Seventy years after the end of World War Two, the voices of revisionism in Japan are growing stronger and moving into the mainstream, particularly on the issue of comfort women, who were women forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the war.

One of the most eloquent voices of revisionism is Toshio Tamogami.

Mr Tamogami is well-educated, knowledgeable and, when I meet him, exquisitely polite. The former chief of staff of Japan's air force believes in a version of Japanese history that is deeply at odds with much of the rest of the world.

But it is increasingly popular among young Japanese, tired of being told they must keep apologising to China and Korea.

Last year Mr Tamogami ran for governor of Tokyo. He came fourth, with 600,000 votes. Most strikingly, among young voters aged 20 to 30 he got nearly a quarter of the votes cast.
"As a defeated nation we only teach the history forced on us by the victors," he says. "To be an independent nation again we must move away from the history imposed on us. We should take back our true history that we can be proud of."
In this "true" history of the 20th Century that Mr Tamogami talks of, Japan was not the aggressor, but the liberator. Japanese soldiers fought valiantly to expel the hated white imperialists who had subjugated Asian peoples for 200 years.
It is a proud history, where Japan, alone in Asia, was capable of taking on and defeating the European oppressors. It is also a version of history that has no room for the Japanese committing atrocities against fellow Asians.
Mr Tamogami believes that Japan did not invade the Korean Peninsula, but rather "invested in Korea and also in Taiwan and Manchuria".
I ask him about the invasion of China in 1937 and the massacre of civilians in the capital Nanjing. Surely that was naked aggression?
"I can declare that there was no Nanjing Massacre," he says, claiming there were "no eyewitnesses" of Japanese soldiers slaughtering Chinese civilians.

Former chief of Japan's air forces, Toshio Tamogami, says that stories of atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre in the 1930s are "lies and fabrication"

It is when I ask him about the issue of Korean comfort women that Mr Tamogami's denials are most indignant.

He declares it "another fabrication", saying: "If this is true, how many soldiers had to be mobilised to forcibly drag those women away? And those Korean men were just watching their women taken away by force? Were Korean men all cowards?"

Although they may not say it as loudly and as bluntly as Mr Tamogami, this is a version of history that is widely believed by many Japan's nationalists.

Earlier this year at a joint session of the US Congress in Washington DC, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed deep sorrow for the suffering caused by Japan during WW2.

Mr Abe does not deny there were Korean women serving as comfort women near the frontlines in China and South East Asia.

But he has repeatedly said there is no evidence these women were coerced or that the Japanese military was involved in their recruitment and confinement. The implication is the women were prostitutes.

This is a very murky area. Girls from poor families have been sold in to prostitution in Japan, Korea and China for centuries, and the practice was certainly still going on in the 1930s and 1940s.

But that does not absolve the Japanese military from responsibility.

'We were kidnapped'

In a quiet valley an hour's drive from Seoul there is a small care home called the House of Sharing. This is where some of the last surviving comfort women are cared for in their old age. There are only ten left here now.
Lee Ok Seon is a tiny 88-year-old with thick white curly hair and badly-fitting false teeth. She chuckles as I try to cajole her to speak to me in Chinese.
Ms Lee spent 65 years in China, and only returned to South Korea 15 years ago.
She was born in the port city of Busan on the southern tip of modern day South Korea. Her family was poor and she was sent out to work at the age of 14.

"I had to start work as a housekeeper for another family at a young age. It was at that time I was out on the street one day… that's how I got kidnapped," she says.
She said two men grabbed her and put her on a train. "By the time we arrived I realised we had crossed the border into China. I was sent to a place where there were already several comfort women.
"I wonder why they called us comfort women. We didn't go by our own accord, we were kidnapped. I was forced to have sex with many men each day."

Ms Lee spent three years in the brothel close to a Japanese military camp in Manchuria. I ask her why she didn't try to escape.

"Of course I tried to escape several times!" she says. "Each time I was taken back and I was beaten over and over.
The military police would ask me 'Why are you trying to escape?' I would tell them because I am cold and have no food. They would hit me again saying I talked too much."
She says that she lost part of her hearing and some of her teeth from those assaults.

Revisionists like Mr Tamogami say women like Lee Ok Seon have been coached to embellish their stories; that they are tools of a South Korean government that is intent on humiliating Japan and squeezing it for more money

It is certainly true that the comfort women issue is used by the South Korean government for its own political ends. But there is plenty of other evidence that the Japanese military organised the comfort women system, not least from the men who served in the Japanese imperial army in China.

'Ridiculous to deny'

Masayoshi Matsumoto is now 93 and lives with his daughter on the edge of Tokyo. He has a warm open face and the piercing eyes of a much younger man.

Former Japanese soldier Masayoshi Matsumoto: "I call myself a war criminal"
As a 20-year-old he served as a medical orderly in northwest China. "There were six comfort women for our unit," he tells me. "Once a month I would check them for sexually transmitted diseases.
"The Korean women were mainly for the officers," he says. "So the ordinary soldiers attacked local villages screaming, 'Are there any good girls here?' Those soldiers robbed, raped, or killed those who did not listen to them."
Those who were captured were taken to Mr Matsumoto's unit to serve as comfort women.

After the war Mr Matsumoto became a priest to try and atone for his sins. For decades he said nothing of what he'd seen.

But then as the voices of denial grew stronger he was filled with righteous anger, and decided to speak out.

"It's ridiculous... Mr Abe speaks as if this is something he witnessed, but he didn't. I did," says Mr Matsumoto.
"Someone told me this, 'One who fails to look back and perceive the past will repeat their wrongdoing'. But Mr Abe thinks we should erase anything bad Japan had done in the past and pretend nothing happened. That is why I cannot forgive him," he adds.
Mr Matsumoto sits back in his chair and chuckles.
"One day the right-wingers will come and get me for saying such things," he says, drawing a finger across his throat.

That seems unlikely, but Mr Matsumoto and all the other survivors are now in their late 80s or 90s. Soon they will all be gone - while the voices of denial grow louder and stronger

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Us Southernors have trouble accepting what happened over 150 years ago. This isn't something that's going away anytime soon.

Ouze wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Us Southernors have trouble accepting what happened over 150 years ago. This isn't something that's going away anytime soon.

Yeah no shizz. I read this thread and immediately thought of just a few weeks ago how many people were posting that the civil was was all about state's rights and not really slavery at all.

 gorgon wrote:
"States' rights" is coded language in the South anyway. That's why Reagan infamously invoked them at that county fair in Mississippi in 1980.

But back on topic, most people prefer to think of themselves as good people and their country as a good place. So it all gets rationalized. The citizens say "I wasn't the one pulling the trigger." The soldiers pulling the trigger say "I wasn't the one giving the order." The people giving the orders say "I wasn't the one ultimately in charge." And you construct a reality in an effort to quell all the cognitive dissonance.

 Frazzled wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
"States' rights" is coded language in the South anyway. That's why Reagan infamously invoked them at that county fair in Mississippi in 1980.

But back on topic, most people prefer to think of themselves as good people and their country as a good place. So it all gets rationalized. The citizens say "I wasn't the one pulling the trigger." The soldiers pulling the trigger say "I wasn't the one giving the order." The people giving the orders say "I wasn't the one ultimately in charge." And you construct a reality in an effort to quell all the cognitive dissonance.

Says the Yankee.

Haruspex wrote:
Funny thing is if you read over the speeches and writings of the Confederacy's leaders, you will find that slavery does come up quite frequently. In fact the Confederacy was ideologically dedicated to the notion that the white man was superior and that the laws of the confederacy were morally and logically superior to the laws of other nations. Southern leaders founded the Confederacy in order to preserve the institution of slavery. This was their primary goal, and they made no secret of it. They did not hide their intentions behind flowery language and code-words like the cowardly Southern separatists of today. They did not care about the Constitution. If they did, they would have held onto it instead of rejecting it and starting a new nation.

The Southern states seceded because a prominent abolitionist named Abraham Lincoln won the US presidential election. That's all there is to it. Step into your time machine, go back and ask Jefferson Davis himself. He stated this exact reason repeatedly, and never offered any other rationale or justification for his actions. The South did not want to live in a country with an Abolitionist president. That is why the US Civil War occurred. Anyone who argues otherwise is willfully ignorant of American History and simply enjoys being wrong.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

At least the chinese and korean governments have not commited mass attrocities on the japanese population .

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

At least the chinese and korean governments have not commited mass attrocities on the japanese population .

Maybe, but I agree with Killkrazy, Japan at least did what it could to make up for past mistakes and again, the war ended 70 years ago, it should have been more than enough time to bury the axe. The problem is the idea of trying to "erase" history to make it all better. For me, that idea is atrocious, it's as if they are trying to run away from their responsability. (besides that, they are the only nation who so far was hit not only with 1, but 2 nukes! That's a good enough "karma's a bitch" for their massacres)

And yes, Daston, it's amazing how Europe still manages to keep it's relations considering we've been kicking each other's asses since... always

And going a bit OT: I had no idea some parts of America STILL feel that way about the battles 150 years ago. Damn, that's crazy!

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

At least the chinese and korean governments have not commited mass attrocities on the japanese population .

Maybe, but I agree with Killkrazy, Japan at least did what it could to make up for past mistakes and again, the war ended 70 years ago, it should have been more than enough time to bury the axe. The problem is the idea of trying to "erase" history to make it all better. For me, that idea is atrocious, it's as if they are trying to run away from their responsability. (besides that, they are the only nation who so far was hit not only with 1, but 2 nukes! That's a good enough "karma's a bitch" for their massacres)

And yes, Daston, it's amazing how Europe still manages to keep it's relations considering we've been kicking each other's asses since... always

And going a bit OT: I had no idea some parts of America STILL feel that way about the battles 150 years ago. Damn, that's crazy!

You have to remember, a lot of those people haven't been dead for too long. And regarding the Nanking massacre, are still alive.

My great grandmother went to her grave cursing carpet-bagging Yankees, and seeing the folks moving in from Chicago and New Jersey I think I can relate.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

And yes, Daston, it's amazing how Europe still manages to keep it's relations considering we've been kicking each other's asses since... always

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

Maybe, but I agree with Killkrazy, Japan at least did what it could to make up for past mistakes and again, the war ended 70 years ago, it should have been more than enough time to bury the axe. The problem is the idea of trying to "erase" history to make it all better. For me, that idea is atrocious, it's as if they are trying to run away from their responsability. (besides that, they are the only nation who so far was hit not only with 1, but 2 nukes! That's a good enough "karma's a bitch" for their massacres)

 Ketara wrote:

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

And yes, Daston, it's amazing how Europe still manages to keep it's relations considering we've been kicking each other's asses since... always

Probably because most wars in Europe between major powers tend to be ultimately based on realpolitik as opposed to along ethnic lines. You get anti-whoever propaganda churned out against whoever the enemy of the day is, but alliances have changed so often over the last 500 years that it rarely sticks.

As such, even after WW2 and the Cold War, us lot here in Britain are pretty amicable towards both Russians and Germans.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:


2) Post-war, it got drilled into Germany that they had crossed a line. End result is that Germans learn that they committed atrocities. Japan did not get this treatment.

Daston wrote:
It is strange how some nations take things differently. England and Germany's relationship is fine.....in fact Englands relationship with a lot of places is pretty good considering the gak we got up to.

We even got over certain colonials giving the V's to the King and going their own way

The 'sanitised narrative' of Hiroshima's atomic bombing
By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC News
4 August 2015


Hiroshima survivor Keiko Ogura recalls the horror of what she saw
The US has always insisted that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to end World War Two. But it is a narrative that has little emphasis on the terrible human cost.
I met a remarkable young man in Hiroshima the other day. His name is Jamal Maddox and he is a student at Princeton University in America. Jamal had just toured the peace museum and met with an elderly hibakusha, a survivor of the bombing.
Standing near the famous A-Bomb Dome, I asked Jamal whether his visit to Hiroshima had changed the way he views America's use of the atom bomb on the city 70 years ago. He considered the question for a long time.
"It's a difficult question," he finally said. "I think we as a society need to revisit this point in history and ask ourselves how America came to a point where it was okay to destroy entire cities, to firebomb entire cities.
"I think that's what's really necessary if we are going to really make sense of what happened on that day."


Damage in Hiroshima, 1945

A conventional view in the US is that while terrible, the use of the bomb brought an end to the war
It isn't the sort of thing you often hear said by Americans about Hiroshima. The first President George Bush famously said that issuing an apology for Hiroshima would be "rank revisionism" and he would never do it.
The conventional wisdom in the United States is that the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, and because of that it was justified - end of story.
Is that really the end of the story?
It's certainly a convenient one. But it is one that was constructed after the war, by America's leaders, to justify what they had done. And what they had done was, by any measure, horrendous.


Damage from US bombing of Tokyo (1945)

It didn't start on 6 August. It had started months before with the fire bombing of Tokyo.
On 9 March 1945, 25 sq km (9.7 sq miles) of Tokyo were destroyed in a huge firestorm. The death toll was as large, or even larger, than the first day at Hiroshima. From April to July the relentless bombing continued in other parts of Japan.
Then came Hiroshima.
'There was no sound at all'
Keiko Ogura had just celebrated her eighth birthday. Her home was on the northern edge of Hiroshima behind a low hill. At 08:10 on 6 August, she was out on the street in front of the house.


Picture of a model showing the target of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima

The bomb was set to explode 500m (0.3 miles) above the ground for maximum destructive effect
"I was surrounded by a tremendous flash and blast at the same time," she says.
"I couldn't breathe. I was knocked to the ground and became unconscious. When I awoke I thought it was already night because I could not see anything, there was no sound at all."
What Keiko witnessed in the following hours is hard to comprehend.
By mid-morning, survivors of the blast began pouring out of the city looking for help. Many were in a terrible state.
"Most of the people who were fleeing tried to go to the hillside. There was a Shinto shrine near our house so many came here," she says.
"Their skin was peeling off and hanging. At first I saw some and I thought they were holding a rag or something, but really it was skin peeling off. I noticed their burned hair. There was a very bad smell."

