I said
They had NO intention of ever stopping, even if it meant trying to sneak up on us with fishing boats and swords.
They had more then that. I CLEARLY said thats what would happen if it came down to it. Either way the US and probably the USSR would have lost more soldiers/marines, and the Chinese would have lost thousands more civilians due to the "scorched earth" policy enacted. If the japs can't use it, they utterly destroyed it.
Thing is, I'm talking about whether the Japanese could still have won the war. They couldn't. As I've already said, they no longer had the wherewithal to hurt America. You volunteered chemical weapons as a threat, I have demonstrated why that is not so. As I have also mentioned, when sending out their largest battleship to engage the American fleet when it was approaching mainland Japan, they didn't even have enough fuel left for it to get it home again, they were so short on supplies.
Japan was isolated, blockaded, and bombarded. They had lost the war. They were out of supplies. And as any knowledgeable tactician will tell you, logistics are the major part of prosecuting any war successfully. Telling me they 'had no intention of ever stopping, even if it meant sneaking up on you fishing boats and swords' is ridiculous. Do you honestly have this image in your mind of a fleet of Japanese civilians attacking the US carrier fleet waving swords? The Japanese are not all radical suicide bombers and fanatics, anymore than all muslims are. And even if they did do that, they'd have been blown out of the water.
Having the will to prosecute a war is different to having the means. The Japanese had lost the war, and were no longer a threat to the US people or fleet. They had simply not surrendered as of yet.
Frazzled wrote: It ended the war and those people survived.
Whether or not this is true is open to significant debate. The timing of the bombings was such that they may not have been the proximal cause of surrender, and there were statements made by Japanese officials to support such a conclusion.
Olympic was planned to start November 1. Thats less than three months after that. The level of prepatory bombing would have made the firebombing of Tokya look like an elementarty scuffle.
On the other hand, if millions of japanese would have died while resisting an invasion that they thought would result in their domination and colonization (which we did to the Phillipines after winning them in a poker game), are they to blame?
This is the hard question for me: if we had offered them the terms they eventually had imposed on them, would they have surrendered earlier?
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dogma wrote:
Frazzled wrote: It ended the war and those people survived.
Whether or not this is true is open to significant debate. The timing of the bombings was such that they may not have been the proximal cause of surrender, and there were statements made by Japanese officials to support such a conclusion.
There is evidnece to suggest they'd take their chances with occupation by us instead of the Soviets.
Polonius wrote:This is the hard question for me: if we had offered them the terms they eventually had imposed on them, would they have surrendered earlier?
That's the issue really, how much more conventional warfare (if any) would have been required to make them say Grandad, and would it have saved more lives?
Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
You are twisting my words to feel better about losing the argument.
We're having an argument? That might explain why I'm losing it then, I didn't even realise I was engaging in it!
I believe I said
They had NO intention of ever stopping, even if it meant trying to sneak up on us with fishing boats and swords.
They had more then that. I CLEARLY said thats what would happen if it came down to it. Either way the US and probably the USSR would have lost more soldiers/marines, and the Chinese would have lost thousands more civilians due to the "scorched earth" policy enacted. If the japs can't use it, they utterly destroyed it.
Thing is, I'm talking about whether the Japanese could still have won the war. They couldn't. As I've already said, they no longer had the wherewithal to hurt America. You volunteered chemical weapons as a threat, I have demonstrated why that is not so. As I have also mentioned, when sending out their largest battleship to engage the American fleet when it was approaching mainland Japan, they didn't even have enough fuel left for it to get it home again, they were so short on supplies.
Japan was isolated, blockaded, and bombarded. They had lost the war. They were out of supplies. And as any knowledgeable tactician will tell you, logistics are the major part of prosecuting any war successfully. Telling me they 'had no intention of ever stopping, even if it meant sneaking up on you fishing boats and swords' is ridiculous. Do you honestly have this image in your mind of a fleet of Japanese civilians attacking the US carrier fleet waving swords? The Japanese are not all radical suicide bombers and fanatics, anymore than all muslims are. And even if they did do that, they'd have been blown out of the water.
Having the will to prosecute a war is different to having the means. The Japanese had lost the war, and were no longer a threat to the US people or fleet. They had simply not surrendered as of yet.
*struggling not to break rule 1*
You aren't getting it. They KNEW they couldn't win, but were gonna go down fighting by any means possible. War ends when one guy gets scared enough to drop his gun and go home. We scared them, and most of the known world, including the USSR. Two for the price of....well...two
EDIT: And any conventional means would have resulted in much more bloodshed. These people were resorting to CANNIBALISM! You can't just starve them out that way, and they still had the ability to support themselves, unless you are talking about firebombing the entire country and a good chunk of Asia along with it
Polonius wrote:This is the hard question for me: if we had offered them the terms they eventually had imposed on them, would they have surrendered earlier?
That's the issue really, how much more conventional warfare (if any) would have been required to make them say Grandad, and would it have saved more lives?
Polonius wrote:This is the hard question for me: if we had offered them the terms they eventually had imposed on them, would they have surrendered earlier?
That's the issue really, how much more conventional warfare (if any) would have been required to make them say Grandad, and would it have saved more lives?
I'm not sure that's the issue. That's a judgment call, based on estimation.
I think the issue is if making they say grandad was proper, especially when they didn't know that would entail.
Polonius wrote:This is the hard question for me: if we had offered them the terms they eventually had imposed on them, would they have surrendered earlier?
That's the issue really, how much more conventional warfare (if any) would have been required to make them say Grandad, and would it have saved more lives?
The numbers here are actually a mulltiple higher than I proffered, so yea, it did. I am not arguing its the only thing as the Soviet obliteration of Japanese forces in Manchuria occurred in the same three days. But it was the one two punch that did it. As a reminder there was an attempted coup at the time to try to keep Japan IN THE WAR after all that.
The real question is why did we demand unconditional surrender of a culture that considers surrender dishonorable and not always preferable to annhialation?
Well seeing as the Japanese were well known to never accept surrender it seams rather courteous to offer them any form of surrender conditional or not. The Japanese were bent on complete subjugation or annihilation of other cultures. To allow that culture any avenues of escaping intact would have been completely irresponsible. THEY NEEDED A BEAT DOWN and they got it.
The real question is why did we demand unconditional surrender of a culture that considers surrender dishonorable and not always preferable to annhialation?
Well seeing as the Japanese were well known to never accept surrender it seams rather courteous to offer them any form of surrender conditional or not. The Japanese were bent on complete subjugation or annihilation of other cultures. To allow that culture any avenues of escaping intact would have been completely irresponsible. THEY NEEDED A BEAT DOWN and they got it.
I'd be careful of how you word that point. I've read that there was a culture among high ranking field and general grade officers that Imperial Japan needed to expand or die, but I'd be wary of attributing the national culture with that attribute.
As a culture they were notoriosly racist in their treatment of non-japanese, but I don't see how that makes them incapable of accepting a surrender offer.
Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:You aren't getting it. They KNEW they couldn't win, but were gonna go down fighting by any means possible. War ends when one guy gets scared enough to drop his gun and go home. We scared them, and most of the known world, including the USSR. Two for the price of....well...two
You have the most bizare conception of warfare, and the Japanese people I have ever known. Seriously. I get what you're trying to say, but not only is it illogical, its actually mildly disturbing that someone can have such a distorted view of the world.
EDIT: And any conventional means would have resulted in much more bloodshed. These people were resorting to CANNIBALISM! You can't just starve them out that way, and they still had the ability to support themselves, unless you are talking about firebombing the entire country and a good chunk of Asia along with it
I'm not deliberately trying to be offensive here, but your portrayal of the entire Japanese people as fanatical cannibals, and using that as a reason as to why they were a danger to the US just isn't working. Please. Just leave it there.
I will just reiterate one point to you, in the hope that you will realise why even if every single Japanese person was a stark raving madman who would rip off his own arm to hit an American with it, it made no difference.
This point is that intent to do harm does not equate to capacity to do harm. Every Japanese soldier can be a frothing beserker, if the US remains in control of their supplies, the sea, and the air, there is nothing the Japanese can do to hurt them.
whitedragon wrote:
According to most...a lot.
I don't know. Honestly, I don't. I'm willing to admit when my knowledge in an area is lacking. Whilst I feel I can definitively say the Japanese had lost by that stage, I've heard several conflicting accounts about the state of the government and mood of the people, so I couldn't really comment.
Polonius wrote:
I'm not sure that's the issue. That's a judgment call, based on estimation.
I think the issue is if making they say grandad was proper, especially when they didn't know that would entail.
Extrapolation? I don't quite understand what you're getting at.
Frazzled wrote:
The numbers here are actually a mulltiple higher than I proffered, so yea, it did. I am not arguing its the only thing as the Soviet obliteration of Japanese forces in Manchuria occurred in the same three days. But it was the one two punch that did it.
Quite possibly. Like I said, I wouldn't claim to know enough to say one way or the other.
I say that yes, they were justified. Regardless of whether the Japanese had the power to effectively strike back against the US or not, they would not have surrendered otherwise and would have fought back to the bitter end or killed themselves to prevent dishonor. And nobody wanted to repeat the same mistakes that were made with the Treaty of Versailles and Germany at the end of World War One - if you leave behind a hurt, defeated, and humiliated enemy but allow it just enough strength to stumble to it's feet again, you can bet that it will, and it will strike back all the harder for it when it can.
America was looking to completely break the Japanese - not merely defeat them in battle, but psychologically destroy the want to go to war again. And without the A-Bombs, it would not have happened. The invasion of Japan would have been a huge, time-consuming, and costly (in both material and lives) disaster. The minute that American troops set foot on Japan's shores, every single Japanese citizen would have picked up the closest thing to a weapon and fought back, and likely have fought back even harder. It's one thing to fight when you're in a different country, it's completely different to do so when your home is being invaded, especially when you've got such an honor-bound culture involved. They would have never broken by conventional means. In response to Ketara, yes, we could have gone for other options, but those options would have taken much longer to go into effect and would not have broken the Japanese spirit to fight like the A-Bombs did. And that was what we were truly aiming for - not the mere military defeat, but the complete breaking of their will to fight, both during the war and afterwards.
DiscoVader wrote:I say that yes, they were justified. Regardless of whether the Japanese had the power to effectively strike back against the US or not, they would not have surrendered otherwise and would have fought back to the bitter end or killed themselves to prevent dishonor. And nobody wanted to repeat the same mistakes that were made with the Treaty of Versailles and Germany at the end of World War One - if you leave behind a hurt, defeated, and humiliated enemy but allow it just enough strength to stumble to it's feet again, you can bet that it will, and it will strike back all the harder for it when it can.
America was looking to completely break the Japanese - not merely defeat them in battle, but psychologically destroy the want to go to war again. And without the A-Bombs, it would not have happened. The invasion of Japan would have been a huge, time-consuming, and costly (in both material and lives) disaster. The minute that American troops set foot on Japan's shores, every single Japanese citizen would have picked up the closest thing to a weapon and fought back, and likely have fought back even harder. It's one thing to fight when you're in a different country, it's completely different to do so when your home is being invaded, especially when you've got such an honor-bound culture involved. They would have never broken by conventional means. In response to Ketara, yes, we could have gone for other options, but those options would have taken much longer to go into effect and would not have broken the Japanese spirit to fight like the A-Bombs did. And that was what we were truly aiming for - not the mere military defeat, but the complete breaking of their will to fight, both during the war and afterwards.
Ketara wrote:It was unnecessary. The Japanese no longer possessed any way of striking back against the Americans. Does that make it immoral? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky.
No. It was painless if it landed on your head. The resulting burns and radiation sickness from those caught on the edge of the blast, or in slightly covered locations were horrific. Seriously. Go and read some accounts of the resulting symptoms. This was only excaberated by the levelling of 2/3's of Japans housing by incendiaries, and lack of supplies. People died in extreme pain writhing in their own excrement as a result of those bombs.
'Politest form of death', it was not.
You're right. We had already defeated them catastrophically in the battle of midway, and they were probably ready to throw in the towel anyway... We sunk four carriers in the BOM. FOUR. That's almost half of our current selection of carriers! What can they do after that? Just about nothing :3
I'll take your word for it. I was basing that off opinions I've heard from the people around me, not on fact I think the standard opinion is probably "painless, yeah!"
I weep for the future if thats your knowledge base-educate yourself young man!
Midway occurred in 1942. They didn't surrender until late 1945, after three more years and thousands upong thousands of American and Japanes military dead alone.
Those last three years were basically ground wars though, right? I remember reading something about the BOM being the turning point of the SEA-borne war, but the war definitely carried on on the shores...
Its simple. The Japanese still had their empire. Thousands of innocents in occupied countries were dying daily. We had seriously obliterated their navy but they kept coming. We had pushed to within striking distance but they did not surrender. We had firebombed multiple cities causing more deaths yet they still didn't surrender. On Iwo Jima and Okinawa the casualities were horrendous. Projected casualties from an invasion were in the millions of civilian deaths, which is supported by Japanese plans discovered after. Even with one bomb, the start of a blitzkrieg by the Soviets that would have made Rommel cry at the awesomeness of it, and another bomb, there were strong elements that didn't want to surrender.
What exactly is the argument against using the Bombs?
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DiscoVader wrote:I say that yes, they were justified. Regardless of whether the Japanese had the power to effectively strike back against the US or not, they would not have surrendered otherwise and would have fought back to the bitter end or killed themselves to prevent dishonor. And nobody wanted to repeat the same mistakes that were made with the Treaty of Versailles and Germany at the end of World War One - if you leave behind a hurt, defeated, and humiliated enemy but allow it just enough strength to stumble to it's feet again, you can bet that it will, and it will strike back all the harder for it when it can.
America was looking to completely break the Japanese - not merely defeat them in battle, but psychologically destroy the want to go to war again. And without the A-Bombs, it would not have happened. The invasion of Japan would have been a huge, time-consuming, and costly (in both material and lives) disaster. The minute that American troops set foot on Japan's shores, every single Japanese citizen would have picked up the closest thing to a weapon and fought back, and likely have fought back even harder. It's one thing to fight when you're in a different country, it's completely different to do so when your home is being invaded, especially when you've got such an honor-bound culture involved. They would have never broken by conventional means. In response to Ketara, yes, we could have gone for other options, but those options would have taken much longer to go into effect and would not have broken the Japanese spirit to fight like the A-Bombs did. And that was what we were truly aiming for - not the mere military defeat, but the complete breaking of their will to fight, both during the war and afterwards.
We should remember we also had just watched the bloodbath of Soviet attack on Berlin and the hundreds of thousand of casualties they took for that.
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Samus_aran115 wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Samus_aran115 wrote:
Ketara wrote:It was unnecessary. The Japanese no longer possessed any way of striking back against the Americans. Does that make it immoral? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky.
No. It was painless if it landed on your head. The resulting burns and radiation sickness from those caught on the edge of the blast, or in slightly covered locations were horrific. Seriously. Go and read some accounts of the resulting symptoms. This was only excaberated by the levelling of 2/3's of Japans housing by incendiaries, and lack of supplies. People died in extreme pain writhing in their own excrement as a result of those bombs.
'Politest form of death', it was not.
You're right. We had already defeated them catastrophically in the battle of midway, and they were probably ready to throw in the towel anyway... We sunk four carriers in the BOM. FOUR. That's almost half of our current selection of carriers! What can they do after that? Just about nothing :3
I'll take your word for it. I was basing that off opinions I've heard from the people around me, not on fact I think the standard opinion is probably "painless, yeah!"
I weep for the future if thats your knowledge base-educate yourself young man!
Midway occurred in 1942. They didn't surrender until late 1945, after three more years and thousands upong thousands of American and Japanes military dead alone.
Those last three years were basically ground wars though, right? I remember reading something about the BOM being the turning point of the SEA-borne war, but the war definitely carried on on the shores...
Marianas turkey shoot...battle of Leyte Gulf...the joy of Iron Bottom Sound...er no.
Frazzled wrote:Then why are you arguing the point?
Its simple. The Japanese still had their empire. Thousands of innocents in occupied countries were dying daily. We had seriously obliterated their navy but they kept coming. We had pushed to within striking distance but they did not surrender. We had firebombed multiple cities causing more deaths yet they still didn't surrender. On Iwo Jima and Okinawa the casualities were horrendous. Projected casualties from an invasion were in the millions of civilian deaths, which is supported by Japanese plans discovered after. Even with one bomb, the start of a blitzkrieg by the Soviets that would have made Rommel cry at the awesomeness of it, and another bomb, there were strong elements that didn't want to surrender.
What exactly is the argument against using the Bombs?
Is that addressed to me? If so, I'll reiterate my last post to you. I'm not arguing that dropping the bomb was a bad thing, or even the wrong thing to do. Just that it was not necessary. The US government still had other options open to them. They chose not to exploit those options, and prioritise dropping nukes ahead of those other options. This was not bad, or wrong, butit was also not necessary, in that they had to do it.
I'm not arguing against using the bombs, just commenting that the US government had other options open to them at the time, due to the Japanese basically having lost the war already. That's all.
In response to Ketara, yes, we could have gone for other options, but those options would have taken much longer to go into effect and would not have broken the Japanese spirit to fight like the A-Bombs did. And that was what we were truly aiming for - not the mere military defeat, but the complete breaking of their will to fight, both during the war and afterwards.
Maybe. Maybe not. Wouldn't consider myself knowledgeable enough on the affair to say.
It amuses me at the number of people who do think they are though.
Polonius wrote:This is the hard question for me: if we had offered them the terms they eventually had imposed on them, would they have surrendered earlier?
We did, on July 26, 1945. It was called the Potsdam Declaration. It was broadcast over the radio and leaflets dropped on Japan. Apparently the Japanese leadership didn't think surrending was such a great idea.
Ketara wrote:That's the issue really, how much more conventional warfare (if any) would have been required to make them say Grandad, and would it have saved more lives?
The military wasn't interested in surrender, and still believed that they had the ability to win the war. It wasn't until the Emperor intervened (after Hiroshima) that surrender was even considered.
Another armchair general look back question.
Moral or immoral by our current standards doesn't matter.
It happened in a different age and it worked.
Remember little armchair generals, they didn't have the mass of info you have today.
Frazzled wrote:Then why are you arguing the point?
Its simple. The Japanese still had their empire. Thousands of innocents in occupied countries were dying daily. We had seriously obliterated their navy but they kept coming. We had pushed to within striking distance but they did not surrender. We had firebombed multiple cities causing more deaths yet they still didn't surrender. On Iwo Jima and Okinawa the casualities were horrendous. Projected casualties from an invasion were in the millions of civilian deaths, which is supported by Japanese plans discovered after. Even with one bomb, the start of a blitzkrieg by the Soviets that would have made Rommel cry at the awesomeness of it, and another bomb, there were strong elements that didn't want to surrender.
What exactly is the argument against using the Bombs?
Is that addressed to me? If so, I'll reiterate my last post to you. I'm not arguing that dropping the bomb was a bad thing, or even the wrong thing to do. Just that it was not necessary. The US government still had other options open to them. They chose not to exploit those options, and prioritise dropping nukes ahead of those other options. This was not bad, or wrong, butit was also not necessary, in that they had to do it.
I'm not arguing against using the bombs, just commenting that the US government had other options open to them at the time, due to the Japanese basically having lost the war already. That's all.
In response to Ketara, yes, we could have gone for other options, but those options would have taken much longer to go into effect and would not have broken the Japanese spirit to fight like the A-Bombs did. And that was what we were truly aiming for - not the mere military defeat, but the complete breaking of their will to fight, both during the war and afterwards.
Maybe. Maybe not. Wouldn't consider myself knowledgeable enough on the affair to say.
It amuses me at the number of people who do think they are though.
I see. Did they have other options? Sure
1. Bomb every inch of the island. Mustard gas every village. Drop nice combos of anthrax, smallpox, and the plague via bomber or submarine.
2. Invade and kill everything they see. Burn every leaf. Sell the land to US citizens for a dollar an acre.
Those were some options. They chose not to do that.
Polonius wrote:This is the hard question for me: if we had offered them the terms they eventually had imposed on them, would they have surrendered earlier?
We did, on July 26, 1945. It was called the Potsdam Declaration. It was broadcast over the radio and leaflets dropped on Japan. Apparently the Japanese leadership didn't think surrending was such a great idea.
Interesting. Yeah, you can quibble about some issues (the unclear future of the emperor), but that's a pretty fair surrender offer.
It was the armed forces that were called upon to surrender unconditionally, not the nation.
Well, turn down an offer, you want to keep fighting? We kept fighting...
Frazzled wrote:I see. Did they have other options? Sure
1. Bomb every inch of the island. Mustard gas every village. Drop nice combos of anthrax, smallpox, and the plague via bomber or submarine.
2. Invade and kill everything they see. Burn every leaf.
Those were options. They chose not to do that.
Unfortunately, you guys didn't get hold of the anthrax sprays until you took all those lovely atrocity committing Japanese scientists and gave them new jobs post war.
However, yes, bombing the place to ruins, and a land invasion were two options. Further options included:-
-Blockading and starving the country into surrender at leisure.
-Maintaining a continuous barrage of day/night time bombing raids, accompanied by repeated demands for surrender
-waiting for the Soviets to roll up and finish things in their typical brutal fashion.
Ketara wrote:
However, yes, bombing the place to ruins, and a land invasion were two options. Further options included:-
-Blockading and starving the country into surrender at leisure.
-Maintaining a continuous barrage of day/night time bombing raids, accompanied by repeated demands for surrender
-waiting for the Soviets to roll up and finish things in their typical brutal fashion.
There were a few others, but you get the point.
They also could have simply returned to the US.
Somehow everyone always seems to forget that it isn't necessary to crush your opponent to win a war. Machismo, I think.
Unfortunately, you guys didn't get hold of the anthrax sprays until you took all those lovely atrocity committing Japanese scientists and gave them new jobs post war.
***We had anthrax before that. Not weaponized though.
However, yes, bombing the place to ruins, and a land invasion were two options. Further options included:-
-Blockading and starving the country into surrender at leisure.
***They would not have surrendered for years if ever. Just look at NKorea (NORTH KOREA IS BEST KOREA!)
-Maintaining a continuous barrage of day/night time bombing raids, accompanied by repeated demands for surrender
***They had been doing that for months. It didn’t work in Germany and would not have worked here.
-waiting for the Soviets to roll up and finish things in their typical brutal fashion.
***Politically untenable. Japan was our enemy and the Rooskies would not have invaded Japan. Of course if they did by the time they got there would have nuked Japan too
Well, let's put it perspective: 90,000–166,000 killed at Hiroshima vs. 2-3,000,000 estimated casualties for the invasion of Japan. War is war. For the United States to feel guilty over ending an already bloody war that was going to be bogged down by the fighting in Japan is ridiculous.
Polonius wrote:@Dogma: only if that would have gotten the japanese out of China. Otherwise China would have had greater soviet control.
That would have been a Soviet concern, but our relations with them were already souring.
In any case I don't think the political sentiment at the time would have made simply leaving an option, as Ketara said. However, pushing that line of argument inevitably leads to contending that things happened as they happened because they could not have happened any other way, "history is set in stone". When we debate what could have happened, we're really just talking about how the war might have been fought under different circumstances in order to draw lessons from the events. My point was simply that one lesson which is often forgotten is that states can simply decide to stop fighting, which was often the case prior to WWI and WWII. Total war is a modern phenomenon which has, in large part, lead to what is in my mind the prevalence of foreign policy grounded in machismo rather than sense.
Polonius wrote:
I'd also make the argument that we were looking to make sure Germany and Japan didn't bounce back and start another war a generation later.
Germany, yes, Japan less so. Honestly I think the largest issue with Japan, as you stated, was the continuing threat it posed to China, and also India and Australia.
As a culture they were notoriosly racist in their treatment of non-japanese, but I don't see how that makes them incapable of accepting a surrender offer.
I think you misread me. I wasn't saying they were incapable (though the fact that it took more than one nuc speaks volumes as to how readily they would have accepted any form of surrender), I'm saying they were undeserving! Their treatment of prisoners shows that any surrender other than complete and utter destruction and humiliation, was not to be honored by the Japanese. Their code would have forced then to resist if any weakness was shown.
As requested by the Moderator, I'll post this here.
I've been following the debate on the poll regarding the justification of dropping atomic bombs on Japan, and I must admit some interesting points have been raised. Ever since I've joined this site, I've always been keen on seeing quality debate within these ranks, and it's for that reason I'm posting this article from a few years back. It's an alternative view, and the author of the piece does raise some interesting points. The author is not a historian, and he is known within the United Kingdom for his left -wing views. But at any rate it's worth a read, and It certainly got me thinking. Please don't be put off by its length.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today is Hiroshima Day. It is the 62nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima, which was followed three days later by the devastation at Nagasaki. As usual, there is a great deal of media coverage asking whether America should formally apologise for the bombings, and whether they can be classified as ‘war crimes’ or ‘crimes against humanity’. Some argue that the horrors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified because they helped to bring the Second World War to an end; others protest that the war was coming to a close anyway. In light of this predictable and unenlightening debate, spiked is republishing an edited version of Mick Hume’s important essay on Hiroshima, which first appeared in Living Marxism in 1995 on the fiftieth anniversary of the A-bombings. Hume places the bombings in their proper historical context - as the final act of a bitter race war in the Pacific.—- Brendan O’Neill
* * *
‘The only language [the Japanese] seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.’ US President Harry S Truman, 11 August 1945, in a letter justifying his decision to drop the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
‘President Clinton said today that the United States owed Japan no apology for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War Two, and that President Harry S Truman had made the right decision to use the bombs.’ Reuters, 7 April 1995
Why did the US government drop atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945? Throughout the past 50 years, the official Anglo-American line has remained more or less the same: that the bombings were justified because they ended the war early, and so saved countless American and Japanese lives that could have been lost if Allied forces had been forced to launch a costly invasion of Japan.
The notion that the Allies vaporised two cities as a humanitarian act was perverse even by the standards of wartime propaganda. That such a notion should have been so widely and uncritically accepted for half a century is even more remarkable - especially given the evidence to the contrary.
The argument that the Bomb significantly shortened the Pacific conflict and made a bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland unnecessary was first rubbished almost immediately after the war, when the American government’s own Strategic Bombing Survey reported that Japan had been on the point of surrender anyway:
‘Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.’
But did President Truman and his advisers know that Japan was already nearing the point of surrender at the time they decided to drop the Bomb? If they did not, they must surely have been ignoring their own intelligence reports.
In 1993 the author Gar Alperovitz obtained hundreds of pages of US National Security Agency intercepts of secret enemy wartime communications. These revealed that US intelligence knew top Japanese army officers were willing to surrender more than three months before the Hiroshima bomb was dropped. For instance, one document intercepted by the NSA quotes a German diplomat reporting back to Berlin on the state of Japan on 5 May 1945: ‘since the situation is clearly recognised to be hopeless, large sections of the Japanese armed forces would not regard with disfavour an American request for capitulation even if the terms were hard’ (see New York Times, 11 August 1993). Alperovitz has noted that the president’s rediscovered diary ‘leaves no doubt that Truman knew the war would end “a year sooner now” and without an invasion’ (Nation, 10 May 1993).
Despite the evidence that they knew of an impending Japanese collapse, the US authorities not only blasted Hiroshima, they also dropped another bomb on Nagasaki three days later, before the Japanese had a chance to assess the Hiroshima damage and surrender. Even Dwight D Eisenhower, the wartime Supreme Allied Commander in Europe who went on to become US president, later admitted that ‘the Japanese were ready to surrender and we didn’t have to hit them with that awful thing’ (quoted in Newsweek, 11 November 1963). All of which begs the question, why did they do it?
The decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki clearly rested on something more than battlefield calculations about the specific state of the military campaign in August 1945. Two broader political considerations made up Truman’s mind. First, the politics of international power dictated that the USA would definitely drop the Bomb somewhere, regardless of the state of the war. And second, the politics of racial superiority determined that that somewhere would definitely be Japan.
Having developed the Bomb, the US administration was always going to use it. Truman and his predecessor as president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had invested $2 billion in the Manhattan Project to develop the Bomb, a massive sum at that time. The government was under considerable pressure from Congress to show some bang for its megabucks expenditure. That was one reason why Truman’s Secretary of State, James F Byrnes, demanded that the atom bomb be dropped as soon as possible in order to ‘show results’. And international considerations proved even more influential in the Truman administration’s decision to use its new atomic weapon.
By the end of the Second World War, the USA stood head and shoulders above every other nation as the leading economic, political and military global force. America’s new standing was perfectly symbolised by its massive nuclear bomb programme, which gave Washington a unique power to destroy the world it dominated. To be effective as a tool of international politics, however, that power had to be demonstrated in practice. Detonating an atomic device at a time when no other state could come close to building one would be the ultimate demonstration of American supremacy on Earth - a demonstration to be aimed not merely at the Japanese regime, but at Stalin’s Soviet Union, the other Allies, the whole of Asia and indeed the world.
A detailed study by the Japanese Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki puts the attacks in something like their proper international perspective:
‘the A-Bomb attacks were needed not so much against Japan - already on the brink of surrender and no longer capable of mounting an effective counter-offensive - as to establish clearly America’s postwar international position and strategic supremacy in the anticipated Cold War setting. One tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that this historically unprecedented devastation of human society stemmed from essentially experimental and political aims.’
In this sense, America’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was motivated less by a need to end the war than a determination to shape the postwar era in international politics.
If the US authorities always intended to drop the Bomb, it is equally certain that they always intended to drop it on the Japanese. There was no high-level discussion about using the Bomb in Europe against Nazi Germany. Only the Japanese were ever in the Allies’ nuclear bombsights. Here we come to the hidden history of Hiroshima: the story of the Allied powers’ race war against the Japanese, which culminated in the explosion of the White Man’s Bomb.
On 23 April 1945, General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, sent a memo to Henry L Stimson, the American Secretary of War, on plans for using the Bomb. It included the striking observation that ‘[t]he target is and was always expected to be Japan’ (emphasis added).
When he unearthed this memo during research in the 1990s, Arjun Makhijani discussed its implications with leading scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project. He reports that they were ‘amazed’ to learn of Groves’ attitude, 50 years after the event. Most leading members of the Manhattan project team were east European emigres, who had agreed to work on the Bomb only on the understanding that the Nazis were both the target and their competitors. Joseph Rotblat, the Polish scientist, told Makhijani that ‘there was never any idea [among the scientists] that [the Bomb] would be used against Japan. We never worried that the Japanese would have the Bomb. We always worried what Heisenberg and the other German scientists were doing. All of our concentration was on Germany’ (see A Makhijani, ‘Always the target’, Bulletin of AtomicScientists, May/June 1995). All of the concentration of the political and military strategists, however, was on using the Bomb against the Japanese.
The first American discussion about possible targets for an atomic attack took place in May 1943, at a meeting of the high-powered Military Policy Committee. At that time, a year before the D-Day invasion and two years before VE-Day, Hitler’s Germany was still very much a player in the war. Yet the committee’s automatic assumption was that Japan would be the target. General Groves’ summary of the meeting records how ‘[t]he point of use of the first bomb was discussed and the general view appeared to be that its best point of use would be on a Japanese fleet concentration in the Harbour of Truk. General Styer suggested Tokyo…’.
That Japan was already assumed to be the target was confirmed later in 1943, when the B-29 was chosen as the plane the USA would use to drop the Bomb. The distance the B-29 could fly made it the only bomber suitable for use in the Pacific. As one study has observed, ‘had Germany been the primary target, the choice would hardly have fallen on an aircraft never intended for the European theatre’ (RG Hewlett and OE Anderson, The New World, 1962, p253). The targeting of Japan was affirmed during a September 1944 meeting between British prime minister Winston Churchill and US president Roosevelt. The official summary of the meeting makes no mention of any possible use against Germany, but reports the Allied leaders’ view that the Bomb ‘might perhaps, after mature consideration, be used against the Japanese, who should be warned that this bombardment will be repeated until they surrender’.
The fact that Japan was always the target, and that Nazi Germany was not considered, demonstrates a potent double standard in Anglo-American foreign policy. And the basis of that double standard was the issue of race. To the Allies, Germany was a fellow white power which they had temporarily fallen out with; but Japan was an enemy alien, a nation apart. That was why the architects of the Holocaust in Europe were never mentioned as candidates for a ‘humanitarian’ bombing such as Hiroshima. Instead, the atomic bomb was aimed solely at the Japanese. They were considered legitimate targets because the Western powers considered them to be a lower race; as president Truman put it in the letter quoted above, the Japanese were no better than ‘beasts’, and to be treated accordingly.
Japan had been seen as a problem by the Western elites ever since its victory over Russia in 1905 catapulted it on to the world stage. Japan had emerged as a major capitalist power, but was never quite one of the club; it was not, in short, a white man. The notion of racial supremacy and the ‘White Man’s burden’ lay at the heart of the ideology and self-image of the Western imperialists. An Asian nation could not be allowed to sit freely at the top table of world affairs.
The racial double standard in imperial politics was clearly demonstrated back at the Versailles conference which followed the First World War in 1919. While the Americans and the British affirmed their commitment to the new movements for national self-determination in Europe, they rebutted Japan’s attempt to include a clause on racial equality in the covenant of the new League of Nations (forerunner of the UN). As one account puts it, the rejected Japanese amendment was ‘palpably a challenge to the theory of the superiority of the white race on which rested so many of Great Britain’s imperial pretensions’ (AW Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States, 1966, p247).
The run-up to the Second World War was marked by escalating tensions between Japan, the USA and Britain over spheres of influence and trade in Asia and the Pacific. And always, the Western elites interpreted these conflicts through the prism of race. In 1938, three years before the Pacific War with Japan began, Antony Eden (later a Tory foreign secretary and prime minister) was already emphasising the importance of ‘effectively asserting white-race authority in the Far East’. In 1939 Sir Frederick Maze, a top British official in China, described the coming conflict as ‘not merely Japan against Great Britain’ but also ‘the Orient against the Occident - the Yellow race against the White race’.
