Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
2015/08/05 22:00:48
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
Ketara wrote: Such reasoning only applies if you run with the idea that an invasion was a necessary evil.
Given the geopolitical goals/fears of the Western Allies, it became such. At least to an extent, those fears were well founded, because that part turned out to be real.A blockade would simply be allowing the Soviets to overrun Manchuria, China, and Korea, which at the time especially worried the United States.
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.
Yeah. The Unconditional Surrender Doctrine probably fits into this fairly well.
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.
I think part of the larger issue is that the Atomic Bomb can be viewed as a mere, albeit extreme, continuation of the larger Allied Strategic Bombing campaign which is itself morally and strategically dubious, and American insistence that surrender be unconditional.
Let us assume the Allies did enact a blockade. I think it hard to fathom Japan would ever accept Unconditional Surrender. All overtures made by the Imperial government before the Atomic Bombs were at the explicit cost of a Conditional Surrender, Something that for better or worse, FDR and Truman after him were refusing to accept. A blockade in itself, is unlikely to extort surrender from Japan. The strategic bombing campaign would have likely continued under a blockade and Japanese civilians would have continued to die. Even without the bombs, the Allied fleet would be vulnerable under a blockade to the large build up of Kamikaze fighters operating from the shore which at the time Olympic was being planned were very numerous. The Blockade scenario would have undoubtedly prolonged the war for who knows how long, and people on both sides would have simply continued killing each other. Plus the Soviets would have been unleashed on Asia and who knows how that would have turned out.
An invasion scenario I think would have been less bloody on the whole than Allied planners feared in 1945. The lion share of deaths would have come from the immediate invasion on Kyushu, but once that was cleared... Japan basically had nothing else to even offer token resistance with. The Civilian militias, if Germany is any similar indication, would likely break of their own accord when faced by Allied troops and once the kamikaze planes were used up, there weren't going to be anymore. However we can look at the mass civilian deaths on Okinawa (mass suicides by a fearful populace) and even if the Allies weren't taking many casualties after a bloody beach landing, we can assume it probably than hundreds of thousands of Japanese might take their own lives. The Japanese Government did a fairly good job through the war terrorizing the people with fears of the horrible mass murdering/mass raping American imperialists... Which is somewhat ironic given all the gak that happened in Korea in Nanking now that I think about it.
Anyway, looking at the three options , Nuke, Don't Nuke Blockade, and Don't Nuke Invade, we're seeing huge amount civilian deaths no matter what we did. From a purely academic history perspective, I think the orthodox view that the bombings were the lesser of all evils still holds water. The Pacific War was brutal from beginning to end. We in the US however, like to ignore the brutality of American troops because we perceive Japan's brutality as being much worse. Unlike Japan, we never really came to terms with the Atomic Bomb because we definitely do from a social political perspective chalk it up to "they started it *shrugs*."
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.
The Japanese government has offered several apologies over the many years for a lot of things (Korea, Nanking, Bataan).
However the issues are extremely divisive politically inside Japan. There is for example the Yasukuni Shrine, constructed as a memorial to soldiers who died in WWII. In itself, this such a thing would be understandable. You can honor the dead and their sacrifice without necessarily honoring the crimes many of them committed. The issue though becomes a big deal when the museum next door outright denies the Nanking massacre, and the shrine itself deifies (its a Shinto thing) many convicted War Criminals, including those who precipitated Nanking and the Bataan Death March.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/05 22:08:18
It depends on what you mean by 'long lasting results'. Do you mean peace? Control of a former enemy? Strategic domination? The maximum amount of concessions? All of these things?
I mean all of the above. Most important is destroying the will of the next generation or survivors to continue the war, or to avenge the previous conflict, eg Germany and the "stabbed in the back" belief that Hitler played up. Definition of "hard surrender" is total strategic defeat and loss of will for resistance. That is what leads to long lasting peace and a stable region.
An armistice or surrender due to blockade would not be significant.
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.
Blockade has an inefficient psychological impact. And the impact on heavy industry by bombing has and was overestimated. The Nazis managed to fight for a long time while being bombed around the clock in precision daylight raids by the USAAF and night mass raids by the RAF. Additionally regardless of the technical and industrial capability of the Japanese the US was worried about fanatical resistance and massive casualties. A blockade with incessant Kamikaze attacks could be costly and would most likely encourage a last chance mass suicide attack by the Japanese if it were attempted. A blockade would also most likely have not ended the war. Few wars have been ended by blockade and rarely against a fanatical enemy.
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.
I'll be honest, all four conflicts had such a varying range of combat conditions and resolutions that trying to break them down into simplistic comparisons strikes me as an ineffective way of trying to make any sort of point.