Eighteen-year-old Shizuko Abe was staggering out of the city, the whole right side of her body burned, her skin hanging off. Now 88, she still bears the terrible imprint of the bomb on her face and hands.
Yoshie Amaha, a patient at the Tokyo Imperial University Hospital, displaying injuries suffered as a result of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima on the 6 August 1945.


Many of those who did not die from the initial impact of the bomb were left with horrific injuries

"I was burned badly on my right side and my left hand was also burned from the bomb. Fire was coming closer… We were told to run to rivers when hit by air raids so people jumped into the rivers.
"So many bodies were floating in the river that I could not even see the water," she says.
Somehow, despite the agony, she staggered to a medical station.
"They did not even have any dressing for the wounds. Many injured people lay their bodies down under the roof, so I found a place there as well to lie down. People around me were calling out 'Mother it hurts, Father it hurts'.
"When I stopped hearing that, I realised they had died right next to me."


The crew of the Enola Gay were treated as heroes for dropping an A-bomb on the heavily populated city

Hiroshima was not a military target. The crew of the Enola Gay did not aim at the docks, or large industrial facilities.
Their target was the geographical centre of the city. The bomb was set to explode 500m (0.3 miles) above the ground for maximum destructive effect.
On the ground many survived the initial blast, but were trapped in the wreckage of their homes under wooden beams and heavy tiled roofs. Then the fires began.
Ms Abe remembers hearing the cries for help from beneath the debris as the flames swept forward.
"They were such sad voices calling out for help. Even 70 years later, I can still hear them calling out for help," she says.


Children in Hiroshima, Japan, wearing masks to combat the odour of death after the city was destroyed by the first atom bomb, October 1945.

No-one is sure how many died on that first day. Estimates start at 70,000. More than eight out of 10 were civilians.
If you look up "Hiroshima in colour" online, you will find some remarkable film that is now kept in the US national archives.
A US military team and Japanese camera crew shot more than 20 hours of film in March 1946. It is the most complete and detailed visual record of the after effects of the first atomic attack.
There is high-quality colour footage of the horrific scarring caused by flash burns from the bomb. There are injuries that had never been seen before.
'They should not thank the bomb'
What is all the more remarkable is that the film was not seen in public until the early 1980s. It was marked secret and suppressed by the US government for more than 30 years.
Instead, Americans were told a sanitised narrative of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: that a great scientific endeavour had brought quick victory, and saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.


Radiation poisoning, a previously unknown condition, would claim thousands more victims in the weeks after the bombing

Decades later when Ms Ogura travelled to the Washington DC to see the unveiling of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Museum, she was astonished to find this version of history still holding sway.
"Many American people said to me, '"Congratulations, you could come here thanks to the bombing! Without the bombing you would have to do hara-kiri, you know, commit suicide'."
"That is a very awful excuse. We do not blame the Americans, but they should not say that thanks to the bomb so many people could survive."
A lifetime of radiation secrecy
The atomic bombing has left one final legacy that sets it apart from all the other horrors of World War II.
In the weeks after the bombing otherwise healthy people began dying of a strange new illness. First they lost their appetite, then they began to run a high fever.
Finally strange red blotches began appearing under their skin. No-one knew it at the time, but these people were dying from radiation poisoning.
To this day many hibakusha keep their pasts a secret, afraid that their families will be discriminated against because of the fear of radiation.
"I had bad burns and looked deformed so I could not keep it secret," says Ms Abe. "My children were discriminated against. They were called 'A-bomb children'."
Tears fill her eyes as she describes what happened to them.


Rupert Wingfield-Hayes takes a trip on the tram that survived the Hiroshima bombing
"They told me they had to choose a different route to come home from school because they were bullied and chased by the other children. I felt the pain my children had to go through because of their mother, because of me."
Even today some hide the fact that a grandparent is an A-bomb survivor, afraid their children may find it difficult to find a husband or wife.
The human cost
It is said that those who don't know their own history are condemned to repeat it. Japanese leaders are rightly criticised for their continued attempts to whitewash Japan's WWII crimes in China, Korea and South East Asia.


A file photo dated September 1945 of the remains of the Prefectural Industry Promotion Building after the bombing of Hiroshima, which was later preserved as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Atomic Bomb Dome or Genbaku Dome


Today it is known as the A-bomb Dome, a peace memorial to the bombing

It is also true that terror bombing was not invented by the United States. The Nazis unleashed it at Guernica in 1937 and again on British cities in 1940.
The Japanese bombed Chongqing for six years. The British destroyed Dresden and many other German cities.
But no other bombing campaign in WW2 was as intense in the destruction of civilian lives as the US bombing of Japan in 1945. Between 300,000 and 900,000 people died.
As Jamal Maddox put it to me so well, how was it that the country that entered the war to save civilisation ended it by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

At least the chinese and korean governments have not commited mass attrocities on the japanese population .

 gorgon wrote:

Would a land invasion of the Japanese island have caused more or less damage to and for the Japanese citizenry than 2 atomic weapons?

 gorgon wrote:
While I think dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagaski should be something to reflect on and not celebrate, a few questions come to mind after reading the last few lines in that article.

Who were the aggressors in that war?

Would a land invasion of the Japanese island have caused more or less damage to and for the Japanese citizenry than 2 atomic weapons?

If Japan or Germany had developed the A-bomb first, would they have refused to drop it, or have dropped it in a 'safe', out-of-the-way location?

Did the Japanese quietly reflect on or celebrate the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor?

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

Honestly, I believe it would have been even worse if they didn't use the A-bombs, based on all the accounts we know from the war in the Pacific. If the Emperor said "fight 'till the last" once the US invaded, it would have been a massacre in both US troops and Japanese civilians.

 Da Boss wrote:
Every country tends to be in denial about some of the more unsavoury parts of it's past. If not in outright denial, at the least, they do not like to acknowledge the nasty parts. It's completely normal.

 Ketara wrote:
It's hard to declare your country is the best when you have to acknowledge the past follies of that nation.

 kronk wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
It's hard to declare your country is the best when you have to acknowledge the past follies of that nation.

We were complete dicks to the Native Americans.

We're still #1, though!

America, feth yeah!

 Ketara wrote:


And if you believe it did, then that's your point of view, and I respect your right to have it. I just disagree. The reason the Americans dropped the one bomb wasn't to spare American lives, but for geopolitical reasons with regards to the Soviet Union.

 Da Boss wrote:
There certainly was some experimentation on victims to understand the effects of radiation exposure and so on. And the results of radiation sickness and so on were kept under wraps for a while, so survivors didn't all get decent treatment.

I dunno though. I guess it was a demonstration of willingness as well as power.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

I don't know a great deal about the Pacific Theatre in WW 2 so idk, but did the US give Japan a warning first that they possessed the ability to delete entire cities in an instant? Or did they just go "Surprise mother fether!"

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
There certainly was some experimentation on victims to understand the effects of radiation exposure and so on. And the results of radiation sickness and so on were kept under wraps for a while, so survivors didn't all get decent treatment.

I dunno though. I guess it was a demonstration of willingness as well as power.

Well it seems like a case of immediately jumping to the last resort.

Step 1 should have been...inform Japan of the existence of this terrible new weapon you've made.
Step 2...demonstrate its power. Obliterate some small low population island off the coast but within sight of mainland Japan. Demand immediate surrender.
Step 3...and only THEN begin dropping these bombs on cities if Japan refuses the demand to surrendur.

I don't know a great deal about the Pacific Theatre in WW 2 so idk, but did the US give Japan a warning first that they possessed the ability to delete entire cities in an instant? Or did they just go "Surprise mother fether!"

LordofHats wrote:
While I agree with most of your view, I think you apply a little too much of what has come to be known in hind sight. At the time, military planners were frantic about how bloody a mainland invasion would be after the very brutal Okinawa Campaign. We can examine that possibility objectively in 1946, but in 1945 things were far less certain and military planners (at least in the Pacific generally) tended to plan for the worst and oiten found themselves to be correct so they ran with it.

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:Regarding the atomic bombing...was it really necessary to target a city? Could they not have just obliterated an unpopulated or low population Japanese island as a demonstration of its power and a threat to drop more bombs on Japan's cities?

"See that island over there? Yeah, it doesn't exist anymore. We have X more of these things. Surrender now."

Same outcome - Japan is intimidated into surrender - but with a dramatically reduced loss of life.

I suppose the obvious answer is that those who gave the orders to drop the bombs on cities were bloodthirsty sadists who wanted to test the effects on a human population.

 kronk wrote:

The only way to show people you're willing to do a thing is to do that thing.

 whembly wrote:
^Yup.

Ya'll forget... Japan didn't surrender until AFTER the 2nd bomb dropped. So, dropping it 1st on an uninhabited island wouldn't do gak.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 whembly wrote:
^Yup.

Ya'll forget... Japan didn't surrender until AFTER the 2nd bomb dropped. So, dropping it 1st on an uninhabited island wouldn't do gak.

They had three days after Hiroshima before Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. That's not a whole lot of time to come to terms with what just happened.

 kronk wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 whembly wrote:
^Yup.

Ya'll forget... Japan didn't surrender until AFTER the 2nd bomb dropped. So, dropping it 1st on an uninhabited island wouldn't do gak.

They had three days after Hiroshima before Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. That's not a whole lot of time to come to terms with what just happened.

Should have debated faster!

 Ketara wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 whembly wrote:
^Yup.

Ya'll forget... Japan didn't surrender until AFTER the 2nd bomb dropped. So, dropping it 1st on an uninhabited island wouldn't do gak.

They had three days after Hiroshima before Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. That's not a whole lot of time to come to terms with what just happened.

Should have debated faster!

You must be kidding. Everyone knows it takes three days just to get the committee through the first few boxes of doughnuts and powerpoint presentations!

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Regarding the atomic bombing...was it really necessary to target a city? Could they not have just obliterated an unpopulated or low population Japanese island as a demonstration of its power and a threat to drop more bombs on Japan's cities?

"See that island over there? Yeah, it doesn't exist anymore. We have X more of these things. Surrender now."

Same outcome - Japan is intimidated into surrender - but with a dramatically reduced loss of life.


I suppose the obvious answer is that those who gave the orders to drop the bombs on cities were bloodthirsty sadists who wanted to test the effects on a human population.

 Frazzled wrote:
Agreed but going way OT methinks.

 IGtR= wrote:
Ketara you forget the ideological element to the military strategy in combination with the practicality. America was aiming for a "hard surrender" as this is the most optimal result if one is to achieve long lasting results.

An armistice or surrender due to blockade would not be significant.

Contrast the Armistice in 1918 with the utter defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, equally compare the Korean war with the Vietnam war. Both roughly contemporaneous and yet completely different outcomes due to the lack of spectacular definitive outcome in Korea.

My point is that America needed to utterly defeat Japan for it to start to rebuild as a new nation rather than just to carry on doing what it was doing before.

 Grey Templar wrote:
We did issue a threat to bomb Japan off the face of the earth. But even if we had been explicit saying ''we have a bomb that can destroy an entire city by itself'' they wouldn't have believed us. They didn't even believe Hiroshima had been totally destroyed at first, it really took the second bomb to make them realize what was happening.

And the bomb did save Japan. Even if they wouldn't have all fought to the death like was originally thought, it would have been extremely bloody. Far more than the bombs killed.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 whembly wrote:
^Yup.

Ya'll forget... Japan didn't surrender until AFTER the 2nd bomb dropped. So, dropping it 1st on an uninhabited island wouldn't do gak.

They had three days after Hiroshima before Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. That's not a whole lot of time to come to terms with what just happened.

I disagree. Blockade is generally an ineffective form of resolving a conflict, it is true. But island nations are the exceptions that break the rule. Japan was especially vulnerable with it's low amounts of arable land and mineral resources. If America had wanted to, it could have reduced Japan to being a very primitive society indeed just by blockading the trade routes and smashing any heavy industry through regular bombing.

 Frazzled wrote:


We'd firebombed all of Tokyo and they didn't surrender. What does bombing a deserted island do?

And in the year or years that took how many millions of Chinese would have died?

 Ketara wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:


We'd firebombed all of Tokyo and they didn't surrender. What does bombing a deserted island do?

Unfortunately, surrenders are usually dictated by people at the top. Who, in a military dictatorship, are snug in a bunker underground with the best food and resources.

And in the year or years that took how many millions of Chinese would have died?

Why does a blockade preclude eliminating the few remaining isolated outgunned ill-supplied cut off Japanese troops in China?

 Frazzled wrote:


IIRC there were hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers in China. This would just move the casualties to China.

As you noted, safe in their bunker the command would not surrender. In the end the Allies would still have had to invade Japan.

 Desubot wrote:
Im pretty sure those bunkers where not nuke proof.

no one would of accounted for that.

 Ketara wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:


IIRC there were hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers in China. This would just move the casualties to China.

The remaining Japanese forces had already been kicked about by the Soviets to the extent that some people theorise it was a bigger contributing factor to the Japanese surrender than the nukes.

According to a report submitted by the Japanese Headquarters, there were in the China Theatre (excluding Manchuria), Indochina north of the 16th parallel, and Formosa over 1,385,000 Japanese troops and over half a million Japanese civilians.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Im pretty sure those bunkers where not nuke proof.

no one would of accounted for that.

Actually, considering the (lack of) accuracy of early nuclear weapons, the odds of getting a good enough hit on a hardened position ought to be rather slim, although I'm far from an expert on the subject.

 Scrabb wrote:
Ketara, I think your link there lays it on a bit think when applying moral blame, yeah?

No one knew how deadly the radiation was. The Americans were going to march their own troops through it and all.

Telling us about the persecution the fallout survivors suffered at the hands of their countrymen shouldn't fall on America, no?

And the Japanese navy were like nothing Americans had even encountered before. Unbelievably low capture rates owning to the Japanese military culture owning the vast majority of fighting aged males heart and soul.You've been talking about this whole thing as though Japan were just your average state during wartime. That's not terribly honest.