The view of the Japanese as a less advanced race was so powerful, however, that many members of the Western elites - including Churchill - believed that Japan would not dare to fight the white powers, or would be quickly crushed if it did. Peering into Japanese-occupied China through the barbed-wire fences around British-occupied Hong Kong in 1940, the British commander-in-chief of the Far East described seeing ‘various subhuman species dressed in dirty grey uniform, which I was informed were Japanese soldiers…I cannot believe they would form an intelligent fighting force’. The strength of this prejudice was such that, when war did break out and the British garrison at Hong Kong was strafed by enemy aircraft, many initially believed that German pilots must have been imported to do it, since the Japanese would not have been capable.
Against this background, the string of military successes which Japan achieved against the Americans and the British, Dutch and French colonialists between December 1941 and 1943 traumatised the Allied powers. The white imperialists had been beaten and humiliated by an Asian power, before the eyes of their colonial subjects. The effect, as one perceptive commentator notes, was to free the peoples of India and the rest of Asia from ‘the spell of European invincibility’ (see C Thorne, ‘Racial aspects of the Far Eastern war of 194145’, Proceedings of the British Council, 80, 1980).
‘Japan’s attack’, wrote Dr Margery Perham at the time, ‘has produced a very real revolution in race relationships’ (Times, 13 March 1942). The abject British surrender to Japan in Singapore and Malaya was particularly damaging to the image of the old empires in Asia, as the president of Singapore’s India Association was to reflect in 1945: ‘the running away action of the Empire, both officers and non-officers, created a very deep impression in the minds of the people throughout Malaya [and] brought great disgrace on the white race generally.’
Reading through the Allied leaders’ discussion of these events, the major concern which they voiced time and again was not so much about the loss of territory to Japan, but about the loss of prestige suffered by the white powers in the process. Islands and colonial outposts could always be won back; but the image of invincible racial superiority which the imperialists had built up over a century was lost forever. That is why, for the British authorities, the real impact of the loss of Singapore was ‘not a strategic one, but a moral one’ (L Allen, Singapore 1941-42, 1977, p259).
The fears over a loss of racial prestige also help to explain why the Allies were (and indeed remain) so sensitive about Japan’s mistreatment of their prisoners of war. Allied POWs held by the Japanese suffered terribly, but most fared no worse than many other wartime prisoners. One in four Western POWs died in Japanese captivity; only the same proportion of Russians held in German camps survived.
What made Japan’s mistreatment of Allied prisoners so uniquely controversial was the inversion of racial roles that it involved. In effect, the Japanese were treating white POWs in the way that white colonialists had treated entire Asian peoples - like coolies. General Thomas Blamey of Australia let the cat out of the bag when reporting on the mood of POWs released in 1945. ‘The thing that has hurt our fellows more than harsh treatment’, said Blamey, ‘has been the loss of prestige amongst the natives by British personnel due to the ignominious treatment they have received at the hands of the Japs in the sight of the natives’. Fears over the loss of racial prestige in the Pacific War were so widespread in the West that even Hitler was reported to be ambivalent about the victories of his Japanese ally, complaining that with ‘the loss of a whole continent….the white race [is] the loser’.
The Allies were acutely sensitive to the way that Japan’s wartime propaganda played upon their weak spots of racial and national oppression. ‘And everywhere’, wrote one American observer, ‘Tokyo makes good use of our greatest weaknesses - our past imperialism and our present racial discrimination’ (SC Menefee, ‘Japan’s psychological warfare’, Social Forces, May 1943). Under the slogan ‘Asia for the Asiatics’, Tokyo attacked Britain’s bloody colonial record and presented Japan as the champion of Indian freedom. After the surrender of Singapore, 45 000 captured Indian troops were addressed by a Japanese major. ‘Japan is fighting for the liberation of the Asiatic nations which have been for so long trodden under the cruel heels of British imperialism. Japan is the liberator and the friend of Asiatics.’ Around 25 000 Indian soldiers eventually changed sides, and joined the Japanese-sponsored Indian National Army to fight against the British.
When they came to attack America, Japanese propagandists concentrated on the treatment of racial minorities within the USA. They made great play of the immigration laws which barred Chinese and Indians from entering the USA. And the systematic segregation employed against blacks in America proved even richer pickings. In the article quoted above, Selden Menefee noted that ‘the Deep South is our India’, and quoted this Tokyo radio broadcast of August 1942:
‘How is the United States transmitting her ideas of the four freedoms into her living, into her labour and racial problems? What about her ever-present negro problem? Her notorious lynchings [are] a rare practice even among savages….The Americans prove and advertise to the whole world by their actions that they have completely forgotten that negroes are just as much a part of humanity as they are themselves.’
The Allies had no effective answer to this kind of propaganda. It touched on the raw nerves of Western imperialists who claimed to be fighting a war for freedom and against fascism, while practising racial and national oppression themselves. As Mahatma Gandhi pointed out to Roosevelt in 1942, ‘the Allied declaration that [they] are fighting to make the world safe for freedom of the individual sounds hollow, so long as India, and for that matter Africa, are exploited by Great Britain, and America has the negro problem in her own home’. Indeed the Western elites had become so insecure on these issues that their fears of racial and colonial unrest being stirred up by the Japanese during the war often outweighed any real immediate threat. So there was a constant debate about the growing threat of Pan-Asian unity, even though that ‘movement’ was largely a myth. There was even a serious discussion among the fearful US authorities about the possibility that American blacks might actively side with Japan.
The racial dimension made the Japanese a very different enemy from the Germans. The Japanese posed not just a military threat to the old imperial order, but a political challenge to white power that could spark the fires of Asian nationalism. The leaders of the Allied powers saw the Pacific War as a life-and-death struggle to salvage the prestige of the Western elites. They had been humiliated by ‘Asiatics’. As a consequence they were fighting a race war, in which the enemy had to be not just contained, but crushed if the white powers were to retain any authority in Asia. The extent to which they saw the Japanese as different was reflected in the ruthless attitudes and actions adopted by Allied governments and forces during the Pacific War, culminating in the decision to drop the White Man’s Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Throughout the conflict, the Japanese were depicted and treated as a lower race. These attitudes predated Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. America’s president Roosevelt, the leader of Western liberalism, seriously considered the proposition that the Japanese were evil because their skulls were 2000 years less developed than the white man’s civilised cranium, and that the solution might be to encourage some cross-breeding to create a new ‘Euroindoasian’ race that could isolate the Japanese. On the British side, Churchill was always noted for espousing the blunt racial attitudes of his Edwardian background, disparaging Asian peoples as ‘dirty baboos’ and ‘chinks’ in need of a good thrashing with ‘the sjambok’. And Churchill was far from the exception. In the months before the Pacific War began, the diary of Sir Alexander Cadogan of the British Foreign Office records Cadogan’s own views of the Japanese as ‘beastly little monkeys’ and ‘yellow dwarf slaves’.
Once the war with Japan had begun, these prejudices were no longer confined to the private diaries and dinner party conversations of the Western elite. Instead, the politics of racial superiority were made public by Allied propagandists, and put into practice by the US and British military.
The American press branded Japan ‘a racial menace’, and routinely depicted the Japanese as monkeys, mad dogs, rats and vermin. Hollywood war movies emphasised the sadistic character of Japanese soldiers, who seemed to break the rules of ‘civilised’ warfare in every film. Allied propagandists made a clear distinction between their two major enemies. They showed the problem in Europe not as the whole German nation, but as Hitler and the Nazis. In Asia, by contrast, the enemy was ‘the Japs’ - an entire malignant race. As one of the best studies of the race war in the Pacific points out, ‘Western film-makers and publicists found a place for the “good German” in their propaganda, but no comparable counterpart for the Japanese’ (J Dower, War Without Mercy, 1986, p322n).
The racial denigration of the Japanese did not only happen in the movies. In America, the only German immigrants interned were those with suspected Nazi connections. Meanwhile, 120 000 Japanese-Americans, many of them born US citizens, were indiscriminately rounded up in camps. Asked to justify this treatment, General De Witt announced bluntly that ‘a Jap is a Jap’. Meanwhile in the Pacific war zone, working on the assumption that the only good Jap was a dead one, Admiral William Halsey of the US Navy urged his men to make ‘monkey meat’ out of the Japanese, and demanded that any Japanese survivors of the war should be rendered impotent.
The lower ranks took their lead from above. The US Marine Monthly “Leatherneck” counselled the extermination of the ‘Louseous Japanicus’, depicted as a vicious Asiatic cockroach. One US marine explained the racial outlook which made it easy for his comrades to slaughter the Japanese and mutilate their bodies on the battlefield:
‘The Japanese made the perfect enemy. They had many characteristics that an American marine could hate. Physically they were small, a strange colour and, by some standards, unattractive….Marines did not consider that they were killing men. They were wiping out dirty animals.’ (Quoted in J Weingartner, ‘Trophies of war: US troops and the mutilation of Japanese war dead, 1941-45’, Pacific Historical Review, February 1992)
If the Americans were happy ‘wiping out dirty animals’ with bayonets and flame-throwers on the beaches of Pacific islands, why should they worry about wiping out two whole cities of ‘beasts’ with the atom bomb?
At the same time as they were fighting a ruthless race war against the Japanese, the US authorities understood that there could be no return to old colonial arrangements in Asia after the war. The ‘revolution in race relationships’ triggered by Japan’s victories, and the rise of nationalist sentiment, saw to that. Washington’s concern was to reach an accommodation with the anti-colonial movements which would leave intact as much of the past power relations as possible, and so preserve the authority of the West. To that end, in 1942 the US government declared that the European powers’ Far Eastern colonies should be ‘liberated after the war, and such possessions should be placed under an international trusteeship to assist the peoples to attain political maturity’. The dual emphasis on reforming the colonial system while leaving the former colonies under ‘international’ (that is, Western) supervision reflected America’s ‘welldefined commitment to maintaining the prewar structure of Asian politics…not a concern with abstract rights and freedoms for Asians’ (A Iriye, Power and Culture: The Japanese-American War 1941-45, 1981, p81). In Washington’s vision of a new Asian order, the white powers led by America would still hold the whip hand over the ‘immature’ native peoples.
The Allied powers understood that crushing the Japanese remained the precondition for reaching such an accommodation with the new Asian nationalism. Japan had acted as the catalyst for change in the colonial world, and its victories over the white powers had revolutionised race relations in Asia. That humiliation had to be avenged and that threat extinguished before the Western powers could re-establish their dominance.
Admiral Leahy, Roosevelt’s close adviser, expressed the widely held fear that ‘unless we administer a defeat to Japan in the near future, that nation will succeed in combining most of the Asiatic people against the whites’. In May 1943, when a top US government committee first discussed the question of how to treat Japan after the war, the navy’s representative, Captain HL Pence, was in no doubt that ‘Japan should be bombed…so that the country could not begin to recuperate for 50 years’. The war was ‘a question of which race was to survive….we should kill them before they kill us’. The Japanese ‘should not be dealt with as civilised human beings. The only thing they would respect was force applied for a long time’. Two years later, in May 1945, a US official in China named Robert Ward warned that Japan had exposed the peoples of the East to ‘a virus that may yet poison the whole soul of Asia and ultimately commit the world to racial war that would destroy the white man and decimate the Asiatic’.
The myth that the bombing of Hiroshima was intended to save lives turns the truth completely on its head; the planning meetings which preceded the attack seemed to conclude that the intention was to kill as many people as possible, in order that the American bomb might make the most dramatic impact on the world.
On 31 May 1945, the Interim Committee (formed to advise the president on the use of the Bomb), met to discuss using atomic weapons against the Japanese. The committee comprised the leading political, military and scientific figures involved in the Manhattan Project. The two key players at this meeting were the top chemist and former president of Harvard University, James B Conant, and the Secretary of War, Henry L Stimson. The minutes record their conclusions:
‘At the suggestion of Dr Conant, the secretary agreed that the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses.’
Hiroshima fitted the bomb sights. On 6 August it was destroyed, followed by Nagasaki on 9 August. The racial aspects of the fearful bombing were not lost on either side. Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King was one of many to express his private relief that the Bomb had not been dropped on the ‘white races’ in Europe (see Times, 3 January 1976). In Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient, the angry reaction of Kip, the Sikh soldier, on hearing of Hiroshima captures the mood of many in the colonial world: “All those speeches of civilisation from kings and queens and presidents…. American, French, I don’t care. When you start bombing the brown races of the world, you’re an Englishman.” For some reason that passage did not appear in the Hollywood film of the book.
Mick Hume is editor-at-large of spiked. A longer version of this essay was published in the August 1995 issue of Living Marxism.
The use of a weapon of mass destruction to indiscriminately kill tens thousands of noncombatants was not justified, no.
Theoretical speculation on how long the war may or may not have gone on, if nuclear weapons may or may not have been used later aren't relevant. Other acts already perpetrated in the same conflict, no matter how horrible, aren't relevant.
If you're vaporizing children, and other people who have never lifted a finger in combat, you're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
Chongara wrote:The use of a weapon of mass destruction to indiscriminately kill tens thousands of noncombatants was not justified, no.
Theoretical speculation on how long the war may or may not have gone on, if nuclear weapons may or may not have been used later aren't relevant. Other acts already perpetrated in the same conflict, no matter how horrible, aren't relevant.
If you're vaporizing children, and other people who have never lifted a finger in combat, you're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
High school is such a sweet age. Such brazen innocence bereft of any concern for facts, reality, math, or consequences. Its touching.
What pray tell then, about China? In Chongara's world evidently the popluations of China and South East Asia are not relevant.
Chongara wrote:The use of a weapon of mass destruction to indiscriminately kill tens thousands of noncombatants was not justified, no.
Theoretical speculation on how long the war may or may not have gone on, if nuclear weapons may or may not have been used later aren't relevant. Other acts already perpetrated in the same conflict, no matter how horrible, aren't relevant.
If you're vaporizing children, and other people who have never lifted a finger in combat, you're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
High school is such a sweet age. Such brazen innocence bereft of any concern for facts, reality, math, or consequences. Its touching.
What pray tell then, about China? In Chongara's world evidently the popluations of China and South East Asia are not relevant.
No. The actions of the Japanese military in other nations has no relevance to the mass slaughter of Japanese civilians.
Frazzled wrote:
What pray tell then, about China? In Chongara's world evidently the popluations of China and South East Asia are not relevant.
If the atrocities committed by a part of a nation are important to determining how another part of it is treated, then all that torture the Japanese inflicted on American POWs is justifiable by way of the bombing of Dresden, the internment of the Japanese, possibly even something as far removed as slavery.
Bombing of civliians is bad now because it can be avoided. It was bad in WWI and prior because it was essentially impossible.
During WWII, industrial output fueled warfare like in no other conflict, and the means of production were considered, by all parties, to be valid targets. That few, if any, weapons were accurate enough to hit the factory but not the school was just part of the nature of war.
Chongara wrote:The use of a weapon of mass destruction to indiscriminately kill tens thousands of noncombatants was not justified, no.
Theoretical speculation on how long the war may or may not have gone on, if nuclear weapons may or may not have been used later aren't relevant. Other acts already perpetrated in the same conflict, no matter how horrible, aren't relevant.
If you're vaporizing children, and other people who have never lifted a finger in combat, you're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
High school is such a sweet age. Such brazen innocence bereft of any concern for facts, reality, math, or consequences. Its touching.
What pray tell then, about China? In Chongara's world evidently the popluations of China and South East Asia are not relevant.
No. The actions of the Japanese military in other nations has no relevance to the mass slaughter of Japanese civilians.
It's interesting seeing the Nintendo generation weigh in on WW2.
War wasn't always a joystick video game with Predator drones, boys and girls. It used to be fought with guns and knives, up close and personal like. The alternative to dropping the A-bomb was a full scale invasion of Japan, which would have been bloody.
The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved countless millions of lives on both the American and Japanese sides. They were worth it for that.
As Patton once said "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
Chongara wrote:The use of a weapon of mass destruction to indiscriminately kill tens thousands of noncombatants was not justified, no.
Theoretical speculation on how long the war may or may not have gone on, if nuclear weapons may or may not have been used later aren't relevant. Other acts already perpetrated in the same conflict, no matter how horrible, aren't relevant.
If you're vaporizing children, and other people who have never lifted a finger in combat, you're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
High school is such a sweet age. Such brazen innocence bereft of any concern for facts, reality, math, or consequences. Its touching.
What pray tell then, about China? In Chongara's world evidently the popluations of China and South East Asia are not relevant.
No. The actions of the Japanese military in other nations has no relevance to the mass slaughter of Japanese civilians.
Chongara wrote:The use of a weapon of mass destruction to indiscriminately kill tens thousands of noncombatants was not justified, no.
Theoretical speculation on how long the war may or may not have gone on, if nuclear weapons may or may not have been used later aren't relevant. Other acts already perpetrated in the same conflict, no matter how horrible, aren't relevant.
If you're vaporizing children, and other people who have never lifted a finger in combat, you're doing something horribly, horribly wrong.
High school is such a sweet age. Such brazen innocence bereft of any concern for facts, reality, math, or consequences. Its touching.
What pray tell then, about China? In Chongara's world evidently the popluations of China and South East Asia are not relevant.
No. The actions of the Japanese military in other nations has no relevance to the mass slaughter of Japanese civilians.
Seriously?
Yeah. I am seriously asserting it is not ethical to kill tens of thousand of civilians because of the actions of their government and military.
I am in agreement with Ketara--- and pretty much with Dogma too. Will wonders ever cease?
Dogma pretty much addressed my point about Japan. What was the rush to invade it, if it could not hurt anyone? Why didn’t anyone question the wisdom of promoting an invasion that would result in up to 250,000 US casualties? If you asked me, those that did should have been sacked. What a waste of US lives for such a limited gain. Without the pressure to prevent an unnecessary an invasion, you remove the need to hurry up and nuke Japan.
We considered using nukes on Germany, but the war ended too soon. Can you imagine how Europe would have felt about us nuking Berlin, and leaving fallout to affect all of Europe, as well as killing POWs? Talk about overkill just to show off Oppenheimer’s toy.
Japan was one big prison camp, like Rabaul. The head B-29 commander Curtis LeMay himself declared there were no real targets of value to bomb anymore. Ongoing bombing was pretty much was to terrorize to break the will of the Japanese civilians—the same thing we condemn Hitler for with his Blitz on the UK and V1/V2 missiles. But of course, its always ok for us, the good guys, do it, as long as they did it first.
Problem was, Tojo and his crew where not going to surrender, no matter how many of their people died-- So why punish civilians—And US POWs--- for the stubbornness of their leaders? The Unconditional surrender was the biggest blunder the US ever did. Who wouldn't fight to the death, if you got nothing to lose? Especially if they treat their emperor as a being divine?
The concerns about the Japanese developing germ warfare, Jet fighters, and such is “what if” fantasy. Japan didn’t have the pilots, fuel, or the delivery systems. All the US Navy had to do was keep away, and let B-29’s bomb airfields 24/7.
As far as China goes, I’m sorry. The US really didn’t care about China, much less anyone else, except for those in the Government who were “China Firsters”, former missionaries who had served in China before the war. China was just another useful front used for our purposes--just like we used the USSR to attrition the Germans before we invaded France. Did the US care about the Philippines when it captured it during the Spanish American War? No. How about the Battle of Manila, were 100,000 Philippines died in street fighting between US troops and the Japanese? Yeah, we had to destroy the village to save it. In any case, it was about getting even with Japan for Pearl Harbor, and nothing about liberating China or anyone else. I'm sure the folk on Bikini atoll did not feel much gratitude for the US moving them off their island for atomic bomb testing. They lost the burial grounds of their ancestors, their way of life, and became a displaced people for the sake of atomic testing. Ah, the price of our freedom others must pay for.
I don't know it just seems like a simple equation.
1. did it work? yes. after it and Manchuria they surrendered.
2. Were the alternatives less horrendous? No, not by a long shot. Hundreds of thousands to millions dead. Do absolutely nothing and you still get hundreds of thousands to millions dead, and thats not considering Japan regains strength or the bomb on its own.
War is hell. We didn't start it but we did end it. Potentially millions of occupied Asians are alive because of the US, UK, USSR, and brave guerrillas.
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Brushfire wrote:I am in agreement with Ketara--- and pretty much with Dogma too. Will wonders ever cease?
Dogma pretty much addressed my point about Japan. What was the rush to invade it, if it could not hurt anyone? Why didn’t anyone question the wisdom of promoting an invasion that would result in up to 250,000 US casualties? If you asked me, those that did should have been sacked. What a waste of US lives for such a limited gain. Without the pressure to prevent an unnecessary an invasion, you remove the need to hurry up and nuke Japan.
We considered using nukes on Germany, but the war ended too soon. Can you imagine how Europe would have felt about us nuking Berlin, and leaving fallout to affect all of Europe, as well as killing POWs? Talk about overkill just to show off Oppenheimer’s toy.
Japan was one big prison camp, like Rabaul. The head B-29 commander Curtis LeMay himself declared there were no real targets of value to bomb anymore. Ongoing bombing was pretty much was to terrorize to break the will of the Japanese civilians—the same thing we condemn Hitler for with his Blitz on the UK and V1/V2 missiles. But of course, its always ok for us, the good guys, do it, as long as they did it first.
Problem was, Tojo and his crew where not going to surrender, no matter how many of their people died-- So why punish civilians—And US POWs--- for the stubbornness of their leaders? The Unconditional surrender was the biggest blunder thing the US ever did. Who wouldn't fight to the death, if you got nothing to lose? Especially if they treat their emperor as a being divine?
The concerns about the Japanese developing germ warfare, Jet fighters, and such is “what if” fantasy. Japan didn’t have the pilots, fuel, or the delivery systems. All the US Navy had to do was keep away, and let B-29’s bomb airfields 24/7.
As far as China goes, I’m sorry. The US really didn’t care about China, much less anyone else, except for those in the Government who were “China Firsters”, former missionaries who had served in China before the war. China was just another useful front used for our purposes--just like we used the USSR to attrition the Germans before we invaded France. Did the US care about the Philippines when it captured it during the Spanish American War? No. How about the Battle of Manila, were 100,000 Philippines died in street fighting between US troops and the Japanese? Yeah, we had to destroy the village to save it. In any case, it was about getting even with Japan for Pearl Harbor, and nothing about liberating China or anyone else. I'm sure the folk on Bikini atoll did not feel much gratitude for the US moving them off their island for atomic bomb testing. They lost the burial grounds of their ancestors, their way of life, and became a displaced people for the sake of atomic testing. Ah, the price of our freedom others must pay for.
So Japanese dead are more important than Chinese and Asian dead. Gotcha.
During WWII, industrial output fueled warfare like in no other conflict, and the means of production were considered, by all parties, to be valid targets. That few, if any, weapons were accurate enough to hit the factory but not the school was just part of the nature of war.
Few, in fact exactly one type of weapon, was powerful and indiscriminate enough to hit the schools and homes when the factory was more than a mile away.
During WWII, industrial output fueled warfare like in no other conflict, and the means of production were considered, by all parties, to be valid targets. That few, if any, weapons were accurate enough to hit the factory but not the school was just part of the nature of war.
Few, in fact exactly one type of weapon, was powerful and indiscriminate enough to hit the schools and homes when the factory was more than a mile.
Again except of course the thousand plane raids going on at the time.
Read the histories of bombing campaigns, especially strategic. Although we were getting better, accuracy was minimal and casualties (ours) high.
Polonius wrote:
During WWII, industrial output fueled warfare like in no other conflict, and the means of production were considered, by all parties, to be valid targets. That few, if any, weapons were accurate enough to hit the factory but not the school was just part of the nature of war.
One thing that many people forget is that, prior to WWII, the strategic bomber did not exist. We didn't know how to use this innovation, or how we felt about the consequences of using it in certain ways. Its telling that, excepting Vietnam which is separate for various reasons (racism, ideological fear), strategic bombers essentially went out of fashion after their use in WWII.
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Chongara wrote:
Few, in fact exactly one type of weapon, was powerful and indiscriminate enough to hit the schools and homes when the factory was more than a mile away.
The nuclear strikes weren't even the most devastating air attacks on Japan.
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Frazzled wrote:
So Japanese dead are more important than Chinese and Asian dead. Gotcha.
That isn't what he said. You're being ridiculous again.
Completely necessary as an undeniable demonstration of the capabilities of the new weapon for the eyes of potential future enemies and as a test of that weapon in the field.
Of course there is the little issue (at the time of the bombing) that if you don't achieve a surrender, then you still have to somehow deal with the rest of the Imperial Army that you left on all those islands, and an undefeated mainland. Can't just leave them there, because inevitably they will find a way to continue the prosecution of the war. Can't leave Japan as it is, because one way or another it will also find a way to continue prosecuting the war. A surrender really is necessary if you don't want to get stuck in the long game.
So Japanese dead are more important than Chinese and Asian dead. Gotcha.
No. But the Japanese and the Chinese were at war since 1937. So what happened in China was their business, not ours.
What, should we have sent US troops to China to clear out the Japanese army after nullifying Japan? I think not.
Besides,you forget how the US used its gunboat diplomacy to exploit China for its personal gain, just like all the other European countries.
I remember reading about how in the 55 day siege in Peking, where all the Americans, Russians, French, etc. where able to secure cover in buildings from incoming Chinese rebel fire, but would not allow converted Christian Chinese seeking refuge in the compound the same courtesy, because, well, they were Chinese! They did not esteemed them worthy to rub elbows with. So the Chinese Christians endured being targets out in the open. Some brotherly love. So while you have genuine human concern for the Chinese plight, the US by and large did not. They were useful for us, that's all.
So Japanese dead are more important than Chinese and Asian dead. Gotcha.
No. But the Japanese and the Chinese were at war since 1937. So what happened in China was their business, not ours.
What, should we have sent US troops to China to clear out the Japanese army after nullifying Japan? I think not.
Besides,you forget how the US used its gunboat diplomacy to exploit China for its personal gain, just like all the other European countries.
I remember reading about how in the 55 day siege in Peking, where all the Americans, Russians, French, etc. where able to secure cover in buildings from incoming Chinese rebel fire, but would not allow converted Christian Chinese seeking refuge in the compound the same courtesy, because, well, they were Chinese! They did not esteemed them worthy to rub elbows with. So the Chinese Christians endured being targets out in the open. Some brotherly love. So while you have genuine human concern for the Chinese plight, the US by and large did not.
You're missing the whole we had military forces all the way back to that time thing..embargo...attack on pearl harbor thing.
Again if Japanese casualties are our business, the Chinese casualties resulting from the Japanese army occupation is also our business. I know its a weird concept, but you tend to care more about an ally than an enemy.
I think the real question here is what Polonius was hitting at earlier. The Japanese were willing to accept a conditional surrender, one that would have effectively ended their Empire. Regardless of whether the U.S. had required Japan forgo their holdings, they would have been lost anyway to locals / Russians / Brits. IIRC, the Japanese were willing to give up all but Manchuria, which they would have lost to the Russians anyway, thus negating any claims of "continued Japanese atrocities."
So, should we have accepted a conditional surrender, did we HAVE to make their defeat an unconditional one?
In the end, it doesn't matter because the Russians only had one end game and the U.S. wouldn't accept any conditional surrender unless the Russians approved it, which they wouldn't have. The Russians wanted to occupy Japan proper, conditional surrender doesn't allow this but they had no idea about the nuke ace in the hole the Americans had, an ace that allowed the U.S. to fully occupy the country instead of the remaking of a West / East German model.
Frazzled wrote:
Again if Japanese casualties are our business, the Chinese casualties resulting from the Japanese army occupation is also our business.
Manstein wrote:
So, should we have accepted a conditional surrender, did we HAVE to make their defeat an unconditional one?
We didn't have to, but the emotional state of the US public, and its military, was such that nothing else was going to happen. Not without material compulsion anyway.
Manstein wrote:
In the end, it doesn't matter because the Russians only had one end game and the U.S. wouldn't accept any conditional surrender unless the Russians approved it, which they wouldn't have. The Russians wanted to occupy Japan proper, conditional surrender doesn't allow this but they had no idea about the nuke ace in the hole the Americans had, an ace that allowed the U.S. to fully occupy the country instead of the remaking of a West / East German model.
Which supports the argument that the nuke was about Russia, and not Japan. An argument which renders the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atrocities, instead of necessities.
We will never know what the world would be like without dropping those bombs. It sucked for the "innocent" people of japan, yes. The act of demonstrating the destructive potential of that weapon has in many, many ways been of incalculable benefit to the world. We may never see wars on that scale again because of it. Would nuclear deterrence ever have worked without that act? Imagine what the world would have been like if the US and USSR had no cautionary tale of the pure destructive force of this weapon.
Frazzled wrote:
Again except of course the thousand plane raids going on at the time.
I believe that the argument here would be that such strikes were also wrong.
Yes. However the nuclear weapons were particularly bad, because while conventional weapons were inaccurate at least some attempt could actually be made at hitting a relevant target. With them, things like schools are actually collateral damage.
Still horrible, still wrong.. but not as horrible. With a weapon like as indiscriminate as a nuclear bomb you're not just incidentally hitting civilians as a byproduct of how shoddy contemporary accuracy ones, you're actively making a target of them. I'll admit the line is very thin and somewhat blurry, but for me it's an important distinction.
You shouldn't be throwing explosives into an area with civilians in it, that's bad enough. However when you intentionally develop a weapon less capable of avoiding collateral damage, and then intentionally deploy in a way such to maximize collateral damage you're doing something particularly nasty.
Also while it hardly makes things right, it is also somewhat relevant that a sustained bombing campaign with conventional weapons at least affords some civilians a chance some hope of finding shelter, or otherwise increasing their chances of survival. A weapon that flattens everything within 2 miles in half second is a different beast.
Manstein wrote:I am curious dogma, are you a philosophy teacher? You sound an awful lot like the philo guys that I know...
Political science actually, and I'm a TA (read: I teach comp classes because my PhD adviser doesn't want to) not a teacher. But I studied philosophy (plus political science and economics) in undergrad and would probably label myself a logician before anything else; that's the only thing I'm published in anyway.
Frazzled wrote:
Again except of course the thousand plane raids going on at the time.
I believe that the argument here would be that such strikes were also wrong.
Yes. However the nuclear weapons were particularly bad, because while conventional weapons were inaccurate at least some attempt could actually be made at hitting a relevant target. With them, things like schools are actually collateral damage.
Still horrible, still wrong.. but not as horrible. With a weapon like as indiscriminate as a nuclear bomb you're not just incidentally hitting civilians as a byproduct of how shoddy contemporary accuracy ones, you're actively making a target of them. I'll admit the line is very thin and somewhat blurry, but for me it's an important distinction.
You shouldn't be throwing explosives into an area with civilians in it, that's bad enough. However when you intentionally develop a weapon less capable of avoiding collateral damage, and then intentionally deploy in a way such to maximize collateral damage you're doing something particularly nasty.
Also while it hardly makes things right, it is also somewhat relevant that a sustained bombing campaign with conventional weapons at least affords some civilians a chance some hope of finding shelter, or otherwise increasing their chances of survival. A weapon that flattens everything within 2 miles in half second is a different beast.
I think Frazzled point is that what you are saying is irrelevant, as conventional means were used for the same reasons as the bomb and were far more effective than the bomb. Many fire bombing on Japan were not meant to destroy industrial targets, but rather to strike fear and terror into the civilian population. Firebombings were far more dangerous and killed far more people than conventional bombs, saying that is is somehow slightly better because people "have a chance of getting out" (which they really don't, read up on the nasty stuff massive city wide fires do to air supply and such and you will understand) is a little silly.
Either it is all equally bad or it is all equally acceptable. The nuke changed things in that it could kill so many using only ONE bomb, instead of tons. The nuke carried more "shock and awe" than firebombings but was not, by any more, more deadly than fire bombing.
Andrew1975 wrote: Would nuclear deterrence ever have worked without that act? Imagine what the world would have been like if the US and USSR had no cautionary tale of the pure destructive force of this weapon.
Well, nuclear weapons weren't really the primary deterrent until the late 50's. Before that it was the massive Russian army.
Manstein wrote:I am curious dogma, are you a philosophy teacher? You sound an awful lot like the philo guys that I know...
Political science actually, and I'm a TA (read: I teach comp classes because my PhD adviser doesn't want to) not a teacher. But I studied philosophy (plus political science and economics) in undergrad and would probably label myself a logician before anything else; that's the only thing I'm published in anyway.
I figured as much, judging from your posts it reads a lot like some of my associates and friends in the same fields. Historians and Political Scientists / "Philosophers" always have the most interesting of arguments... in my experience.
You're missing the whole we had military forces all the way back to that time thing..embargo...attack on pearl harbor thing.
Again if Japanese casualties are our business, the Chinese casualties resulting from the Japanese army occupation is also our business. I know its a weird concept, but you tend to care more about an ally than an enemy.
Again, the Japanese where killing the Chinese before we had any alliance with them. By your logic, we should have declared war on Japan to help our Asian brothers. But suddenly after Pearl harbor, we are buddy buddy with China? Don't you think that was strategically and expeditiously convenient of us to use the Chinese as another front for fighting the Japanese? That's the same logic we used with the USSR, even after we were disgusted at Stalin signing a non-aggressive pact with Germany, invaded Poland, occupied Albania, and raised the world's ire for attacking Finland. But after June 22, 1941, Stalin suddenly becomes friendly "Uncle Joe"? It's all theater for the masses, to use others until they smarten up, and then use us!
Which opens another can of worms. If the US did not occupy the Philippines as a war trophy from the Spanish American war, and did not exploit China like all the other Europeans countries where doing prior to the war, do you think we would even be involved in a dispute with Japan?