True the conflicts I named had varying combat conditions I was merely trying to, somewhat simplistically demonstrate that generally clear results lead to longer lasting stability. Messy finishes do not satisfy any nation and lead to a continuation of the conflict.
Why was what it was doing before so bad that it needed to rebuild 'as a new nation'? Yes, the military leadership/influence was a bit of an issue, but roll back fifteen years, and Japan is no better or worse than America in its policies. The occupation of Haiti was hardly a bright spot in American history.
Dunno rape of Nanking, obsession with domination of Asia, threat to the region, attack on Pearl Harbor, maybe America did not want these to happen again. And from this perspective America did pretty well in rehabilitating Japan. And Japan was a regional threat for a significant period of time and could arguably be seen as a roblem pre Russo-Japanese war. So a paradigm change was required (from the Western pov) so that Japan could function as part of the vision of post-war Asia. And this has largely succeeded.
Also comparing Haiti to Japan's conduct is tenuous. There was not mass rape, genocide, torture of POWs, or barbarity to anywhere near the extent of the Japanese in anywhere near the prevalence that existed among the Japanese. There was a belief of racial superiority similar to that of the Nazis which led to mass murder and quasi-genocidal or genocidal policies and events. I believe that there was rightly a feeling that Japan needed to be rebuilt as a new nation.
Relapse wrote:
Baron, don't forget to talk about the SEALs and Marines you habitually beat up on 2 and 3 at a time, as you PM'd me about.
nareik wrote: Perhaps it is a lube issue, seems obvious now.
2015/08/05 22:22:28
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
Japan's war in mainland Asia is something I need to look more into.
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.
So much fascinating stuff there. While what they did is inexcusable you can actually trace back their recent history and find out why they committed these atrocities and invaded nearby lands. Much like you likely know why Germany committed it's atrocities after learning about it in school.
In my opinion the wars in Asia in the 20th century has to be the most interesting time period to learn about. It even influenced many later events like the Vietnam War and so on.
2015/08/05 23:24:22
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
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.
Yea, I personally think it comes down to desperation. By the time WW2 was coming around Japan was against the world (while Germany and Italy are allies on paper I think it made no difference to how they felt). The major reason for Japans modernization and eventual imperialism was to ensure she would not end up like her neighbors (exploited by western powers) and then as time went on turned into an attempt at solidifying it's place as a world power forever. 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.
2015/08/05 23:37:33
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
States' Rights were there to keep the Federal Government in check - stop it from becoming oppressive. Unfortunately, ever since the Civil War, they've slowly become nothing but an illusion.
To quote a fictional character... "Let's make this fun!"
Tactical_Spam wrote: There was a story in the SM omnibus where a single kroot killed 2-3 marines then ate their gene seed and became a Kroot-startes.
We must all join the Kroot-startes...
2015/08/05 23:50:22
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
I agree - they weren't treated with much dignity despite their successes in modernizing. They got Syndrome'd
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.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/06 00:31:40
To quote a fictional character... "Let's make this fun!"
Tactical_Spam wrote: There was a story in the SM omnibus where a single kroot killed 2-3 marines then ate their gene seed and became a Kroot-startes.
We must all join the Kroot-startes...
2015/08/06 00:44:28
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
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
That means 13.7 million men and women who are able to accurately wield a firearm.
Not really... Even into the 20th century, most Japanese had never even held a firearm. Most of Japan still subsisted off agriculture.
Even if that weren't the case, Japan didn't have that many rifles by 1945. Post war examinations of Japan's defense plans revealed that of 90 Divisions organized to defend the home islands, only 40 were able to be armed. The citizen militias organized by the Imperial Army were mostly armed with farming implements. There was even less available ammunition and virtually no heavy weapons left (the bulk of what remained of the Imperial Army was trapped on Mainland Asia with no means of returning to Japan). I don't doubt that there was still a profound will to fight in Japan, but the reality is the means were nonexistent.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/06 00:45:44
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?
2015/08/06 00:52:42
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
Honestly, nukes don't even compare to the Americans' treatment of the Native Americans. At least the nukes being dropped made logical sense, the oppression of the natives was just a blatant atrocity and waste of resources, as well as waste of potential military assets.
To quote a fictional character... "Let's make this fun!"
Tactical_Spam wrote: There was a story in the SM omnibus where a single kroot killed 2-3 marines then ate their gene seed and became a Kroot-startes.
We must all join the Kroot-startes...
2015/08/06 01:05:36
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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. Also, don't forget the equally fanatical japanese soldiers garrisoning mainland Japan.