All that said, I cannot argue with your conclusions. The US didn't need to use the nuke, but decided they'd rather do that than give Russia a foothold. Not keeping the high ground there. This moral lapse occurred before the nukes, it's just that firebombing isn't as sexy as nuking something.

 Ketara wrote:

Telling us about the persecution the fallout survivors suffered at the hands of their countrymen shouldn't fall on America, no?

There's a certain amount of responsibility attached to deliberately giving people a condition that leads to others mistreating them. If I inject someone with HIV, I bear some small responsibility for the subsequent mistreatment of future poor treatment on that account.

I'm not entirely sure who else but America is responsible for America employing nuclear weaponry.

 Desubot wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

Telling us about the persecution the fallout survivors suffered at the hands of their countrymen shouldn't fall on America, no?

There's a certain amount of responsibility attached to deliberately giving people a condition that leads to others mistreating them. If I inject someone with HIV, I bear some small responsibility for the subsequent mistreatment of future poor treatment on that account.

In hindsight. since no one knew that would of happened.

Frazzled wrote:How about the guys that started it.
How about the guys in charge that wouldn't surrender.

Yea, I'm pretty sure they were the responsible ones.

When you point out that there was a third option though, that of blockade, the reaction is normally one of , 'Well, they shouldn't have started it then!' as if the Japanese initiation of hostilities and atrocities gave America carte blanche to initiate them right back at any scale and come out morally unblemished.

 Frazzled wrote:
You said blockade yes. Then I pointed out there were nearly 1.5 million Japanese troops in occupied lands and you were merely shifting the casualties somewhere else, and then you STILL would have had to invade Japan, with then same casualties.

 n0t_u wrote:
Bit naive to believe that.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What would people have the Japanese nation (acting through its government) do?

 Frazzled wrote:


Yes but if I shoot two guys who were making the bullets for guy X so he could shoot guys A-H then there is no equivalency.

You're arguing blockade. Blockade does nothing but increase the kill count.
*Hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops in China die.
*Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Chinese die.
*Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Japanese die from starvation.
*When the Allies STILL are forced to invade, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions die.
Blockade does nothing but increase the killing.

 Ketara wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

Telling us about the persecution the fallout survivors suffered at the hands of their countrymen shouldn't fall on America, no?

There's a certain amount of responsibility attached to deliberately giving people a condition that leads to others mistreating them. If I inject someone with HIV, I bear some small responsibility for the subsequent mistreatment of future poor treatment on that account.

In hindsight. since no one knew that would of happened.

I'm not sure that, 'I planned to vaporise them instead of give them a medical condition, honest!' is much of an improvement.

 Desubot wrote:


But it is entirely different.
while both are terrible anyway
One is a quick death the other is malicious torture over time. the intent matters and saying they deliberately caused rad poisoning is pretty bias.

 Ketara wrote:

 Desubot wrote:


But it is entirely different.
while both are terrible anyway
One is a quick death the other is malicious torture over time. the intent matters and saying they deliberately caused rad poisoning is pretty bias.

I don't believe I ever did?

 Ketara wrote:


There's a certain amount of responsibility attached to deliberately giving people a condition that leads to others mistreating them. If I inject someone with HIV, I bear some small responsibility for the subsequent mistreatment of future poor treatment on that account.

 Desubot wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 Desubot wrote:


But it is entirely different.
while both are terrible anyway
One is a quick death the other is malicious torture over time. the intent matters and saying they deliberately caused rad poisoning is pretty bias.

I don't believe I ever did?

 Ketara wrote:


There's a certain amount of responsibility attached to deliberately giving people a condition that leads to others mistreating them. If I inject someone with HIV, I bear some small responsibility for the subsequent mistreatment of future poor treatment on that account.

besides the original quote?

It's an excellent thing that isn't the case then. The Japanese merchant fleet was obliterated by the time of the nukes, so there's absolutely no question of them supplying Japanese troops in China with munitions.

It's a slow meter of destruction. Food was scarce in Japan, but hundreds of thousands aren't going to keel over and die next week.

Chinese civilians aren't all going to be loaded up in trains and sent to gas chambers,

and Japanese troops aren't going to insist on dying to the last man.

Estimates of the numbers of Japanese personnel taken prisoner during the Pacific War differ.[1][26] Japanese historian Ikuhiko Hata states that up to 50,000 Japanese became POWs before Japan's surrender.[41] The Japanese Government's wartime POW Information Bureau believed that 42,543 Japanese surrendered during the war;[16] a figure also used by Niall Ferguson who states that it refers to prisoners taken by United States and Australian forces.[42] Ulrich Straus states that about 35,000 were captured by western Allied and Chinese forces,[43] and Robert C. Doyle gives a figure of 38,666 Japanese POWs in captivity in camps run by the western Allies at the end of the war.[44] Alison B. Gilmore has also calculated that Allied forces in the South West Pacific Area alone captured at least 19,500 Japanese.[45]a

As the Japanese forces in China were mainly on the offensive and suffered relatively few casualties, few Japanese soldiers surrendered to Chinese forces prior to August 1945.[46] It has been estimated that at the end of the war Chinese Nationalist and Communist forces held around 8,300 Japanese prisoners. The conditions these POWs were held in generally did not meet the standards required by international law. The Japanese government expressed no concern for these abuses, however, as it did not want IJA soldiers to even consider surrendering. The government was, however, concerned about reports that 300 POWs had joined the Chinese Communists and had been trained to spread anti-Japanese propaganda.[47]

The Japanese government sought to suppress information about captured personnel. On 27 December 1941, it established a POW Information Bureau within the Ministry of the Army to manage information concerning Japanese POWs. While the Bureau cataloged information provided by the Allies via the Red Cross identifying POWs, it did not pass this information on to the families of the prisoners. When individuals wrote to the Bureau to inquire if their relative had been taken prisoner, it appears that the Bureau provided a reply which neither confirmed or denied whether the man was a prisoner. Although the Bureau's role included facilitating mail between POWs and their families, this was not carried out as the families were not notified and few POWs wrote home. The lack of communication with their families increased the POWs feelings of being cut off from Japanese society.

The Office of the Provost Marshal General (OPMG) supervised[11]:8 the 425,000 German prisoners. They stayed in 700 camps[14] in 46 states; a complete list may not exist because of the small, temporary nature of some camps and the frequent use of satellite or sub-camps administratively part of larger units.[17] Other than barbed wire and watchtowers, the camps resembled standard United States or German military training sites;[12][18][11]:33 the Geneva Convention of 1929 required the United States to provide living quarters comparable to those of its own military,[15] which meant 40 square feet (3.71 m²) for enlisted men and 120 square feet (11.15 m²) for officers.[13]:xxii If prisoners had to sleep in tents while their quarters were constructed, so did their guards.[19] The three admirals and 40 generals in custody were sent to a Mississippi camp, where each had his own bungalow with garden.[15]

Government guidelines mandated placing the compounds away from urban, industrial areas for security purposes, in regions with mild climate to minimize construction costs, and at sites where POWs could alleviate anticipated farm labor shortages.[18]

Ouze wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Agreed but going way OT methinks.

Yes, I'm sorry that the civil war discussion dragged things OT for a page. My intent was only to illustrate that I imagine it's a pretty natural instinct to want to downplay the awful things that our forebears did. I think there are only a handful of countries that have really owned up to their past unpleasantness, right? Germany, Australia, South Africa come to mind.

Also, didn't Japan apologize at some point in the past? I could swear they made an apology, formally, for Nanking. Perhaps I am misremembering.

 Ketara wrote:
Such reasoning only applies if you run with the idea that an invasion was a necessary evil.

Primarily, that the American perspective was one of complete domination/victory at any human cost, be it of their own lives, or those of their opponents.

It was more about demonstrating the bomb to the Soviets, and forcing the Japanese to capitulate before the Soviets could get involved. Which are perfectly legitimate geopolitical reasons. The question is whether or not such reasons were worth the cost borne by the Japanese. From an American viewpoint (as it had no cost to them) probably so. From a moral/humanitarian one, not so much.

Also, didn't Japan apologize at some point in the past? I could swear they made an apology, formally, for Nanking. Perhaps I am misremembering.

An armistice or surrender due to blockade would not be significant.

Contrast the Armistice in 1918 with the utter defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, equally compare the Korean war with the Vietnam war. Both roughly contemporaneous and yet completely different outcomes due to the lack of spectacular definitive outcome in Korea.

 Strombones wrote:
Wow fascinating read.

Japan's war in mainland Asia is something I need to look more into.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Yes, Japan and its modern history is pretty cool and is usually not well known despite it's importance.

For example Japan was the first non western nation to defeat a western power in warfare (against Russia). Crushing it's navy at sea and defeating the Russians at port Arthur which would pave the way for Warfare in the first world war. The modernization, expansionism and so on right up till its final defeat in Manchuria against soviets and the nuking is pretty interesting. Surprisingly alien too. Japan also showed just how flawed the United Nations concept as (The old UN) a world peace keeping force at the time.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

At least the chinese and korean governments have not commited mass attrocities on the japanese population .

 VorpalBunny74 wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
Yes, Japan and its modern history is pretty cool and is usually not well known despite it's importance.

For example Japan was the first non western nation to defeat a western power in warfare (against Russia). Crushing it's navy at sea and defeating the Russians at port Arthur which would pave the way for Warfare in the first world war. The modernization, expansionism and so on right up till its final defeat in Manchuria against soviets and the nuking is pretty interesting. Surprisingly alien too. Japan also showed just how flawed the United Nations concept as (The old UN) a world peace keeping force at the time.

They also, if memory serves, were amazingly humane to their POWs in WWI. I remember reading some accounts from their German naval POWs about their good treatment.

My how things changed for WWII.

 gorgon wrote:
"States' rights" is coded language in the South anyway. That's why Reagan infamously invoked them at that county fair in Mississippi in 1980.

But back on topic, most people prefer to think of themselves as good people and their country as a good place. So it all gets rationalized. The citizens say "I wasn't the one pulling the trigger." The soldiers pulling the trigger say "I wasn't the one giving the order." The people giving the orders say "I wasn't the one ultimately in charge." And you construct a reality in an effort to quell all the cognitive dissonance.

 Swastakowey wrote:
So yea at the beginning working with the west to achieve this failed (they got ripped off in peace agreements and so on) and so desperation and hate set in and well we all know how it ended.

 Ketara wrote:

Secondly, it's an issue of equivalency at best. Saying you killed hundreds of thousands to save hundreds of thousands is something of an equal result. You can say the Chinese civilians deserve to die less than Japanese civilians, but that's a pretty callous judgement. In most cases, civilians want to get on with their lives regardless of nationality, it's governments that start wars.

Thirdly, it's making the assumption that Japan wouldn't have surrendered shortly or after the application of alternative kinds of pressure anyway (Dan Van Der Vat for example, reckons the surrender of Manchuria was just as instrumental in causing surrender as the nukes).

Fourthly, you're employing some sort of strange psychic vision to decide that an embattled Japanese army would decide to waste their time and energy slaughtering as many chinese civilians as they could get their hands on, and what's more, they'd kill just as many as the nukes did. Which is quite some prescience on your part.

Fifth, Japanese troops being elsewhere doesn't necessarily result in invading Japan so much as it does China in order to stop those troops. You can not nuke Japan, not invade Japan, and still conduct military actions against those troops.

 VorpalBunny74 wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
Yes, Japan and its modern history is pretty cool and is usually not well known despite it's importance.

For example Japan was the first non western nation to defeat a western power in warfare (against Russia). Crushing it's navy at sea and defeating the Russians at port Arthur which would pave the way for Warfare in the first world war. The modernization, expansionism and so on right up till its final defeat in Manchuria against soviets and the nuking is pretty interesting. Surprisingly alien too. Japan also showed just how flawed the United Nations concept as (The old UN) a world peace keeping force at the time.

They also, if memory serves, were amazingly humane to their POWs in WWI. I remember reading some accounts from their German naval POWs about their good treatment.

My how things changed for WWII.

That means 13.7 million men and women who are able to accurately wield a firearm.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

Secondly, it's an issue of equivalency at best. Saying you killed hundreds of thousands to save hundreds of thousands is something of an equal result. You can say the Chinese civilians deserve to die less than Japanese civilians, but that's a pretty callous judgement. In most cases, civilians want to get on with their lives regardless of nationality, it's governments that start wars.

Thirdly, it's making the assumption that Japan wouldn't have surrendered shortly or after the application of alternative kinds of pressure anyway (Dan Van Der Vat for example, reckons the surrender of Manchuria was just as instrumental in causing surrender as the nukes).

Fourthly, you're employing some sort of strange psychic vision to decide that an embattled Japanese army would decide to waste their time and energy slaughtering as many chinese civilians as they could get their hands on, and what's more, they'd kill just as many as the nukes did. Which is quite some prescience on your part.

Fifth, Japanese troops being elsewhere doesn't necessarily result in invading Japan so much as it does China in order to stop those troops. You can not nuke Japan, not invade Japan, and still conduct military actions against those troops.

Do you even logic, bro?

The Japan of that era was essentially the same as the United States of today. Basically, the US of today has approx. 13.7 million hunters. That means 13.7 million men and women who are able to accurately wield a firearm. Of these hunters, if even half of them were to be willing to fight if the US were to be invaded, they would form the largest army in the world; easily able to overpower nearly any military force on the planet. This isn't even accounting the fact that the US militia (policemen, not to mention government agencies like the FBI and NSA), who number more than 1.1 million in active-duty officers, has had training that is the equal of that of some military forces, and has equipment that can even be superior to that of some militaries. On top of these civilian elements, you have thirteen hundred thousand active-duty military personnel, as well as 877 million in the reserve. If, say, the Chinese, Russians, North Koreans, and Japanese all decided to tag-team the US, as soon as they tried to invade, they would face a fight that would absolutely devastate their militaries, even when combined.