What's the difference between Japan conquering China for its raw resources, since we did the same in China, or to the Philippines? Or the UK with India, Burma, Singapore, or Hong King? ? or the Dutch with Java? Where the Japanese less kinder and gentler than us, sure, though the US methods in subduing the Moros in the Philippines would make you think otherwise. Mark Twain thought so too.
Frazzled wrote:
Again except of course the thousand plane raids going on at the time.
I believe that the argument here would be that such strikes were also wrong.
Yes. However the nuclear weapons were particularly bad, because while conventional weapons were inaccurate at least some attempt could actually be made at hitting a relevant target. With them, things like schools are actually collateral damage.
Still horrible, still wrong.. but not as horrible. With a weapon like as indiscriminate as a nuclear bomb you're not just incidentally hitting civilians as a byproduct of how shoddy contemporary accuracy ones, you're actively making a target of them. I'll admit the line is very thin and somewhat blurry, but for me it's an important distinction.
You shouldn't be throwing explosives into an area with civilians in it, that's bad enough. However when you intentionally develop a weapon less capable of avoiding collateral damage, and then intentionally deploy in a way such to maximize collateral damage you're doing something particularly nasty.
Also while it hardly makes things right, it is also somewhat relevant that a sustained bombing campaign with conventional weapons at least affords some civilians a chance some hope of finding shelter, or otherwise increasing their chances of survival. A weapon that flattens everything within 2 miles in half second is a different beast.
I think Frazzled point is that what you are saying is irrelevant, as conventional means were used for the same reasons as the bomb and were far more effective than the bomb. Many fire bombing on Japan were not meant to destroy industrial targets, but rather to strike fear and terror into the civilian population. Firebombings were far more dangerous and killed far more people than conventional bombs, saying that is is somehow slightly better because people "have a chance of getting out" (which they really don't, read up on the nasty stuff massive city wide fires do to air supply and such and you will understand) is a little silly.
Either it is all equally bad or it is all equally acceptable. The nuke changed things in that it could kill so many using only ONE bomb, instead of tons. The nuke carried more "shock and awe" than firebombings but was not, by any more, more deadly than fire bombing.
Remember the question is whether nukes are a good idea. As the alternative would have been continued firebombing - moral or not- the cassualties that actually occurred are lower.
It sucks, yes it does, but don't start a war with a 1/3 of the world's population 50% of its industrial and then whine when they start shooting back.
Manstein wrote:
Either it is all equally bad or it is all equally acceptable. The nuke changed things in that it could kill so many using only ONE bomb, instead of tons. The nuke carried more "shock and awe" than firebombings but was not, by any more, more deadly than fire bombing.
Conceding any & all points about the nature, degree, and intent of the destruction - the answer is clearly equally bad. Really, you're ultimately right it all boils down to deaths of civilians. That is wrong.
Ketara wrote:It was unnecessary. The Japanese no longer possessed any way of striking back against the Americans. Does that make it immoral? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky.
No. It was painless if it landed on your head. The resulting burns and radiation sickness from those caught on the edge of the blast, or in slightly covered locations were horrific. Seriously. Go and read some accounts of the resulting symptoms. This was only excaberated by the levelling of 2/3's of Japans housing by incendiaries, and lack of supplies. People died in extreme pain writhing in their own excrement as a result of those bombs.
'Politest form of death', it was not.
My thoughts exactly.
Japan was, quite literally, helpless. They were stuck on their one gakky island, and had no way of attacking us in any way.
The atomic bomb was a rushed decision, and was not fully thought through. I remember this back in my senior year of Highschool, when I took AP European History.
Brushfire wrote:I am in agreement with Ketara--- and pretty much with Dogma too. Will wonders ever cease?
Dogma pretty much addressed my point about Japan. What was the rush to invade it, if it could not hurt anyone? Why didn’t anyone question the wisdom of promoting an invasion that would result in up to 250,000 US casualties? If you asked me, those that did should have been sacked. What a waste of US lives for such a limited gain. Without the pressure to prevent an unnecessary an invasion, you remove the need to hurry up and nuke Japan.
We considered using nukes on Germany, but the war ended too soon. Can you imagine how Europe would have felt about us nuking Berlin, and leaving fallout to affect all of Europe, as well as killing POWs? Talk about overkill just to show off Oppenheimer’s toy.
Japan was one big prison camp, like Rabaul. The head B-29 commander Curtis LeMay himself declared there were no real targets of value to bomb anymore. Ongoing bombing was pretty much was to terrorize to break the will of the Japanese civilians—the same thing we condemn Hitler for with his Blitz on the UK and V1/V2 missiles. But of course, its always ok for us, the good guys, do it, as long as they did it first.
Problem was, Tojo and his crew where not going to surrender, no matter how many of their people died-- So why punish civilians—And US POWs--- for the stubbornness of their leaders? The Unconditional surrender was the biggest blunder the US ever did. Who wouldn't fight to the death, if you got nothing to lose? Especially if they treat their emperor as a being divine?
The concerns about the Japanese developing germ warfare, Jet fighters, and such is “what if” fantasy. Japan didn’t have the pilots, fuel, or the delivery systems. All the US Navy had to do was keep away, and let B-29’s bomb airfields 24/7.
As far as China goes, I’m sorry. The US really didn’t care about China, much less anyone else, except for those in the Government who were “China Firsters”, former missionaries who had served in China before the war. China was just another useful front used for our purposes--just like we used the USSR to attrition the Germans before we invaded France. Did the US care about the Philippines when it captured it during the Spanish American War? No. How about the Battle of Manila, were 100,000 Philippines died in street fighting between US troops and the Japanese? Yeah, we had to destroy the village to save it. In any case, it was about getting even with Japan for Pearl Harbor, and nothing about liberating China or anyone else. I'm sure the folk on Bikini atoll did not feel much gratitude for the US moving them off their island for atomic bomb testing. They lost the burial grounds of their ancestors, their way of life, and became a displaced people for the sake of atomic testing. Ah, the price of our freedom others must pay for.
This too. How were we any different from Nazi Germany when we bombed Japan? Hitler did it to quickly knock out the U.K., and not force a land invasion (which he had in mind). The only reason he stopped is because the U.K. struck back once, and he withdrawed all planes because he was stunned that they could have possibly striked him (he was...sort of insane).
We did it to quickly knock out Japan and end the war. Its not OK because our side is seen as the "good" side.
You're missing the whole we had military forces all the way back to that time thing..embargo...attack on pearl harbor thing.
Again if Japanese casualties are our business, the Chinese casualties resulting from the Japanese army occupation is also our business. I know its a weird concept, but you tend to care more about an ally than an enemy.
Again, the Japanese where killing the Chinese before we had any alliance with them. By your logic, we should have declared war on Japan to help our Asian brothers. But suddenly after Pearl harbor, we are buddy buddy with China? Don't you think that was strategically and expeditiously convenient of us to use the Chinese as another front for fighting the Japanese? That's the same logic we used with the USSR, even after we were disgusted at Stalin signing a non-aggressive pact with Germany, invaded Poland, occupied Albania, and raised the world's ire for attacking Finland. But after June 22, 1941,Stalin becomes friendly "Uncle Joe"? It's all theater for the masses, to use others until they smarten up, and then use us!
Which opens another can of worms. If the US did not occupy the Philippines as a war trophy from the Spanish American war, and did not exploit China like all the other Europeans countries where doing prior to the war, do you think we would even be involved in a dispute with Japan?
What's the difference between Japan conquering China for its raw resources, since we did the same in China, or to the Philippines? Or the UK with India, Burma, Singapore, or Hong King? ? or the Dutch with Java? Where the Japanese less kinder and gentler than us, sure, thought the US methods of subduing the Moros in the Philippines would make you think otherwise. Mark Twain thought so too.
Your ignorance is showing. American "volunteers" were indeed shooting it out with Japanese pilots in the 30s.
Now that i think about it, following Japanese tradition once they surrendered we should have slaughtered their entire military. OLh well, we're just a bunch of peaceniks.
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Karon wrote:
Ketara wrote:It was unnecessary. The Japanese no longer possessed any way of striking back against the Americans. Does that make it immoral? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky.
No. It was painless if it landed on your head. The resulting burns and radiation sickness from those caught on the edge of the blast, or in slightly covered locations were horrific. Seriously. Go and read some accounts of the resulting symptoms. This was only excaberated by the levelling of 2/3's of Japans housing by incendiaries, and lack of supplies. People died in extreme pain writhing in their own excrement as a result of those bombs.
'Politest form of death', it was not.
My thoughts exactly.
Japan was, quite literally, helpless. They were stuck on their one gakky island, and had no way of attacking us in any way.
The atomic bomb was a rushed decision, and was not fully thought through. I remember this back in my senior year of Highschool, when I took AP European History.
you mean other than the 10,000 planes they had, and their nuke program, and the fact they occupied the lands of a billion people, yes they were helpless, for a short period of time.
You're missing the whole we had military forces all the way back to that time thing..embargo...attack on pearl harbor thing.
Again if Japanese casualties are our business, the Chinese casualties resulting from the Japanese army occupation is also our business. I know its a weird concept, but you tend to care more about an ally than an enemy.
Again, the Japanese where killing the Chinese before we had any alliance with them. By your logic, we should have declared war on Japan to help our Asian brothers. But suddenly after Pearl harbor, we are buddy buddy with China? Don't you think that was strategically and expeditiously convenient of us to use the Chinese as another front for fighting the Japanese? That's the same logic we used with the USSR, even after we were disgusted at Stalin signing a non-aggressive pact with Germany, invaded Poland, occupied Albania, and raised the world's ire for attacking Finland. But after June 22, 1941,Stalin becomes friendly "Uncle Joe"? It's all theater for the masses, to use others until they smarten up, and then use us!
Which opens another can of worms. If the US did not occupy the Philippines as a war trophy from the Spanish American war, and did not exploit China like all the other Europeans countries where doing prior to the war, do you think we would even be involved in a dispute with Japan?
What's the difference between Japan conquering China for its raw resources, since we did the same in China, or to the Philippines? Or the UK with India, Burma, Singapore, or Hong King? ? or the Dutch with Java? Where the Japanese less kinder and gentler than us, sure, thought the US methods of subduing the Moros in the Philippines would make you think otherwise. Mark Twain thought so too.
Your ignorance is showing. American "volunteers" were indeed shooting it out with Japanese pilots in the 30s.
Now that i think about it, following Japanese tradition once they surrendered we should have slaughtered their entire military. OLh well, we're just a bunch of peaceniks.
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Karon wrote:
Ketara wrote:It was unnecessary. The Japanese no longer possessed any way of striking back against the Americans. Does that make it immoral? That's something you have to decide for yourself.
As far as I know, the A-bomb was painless, instantaneous death from the sky.
No. It was painless if it landed on your head. The resulting burns and radiation sickness from those caught on the edge of the blast, or in slightly covered locations were horrific. Seriously. Go and read some accounts of the resulting symptoms. This was only excaberated by the levelling of 2/3's of Japans housing by incendiaries, and lack of supplies. People died in extreme pain writhing in their own excrement as a result of those bombs.
'Politest form of death', it was not.
My thoughts exactly.
Japan was, quite literally, helpless. They were stuck on their one gakky island, and had no way of attacking us in any way.
The atomic bomb was a rushed decision, and was not fully thought through. I remember this back in my senior year of Highschool, when I took AP European History.
you mean other than the 10,000 planes they had, and their nuke program, and the fact they occupied the lands of a billion people, yes they were helpless, for a short period of time.
PLEASE, PLEASE tell me how they had 10,000 planes. I specifically remember that Japan had next to no navy, and their airforce was almost as bad, and all they used them for was for Kamikazi Attacks, all of their skilled pilots were dead.
Your ignorance is showing. American "volunteers" were indeed shooting it out with Japanese pilots in the 30s.
Yeah, the Flying Tigers. "Volunteers" who were recruited by the US State Department to ship over there with obsolete p-40s. It was a ruse, not unlike what the CIA does today. They were not pure-hearted volunteers who joined up to fight for Chinas cause. They were not like those who went and fought in the Spanish American war, in Finland, or Eagle Squadron in Britain. They were Mercs being paid to shoot down Japanese planes. And I have no problems with that as long as we keep that in mind.
I see the true "never met anything good about America" crowd has now arrived. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.
KamikazeAdmiral Matome Ugaki was recalled to Japan in February 1945 and given command of the Fifth Air Fleet on Kyūshū. The Fifth Air Fleet was assigned the task of kamikaze attacks against ships involved in the invasion of Okinawa, Operation Ten-Go, and began training pilots and assembling aircraft for the defense of Kyūshū where the Allies were likely to invade next.
The Japanese defense relied heavily on kamikaze planes. In addition to fighters and bombers, they reassigned almost all of their trainers for the mission, trying to make up in quantity what they lacked in quality. Their army and navy had more than 10,000 aircraft ready for use in July (and would have had somewhat more by October) and were planning to use almost all that could reach the invasion fleets. Ugaki also oversaw building of hundreds of small suicide boats that would also be used to attack any Allied ships that came near the shores of Kyūshū.
Fewer than 2,000 kamikaze planes launched attacks during the Battle of Okinawa, achieving approximately one hit per nine attacks. At Kyūshū, given the more favorable circumstances (such as terrain that reduced the U.S's radar advantage), they hoped to get one for six by overwhelming the U.S. defenses with large numbers of kamikaze attacks in a period of hours. The Japanese estimated that the planes would sink more than 400 ships; since they were training the pilots to target transports rather than carriers and destroyers, the casualties would be disproportionately greater than at Okinawa. One staff study estimated that the kamikazes could destroy a third to a half of the invasion force before its landings.[21]
Your ignorance is showing. American "volunteers" were indeed shooting it out with Japanese pilots in the 30s.
Yeah, the Flying Tigers. "Volunteers" who were recruited by the US State Department to ship over there with obsolete p-40s. It was a ruse, not unlike what the CIA does today. They were not pure-hearted volunteers who joined up fight for Chinas cause like those who went and fought in the Spanish American war, in Finland, or Eagle Squadron in Britain. They were Mercs being paid to shoot down Japanese planes. And I have no problems with that as long as we keep that in mind.
PLEASE, PLEASE tell me how they had 10,000 planes. I specifically remember that Japan had next to no navy, and their airforce was almost as bad, and all they used them for was for Kamikazi Attacks, all of their skilled pilots were dead.
Yes indeed. Please do so. Biplanes, No gas, green pilots who needed to follow a veteran pilot to navigate his way to target.
Fresh meat for experienced Navy pilots as they flew blindly on in formation. Then a curtain of steel from US warships AA guns. Good luck with that.
And that Jane's Book of WW2 aircraft fact justifies your point in what way, concerning the so-called altrustic volunteer nature of the Flying Tigers in China?
Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:You aren't getting it. They KNEW they couldn't win, but were gonna go down fighting by any means possible. War ends when one guy gets scared enough to drop his gun and go home. We scared them, and most of the known world, including the USSR. Two for the price of....well...two
You have the most bizare conception of warfare, and the Japanese people I have ever known. Seriously. I get what you're trying to say, but not only is it illogical, its actually mildly disturbing that someone can have such a distorted view of the world.
EDIT: And any conventional means would have resulted in much more bloodshed. These people were resorting to CANNIBALISM! You can't just starve them out that way, and they still had the ability to support themselves, unless you are talking about firebombing the entire country and a good chunk of Asia along with it
I'm not deliberately trying to be offensive here, but your portrayal of the entire Japanese people as fanatical cannibals, and using that as a reason as to why they were a danger to the US just isn't working. Please. Just leave it there.
I will just reiterate one point to you, in the hope that you will realise why even if every single Japanese person was a stark raving madman who would rip off his own arm to hit an American with it, it made no difference.
This point is that intent to do harm does not equate to capacity to do harm. Every Japanese soldier can be a frothing beserker, if the US remains in control of their supplies, the sea, and the air, there is nothing the Japanese can do to hurt them.
whitedragon wrote:
According to most...a lot.
I don't know. Honestly, I don't. I'm willing to admit when my knowledge in an area is lacking. Whilst I feel I can definitively say the Japanese had lost by that stage, I've heard several conflicting accounts about the state of the government and mood of the people, so I couldn't really comment.
Polonius wrote:
I'm not sure that's the issue. That's a judgment call, based on estimation.
I think the issue is if making they say grandad was proper, especially when they didn't know that would entail.
Extrapolation? I don't quite understand what you're getting at.
Frazzled wrote:
The numbers here are actually a mulltiple higher than I proffered, so yea, it did. I am not arguing its the only thing as the Soviet obliteration of Japanese forces in Manchuria occurred in the same three days. But it was the one two punch that did it.
Quite possibly. Like I said, I wouldn't claim to know enough to say one way or the other.
1. Distorted view? That's the way the Japanese fought, no mercy, and ask for none. They were ready to push to the absolute end. They were brave, but also proud.
2. He did not call the Japanese cannibals. If you were starving, what would you do? If a man is hungry, he will eat.
3. Of course they could harm us. You just said yourself that "Every japanese soldier can become a frothing berserker..." if you were starving me, I would do my best to tear you apart. Just need to grab the biggest rock.
Also, let's not take offense to stereotyping Japan. That's the way the did their thing. Win no matter what. I mean, c'mon, Kamikazes. That in itself proves determination.
Frazzled wrote:
Er P-40s were the best plane we had at the time.
The P-38?
Frazzled wrote:Here's a hint. Look up a post.
An uncited fact from wikipedia?
It really is true, you only question things that you don't agree with.
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Kasrkai wrote:
3. Of course they could harm us. You just said yourself that "Every japanese soldier can become a frothing berserker..." if you were starving me, I would do my best to tear you apart. Just need to grab the biggest rock.
I did, and you missed my point. Hardly any pilots, or gas. The Germans produced 40,000 planes in 1944, despite all the allied bombing at the time. But most of them sat on the ground to be destroyed, as they did not have enough fuel or pilots for them. In Operation Bodenplatte during the Battle of the Bulge the Germans expended the last of their pilots and fuel in a 800 plane raid that resulted in a an Pyrrhic victory for the Luftewaffe. Aftewards they could only manage to send a handful of planes in the air, while thousands sat grounded.
So if the Germans had that much trouble fielding an air fleet, how much less so could Japan to get the smallest fraction of a 10,000 plane force in the air? A few hundred, maybe. Would the few they got into the air have done some damage?, perhaps. But not enough to make any serious threat to the US Navy. Not unless they could swarm the US fleet with all 10,000 aircraft at once, which wasn't going to happen.
Karon wrote:[Japan was, quite literally, helpless. They were stuck on their one gakky island, and had no way of attacking us in any way.
The atomic bomb was a rushed decision, and was not fully thought through. I remember this back in my senior year of Highschool, when I took AP European History.
How were we any different from Nazi Germany when we bombed Japan? Hitler did it to quickly knock out the U.K., and not force a land invasion (which he had in mind). The only reason he stopped is because the U.K. struck back once, and he withdrawed all planes because he was stunned that they could have possibly striked him (he was...sort of insane).
We did it to quickly knock out Japan and end the war. Its not OK because our side is seen as the "good" side.
You may have attended that class, but if what you are saying about the Blitz is what you learned in that class, then that class was a waste of time.
Brushfire wrote:
So if the Germans had that much trouble fielding an air fleet, how much less so could Japan to get the smallest fraction of a 10,000 plane force in the air? Not many, I'm sure. Would the few they got into the air have done some damage?, perhaps. But not enough to make any serious threat. Not unless they could swarm the US fleet with all 10,000 aircraft at once, which was a fantasy.
There's also the issue of whether or not 10,000 planes should not be considered helpless.
If I have 30 tanks you might consider me powerful, unless you have 30,000.
It's hardly relevant how many planes the Japanese had.
While they were militarily beaten, until they surrendered there were basically three courses of action open to the Allies.
1. Let the Japanese starve to death.
2. Invade, causing and taking massive casualties, damaging infrastructure further, and causing more starvation.
3. Try to bring a quick end to the war with the atom bombs.
The atom bombs brought about the total surrender and collapse of Japanese resistance in a week. It was absolutely the right thing to do in the circumstances.
The fact that everyone used area bombing does not make area bombing right in itself.
Brushfire wrote:
So if the Germans had that much trouble fielding an air fleet, how much less so could Japan to get the smallest fraction of a 10,000 plane force in the air? Not many, I'm sure. Would the few they got into the air have done some damage?, perhaps. But not enough to make any serious threat. Not unless they could swarm the US fleet with all 10,000 aircraft at once, which was a fantasy.
There's also the issue of whether or not 10,000 planes should not be considered helpless.
If I have 30 tanks you might consider me powerful, unless you have 30,000.
Yes, but Japans wrinkle is akin to one person having 30,000 guns, and you have only 30, but also have 30 people to shoot them as well, it doesn't matter that the other guy has 30,000 guns, tanks, or planes, 'cause he only shoot 1-2 guns at the same time anyway.And if he does not have enough ammo, those 30,000 guns are just so many paperweights.
I did, and you missed my point. Hardly any pilots, or gas. The Germans produced 40,000 planes in 1944, despite all the allied bombing at the time. But most of them sat on the ground to be destroyed, as they did not have enough fuel or pilots for them. In operation Bodenplatte during the Battle of the Bulge the Germans expended the last of their pilots and fuel in a 800 plane raid that resulted in a an Pyrrhic victory for the Luftewaffe. Aftewards they could only manage to send a handful of planes in the air, while thousands sat grounded.
So if the Germans had that much trouble fielding an air fleet, how much less so could Japan to get the smallest fraction of a 10,000 plane force in the air? Not many, I'm sure. Would the few they got into the air have done some damage?, perhaps. But not enough to make any serious threat to the US Navy. Not unless they could swarm the US fleet with all 10,000 aircraft at once, which wasn't going to happen.
Even with such things as cracking the Nazi codes, those forces tasked with investigating and retrieving Nazi technology and research in the last weeks of the war were constantly finding new technology, weaponry and techniques that were decades in advance of allied technology. Such things were a surprise to Allied Intelligence, much as many of the innovations that actually went in to service were also a surprise. Every month that Germany could stay fighting is a month when yet more potential innovations could be used in the field. And this is WITH Enigma intercepts. Even having broken all of Japan's codes, who are we to say that they could not likewise have concealed any manner of things from us?
Another important task that such retrieval units had was to find evidence of technological or knowledge-sharing with Japan. Potentially any of the innovations found in Germany could have been shared with Japan...and many were. Germany had copious chemical weapons capability and frightening research in new areas (Sarin for example). The German military and Hitler himself showed huge reluctance to deploy chemical weapons, and thus the allies never responded in kind. (Which is why the units tasked with such "looting" were often Chemical Weapons units). Can anyone say that Japan would have not resorted to such methods in a lengthened conflict? They did indeed work on delivery systems which actually reached the continental US. (Balloons surprisingly enough.) They used incendiary weapons which failed to cause a major conflagration, but there was genuine fear that they could have deployed chemical weapons, with potentially devastating effects.
So we can't even say today that Japan was no threat to the USA, and it certainly could not be claimed in 1945, when planners had no access to hindsight or google.
ArbeitsSchu wrote: Even having broken all of Japan's codes, who are we to say that they could not likewise have concealed any manner of things from us?
The same is true of England, France, China, India, and every other country in the world.
Who are we to say that France has not concealed a massive army with which it will conquer the US and enslave all God-fearing Christians?
ArbeitsSchu wrote: Even having broken all of Japan's codes, who are we to say that they could not likewise have concealed any manner of things from us?
The same is true of England, France, China, India, and every other country in the world.
Who are we to say that France has not concealed a massive army with which it will conquer the US and enslave all God-fearing Christians?
Maybe thats why France couldn't get into Nato meetings for ages?
Point is that if one aggressor nation with compromised secret communications could hide so much from the allies, why not another aggressor nation with similarly compromised communications?
I did, and you missed my point. Hardly any pilots, or gas. The Germans produced 40,000 planes in 1944, despite all the allied bombing at the time. But most of them sat on the ground to be destroyed, as they did not have enough fuel or pilots for them. In operation Bodenplatte during the Battle of the Bulge the Germans expended the last of their pilots and fuel in a 800 plane raid that resulted in a an Pyrrhic victory for the Luftewaffe. Aftewards they could only manage to send a handful of planes in the air, while thousands sat grounded.
So if the Germans had that much trouble fielding an air fleet, how much less so could Japan to get the smallest fraction of a 10,000 plane force in the air? Not many, I'm sure. Would the few they got into the air have done some damage?, perhaps. But not enough to make any serious threat to the US Navy. Not unless they could swarm the US fleet with all 10,000 aircraft at once, which wasn't going to happen.
Even with such things as cracking the Nazi codes, those forces tasked with investigating and retrieving Nazi technology and research in the last weeks of the war were constantly finding new technology, weaponry and techniques that were decades in advance of allied technology. Such things were a surprise to Allied Intelligence, much as many of the innovations that actually went in to service were also a surprise. Every month that Germany could stay fighting is a month when yet more potential innovations could be used in the field. And this is WITH Enigma intercepts. Even having broken all of Japan's codes, who are we to say that they could not likewise have concealed any manner of things from us?
Another important task that such retrieval units had was to find evidence of technological or knowledge-sharing with Japan. Potentially any of the innovations found in Germany could have been shared with Japan...and many were. Germany had copious chemical weapons capability and frightening research in new areas (Sarin for example). The German military and Hitler himself showed huge reluctance to deploy chemical weapons, and thus the allies never responded in kind. (Which is why the units tasked with such "looting" were often Chemical Weapons units). Can anyone say that Japan would have not resorted to such methods in a lengthened conflict? They did indeed work on delivery systems which actually reached the continental US. (Balloons surprisingly enough.) They used incendiary weapons which failed to cause a major conflagration, but there was genuine fear that they could have deployed chemical weapons, with potentially devastating effects.
So we can't even say today that Japan was no threat to the USA, and it certainly could not be claimed in 1945, when planners had no access to hindsight or google.
None of the German wonder weapons, short of a nuke, would have changed the results. Too, late, too little, and too sophisticated for the young green operators. The Henkiel VolksJager had a bad habit of falling apart in air. Too many wonderweapons were untested and unreliable in the heat of combat. The Germans scientists were geeks working in a ivory tower with nice ideas, while Germany was going up in flames. Besides, the Germans had no fuel or enough raw materials to build them in any numbers to make a difference against the Soviet hordes.
In the end, the many wonder weapons created by the Germans actually watered down their limited resources with coming up with so many weapon systems. It was counterproductive. The Russians had the right idea. Make a decent tank like a T-34-85, and make a gazillion of them. So what if a Tiger Tank equipped with night vision takes out ten T-34-85's in a row? The other 10 will take out the Tiger.
So what if Me 262 were faster than P-51's? P-51's would just hang out over their airfields and hit them when they landed or took off.
Adolf Galland sweated bullets all the time dealing with this tactic when he flew with the JV 44 squadron.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Point is that if one aggressor nation with compromised secret communications could hide so much from the allies, why not another aggressor nation with similarly compromised communications?
Well right, but at that level of suspicion I should be murdering everyone that comes within three feet of me because some guy that came within three feet of another guy murdered the latter.
I did, and you missed my point. Hardly any pilots, or gas. The Germans produced 40,000 planes in 1944, despite all the allied bombing at the time. But most of them sat on the ground to be destroyed, as they did not have enough fuel or pilots for them. In operation Bodenplatte during the Battle of the Bulge the Germans expended the last of their pilots and fuel in a 800 plane raid that resulted in a an Pyrrhic victory for the Luftewaffe. Aftewards they could only manage to send a handful of planes in the air, while thousands sat grounded.
So if the Germans had that much trouble fielding an air fleet, how much less so could Japan to get the smallest fraction of a 10,000 plane force in the air? Not many, I'm sure. Would the few they got into the air have done some damage?, perhaps. But not enough to make any serious threat to the US Navy. Not unless they could swarm the US fleet with all 10,000 aircraft at once, which wasn't going to happen.
Even with such things as cracking the Nazi codes, those forces tasked with investigating and retrieving Nazi technology and research in the last weeks of the war were constantly finding new technology, weaponry and techniques that were decades in advance of allied technology. Such things were a surprise to Allied Intelligence, much as many of the innovations that actually went in to service were also a surprise. Every month that Germany could stay fighting is a month when yet more potential innovations could be used in the field. And this is WITH Enigma intercepts. Even having broken all of Japan's codes, who are we to say that they could not likewise have concealed any manner of things from us?
Another important task that such retrieval units had was to find evidence of technological or knowledge-sharing with Japan. Potentially any of the innovations found in Germany could have been shared with Japan...and many were. Germany had copious chemical weapons capability and frightening research in new areas (Sarin for example). The German military and Hitler himself showed huge reluctance to deploy chemical weapons, and thus the allies never responded in kind. (Which is why the units tasked with such "looting" were often Chemical Weapons units). Can anyone say that Japan would have not resorted to such methods in a lengthened conflict? They did indeed work on delivery systems which actually reached the continental US. (Balloons surprisingly enough.) They used incendiary weapons which failed to cause a major conflagration, but there was genuine fear that they could have deployed chemical weapons, with potentially devastating effects.
So we can't even say today that Japan was no threat to the USA, and it certainly could not be claimed in 1945, when planners had no access to hindsight or google.
None of the German wonder weapons, short of a nuke, would have changed the results. Too, late, too little, and too sophisticated for the young green operators. The Henkiel VolksJager had a bad habit of falling apart in air. Too many wonderweapons were untested and unreliable in the heat of combat. The Germans scientists were geeks working in a ivory tower with nice ideas, while Germany was going up in flames. Besides, the Germans had no fuel or enough raw materials to build them in any numbers to make a difference against the Soviet hordes.
In the end, the many wonder weapons created by the Germans actually watered down their limited resources with coming up with so many weapon systems. It was counterproductive. The Russians had the right idea. Make a decent tank like a T-34-85, and make a gazillion of them. So what if a Tiger Tank equipped with night vision takes out ten T-34-85's in a row? The other 10 will take out the Tiger.
Because it takes loads of training to load a shell with a different coloured band around the tip into a 10.5cm gun? As opposed to the shells you were firing five minutes before? Not every "wonder-weapon" needs to be sophisticated to be potentially devastating, or even hard to use...exactly like the T-34 in fact. A peasants tractor with angled armour..its about as simple as it gets, and a wonder-weapon when it showed up. What Germany lacked in many cases was the will to use some of their most potentially devastating weapons, or the acumen to use them properly. If they hit London with a V2 full of hi-explosive, they could have done nailed the Normandy beach-heads with a payload of something far more unpleasant, for example. But thats a bit "Germany '46" and not the point.
The point is that Germany could have and in many cases DID share their ideas and technology with Japan, and allied leaders at the time had no idea what had been shared. Where Germany lacked the will or capacity, Japan may have not. From the viewpoint of an allied leader in 45, Japan is a very real threat, even without a conventional navy.
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dogma wrote:
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Point is that if one aggressor nation with compromised secret communications could hide so much from the allies, why not another aggressor nation with similarly compromised communications?
Well right, but at that level of suspicion I should be murdering everyone that comes within three feet of me because some guy that came within three feet of another guy murdered the latter.
I think you're supposed to be suspicious of the enemy when engaged in global war.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Try it this way. Its 1945 and you are in Allied Intelligence. You KNOW that Germany has deployed new and technologically advanced weaponry against you, you KNOW that they are carrying out further research. You KNOW that they have investigated the Chemical options, and you KNOW that they have engaged in Nuclear research. Germany is on the brink of destruction, and you also now KNOW that Germany has been sharing things with Japan, a nation still engaged in war-fighting, with a degree less respect for the rules of war than even the Germans (which is saying something.) You know that the Japanese soldier will generally fight to the death regardless of situation, and has no regard for prisoners or collateral damage, and that his officers will even contemplate a suicide mission with A BATTLESHIP. You DON'T KNOW how much has been shared, or what capabilities Japan still retains, and you KNOW that Japan still retains the greater part of its land-based fighting forces. Are you worried that Japan might still be a threat?
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
I think you're supposed to be suspicious of the enemy when engaged in global war.
Sure, but when you are suspicious to a level which is equivalent to stupidity then you should be told as much, and probably mocked in order to drive the point home.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Try it this way. Its 1945 and you are in Allied Intelligence. You KNOW that Germany has deployed new and technologically advanced weaponry against you, you KNOW that they are carrying out further research. You KNOW that they have investigated the Chemical options, and you KNOW that they have engaged in Nuclear research. Germany is on the brink of destruction, and you also now KNOW that Germany has been sharing things with Japan, a nation still engaged in war-fighting, with a degree less respect for the rules of war than even the Germans (which is saying something.) You know that the Japanese soldier will generally fight to the death regardless of situation, and has no regard for prisoners or collateral damage, and that his officers will even contemplate a suicide mission with A BATTLESHIP. You DON'T KNOW how much has been shared, or what capabilities Japan still retains, and you KNOW that Japan still retains the greater part of its land-based fighting forces. Are you worried that Japan might still be a threat?
No. Considering Japan a threat of note (because if things exist, then they are threats) in 1946 is like considering Iran a threat now. Its something idiots do.
That land based fighting force cannot swim across the Pacific Ocean.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
I think you're supposed to be suspicious of the enemy when engaged in global war.
Sure, but when you are suspicious to a level which is equivalent to stupidity then you should be told as much, and probably mocked in order to drive the point home.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Try it this way. Its 1945 and you are in Allied Intelligence. You KNOW that Germany has deployed new and technologically advanced weaponry against you, you KNOW that they are carrying out further research. You KNOW that they have investigated the Chemical options, and you KNOW that they have engaged in Nuclear research. Germany is on the brink of destruction, and you also now KNOW that Germany has been sharing things with Japan, a nation still engaged in war-fighting, with a degree less respect for the rules of war than even the Germans (which is saying something.) You know that the Japanese soldier will generally fight to the death regardless of situation, and has no regard for prisoners or collateral damage, and that his officers will even contemplate a suicide mission with A BATTLESHIP. You DON'T KNOW how much has been shared, or what capabilities Japan still retains, and you KNOW that Japan still retains the greater part of its land-based fighting forces. Are you worried that Japan might still be a threat?