Of course, blockading Imperial Japan would beat them into submission, but then you'd have the issue of a recumbent Imperial Japan eventually trying to forge another Pacific Empire, like they'd had before.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/06 01:10:23
To quote a fictional character... "Let's make this fun!"
Tactical_Spam wrote: There was a story in the SM omnibus where a single kroot killed 2-3 marines then ate their gene seed and became a Kroot-startes.
We must all join the Kroot-startes...
2015/08/06 01:20:07
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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
I can't remember which book I read about for the German POWs - might have been the same book you read
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.
2015/08/06 01:41:05
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
All that it takes is crap, sticks, and a shovel, and you can kill dozens of americans with pungi sticks. Heck, the shovel isn't even always necessary. Many of the Japanese were losing heart, that is correct. However, in a nation such as that, there would be millions more who would not give up until their Emperor did. Remember, the Confederates had their entire homeland ravaged by a superior force, and they remained resiliently anti-Union for decades to come, despite the obvious inferiority of their military capabilities.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/06 01:41:38
To quote a fictional character... "Let's make this fun!"
Tactical_Spam wrote: There was a story in the SM omnibus where a single kroot killed 2-3 marines then ate their gene seed and became a Kroot-startes.
We must all join the Kroot-startes...
2015/08/06 01:46:16
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
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.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
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.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/08/06 03:26:38
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
2015/08/06 02:40:51
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
Just like all the bombing raids then? This was not the first time japan had their cities devastated by literally fire. I think you are very incorrect in how they viewed the invasion. They viewed it as inevitable which implies they knew they had already lost.
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.
That's pretty interesting. I agree with it too, however I think I need to do some more reading on it. But honestly I would not be surprised if this was the case.
2015/08/06 02:47:37
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
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.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/06 02:49:07
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
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.
There was no way Japan would be able to remain militarized, even without the atomic bombs being used. It had no factories left. Add in that both atomic bombs were used on civilian targets, not military ones, and that argument is shown to be completely false.
Not to mention that these are the terms offered by Japan before the bombs were used:
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.
See that bit in bold?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/06 02:54:53
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
2015/08/06 03:01:49
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
The reason Japan's last overture before the bombing was rejected was because it did not call for the dissolution of the Imperial State, which was a military state. The Potsdam Conference mere days before the bombings saw the Allies reaffirm a dedication to Unconditional Surrender, a mechanism of which was the desire (particularly by the United States and the United Kingdom) to completely dissolve the Japanese government.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grey Templar wrote: I think you are undervaluing the ideological ''brainwashing'' that the Japanese were under.
The use of 'brainwashing' in reference to the Japanese population has always been troublesome because it implies something that didn't actually happen. At least not in the way people think of it.
Devotion to the Emperor and loyalty to the state were not values instilled into the population by the Imperial regime. They were long standing cultural values. Values that both made the Japanese fanatical in combat, and made it so easy for war to end just by having the Emperor make a public call to end hostilities. There's a reason Japan has struggled to deal with the conflicting feelings and ideals of the pre and post Imperial periods of their history and a big part of that is the question of the values held by Japan at the time, and whether or not they were wholly wrong or misguided.
The 'brainwashing' which keeps getting referenced, is unlikely to have caused the Japanese population to start opposing Allied troops with shovels and pictchforks (that's just silly). The Imperial Army would happily fight to the death (all 1,000,000 of them) because that's what they did and Army hardliners right up until the signing of the surrender were happy to express their willingness to do so. The population at large would more likely have committed mass suicides in excess of those seen on Okinawa.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/08/06 03:10:18
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.
2015/08/06 03:16:33
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
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 :(
To quote a fictional character... "Let's make this fun!"
Tactical_Spam wrote: There was a story in the SM omnibus where a single kroot killed 2-3 marines then ate their gene seed and became a Kroot-startes.
We must all join the Kroot-startes...
2015/08/06 03:19:16
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
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.
To quote a fictional character... "Let's make this fun!"
Tactical_Spam wrote: There was a story in the SM omnibus where a single kroot killed 2-3 marines then ate their gene seed and became a Kroot-startes.
We must all join the Kroot-startes...
2015/08/06 03:28:51
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
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.
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.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/08/06 03:32:01
2015/08/06 03:33:56
Subject: Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
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.
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.
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.
To quote a fictional character... "Let's make this fun!"
Tactical_Spam wrote: There was a story in the SM omnibus where a single kroot killed 2-3 marines then ate their gene seed and became a Kroot-startes.
.
). the soldiers were so polite it didn't even look like looting 