That description of the US, as of now, was basically the condition of Japan, only with more fanaticism. Imperial Japan had a population of approx. 35 million people, 5 million of which were active-duty soldiers, and the other 30 million were actively training to fight off a US invasion using any means possible - that means civilian men, women, and children all training to use everything from homemade spears to brand-new pistols to kill US soldiers. Now, while the US would have been more than capable of defeating these forces eventually, the losses would be catastrophic - one estimate had them at over 1 million, which isn't even taking into account the massive civilian casualties that would be inflicted, and likely would cripple Japan's growth and development for decades to come.

And, this doesn't even take into account the casualties from the Japanese occupations all across the Pacific and China (the US never actually took every Japanese stronghold, they used the strategy of "island-hopping" to take only the most critical of checkpoints necessary to defeat Japan, while keeping the Japanese forces stretched thin), which would have to be rooted out if their morale was not broken.

Now compare this with the less than 200k dead civilians from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nukes were downright humane.

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:
Not sure why we started talking about nukes. People may argue about the necessity of dropping the bomb, but no one in America denies it happened.

The Japanese seem to be increasingly denying that many of their worst atrocities even occurred. If you are looking for something to compare it to, compare it to holocaust denial.

 LordofHats wrote:
One journalist once reported that when Japanese soldiers looted a residence in the Seymour Expedition (because everyone was there looting in the Seymour Expedition ). the soldiers were so polite it didn't even look like looting

Radical changes occurred in Japanese culture and military conduct between 1900 and 1945. I read a book about it once but I honestly don't remember a damn thing about it

 dusara217 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

Secondly, it's an issue of equivalency at best. Saying you killed hundreds of thousands to save hundreds of thousands is something of an equal result. You can say the Chinese civilians deserve to die less than Japanese civilians, but that's a pretty callous judgement. In most cases, civilians want to get on with their lives regardless of nationality, it's governments that start wars.

Thirdly, it's making the assumption that Japan wouldn't have surrendered shortly or after the application of alternative kinds of pressure anyway (Dan Van Der Vat for example, reckons the surrender of Manchuria was just as instrumental in causing surrender as the nukes).

Fourthly, you're employing some sort of strange psychic vision to decide that an embattled Japanese army would decide to waste their time and energy slaughtering as many chinese civilians as they could get their hands on, and what's more, they'd kill just as many as the nukes did. Which is quite some prescience on your part.

Fifth, Japanese troops being elsewhere doesn't necessarily result in invading Japan so much as it does China in order to stop those troops. You can not nuke Japan, not invade Japan, and still conduct military actions against those troops.

Do you even logic, bro?

The Japan of that era was essentially the same as the United States of today. Basically, the US of today has approx. 13.7 million hunters. That means 13.7 million men and women who are able to accurately wield a firearm. Of these hunters, if even half of them were to be willing to fight if the US were to be invaded, they would form the largest army in the world; easily able to overpower nearly any military force on the planet. This isn't even accounting the fact that the US militia (policemen, not to mention government agencies like the FBI and NSA), who number more than 1.1 million in active-duty officers, has had training that is the equal of that of some military forces, and has equipment that can even be superior to that of some militaries. On top of these civilian elements, you have thirteen hundred thousand active-duty military personnel, as well as 877 million in the reserve. If, say, the Chinese, Russians, North Koreans, and Japanese all decided to tag-team the US, as soon as they tried to invade, they would face a fight that would absolutely devastate their militaries, even when combined.

That description of the US, as of now, was basically the condition of Japan, only with more fanaticism. Imperial Japan had a population of approx. 35 million people, 5 million of which were active-duty soldiers, and the other 30 million were actively training to fight off a US invasion using any means possible - that means civilian men, women, and children all training to use everything from homemade spears to brand-new pistols to kill US soldiers. Now, while the US would have been more than capable of defeating these forces eventually, the losses would be catastrophic - one estimate had them at over 1 million, which isn't even taking into account the massive civilian casualties that would be inflicted, and likely would cripple Japan's growth and development for decades to come.

And, this doesn't even take into account the casualties from the Japanese occupations all across the Pacific and China (the US never actually took every Japanese stronghold, they used the strategy of "island-hopping" to take only the most critical of checkpoints necessary to defeat Japan, while keeping the Japanese forces stretched thin), which would have to be rooted out if their morale was not broken.

Now compare this with the less than 200k dead civilians from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nukes were downright humane.

The "all mobalized nation of Japan" thing is actually very incorrect. While yes there where some women training with spears and some children, most of them are actually working factories or making crap in their backyards. This total mobalization of people was not for fighting but for creating weapons and replacing their loss of production. As a result we have "last ditch rifles" and the output of military gear was so low in quality that Japanese troops spent a lot of time training to kill themselves with it more than anything else.

While it is true that Japan had a huge will to fight, it did no have the means to fight by the end of it. If America had invaded they would be fighting against only hundreds of Tanks (yes hundreds...) many of which would not have worked, untrained pilots trying likely resorting to kamikaze strikes, small groups of civilians with spears and "Last Ditch Rifles" and that is about it alongside the home army who probably had what was left of Japans drying reserves and gear. Chances are the Japanese would merely have been slaughtered for a while and the population, not separated by huge bodies of water (unlike their unfortunate soldiers in the Pacific), would quickly realize how futile it will be. Especially when most of their gear will not work. Japan had horrible logistics (evident throughout the entire war), dated weapons of low quality (even lower as the war got closer to the end) and could not feed it's own people.

Japan in it's final state was nothing like America. America is not starving, America has the latest technology and has all the resources they need, America is the dominant power of the world (Not merely contesting a region) and finally America is not dealing with desperation on a scale never seen before. To add to this America has not been in a real war for longer than decades and does not have threats from more dominant powers that are surrounding them. The situation is not even similar at all.

All we need to look at see how badly the Imperial Army was fearing at the time was look at the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. Soviets destroyed the Japanese with ease. Likely the same would happen when America landed on Japan.

I do not doubt the Nukes would be faster, cheaper and more contained than an actual invasion, but I also think people over estimate how much loss there would be invading a starving and tired nation. But lets not over hype Japan eh?

Now that I've read up on it, I realize that the Japanese did not have their entire citizenship up in arms. They had approx. 2 million combat-ready militia. However, the issue here is similar to what would happen if you were to invade any heavily nationalistic country - virtually every individual doing everything they can to help their homeland win the war. Think the movie "Red Dawn", only with more of the "no surrender" mentality.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

Secondly, it's an issue of equivalency at best. Saying you killed hundreds of thousands to save hundreds of thousands is something of an equal result. You can say the Chinese civilians deserve to die less than Japanese civilians, but that's a pretty callous judgement. In most cases, civilians want to get on with their lives regardless of nationality, it's governments that start wars.

Thirdly, it's making the assumption that Japan wouldn't have surrendered shortly or after the application of alternative kinds of pressure anyway (Dan Van Der Vat for example, reckons the surrender of Manchuria was just as instrumental in causing surrender as the nukes).

Fourthly, you're employing some sort of strange psychic vision to decide that an embattled Japanese army would decide to waste their time and energy slaughtering as many chinese civilians as they could get their hands on, and what's more, they'd kill just as many as the nukes did. Which is quite some prescience on your part.

Fifth, Japanese troops being elsewhere doesn't necessarily result in invading Japan so much as it does China in order to stop those troops. You can not nuke Japan, not invade Japan, and still conduct military actions against those troops.

Do you even logic, bro?

The Japan of that era was essentially the same as the United States of today. Basically, the US of today has approx. 13.7 million hunters. That means 13.7 million men and women who are able to accurately wield a firearm. Of these hunters, if even half of them were to be willing to fight if the US were to be invaded, they would form the largest army in the world; easily able to overpower nearly any military force on the planet. This isn't even accounting the fact that the US militia (policemen, not to mention government agencies like the FBI and NSA), who number more than 1.1 million in active-duty officers, has had training that is the equal of that of some military forces, and has equipment that can even be superior to that of some militaries. On top of these civilian elements, you have thirteen hundred thousand active-duty military personnel, as well as 877 million in the reserve. If, say, the Chinese, Russians, North Koreans, and Japanese all decided to tag-team the US, as soon as they tried to invade, they would face a fight that would absolutely devastate their militaries, even when combined.

That description of the US, as of now, was basically the condition of Japan, only with more fanaticism. Imperial Japan had a population of approx. 35 million people, 5 million of which were active-duty soldiers, and the other 30 million were actively training to fight off a US invasion using any means possible - that means civilian men, women, and children all training to use everything from homemade spears to brand-new pistols to kill US soldiers. Now, while the US would have been more than capable of defeating these forces eventually, the losses would be catastrophic - one estimate had them at over 1 million, which isn't even taking into account the massive civilian casualties that would be inflicted, and likely would cripple Japan's growth and development for decades to come.

And, this doesn't even take into account the casualties from the Japanese occupations all across the Pacific and China (the US never actually took every Japanese stronghold, they used the strategy of "island-hopping" to take only the most critical of checkpoints necessary to defeat Japan, while keeping the Japanese forces stretched thin), which would have to be rooted out if their morale was not broken.

Now compare this with the less than 200k dead civilians from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nukes were downright humane.

The "all mobalized nation of Japan" thing is actually very incorrect. While yes there where some women training with spears and some children, most of them are actually working factories or making crap in their backyards. This total mobalization of people was not for fighting but for creating weapons and replacing their loss of production. As a result we have "last ditch rifles" and the output of military gear was so low in quality that Japanese troops spent a lot of time training to kill themselves with it more than anything else.

While it is true that Japan had a huge will to fight, it did no have the means to fight by the end of it. If America had invaded they would be fighting against only hundreds of Tanks (yes hundreds...) many of which would not have worked, untrained pilots trying likely resorting to kamikaze strikes, small groups of civilians with spears and "Last Ditch Rifles" and that is about it alongside the home army who probably had what was left of Japans drying reserves and gear. Chances are the Japanese would merely have been slaughtered for a while and the population, not separated by huge bodies of water (unlike their unfortunate soldiers in the Pacific), would quickly realize how futile it will be. Especially when most of their gear will not work. Japan had horrible logistics (evident throughout the entire war), dated weapons of low quality (even lower as the war got closer to the end) and could not feed it's own people.

Japan in it's final state was nothing like America. America is not starving, America has the latest technology and has all the resources they need, America is the dominant power of the world (Not merely contesting a region) and finally America is not dealing with desperation on a scale never seen before. To add to this America has not been in a real war for longer than decades and does not have threats from more dominant powers that are surrounding them. The situation is not even similar at all.

All we need to look at see how badly the Imperial Army was fearing at the time was look at the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. Soviets destroyed the Japanese with ease. Likely the same would happen when America landed on Japan.

I do not doubt the Nukes would be faster, cheaper and more contained than an actual invasion, but I also think people over estimate how much loss there would be invading a starving and tired nation. But lets not over hype Japan eh?

Now that I've read up on it, I realize that the Japanese did not have their entire citizenship up in arms. They had approx. 2 million combat-ready militia. However, the issue here is similar to what would happen if you were to invade any heavily nationalistic country - virtually every individual doing everything they can to help their homeland win the war. Think the movie "Red Dawn", only with more of the "no surrender" mentality.

Ish. Combat ready at the time of invasion would likely have been far from effective. If you have seen the rifles used at the time it is almost laughable. The battle for Stalingrad at around 1 million men per side in the beginning, 2 million is not many, especially if they are going to die at any rate similar to the deaths in the pacific.

I personally think Japan would have fallen pretty easily when word got out that Americans had landed and the Japanese are being told to fight them with Sticks. I heard a quote from a Japanese boy who after the war felt betrayed because after seeing the results of the Nuclear blast thought "how could our government be so foolish to think we could have any chance against a nation with such power while all we have are sticks?" Paraphrasing of course but it just goes to show that people at the time are already growing weary of the war. I am very certain the hype of their ability to fight to the death in an American invasion was simply hyped up to make people not feel as bad about nuking them.

Soldiers in the Pacific had no way of communicating with other islands or the people at home. Word of how helpless the situation was could not spread and ultimately each island had to learn the lesson on it's own (we can see this in diaries of how soldiers felt as the war went on). But on the main land? All it takes is for refugees to tell other citizens as the flee from conflict about how Japanese are dying in fruitless efforts to stop a superior enemy. The people are starving, they have crap to fight with and defeat after defeat they will lose their will. Frankly I think once the soviets crush Manchuria and America lands with ease, walking through Japanese last ditch at defense it will have been over quickly.

I have heard that America had half a million purple hearts made in preparation for the invasion and that is proof many people use for the assumed scale of the conflict. But given how a purple heart medal, especially for a nation like USA, is gonna be important for many decades to come I have feeling they merely purchased that many to help justify the nukes at the time. I mean those purple hearts are still being used apparently. Of course this is what I think as I see no reason to believe Japan could wage a war killing hundreds of thousands with sticks and crap rifles.

Ultimately however, it is obvious that the nuking ended the war faster and likely cheaper than sending in waves of military forces there.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Quotes being messed up now...

Starting fresh.


You are assuming the Emperor will not give up though. Why would the emperor give up at Nukes but not at an Invasion on many fronts?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because an invasion is expected and not something beyond comprehension. Nukes were something alien. No honorable fight to the death or suicide. Only fire and suffering with no option to strike back with your dying breath.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because an invasion is expected and not something beyond comprehension. Nukes were something alien. No honorable fight to the death or suicide. Only fire and suffering with no option to strike back with your dying breath.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
Quotes being messed up now...

Starting fresh.


You are assuming the Emperor will not give up though. Why would the emperor give up at Nukes but not at an Invasion on many fronts?

There's also the fact that the Emperor had offered terms, almost identical to those eventually accepted, before the dropping of the atomic bombs.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

Spoiler:

Was Hiroshima Necessary?