No. Considering Japan a threat of note (because if things exist, then they are threats) in 1946 is like considering Iran a threat now. Its something idiots do.
And if I had said 1946 you would be right..them having lost the war by then...
You seem to be missing some very pertinent points that are really very obvious. German had chemical weapons stocks and a suspected nuclear program, and a proven delivery system. These are all facts. Germany had provably shared intelligence with Japan. Also fact. From the viewpoint of the allies In 1944/5 its very easy to see the obvious conclusion to that: Germany may have shared its chemical weapons/nuclear research/proven delivery systems with Japan. Thus Japan is a threat. I'm not talking about with hindsight or information found since then. I'm talking about at the time, with information known at the time.
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LunaHound wrote:Was Hiroshima a civilian city or Military place?
Its a city. By definition its a civilian, filled with civilians. A city may contain targets of military interest, but in and of itself is not a "military" place.
A total of 200,000 people, if I'm remembering correctly, were killed due to the use of atomic weapons in WW II. By the time that we used fat man and little boy, we had already killed 500,000 civilians (and plenty of property) in Tokyo through conventional and incendiary bombing methods. Our outlook suggested that this would be necessary for most large cities.
Additionally, if we had not dropped said bombs, we would have had to invade the Japanese mainland. we expected to lose at least 250,000 American lives (that's not counting Japanese casualties) in the initial invasion of Japan, with around 200,000 more (once again, only American) deaths throughout. It was most likely that Japanese citizens would fight back and aid the military, as was the culture at the time, meaning more civilian casualties as well.
So all in all, it was the lesser two evils that we chose when we dropped the fission bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Here's to hoping that we never have to use them ever again.
Also, Russia would have joined in the fight. Did we really want to have a Berlin- style situation in Tokyo?
I think it might been for nothing as Japan surrendered 6 days after the nukes felll because Russia was preparing Invade the north and was about to deploy 1.5 million troops on the North Island.
The Japanese knowing that if Russia manage to capture Japan mean't an end to thier way of life while if they sided with the Allies thier contry would stay much the same.
So in a sence the Nukes were for nothing although it may have helped with thier surrender it might have done more damage then good.
Its a city. By definition its a civilian, filled with civilians. A city may contain targets of military interest, but in and of itself is not a "military" place.
In that case , i vote for Bad Idea.
Desperate or not , killing civilians is no better than terrorist doing 9-11
Yes, it was necessary and resulted in less casualties than the expected casualties for the other proposed methods.
The bombings would use normal bombs first to destroy the buildings which were made out of wood and other nice bits of flammable materials, this bombing created kindling which was easier to ignite when fire bombs were used afterwards.
The government also toyed around with using bats with small napalm filled explosives. The bats would be knocked out with a gas and have a small explosive attached to them. The explosive would be attached to a metal tray and several metal trays would be attached to each other with a metal cover going over it. The bombs would've been dropped during the daylight and the trays would fall apart until a string that tied each tray together stopped them from falling apart(like an accordian) and the sudden stop would've been enough to wake the bats who would then fly off to find shelter from the sunlight. When the bats flew off of the trays another string pulled from the xplosive and started a timer. After the bats found a nice dark hiding spot(like under a roof or in an attic) the napalm bombs would go off.
An all out invasion would've been far worse as we would've had to taken all of Japan inch by inch. Couple that with the propaganda the Japanese were giving to its citizens and you have Japanese and American soldiers dyeing along with Japanese citizens comitting suicide if the area was captured by the Americans.
Emperors Faithful wrote:It boggles the mind that people can ever defend specific targetting of civilians as a humanitarian move.
Unlike the European front, the war in the East was heavily based on race issues. Would the US have ever used Nukes on Germany, even before D-Day? No.
Why is Dresden condemned as a war crime, but the annhilation of two cities in Japan is supported? Take a guess.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Do_I_Not_Like_It posted a ripping article on page 3 BTW.
Before their abrupt surrender, Germany was our main nuclear target. It was a horrible thing to do, but as I previously showed, it was the lesser of two evils. Many civilians died, but many, many more would have died in the other option.
Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki at least had some military assets in them, which is why they were on our nuclear hit list.
micahaphone wrote:
Before their abrupt surrender, Germany was our main nuclear target.
No it wasn't. This may have been the impression that the scientists were working under, but (seriously read the article onpage 3) it appears that the US government was always going to use it on Japan rather than Germany.
Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki at least had some military assets in them, which is why they were on our nuclear hit list.
You don't honestly believe this. The atomic bombs were used to inflict the most severe amount of death and damage possible, that the target was a civilian one made it all the more devestating. This is sort of why they were dropped on cities.
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ArbeitsSchu wrote:You seem to be missing some very pertinent points that are really very obvious. German had chemical weapons stocks and a suspected nuclear program, and a proven delivery system. These are all facts. Germany had provably shared intelligence with Japan. Also fact.
In the same way that the US was so eager to share their military secrets with the USSR?
micahaphone wrote:
Before their abrupt surrender, Germany was our main nuclear target.
No it wasn't. This may have been the impression that the scientists were working under, but (seriously read the article onpage 3) it appears that the US government was always going to use it on Japan rather than Germany.
Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki at least had some military assets in them, which is why they were on our nuclear hit list.
You don't honestly believe this. The atomic bombs were used to inflict the most severe amount of death and damage possible, that the target was a civilian one made it all the more devestating. This is sort of why they were dropped on cities.
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ArbeitsSchu wrote:You seem to be missing some very pertinent points that are really very obvious. German had chemical weapons stocks and a suspected nuclear program, and a proven delivery system. These are all facts. Germany had provably shared intelligence with Japan. Also fact.
In the same way that the US was so eager to share their military secrets with the USSR?
I think our "unsteady frenemy" status with Russia was rather different the the Alliance of the Axis.
Also, if they wanted to inflict "the most death and destruction possible", then how come they chose to attack Nagasaki, instead of some other, larger city? Granted Hiroshima was a large city, but it had many important industries for the war effort. Nagasaki had a large mountain range that divided the town, resulting in less damage, despite the fact that the stronger atomic bomb was used on it? I mean, it was a secondary target due to cloud cover, but they could have found several cities more visible and important to Japanese culture if they solely wanted to inflict pain on the people of Japan.
micahaphone wrote:
Before their abrupt surrender, Germany was our main nuclear target.
No it wasn't. This may have been the impression that the scientists were working under, but (seriously read the article onpage 3) it appears that the US government was always going to use it on Japan rather than Germany.
Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki at least had some military assets in them, which is why they were on our nuclear hit list.
You don't honestly believe this. The atomic bombs were used to inflict the most severe amount of death and damage possible, that the target was a civilian one made it all the more devestating. This is sort of why they were dropped on cities.
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ArbeitsSchu wrote:You seem to be missing some very pertinent points that are really very obvious. German had chemical weapons stocks and a suspected nuclear program, and a proven delivery system. These are all facts. Germany had provably shared intelligence with Japan. Also fact.
In the same way that the US was so eager to share their military secrets with the USSR?
I think our "unsteady frenemy" status with Russia was rather different the the Alliance of the Axis.
I'd hardly call the relationship between the US and the UK a 'frenemy' status. That didn't mean you let them in on the nuclear bomb.
And there's little evidence to suggest Germany was any closer to Japan that the US was to Russia.
Also, if they wanted to inflict "the most death and destruction possible", then how come they chose to attack Nagasaki, instead of some other, larger city? Granted Hiroshima was a large city, but it had many important industries for the war effort. Nagasaki had a large mountain range that divided the town, resulting in less damage, despite the fact that the stronger atomic bomb was used on it? I mean, it was a secondary target due to cloud cover, but they could have found several cities more visible and important to Japanese culture if they solely wanted to inflict pain on the people of Japan.
This bit put in bold would have something to do with it.
The two cities vaporized were the targets, not collateral damage around any military installations within the city.
micahaphone wrote: Before their abrupt surrender, Germany was our main nuclear target.
No it wasn't. This may have been the impression that the scientists were working under, but (seriously read the article onpage 3) it appears that the US government was always going to use it on Japan rather than Germany.
Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki at least had some military assets in them, which is why they were on our nuclear hit list.
You don't honestly believe this. The atomic bombs were used to inflict the most severe amount of death and damage possible, that the target was a civilian one made it all the more devestating. This is sort of why they were dropped on cities.
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ArbeitsSchu wrote:You seem to be missing some very pertinent points that are really very obvious. German had chemical weapons stocks and a suspected nuclear program, and a proven delivery system. These are all facts. Germany had provably shared intelligence with Japan. Also fact.
The targets had military assets in them. The point of destroying them was to send a message to the Japanese people that being near the military guaranteed death and destruction.
And as we seem to be quibbling over the same points, can I ask what you would have preferred to the use of atomic weapons? What would have been better? In the same way that the US was so eager to share their military secrets with the USSR?
I think our "unsteady frenemy" status with Russia was rather different the the Alliance of the Axis.
I'd hardly call the relationship between the US and the UK a 'frenemy' status. That didn't mean you let them in on the nuclear bomb.
And there's little evidence to suggest Germany was any closer to Japan that the US was to Russia.
Also, if they wanted to inflict "the most death and destruction possible", then how come they chose to attack Nagasaki, instead of some other, larger city? Granted Hiroshima was a large city, but it had many important industries for the war effort. Nagasaki had a large mountain range that divided the town, resulting in less damage, despite the fact that the stronger atomic bomb was used on it? I mean, it was a secondary target due to cloud cover, but they could have found several cities more visible and important to Japanese culture if they solely wanted to inflict pain on the people of Japan.
This bit put in bold would have something to do with it.
The two cities vaporized were the targets, not collateral damage around any military installations within the city.
EDIT: for some reason I can't see what I just typed: so I'll restate it.
Every city listed as a target had integral military assets in them. The point was to hurt the Japanese war effort, while also sending a message to the Japanese people about what supporting the military would lead to.
But seeing as we're just debating over the same facts, I'd like to suggest a new question: what would you have preferred to the use of atomic weapons?
Either that or your generation was taught by one who needed to justify their own actions and global stance to themselves?
Make no mistake, I have no real interest either way, bar an academic one. I'm not interested in penalising America, the Japanese committed atrocities just as bad. I wouldn't put either on the level of say, the Holocaust, just the natural order of war.
The thing remains though, that Japan was out of supplies, half levelled by extensive incendiary and napalm bombing, their navy was no longer an issue, and the Americans and allied forces were capable of moving at will about the place. Those are military facts, regardless of your viewpoint.
To my mind, that would classify it as 'unnecessary', in the sense that the war was as good as over, and the Japanese no longer had any meaningful way of striking back. You are of course, free to examine those military facts I have given there, and draw a separate conclusion.
However, to simply accuse someone with no stake either way, who is indeed an academic in the field of warfare of , 'PCbs whitewashing' is bold indeed. I would appreciate academic citation if I am wrong. If you can prove that Japan was still amply supplied with ammo, soldiers, warships, aircraft, and so on, and still possessed the means and wherewithal to use it, I will accept it and draw another conclusion. So in the interests of defending your stance, discrediting the one you feel is wrong, and spreading education, please do so.
Wow just wow.
I don't have to debate some loser revisionst scholar.
-When did Japanese troops leave China?
-When did Japanese troops leave Vietnam?
-When did Japanese troops leave Cambodia?
-When did Japanese troops leave Laos?
-When did Japanese troops leave Malaysia?
-When did Japanese troops leave Singapore?
-Were the Japanese working on a nuclear program?
-Were the Japanese working on their own jet fighters?
-Did the Japanese surrender Manchuria after the first A bomb? Did they ever surrender Manchuria?
-Did the Japanese surrender after the first A bomb? Did they surrender after the first A bomb and the invasion of Manchuria?
-how many millions of civilians died at the hands of the Japanese? How many were dying daily when they surrenderd?
In the words of the immortal bard: nuts.
Like many War-Histories, history is written by the victors.
Who says what you "learned" at school is the reality?
Would further atrocities committed by USMC and other Defence personnel change the US public's views of the present invasions? As they did in Vietnam and the US Govt decided to explain away by claiming it was only a single unit who committed them.
Any who take the time to investigate the other side of an opinion or "fact" would know that what you are taught to believe at school is only half-truths.
There were attrocities on both sides. War is never the correct choice or a method of vindication to decide who is in the "right".
micahaphone wrote:
EDIT: for some reason I can't see what I just typed: so I'll restate it.
Every city listed as a target had integral military assets in them. The point was to hurt the Japanese war effort, while also sending a message to the Japanese people about what supporting the military would lead to.
Which clearly explains why the bombs were detonated in the city centers. Not over any particular military installation.
The point was to make an example of the Japanese population. By killing them. A lot of them.
But seeing as we're just debating over the same facts, I'd like to suggest a new question: what would you have preferred to the use of atomic weapons?
It's not so much the use of the atomic bomb, but the fact that civilians were targetted, or at the very least how their deaths in addition to any other targets were a welcome bonus. Generally, killing civilians is a pretty gakky thing to do. Targetting them is even worse.
I've already had this discussion, but the use of atomic weapons against a military asset (rather than an entire city) may have worked just as fine.
Just to quote a short academic article, " Following the Sino-Japanese War, with its military-related depots, Hiroshima gradually took on the atmosphere of a military supply base. In 1942, the Marine Headquarters (commonly known as the Akatsuki Corps) was established in the city." It contained several key factories, and it's port was a major naval base.
There were smaller military bases inside the city, but the main targets were the factories that were creating war materials, like the engines for airplanes. And of course killing civilians was an donkey-cave move, but how else to send a message of surrender or die? What else whould we have done?
It was a horrible thing to do. War, in general, is full of horrible things.
micahaphone wrote:Just to quote a short academic article, " Following the Sino-Japanese War, with its military-related depots, Hiroshima gradually took on the atmosphere of a military supply base. In 1942, the Marine Headquarters (commonly known as the Akatsuki Corps) was established in the city." It contained several key factories, and it's port was a major naval base.
There were smaller military bases inside the city, but the main targets were the factories that were creating war materials, like the engines for airplanes. And of course killing civilians was an donkey-cave move, but how else to send a message of surrender or die? What else whould we have done?
It was a horrible thing to do. War, in general, is full of horrible things.
That makes purposefuly killing civilians okay, right? No wait... I must be missing something.
The Article from Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
‘The only language [the Japanese] seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.’ US President Harry S Truman, 11 August 1945, in a letter justifying his decision to drop the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
From roughly the 1930s onto the end of world war 2, Japan had a very militaristic culture. Surrendering was one of the worst things to do. Killing civilians was horrible, but what's your alternative? What would have been better than dropping the bomb?
micahaphone wrote:From roughly the 1930s onto the end of world war 2, Japan had a very militaristic culture. Surrendering was one of the worst things to do. Killing civilians was horrible, but what's your alternative? What would have been better than dropping the bomb?
Not dropping the bomb?
How about a surrender that allowed Japan to save face? Somehow that strikes me as a little more moral than genocide.
micahaphone wrote:From roughly the 1930s onto the end of world war 2, Japan had a very militaristic culture. Surrendering was one of the worst things to do. Killing civilians was horrible, but what's your alternative? What would have been better than dropping the bomb?
Not dropping the bomb?
How about a surrender that allowed Japan to save face? Somehow that strikes me as a little more moral than genocide.
And what exactly would the USA have been doing? Twiddling our thumbs while we waited for the Japanese people to say "whoah, our entire mindset these 14 years has been entirely wrong! It'd be best if we just surrendered right now."
micahaphone wrote:From roughly the 1930s onto the end of world war 2, Japan had a very militaristic culture. Surrendering was one of the worst things to do. Killing civilians was horrible, but what's your alternative? What would have been better than dropping the bomb?
Not dropping the bomb?
How about a surrender that allowed Japan to save face? Somehow that strikes me as a little more moral than genocide.
And what exactly would the USA have been doing? Twiddling our thumbs while we waited for the Japanese people to say "whoah, our entire mindset these 14 years has been entirely wrong! It'd be best if we just surrendered right now."
An unconditional surrender isn't what I said, that's unpopular with pretty much any country you'd care to name. I said a surrender that would allow Japan to save face.
micahaphone wrote:From roughly the 1930s onto the end of world war 2, Japan had a very militaristic culture. Surrendering was one of the worst things to do. Killing civilians was horrible, but what's your alternative? What would have been better than dropping the bomb?
Not dropping the bomb?
How about a surrender that allowed Japan to save face? Somehow that strikes me as a little more moral than genocide.
And what exactly would the USA have been doing? Twiddling our thumbs while we waited for the Japanese people to say "whoah, our entire mindset these 14 years has been entirely wrong! It'd be best if we just surrendered right now."
An unconditional surrender isn't what I said, that's unpopular with pretty much any country you'd care to name. I said a surrender that would allow Japan to save face.
Was not the mindset of the Japanese government, military, and civilian population that surrender, to use a cheesy phrase "the highest dishonor"? As previously stated, expected casualties for any invasion of the Japanese homeland were extremely high, as they would most likely fight 'till the last man. Japan showed little intention of surrendering before the use of atomic weapons.
Unit1126PLL wrote:The dropping of the atomic bombs was justified because:
The droppings of regular bombs were justified, and what is an atomic bomb but a bigger bomb?
What, exactly, is wrong with dropping an atomic bomb anywhere?
Please, enlighten me.
I think there is a general concensus that dropping bombs on civilians is a no-no.
micahaphone wrote:
Emperors Faithful wrote:An unconditional surrender isn't what I said, that's unpopular with pretty much any country you'd care to name. I said a surrender that would allow Japan to save face.
Was not the mindset of the Japanese government, military, and civilian population that surrender, to use a cheesy phrase "the highest dishonor"? As previously stated, expected casualties for any invasion of the Japanese homeland were extremely high, as they would most likely fight 'till the last man. Japan showed little intention of surrendering before the use of atomic weapons.
I have already asked you to read the article on page 3. There was a fair amount of support for the idea of a conditional surrender, especially if the terms were favourable in regards to the status of the Emperor. Your arguement that they showed no inclination towards a favourable surrender is patently false.
Also, the invasion plan intended to make use of up to a further 15 nuclear bombs. It's not the nature of the weapon I take issue with, it's what it was used to target. I also find the firebombing of Tokyo morally reprehensible.
Unit1126PLL wrote:The dropping of the atomic bombs was justified because:
The droppings of regular bombs were justified, and what is an atomic bomb but a bigger bomb?
What, exactly, is wrong with dropping an atomic bomb anywhere?
Please, enlighten me.
I think there is a general concensus that dropping bombs on civilians is a no-no.
micahaphone wrote:
Emperors Faithful wrote:An unconditional surrender isn't what I said, that's unpopular with pretty much any country you'd care to name. I said a surrender that would allow Japan to save face.
Was not the mindset of the Japanese government, military, and civilian population that surrender, to use a cheesy phrase "the highest dishonor"? As previously stated, expected casualties for any invasion of the Japanese homeland were extremely high, as they would most likely fight 'till the last man. Japan showed little intention of surrendering before the use of atomic weapons.
I have already asked you to read the article on page 3. There was a fair amount of support for the idea of a conditional surrender, especially if the terms were favourable in regards to the status of the Emperor. Your arguement that they showed no inclination towards a favourable surrender is patently false.
Also, the invasion plan intended to make use of up to a further 15 nuclear bombs. It's not the nature of the weapon I take issue with, it's what it was used to target. I also find the firebombing of Tokyo morally reprehensible.
The conventional bombs were being dropped on civilians. Invading the island would have caused massive civilian casualties. Nearly every part of war is morally reprehensible; it'd be hard to find a part that isn't.
The article on page three shows that Japan was willing to have a conditional surrender, but does not mention what those conditions were, instead veering off to cold war politics (a good point) and racism (a point I'm somewhat sketchy on). What are these terms? Could Japan have wanted to keep territory? I know they were afraid that their Emperor, who was very revered, would be killed, but did we ever insinuate this? What exactly were their terms?
ArbeitsSchu wrote:You seem to be missing some very pertinent points that are really very obvious. German had chemical weapons stocks and a suspected nuclear program, and a proven delivery system. These are all facts. Germany had provably shared intelligence with Japan. Also fact. From the viewpoint of the allies In 1944/5 its very easy to see the obvious conclusion to that: Germany may have shared its chemical weapons/nuclear research/proven delivery systems with Japan. Thus Japan is a threat. I'm not talking about with hindsight or information found since then. I'm talking about at the time, with information known at the time.
What proven delivery systems was Japan going to use to drop a nuclear bomb on the United States? One of the vaunted German twin-engine bombers?
The argument that Japan was a threat because they possessed weapons of any type is a nonstarter. As I said above, Japan was a threat only in the sense that all other nations in the world are threats, which is just realist hokum predicated on Ken Waltz's dreck. I mean seriously, Germany also shared intelligence and technology with Argentina, and we didn't drop a nuclear bomb on them.
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micahaphone wrote:Nearly every part of war is morally reprehensible; it'd be hard to find a part that isn't.
Rosie the Riveter eventually became a feminist icon, and helped launch the 60's cultural revolution.
Also, if war didn't exist, my jobs prospects would be greatly diminished.
Emperors Faithful wrote:I think there is a general concensus that dropping bombs on civilians is a no-no.
You probably need to go back in time and tell the participants of WWII, who spent most of the war dropping bombs on cities.
Most of which, I'd argue, where immoral, because they killed loads of innocent people and achieved little. Dresden did nothing to make the war end sooner. The saturation bombing of Berlin didn't either. In fact, they took resources away from tactical bombing campaigns that were having a good effect.
Whereas dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war. The loss of life was worth the US and Japanese lives that would have been lost in the invasion, to say nothing of the Chinese, Japanese and Russian lives being lost in the incredibly bloody fighting on the continent.
micahaphone wrote:
The conventional bombs were being dropped on civilians. Invading the island would have caused massive civilian casualties. Nearly every part of war is morally reprehensible; it'd be hard to find a part that isn't.
I think I've already said killing civilians on purpose is bad, m'kay?
The article on page three shows that Japan was willing to have a conditional surrender, but does not mention what those conditions were, instead veering off to cold war politics (a good point) and racism (a point I'm somewhat sketchy on).
Denial?
What are these terms? Could Japan have wanted to keep territory?
Maybe they would have. The approachof the Soviets ensured this wasn't going to be a reality.
I know they were afraid that their Emperor, who was very revered, would be killed, but did we ever insinuate this? What exactly were their terms?
I can't recall if it was ever specifically declared that the Emperor was going to be put on trial (which would have been a stupendous move on the Allies part). But in the wake of an unconditional surrender they knew they wouldn't be able to do anything about it if that was what the Allies wanted (and looking at what happened to Japanese commanders, it wouldn't have been out of the question).The Emperor's well-being was always a top priority. In fact, in thier final surrender that was the only condition.
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sebster wrote:
Emperors Faithful wrote:I think there is a general concensus that dropping bombs on civilians is a no-no.
You probably need to go back in time and tell the participants of WWII, who spent most of the war dropping bombs on cities.
A lot of people back then were also homophobic racists. Should I go back and tell them they were wrong about that as well?
Most of which, I'd argue, where immoral, because they killed loads of innocent people and achieved little. Dresden did nothing to make the war end sooner. The saturation bombing of Berlin didn't either. In fact, they took resources away from tactical bombing campaigns that were having a good effect.
Whereas dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war. The loss of life was worth the US and Japanese lives that would have been lost in the invasion, to say nothing of the Chinese, Japanese and Russian lives being lost in the incredibly bloody fighting on the continent.
A surrender without invasion or vaporising two cities appears to have been entirely possible. People here are far to quick to assume it had to be one way or the other.
I also don't agree with the approach of Consequentialism.
micahaphone wrote: The conventional bombs were being dropped on civilians. Invading the island would have caused massive civilian casualties. Nearly every part of war is morally reprehensible; it'd be hard to find a part that isn't.
I think I've already said killing civilians on purpose is bad, m'kay?
The article on page three shows that Japan was willing to have a conditional surrender, but does not mention what those conditions were, instead veering off to cold war politics (a good point) and racism (a point I'm somewhat sketchy on).
Denial?
What are these terms? Could Japan have wanted to keep territory?
Maybe they would have. The approachof the Soviets ensured this wasn't going to be a reality.
I know they were afraid that their Emperor, who was very revered, would be killed, but did we ever insinuate this? What exactly were their terms?
I can't recall if it was ever specifically declared that the Emperor was going to be put on trial (which would have been a stupendous move on the Allies part). But in the wake of an unconditional surrender they knew they wouldn't be able to do anything about it if that was what the Allies wanted (and looking at what happened to Japanese commanders, it wouldn't have been out of the question).The Emperor's well-being was always a top priority. In fact, in thier final surrender that was the only condition.
1) I'm just saying, the article didn't specify.
2) If the territory thing was in there (I shall research this tomorrow- I must go to bed soon), we would not have accepted it. Until later, I shall chalk that up as an uncertain.
3) Ditto for the threats against the Emperor. Was that solely an internal fear, or had we hinted at it?
EDIT for failing grammar. I really need to hit the sack. goodnight all.
micahaphone wrote:2) If the territory thing was in there (I shall research this tomorrow- I must go to bed soon), we would not have accepted it. Until later, I shall chalk that up as an uncertain.
Accepted what? Japan was a defeated nation with no ability to bargain for territory they no longer held.
3) Ditto for the threats against the Emperor. Was that solely an internal fear, or had we hinted at it?
Had the Allies ever come out and said that the Emperor would be put on the block? No. But they also hadn't said that he wouldn't be.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:Even with such things as cracking the Nazi codes, those forces tasked with investigating and retrieving Nazi technology and research in the last weeks of the war were constantly finding new technology, weaponry and techniques that were decades in advance of allied technology. Such things were a surprise to Allied Intelligence, much as many of the innovations that actually went in to service were also a surprise.
What they found was a collection of high end research projects where the real world applications were not worth the research time. When you hear stories about the Russians coming across the development of a long range bomber planned to reach New York from Berlin, the first thought is 'holy crap the Nazis could have bombed New York if the war had continued for another few years'.
But shortly afterwards we start to think 'what in blue blazes were the Nazis doing developing a long range bomber to hit New York while the Russians were advancing on Berlin?
The thing about Nazi super science is that it was a collection of hair brained schemes. You get all this cool looking weapons tech that makes for great stories, but in the real world their inability to prioritise and produce practical weapons harmed their ability to fight the war.
And a good thing to, because a sane regime with the industrial capacity of most of continental Europe behind it could have dominated the globe, rather than being utterly crushed in a few years. But if they were sane they wouldn't have been the Nazis.
Can anyone say that Japan would have not resorted to such methods in a lengthened conflict? They did indeed work on delivery systems which actually reached the continental US. (Balloons surprisingly enough.)
Yes, they tasked schoolkids with building ballons, and they sent hundreds of thousands up over the gulf stream. For the total of one effective hit, killing a handful of people. Turns out the while a city is very big, the entirety the west coast of the US is much bigger, and the odds of a bomb landing successfully is so remote that it made the whole thing a very stupid idea indeed.
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ArbeitsSchu wrote:Maybe thats why France couldn't get into Nato meetings for ages?
Couldn't get into? France withdrew from NATO, due to US dominance of its activities. Well, withdrew its forces from NATO command, it remained part of the organisation.
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Brushfire wrote:The Germans scientists were geeks working in a ivory tower with nice ideas, while Germany was going up in flames.
I think those scientists were very practically minded people, that is if they keep telling Hitler their superweapon projects had real and practical uses and would be ready in just a few months then they can keep working in their labs, and not get reassigned to an infantry division on the Eastern front.
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ArbeitsSchu wrote:exactly like the T-34 in fact. A peasants tractor with angled armour..its about as simple as it gets, and a wonder-weapon when it showed up.
You're really not giving the right amount of credit to the christie suspension.
What Germany lacked in many cases was the will to use some of their most potentially devastating weapons, or the acumen to use them properly.
Now, the problem was that the superweapons weren't as effective as people like to pretend, and that it was a war where quantity decided battles, far more than particular instances of superior tech.
If they hit London with a V2 full of hi-explosive, they could have done nailed the Normandy beach-heads with a payload of something far more unpleasant, for example.
They fired V-2s at London. Explosive is scary and all and makes a big mess where it lands, but really doesn't make that much of dent in something on the scale of a city. To effect a city on any material level you need lots explosions, constantly, and therein lies the problem with V-2s. They were highly engineered and incredibly time consuming to produce, so they couldn't operate on that scale.
Weapon delivery like V-2 only became useful when we had much bigger bombs to put in them - nukes.
The point is that Germany could have and in many cases DID share their ideas and technology with Japan, and allied leaders at the time had no idea what had been shared. Where Germany lacked the will or capacity, Japan may have not. From the viewpoint of an allied leader in 45, Japan is a very real threat, even without a conventional navy.
No, Japan wasn't. They had exactly as little capability, and this talk about lacking will is nonsensical.
What Japan represented was a costly, exhaustive invasion. Which alone is reason enough to drop the bomb. So I don't know why you're bothering with this superweapon stuff at all.
Germany is on the brink of destruction, and you also now KNOW that Germany has been sharing things with Japan,
This is a bizarre claim.
a nation still engaged in war-fighting, with a degree less respect for the rules of war than even the Germans (which is saying something.)
Whereas that is just plain ridiculous.
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ArbeitsSchu wrote:German had chemical weapons stocks and a suspected nuclear program, and a proven delivery system.
The German nuclear weapons programs wasn't suspected, it was known. Allied operatiions had been undertaken to stop it, specifically to stop the supply of heavy water.
The allies knew the scope of the German program, and they knew it was very small and limited, just another one of the nazi crazy side projects. I mean, just compare it to the scope of the Manhattan Project, which chewed up immense resources and still had to cut corners at the end and hope it all worked out to get a bomb ready in time. The German plan had resources maybe 1/1,000 of that.
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Emperors Faithful wrote:A lot of people back then were also homophobic racists. Should I go back and tell them they were wrong about that as well?
That'd also be helpful.
Meanwhile, there's still loads of bombs getting dropped on cities, because that's where the key targets are.
Thing is, if you fight a war by arbitrary rules like 'don't drop bombs on civilians' then you can end up dragging a war on, getting more of your soldiers and more of their soldiers killed, and likely loads of civilians as well. Playing games with rules like that can be immoral.
A surrender without invasion or vaporising two cities appears to have been entirely possible.
My reading indicates no such conclusion was likely. Meanwhile, every month there was god knows how many thousands dying in China. When war drags on in a place like that, where you have subsistance level farming during the good times, then the civilian death toll just gets uglier month by month, even when no-one is trying to kill civilians.
So you might have been welcome to say Japan will surrender any day now, I'm going to go with doing what has to be done to end the war as quickly as possible.
@ Various people including Sebster: And when the American military leadership of 1945 developed its time machine and flew to the future of NOW and googled Japan's war effort then they would have known that Japan didn't actually receive anything particularly useful from Germany, that most German research was advanced but not immediately useful, and a host of other exciting things......
Far too many people in this thread are thinking in terms of what we know now, and not what was known in 1944/45, which makes most of the counter arguments completely void. What they actually HAD is not only irrelevant but unknown to planners at the time. What they MIGHT have had however, is very very important.
And I already stated my reasons for why the attack was necessary. Everything else is a response to this ridiculous beleif that Japan was not a threat to the US because it lacked a Navy or effective Air Force. I seem to recall a big hole in the middle of Manhattan made by a group with no air force and no navy. And if nothing else, if Japan was not a threat as much as people in this thread seem to believe was the case, then why didn't the whole Pacific Fleet just pack up and sale home? Why carry on prosecuting a war against a nation that is "no threat"?
Addendum: For those who seem to think that I'm stating opinion and not fact, here's a google for you. 30AU and T-Force. Then go and read up about what the Germans did or did not have, and the rest of it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: On a slightly different angle: There seems to be some confusion about the difference between the act of bombing being "right" and "necessary", which are obviously two distinct things.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:@ Various people including Sebster: And when the American military leadership of 1945 developed its time machine and flew to the future of NOW and googled Japan's war effort then they would have known that Japan didn't actually receive anything particularly useful from Germany, that most German research was advanced but not immediately useful, and a host of other exciting things......
Far too many people in this thread are thinking in terms of what we know now, and not what was known in 1944/45, which makes most of the counter arguments completely void. What they actually HAD is not only irrelevant but unknown to planners at the time. What they MIGHT have had however, is very very important.
Taking action on a "maybe" can be understood. IF there was anything to suggest that it was a maybe. They DIDN'T have a nuclear program and the Allies DIDN'T suspect anything otherwise.
And I already stated my reasons for why the attack was necessary. Everything else is a response to this ridiculous beleif that Japan was not a threat to the US because it lacked a Navy or effective Air Force. I seem to recall a big hole in the middle of Manhattan made by a group with no air force and no navy.
Under the circumstances would being in control of a plane that size count as having some sort of make-shift air force?
Regardless, trying to compare 9/11 to WWII is a bit off, donchathink?
And if nothing else, if Japan was not a threat as much as people in this thread seem to believe was the case, then why didn't the whole Pacific Fleet just pack up and sale home? Why carry on prosecuting a war against a nation that is "no threat"?
Because of US popular opinion. And popular opinion is hardly something you want to base your moral compass on.
Addendum: For those who seem to think that I'm stating opinion and not fact, here's a google for you. 30AU and T-Force. Then go and read up about what the Germans did or did not have, and the rest of it.