Why the Atomic Bombings Could Have Been Avoided

By Mark Weber

On August 6, 1945, the world dramatically entered the atomic age: without either warning or precedent, an American plane dropped a single nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion utterly destroyed more than four square miles of the city center. About 90,000 people were killed immediately; another 40,000 were injured, many of whom died in protracted agony from radiation sickness. Three days later, a second atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki killed some 37,000 people and injured another 43,000. Together the two bombs eventually killed an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians.

Between the two bombings, Soviet Russia joined the United States in war against Japan. Under strong US prodding, Stalin broke his regime's 1941 non-aggression treaty with Tokyo. On the same day that Nagasaki was destroyed, Soviet troops began pouring into Manchuria, overwhelming Japanese forces there. Although Soviet participation did little or nothing to change the military outcome of the war, Moscow benefitted enormously from joining the conflict.

In a broadcast from Tokyo the next day, August 10, the Japanese government announced its readiness to accept the joint American-British "unconditional surrender" declaration of Potsdam, "with the understanding that the said declaration does not compromise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."

A day later came the American reply, which included these words: "From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the State shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." Finally, on August 14, the Japanese formally accepted the provisions of the Potsdam declaration, and a "cease fire" was announced. On September 2, Japanese envoys signed the instrument of surrender aboard the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

A Beaten Country

Apart from the moral questions involved, were the atomic bombings militarily necessary? By any rational yardstick, they were not. Japan already had been defeated militarily by June 1945. Almost nothing was left of the once mighty Imperial Navy, and Japan's air force had been all but totally destroyed. Against only token opposition, American war planes ranged at will over the country, and US bombers rained down devastation on her cities, steadily reducing them to rubble.

What was left of Japan's factories and workshops struggled fitfully to turn out weapons and other goods from inadequate raw materials. (Oil supplies had not been available since April.) By July about a quarter of all the houses in Japan had been destroyed, and her transportation system was near collapse. Food had become so scarce that most Japanese were subsisting on a sub-starvation diet.

On the night of March 9-10, 1945, a wave of 300 American bombers struck Tokyo, killing 100,000 people. Dropping nearly 1,700 tons of bombs, the war planes ravaged much of the capital city, completely burning out 16 square miles and destroying a quarter of a million structures. A million residents were left homeless.

On May 23, eleven weeks later, came the greatest air raid of the Pacific War, when 520 giant B-29 "Superfortress" bombers unleashed 4,500 tons of incendiary bombs on the heart of the already battered Japanese capital. Generating gale-force winds, the exploding incendiaries obliterated Tokyo's commercial center and railway yards, and consumed the Ginza entertainment district. Two days later, on May 25, a second strike of 502 "Superfortress" planes roared low over Tokyo, raining down some 4,000 tons of explosives. Together these two B-29 raids destroyed 56 square miles of the Japanese capital.

Even before the Hiroshima attack, American air force General Curtis LeMay boasted that American bombers were "driving them [Japanese] back to the stone age." Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, commanding General of the Army air forces, declared in his 1949 memoirs: "It always appeared to us, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." This was confirmed by former Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoye, who said: "Fundamentally, the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s."

Japan Seeks Peace

Months before the end of the war, Japan's leaders recognized that defeat was inevitable. In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. When Germany capitulated in early May, the Japanese understood that the British and Americans would now direct the full fury of their awesome military power exclusively against them.

American officials, having long since broken Japan's secret codes, knew from intercepted messages that the country's leaders were seeking to end the war on terms as favorable as possible. Details of these efforts were known from decoded secret communications between the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and Japanese diplomats abroad.

In his 1965 study, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (pp. 107, 108), historian Gar Alperovitz writes:

Although Japanese peace feelers had been sent out as early as September 1944 (and [China's] Chiang Kai-shek had been approached regarding surrender possibilities in December 1944), the real effort to end the war began in the spring of 1945. This effort stressed the role of the Soviet Union ...

In mid-April [1945] the [US] Joint Intelligence Committee reported that Japanese leaders were looking for a way to modify the surrender terms to end the war. The State Department was convinced the Emperor was actively seeking a way to stop the fighting.

A Secret Memorandum

It was only after the war that the American public learned about Japan's efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan, for example, was obliged by wartime censorship to withhold for seven months one of the most important stories of the war.

In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
Surrender of designated war criminals.
Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):

The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.

Peace Overtures

In April and May 1945, Japan made three attempts through neutral Sweden and Portugal to bring the war to a peaceful end. On April 7, acting Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu met with Swedish ambassador Widon Bagge in Tokyo, asking him "to ascertain what peace terms the United States and Britain had in mind." But he emphasized that unconditional surrender was unacceptable, and that "the Emperor must not be touched." Bagge relayed the message to the United States, but Secretary of State Stettinius told the US Ambassador in Sweden to "show no interest or take any initiative in pursuit of the matter." Similar Japanese peace signals through Portugal, on May 7, and again through Sweden, on the 10th, proved similarly fruitless.

By mid-June, six members of Japan's Supreme War Council had secretly charged Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo with the task of approaching Soviet Russia's leaders "with a view to terminating the war if possible by September." On June 22 the Emperor called a meeting of the Supreme War Council, which included the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the leading military figures. "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers," said Emperor Hirohito. "We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will strive now to study the ways and the means to conclude the war. In doing so, try not to be bound by the decisions you have made in the past."

By early July the US had intercepted messages from Togo to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, showing that the Emperor himself was taking a personal hand in the peace effort, and had directed that the Soviet Union be asked to help end the war. US officials also knew that the key obstacle to ending the war was American insistence on "unconditional surrender," a demand that precluded any negotiations. The Japanese were willing to accept nearly everything, except turning over their semi-divine Emperor. Heir of a 2,600-year-old dynasty, Hirohito was regarded by his people as a "living god" who personified the nation. (Until the August 15 radio broadcast of his surrender announcement, the Japanese people had never heard his voice.) Japanese particularly feared that the Americans would humiliate the Emperor, and even execute him as a war criminal.

On July 12, Hirohito summoned Fumimaro Konoye, who had served as prime minister in 1940-41. Explaining that "it will be necessary to terminate the war without delay," the Emperor said that he wished Konoye to secure peace with the Americans and British through the Soviets. As Prince Konoye later recalled, the Emperor instructed him "to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity."

The next day, July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow: "See [Soviet foreign minister] Molotov before his departure for Potsdam ... Convey His Majesty's strong desire to secure a termination of the war ... Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace ..."

On July 17, another intercepted Japanese message revealed that although Japan's leaders felt that the unconditional surrender formula involved an unacceptable dishonor, they were convinced that "the demands of the times" made Soviet mediation to terminate the war absolutely essential. Further diplomatic messages indicated that the only condition asked by the Japanese was preservation of "our form of government." The only "difficult point," a July 25 message disclosed, "is the ... formality of unconditional surrender."

Summarizing the messages between Togo and Sato, US naval intelligence said that Japan's leaders, "though still balking at the term unconditional surrender," recognized that the war was lost, and had reached the point where they have "no objection to the restoration of peace on the basis of the [1941] Atlantic Charter." These messages, said Assistant Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss, "indeed stipulated only that the integrity of the Japanese Royal Family be preserved."

Navy Secretary James Forrestal termed the intercepted messages "real evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war." "With the interception of these messages," notes historian Alperovitz (p. 177), "there could no longer be any real doubt as to the Japanese intentions; the maneuvers were overt and explicit and, most of all, official acts. Koichi Kido, Japan's Lord Privy Seal and a close advisor to the Emperor, later affirmed: "Our decision to seek a way out of this war, was made in early June before any atomic bomb had been dropped and Russia had not entered the war. It was already our decision."

In spite of this, on July 26 the leaders of the United States and Britain issued the Potsdam declaration, which included this grim ultimatum: "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces and to provide proper and adequate assurance of good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

Commenting on this draconian either-or proclamation, British historian J.F.C. Fuller wrote: "Not a word was said about the Emperor, because it would be unacceptable to the propaganda-fed American masses." (A Military History of the Western World [1987], p. 675.)

America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.

The sad irony is that, as it actually turned out, the American leaders decided anyway to retain the Emperor as a symbol of authority and continuity. They realized, correctly, that Hirohito was useful as a figurehead prop for their own occupation authority in postwar Japan.

Justifications

President Truman steadfastly defended his use of the atomic bomb, claiming that it "saved millions of lives" by bringing the war to a quick end. Justifying his decision, he went so far as to declare: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

This was a preposterous statement. In fact, almost all of the victims were civilians, and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (issued in 1946) stated in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."

If the atomic bomb was dropped to impress the Japanese leaders with the immense destructive power of a new weapon, this could have been accomplished by deploying it on an isolated military base. It was not necessary to destroy a large city. And whatever the justification for the Hiroshima blast, it is much more difficult to defend the second bombing of Nagasaki.

All the same, most Americans accepted, and continue to accept, the official justifications for the bombings. Accustomed to crude propagandistic portrayals of the "Japs" as virtually subhuman beasts, most Americans in 1945 heartily welcomed any new weapon that would wipe out more of the detested Asians, and help avenge the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the young Americans who were fighting the Japanese in bitter combat, the attitude was "Thank God for the atom bomb." Almost to a man, they were grateful for a weapon whose deployment seemed to end the war and thus allow them to return home.

After the July 1943 firestorm destruction of Hamburg, the mid-February 1945 holocaust of Dresden, and the fire-bombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, America's leaders -- as US Army General Leslie Groves later commented -- "were generally inured to the mass killing of civilians." For President Harry Truman, the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians was simply not a consideration in his decision to use the atom bomb.

Critical Voices

Amid the general clamor of enthusiasm, there were some who had grave misgivings. "We are the inheritors to the mantle of Genghis Khan," wrote New York Times editorial writer Hanson Baldwin, "and of all those in history who have justified the use of utter ruthlessness in war." Norman Thomas called Nagasaki "the greatest single atrocity of a very cruel war." Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the President, was similarly appalled.

A leading voice of American Protestantism, Christian Century, strongly condemned the bombings. An editorial entitled "America's Atomic Atrocity" in the issue of August 29, 1945, told readers:

The atomic bomb was used at a time when Japan's navy was sunk, her air force virtually destroyed, her homeland surrounded, her supplies cut off, and our forces poised for the final stroke ... Our leaders seem not to have weighed the moral considerations involved. No sooner was the bomb ready than it was rushed to the front and dropped on two helpless cities ... The atomic bomb can fairly be said to have struck Christianity itself ... The churches of America must dissociate themselves and their faith from this inhuman and reckless act of the American Government.

A leading American Catholic voice, Commonweal, took a similar view. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the magazine editorialized, "are names for American guilt and shame."

Pope Pius XII likewise condemned the bombings, expressing a view in keeping with the traditional Roman Catholic position that "every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man." The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano commented in its August 7, 1945, issue: "This war provides a catastrophic conclusion. Incredibly this destructive weapon remains as a temptation for posterity, which, we know by bitter experience, learns so little from history."

Authoritative Voices of Dissent

American leaders who were in a position to know the facts did not believe, either at the time or later, that the atomic bombings were needed to end the war.

When he was informed in mid-July 1945 by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson of the decision to use the atomic bomb, General Dwight Eisenhower was deeply troubled. He disclosed his strong reservations about using the new weapon in his 1963 memoir, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (pp. 312-313):

During his [Stimson's] recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face."

"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing ... I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon," Eisenhower said in 1963.

Shortly after "V-J Day," the end of the Pacific war, Brig. General Bonnie Fellers summed up in a memo for General MacArthur: "Neither the atomic bombing nor the entry of the Soviet Union into the war forced Japan's unconditional surrender. She was defeated before either these events took place."

Similarly, Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, later commented:

It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan ... The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons ... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

If the United States had been willing to wait, said Admiral Ernest King, US Chief of Naval Operations, "the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials."

Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued against its use. "Japan was essentially defeated," he said, and "it would be wrong to attack its cities with atomic bombs as if atomic bombs were simply another military weapon." In a 1960 magazine article, Szilard wrote: "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them."

US Strategic Bombing Survey Verdict

After studying this matter in great detail, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey rejected the notion that Japan gave up because of the atomic bombings. In its authoritative 1946 report, the Survey concluded:

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did not defeat Japan, nor by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender. The Emperor, the Lord Privy Seal, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the Navy Minister had decided as early as May of 1945 that the war should be ended even if it meant acceptance of defeat on allied terms ...

The mission of the Suzuki government, appointed 7 April 1945, was to make peace. An appearance of negotiating for terms less onerous than unconditional surrender was maintained in order to contain the military and bureaucratic elements still determined on a final Bushido defense, and perhaps even more importantly to obtain freedom to create peace with a minimum of personal danger and internal obstruction. It seems clear, however, that in extremis the peacemakers would have peace, and peace on any terms. This was the gist of advice given to Hirohito by the Jushin in February, the declared conclusion of Kido in April, the underlying reason for Koiso's fall in April, the specific injunction of the Emperor to Suzuki on becoming premier which was known to all members of his cabinet ...

Negotiations for Russia to intercede began the forepart of May 1945 in both Tokyo and Moscow. Konoye, the intended emissary to the Soviets, stated to the Survey that while ostensibly he was to negotiate, he received direct and secret instructions from the Emperor to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity ...

It seems clear ... that air supremacy and its later exploitation over Japan proper was the major factor which determined the timing of Japan's surrender and obviated any need for invasion.

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 [the date of the planned American invasion], 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.

Historians' Views

In a 1986 study, historian and journalist Edwin P. Hoyt nailed the "great myth, perpetuated by well-meaning people throughout the world," that "the atomic bomb caused the surrender of Japan." In Japan's War: The Great Pacific Conflict (p. 420), he explained:

The fact is that as far as the Japanese militarists were concerned, the atomic bomb was just another weapon. The two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were icing on the cake, and did not do as much damage as the firebombings of Japanese cities. The B-29 firebombing campaign had brought the destruction of 3,100,000 homes, leaving 15 million people homeless, and killing about a million of them. It was the ruthless firebombing, and Hirohito's realization that if necessary the Allies would completely destroy Japan and kill every Japanese to achieve "unconditional surrender" that persuaded him to the decision to end the war. The atomic bomb is indeed a fearsome weapon, but it was not the cause of Japan's surrender, even though the myth persists even to this day.

In a trenchant new book, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Praeger, 1996), historian Dennis D. Wainstock concludes that the bombings were not only unnecessary, but were based on a vengeful policy that actually harmed American interests. He writes (pp. 124, 132):

... By April 1945, Japan's leaders realized that the war was lost. Their main stumbling block to surrender was the United States' insistence on unconditional surrender. They specifically needed to know whether the United States would allow Hirohito to remain on the throne. They feared that the United States would depose him, try him as a war criminal, or even execute him ...

Unconditional surrender was a policy of revenge, and it hurt America's national self-interest. It prolonged the war in both Europe and East Asia, and it helped to expand Soviet power in those areas.

General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of US Army forces in the Pacific, stated on numerous occasions before his death that the atomic bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view: "My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender."

General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war."

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because an invasion is expected and not something beyond comprehension. Nukes were something alien. No honorable fight to the death or suicide. Only fire and suffering with no option to strike back with your dying breath.

Japan had already been totally ruined by conventional bombing. All the Nuke did was condense that into a single bomb.

It was completely unnecessary.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think you are undervaluing the ideological ''brainwashing'' that the Japanese were under. Even if the bombs weren't important in a material way, they were very important for the psychological victory. Its one thing to use a million bombs, its another to use only one.

I think the bombs were vital in destroying the destructive Bushido code and its twisted derivations that the Japanese had allowed to grip their culture. Thus avoiding a similar situation like ww1 had on Germany leading to a future conflict. Allowing Japan to make peace on their own terms would have only allowed Japan to remain militarized, potentially leading to future conflict. Particularly during the Cold War.

Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
Surrender of designated war criminals.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think you are undervaluing the ideological ''brainwashing'' that the Japanese were under.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think you are undervaluing the ideological ''brainwashing'' that the Japanese were under. Even if the bombs weren't important in a material way, they were very important for the psychological victory. Its one thing to use a million bombs, its another to use only one.

I think the bombs were vital in destroying the destructive Bushido code and its twisted derivations that the Japanese had allowed to grip their culture. Thus avoiding a similar situation like ww1 had on Germany leading to a future conflict. Allowing Japan to make peace on their own terms would have only allowed Japan to remain militarized, potentially leading to future conflict. Particularly during the Cold War.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
Quotes being messed up now...

Starting fresh.


You are assuming the Emperor will not give up though. Why would the emperor give up at Nukes but not at an Invasion on many fronts?

There's also the fact that the Emperor had offered terms, almost identical to those eventually accepted, before the dropping of the atomic bombs.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

Spoiler:

Was Hiroshima Necessary?

Why the Atomic Bombings Could Have Been Avoided

By Mark Weber

On August 6, 1945, the world dramatically entered the atomic age: without either warning or precedent, an American plane dropped a single nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion utterly destroyed more than four square miles of the city center. About 90,000 people were killed immediately; another 40,000 were injured, many of whom died in protracted agony from radiation sickness. Three days later, a second atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki killed some 37,000 people and injured another 43,000. Together the two bombs eventually killed an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians.

Between the two bombings, Soviet Russia joined the United States in war against Japan. Under strong US prodding, Stalin broke his regime's 1941 non-aggression treaty with Tokyo. On the same day that Nagasaki was destroyed, Soviet troops began pouring into Manchuria, overwhelming Japanese forces there. Although Soviet participation did little or nothing to change the military outcome of the war, Moscow benefitted enormously from joining the conflict.

In a broadcast from Tokyo the next day, August 10, the Japanese government announced its readiness to accept the joint American-British "unconditional surrender" declaration of Potsdam, "with the understanding that the said declaration does not compromise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."

A day later came the American reply, which included these words: "From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the State shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." Finally, on August 14, the Japanese formally accepted the provisions of the Potsdam declaration, and a "cease fire" was announced. On September 2, Japanese envoys signed the instrument of surrender aboard the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

A Beaten Country

Apart from the moral questions involved, were the atomic bombings militarily necessary? By any rational yardstick, they were not. Japan already had been defeated militarily by June 1945. Almost nothing was left of the once mighty Imperial Navy, and Japan's air force had been all but totally destroyed. Against only token opposition, American war planes ranged at will over the country, and US bombers rained down devastation on her cities, steadily reducing them to rubble.

What was left of Japan's factories and workshops struggled fitfully to turn out weapons and other goods from inadequate raw materials. (Oil supplies had not been available since April.) By July about a quarter of all the houses in Japan had been destroyed, and her transportation system was near collapse. Food had become so scarce that most Japanese were subsisting on a sub-starvation diet.

On the night of March 9-10, 1945, a wave of 300 American bombers struck Tokyo, killing 100,000 people. Dropping nearly 1,700 tons of bombs, the war planes ravaged much of the capital city, completely burning out 16 square miles and destroying a quarter of a million structures. A million residents were left homeless.

On May 23, eleven weeks later, came the greatest air raid of the Pacific War, when 520 giant B-29 "Superfortress" bombers unleashed 4,500 tons of incendiary bombs on the heart of the already battered Japanese capital. Generating gale-force winds, the exploding incendiaries obliterated Tokyo's commercial center and railway yards, and consumed the Ginza entertainment district. Two days later, on May 25, a second strike of 502 "Superfortress" planes roared low over Tokyo, raining down some 4,000 tons of explosives. Together these two B-29 raids destroyed 56 square miles of the Japanese capital.

Even before the Hiroshima attack, American air force General Curtis LeMay boasted that American bombers were "driving them [Japanese] back to the stone age." Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, commanding General of the Army air forces, declared in his 1949 memoirs: "It always appeared to us, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." This was confirmed by former Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoye, who said: "Fundamentally, the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s."

Japan Seeks Peace

Months before the end of the war, Japan's leaders recognized that defeat was inevitable. In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. When Germany capitulated in early May, the Japanese understood that the British and Americans would now direct the full fury of their awesome military power exclusively against them.

American officials, having long since broken Japan's secret codes, knew from intercepted messages that the country's leaders were seeking to end the war on terms as favorable as possible. Details of these efforts were known from decoded secret communications between the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and Japanese diplomats abroad.

In his 1965 study, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (pp. 107, 108), historian Gar Alperovitz writes:

Although Japanese peace feelers had been sent out as early as September 1944 (and [China's] Chiang Kai-shek had been approached regarding surrender possibilities in December 1944), the real effort to end the war began in the spring of 1945. This effort stressed the role of the Soviet Union ...

In mid-April [1945] the [US] Joint Intelligence Committee reported that Japanese leaders were looking for a way to modify the surrender terms to end the war. The State Department was convinced the Emperor was actively seeking a way to stop the fighting.

A Secret Memorandum

It was only after the war that the American public learned about Japan's efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan, for example, was obliged by wartime censorship to withhold for seven months one of the most important stories of the war.

In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
Surrender of designated war criminals.
Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):

The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.

Peace Overtures

In April and May 1945, Japan made three attempts through neutral Sweden and Portugal to bring the war to a peaceful end. On April 7, acting Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu met with Swedish ambassador Widon Bagge in Tokyo, asking him "to ascertain what peace terms the United States and Britain had in mind." But he emphasized that unconditional surrender was unacceptable, and that "the Emperor must not be touched." Bagge relayed the message to the United States, but Secretary of State Stettinius told the US Ambassador in Sweden to "show no interest or take any initiative in pursuit of the matter." Similar Japanese peace signals through Portugal, on May 7, and again through Sweden, on the 10th, proved similarly fruitless.

By mid-June, six members of Japan's Supreme War Council had secretly charged Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo with the task of approaching Soviet Russia's leaders "with a view to terminating the war if possible by September." On June 22 the Emperor called a meeting of the Supreme War Council, which included the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the leading military figures. "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers," said Emperor Hirohito. "We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will strive now to study the ways and the means to conclude the war. In doing so, try not to be bound by the decisions you have made in the past."

By early July the US had intercepted messages from Togo to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, showing that the Emperor himself was taking a personal hand in the peace effort, and had directed that the Soviet Union be asked to help end the war. US officials also knew that the key obstacle to ending the war was American insistence on "unconditional surrender," a demand that precluded any negotiations. The Japanese were willing to accept nearly everything, except turning over their semi-divine Emperor. Heir of a 2,600-year-old dynasty, Hirohito was regarded by his people as a "living god" who personified the nation. (Until the August 15 radio broadcast of his surrender announcement, the Japanese people had never heard his voice.) Japanese particularly feared that the Americans would humiliate the Emperor, and even execute him as a war criminal.

On July 12, Hirohito summoned Fumimaro Konoye, who had served as prime minister in 1940-41. Explaining that "it will be necessary to terminate the war without delay," the Emperor said that he wished Konoye to secure peace with the Americans and British through the Soviets. As Prince Konoye later recalled, the Emperor instructed him "to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity."

The next day, July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow: "See [Soviet foreign minister] Molotov before his departure for Potsdam ... Convey His Majesty's strong desire to secure a termination of the war ... Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace ..."

On July 17, another intercepted Japanese message revealed that although Japan's leaders felt that the unconditional surrender formula involved an unacceptable dishonor, they were convinced that "the demands of the times" made Soviet mediation to terminate the war absolutely essential. Further diplomatic messages indicated that the only condition asked by the Japanese was preservation of "our form of government." The only "difficult point," a July 25 message disclosed, "is the ... formality of unconditional surrender."

Summarizing the messages between Togo and Sato, US naval intelligence said that Japan's leaders, "though still balking at the term unconditional surrender," recognized that the war was lost, and had reached the point where they have "no objection to the restoration of peace on the basis of the [1941] Atlantic Charter." These messages, said Assistant Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss, "indeed stipulated only that the integrity of the Japanese Royal Family be preserved."

Navy Secretary James Forrestal termed the intercepted messages "real evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war." "With the interception of these messages," notes historian Alperovitz (p. 177), "there could no longer be any real doubt as to the Japanese intentions; the maneuvers were overt and explicit and, most of all, official acts. Koichi Kido, Japan's Lord Privy Seal and a close advisor to the Emperor, later affirmed: "Our decision to seek a way out of this war, was made in early June before any atomic bomb had been dropped and Russia had not entered the war. It was already our decision."

In spite of this, on July 26 the leaders of the United States and Britain issued the Potsdam declaration, which included this grim ultimatum: "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces and to provide proper and adequate assurance of good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

Commenting on this draconian either-or proclamation, British historian J.F.C. Fuller wrote: "Not a word was said about the Emperor, because it would be unacceptable to the propaganda-fed American masses." (A Military History of the Western World [1987], p. 675.)

America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.

The sad irony is that, as it actually turned out, the American leaders decided anyway to retain the Emperor as a symbol of authority and continuity. They realized, correctly, that Hirohito was useful as a figurehead prop for their own occupation authority in postwar Japan.

Justifications

President Truman steadfastly defended his use of the atomic bomb, claiming that it "saved millions of lives" by bringing the war to a quick end. Justifying his decision, he went so far as to declare: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

This was a preposterous statement. In fact, almost all of the victims were civilians, and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (issued in 1946) stated in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."

If the atomic bomb was dropped to impress the Japanese leaders with the immense destructive power of a new weapon, this could have been accomplished by deploying it on an isolated military base. It was not necessary to destroy a large city. And whatever the justification for the Hiroshima blast, it is much more difficult to defend the second bombing of Nagasaki.

All the same, most Americans accepted, and continue to accept, the official justifications for the bombings. Accustomed to crude propagandistic portrayals of the "Japs" as virtually subhuman beasts, most Americans in 1945 heartily welcomed any new weapon that would wipe out more of the detested Asians, and help avenge the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the young Americans who were fighting the Japanese in bitter combat, the attitude was "Thank God for the atom bomb." Almost to a man, they were grateful for a weapon whose deployment seemed to end the war and thus allow them to return home.

After the July 1943 firestorm destruction of Hamburg, the mid-February 1945 holocaust of Dresden, and the fire-bombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, America's leaders -- as US Army General Leslie Groves later commented -- "were generally inured to the mass killing of civilians." For President Harry Truman, the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians was simply not a consideration in his decision to use the atom bomb.

Critical Voices

Amid the general clamor of enthusiasm, there were some who had grave misgivings. "We are the inheritors to the mantle of Genghis Khan," wrote New York Times editorial writer Hanson Baldwin, "and of all those in history who have justified the use of utter ruthlessness in war." Norman Thomas called Nagasaki "the greatest single atrocity of a very cruel war." Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the President, was similarly appalled.

A leading voice of American Protestantism, Christian Century, strongly condemned the bombings. An editorial entitled "America's Atomic Atrocity" in the issue of August 29, 1945, told readers:

The atomic bomb was used at a time when Japan's navy was sunk, her air force virtually destroyed, her homeland surrounded, her supplies cut off, and our forces poised for the final stroke ... Our leaders seem not to have weighed the moral considerations involved. No sooner was the bomb ready than it was rushed to the front and dropped on two helpless cities ... The atomic bomb can fairly be said to have struck Christianity itself ... The churches of America must dissociate themselves and their faith from this inhuman and reckless act of the American Government.

A leading American Catholic voice, Commonweal, took a similar view. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the magazine editorialized, "are names for American guilt and shame."

Pope Pius XII likewise condemned the bombings, expressing a view in keeping with the traditional Roman Catholic position that "every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man." The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano commented in its August 7, 1945, issue: "This war provides a catastrophic conclusion. Incredibly this destructive weapon remains as a temptation for posterity, which, we know by bitter experience, learns so little from history."

Authoritative Voices of Dissent

American leaders who were in a position to know the facts did not believe, either at the time or later, that the atomic bombings were needed to end the war.

When he was informed in mid-July 1945 by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson of the decision to use the atomic bomb, General Dwight Eisenhower was deeply troubled. He disclosed his strong reservations about using the new weapon in his 1963 memoir, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (pp. 312-313):

During his [Stimson's] recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face."