This is about Japan, not Germany. There is nothing to suggest that the Allies believed Japan and Germany were working on a nuclear program together.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
I seem to recall a big hole in the middle of Manhattan made by a group with no air force and no navy.
Right, and I can beat someone to death with a the keyboard I'm using right now. Clearly I'm a threat to US citizens, and therefore the US.
What a joke.
You keep saying that people arguing against you are reaching a conclusion based on knowledge developed after the end of the war, I have repeatedly shown why this is not the case. Either you are being willfully ignorant, or you cannot, by way of intellectual limitations, perceive this fact.
Emperors Faithful wrote:A lot of people back then were also homophobic racists. Should I go back and tell them they were wrong about that as well?
That'd also be helpful.
Meanwhile, there's still loads of bombs getting dropped on cities, because that's where the key targets are.
Sure, but there's a huge difference between striking at targets within a city, and simply targetting the city itself. The first one may view civilian casualties as a collateral, the other is hoping for civilian casualties in itself.
You can do so with Nukes or conventional bombs, BTW.
Thing is, if you fight a war by arbitrary rules like 'don't drop bombs on civilians' then you can end up dragging a war on, getting more of your soldiers and more of their soldiers killed, and likely loads of civilians as well. Playing games with rules like that can be immoral.
It could never be as simple as "don't drop bombs on civilians", especially with the technology available at the time, because then civilians themselves would be used as shields by one side or the other to protect sites from bombing attacks.
Getting to the point where you are specifically targetting sites becuase it's going to cause a massive amount of destruction to infrustructure and civilian life is much worse.
A surrender without invasion or vaporising two cities appears to have been entirely possible.
My reading indicates no such conclusion was likely.
If you mean an unconditional surrender wasn't going to happen then you'd be absolutely correct.
If by surrender you mean an agreement that lets Japanese officials save face then it's different.
I would be dubious about such a surrender though, given the Treaty of Versailles, though the eventual outcome that could in part be due to the Great Depression.
Meanwhile, every month there was god knows how many thousands dying in China. When war drags on in a place like that, where you have subsistance level farming during the good times, then the civilian death toll just gets uglier month by month, even when no-one is trying to kill civilians.So you might have been welcome to say Japan will surrender any day now, I'm going to go with doing what has to be done to end the war as quickly as possible.
I hardly think the situation in China was what prompted the US to drop the bomb. That wasn't the motivation behind it.
After pouring in an huge amount of resources into the nuclear program do you think the US government was going to let them sit by unused? Of course not, by dropping the A-bomb and annhilating two cities in moments the US established itself as the dominant military force in the world, by using it on an enemy that was already defeated.
micahaphone wrote:A total of 200,000 people, if I'm remembering correctly, were killed due to the use of atomic weapons in WW II. By the time that we used fat man and little boy, we had already killed 500,000 civilians (and plenty of property) in Tokyo through conventional and incendiary bombing methods. Our outlook suggested that this would be necessary for most large cities.
Additionally, if we had not dropped said bombs, we would have had to invade the Japanese mainland. we expected to lose at least 250,000 American lives (that's not counting Japanese casualties) in the initial invasion of Japan, with around 200,000 more (once again, only American) deaths throughout. It was most likely that Japanese citizens would fight back and aid the military, as was the culture at the time, meaning more civilian casualties as well.
So all in all, it was the lesser two evils that we chose when we dropped the fission bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Here's to hoping that we never have to use them ever again.
Also, Russia would have joined in the fight. Did we really want to have a Berlin- style situation in Tokyo?
Exactly. Thatsa why this hindsight crap argument is, well crap.
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LunaHound wrote:
Its a city. By definition its a civilian, filled with civilians. A city may contain targets of military interest, but in and of itself is not a "military" place.
In that case , i vote for Bad Idea.
Desperate or not , killing civilians is no better than terrorist doing 9-11
Then your thinking lacks logic. Hindsight in this case is blind.
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AvatarForm wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
Ketara wrote:@ Frazzled
Either that or your generation was taught by one who needed to justify their own actions and global stance to themselves?
Make no mistake, I have no real interest either way, bar an academic one. I'm not interested in penalising America, the Japanese committed atrocities just as bad. I wouldn't put either on the level of say, the Holocaust, just the natural order of war.
The thing remains though, that Japan was out of supplies, half levelled by extensive incendiary and napalm bombing, their navy was no longer an issue, and the Americans and allied forces were capable of moving at will about the place. Those are military facts, regardless of your viewpoint.
To my mind, that would classify it as 'unnecessary', in the sense that the war was as good as over, and the Japanese no longer had any meaningful way of striking back. You are of course, free to examine those military facts I have given there, and draw a separate conclusion.
However, to simply accuse someone with no stake either way, who is indeed an academic in the field of warfare of , 'PCbs whitewashing' is bold indeed. I would appreciate academic citation if I am wrong. If you can prove that Japan was still amply supplied with ammo, soldiers, warships, aircraft, and so on, and still possessed the means and wherewithal to use it, I will accept it and draw another conclusion. So in the interests of defending your stance, discrediting the one you feel is wrong, and spreading education, please do so.
Wow just wow.
I don't have to debate some loser revisionst scholar.
-When did Japanese troops leave China?
-When did Japanese troops leave Vietnam?
-When did Japanese troops leave Cambodia?
-When did Japanese troops leave Laos?
-When did Japanese troops leave Malaysia?
-When did Japanese troops leave Singapore?
-Were the Japanese working on a nuclear program?
-Were the Japanese working on their own jet fighters?
-Did the Japanese surrender Manchuria after the first A bomb? Did they ever surrender Manchuria?
-Did the Japanese surrender after the first A bomb? Did they surrender after the first A bomb and the invasion of Manchuria?
-how many millions of civilians died at the hands of the Japanese? How many were dying daily when they surrenderd?
In the words of the immortal bard: nuts.
Like many War-Histories, history is written by the victors.
Who says what you "learned" at school is the reality?
Would further atrocities committed by USMC and other Defence personnel change the US public's views of the present invasions? As they did in Vietnam and the US Govt decided to explain away by claiming it was only a single unit who committed them.
Any who take the time to investigate the other side of an opinion or "fact" would know that what you are taught to believe at school is only half-truths.
There were attrocities on both sides. War is never the correct choice or a method of vindication to decide who is in the "right".
Thats suich bs its like being on a ranch. Is this what passes for education now?
How many million did the Japanese kill? How many death marches, how many Nankings. This is just crazy talk.
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Emperors Faithful wrote:
micahaphone wrote:
Emperors Faithful wrote:
micahaphone wrote:From roughly the 1930s onto the end of world war 2, Japan had a very militaristic culture. Surrendering was one of the worst things to do. Killing civilians was horrible, but what's your alternative? What would have been better than dropping the bomb?
Not dropping the bomb?
How about a surrender that allowed Japan to save face? Somehow that strikes me as a little more moral than genocide.
And what exactly would the USA have been doing? Twiddling our thumbs while we waited for the Japanese people to say "whoah, our entire mindset these 14 years has been entirely wrong! It'd be best if we just surrendered right now."
An unconditional surrender isn't what I said, that's unpopular with pretty much any country you'd care to name. I said a surrender that would allow Japan to save face.
Thats what happened.
If we followed Japanese policy, on conquering the country we would have put the entire military and government to death or sent them to death camps inlcuidng the Emperor. All prisoners would have been killed or sent to death camps. Their production and crops exported to the US. Their women used for prostitutes. Entire cities would have been killed for kicks. WE would have ground their culture into dust.
Thats how the Japanese did it.
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Emperors Faithful wrote:
micahaphone wrote:2) If the territory thing was in there (I shall research this tomorrow- I must go to bed soon), we would not have accepted it. Until later, I shall chalk that up as an uncertain.
Accepted what? Japan was a defeated nation with no ability to bargain for territory they no longer held.
They still retained most of their possessions in Asia. Jeez read a book.
Frazzled wrote:
Thats what happened.
If we followed Japanese policy, on conquering the country we would have put the entire military and government to death or sent them to death camps inlcuidng the Emperor. All prisoners would have been killed or sent to death camps. Their production and crops exported to the US. Their women used for prostitutes. Entire cities would have been killed for kicks. WE would have ground their culture into dust.
Thats how the Japanese did it.
Allied Occupation of Japan:
-Government Officials sentenced to death? Tick. -Prisoners killed or put in camps? Cross. Allies stopped killing prisoners once war ended.
-Production and Crops exported? Not sure about that. I don't see what's wrong with it either.
-Women used as prostitues? Tick tick. -Entire Cities killed? Tick. Well that's what this thread is about isn't it? Japan never killed a city like the US did.
-Grounded culture into the dust? Dunno, maybe? Though, having been on the internet this would be a good thing. Hmm, and that Memoirs of a Geisha thing.
Emperors Faithful wrote:
micahaphone wrote:2) If the territory thing was in there (I shall research this tomorrow- I must go to bed soon), we would not have accepted it. Until later, I shall chalk that up as an uncertain.
Accepted what? Japan was a defeated nation with no ability to bargain for territory they no longer held.
They still retained most of their possessions in Asia. Jeez read a book.
We've already been over this. Having troops stationed at particular places doesn't mean much if you can't mobilise them. War is won on logistics..and massive guns. And planes. And stones. And gak.
Frazzled wrote:If we followed Japanese policy, on conquering the country we would have put the entire military and government to death or sent them to death camps inlcuidng the Emperor. All prisoners would have been killed or sent to death camps. Their production and crops exported to the US. Their women used for prostitutes. Entire cities would have been killed for kicks. WE would have ground their culture into dust.
Thats how the Japanese did it.
Talk about revisionist history.
Prisoners weren't killed or sent to death camps, they were forced to work until they starved to death or, if unable to work, killed or sent to death camps.
Also, their women weren't used for prostitutes. That is suggesting that the women were paid for their "services." The word you're looking for is "raped."
Frazzled wrote:
Thats what happened.
If we followed Japanese policy, on conquering the country we would have put the entire military and government to death or sent them to death camps inlcuidng the Emperor. All prisoners would have been killed or sent to death camps. Their production and crops exported to the US. Their women used for prostitutes. Entire cities would have been killed for kicks. WE would have ground their culture into dust.
Thats how the Japanese did it.
Allied Occupation of Japan:
-Government Officials sentenced to death? Tick. -Prisoners killed or put in camps? Cross. Allies stopped killing prisoners once war ended.
-Production and Crops exported? Not sure about that. I don't see what's wrong with it either.
-Women used as prostitues? Tick tick. -Entire Cities killed? Tick. Well that's what this thread is about isn't it? Japan never killed a city like the US did.
-Grounded culture into the dust? Dunno, maybe? Though, having been on the internet this would be a good thing. Hmm, and that Memoirs of a Geisha thing.
Emperors Faithful wrote:
micahaphone wrote:2) If the territory thing was in there (I shall research this tomorrow- I must go to bed soon), we would not have accepted it. Until later, I shall chalk that up as an uncertain.
Accepted what? Japan was a defeated nation with no ability to bargain for territory they no longer held.
They still retained most of their possessions in Asia. Jeez read a book.
We've already been over this. Having troops stationed at particular places doesn't mean much if you can't mobilise them. War is won on logistics..and massive guns. And planes. And stones. And gak.
Go to a library. Read what was done in Korea and China during the war. Then compare the American occupation.
Frazzled wrote:If we followed Japanese policy, on conquering the country we would have put the entire military and government to death or sent them to death camps inlcuidng the Emperor. All prisoners would have been killed or sent to death camps. Their production and crops exported to the US. Their women used for prostitutes. Entire cities would have been killed for kicks. WE would have ground their culture into dust.
Thats how the Japanese did it.
Talk about revisionist history.
Prisoners weren't killed or sent to death camps, they were forced to work until they starved to death or, if unable to work, killed or sent to death camps.
Also, their women weren't used for prostitutes. That is suggesting that the women were paid for their "services." The word you're looking for is "raped."
Gee Fraz, get your facts straight ( )
You are correct. my bad.
Here's some topics to read
Comfort women
Bataan Death March
Rape of Nanking
And for a codicil that Japanese weren't animals but human beings too
Letters from Iwo Jima
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Emperors Faithful wrote:Nice, so just ignore everything the Allies did so that you can have your "USA! USA! USA!" moment? That's cool.
But if you don't have the courtesy to properly address my posts stop posting here rather than continuing to insult me.
I'm not ignoring it. The fact you can't tell the differnce between the grades of crimes is telling.
Let's turn it down a notch or two please gentleman , count to 10, chew more gum etc etc and take a moment before responding. You're on the OT board of a wargaming website. You're not actually in the super important court case FOR THE FATE AND DESTINY OF THE VERY IMPORTANT THING.
Regardless of what natty little outfit you may be wearing.
..assuming that you are wearing clothes anyway, bit it's lunchtime so we'll leave that nightmare trail of thought to another day.
Emperors Faithful wrote:Nice, so just ignore everything the Allies did so that you can have your "USA! USA! USA!" moment? That's cool.
But if you don't have the courtesy to properly address my posts stop posting here rather than continuing to insult me.
I'm not ignoring it. The fact you can't tell the differnce between the grades of crimes is telling.
You are ignoring it. You haven't addressed any of the allegations made against Allied forces.
-Execution of Japanese Prisoners
-Mutilation of Japanese Prisoners and casualties
-Prostitution of Japanese Women in Occupied Japan (to prevent too many rape cases)
-Indiscriminate Vaporisation of Cities
I'm not saying that the Japanese Government were the good guys, but you seem to be idolising the Alllied forces here.
EDIT: Red has a point, I should be wearing clothes calm down.
Yes, they tasked schoolkids with building ballons, and they sent hundreds of thousands up over the gulf stream. For the total of one effective hit, killing a handful of people. Turns out the while a city is very big, the entirety the west coast of the US is much bigger, and the odds of a bomb landing successfully is so remote that it made the whole thing a very stupid idea indeed.
Actually, might not have been as stupid as you think. The American government considered it enough of a threat to morale to hush the whole thing up. Something about the whole 'being attacked on american soil' thing. They didn't think it would sit well with the masses. And they were probably right. It was never going to do substantial damage, by then again, neither were the V1&2's. That wasn't really their purpose.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:Everything else is a response to this ridiculous beleif that Japan was not a threat to the US because it lacked a Navy or effective Air Force.
Aaaaand.....I stopped taking you seriously there.
Automatically Appended Next Post: On a slightly different angle: There seems to be some confusion about the difference between the act of bombing being "right" and "necessary", which are obviously two distinct things.
AvatarForm wrote:
Like many War-Histories, history is written by the victors.
Who says what you "learned" at school is the reality?
Would further atrocities committed by USMC and other Defence personnel change the US public's views of the present invasions? As they did in Vietnam and the US Govt decided to explain away by claiming it was only a single unit who committed them.
Any who take the time to investigate the other side of an opinion or "fact" would know that what you are taught to believe at school is only half-truths.
There were attrocities on both sides. War is never the correct choice or a method of vindication to decide who is in the "right".
War is in and of itself, an atrocity. Therefore in order to distinguish the difference between the atrocity level that is a constant in standard war (aka, killing people), and things actually are atrocities, a general rule of thumb is to judge how inhumane/unnecessary we would consider it to be.
The nuclear detonations were unnecessary, in that there were other options available, but not to the extent whereby I would consider it an atrocity (because most of those other options also included lots of people dying one way or another). Ultimately, it was a judgement call, and one that is impossible to suddenly declare an atrocity. Why? Because it was no different from the napalm bombing. A bomb dropped on a civilian populace is a bomb dropped on a civilian populace. Unless the two styles of bombing are radically disproportionate (so, dropping an ICBM after one night of light bombing for example), there is really no distinction. The nukes were no worse than the napalm. Both killed lots of people over large areas, in many horrible ways. Just because one was the effect of a single bomb does not suddenly make it an atrocity.
As for bombing civilians in general being an atrocity, as it was modus operandi of modern warfare by that stage, I would judge it part of the nature of warfare of the time, and thus, not an atrocity. It is not cruel enough, deliberate enough, unnecessary enough, or inhumane enough when compared to the real atrocities of the time, such as the Holocaust, the German, and then Russian exterminations along the Eastern Front, or the Death marches the Japanese subjected PoW's too. Claiming 'everyone did atrocities, we only get taught half truths, rabble rabble' is no better than raving about UFO's. If you have the proof to show that the US or UK committed atrocities equal to the ones I just named, show it.
Lack of proof is not necessarily a sign something happened, but is more often a sign that something did not.
Ketara wrote: Claiming 'everyone did atrocities, we only get taught half truths, rabble rabble' is no better than raving about UFO's. If you have the proof to show that the US or UK committed atrocities equal to the ones I just named, show it.
Mutilation of Japanese prisoners and corpes is well documented.
So is the reluctance to accept Japanese prisoners at all (in part due to a difference in race, and in part becuase it was sometimes a trick).
When did Japan indiscriminately bomb whole cities of either the US or UK?
Emperors Faithful wrote:When did Japan indiscriminately bomb whole cities of either the US or UK?
The lack of ability to do a thing is not the same as the lack of desire to do a thing.
As noted they attempted balloon bombing.
A more appropriate context is China. They had no compunction about cities when they had the aircraft in range to do so.
Like many War-Histories, history is written by the victors.
Who says what you "learned" at school is the reality?
Would further atrocities committed by USMC and other Defence personnel change the US public's views of the present invasions? As they did in Vietnam and the US Govt decided to explain away by claiming it was only a single unit who committed them.
Any who take the time to investigate the other side of an opinion or "fact" would know that what you are taught to believe at school is only half-truths.
There were attrocities on both sides. War is never the correct choice or a method of vindication to decide who is in the "right".
War is in and of itself, an atrocity. Therefore in order to distinguish the difference between the atrocity level that is a constant in standard war (aka, killing people), and things actually are atrocities, a general rule of thumb is to judge how inhumane/unnecessary we would consider it to be.
The nuclear detonations were unnecessary, in that there were other options available, but not to the extent whereby I would consider it an atrocity (because most of those other options also included lots of people dying one way or another). Ultimately, it was a judgement call, and one that is impossible to suddenly declare an atrocity. Why? Because it was no different from the napalm bombing. A bomb dropped on a civilian populace is a bomb dropped on a civilian populace. Unless the two styles of bombing are radically disproportionate (so, dropping an ICBM after one night of light bombing for example), there is really no distinction. The nukes were no worse than the napalm. Both killed lots of people over large areas, in many horrible ways. Just because one was the effect of a single bomb does not suddenly make it an atrocity.
As for bombing civilians in general being an atrocity, as it was modus operandi of modern warfare by that stage, I would judge it part of the nature of warfare of the time, and thus, not an atrocity. It is not cruel enough, deliberate enough, unnecessary enough, or inhumane enough when compared to the real atrocities of the time, such as the Holocaust, the German, and then Russian exterminations along the Eastern Front, or the Death marches the Japanese subjected PoW's too. Claiming 'everyone did atrocities, we only get taught half truths, rabble rabble' is no better than raving about UFO's. If you have the proof to show that the US or UK committed atrocities equal to the ones I just named, show it.
Lack of proof is not necessarily a sign something happened, but is more often a sign that something did not.
What about US soldiers raping civilians?
US forces murdering News reporters to cover up facts?
It is well-documented and examples of the attrocities I was referring to.
Half-truths are what you seem to believe and have nothing comparable to UFO conspiracies.
Lack of proof? Apparently you are the product of the education systems which teach only one side of the story.
If you care for proof, go read a book not condoned by your own education system or, as would be easier for someone not interested in the whole truth, google may be the minimum effort you seem to require for education.
Anyone with a decent tertiary education is taught not to believe everything fed to them at face value. Ask questions, find the truth.
Finally, you seem to have not read Frazzled's post whcich I was specifically responding to.
Mutilation of Japanese prisoners and corpes is well documented.
Mutilation of corpses, well, I wouldn't call that an atrocity personally, since no-one gets hurt by it. It offends relatives slightly if they find out, but its hardly inflicting suffering on another human being. I think its disgusting, but such things has always been a feature of war, for as long as people have been killing each other.
Butchering of the living is something else altogether. I am intrigued. For it to happen on the scale where you could label it an 'American' atrocity, would indicate widespread and common chopping bits off of prisoners. Can you link evidence of this mass, and common practice?
If it was just the case of a few sets of individual groups of soldiers though, that would constitute a smaller individual atrocity, and again, such things have happened in war as long as its gone on. It would be difficult to ascribe the level of 'national atrocity' to them.
So is the reluctance to accept Japanese prisoners at all (in part due to a difference in race, and in part becuase it was sometimes a trick).
There are plenty of documented cases of surrender being used as a device to kill more americans. I believe such an approach is understandable, and not an atrocity in any way.
When did Japan indiscriminately bomb whole cities of either the US or UK?
When did they have the power to?
They did however, indiscriminately bomb that little ol' place called Pearl Harbour. And many other targets across the Far East, some of which were held by the British, many of which were packed with civilians. As said, bombing was standard and acceptable fare of warfare of the era. The nukes were no more or less of an atrocity than the standard act in itself.
Emperors Faithful wrote:-Execution of Japanese Prisoners
The people who committed and/or ordered and presided over Japan's atrocities were subject to trials, and executed for their actions.
-Mutilation of Japanese Prisoners and casualties
[citation needed]
-Prostitution of Japanese Women in Occupied Japan (to prevent too many rape cases)
The crime the Japanese committed wasn't "paid women to work as prostitutes" but "abducted woman for use as sex slaves by front line soldiers".
-Indiscriminate Vaporisation of Cities
War is a filthy business wherein people die. If a nation doesn't surrender when its armed forces lie in ruins and it's surrounded on all sides, the only acceptable course of action is to beat it into submission until it either comes around or has been annihilated. Had they offered their conditional surrender after the Battle of Midway, then it would probably have made sense to accept it, rather than fight a bloody ground war for strategic islands. When they have exactly nothing going for them and are still not willing to surrender on our terms, all things are acceptable in making them come around, and the nuclear bombs happened to shock them into that surrender, far easier than a much bloodier protracted ground war and conventional bombing campaign would have.
Look I Google'd for you, and you know what... the atrocities listed that were commited by "Allied" forces are buried wayyyyyyy down the list.
I wonder why?
It's not like Google is US-owned is it?
Though, Im guessing your next arguement would be that these are not "reputable sources".
That being said, define reputable? Apparently, reputable means agreeing with the present Administration and those in power. Much like the "reputable" sources who claim Carbon Taxes will resolve Global Warming...
Those who back the Government in power's opinions will receive more funding... hence, sometimes those reputable sources you rely so heavily upon are nothing but hot air.
How about you do some further reading, actually speak to those who were in the Wars (or presently serving) and make up your own minds.
It may take some effort, but in the end people will respect your opinions more than just regurgitating what was fed to you in schools and by the media.
What about US soldiers raping civilians?
*You said it. Prove it. Now compare it to the numbers that occurred from Japanese soldiers.
US forces murdering News reporters to cover up facts?
*You said it. Prove it. What WWII reporters were murdered to cover up facts. Evidently Ernie Pyle wasn't killed by Japanese fire but by the American Gestapo.
Now compare it to the numbers of civilians deaths that occurred from japanese soldiers.
R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."[35] According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 millions in the course of the war.[36] The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937-38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war, although the accepted figure[by whom?] is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.[37] In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre, resulted in the death of 100,000 civilians in the Philippines. It is estimated that at least one out of every 20 Filipinos died at the hand of the Japanese during the occupation.[38][39] In the Sook Ching massacre, Lee Kuan Yew, the ex-Prime Minister of Singapore, said during an interview on with National Geographic that there were between 50,000 and 90,000 casualties[40] while according to Major General Kawamura Saburo, there were 5000 casualties in total.[41] There were other massacres of civilians e.g. the Kalagong massacre.
Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."
Additionally, captured allied service personnel were massacred in various incidents, including:
Laha massacre
Banka Island massacre
Parit Sulong
Palawan massacre
SS Tjisalak massacre perpetrated by Japanese submarine I-8
Wake Island massacre - See Battle of Wake Island
Bataan Death March
Frazzled wrote:What about US soldiers raping civilians?
*You said it. Prove it. Now compare it to the numbers that occurred from Japanese soldiers.
US forces murdering News reporters to cover up facts?
*You said it. Prove it. What WWII reporters were murdered to cover up facts. Evidently Ernie Pyle wasn't killed by Japanese fire but by the American Gestapo.
Now compare it to the numbers of civilians deaths that occurred from japanese soldiers.
R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."[35] According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 millions in the course of the war.[36] The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937-38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war, although the accepted figure[by whom?] is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.[37] In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre, resulted in the death of 100,000 civilians in the Philippines. It is estimated that at least one out of every 20 Filipinos died at the hand of the Japanese during the occupation.[38][39] In the Sook Ching massacre, Lee Kuan Yew, the ex-Prime Minister of Singapore, said during an interview on with National Geographic that there were between 50,000 and 90,000 casualties[40] while according to Major General Kawamura Saburo, there were 5000 casualties in total.[41] There were other massacres of civilians e.g. the Kalagong massacre.
Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."
Additionally, captured allied service personnel were massacred in various incidents, including:
Laha massacre
Banka Island massacre
Parit Sulong
Palawan massacre
SS Tjisalak massacre perpetrated by Japanese submarine I-8
Wake Island massacre - See Battle of Wake Island
Bataan Death March
Refer to my post above. You will need to dig deeper than the front page of a Google search Frazz.
AvatarForm wrote:Look I Google'd for you, and you know what... the atrocities listed that were commited by "Allied" forces are buried wayyyyyyy down the list.
I wonder why?
It's not like Google is US-owned is it?
Though, Im guessing your next arguement would be that these are not "reputable sources".
That being said, define reputable? Apparently, reputable means agreeing with the present Administration and those in power. Much like the "reputable" sources who claim Carbon Taxes will resolve Global Warming...
Those who back the Government in power's opinions will receive more funding... hence, sometimes those reputable sources you rely so heavily upon are nothing but hot air.
How about you do some further reading, actually speak to those who were in the Wars (or presently serving) and make up your own minds.
It may take some effort, but in the end people will respect your opinions more than just regurgitating what was fed to you in schools and by the media.
Thats sweet but I see you didn't actually respond.
AvatarForm wrote:
What about US soldiers raping civilians?
Happens in war. Always has, probably always will. Disgusting, but difficult to ascribe as a 'national' level atrocity. It's an individual crime, unless it becomes institutionalised. I'm pretty sure it isn't part of the US forces handbook.
US forces murdering News reporters to cover up facts?
The Japanese had news reporters? Wut?
It is well-documented and examples of the attrocities I was referring to.
The atrocvities you referred to were some absurd rant about Vietnam. We're taking about WW2 here. Go start another thread for that.
Half-truths are what you seem to believe and have nothing comparable to UFO conspiracies.
I like evidence. Sorry. I know this impairs vast, broad statements and conclusions somewhat, but I can't help it. It's part of being someone about to graduate as a War Historian.
Lack of proof? Apparently you are the product of the education systems which teach only one side of the story.
.......Are you trying to accuse the UK educational establishment of teaching pro-US propaganda?
I actually find that hilarious.
If you care for proof, go read a book not condoned by your own education system or, as would be easier for someone not interested in the whole truth, google may be the minimum effort you seem to require for education.
.....Please cite me three decent academic works detailing the commitment of American war atrocities against Japan in WW2. Otherwise, I will simply ignore you from now on. You have now claimed there are certified sources of more 'accurate' information avilable, please quote them. I can no doubt order these wondrous works on loan from the British library, if not by simply walking into my university library right now.
Anyone with a decent tertiary education is taught not to believe everything fed to them at face value. Ask questions, find the truth.
This is correct. We are also taught not to treat stuff 'some guy said in the pub/internet' as gospel either.
Finally, you seem to have not read Frazzled's post whcich I was specifically responding to.
If you look back, you'll note I responded to that post before you did.
Oh jeez I'm conversing with Charlie Sheen. I didn't know else I would have had a lobotomy to make it a fair fight.
To the topic. I'll go back to Ketara as he's represented the counter argument a little more lucidly.
Ketara. You're Supreme OverDog Truman. Its August 2. Your forces are gathering for the invasion. Japan still has forces in Asia. You may or may not know that the USSR is about to go super Blitkkrieg on the Japanese in Manchuria. US forces are taking casualties daily and are bombing the Japanese islands daily.
What do you do to win the war as quickly as possible with as few ally civilian and military casualties as possible, and secondarily with as few Japanese civilian deaths as possible. You've seen some options here and there may be others we haven't noted. What do you do?
I cannot believe that anyone with access to the Internet or a tertiary education can deny that these events occurred.
To address Ketara's comment RE: Pro-USA education regarding the major Wars...
Most education in primary and secondary schools is very similar between the USA, AUS and UK. All education systems from the "Allies" nations will teach the same line. Its part of Nationalism and pretending that they were always the protagonists.
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Frazzled wrote:
God exists. You said it... prove it!
BOOM! Headshot!
Oh jeez I'm conversing with Charlie Sheen. I didn't know else I would have had a lobotomy to make it a fair fight.
To the topic. I'll go back to Ketara as he's represented the counter argument a little more lucidly.
Ketara. You're Supreme OverDog Truman. Its August 2. Your forces are gathering for the invasion. Japan still has forces in Asia. You may or may not know that the USSR is about to go super Blitkkrieg on the Japanese in Manchuria. US forces are taking casualties daily and are bombing the Japanese islands daily.
What do you do to win the war as quickly as possible with as few ally civilian and military casualties as possible, and secondarily with as few Japanese civilian deaths as possible. You've seen some options here and there may be others we haven't noted. What do you do?
Cute.
I see that you still have not responded.
Nor have you provided proof that "God" exists.
Yet I have provided links to pages for you to peruse at your own speed and you can choose to persue the facts in your own time and cost.
I am certain Amnesty International and other Humane Societies will provide you with further reading material.
Now, after you do some reading and you still wish to deny the atrocities committed by US soldiers, please provide documentation to DIS-prove these.
I cannot believe that anyone with access to the Internet or a tertiary education can deny that these events occurred.
To address Ketara's comment RE: Pro-USA education regarding the major Wars...
Most education in primary and secondary schools is very similar between the USA, AUS and UK. All education systems from the "Allies" nations will teach the same line. Its part of Nationalism and pretending that they were always the protagonists.
Ok, lets help you out. maybe your eyesight is bad like mine. We're talking about WWII. Further we're talking about the Pacific/Asia. Further we were at least tangentially talking about whether the nuke bombings were "a good idea."
World War II ended in 1945. The US had no material troops in Vietnam until about 1965. Now Japan had troops in Vietnam, but I don't think thats whet you're talking about. But its ok, you're only a generation off. Duh, winning!
I cannot believe that anyone with access to the Internet or a tertiary education can deny that these events occurred.
To address Ketara's comment RE: Pro-USA education regarding the major Wars...
Most education in primary and secondary schools is very similar between the USA, AUS and UK. All education systems from the "Allies" nations will teach the same line. Its part of Nationalism and pretending that they were always the protagonists.
Ok, lets help you out. maybe your eyesight is bad like mine. We're talking about WWII. Further we're talking about the Pacific/Asia. Further we were at least tangentially talking about whether the nuke bombings were "a good idea."
World War II ended in 1945. The US had no material troops in Vietnam until about 1965. Now Japan had troops in Vietnam, but I don't think thats whet you're talking about. But its ok, you're only a generation off. Duh, winning!
Yes, the thread began concerning WW2, however the context changed to encompass individuals denying that the USA has unclean hands. Which is what I was providing evidence of. Regardless of chronology, I have provided the evidence requested.
Most situations are an escalation or product of a previous War or conflict.
Ie. WW2 began soon after WW1 due to Militarism, Alliance, Industrialisation, Nationalism as a general rule.
Similarly, Vietnam is a result of many factors which flowed on from the USA/Japan conflict. Just because the USA and other allies did not literally have their own troops in a contested area, this does not mean they did not have proxies doing the dirty work.
Once the USA had troops in Vietnam, to combat the Viet Cong (Japanese proxies) the atrocities listed were committed. Isnt it funny how a conflict cna continue for an entire generation and the effects continue generations later. I am sure that a hardline denialist such as yourself can even see this from your isolation across the ocean.
Examples of these can be found in the 3 factions in Cambodia. China; the USA; and Germany all had proxies contesting the political power in Cambodia. More recently, in Afganistan and Iraq the USA had employed bands of mercenaries and guerillas in the form of local warlords and their private armies.
Now, please stop stalling and provide a response of substance or
Ketara wrote:
.....Please cite me three decent academic works detailing the commitment of American war atrocities against Japan in WW2. Otherwise, I will simply ignore you from now on. You have now claimed there are certified sources of more 'accurate' information avilable, please quote them. I can no doubt order these wondrous works on loan from the British library, if not by simply walking into my university library right now.
.....was what I said/asked.
Your first answer seems to consist of....*peruses*.....a news link about US war crimes. In Vietnam. Hmmm. That must be a mistake. I'm sure the chap just mixed things up.
Links two and three.....are about Vietnam. And Wikianswers to boot. Which is only about half as academically certified as wikipedia! *rolls eyes* But surely there must be something about Japan and WW2 in here in somewhere!
*checks*
Nope.
I'm sorry, who are you arguing with here? I think you have me confused with someone who is arguing there were no atrocities committed in the Vietnam war. Which would be silly, because there were. Everyone knows that, its no big secret.
Most education in primary and secondary schools is very similar between the USA, AUS and UK. All education systems from the "Allies" nations will teach the same line.
And no. They really, really don't. Let's just say my history lessons about the Cold War were....less than flattering of the US.
To the topic. I'll go back to Ketara as he's represented the counter argument a little more lucidly.
Ketara. You're Supreme OverDog Truman. Its August 2. Your forces are gathering for the invasion. Japan still has forces in Asia. You may or may not know that the USSR is about to go super Blitkkrieg on the Japanese in Manchuria. US forces are taking casualties daily and are bombing the Japanese islands daily.