"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing ... I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon," Eisenhower said in 1963.

Shortly after "V-J Day," the end of the Pacific war, Brig. General Bonnie Fellers summed up in a memo for General MacArthur: "Neither the atomic bombing nor the entry of the Soviet Union into the war forced Japan's unconditional surrender. She was defeated before either these events took place."

Similarly, Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, later commented:

It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan ... The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons ... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

If the United States had been willing to wait, said Admiral Ernest King, US Chief of Naval Operations, "the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials."

Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued against its use. "Japan was essentially defeated," he said, and "it would be wrong to attack its cities with atomic bombs as if atomic bombs were simply another military weapon." In a 1960 magazine article, Szilard wrote: "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them."

US Strategic Bombing Survey Verdict

After studying this matter in great detail, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey rejected the notion that Japan gave up because of the atomic bombings. In its authoritative 1946 report, the Survey concluded:

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did not defeat Japan, nor by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender. The Emperor, the Lord Privy Seal, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the Navy Minister had decided as early as May of 1945 that the war should be ended even if it meant acceptance of defeat on allied terms ...

The mission of the Suzuki government, appointed 7 April 1945, was to make peace. An appearance of negotiating for terms less onerous than unconditional surrender was maintained in order to contain the military and bureaucratic elements still determined on a final Bushido defense, and perhaps even more importantly to obtain freedom to create peace with a minimum of personal danger and internal obstruction. It seems clear, however, that in extremis the peacemakers would have peace, and peace on any terms. This was the gist of advice given to Hirohito by the Jushin in February, the declared conclusion of Kido in April, the underlying reason for Koiso's fall in April, the specific injunction of the Emperor to Suzuki on becoming premier which was known to all members of his cabinet ...

Negotiations for Russia to intercede began the forepart of May 1945 in both Tokyo and Moscow. Konoye, the intended emissary to the Soviets, stated to the Survey that while ostensibly he was to negotiate, he received direct and secret instructions from the Emperor to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity ...

It seems clear ... that air supremacy and its later exploitation over Japan proper was the major factor which determined the timing of Japan's surrender and obviated any need for invasion.

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 [the date of the planned American invasion], 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.

Historians' Views

In a 1986 study, historian and journalist Edwin P. Hoyt nailed the "great myth, perpetuated by well-meaning people throughout the world," that "the atomic bomb caused the surrender of Japan." In Japan's War: The Great Pacific Conflict (p. 420), he explained:

The fact is that as far as the Japanese militarists were concerned, the atomic bomb was just another weapon. The two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were icing on the cake, and did not do as much damage as the firebombings of Japanese cities. The B-29 firebombing campaign had brought the destruction of 3,100,000 homes, leaving 15 million people homeless, and killing about a million of them. It was the ruthless firebombing, and Hirohito's realization that if necessary the Allies would completely destroy Japan and kill every Japanese to achieve "unconditional surrender" that persuaded him to the decision to end the war. The atomic bomb is indeed a fearsome weapon, but it was not the cause of Japan's surrender, even though the myth persists even to this day.

In a trenchant new book, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Praeger, 1996), historian Dennis D. Wainstock concludes that the bombings were not only unnecessary, but were based on a vengeful policy that actually harmed American interests. He writes (pp. 124, 132):

... By April 1945, Japan's leaders realized that the war was lost. Their main stumbling block to surrender was the United States' insistence on unconditional surrender. They specifically needed to know whether the United States would allow Hirohito to remain on the throne. They feared that the United States would depose him, try him as a war criminal, or even execute him ...

Unconditional surrender was a policy of revenge, and it hurt America's national self-interest. It prolonged the war in both Europe and East Asia, and it helped to expand Soviet power in those areas.

General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of US Army forces in the Pacific, stated on numerous occasions before his death that the atomic bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view: "My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender."

General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war."

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because an invasion is expected and not something beyond comprehension. Nukes were something alien. No honorable fight to the death or suicide. Only fire and suffering with no option to strike back with your dying breath.

Japan had already been totally ruined by conventional bombing. All the Nuke did was condense that into a single bomb.

It was completely unnecessary.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think you are undervaluing the ideological ''brainwashing'' that the Japanese were under. Even if the bombs weren't important in a material way, they were very important for the psychological victory. Its one thing to use a million bombs, its another to use only one.

I think the bombs were vital in destroying the destructive Bushido code and its twisted derivations that the Japanese had allowed to grip their culture. Thus avoiding a similar situation like ww1 had on Germany leading to a future conflict. Allowing Japan to make peace on their own terms would have only allowed Japan to remain militarized, potentially leading to future conflict. Particularly during the Cold War.

I think you are over estimating this Bushido code. Especially it's effect on normal people. Japan was more ignorant of the real world than brain washed. A strong sense of nationalism is hardly brain washing either. I think you will find most people in japan where simply lied to more than anything else (more lied to than most nations would lie to their people).

Also I was under the impression what happened with Germany was the fact the terms of peace where heavily unfair. Reparations, demilitarization and the land changes led to horrible conditions which started various political movements and so on. A nuke is not needed to avoid this situation again, instead far less harsh peace agreements are needed. The whole reason Japan went on it's path was because of unfair treatment from the west. So when the war ended it was only normal that it becomes demilitarized but I think USA staying and occupying Japan had more to do with securing its long term peace. If I recall correctly Germany was not occupied after ww1 and was left to fester in it's own poverty and so on.

No Nuke is needed for what you say it is. Frankly the only good reason to use them was to save time, money and ultimately test the weapon on a real target. Japan would have surrendered pretty quickly if invaded by USA and I highly doubt many casualties would have come up.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

Dammit, I didn't think the US government was that fethed up back then. I thought that it started some time during the Cold War :(

War is always difficult.

Though after doing a bit of digging, that site may not be the most reliable source.

Apparently the site is pretty notorious for Holocaust denial.

So I would warn that it is highly likely to be unreliable.

After digging I haven't found anywhere else that corroborates much of what is claimed.

 dusara217 wrote:

Actually, brainwashing was precisely what was going on in Imperial Japan. It's a kind of brainwashing known as "societal brainwashing", or "cultural conditioning". Basically, the simple act of living in that culture brainwashes you to its beliefs, no matter what society or culture that you live in. If you live in a militaristic and honor-obsessive culture, then you will become far more militaristic and honor-obsessive than if you lived in a liberal, free-market economy that values personal freedoms and rights more than honesty and virtue.

 dusara217 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

Dammit, I didn't think the US government was that fethed up back then. I thought that it started some time during the Cold War :(

War is always difficult.

Though after doing a bit of digging, that site may not be the most reliable source.

Apparently the site is pretty notorious for Holocaust denial.

So I would warn that it is highly likely to be unreliable.

After digging I haven't found anywhere else that corroborates much of what is claimed.

Yea looking around I can't find much either. Chances are the original story is true. The choice between nuking them or invading them. I do remember though watching a documentary about it, and seem to remember a situation where the Emperor was about to surrender but militarists attacked the palace and prevented it or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

Here, so after the bombs went off there was an attempt to stop the Emperor surrendering, however no evidence for before the bombs. However they did try talk to the soviets about a surrender but nothing of substance came from that. Certainly no discussions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dusara217 wrote:

Actually, brainwashing was precisely what was going on in Imperial Japan. It's a kind of brainwashing known as "societal brainwashing", or "cultural conditioning". Basically, the simple act of living in that culture brainwashes you to its beliefs, no matter what society or culture that you live in. If you live in a militaristic and honor-obsessive culture, then you will become far more militaristic and honor-obsessive than if you lived in a liberal, free-market economy that values personal freedoms and rights more than honesty and virtue.

Ok... so by that logic we are all brain washed because we take on the norms of our respected countries... so in other words they aren't brain washed they are simply following the trends of their country?

Come on dude, there was no massive brain washing program turning people into nut jobs. They may have been nationalistic but that does not = brain washed.

It's an established facet of our psychology. If something is told to you enough times, you come to believe it. If you are told enough times that surrender is a terrible, terrible, dishonorable thing to do, then you will come to hate surrender. I don't exactly have access to my personal book collection right now, but, I'll try to cite this as soon as I get home.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

Dammit, I didn't think the US government was that fethed up back then. I thought that it started some time during the Cold War :(

War is always difficult.

Though after doing a bit of digging, that site may not be the most reliable source.

Apparently the site is pretty notorious for Holocaust denial.

So I would warn that it is highly likely to be unreliable.

After digging I haven't found anywhere else that corroborates much of what is claimed.

Yea looking around I can't find much either. Chances are the original story is true. The choice between nuking them or invading them. I do remember though watching a documentary about it, and seem to remember a situation where the Emperor was about to surrender but militarists attacked the palace and prevented it or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

Here, so after the bombs went off there was an attempt to stop the Emperor surrendering, however no evidence for before the bombs. However they did try talk to the soviets about a surrender but nothing of substance came from that. Certainly no discussions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dusara217 wrote:

Actually, brainwashing was precisely what was going on in Imperial Japan. It's a kind of brainwashing known as "societal brainwashing", or "cultural conditioning". Basically, the simple act of living in that culture brainwashes you to its beliefs, no matter what society or culture that you live in. If you live in a militaristic and honor-obsessive culture, then you will become far more militaristic and honor-obsessive than if you lived in a liberal, free-market economy that values personal freedoms and rights more than honesty and virtue.

Ok... so by that logic we are all brain washed because we take on the norms of our respected countries... so in other words they aren't brain washed they are simply following the trends of their country?

Come on dude, there was no massive brain washing program turning people into nut jobs. They may have been nationalistic but that does not = brain washed.

It's an established facet of our psychology. If something is told to you enough times, you come to believe it. If you are told enough times that surrender is a terrible, terrible, dishonorable thing to do, then you will come to hate surrender. I don't exactly have access to my personal book collection right now, but, I'll try to cite this as soon as I get home.

Ok firstly normal people likely did not get told this, the army did as part of their training yes. But that is no different from Stalins "Not one step back" or Hitlers "Defend every inch of land" etc.

Again yes technically... it is brainwashing. But so is me being taught math (1+1=2 is technically brain washed into my head). I mean you can hardly use "brainwashing" as an excuse for something. The person who used the term brainwashing was clearly trying to paint the people in question under a negative light to justify the bombs. They where no more or less brainwashed than anyone else. Because your definition of brainwashing is simply a cause of existing in a group.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

Dammit, I didn't think the US government was that fethed up back then. I thought that it started some time during the Cold War :(

War is always difficult.

Though after doing a bit of digging, that site may not be the most reliable source.

Apparently the site is pretty notorious for Holocaust denial.

So I would warn that it is highly likely to be unreliable.

After digging I haven't found anywhere else that corroborates much of what is claimed.

Yea looking around I can't find much either. Chances are the original story is true. The choice between nuking them or invading them. I do remember though watching a documentary about it, and seem to remember a situation where the Emperor was about to surrender but militarists attacked the palace and prevented it or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

Here, so after the bombs went off there was an attempt to stop the Emperor surrendering, however no evidence for before the bombs. However they did try talk to the soviets about a surrender but nothing of substance came from that. Certainly no discussions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dusara217 wrote:

Actually, brainwashing was precisely what was going on in Imperial Japan. It's a kind of brainwashing known as "societal brainwashing", or "cultural conditioning". Basically, the simple act of living in that culture brainwashes you to its beliefs, no matter what society or culture that you live in. If you live in a militaristic and honor-obsessive culture, then you will become far more militaristic and honor-obsessive than if you lived in a liberal, free-market economy that values personal freedoms and rights more than honesty and virtue.

Ok... so by that logic we are all brain washed because we take on the norms of our respected countries... so in other words they aren't brain washed they are simply following the trends of their country?

Come on dude, there was no massive brain washing program turning people into nut jobs. They may have been nationalistic but that does not = brain washed.

It's an established facet of our psychology. If something is told to you enough times, you come to believe it. If you are told enough times that surrender is a terrible, terrible, dishonorable thing to do, then you will come to hate surrender. I don't exactly have access to my personal book collection right now, but, I'll try to cite this as soon as I get home.

Ok firstly normal people likely did not get told this, the army did as part of their training yes. But that is no different from Stalins "Not one step back" or Hitlers "Defend every inch of land" etc.

Again yes technically... it is brainwashing. But so is me being taught math (1+1=2 is technically brain washed into my head). I mean you can hardly use "brainwashing" as an excuse for something. The person who used the term brainwashing was clearly trying to paint the people in question under a negative light to justify the bombs. They where no more or less brainwashed than anyone else. Because your definition of brainwashing is simply a cause of existing in a group.

No, that is not my definition of brainwashing. That is simply one form of brainwashing. It comes in all shapes and sizes.
Here're a few articles and threads about societal brainwashing:
http://silenced.co/2012/03/societal-versus-institutional-brainwashing/
http://www.socialanxietysupport.com/forum/f26/society-being-told-what-to-think-and-brainwashing-169684/
https://accordingtoabrial.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/the-results-of-societal-brainwashing/
http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1271292
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_conditioning
http://mikeperazzetti.com/2012/06/a-brief-introduction/


Basically, the Nazi propaganda minister, Urwin Rommel, was right in his beliefs that if repeat a lie often enough, anybody will believe it.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Except these were cultural norms that were heavily distilled into their society, not something that was a recent development. Cultural values that were hundreds or thousands of years old.

So brainwashing is perfectly applicable.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You seriously can't equate Emperor worship with Christianity.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You seriously can't equate Emperor worship with Christianity.

 Grey Templar wrote:
With a fanatical devotion to a person that includes fighting to the death to protect him. A code of death before dishonor. Fighting to the death is literally the only option besides victory. Compromise isn't in the vocabulary.

Combine this with tales of Americans being raping savage barbarians and its a recipie for disaster. If they were able to convince non-japanese to commit mass suicide what do you think their own citizens would have done? Japan was a very different place back then.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It happened on far more than one island. There was one which had the worst example of it, but it was far from the only example.

The fact is its all speculation one way or the other, but the evidence was certainly there for a large scale fight to the death and/or suicide. Not everyone in Japan, but certainly a huge chunk of the population. It still would have resulted in massive death tolls if we had invaded.

 LordofHats wrote:
That would be Joseph Goebbels

 The Airman wrote:
But Japan has always denied or neglect to mention their own war crimes during that time period, as do the detractors of the atomic bombings. Sure, American did some bad things, as did most anybody else -- but god forbid Japan be mentioned too?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
Quotes being messed up now...

Starting fresh.


You are assuming the Emperor will not give up though. Why would the emperor give up at Nukes but not at an Invasion on many fronts?

[Removed as found to be unreliable.]


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because an invasion is expected and not something beyond comprehension. Nukes were something alien. No honorable fight to the death or suicide. Only fire and suffering with no option to strike back with your dying breath.

Japan had already been totally ruined by conventional bombing. All the Nuke did was condense that into a single bomb.

It was completely unnecessary.

 Frazzled wrote:
If it were unnecessary the Japanese would have already surrendered.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
If it were unnecessary the Japanese would have already surrendered.

True, but they had already offered to start peace talks after being driven back home.

 Frazzled wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
If it were unnecessary the Japanese would have already surrendered.

True, but they had already offered to start peace talks after being driven back home.

And they wanted to keep their conquered territories.

 Frazzled wrote:

Feeling out a third party is a joke excuse by apologists to say "look see, they were trying to surrender, but those evil Americans were evilz and wouldn't let us."

 Frazzled wrote:
Again, you're utterly ignoring casualty estimates by the Alllies.

Your arguments rests on a lot of maybes, could haves, etc.

The fact is they didn't surrender until these events occurred, all of them occurred.

And it worked.

The Americans wanted to keep the Soviets out of postwar Japan, and that was the reason that there was a pressure to invade 'Now, now, now!', and they were calculating casualty lists.

 Frazzled wrote:

The fact is they didn't surrender until these events occurred, all of them occurred.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

Feeling out a third party is a joke excuse by apologists to say "look see, they were trying to surrender, but those evil Americans were evilz and wouldn't let us."

They were trying to negotiate, not surrender. Or at least not unconditionally. A less determined (or capable) enemy might have let them do so. But it had been decided that the japanese should be taken out as a threat for good and the means were available. I'd even say the Japanese are now far better off than they would be if they'd been allowed to keep to their old system instead of being subject to occupation. Which doesn't make the nukes less horrible, ofc - but at the time it seemed like the only way to ensure unconditional surrender without totally leveling the islands.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

The fact is they didn't surrender until these events occurred, all of them occurred.

Correlation does not imply causation. We don't know if Hirohito would've been pushed to surrender by the Soviet advance or not.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

The fact is they didn't surrender until these events occurred, all of them occurred.

Correlation does not imply causation. We don't know if Hirohito would've been pushed to surrender by the Soviet advance or not.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

The fact is they didn't surrender until these events occurred, all of them occurred.

Correlation does not imply causation. We don't know if Hirohito would've been pushed to surrender by the Soviet advance or not.

 Frazzled wrote:
Again, you're utterly ignoring casualty estimates by the Alllies.

Your arguments rests on a lot of maybes, could haves, etc.

The fact is they didn't surrender until these events occurred, all of them occurred.

And it worked.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Again, you're utterly ignoring casualty estimates by the Alllies.

Your arguments rests on a lot of maybes, could haves, etc.

The fact is they didn't surrender until these events occurred, all of them occurred.

And it worked.

And your "Casualty estimates" aren't based on maybes and could haves?

 Ketara wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

The fact is they didn't surrender until these events occurred, all of them occurred.

Correlation does not imply causation. We don't know if Hirohito would've been pushed to surrender by the Soviet advance or not.

That's the key, really. I believe another Japan was washed up to the point Hirohito would have folded within the following month anyway, invasion or no. And I think the potential for overall lives saved, and the powerlessness of Japanese forces was great enough, for a short breathing space to have been advisable, if you look at it from a moral standpoint.

YMMV.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Again, you're utterly ignoring casualty estimates by the Alllies.

Your arguments rests on a lot of maybes, could haves, etc.

The fact is they didn't surrender until these events occurred, all of them occurred.

And it worked.

And your "Casualty estimates" aren't based on maybes and could haves?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Again, you're utterly ignoring casualty estimates by the Alllies.

Your arguments rests on a lot of maybes, could haves, etc.

The fact is they didn't surrender until these events occurred, all of them occurred.

And it worked.

And your "Casualty estimates" aren't based on maybes and could haves?

Casualty estimates which got bigger and bigger every time they were brought up, especially after the devastation of the bomb became known.

 Frazzled wrote:
[

Meanwhile Chinese and Koreans would continue to be dying, and Allied POW's would continue to be dying. There's no logical reason for the allies to wait for anything. Time was Life.

 Ketara wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
[

Meanwhile Chinese and Koreans would continue to be dying, and Allied POW's would continue to be dying. There's no logical reason for the allies to wait for anything. Time was Life.

Perhaps I'm not making this clear.

Event A (the dropping of the nuclear bomb) resulted in X number of definitive casualties. It is possible, that by waiting slightly longer and not initiating Event A, the number of casualties that would have resulted would have been less than that definitive number of casualties. It is also possible it would have been equivalent or greater. But weighing up the evidence, I am inclined to believe it would have been lesser.

 Frazzled wrote:


Prove it. On its face its false.
One more allied casualty incurred for not using the bomb was one too many. And yes I am absolutely valuing the lives of the allies and the subject citizens over those of Japan.

 Ketara wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:


Prove it. On its face its false.
One more allied casualty incurred for not using the bomb was one too many. And yes I am absolutely valuing the lives of the allies and the subject citizens over those of Japan.

I'll prove it if you can prove the casualty list from an invasion of Japan. Which you can't, because this is 'What if?' history.

I'll hold with my own opinion with regards to making my own judgement on weighing up the evidence of what 'could have happened'. You are free to believe as you will.

 Grey Templar wrote:
There is a casualty list. Its zero allied casualties.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:


Prove it. On its face its false.
One more allied casualty incurred for not using the bomb was one too many. And yes I am absolutely valuing the lives of the allies and the subject citizens over those of Japan.

I'll prove it if you can prove the casualty list from an invasion of Japan. Which you can't, because this is 'What if?' history.

I'll hold with my own opinion with regards to making my own judgement on weighing up the evidence of what 'could have happened'. You are free to believe as you will.

I can prove that, absent a miracle proving the existence of Dog, there will be at least one casualty in any invasion or even a mere few day's delay. Thats one more than actually occurred. Your plan is no go on that basis alone.

 kronk wrote:
I hope his daughter doesn't invade Pearl Harbor!

 Frazzled wrote:


If you can't win the argument, make it personal. I'm confident that had the situation been reversed, the bombs would have dropped on the US and this conversation would never have come up.

And on that note I am out. Making it personal was

 Grey Templar wrote:
Unnecessary to have peace, probably. Necessary for the peace we ended up getting which was most advantageous, most likely.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Unnecessary to have peace, probably. Necessary for the peace we ended up getting which was most advantageous, most likely.

Not really. As many of them point out, Japan no longer had the means to wage war. It didn't even have an air force capable of defending its own skies.

 Ketara wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:


If you can't win the argument, make it personal. I'm confident that had the situation been reversed, the bombs would have dropped on the US and this conversation would never have come up.

And on that note I am out. Making it personal was

Making it personal? I'm wishing your family the absolute best I can, namely that if anyone is ever in a position to harm them without retribution, they choose not to do so. If you take offensive at that, there's not much I can say.

I only hope though, that the day your daughter's faces are at risk of being melted off from nuclear fire because of the decisions of a bunch of old men in a room in Washington, the person with the finger on the button is more merciful than you.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Unnecessary to have peace, probably. Necessary for the peace we ended up getting which was most advantageous, most likely.

Not really. As many of them point out, Japan no longer had the means to wage war. It didn't even have an air force capable of defending its own skies.

Sure, but that is irrelevant. The goal was unconditional surrender. Not just a peace where Japan was left alone.

Japan wouldn't have stopped their aggression if America became unable to strike back, why should we have done any different?

That sort of language would rightfully generate a demand for duel at dawn with whippy sticks if we were in the same room.

Whippy sticks...GW's method for the satisfaction of honor since 1982.

 Grey Templar wrote:


Sure, but that is irrelevant. The goal was unconditional surrender. Not just a peace where Japan was left alone.

Japan wouldn't have stopped their aggression if America became unable to strike back, why should we have done any different?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Unnecessary to have peace, probably. Necessary for the peace we ended up getting which was most advantageous, most likely.

Not really. As many of them point out, Japan no longer had the means to wage war. It didn't even have an air force capable of defending its own skies. Japan would have surrendered even if the bomb had not been dropped.

 kronk wrote:
I hope his daughter doesn't invade Pearl Harbor!

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I hope his daughter doesn't invade Pearl Harbor!

My mother in law didn't invade Pearl Harbour, she had only just been born when it happened.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I think I can sum up Frazzled' s position in one word:

'MURICA!

 Grey Templar wrote:
Different times dude. Civilians have only recently been seen as off limits in wartime because, rightly so, they are indeed part of any war effort. They have always been fair game since the dawn of warfare.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I hope his daughter doesn't invade Pearl Harbor!

My mother in law didn't invade Pearl Harbour, she had only just been born when it happened.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I hope his daughter doesn't invade Pearl Harbor!

My mother in law didn't invade Pearl Harbour, she had only just been born when it happened.

I think he was referring to my daughter, thus incurring my demand for whippy stick justice. JUSTICE!!!

 kronk wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 kronk wrote:
I hope his daughter doesn't invade Pearl Harbor!

My mother in law didn't invade Pearl Harbour, she had only just been born when it happened.

I think he was referring to my daughter, thus incurring my demand for whippy stick justice. JUSTICE!!!

Yes, I was referring to Frazz's kiddo.

 Frazzled wrote:
Bourbon! (or rum depending on what week)

 Ketara wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:


If you can't win the argument, make it personal. I'm confident that had the situation been reversed, the bombs would have dropped on the US and this conversation would never have come up.

And on that note I am out. Making it personal was

Making it personal? I'm wishing your family the absolute best I can, namely that if anyone is ever in a position to harm them without retribution, they choose not to do so. If you take offensive at that, there's not much I can say.

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm confident that had the situation been reversed, the bombs would have dropped on the US and this conversation would never have come up.

 Ketara wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
[

Meanwhile Chinese and Koreans would continue to be dying, and Allied POW's would continue to be dying. There's no logical reason for the allies to wait for anything. Time was Life.

Perhaps I'm not making this clear.

Event A (the dropping of the nuclear bomb) resulted in X number of definitive casualties. It is possible, that by waiting slightly longer and not initiating Event A, the number of casualties that would have resulted would have been less than that definitive number of casualties. It is also possible it would have been equivalent or greater. But weighing up the evidence, I am inclined to believe it would have been lesser.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm confident that had the situation been reversed, the bombs would have dropped on the US and this conversation would never have come up.

Oh so thats OK then?

"Our enemy are monsters and they would have done it".

 dusara217 wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:


If you can't win the argument, make it personal. I'm confident that had the situation been reversed, the bombs would have dropped on the US and this conversation would never have come up.

And on that note I am out. Making it personal was

Making it personal? I'm wishing your family the absolute best I can, namely that if anyone is ever in a position to harm them without retribution, they choose not to do so. If you take offensive at that, there's not much I can say.

You made it personal. You can't deny it . We all read the post. Nothing left to do but move on and continue the pointless argument.

 easysauce wrote:


I know this offends many left sensibilities... but war is literally kill or be killed... yes japan would have done it, if they are willing to *start the war* and kamikaze their own people, you can bet they were willing to nuke American cities had the roles been reversed.

the USA would also have quickly surrendered once it knew it had zero chance of survival if it didnt.

You should feel extraordinarily lucky that a state like the USA was the first to come up with the bomb.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm confident that had the situation been reversed, the bombs would have dropped on the US and this conversation would never have come up.

Oh so thats OK then?

"Our enemy are monsters and they would have done it".

So Frazzled is OK with the vaporization and horrific mutilation of hundreds of thousands of Japanese people (many of them daughters), but the moment someone brings up his own daughter and expresses a wish that should the situation ever be reversed that his enemy would have mercy...suddenly THAT is inappropriate?

Try applying that logic to ISIS.

Still think its OK to be every bit as evil and brutal as your enemy?

 Frazzled wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm confident that had the situation been reversed, the bombs would have dropped on the US and this conversation would never have come up.

Oh so thats OK then?

"Our enemy are monsters and they would have done it".

You're saying it like its a bad thing.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm confident that had the situation been reversed, the bombs would have dropped on the US and this conversation would never have come up.

Oh so thats OK then?

"Our enemy are monsters and they would have done it".

You're saying it like its a bad thing.

You're saying that being a sick sadistic fether is a good thing?

 Grey Templar wrote:
All is fair in love and war. Pulling punches makes no sense unless the other guy is also doing it.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
All is fair in love and war. Pulling punches makes no sense unless the other guy is also doing it.

All that does is create an ever escalating cycle of violence.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
All is fair in love and war. Pulling punches makes no sense unless the other guy is also doing it.

All that does is create an ever escalating cycle of violence.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
All is fair in love and war. Pulling punches makes no sense unless the other guy is also doing it.

All that does is create an ever escalating cycle of violence.

 Grey Templar wrote:
All is fair in love and war. Pulling punches makes no sense unless the other guy is also doing it.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To be fair, while the Allies did not want the war, they basically put Japan into a situation where (given the Japanese government of the time) they were going to have to go to war with somebody (and one could argue that warfare had already begun by economic means), and the western allies were the logical target in many respects, and had a not-unrealistic chance of making something work.