What do you do to win the war as quickly as possible with as few ally civilian and military casualties as possible, and secondarily with as few Japanese civilian deaths as possible. You've seen some options here and there may be others we haven't noted. What do you do?
Sorry Fraz, but I'm not sure what part of your argument you think I'm countering. I've lost the plot slightly here. Could you point out what you and me are arguing about? I thought we agreed a few pages back that whilst it was technically 'unnecessary' due to having other options and Japanese weakness, it was a perfectly valid thing to do in a war, and no more an atrocity than napalm bombing?
Duh, losing. Everyone but you is talking about WWII. You seem to be just ranting about the US, and God or something. maybe you need to drink some more tiger blood.
Were the Japanese ready to roll up the white flag? Yes.
I'm not sure those two have been conclusively proven one way or another. In fact, I heavily doubt that 'racism' as we know it played a part at all in the decision to use the bomb.
Ketara wrote:
Sorry Fraz, but I'm not sure what part of your argument you think I'm countering. I've lost the plot slightly here. Could you point out what you and me are arguing about? I thought we agreed a few pages back that whilst it was technically 'unnecessary' due to having other options and Japanese weakness, it was a perfectly valid thing to do in a war, and no more an atrocity than napalm bombing?
Oh sorry. I think we're on the same page then. I thought you were arguing initially that it was a bad idea and I was looking to see what you would have done (and I was not trying for a "yea well what would you have done!" attack).
Its a difficult question. Now that I think about it more, it feels a lot like a "lets try this as a long shot to see if we can end the war before the coming great big bloodbath" Hail Mary pass than anything else.
In the various accusations of whom did what to whom and whether it was justified I have to ask where people stand on the way the Unit 731 was handled. If you don't know who Unit 731 were you can read about them here.
They were the japanese human experimentation and biological warfare unit, if you don't want to know the details don't read the above, it's grotesque. The thing is that the US granted many of these fiends immunity on the basis they would cooperate with handing over their research and some even went on to work in the US on biological weapons there. That has to be the hight of moral dubiousness, on one hand to make a public display of prosecuting people for war crimes such as the Nuremberg Trials, yet if you can profit from these people in some fashion though acquisition of research you can give them a free pass. I don't know what you's call it, it's almost some kind of after-the-fact complicity, they didn't have a hand in it but chose to benefit from this evil afterwards. Instances like that don't make you look a whole lot better than the bad guys, although broadly speaking it's obvious that the conduct of the japanese forces in WW2 were much worse than that of the allies. Although that said, again the Russians went berserk when they invaded Berlin, yet you don't whole a whole heap about the masses of rapes and gang rapes against women and young girls that went on.
I don't know where to stand on the use of the atomic bomb, it's all very well criticising now but it was nearly 70 years ago. And the attitudes then were different. I don't think it was a bad idea, I think it achieved what was needed. I don't think people appreciated the true nature of the weapon, in fact the use of the second bomb is more open to question as being necessary. My suspicion is that they made two bombs and they were going to use two bombs. The thing to remember is that terrible as they were, I think there's an over preoccupation with the deaths resulting from the use of the atomic bomb. US forces killed a lot more people by fire bombing Tokyo - fire bombing a city they knew was largely made of wood and canvas buildings, and they did it night after night burning a hell of a lot more people to a crisp than died under the atomic bombs. Yet time and again we focus on the morality of the atomic weapons. Or take the German city Dresden; the allies annihilated Dresden, again with fire bombing used to a disproportionate degree on a city mostly full of civilians to turn it into a firestorm.
Mutilation of Japanese prisoners and corpes is well documented.
Mutilation of corpses, well, I wouldn't call that an atrocity personally, since no-one gets hurt by it. It offends relatives slightly if they find out, but its hardly inflicting suffering on another human being. I think its disgusting, but such things has always been a feature of war, for as long as people have been killing each other.
Why do you think it was so popular to take trophies of dead Japs, but frowned upon if done to Germans? It wouldn't have anything to do with the Allies viewing the Japanese people as subhuman would it? Especially since this was the very reason Truman gave for dropping the bomb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_mutilation_of_Japanese_war_dead
Butchering of the living is something else altogether. I am intrigued. For it to happen on the scale where you could label it an 'American' atrocity, would indicate widespread and common chopping bits off of prisoners. Can you link evidence of this mass, and common practice?
I have conciously tried to use the word 'Allied' not 'American'. Australians were some of the worse offenders, with a popular game where grenades were attached to prisoners and the prisoner was told to 'run for it'. Generally Australian forces were the worst when it came to treatment of Japanese prisoners.
US troops were more well known for the taking of trophies though.
If it was just the case of a few sets of individual groups of soldiers though, that would constitute a smaller individual atrocity, and again, such things have happened in war as long as its gone on. It would be difficult to ascribe the level of 'national atrocity' to them.
Turning a blind eye to a crime isn't any better than condoning it. If it was then the Rape of Nanking could be attributed to the 'expected nastiness of war'. The Japanese High Command didn't actively encourage it, but they didn't do a damn thing to stop it either.
So is the reluctance to accept Japanese prisoners at all (in part due to a difference in race, and in part becuase it was sometimes a trick).
There are plenty of documented cases of surrender being used as a device to kill more americans. I believe such an approach is understandable, and not an atrocity in any way.
Japanese tended to have a similar survival rate than Western prisoners (according to Wiki). Also, it seems nearly a third of Western prisoners were killed by friendly fire. Didn't know that.
When did Japan indiscriminately bomb whole cities of either the US or UK?
When did they have the power to?
They did however, indiscriminately bomb that little ol' place called Pearl Harbour.
Really? I thought they attacked a viable military target. Those weren't floating schools were they?
And many other targets across the Far East, some of which were held by the British, many of which were packed with civilians. As said, bombing was standard and acceptable fare of warfare of the era. The nukes were no more or less of an atrocity than the standard act in itself.
As said, civilians themselves were not usually the targets.
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Ketara wrote:
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Was racism a major factor in using the bomb? Yes.
Were the Japanese ready to roll up the white flag? Yes.
I'm not sure those two have been conclusively proven one way or another. In fact, I heavily doubt that 'racism' as we know it played a part at all in the decision to use the bomb.
Certainly came up in their propoganda. And was definitely a reason behind the deplorable treatment of Japanese prisoners.
Emperor's Faithful: I'm not sure what you're point here is. that war is bad and we shouldn't do it? That killing civilians is bad and shouldn't be done?
Congratulations, you've made a nearly self evident point.
It ignores two things:
1) The axis, by and large, committed atrocities on a larger scale and due to top-down orders. Soldiers in the field committ atrocities, it happens (at least partially due to PTSD). Rather than judge the actions of mentally ill individuals, you should look at the attempts to restrain/encourage those behaviours in the organizations. I'm not going to say that American's that shot Japanese POWs were sanctions, but the Japanese institutionalized their atrocities.
2) Statecraft is not personal morality. It never has been. Very rarely does an invididual need to choose between the death of 10,000 and 100,000. States do.
I'm not comfortable with any moral code that makes it impossible to actually be moral.
I don't think anybody really benefitted from the actions of unit 731 directly. The scientists were repurposed, although they should have hanged instead.
I'm not sure what you're trying to do here EF. Are you justifying what the Japanese did, or are you just angry with America?
Polonius wrote:Emperor's Faithful: I'm not sure what you're point here is. that war is bad and we shouldn't do it? That killing civilians is bad and shouldn't be done?
Congratulations, you've made a nearly self evident point.
I'd like to thank my peers, my family, and also the academy...
But seriously, is it really that hard to admit that targetting civilians in a war is bad?
It ignores two things:
1) The axis, by and large, committed atrocities on a larger scale and due to top-down orders. Soldiers in the field committ atrocities, it happens (at least partially due to PTSD). Rather than judge the actions of mentally ill individuals, you should look at the attempts to restrain/encourage those behaviours in the organizations. I'm not going to say that American's that shot Japanese POWs were sanctions, but the Japanese institutionalized their atrocities.
The disturbing parallels between Allied and Axis prison camps aside...The US did blow up a freaking city.
And the Tokyo trials found that the Rape of Nanking was a result of failure to maintain discipline rather than any governmental policy. Does that make it okay?
2) Statecraft is not personal morality. It never has been. Very rarely does an invididual need to choose between the death of 10,000 and 100,000. States do.
I'm not comfortable with any moral code that makes it impossible to actually be moral.
I'm not comfortable with any moral code that justifies genocide.
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Medium of Death wrote:I'm not sure what you're trying to do here EF. Are you justifying what the Japanese did, or are you just angry with America?
Justify what Japan did? No.
Saying the allies (well, the US, since they dropped the bomb) did a pretty gakky thing by killing a ton of innocent people? Yeah.
I don't think I've ever said that the death of civlians was good. Killing anybody is bad, in absolute terms. I would, howver, be really leery about accusations of genocide, when the net results of the war was a democratic and independent nation.
Much of policy in the Pacific was based on notions of race. I mean, this was a time in which most of Europe didn't care about the Nuremburg laws and the US forces were segregated. Racial issues were different then, and not just because people were worse then.
What makes the A-Bomb attacks worse than actions commited by other countries isn't a question of morals, but one of capacity. we were the only ones that could nuke cities, so we did. We also firebombed cities, saturation bombed cities, etc.
A moral discussion of what is absolutely right and wrong more or less ends with Kant. The man did a good job of wrapping it up, and I read enough to realize that it's well written, and more or less utterly impractical for actual humans.
With morals in general, and certainly with the moral approach to statecraft, a question of "what is best" is more useful than "what is good."
There is no good. there isn't. there is only less bad.
Polonius wrote:I don't think I've ever said that the death of civlians was good. Killing anybody is bad, in absolute terms. I would, howver, be really leery about accusations of genocide, when the net results of the war was a democratic and independent nation.
What if the Holocaust had ended the war? Would that justify it? It's a stretch, but (unfortunately) not much of one.
Much of policy in the Pacific was based on notions of race. I mean, this was a time in which most of Europe didn't care about the Nuremburg laws and the US forces were segregated. Racial issues were different then, and not just because people were worse then.
Well, that does sort of support the whole "White Man's Bomb" thing.
What makes the A-Bomb attacks worse than actions commited by other countries isn't a question of morals, but one of capacity. we were the only ones that could nuke cities, so we did. We also firebombed cities, saturation bombed cities, etc.
The arguement of "they would have if they could have" doesn't by any means justify the person who actually did commit the act.
There is no good. there isn't. there is only less bad.
Is it really naive of me to think morals should be considered when making decisions that affect the state? I am just a young un'...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Don't take me too seriously now, I'm way too tired to be coherent.
Nuking Japan was the way to go but its gakky nonetheless. There's also no way in hell that the allied forces would rather invade Japan either which would've been a more deadly and desperate conflict, think of Iwo Jima only much worse.
It took not one but two a-bombs and the Russians to invade the Japanese Empire's northern territories before they would come close to surrendering. And their Empire was already beyond crumbling by that point. Thats just how crazy their leadership was. The amount of crimes against humanity that their Empire did rivals that of the Nazis as well but since China's not exactly beloved by the West you don't really hear that too often.
I think the mistake you're making is that you attribute all arguments that "X is better than Y, so we'll do X even though it's bad" as being able to justify any action X.
By the time of the A-bombings, the projected death toll for continued war was very high, higher than the loss of the life in the two cities. Also, in a total war, the moral line between killing civilians working to support a war machine, and soldiers conscripted and fighting in a war machine, becomes blurry.
I'd agree with some of the arguments that the bombs were intended for Japan, if for no other reason than the war in Europe was decided by 43. The soviets, one way or another, were going to take out the Nazis. It wasn't garuanteed, but once the eastern front opened, the possibility of fighting the full might of Germany vanished.
There was plenty of propoganda protraying the Japanese as sub-human monsters. That said, the list of war-crimes commited does support some of the anger against Japanese soldiers that was not unleashed against germans. Is it moral to torture a person because somebody of his ethnicity tortured somebody of your ethnicicy? No, but it's more understandable. particularly, as I've noted, you have individuals in the midst of mental trauma.
It's not naive to think that morals should be considered, but it's also naive to think that the decision to drop the bombs was made with no regard to civilian life.
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Cane wrote:Nuking Japan was the way to go but its gakky nonetheless. There's also no way in hell that the allied forces would rather invade Japan either which would've been a more deadly and desperate conflict, think of Iwo Jima only much worse.
It took not one but two a-bombs and the Russians to invade the Japanese Empire's northern territories before they would come close to surrendering. And their Empire was already beyond crumbling by that point. Thats just how crazy their leadership was. The amount of crimes against humanity that their Empire did rivals that of the Nazis as well but since China's not exactly beloved by the West you don't really hear that too often.
The argument that's been raised, and is worthy of some discussion, isn't "how do you get to Japan to surrender" but rather "why did we need Japan to surrender at all?"
Meaning, why not, after liberating the phillipines, simply offer a cease fire. They keep their Islands, give back their conquered territory, and we end the war like gentlemen.
It's an interesting question, and I'd love to see if there is any writings on the possiblity of Japan simply pulling back to the Home Islands and ending the war. Based on what I've read, it seems unlikely, but who knows.
Cane wrote:Nuking Japan was the way to go but its gakky nonetheless. There's also no way in hell that the allied forces would rather invade Japan either which would've been a more deadly and desperate conflict, think of Iwo Jima only much worse.
It took two a-bombs and the Russians to invade the Japanese Empire's northern territories before they would come close to surrendering. And their Empire was already beyond crumbling by that point. Thats just how crazy their leadership was. The amount of crimes against humanity that their Empire did rivals that of the Nazis as well but since China's not exactly beloved by the West you don't really hear that too often.
Indeed, its a perverse testament to Allied appreciation of Japan. I mean we invaded Italy with two girl scout troops and a beat up Ford pickup with a spitwad gun on it...
We live in what would have been considered back then by some, a perfect world. Globalization and the decline of racism means that Englishmen and Germans are friends, and its NOT absurd for a black man to sit at the bar in a restaurant, its perfectly normal. Likewise, today I would not blame a Japanese man for World War II (or any part wherein) any more than I would blame myself for the killing of Aboriginals. Today is a time of knowledge and understanding.
But back then it wasnt. Especially in wartime, countries hated each other. There was racism, it did exist, it was real.
- Is it right to kill innocents? No.
- Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified and just? Yes. The war had to be stopped.
- Is it justified today, in this modern age? No. Dropping nuclear bombs today should be considered as the intent to destroy a specific race of human beings, to utter extinction.
It was war. Luckily these days there are rules to war, but war is the utter hate to the point of wanting to kill each other with knives. And Nukes. There is no pity, no remorse, there is only humanity, and what humanity deems is right, and what it sees fit to do. You cannot blame America for dropping those nukes. Japan, as other users have said, institutionalized atrocities. Getting shot was getting off good with the Japanese. America didnt know just what the nukes would do, and the war had to end. I have seen some people comment on how Japan was out of ammo, out of food, out of men, but for every man standing with a sharp blade and a beating heart, the Americans would have to kill. Japan was NOT surrendering. And how many did japan lose to the bombings in the end? I won't even bother googling the figures, but I bet it wasn't as many men as how many were killed at the D-day landings, or how many would have been killed if the war continued for another 5 years, until the entire population of Japan was ground into dust.
And I know it isnt as many as the losses humanity would have suffered if we didnt test those nukes in a Wartime situation when we did. Imagine if the cold war had gone hot. I doubt any of us would be here today. I would be surprised if there was still life on earth.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki stopped the war. Civilians were killed, but such is the cost of war, casualties are a must. I am thankful, not greatful or happy, but thankful it happened when it did. I do not advocate it, but it had to be done, and I show no disrespect to Truman because of it.
It's also worth noting that the Japanese were open to an alliance with the Soviets.
If there had been a called peace between the Allies and Japan, once the Cold War started (roughly six minutes later), the possiblity of Japan and the Soviets dividing up east asia becomes plausible. This is conjecture, but Japan was only helpless at that moment. They weren't saying "I shall fight no more forever."
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:Leaving aside the issue of atrocities in China (which frazz is correct in pointing out) the real issues are these:
Was racism a major factor in using the bomb? Yes.
Was Japan finished as a military force? Yes
Were the Japanese ready to roll up the white flag? Yes.
Was the bomb used to lay down a marker to Joe Commie? Yes.
The evidence to support this is overwhelming. That's the moral issue here that those cities need not have been bombed.
Then they should have rolled up the white flag a few days sooner.
Couldn't have put it better myself. The counter argument is, why didnt they surrender after the first bomb dropped? Was the letter still in the mail to president Truman?
The Soviets at least knew about the manhatten project in detail. The Japanese knew enough about budiling a bomb to know it was difficult, and even if possible, would probably only result in a single device.
They waited, at least partially, becuase they didn't know that Hiroshima was already the second bomb.
Why were the bombs dropped?
1. Iwo Jima and Okinawa were so costly in human lives (somethingl like 26,000 casualties on Iwo Jima alone with 6000 of those KiAs) that the US high command decided that an invasion of the Japanese main island would be asking too much of an already over stretched military.
2. After the first bomb, the Japanese military Supreme Coucil (The Big Six) declared that every man, woman and child in Japan would die to the last. When the Russians declared war on August 9 and invaded Manchukuo and the second bomb was dropped, only then did Hirohito step in and force the Big Six to accept any terms offered.
3. Even though they decided to surrender, there was an attempted coup, the Kyujo Incident, that if successful would have derailed peace and continued the war. One of the rebel leaders, Hatakana, left a death poem when he committed suicide, it read "I have nothing to regret now that the dark clouds have disappeared from the reign of the Emperor." It was a different culture, one that had a different view of life and death than Western ideals. Believe me, and all the scholars that have written on the subject (Edwin Hoyt and John Toland to name two), without something this extreme, the war would have continued.
Just think. It took two atomic bombs and a Russian invasion to get Japan to even think about peace and even then it was nearly derailed. No bombs would have only ended in forcing the allies to invade the Japanese main islands and resulted in exponentially greater death.
It was a different world back then, peopled by individuals of such mental strength that we are all pale shadows in comparison. I know it's hard for us, living in a comparatively pampered age, to believe but it really was necessary and actually saved more lives than it cost. That doesn't help the victims but it doesn't change the truth.
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Polonius wrote:It's also worth noting that the Japanese were open to an alliance with the Soviets.
If there had been a called peace between the Allies and Japan, once the Cold War started (roughly six minutes later), the possiblity of Japan and the Soviets dividing up east asia becomes plausible. This is conjecture, but Japan was only helpless at that moment. They weren't saying "I shall fight no more forever."
The Russians were just stalling the Japanese and were already maneuvering to invade Japanese controlled territory in coordination with American forces.
Polonius wrote:The Soviets were ready to invade Japan, but once the Japanese/US war ends, so does the Soviet/US alliance.
Not really. There was actually a great deal of good-will between the US and Russia at the time; in fact it's likely the UN wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for the post-war bliss. It actually took a couple of years for the shine to wear off the new relationship. That's not to say that there wasn't a bit of stress, especially when it came to dividing up spheres of influence in Asia but at the time I don't believe there was any duplicity in the alliance, at least none that I've read about or learned of when I took those WW2 classes in university (damn history degree).
It went south in a hurry though. The Iron Curtain speech was 1946 or 7, the Berlin airlift was 1948.
The US gave into a lot of Soviet demands during the war because Roosevelt wanted to see the US pass the UK as the leader of the western world. It also seems likely that Stalin and FDR personally liked each other.
Polonius wrote:It went south in a hurry though. The Iron Curtain speech was 1946 or 7, the Berlin airlift was 1948.
The US gave into a lot of Soviet demands during the war because Roosevelt wanted to see the US pass the UK as the leader of the western world. It also seems likely that Stalin and FDR personally liked each other.
Oh yeah, things did go sour pretty quickly, especially when FDR died in 1945 which might indicate that the two had good relations. It was probably more a relationship based upon necessity on both sides.
Here's a good read on the subject:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_6/stefan.html
ArbeitsSchu wrote:@ Various people including Sebster: And when the American military leadership of 1945 developed its time machine and flew to the future of NOW and googled Japan's war effort then they would have known that Japan didn't actually receive anything particularly useful from Germany, that most German research was advanced but not immediately useful, and a host of other exciting things......
Far too many people in this thread are thinking in terms of what we know now, and not what was known in 1944/45, which makes most of the counter arguments completely void. What they actually HAD is not only irrelevant but unknown to planners at the time. What they MIGHT have had however, is very very important.
Taking action on a "maybe" can be understood. IF there was anything to suggest that it was a maybe. They DIDN'T have a nuclear program and the Allies DIDN'T suspect anything otherwise.
Because the only thing that would be worrying if shared is a nuclear program? No other research took place at all that might have bearing on the military effectiveness of the Japanese military. K.
And I already stated my reasons for why the attack was necessary. Everything else is a response to this ridiculous beleif that Japan was not a threat to the US because it lacked a Navy or effective Air Force. I seem to recall a big hole in the middle of Manhattan made by a group with no air force and no navy.
Under the circumstances would being in control of a plane that size count as having some sort of make-shift air force?
Regardless, trying to compare 9/11 to WWII is a bit off, donchathink?
Its a very simple example of how someone with no military to speak of can still be a threat to the continental USA. In other words, you don't NEED an organised military to attack the USA, thus not having one does not render you impotent.
And if nothing else, if Japan was not a threat as much as people in this thread seem to believe was the case, then why didn't the whole Pacific Fleet just pack up and sale home? Why carry on prosecuting a war against a nation that is "no threat"?
Because of US popular opinion. And popular opinion is hardly something you want to base your moral compass on.
Addendum: For those who seem to think that I'm stating opinion and not fact, here's a google for you. 30AU and T-Force. Then go and read up about what the Germans did or did not have, and the rest of it.
This is about Japan, not Germany. There is nothing to suggest that the Allies believed Japan and Germany were working on a nuclear program together.
Still stuck on the nuclear program? Because its the only thing they ever researched that might be bad for American health? Righty-ho. I trust you understand the difference between a single example of a possibility, and an exhaustive list of possibilities? Nuclear? Biological? Chemical? Technological?
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dogma wrote:
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
I seem to recall a big hole in the middle of Manhattan made by a group with no air force and no navy.
Right, and I can beat someone to death with a the keyboard I'm using right now. Clearly I'm a threat to US citizens, and therefore the US.
What a joke.
You keep saying that people arguing against you are reaching a conclusion based on knowledge developed after the end of the war, I have repeatedly shown why this is not the case. Either you are being willfully ignorant, or you cannot, by way of intellectual limitations, perceive this fact.
Clearly you didn't understand the comparison. Which is doubly ironic from someone who spends more time trying to think of ways of calling me stupid than he does of understanding the problem. A flame with long words is still a flame, and not an actual response.
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Ketara wrote:
sebster wrote:
Yes, they tasked schoolkids with building ballons, and they sent hundreds of thousands up over the gulf stream. For the total of one effective hit, killing a handful of people. Turns out the while a city is very big, the entirety the west coast of the US is much bigger, and the odds of a bomb landing successfully is so remote that it made the whole thing a very stupid idea indeed.
Actually, might not have been as stupid as you think. The American government considered it enough of a threat to morale to hush the whole thing up. Something about the whole 'being attacked on american soil' thing. They didn't think it would sit well with the masses. And they were probably right. It was never going to do substantial damage, by then again, neither were the V1&2's. That wasn't really their purpose.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:Everything else is a response to this ridiculous beleif that Japan was not a threat to the US because it lacked a Navy or effective Air Force.
Aaaaand.....I stopped taking you seriously there.
Wait.. so you demonstrate how Japan could threaten the continental USA in one breath, then decide I'm not to be taken seriously for saying that in the next breath? Nice double-think there. Explosives and incendiaries are not the only payload that can be suspended from a balloon, as should be patently obvious.
Automatically Appended Next Post: On a slightly different angle: There seems to be some confusion about the difference between the act of bombing being "right" and "necessary", which are obviously two distinct things.
AvatarForm wrote:
Like many War-Histories, history is written by the victors.
Who says what you "learned" at school is the reality?
Would further atrocities committed by USMC and other Defence personnel change the US public's views of the present invasions? As they did in Vietnam and the US Govt decided to explain away by claiming it was only a single unit who committed them.
Any who take the time to investigate the other side of an opinion or "fact" would know that what you are taught to believe at school is only half-truths.
There were attrocities on both sides. War is never the correct choice or a method of vindication to decide who is in the "right".
War is in and of itself, an atrocity. Therefore in order to distinguish the difference between the atrocity level that is a constant in standard war (aka, killing people), and things actually are atrocities, a general rule of thumb is to judge how inhumane/unnecessary we would consider it to be.
The nuclear detonations were unnecessary, in that there were other options available, but not to the extent whereby I would consider it an atrocity (because most of those other options also included lots of people dying one way or another). Ultimately, it was a judgement call, and one that is impossible to suddenly declare an atrocity. Why? Because it was no different from the napalm bombing. A bomb dropped on a civilian populace is a bomb dropped on a civilian populace. Unless the two styles of bombing are radically disproportionate (so, dropping an ICBM after one night of light bombing for example), there is really no distinction. The nukes were no worse than the napalm. Both killed lots of people over large areas, in many horrible ways. Just because one was the effect of a single bomb does not suddenly make it an atrocity.
As for bombing civilians in general being an atrocity, as it was modus operandi of modern warfare by that stage, I would judge it part of the nature of warfare of the time, and thus, not an atrocity. It is not cruel enough, deliberate enough, unnecessary enough, or inhumane enough when compared to the real atrocities of the time, such as the Holocaust, the German, and then Russian exterminations along the Eastern Front, or the Death marches the Japanese subjected PoW's too. Claiming 'everyone did atrocities, we only get taught half truths, rabble rabble' is no better than raving about UFO's. If you have the proof to show that the US or UK committed atrocities equal to the ones I just named, show it.
Lack of proof is not necessarily a sign something happened, but is more often a sign that something did not.
Rather depends on your end goals as to whether or not detonating the atom bomb is "necessary". From the point of view of a military that may soon end up engaged in warfare with the Russians, it could be deemed very necessary to demonstrate just exactly how powerful a weapon it is.
Emperors Faithful wrote:I'm not comfortable with any moral code that justifies genocide.
Genocide doesn't mean "kills a lot of people". It refers solely to a concentrated effort to eradicate an ethnic group, and does not necessarily involve actively killing anyone. Attempting to replace a culture, for example, is technically "genocide", in that it is destroying the defining fabric of an ethnic category. Similarly, bombing the cities of an opposing nation, especially an aggressor, is not genocide, but an attempt to undermine their ability to wage war, and to serve as an example to others.
Further, accepting anything but an unconditional surrender at that point would have been extremely unethical. You have a violent aggressor nation that has maintained an institutional policy of flaunting the rules of war, that has fought fanatically every step of the way and been soundly beaten at every turn, their back's against the wall, and they want to get off with a nervous "ha ha, my bad"? Anything other than unconditional surrender would have been unacceptable, and the only options available involved pummeling them until they accepted it. The two nukes were the easiest, cheapest, most humane, and most politically advantageous option available. They demonstrated the potential to completely and utterly annihilate the entire country, and so terrified the leadership into surrendering on our terms. Nothing else could have accomplished that, because nothing else presented so existential and alien a threat.
You are aware that the Japanese propaganda spread around rumors saying that Americans would rape, murder, kill, torture, and all sorts of other mean things to civilians they captured right?
This led to Japanese civilians on some of the smaller islands comitting suicide by jumping off of cliffs and throwing their children off as well. Now imagine that except on the main island of Japan, yeah that's a lot of people jumping off of cliffs because of rumors the Japanese government spread.
Japan also trained its civilians to fight in basic terms, they even trained women to fire weapons just in case the Americans invaded. If we invaded we would still kill civilians, its just that it wouldn't be all at once.
We could've fire bombed the city which you know, sucked all of the oxygen away from surrounding areas. Sure you could die in the fire, die due to lack of oxygen, die due to smoke inhalation, not to mention the fact that fire spreads even after the initial explsion. This would've killed more civilians than both nukes combined. Again, it just wouldn't do it all at once.
So we looked at all of our options and realized that fire bombing and invasion wouldn't be enough to stop the Japanese. A nuclear weapon was new so we thought they would be too scared to try to fight back if we had weapons that could kill 10,000 in one explosion instead of multiple bombs.
Unfortunately the first one didn't, the second one convinced them that this wasn't a one time deal and that we could keep doing it. This is what made them surrender.
Polonius wrote:It went south in a hurry though. The Iron Curtain speech was 1946 or 7, the Berlin airlift was 1948.
The US gave into a lot of Soviet demands during the war because Roosevelt wanted to see the US pass the UK as the leader of the western world. It also seems likely that Stalin and FDR personally liked each other.
That's because FDR and Stalin were very similar, at least, FDR's personal views and Stalin's public views. Both were very socialist and progressive, which was very popular at the time.
I think Truman's change of direction with the USSR was mostly due to Stalin's refusal to leave occupied Eastern Europe.
I have already asked you to read the article on page 3. There was a fair amount of support for the idea of a conditional surrender, especially if the terms were favourable in regards to the status of the Emperor. Your arguement that they showed no inclination towards a favourable surrender is patently false.
Hmmm, I didn't know the conquered leaders of mass murdering thugs got to dictate the terms of their surrender? What a great policy! I must have missed that in history class! I'll remember that next time the police surround my house when I'm accused of mass murder. "I'll surrender, but only if you let me go and keep leading my cult anyway I want!"
Should have made that offer to Hitler in 44!
Was racism a major factor in using the bomb? Yes. So what? The Japanese were racists. The whole world was racist at the time!
Was Japan finished as a military force? Yes OK alls forgivin, tee hee! Thanks for the party!
Were the Japanese ready to roll up the white flag? Yes. Their will was not broken until they agree to our terms. If their fear is that we will treat them as harshly as they treated others, well then they deserve it.
Was the bomb used to lay down a marker to Joe Commie? Yes. So what, it this a problem? Two birds with one stone. We get to end the war and scare the gak out of the world, thus creating a time of relative peace the likes the world has never seen.
The evidence to support this is overwhelming. That's the moral issue here that those cities need not have been bombed. Maybe, but the world is still much better of for it having been done.
As far as war crimes perpetrated by the US during world war II, these were rogue elements and were not institutionally accepted or sanctioned. The Japanese were monsters! They got off easy in comparison to how they would have treated any conquered people. The Japanese would never have thought twice about dropping nucs if they had the ability.
The US owned the morale high ground. Not because we were the pinnacle, but because we were closer to the summit!
I have already asked you to read the article on page 3. There was a fair amount of support for the idea of a conditional surrender, especially if the terms were favourable in regards to the status of the Emperor. Your arguement that they showed no inclination towards a favourable surrender is patently false.
Hmmm, I didn't know the conquered leaders of mass murdering thugs got to dictate the terms of their surrender? What a great policy! I must have missed that in history class! I'll remember that next time the police surround my house when I'm accused of mass murder. "I'll surrender, but only if you let me go and keep leading my cult anyway I want!"
Should have made that offer to Hitler in 44!
Actually, the Japanese were negotiating with the Russians to serve as middle-men for a favorable, conditional surrender. Little did they know that the Russians were planning to invade one of their puppet-states.
agnosto wrote:Actually, the Japanese were negotiating with the Russians to serve as middle-men for a favorable, conditional surrender. Little did they know that the Russians were planning to invade one of their puppet-states.
Huh? How did that work? Japan and Russia were in a state of war.
Communications between Axis and Allied forces generally went through Swiss emissaries.
Russia and Japan had a non-aggression pact. While russia explicitly announced that they wouldn't renew it when it expire (~1946), they didn't go to war with Japan until after Hiroshima.
It's also not like the Japanese couldn't have made an offer of surrender on their own terms.
They certainly could have tried I suppose if their code of ethics would have allowed it. I love how people think it was the Allies jobs to cater to everyone sensibilities and cultures!
The allied armies were not the embodiment of Jesus Christ. If so they could have walked to Japan, no need for LCACs.
Polonius wrote:Russia and Japan had a non-aggression pact. While russia explicitly announced that they wouldn't renew it when it expire (~1946), they didn't go to war with Japan until after Hiroshima.
In April 1945 the Soviets denounced the nonaggression pact. Whether this restarted the war ended in '41 may be debated, but non-aggression was gone before Potsdam.
It's also not like the Japanese couldn't have made an offer of surrender on their own terms.
They certainly could have tried I suppose if their code of ethics would have allowed it. I love how people think it was the Allies jobs to cater to everyone sensibilities and cultures!
The allied armies were not the embodiment of Jesus Christ. If so they could have walked to Japan, no need for LCACs.
it should also be put in as a further reminder, it was the Allies who had the war forced upon them, not the Japanese. The Japanese invaded country after country. The allies were the ones being invaded.
"At the Yalta Conference (February 1945), amongst other things, Stalin secured from Roosevelt the promise of Stalin's Far Eastern territorial desires, in return agreeing to enter the Pacific war within two or three months of the defeat of Germany. By the middle of March 1945, things were not going well in the Pacific for the Japanese, and they withdrew their elite troops from Manchuria to support actions in the Pacific. Meanwhile the Soviets continued their Far Eastern buildup. The Soviets had decided that they did not wish to renew the Neutrality Pact. The terms of the Neutrality Pact required that 12 months before its expiry, the Soviets must advise the Japanese of this, so on 5 April 1945 they informed the Japanese that they did not wish to renew the treaty.[9] This caused the Japanese considerable concern,[10][11] but the Soviets went to great efforts to assure the Japanese that the treaty would still be in force for another twelve months, and that the Japanese had nothing to worry about.[12]"
Also:
"On 9 May 1945 (Moscow time), Germany surrendered, meaning that if the Soviets were to honour the Yalta agreement, they would need to enter war with Japan by 9 August 1945. "
And
"The Japanese were caught completely by surprise when the Soviets declared war an hour before midnight on 8 August 1945, and invaded simultaneously on three fronts just after midnight on 9 August"
Polonius wrote:Russia and Japan had a non-aggression pact. While russia explicitly announced that they wouldn't renew it when it expire (~1946), they didn't go to war with Japan until after Hiroshima.
In April 1945 the Soviets denounced the nonaggression pact. Whether this restarted the war ended in '41 may be debated, but non-aggression was gone before Potsdam.
My sources say they renounced it in August 1945 which coincides with their invasion of Japanese controlled land.
Russia denounced its non-aggression pact with Japan in August of 1945 and launched a swift and crushing offensive into Manchuria. At the same time, Russian troops seized the Kuriles and Karafuto and entered northern Korea. All but northern Korea remain under Russian control today.
it should also be put in as a further reminder, it was the Allies who had the war forced upon them, not the Japanese. The Japanese invaded country after country. The allies were the ones being invaded.
I understand, but being the second to the party doesn't mean you get to wave your ass around. Not that I think that's what the allies did, it's just not an excuse is all. The allies fought a pretty terrible war and were by far the most humane, especially when compared to the regular atrocities inflicted by the axis powers.
it should also be put in as a further reminder, it was the Allies who had the war forced upon them, not the Japanese. The Japanese invaded country after country. The allies were the ones being invaded.
I understand, but being the second to the party doesn't mean you get to wave your ass around. Not that I think that's what the allies did, it's just not an excuse is all. The allies fought a pretty terrible war and were by far the most humane, especially when compared to the regular atrocities inflicted by the axis powers.
Yea it kinda does. Its not a party, they were invaded. IN historical times thats kill the entire enemy population and salt the earth kind of thing.
After coming back after 13 hours, I'm enjoying where this thead has gone. Frazzled and Ketara have both been making good points. Emp.'s faithful needs to come back, he's a good debater. And I'm sorry avatarform, but your logic, claims, and evidence are all sketchy, silly, and/or off-topic.
Kasrkai wrote:Hiroshima did have factories, but that doesn't justify it as a military target.
These factories were developing war materials, like the engines for Japan's planes. Hence, a military target.
Frazzled wrote:
Yea it kinda does. Its not a party, they were invaded. IN historical times thats kill the entire enemy population and salt the earth kind of thing.
I take it you haven't actually studied history, then.
Either way, comparing "historical times" to WWII is a red herring.
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ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Clearly you didn't understand the comparison. Which is doubly ironic from someone who spends more time trying to think of ways of calling me stupid than he does of understanding the problem. A flame with long words is still a flame, and not an actual response.
I understood the comparison perfectly, I merely believe that it was an awful one for the same reason I have been demeaning your argument this entire time.
If you classify Japan as a threat, then you must also classify every other country in the world as a threat. This is fine, though I consider such things inherently foolish it is at least consistent. However, if you are going to do such a thing, you must further explain why Japan was thus deserving of a nuclear strike while other nations were allowed to go about their business despite similar connections to Germany; hence the comment about Argentina. When you get to that point, you start reaching arguments from political will (we were very angry at Japan), arguments from racism (the Japanese are inhuman), arguments from future conflict (the Soviets are scary), and arguments from international assertion (the bomb makes us look strong) because the argument from threat has been eliminated by comparative analysis.
And yes, I have been flaming you, that much should be obvious. The argument you are making is frustratingly bad.
I'm not just saying this because I posted the article on page 3, but it seems to me that an awful load of members have been missing a major irony of the pacific war, and yes, I'm looking at you Frazz, especially with statements like these
The Japanese invaded country after country. The allies were the ones being invaded.
So China and Hong King were being invaded, despite large chunks being occupied by Britain and other European powers for a number of years. Ditto India, Singapore and Malaysia.
And what about American colonies in the pacific: Midway, Wake Island, Phillipines etc were they not aleady occupied?
Let's not forget the evils of Japanese occupation, but the west was in no position to take the moral high ground about Japanese imperialism. Hence, the conflcit boiled down to a racial struggle. Germany was nuked, Japan was not, despite the Germans being far more of a threat.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:And what about American colonies in the pacific: Midway, Wake Island, Phillipines etc were they not aleady occupied?
I was unaware the US committed the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March.
Also, Midway and Wake Island aren't colonies and never have been.
Let's not forget the evils of Japanese occupation, but the west was in no position to take the moral high ground about Japanese imperialism.
Yeah they could. They weren't raping women in occupied territory or killing of POW's in the thousands.
Hence, the conflcit boiled down to a racial struggle.
The previous statement does not logically follow to this. Even if we agree that the Allies (EDIT: I'm gonna exclude Russia for this one, they weren't nice) couldn't take the moral high ground, they could still believe they had it. In a war of ideology everyone believes they're on the moral high ground and can claim it even if objective reality suggests otherwise.
Germany was nuked, Japan was not, despite the Germans being far more of a threat.
I'm going to assume, and pray, you mixed those two countries up, or are using nuked as a poor analogy.
it should also be put in as a further reminder, it was the Allies who had the war forced upon them, not the Japanese. The Japanese invaded country after country. The allies were the ones being invaded.
I understand, but being the second to the party doesn't mean you get to wave your ass around. Not that I think that's what the allies did, it's just not an excuse is all. The allies fought a pretty terrible war and were by far the most humane, especially when compared to the regular atrocities inflicted by the axis powers.
Yea it kinda does. Its not a party, they were invaded. IN historical times thats kill the entire enemy population and salt the earth kind of thing.
Yeah sure, but you also can't go full ass just because you were attacked, especially if you are concerned about holding the morale high ground. The allies responded to axis atrocities pretty well without having to stoop to that same level of depravity. The world is a better place for it and the allies were able to hold their heads high and look themselves in the mirror after the war.
I'm not a advocate of measured responses, by any means. "Send me to the hospital, I'll send you to the morgue" is fine with me. But you don't have to be depraved about it.
Do_I_Not_Like_That, if you are really saying that allied occupation was anywhere near as bad as axis occupation you really really need to read more.
Either way, comparing "historical times" to WWII is a red herring.
Maybe, but lets face it, Japanese occupation was pretty Medieval and very much consisted of rape, murder, and plunder.
Andrew1975 wrote: The allies responded to axis atrocities pretty well without having to stoop to that same level of depravity. The world is a better place for it and the allies were able to hold their heads high and look themselves in the mirror after the war.
I'm not a advocate of measured responses, by any means. "Send me to the hospital, I'll send you to the morgue" is fine with me. But you don't have to be depraved about it.
The allies? You mean the same Allies who had concentration camps of their own as well as eugenics programs in the US and who thought that sterilizing the mentally disabled was a good idea?
Andrew1975 wrote: The allies responded to axis atrocities pretty well without having to stoop to that same level of depravity. The world is a better place for it and the allies were able to hold their heads high and look themselves in the mirror after the war.
I'm not a advocate of measured responses, by any means. "Send me to the hospital, I'll send you to the morgue" is fine with me. But you don't have to be depraved about it.
The allies? You mean the same Allies who had concentration camps of their own as well as eugenics programs in the US and who thought that sterilizing the mentally disabled was a good idea?
Oh, I wasn't aware that the Allies had declared war on the mentally disabled. Seams a pretty one sided battle. I'm not really against sterilizing the mentally disabled anyway! Do they really have the ability to take care of their progeny? I also feel like everyone should be on birth control until they qualify and apply for a parenting license. But that's just me.
Call me crazy, but you must be even crazier if you are comparing these camps to either the Japanese or German camps? You are out of your mind!
Frazzled wrote:
Yea it kinda does. Its not a party, they were invaded. IN historical times thats kill the entire enemy population and salt the earth kind of thing.
I take it you haven't actually studied history, then.
Either way, comparing "historical times" to WWII is a red herring.
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ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Clearly you didn't understand the comparison. Which is doubly ironic from someone who spends more time trying to think of ways of calling me stupid than he does of understanding the problem. A flame with long words is still a flame, and not an actual response.
I understood the comparison perfectly, I merely believe that it was an awful one for the same reason I have been demeaning your argument this entire time.
If you classify Japan as a threat, then you must also classify every other country in the world as a threat. This is fine, though I consider such things inherently foolish it is at least consistent. However, if you are going to do such a thing, you must further explain why Japan was thus deserving of a nuclear strike while other nations were allowed to go about their business despite similar connections to Germany; hence the comment about Argentina. When you get to that point, you start reaching arguments from political will (we were very angry at Japan), arguments from racism (the Japanese are inhuman), arguments from future conflict (the Soviets are scary), and arguments from international assertion (the bomb makes us look strong) because the argument from threat has been eliminated by comparative analysis.
And yes, I have been flaming you, that much should be obvious. The argument you are making is frustratingly bad.
And you seem to be incapable of differentiating between a nation that is in a state of war with the USA, versus any other nation that just happens to exist at the time. The USA was not engaged in active warfare with "every other country in the world." It wasn't on the verge of starting an invasion that would have made D-Day seem like a gentle seaside holiday with "every other nation in the world." Its a very simple position. Can Japan extend any war-fighting capability to menace the USA, its armed forces or areas under its aegis in 1945? (As asked IN 1944/45.) and thus does it constitute any potential threat? The answer is actually YES, it potentially can engage USA forces or the USA mainland, as indeed it did. Japan managed to strike against the mainland of the USA with a weapon. The weapon used was ineffective, but the delivery system was not. It achieved its purpose. THAT THERE constitutes a threat.
Not that I actually claimed that was why they dropped the bomb. I'm just saying its ridiculous, facile and childish to declare that Japan was zero threat to the US. The purpose in using the bomb was mainly to intimidate the next great potential enemy, the USSR, and any other future unknown antagonists, and to test the potential of the weapon in the field.
Nice to know this gets to be a sensible grown-up conversation though. If my "argument" is that bad, you should be able to demolish it without resorting to juvenile name-calling. Of course it would have to be an "argument" for that to work, as opposed to a display of facts. But if that's all you've got, then knock yourself out son.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
And you seem to be incapable of differentiating between a nation that is in a state of war with the USA, versus any other nation that just happens to exist at the time. The USA was not engaged in active warfare with "every other country in the world." It wasn't on the verge of starting an invasion that would have made D-Day seem like a gentle seaside holiday with "every other nation in the world."
Because for the purposes of this argument the distinction is irrelevant. The presence of a declared war does not indicate the presence of an unusual threat. Hostility and threat are not the same thing.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Its a very simple position. Can Japan extend any war-fighting capability to menace the USA, its armed forces or areas under its aegis in 1945? (As asked IN 1944/45.) and thus does it constitute any potential threat? The answer is actually YES, it potentially can engage USA forces or the USA mainland, as indeed it did. Japan managed to strike against the mainland of the USA with a weapon. The weapon used was ineffective, but the delivery system was not. It achieved its purpose. THAT THERE constitutes a threat.
And, again, that argument is nonsense because it further extends to any and all nations near the United States or the territory it controls, meaning that the extent to which Japan presented a threat to the US was no greater than that presented by any and all other countries in the world.
Arguing that because the Japanese had the capacity use an ineffective explosive delivery system that they represented something akin to a unique threat, thereby necessitating the use of nuclear weapons to force a surrender is preposterous because the argument that a surrender must be forced in order to end a war is a nonstarter.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Nice to know this gets to be a sensible grown-up conversation though. If my "argument" is that bad, you should be able to demolish it without resorting to juvenile name-calling. Of course it would have to be an "argument" for that to work, as opposed to a display of facts. But if that's all you've got, then knock yourself out son.
I've already explicitly indicated, several times, why your position is flatly wrong. The flaming began after you restated it in increasingly absurd ways, while failing to properly refute my objection.
I was unaware the US committed the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March.
Then you need to read about how the US subjugated the Philippines during the Spanish American war.
Torture, mutilation, destruction of villages, and relocation of natives were the rule. It was a brutal colonial acquisition, period. Just like the Belgians taking the Congo, or the French Vietnam.
“There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it — perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands — but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector — not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now — why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.”
---------Mark Twain
Here's something to think about--If we had not occupied the Philippines in the first place, there would be no US troops to be captured and subjected to the Bataan Death march. Our military presence wasn't there to protect the poor Filipinos--It was to protect our commercial interests, as part of our US empire--Oops, I mean our "National Interests" abroad.
Even if the Japanese still attacked us, if we had no US troops as POWs in the Philippines to liberate, as well as to keep MacArthur's political pledge to return, the Pacific campaign would have gone faster by skipping the Philippines altogether. The Navy saw clearly the quickest way to defeat Japan was straight up the Island chain. The Philippines had no strategic importance other than the presence of Japanese ships and planes. Once those were neutralized, it would become one big prison camp like Rabaul. Whatever atrocities the Japanese would have done to the locals would still be less than the hundreds of thousands killed or maimed when the US invaded the island in 1944.
I was unaware the US committed the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March.
Then you need to read about how the US subjugated the Philippines during the Spanish American war.
Torture, mutilation, destruction of villages, and relocation of natives were the rule. It was a brutal colonial acquisition, period. Just like the Belgians taking the Congo, or the French Vietnam.
“There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it — perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands — but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector — not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now — why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.”
---------Mark Twain
Here's something to think about--If we had not occupied the Philippines in the first place, there would be no US troops to be captured and subjected to the Bataan Death march. Our military presence wasn't there to protect the poor Filipinos--It was to protect our commercial interests, as part of our US empire--Oops, I mean our "National Interests" abroad.
Even if the Japanese still attacked us, if we had no US troops as POW in the Philippines to liberate, as well as to keep MacArthur's pledge to return, the Pacific campaign would have gone faster by skipping the Philippines altogether. The Navy saw clearly the quickest way to defeat Japan was straight up the Island chain. The Japanese army would have been stranded and cut off there. Whatever atrocities the Japanese would have done to the locals would still be less than the hundreds of thousands killed or maimed when the US invaded the island in 1944.
Again we are talking about WWII not Vietnam, the Spanish American War or the War on terror. Please try to find relevant examples people!
Oh and the Fillipino people loved the allies compared to the Japanese. To answer Mr. Twain's question, we got a pretty good ally that loves us to this day by the way!
Again we are talking about WWII not Vietnam, the Spanish American War or the War on terror. Please try to find relevant examples people!
Oh and the Fillipino people loves the allies compared to the Japanese.
You cannot separate the past conflicts anymore than you can separate how WWI and the resulting Versailles treaty created the conditions for WW2. From my study of history, every war only breeds the conditions for the next one.
Ask the Moros if they love the US after they were defeated by them in 1898. Ask the Hawaiians how much they love the US for replacing their royalty rule for the benefit of the Dole pineapple company. Ask the natives of Bikini atoll, or Diego Gracia, how much they appreciated being removed from their home islands they had lived on for generations by US, in the interests of our national security.
Brushfire wrote:You cannot separate the past conflicts anymore than you can separate how WWI and the resulting Versailles treaty created the conditions for WW2. From my study of history, every war only breeds the conditions for the next one.
Congratulations. You've discovered the concept of causation. *golf clap*
While the events of the Spanish-American War had an effect on the events of WWII and the Pacific campaign in that it put the Phillipines and Guam under US control, answering the question "Who was worse in WWII, the US or the Japan?" with "The U.S. did bad stuff in the Spanish-American War" is pointless because it's completely off topic and only serves to avoid answering the question at hand. I never claimed the Allies did nothing bad. Merely that actions of the Axis leave it possible for one to put forward the case (somewhat easily really) that the Axis was worse.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:And what about American colonies in the pacific: Midway, Wake Island, Phillipines etc were they not aleady occupied?
I was unaware the US committed the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March.
Even the trial judges at the Tokyo trials found that the Rape of Nanking was not sanctioned by the Japanese Government. If 'Japan' as a whole is responsible for the Rape of Nanking, then so is the 'US' as a whole responsible for the thousands of rapes in the wake of Okinawa.
Let's not forget the evils of Japanese occupation, but the west was in no position to take the moral high ground about Japanese imperialism.
Yeah they could. They weren't raping women in occupied territory or killing of POW's in the thousands.
They sort of were. Not to the extent of the Bataan Death March (if we're not including the Soviets), but hardly an excuse to take the high ground over Imperialism.
Also, when Vietnam was 'liberated' from the French imperialists to be replaced with Japanese ones there was a a fair division in the populace. Some resisted the Japanese as they had the French (Ho Chi Minh), while others were more accepting of this change of hands. Neither case makes Western Imperialism look any better.
Hence, the conflcit boiled down to a racial struggle.
The previous statement does not logically follow to this. Even if we agree that the Allies (EDIT: I'm gonna exclude Russia for this one, they weren't nice) couldn't take the moral high ground, they could still believe they had it. In a war of ideology everyone believes they're on the moral high ground and can claim it even if objective reality suggests otherwise.
Think about it. The Western forces in Asia weren't upset over Imperialism, but that it was Japanese Imperialism. Imperialism tends to be frowned upon if you aren't white.
Germany was nuked, Japan was not, despite the Germans being far more of a threat.
I'm going to assume, and pray, you mixed those two countries up, or are using nuked as a poor analogy.
I think that was supposed to be "Japan was Nuked, Germany was not, despite the Germans being far more of a threat."
This would be understandable if their policies had changed when Germany surrendered, but it appears the target was always going to be Japan.
Emperors Faithful wrote:Even the trial judges at the Tokyo trials found that the Rape of Nanking was not sanctioned by the Japanese Government. If 'Japan' as a whole is responsible for the Rape of Nanking, then so is the 'US' as a whole responsible for the thousands of rapes in the wake of Okinawa.
Again. I never said the US did nothing bad. There were several incidents of POW's being executed by US troops in number but never to the scale of incidents committed by Germany and Japan. Comparing Okinawa to the Rape of Nanking is a great disservice. Both were bad, but one is undoubtedly worse than the other.
This would be understandable if their policies had changed when Germany surrendered, but it appears the target was always going to be Japan.
Leslie Groves begs to differ. There were talks about using the weapon on all three Axis powers while it was in development. Roosevelt told Leslie Groves that if Germany wasn't defeated by the time the bomb was ready that he would order it to be dropped on Germany. The plan had always been to take Germany out of the game first. That never changed in any respect even after FDR died (EDIT: of course Germany pretty much was defeated when FDR died, so that worked out). Japan had the unfortunate position of being the last Axis power standing when the bomb was ready to be deployed.
Emperors Faithful wrote:Even the trial judges at the Tokyo trials found that the Rape of Nanking was not sanctioned by the Japanese Government. If 'Japan' as a whole is responsible for the Rape of Nanking, then so is the 'US' as a whole responsible for the thousands of rapes in the wake of Okinawa.
Again. I never said the US did nothing bad. There were several incidents of POW's being executed by US troops in number but never to the scale of incidents committed by Germany and Japan. Comparing Okinawa to the Rape of Nanking is a great disservice. Both were bad, but one is undoubtedly worse than the other.
So is comparing the bombing of London to that of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other.
One was bad, the others were undoubtedly worse.
This would be understandable if their policies had changed when Germany surrendered, but it appears the target was always going to be Japan.
Leslie Groves begs to differ. There were talks about using the weapon on all three Axis powers while it was in development. Roosevelt told Leslie Groves that if Germany wasn't defeated by the time the bomb was ready that he would order it to be dropped on Germany. The plan had always been to take Germany out of the game first. That never changed in any respect even after FDR died (EDIT: of course Germany pretty much was defeated when FDR died, so that worked out). Japan had the unfortunate position of being the last Axis power standing when the bomb was ready to be deployed.
I'm a little skeptical on this. Can you provide a source?
The article on page 3 supports the opposite conclusion.
Ambivalent in that it was a good deal for the Americans and a bad one for the Japanese.
The Americans would have lost alot of men in conquering the Japanese mainland, which they would have been forced to do given the "Banzai"-spirit of the Japanese people. The result would have been alot of civilian casulties, just like in the bombings. To the Americans, it gave the same result without throwing away the lives of American soldiers. All in all, a good call if you ask me.
However (before you call me something mean) the aftermath of the bombings surely gave the Americans some meat to throw around in the kitchen. The Japanese people were devastated by the sheer show of force. It was no longer any point in the kamikaze pilots to sacrifice themselves, for example, since the blast alone would be counter-intuitive to what they really cared about: protecting their loved ones, their country and the Emperor. To me, and many military personnel and officials at the time, the surrender came as a shock. If one truly studies the Japanese culture around death, honour and suicide (I have in several papers during my time as a history student at the university), the sheer amount of banzai-bravado should have kept the Japanese going, which would have ended in either more bombs or the Americans revising their plans.
In the end, the Japanese followed their code of honour to an extent. Bringing war home to your region and endangering your family, friends and the people you held responsibility of, was an even greater dishonour than losing a battle to the samurai. Truth be told, the samurai didn't commit suicide just because the lost a battle or fled, it was a question of dignity. And to this end the American plan worked, after the bombs fell the Emperor took responsibility to those that admired him and took to serve him and lost the battle with dignity.
All I can say is that whether or not you believe the Americans did wrong, both the President and the Emperor signed the bomb-orders and surrender respectively for good reasons: preventing further deaths of the people that looked to them for leadership and inspiration.
I'm a little skeptical on this. Can you provide a source?
The article on page 3 supports the opposite conclusion.
Leslie Grove's book Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project
I feel no need to even address the article in detail to be honest. He has some interesting information, but a lot of it screams "cherry picked for my purposes" and flies in the face of several known facts, like the fact that Japan wasn't surrendering, and a general lack of historical perspective on how he approaches a lot of his quotes and information. His entire position on Imperialism screams that he doesn't actually know much about the history of it. Imperialism was on the downturn in WWI, and was dead by the end of WWII as a goal of Western powers, something the author of the article hand waves away by acknowledging while at the same time saying we bombed them because there isn't enough room for non-white imperialists around here! EDIT: The US had given up Imperialism ages ago. It was dead and buried when the Great Depression hit. Imperialism and the authors entire position on it is more in line with the British Imperialism rather than American Imperialism.
Also, check when the NSA was founded. It's very informative. He pretty much lost all credibility for me in the first few hundred words with that one. It's hard to intercept enemy communications when you don't exist.
International and foreign policy motives (To clarify, motives heavily tied to what would soon become the Cold War) played a bigger role in dropping the bomb than racism. Racism probably had a role to play. I wouldn't be shocked. But Mr. Hume takes it to an absurd level that I don't think he's even properly supported. He strings together a bunch of inflamatory remarks and cherry picked quotes and says they say what he wants them to say.
That said, regardless of motivation, in hindsight we do know that Japan was unlikely to surrender. It's not really a debatable position as far as I know. Invasion of Japan would have killed just as many if not more people as the bombings (likely more). We'll never know in the end. X-Day never came and Downfall never happened. All we can do is play the numbers game. In retrospect the bombing did end the war. Alternatives may have ended it but I find anyone claiming Japan would have surrendered on its own or should have been left alone because it was no longer a threat to have a poor grip on historical reality (as it is currently known). The bombings played an important role after the war too. You never know how deadly a weapon is till you use it. Because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no sane person wants to use nuclear weapons, which may not be true if they hadn't been used then (they probably would have ended up being used later in another conflict). The same thing happened with chemical weapons after WWI.
My opinion is that if the casualty projections on a full-scale invasion of Japan are to be believed, the bombing of Hiroshima(and the subsequent bombing of Nagasaki) was the lesser of two evils. That said, it's still a bummer that it happened.
I can't reply to everyone in one post, nor can I possibly read them and comment on them. But I do find this sort of discussion entertaining, and so, feel free to PM me.
In any case, here are some rebuttals to common counter arguments:*
1) Dropping bombs on civilians is bad.
Why?
[strawman]Because it kills innocent people[/strawman]
Boo hoo? Why are innocent people so important?
[strawman]Because they just are, OK!?[/strawman]
Additional: I will note that the above argument would require you to prove that any of the people killed were innocent, which (in wartime) is extremely hard if Clausewitzian logic is employed.
2) Dropping atomic bombs is bad because of radiation.
Living on a planet this close to the sun is bad because of radiation. What? It kills people too you know!
* Disclaimer: The straw man is based on normal responses I get when I offer that argument, feel free to articulate your own points here or in a PM. However, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to address them in this thread.
EDIT: I suppose you could sum up my argument with two premises:
1) gak HAPPENS, DEAL WITH IT
2) BOMBING THE BAD GUYS IS NEVER BAD.
2a) THE BAD GUYS ARE WHOMEVER LOSES, ALWAYS.
WWII in general was a bad idea. But we didn't have that much of a choice in it. The suffering of those innocents whom were stricken by the bombs in the years after is unfortunate, sure... but so is the suffering of the people who were enslaved by the Japanese nation at the time.
Unit1126PLL wrote:I can't reply to everyone in one post, nor can I possibly read them and comment on them. But I do find this sort of discussion entertaining, and so, feel free to PM me.
In any case, here are some rebuttals to common counter arguments:*
1) Dropping bombs on civilians is bad. Why? [strawman]Because it kills innocent people[/strawman] Boo hoo? Why are innocent people so important? [strawman]Because they just are, OK!?[/strawman]
First off, that is not what a straw-man a straw man is
Second off, are you honestly going to claim that killing innocent people is not a bad thing
Additional: I will note that the above argument would require you to prove that any of the people killed were innocent, which (in wartime) is extremely hard if Clausewitzian logic is employed.
have you ever once read On War or read more then one critics take on it
2) Dropping atomic bombs is bad because of radiation. Living on a planet this close to the sun is bad because of radiation. What? It kills people too you know!
* Disclaimer: The straw man is based on normal responses I get when I offer that argument, feel free to articulate your own points here or in a PM. However, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to address them in this thread.
EDIT: I suppose you could sum up my argument with two premises:
1) gak HAPPENS, DEAL WITH IT
2) BOMBING THE BAD GUYS IS NEVER BAD. 2a) THE BAD GUYS ARE WHOMEVER LOSES, ALWAYS.
EDIT2: Ok, 2.5 premises.
Ah, so the jews must have been the bad guys in the holocaust then.
Unit1126PLL wrote:I can't reply to everyone in one post, nor can I possibly read them and comment on them. But I do find this sort of discussion entertaining, and so, feel free to PM me.
In any case, here are some rebuttals to common counter arguments:*
1) Dropping bombs on civilians is bad.
Why?
[strawman]Because it kills innocent people[/strawman]
Boo hoo? Why are innocent people so important?
[strawman]Because they just are, OK!?[/strawman]
First off, that is not what a straw-man a straw man is
Second off, are you honestly going to claim that killing innocent people is not a bad thing
I think attributing that argument to you guys is "creating a position that is easy to refute," "attributing said position to [you guys]," and then "refuting it." But that's not important.
I, being a logical being, do not see killing innocent people as detrimental to my survival or to the survival of the human race (provided it is limited in scope to fewer than 7 billion people). Enlighten me as to what I am missing?
youbedead wrote:
Additional: I will note that the above argument would require you to prove that any of the people killed were innocent, which (in wartime) is extremely hard if Clausewitzian logic is employed.
have you ever once read On War or read more then one critics take on it
Never read any critics, just read and interpreted it myself in Philosophy class last semester.
youbedead wrote:
2) Dropping atomic bombs is bad because of radiation.
Living on a planet this close to the sun is bad because of radiation. What? It kills people too you know!
* Disclaimer: The straw man is based on normal responses I get when I offer that argument, feel free to articulate your own points here or in a PM. However, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to address them in this thread.
EDIT: I suppose you could sum up my argument with two premises:
1) gak HAPPENS, DEAL WITH IT
2) BOMBING THE BAD GUYS IS NEVER BAD.
2a) THE BAD GUYS ARE WHOMEVER LOSES, ALWAYS.
EDIT2: Ok, 2.5 premises.
Ah, so the jews must have been the bad guys in the holocaust then.
That is what a strawman looks like
Except the Jews didn't lose the Holocaust, because they still exist. Let's look at the Holocaust:
1) Goal: Exterminate all Jews.
2) Were all Jews Exterminated?
3) No.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:I'm not just saying this because I posted the article on page 3, but it seems to me that an awful load of members have been missing a major irony of the pacific war, and yes, I'm looking at you Frazz, especially with statements like these
The Japanese invaded country after country. The allies were the ones being invaded.
So China and Hong King were being invaded, despite large chunks being occupied by Britain and other European powers for a number of years. Ditto India, Singapore and Malaysia.
And what about American colonies in the pacific: Midway, Wake Island, Phillipines etc were they not aleady occupied?
Let's not forget the evils of Japanese occupation, but the west was in no position to take the moral high ground about Japanese imperialism. Hence, the conflcit boiled down to a racial struggle. Germany was nuked, Japan was not, despite the Germans being far more of a threat.
The Japanese voluntarily joined the international Imperial system in the late 19th century and used it to take hold of places like Formosa and Korea. This put them on the same moral ground as western colonising nations. Then the Japanese attacked the other members of the system. This put them on the lower moral ground.
Ask the Moros if they love the US after they were defeated by them in 1898. Ask the Hawaiians how much they love the US for replacing their royalty rule for the benefit of the Dole pineapple company. Ask the natives of Bikini atoll, or Diego Gracia, how much they appreciated being removed from their home islands they had lived on for generations by US, in the interests of our national security.
I think you could honestly ask most of these people if they are better off now. It's like the African Americans. Did slavery suck, yes! Would you rather be living in the Congo where every 12 year old is armed with an AK 47 and tribal genocide is de regular? I think not.
The people that the US has screwed the most through out history are the American Indian. That's a fact! But I don't really think the majority of them really want to go back to living in teepees and trading wampum!
My point is not that what happened to them wasn't bad, but at least there are people to ask! The Axis powers would ave left few people alive and those that were would have been completely enslaved!
This has nothing really to do with the conversation though. You can nit pick all you want about the allies actions during WWII, but you have to admit all the alternatives were much worse! You can question the morality of dropping the bombs, but you then must deal with the morality of what would have happened if they didn't. That situation would have been far worse for everyone! All the Japanese that died would have probably died anyway, but in a much more gruesome manner, along with potentially millions more. In many ways the A bombs were merciful.
That said, regardless of motivation, in hindsight we do know that Japan was unlikely to surrender. It's not really a debatable position as far as I know. Invasion of Japan would have killed just as many if not more people as the bombings (likely more). We'll never know in the end. X-Day never came and Downfall never happened. All we can do is play the numbers game. In retrospect the bombing did end the war. Alternatives may have ended it but I find anyone claiming Japan would have surrendered on its own or should have been left alone because it was no longer a threat to have a poor grip on historical reality (as it is currently known). The bombings played an important role after the war too. You never know how deadly a weapon is till you use it. Because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no sane person wants to use nuclear weapons, which may not be true if they hadn't been used then (they probably would have ended up being used later in another conflict). The same thing happened with chemical weapons after WWI.
Japan had already surrendered (albeit with conditions) the bombs were utterly unnecessary to end the war, and only used in order to ensure that Japan's government would step down.
In light of that? No, i don't think the bombs can be justified.
Requia wrote:Japan had already surrendered (albeit with conditions) the bombs were utterly unnecessary to end the war, and only used in order to ensure that Japan's government would step down.
In light of that? No, i don't think the bombs can be justified.
Take a look at my post above:
They don't need "justification." Japan was not following the instructions of a superior power, and so the superior power bombed them with superior weapons. Surprise! Shock!
...or maybe the same damn thing people have been doing for 10,000 years? (With, admittedly, more technology.)
Requia wrote:Japan had already surrendered (albeit with conditions) the bombs were utterly unnecessary to end the war, and only used in order to ensure that Japan's government would step down.
In light of that? No, i don't think the bombs can be justified.
Take a look at my post above:
They don't need "justification." Japan was not following the instructions of a superior power, and so the superior power bombed them with superior weapons. Surprise! Shock!
...or maybe the same damn thing people have been doing for 10,000 years? (With, admittedly, more technology.)
Are you seriously suggesting that the Japanese government shouldn't have been forced to step down!
You are both wrong! Japan hadn't surrendered, there had been talks but no formal surrender was ever offered, and certainly none that was satisfactory for all the rape, murder and plunder that they had inflicted on the world!
The justification of which you speak can be found in the mass graves that riddle the formerly occupied lands that are filled with innocent civilians and soldiers who surrendered honorably. Seriously, you guys need to read up on how brutal the Japanese were.
Do you understand they were so brutal that they expected the same harsh treatment when they surrendered! There are many stories of US marines watching in horror as Japanese women threw their own babies off jagged cliffs because they thought the allied soldiers would treat them the way the Japanese treated everyone they conquered!
I think that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki spared essentially over 100 thousand US casualties easily. The operation for the invasion of Japan involved the landing of US marines and troops on soil that had been hit by atomic weapons less than 72 hours ago.
Japanese civilians would have been spared slaughter by their own troops and by their own psyches. Being captured was considered dishonourable at that point. Many Japanese POWs commited suicide in the first 2 weeks of imprisonment.
So essentially both sides were spared a lot of grief, so therefore it was logical.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
1) Dropping bombs on civilians is bad.
Why?
[strawman]Because it kills innocent people[/strawman]
Boo hoo? Why are innocent people so important?
[strawman]Because they just are, OK!?[/strawman]
That isn't what a strawman is. In order to argue from a strawman you have to misrepresent the position of your opponent. When you say dropping bombs on civilians is bad, and then contend that its because civilians are innocent, or that they are treated differently than military personnel by convention, then you aren't making a fallacious argument of any kind; let alone a strawman.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Additional: I will note that the above argument would require you to prove that any of the people killed were innocent, which (in wartime) is extremely hard if Clausewitzian logic is employed.
Clausewitz argued for the importance of moral virtue in war, and was really the first person to distinguish between civilians and soldiers, so I'm not sure that's the person you're thinking of. Additionally, the idea that war is a political tool subjects it to political whims, and if the polity in question wants to avoid killing civilians, then the killing of civilians should be avoided in war.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
2) Dropping atomic bombs is bad because of radiation.
Living on a planet this close to the sun is bad because of radiation. What? It kills people too you know!
That's only a reasonable counter if the initial argument is one from category, and not one from degree (the radiation caused by certain atomic weapons is worse than solar radiation as experienced on Earth's surface) or agency (no one started up the sun).
Unit1126PLL wrote:
1) gak HAPPENS, DEAL WITH IT
That isn't a good argument. People often deal with things by determining whether or not they believe they are wrong, important, or otherwise interesting.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
2) BOMBING THE BAD GUYS IS NEVER BAD.
That just as arbitrary as the supposed strawman you alluded to in your first "refutation".
Unit1126PLL wrote:
2a) THE BAD GUYS ARE WHOMEVER LOSES, ALWAYS.
Seeing as the vast majority of wars throughout history have not been clearly won or lost, this doesn't help very much.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Unit1126PLL wrote:I am not concerned with "horrors" on EITHER side of the war.
My only concern is:
Was it logical?
The answer is a resounding YES.
In fact, I would argue that the question:
IS it logical?
Still should be a resounding YES, but for some reason, isn't.
Have you ever heard the phrase "logic is blind"?
Logic can tell you whether or not something follows from a given set of fundamental premises, but it cannot tell you what those premises are. Hence, logic can tell you that if you want to eat cheese, you have cheese, and you will not suffer from this consumption, then you should eat the cheese. But logic cannot tell you that you should want to eat cheese, which violates Hume's famous is-ought problem.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
They don't need "justification." Japan was not following the instructions of a superior power, and so the superior power bombed them with superior weapons. Surprise! Shock!
You've just provided a justification.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Never read any critics, just read and interpreted it myself in Philosophy class last semester.
If the interpretation you have of Clausewitz includes the elimination of morality from the calculations pertinent to war, then you interpreted it incorrect (he explicitly contradicts that idea when discussing military genius). Clausewitz wrote On War in a dialectical style, which means he gave phrase to a lot of argument which he later rejects.
More to the point, you cannot just read On War and claim to know anything about what Clausewitz thought, his views changed over time, and were expressed in other formats.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
1) Dropping bombs on civilians is bad.
Why?
[strawman]Because it kills innocent people[/strawman]
Boo hoo? Why are innocent people so important?
[strawman]Because they just are, OK!?[/strawman]
That isn't what a strawman is. In order to argue from a strawman you have to misrepresent the position of your opponent. When you say dropping bombs on civilians is bad, and then contend that its because civilians are innocent, or that they are treated differently than military personnel by convention, then you aren't making a fallacious argument of any kind; let alone a strawman.
Fair enough, it wasn't a straw man, my bad. And it's not that the argument is fallacious, it's that I disagree with the premise that civilians ought to be treated differently.
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Additional: I will note that the above argument would require you to prove that any of the people killed were innocent, which (in wartime) is extremely hard if Clausewitzian logic is employed.
Clausewitz argued for the importance of moral virtue in war, and was really the first person to distinguish between civilians and soldiers, so I'm not sure that's the person you're thinking of. Additionally, the idea that war is a political tool subjects it to political whims, and if the polity in question wants to avoid killing civilians, then the killing of civilians should be avoided in war.
It may not be, but the passages I remember spoke of wars as "state on state" rather than "army against army" and that, therefore, the entire state was a target.
If he didn't say that, then he should have; makes a lot of sense.
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
2) Dropping atomic bombs is bad because of radiation.
Living on a planet this close to the sun is bad because of radiation. What? It kills people too you know!
That's only a reasonable counter if the initial argument is one from category, and not one from degree (the radiation caused by certain atomic weapons is worse than solar radiation as experienced on Earth's surface) or agency (no one started up the sun).
Unit1126PLL wrote:
1) gak HAPPENS, DEAL WITH IT
That isn't a good argument. People often deal with things by determining whether or not they believe they are wrong, important, or otherwise interesting.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
2) BOMBING THE BAD GUYS IS NEVER BAD.
That just as arbitrary as the supposed strawman you alluded to in your first "refutation".
Unit1126PLL wrote:
2a) THE BAD GUYS ARE WHOMEVER LOSES, ALWAYS.
Seeing as the vast majority of wars throughout history have not been clearly won or lost, this doesn't help very much.
This isn't one of those cases, so this is irrelevant.
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:I am not concerned with "horrors" on EITHER side of the war.
My only concern is:
Was it logical?
The answer is a resounding YES.
In fact, I would argue that the question:
IS it logical?
Still should be a resounding YES, but for some reason, isn't.
Have you ever heard the phrase "logic is blind"?
Logic can tell you whether or not something follows from a given set of fundamental premises, but it cannot tell you what those premises are. Hence, logic can tell you that if you want to eat cheese, you have cheese, and you will not suffer from this consumption, then you should eat the cheese. But logic cannot tell you that you should want to eat cheese, which violates Hume's famous is-ought problem.
Unfortunately, here, we DO have a given set of premises thanks to Nature, and I think Hume missed the point in his is/ought problem. We have an Evolutionary Imperative to eat things that follow a certain set of guidelines. We survived because of this imperative. Survival is what is required of us. Therefore, we have this imperative.
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
They don't need "justification." Japan was not following the instructions of a superior power, and so the superior power bombed them with superior weapons. Surprise! Shock!
You've just provided a justification.
You're right, I should've said "moral justification." My bad, erase the first sentence entirely.
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Never read any critics, just read and interpreted it myself in Philosophy class last semester.
If the interpretation you have of Clausewitz includes the elimination of morality from the calculations pertinent to war, then you interpreted it incorrect (he explicitly contradicts that idea when discussing military genius). Clausewitz wrote On War in a dialectical style, which means he gave phrase to a lot of argument which he later rejects.
More to the point, you cannot just read On War and claim to know anything about what Clausewitz thought, his views changed over time, and were expressed in other formats.
Then I was wrong about Clausewitz, but fortunately my arguments do not require his agreement. Throw everything I said about him out entirely, if I am that wrong.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think attributing that argument to you guys is "creating a position that is easy to refute," "attributing said position to [you guys]," and then "refuting it." But that's not important.
So, wait, are you trying to say that the dialogue which you posted was meant to be a strawman? Because if that's the case, then yes, you're correct.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I, being a logical being, do not see killing innocent people as detrimental to my survival or to the survival of the human race (provided it is limited in scope to fewer than 7 billion people). Enlighten me as to what I am missing?
Really? You don't see why killing innocent people would prove problematic for society, and therefore humans (social animals) and yourself (a human, who is therefore a social animal)?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if there is no distinction between guilt and innocence which is recognized by convention, then the entire moral basis for the convention of not killing everyone I see is eliminated.
I mean, you may not realize it, but even stating that something which is detrimental to your survival should be stopped is a moral position. Hell, and statement which includes should is usually going to be a moral position.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think attributing that argument to you guys is "creating a position that is easy to refute," "attributing said position to [you guys]," and then "refuting it." But that's not important.
So, wait, are you trying to say that the dialogue which you posted was meant to be a strawman? Because if that's the case, then yes, you're correct.
It was meant to be, yes. Sorry for the confusion!
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I, being a logical being, do not see killing innocent people as detrimental to my survival or to the survival of the human race (provided it is limited in scope to fewer than 7 billion people). Enlighten me as to what I am missing?
Really? You don't see why killing innocent people would prove problematic for society, and therefore humans (social animals) and yourself (a human, who is therefore a social animal)?
I think that within one's social "tribe" that killing innocents is a bad thing, hence why I avoid doing it myself. But our tribes can only be so large, and so other tribes, rather than cooperating, are competing for resources. So when one "tribe" kills another "tribe," that's fine, it's called a war.
dogma wrote:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if there is no distinction between guilt and innocence which is recognized by convention, then the entire moral basis for the convention of not killing everyone I see is eliminated.
I only vaguely see what you are trying to say, but here's my stab at it:
You should shoot for survival. Which means that, if killing everyone you see enhances your survival, then you should do it. However, due to our minds being more powerful than our instincts, we can oust the people who would do that from our tribe with threats to their very survival.
I.E. don't kill people, not for any moral reason, but because you're likely to get killed in return and that is contra-survivalist.
dogma wrote:
I mean, you may not realize it, but even stating that something which is detrimental to your survival should be stopped is a moral position. Hell, and statement which includes should is usually going to be a moral position.
You're right, it is a moral proposition. I don't claim to have no morals! Just differing ones, which make the most sense to me.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
And it's not that the argument is fallacious, it's that I disagree with the premise that civilians ought to be treated differently.
Well if you simply disagree, then you shouldn't contend that the opposition is arguing fallaciously.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
It may not be, but the passages I remember spoke of wars as "state on state" rather than "army against army" and that, therefore, the entire state was a target.
If he didn't say that, then he should have; makes a lot of sense.
Yes, the entire state would be the target in the sense that the belligerents are attempting to achieve political ends with respect to one another. That isn't the same thing as arguing that civilians should be targeted, which Clausewitz did not advocate.
You should look up his argument regarding the distinction between limited wars and total wars.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
This isn't one of those cases, so this is irrelevant.
The point is that developing a specific set of moral imperatives which govern only a very small set of incidences is going to be seen as poor argument. Moreover, if you're going to argue that the side that won is the good one, then you are further going to have to express why the side that lost can't legitimately see them as bad.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Unfortunately, here, we DO have a given set of premises thanks to Nature, and I think Hume missed the point in his is/ought problem. We have an Evolutionary Imperative to eat things that follow a certain set of guidelines. We survived because of this imperative. Survival is what is required of us. Therefore, we have this imperative.
Survival isn't required of us, people kill themselves quite frequently; both by direct action, and in defense of causes. When you argue from nature, you must contend with all of nature; even the parts which you do not consider to be valuable.
Again, logic is blind.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
You're right, I should've said "moral justification." My bad, erase the first sentence entirely.
Justification is necessarily a question of morality. Even when you argue something like "survival is good, therefore you should try to survive" you are making a moral argument.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think that within one's social "tribe" that killing innocents is a bad thing, hence why I avoid doing it myself. But our tribes can only be so large, and so other tribes, rather than cooperating, are competing for resources. So when one "tribe" kills another "tribe," that's fine, it's called a war.
What about those instances in which trade with another tribe is important to the survival of your own tribe?
For example, had the British slaughtered American civilians during the Revolution, they would have been without a key economic partner.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I only vaguely see what you are trying to say, but here's my stab at it:
You should shoot for survival. Which means that, if killing everyone you see enhances your survival, then you should do it. However, due to our minds being more powerful than our instincts, we can oust the people who would do that from our tribe with threats to their very survival.
I.E. don't kill people, not for any moral reason, but because you're likely to get killed in return and that is contra-survivalist.
The problem is that what you're describing are social conventions, which are predicated on morality; in the instance of your argument here "survival is good".
Yeah Dogma has it right, that's was the most bizarre use of the term strawman I think ive ever seen. In plain English, Its simply misrepresenting someone by superficially repeating a part of their argument and changing it a bit.
Here's an easy to understand one..
Matty - "I prefer beer to spirits"
Matts Dad "Matty said he cant handle spirits, the big soft girly poofter"
Unit1126PLL wrote:
And it's not that the argument is fallacious, it's that I disagree with the premise that civilians ought to be treated differently.
Well if you simply disagree, then you shouldn't contend that the opposition is arguing fallaciously.
I wasn't?
EDIT: Drop the damn straw man thing. I was wrong; my bad! It doesn't even hold on-topic relevance.
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
It may not be, but the passages I remember spoke of wars as "state on state" rather than "army against army" and that, therefore, the entire state was a target.
If he didn't say that, then he should have; makes a lot of sense.
Yes, the entire state would be the target in the sense that the belligerents are attempting to achieve political ends with respect to one another. That isn't the same thing as arguing that civilians should be targeted, which Clausewitz did not advocate.
You should look up his argument regarding the distinction between limited wars and total wars.
I don't advocate targeting civilians, just that, if they're hurt during the course of normal military activities (such as atomically bombing their factories out of existence, or strategic bombing their resource centers), then nothing is really lost and no one ought to make a big deal out of it.
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
This isn't one of those cases, so this is irrelevant.
The point is that developing a specific set of moral imperatives which govern only a very small set of incidences is going to be seen as poor argument. Moreover, if you're going to argue that the side that won is the good one, then you are further going to have to express why the side that lost can't legitimately see them as bad.
I will readily change my moral imperatives to suit the most logical answer. I don't believe morals ever have to be solid and immobile; I believe it is a flaw if they are. And the side that lost can see them as bad, sure, but don't be surprised if the greater humanity doesn't see it that way (nor should they).
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Unfortunately, here, we DO have a given set of premises thanks to Nature, and I think Hume missed the point in his is/ought problem. We have an Evolutionary Imperative to eat things that follow a certain set of guidelines. We survived because of this imperative. Survival is what is required of us. Therefore, we have this imperative.
Survival isn't required of us, people kill themselves quite frequently; both by direct action, and in defense of causes. When you argue from nature, you must contend with all of nature; even the parts which you do not consider to be valuable.
Again, logic is blind.
Survival is required of us. The fact that some people fail hard enough at it to kill themselves (either in the defense of hopeless causes or out of despair) doesn't mean it isn't required, it means some of us don't make the grade. And what do you mean by all of nature? I don't understand that point.
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
You're right, I should've said "moral justification." My bad, erase the first sentence entirely.
Justification is necessarily a question of morality. Even when you argue something like "survival is good, therefore you should try to survive" you are making a moral argument.
Fair enough, it does need justification. And I am doing it.
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think that within one's social "tribe" that killing innocents is a bad thing, hence why I avoid doing it myself. But our tribes can only be so large, and so other tribes, rather than cooperating, are competing for resources. So when one "tribe" kills another "tribe," that's fine, it's called a war.
What about those instances in which trade with another tribe is important to the survival of your own tribe?
For example, had the British slaughtered American civilians during the Revolution, they would have been without a key economic partner.
Then we adjust the policy (towards trade) to be pro-survivalist. Nowhere did I say we HAD to fight, I just said that when we do, innocents die, it's called "war."
EDIT 2: Lemme adjust my phrasing: It may have sounded like we were always competing between tribes. I admit, it was a mistake that I said that. What I meant was "when we do compete for resources, rather than cooperate for them, war starts and one tribe kills another tribe." Better?
dogma wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I only vaguely see what you are trying to say, but here's my stab at it:
You should shoot for survival. Which means that, if killing everyone you see enhances your survival, then you should do it. However, due to our minds being more powerful than our instincts, we can oust the people who would do that from our tribe with threats to their very survival.
I.E. don't kill people, not for any moral reason, but because you're likely to get killed in return and that is contra-survivalist.
The problem is that what you're describing are social conventions, which are predicated on morality; in the instance of your argument here "survival is good".
Yes, why is it a problem to describe a social convention that is predicated on the morality of "survival is good"?
I'm a little skeptical on this. Can you provide a source?
The article on page 3 supports the opposite conclusion.
Leslie Grove's book Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project
I feel no need to even address the article in detail to be honest. He has some interesting information, but a lot of it screams "cherry picked for my purposes" and flies in the face of several known facts, like the fact that Japan wasn't surrendering, and a general lack of historical perspective on how he approaches a lot of his quotes and information. His entire position on Imperialism screams that he doesn't actually know much about the history of it. Imperialism was on the downturn in WWI, and was dead by the end of WWII as a goal of Western powers, something the author of the article hand waves away by acknowledging while at the same time saying we bombed them because there isn't enough room for non-white imperialists around here! EDIT: The US had given up Imperialism ages ago. It was dead and buried when the Great Depression hit. Imperialism and the authors entire position on it is more in line with the British Imperialism rather than American Imperialism.
British, Dutch, French, Portugeuse and American holdings were still well and truly in Imperial hands at the start of WWII, even if the holdings had become steadily more shaky in some areas (the Indian independance movement). The French attempted to reassert their Imperial colonies immediately after the war, which lead to the war in Indochina. The Philipines remains in the pocket of the US to this day. It's true that the majority of Imperial holdings were unlikely to continue being ruled by Imperial hands, but this has nothing to do with the goodwill of their White masters and is entirely a result of the efforts of those people.
There's ae some great books on the American spin of Imperialsm BTW. And I asked you for a source that indicates the bomb was going to used against Germany before it's capitulation.
Also, check when the NSA was founded. It's very informative. He pretty much lost all credibility for me in the first few hundred words with that one. It's hard to intercept enemy communications when you don't exist.
I thought Japanese messages were being decoded even before Midway?
International and foreign policy motives (To clarify, motives heavily tied to what would soon become the Cold War) played a bigger role in dropping the bomb than racism. Racism probably had a role to play. I wouldn't be shocked. But Mr. Hume takes it to an absurd level that I don't think he's even properly supported. He strings together a bunch of inflamatory remarks and cherry picked quotes and says they say what he wants them to say.
That said, regardless of motivation, in hindsight we do know that Japan was unlikely to surrender. It's not really a debatable position as far as I know. Invasion of Japan would have killed just as many if not more people as the bombings (likely more). We'll never know in the end. X-Day never came and Downfall never happened. All we can do is play the numbers game. In retrospect the bombing did end the war. Alternatives may have ended it but I find anyone claiming Japan would have surrendered on its own or should have been left alone because it was no longer a threat to have a poor grip on historical reality (as it is currently known). The bombings played an important role after the war too. You never know how deadly a weapon is till you use it. Because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no sane person wants to use nuclear weapons, which may not be true if they hadn't been used then (they probably would have ended up being used later in another conflict). The same thing happened with chemical weapons after WWI.
The willingness of Japan to surrender (to certain terms) without dropping the bomb is a well known contention. Simply stating "It's historical fact that the Japs weren't giving in!" without refering to any authority brings nothing to this discussion.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
And you seem to be incapable of differentiating between a nation that is in a state of war with the USA, versus any other nation that just happens to exist at the time. The USA was not engaged in active warfare with "every other country in the world." It wasn't on the verge of starting an invasion that would have made D-Day seem like a gentle seaside holiday with "every other nation in the world."
Because for the purposes of this argument the distinction is irrelevant. The presence of a declared war does not indicate the presence of an unusual threat. Hostility and threat are not the same thing.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Its a very simple position. Can Japan extend any war-fighting capability to menace the USA, its armed forces or areas under its aegis in 1945? (As asked IN 1944/45.) and thus does it constitute any potential threat? The answer is actually YES, it potentially can engage USA forces or the USA mainland, as indeed it did. Japan managed to strike against the mainland of the USA with a weapon. The weapon used was ineffective, but the delivery system was not. It achieved its purpose. THAT THERE constitutes a threat.
And, again, that argument is nonsense because it further extends to any and all nations near the United States or the territory it controls, meaning that the extent to which Japan presented a threat to the US was no greater than that presented by any and all other countries in the world.
Arguing that because the Japanese had the capacity use an ineffective explosive delivery system that they represented something akin to a unique threat, thereby necessitating the use of nuclear weapons to force a surrender is preposterous because the argument that a surrender must be forced in order to end a war is a nonstarter.
ArbeitsSchu wrote:
Nice to know this gets to be a sensible grown-up conversation though. If my "argument" is that bad, you should be able to demolish it without resorting to juvenile name-calling. Of course it would have to be an "argument" for that to work, as opposed to a display of facts. But if that's all you've got, then knock yourself out son.
I've already explicitly indicated, several times, why your position is flatly wrong. The flaming began after you restated it in increasingly absurd ways, while failing to properly refute my objection.
Unusual threat? Who said "unusual"? I just said "Threat". And a "Hostile" nation is quite distinct to a non-hostile one. And again, "all nations near the USA" were not engaged in a shooting war with the USA, and are thus utterly irrelevant to this conversation. But there is little point speaking to you, because you obviously aren't reading anything that gets said, and have resorted to adding emphasis where I haven't used it, and apparently also inventing new arguments I haven't made. I never claimed that Japans ability to threaten the US was the reason for using the bomb. I was simply pointing out the fallacy that Japan was "no threat" to the USA, and a couple of reasons why it was a threat. Here is another: A Japan left unmolested on its home islands would inevitably rebuild itself, especially with a great part of its military still intact and present overseas, in much the same manner as post-Versailles Germany and potentially once more become a threat to the USA (and anyone else in the area.) Thus if Japan continues to be a threat for whatever reason a solution must be found. The response in Europe to the possibility of a rebuilt Reich (again) was the invasion of its borders, forcing an unconditional surrender, and the subsequent division of Germany. Others in this thread have adequately described the problems with an invasion of the Home Islands, so what other ways are there to force an unconditional surrender and occupation?...And so the reasoning continues...
Nice to know that facts still have no place in your world view though.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:I'm not just saying this because I posted the article on page 3, but it seems to me that an awful load of members have been missing a major irony of the pacific war, and yes, I'm looking at you Frazz, especially with statements like these
The Japanese invaded country after country. The allies were the ones being invaded.
So China and Hong King were being invaded, despite large chunks being occupied by Britain and other European powers for a number of years. Ditto India, Singapore and Malaysia.
And what about American colonies in the pacific: Midway, Wake Island, Phillipines etc were they not aleady occupied?
Let's not forget the evils of Japanese occupation, but the west was in no position to take the moral high ground about Japanese imperialism. Hence, the conflcit boiled down to a racial struggle. Germany was nuked, Japan was not, despite the Germans being far more of a threat.
The Japanese voluntarily joined the international Imperial system in the late 19th century and used it to take hold of places like Formosa and Korea. This put them on the same moral ground as western colonising nations. Then the Japanese attacked the other members of the system. This put them on the lower moral ground.
Not to mention that they were just about pressured into such an attack by said nations. As well as the oft forgotten volunteer armies of Taiwanese, Manchukans and Philippines that joined up. People tend to overlook that Japan used the long running British tactic of recruiting locals into their armies, including in some cases Pacific Islanders. Many Asian s freely joined the Japanese Empire because they thought that an actual Asian imperialist power was better than a Western one. The war crimes were primarily commit against Western troops (or those loyal to them) and the Chinese, both because they were actively resisting the Japanese Empire. The morale code of Japan at the time was unique due to the still strong running samurai heritence, POWs were seen as lower than animals because they had lost their honour but still clinged to life instead of regaining the honour through suicide (as stated in my above post, suicide is seen very differently in the Japanese culture). By that logic, it was okay to treat them like dirt and conducting experiments on them, which by the way was a seldom encountered thing (the experimentation that is).
So yeah, the Japanese did some bad things. Did they deserve the bomb? No, but as I have stated in my above post, it was a matter of projected casualties and practical mathematics, in the end both sides "earned" something, the US no longer had to throw their boys away on a war that the public had started realizing could have been avoided if US foreign policies before the war wasn't egocentrical, the Japanese in that their people could come to peace, instead of the entire population throwing themselves at the Americans. You wouldn't believe the propaganda and actual civilian letters and diaries that I have read that speaks of "the ultimate line of defence". To make a long story short, the Americans would have had to wade through women, children and elderly blood to conquer the Japanese mainland, because that was what the population was ready to do.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I don't advocate targeting civilians, just that, if they're hurt during the course of normal military activities (such as atomically bombing their factories out of existence, or strategic bombing their resource centers), then nothing is really lost and no one ought to make a big deal out of it.
The atomic strikes were most definitely attacks intended to target civilians.
In any case, you could make the same argument regarding murder. The point of making a big deal out of these things is to make people reticent of taking similar actions in the future.
Additionally one might make the argument that doing unnecessary damage to anything is foolish because one never knows if the thing in question would be useful in the future.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I will readily change my moral imperatives to suit the most logical answer. I don't believe morals ever have to be solid and immobile; I believe it is a flaw if they are. And the side that lost can see them as bad, sure, but don't be surprised if the greater humanity doesn't see it that way (nor should they).
The problem is that if you're arguing from a generalized position (the side that wins is good), then your argument must generally apply across the human population. The argument you've made above is more akin to "The side that wins is good, if I wanted that side to win." And that is really just a derivation of the "The side that I like is good."
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Survival is required of us. The fact that some people fail hard enough at it to kill themselves (either in the defense of hopeless causes or out of despair) doesn't mean it isn't required, it means some of us don't make the grade.
No, that doesn't follow unless you attribute agency to nature, which is an odd thing to do. A requirement is something which is necessary for the achievement or fulfillment of something else. Survival cannot compel itself without being reduced to a preference, which indicates that it is merely a subjective concern subject to Hume's is-ought problem, and human nature cannot compel survival because humans clearly also kill themselves due to their nature. This leaves nature itself, or God if you like, to require survival and neither of those make much sense outside intentional arguments regarding human preferences. And, even to the extent which they do make sense, the argument will not hold because you still have answer a question regarding why humans should place value on the compulsion of God/Nature.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
And what do you mean by all of nature? I don't understand that point.
I mean that if humans kill themselves, then it is in human nature to kill oneself.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Then we adjust the policy (towards trade) to be pro-survivalist. Nowhere did I say we HAD to fight, I just said that when we do, innocents die, it's called "war."
EDIT 2: Lemme adjust my phrasing: It may have sounded like we were always competing between tribes. I admit, it was a mistake that I said that. What I meant was "when we do compete for resources, rather than cooperate for them, war starts and one tribe kills another tribe." Better?
That is better, but the point to be made is that what you do in moment one affects what can happen in moment two. For example, if we kill group of civilians X, we may find ourselves later struggling to obtain a good they provide which we want, either because we killed a lot of them, or because they no longer are willing to trade with us. Statecraft is such that you can't just look at what is important now, you have to consider what might become important later; which is also why direct democracy is a bad system of governance outside very small groups.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yes, why is it a problem to describe a social convention that is predicated on the morality of "survival is good"?
Its a problem because you appear to be arguing that social conventions, like those which underpin the civilian/military distinction, are not important, or should be discard; particularly because they're predicated on "survival is good".
Well, and "things I like are good" and "things that are good should be protected."
Unit1126PLL wrote:
And what do you mean by all of nature? I don't understand that point.
I mean that if humans kill themselves, then it is in human nature to kill oneself.
Actually I would argue that suicide is a cultural occurrence, but other than that I am not sure what this has to do with the rest of your (as in both you) argument. Care to elaborate?
Vargtass wrote:
Actually I would argue that suicide is a cultural occurrence, but other than that I am not sure what this has to do with the rest of your (as in both you) argument. Care to elaborate?
Well, right, but culture is also a component of human nature. We socialize, develop culture, and sometimes that culture induces suicide so suicide is a property of human nature according to the transitive property.
The reason its relevant here is that an argument from nature dealing with survival must show that at all humans feel compelled to survive all the time. If some don't do so, even its only some of the time, then survival isn't a requirement of humanity; ie. you aren't required to survive in order to be human.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:I'm not just saying this because I posted the article on page 3, but it seems to me that an awful load of members have been missing a major irony of the pacific war, and yes, I'm looking at you Frazz, especially with statements like these
The Japanese invaded country after country. The allies were the ones being invaded.
So China and Hong King were being invaded, despite large chunks being occupied by Britain and other European powers for a number of years. Ditto India, Singapore and Malaysia.
And what about American colonies in the pacific: Midway, Wake Island, Phillipines etc were they not aleady occupied?
Let's not forget the evils of Japanese occupation, but the west was in no position to take the moral high ground about Japanese imperialism. Hence, the conflcit boiled down to a racial struggle. Germany was nuked, Japan was not, despite the Germans being far more of a threat.
The Japanese voluntarily joined the international Imperial system in the late 19th century and used it to take hold of places like Formosa and Korea. This put them on the same moral ground as western colonising nations. Then the Japanese attacked the other members of the system. This put them on the lower moral ground.
Not to mention that they were just about pressured into such an attack by said nations. ...
... .
The Japanese started the Pacific War because they saw an opportunity to seize by force the resources they needed while the European powers were busy, instead of trading for them peacefully. They also had a problem with the USA, who were annoyed by the Japanese encroachment in China. The US cut off oil exports as a kind of embargo.
This all resulted from the militaristic attitude of the Japanese government of the pre-war period. The pressure was caused by their own militarism both from within and by its effect on other nations.
Unit1126PLL wrote:[
It may not be, but the passages I remember spoke of wars as "state on state" rather than "army against army" and that, therefore, the entire state was a target.
If he didn't say that, then he should have; makes a lot of sense.
That second statement made me spit out my breakfast laughing.
As someone including a section on the nature of war in his dissertation as he types, the concept of telling Clausewitz what he 'should have done' is rather amusing to me.
I also enjoy the mental picture I have of Dogma's face of delight upon stumbling across the rest of your post. I imagine it something akin to Morgan Freeman leaning on a table with both elbows, finger interlocked, head resting on fingers, with a massive grin, and saying, 'You're in my world now'.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think that within one's social "tribe" that killing innocents is a bad thing, hence why I avoid doing it myself. But our tribes can only be so large, and so other tribes, rather than cooperating, are competing for resources. So when one "tribe" kills another "tribe," that's fine, it's called a war.
There are a lot more conceptions and definitions of war then that my friend, from Grotius and Cicero, to Neo-Clausewitzian stances and Lenin. I'd suggest a little more research before issuing a definitive statement on the nature of 'war'.
It's one thing to argue if the nukes were necessary to stop the war.
But justifying the nukes as righteous retribution in return for the Japanese military atrocities is appalling. That is not justice. That's revenge. That's is not war, but a prelude to genocide. What if Tojo managed to keep his war cabinet intact, and win his coup against the Imperial government? Would the US be justified to keep using nukes on the civilian population? Who would be left to learn the lesson that the Western powers are good and kind, and theirs is bad? How is killing civilians punishing those who actually committed the atrocities? We have this ideal that somehow our use of force is justified , even when it copies the methods of our enemies.
One can use that same logic to defend the any Pakistani who want revenge against the US for killing civilians via collateral damage by impersonal predator drones. Or understand why some of the insurgents resist the US because we "liberated" the Iraq people from the evil Saddam Hussein after bombing their country into the stone age with shock and awe, and bungling every reconstruction project. And we still are there to maintain a presence so their newly formed "moderate democratic" government will stay line with the US interests. Just because we don't using raping and torture as a overall policy to subjugate our enemies like the WW2 Japanese military or Nazis did, doesn't make our use of excessive force like nuking Japan any less horrific.
Arguing over if it was a good/humane idea to drop the A bomb is pointless, War is exactly that war and the objective is to win and the allies did win...so we get to decide if it was right or not and guess what we decided it was the right thing to do.
The Imperial army got extremely close to being in postion to invade oz if they had I doubt they would have been the most merciful conquerors and I am 100% sure I would not be here today....So yeah let em burn
Jubear wrote:Arguing over if it was a good/humane idea to drop the A bomb is pointless, War is exactly that war and the objective is to win and the allies did win...so we get to decide if it was right or not and guess what we decided it was the right thing to do.
The Imperial army got extremely close to being in postion to invade oz if they had I doubt they would have been the most merciful conquerors and I am 100% sure I would not be here today....So yeah let em burn
But your timeline is all messed up. BY 1943, Australia was in no serious danger of invasion. So how did nuking Japan save Oz?
Emperors Faithful wrote:British, Dutch, French, Portugeuse and American holdings were still well and truly in Imperial hands at the start of WWII, even if the holdings had become steadily more shaky in some areas (the Indian independance movement). The French attempted to reassert their Imperial colonies immediately after the war, which lead to the war in Indochina. The Philipines remains in the pocket of the US to this day. It's true that the majority of Imperial holdings were unlikely to continue being ruled by Imperial hands, but this has nothing to do with the goodwill of their White masters and is entirely a result of the efforts of those people.
Like I said. It shows a rather simplistic view of imperialism that suggests you don't actually know how it evolved and changed and when it actually died or started dying. The death of Imperialism has nothing to do with the efforts of the people or good will on part of the 'masters.' Imperialism died because by the time WWII came around it was already tettering and by the end of the war the European powers had lost the political willpower to continue, and the Cold War was starting. They started shedding their overseas empires within a few years (exception the French but they're French so it kind of makes sense they sort of tried to keep going).
And I asked you for a source that indicates the bomb was going to used against Germany before it's capitulation.
I gave you one. Leslie Grove, director of the Manhattan Project, wrote it in his book.
I thought Japanese messages were being decoded even before Midway?
Now you're just trolling. Whether or not we were decoding Japanese messages had nothing to do with whether or not the NSA was around to do it. The NSA was founded in 1952. It's predecessor in the late 1940's. They literally couldn't intercept any Japanese encoded messages because they didn't exist to do any intercepting.
The willingness of Japan to surrender (to certain terms) without dropping the bomb is a well known contention. Simply stating "It's historical fact that the Japs weren't giving in!" without refering to any authority brings nothing to this discussion.
A well known contention of people who are ignoring facts maybe. The greatest evidence that they weren't going to surrender is that they weren't surrendering and most historians agree they weren't going to surrender (EDIT: to clarify, not surrender without an invasion or some other act that would force it). It's a historical consensus on an issue backed up by evidence. The author of the article mentioned doesn't even disprove it as much as willfully ignores it and throws out a senseless source of information and point out that some officers wanted to surrender. He doesn't prove the point at all (and he really can't).
If you prefer to ignore it and grasp at historical fantasy behind a shield of 'non-authority' be my guest. Doesn't change what we know or what the Allies knew at the time.
No, it was a desperate attempt to stop the war and save lives! It would be revenge if we didn't accept an unconditional surrender and then dropped the bomb!
Again the bomb saved more lives than it took including Japanese lives. You also must consider the future lives it saved by it's demonstrated effectiveness at a low yield. So morally it's still the best choice. It's sad that the Japanese put the world in the position where it was necessary, but that was their choice.
That's basically how I feel about it too, in more words than I would have had the patience to write.
except of course the thousand plane raids going on at the time.
