Hiroshima

Jason P

Drowned Out wrote:

...With no attempt at negotiations, its hard not to look at the 4 points listed in the article above as the true reasons the bombs were dropped.

I could see point #4 (keeping Russia from invading) being feasable into being involved in the decision to dropping the bomb, although I see it as a secondary factor considering the allies were begging Russia to join in the Pacific theatre. The other three don't make as much plausable sense for contributing to that decision.

It's hard to take the article seriously when they mention those as the true points and make no mention of the culture of the Japanese in regards to surrender.

gimmesometruth27

i don't think they were looking for a way out after midway.

gimmesometruth27

Blockhead wrote:

You all are looking at it from a 2013 perspective, not the 1940's.

so we should never look at anything in hindsight with any perspective from history and what we have learned and try to apply that to today and the future.


got it.

:roll:

BinauralJam

Blockhead wrote:

History lesson for the libtards:
1. We did not look at Japan like we do today. the US saw Japan as little more than vermin that needed to be exterminated. Which, is the same way Japan looked at us...
Japanese were awful people in the 1940's (especially Military) Look up Unit 731, Burning prisoners alive, beheading people, Nanking massacre, the Baatan death march... I guess ignorance is bliss...
2. If Truman had refused to bomb them with a weapon of such power while numerous American military died, he would have been lucky to escape alive. He actually had little choice.
3. To those saying Japan wanted to surrender -
Any military historian will tell you they were offering to buy more time to regroup for the next attack.When a country offers to "surrender" while setting up positions for more combat, it's not a surrender. It's digging in to take you out when your hands are down. These were people that were so dedicated they were literally killing themselves take out a few with them. A surrender involves a pull back of forces. Actions speak louder than words, it took two nukes for them to actually surrender.
4. America's option of not to drop the nuke meant a land invasion to sacrifice which has been calculated as being more than 1 million American soldiers. Japan would have been totally destroyed, and a lot of you wouldn't be alive today since your grandpa would have paid the ultimate price during the invasion.
5. Japan would be another Korea if Nukes weren't used. The US and Soviets would have drawn a line, which would have resulted in more being killed.

A good book on this topic is "X Day"

If Japan had "the bomb" they would have done the same. (research the military atrocities I listed above)

You all are looking at it from a 2013 perspective, not the 1940's.

I'm a Proud Libtard, i agree with all of this ^^^^ It came down to American lives vs Japanese lives. I am in no way patriotic but if i have to choose, Well that's easy. It was also served as a message to the rest of the world, attack us if you want but....

Blockhead

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

Blockhead wrote:

You all are looking at it from a 2013 perspective, not the 1940's.

so we should never look at anything in hindsight with any perspective from history and what we have learned and try to apply that to today and the future.


got it.

:roll:

LOL at the eye roll.
Here... Let me dumb that quote down for you...

1. There are people in this thread that are looking at this from a 2013 point of view, not the 1940's.
Today Japan isn't the enemy and we see them as good people, but that wasn't the case back then. You can't put your self in the perspective of how "you" or the US looked/Felt about Japan in the 1940's.

Name one weapon at anytime before the 40's that any country said "nope, not going to use it, it's too much." At one point in history humans have lobbed Plague infested bodies over enemies' walls into their cities with catapults. War is nothing pretty.For centuries mankind has waged wars and for centuries we have always used the biggest weapon for the job.

It wasn't until after the Atom Bomb that we realized we had developed weapons capable of ending the world...

tybird

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

i don't think they were looking for a way out after midway.

Some of the Japanese naval leaders probably had some concerns at that point. They understood that Japan had no chance in a prolonged war against the United States due to differences in population and industrial capacity.

Godfather.

Blockhead wrote:

History lesson for the libtards:
1. We did not look at Japan like we do today. the US saw Japan as little more than vermin that needed to be exterminated. Which, is the same way Japan looked at us...
Japanese were awful people in the 1940's (especially Military) Look up Unit 731, Burning prisoners alive, beheading people, Nanking massacre, the Baatan death march... I guess ignorance is bliss...
2. If Truman had refused to bomb them with a weapon of such power while numerous American military died, he would have been lucky to escape alive. He actually had little choice.
3. To those saying Japan wanted to surrender -
Any military historian will tell you they were offering to buy more time to regroup for the next attack.When a country offers to "surrender" while setting up positions for more combat, it's not a surrender. It's digging in to take you out when your hands are down. These were people that were so dedicated they were literally killing themselves take out a few with them. A surrender involves a pull back of forces. Actions speak louder than words, it took two nukes for them to actually surrender.
4. America's option of not to drop the nuke meant a land invasion to sacrifice which has been calculated as being more than 1 million American soldiers. Japan would have been totally destroyed, and a lot of you wouldn't be alive today since your grandpa would have paid the ultimate price during the invasion.
5. Japan would be another Korea if Nukes weren't used. The US and Soviets would have drawn a line, which would have resulted in more being killed.

A good book on this topic is "X Day"

If Japan had "the bomb" they would have done the same. (research the military atrocities I listed above)

You all are looking at it from a 2013 perspective, not the 1940's.

xlnt post !

Godfather.

Drowned Out

lukin2006 wrote:

They had a way out ... unconditional surrender ... they had no right to demand anything.

if the reason unconditional surrender was so abhorrent to Japanese culture was because the emperor was considered a deity, and the only condition was that they didn't give him up....why was he allowed to remain as a figurehead anyway? ....so this condition was only acceptable AFTER the bombs were dropped....why? We can keep saying there was no other way...but there was no attempt to try another way.

cp3iverson wrote:

As someone who is a self proclaimed WWII fanatic, almost every vet I've spoken with (from various Allied countries) felt that the Hiroshima bombing was absolutely a necessary evil. I value their opinion way more than any great writer. When you're right in the middle of it, politics and potential talks don't matter very much.

Do you consider a war vet more informed than these people?

Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman:
“It is my opinion that the use of this 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 is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

General Dwight D. Eisenhower:
“It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.”

Secretary of War Henry Stimson:
“the true question was not whether surrender could have been achieved without the use of the bomb but whether a different diplomatic and military course would have led to an earlier surrender. A large segment of the Japanese cabinet was ready in the spring of 1945 to accept substantially the same terms as those finally agreed on.”

These aren't some low-level observers, or 'great writers' with no personal involvement.....I would think these are the people Chomsky references when forming his opinion.

As for the comments about the Japanese and how notoriously brutal they were, and Blockheads little hissy fit about ignorance regarding japanese war crimes (while defending dropping nukes, oh the irony).....

War correspondent Edgar L. Jones, February 1946 Atlantic Monthly:
“What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers.”

Sounds pretty brutal. Do people really think there was no propaganda occurring in the Allied countries? How exactly did such a huge percentage of the population base come to believe the Japanese were vermin? I doubt it was personal experience. There are a lot of people who think that about middle-eastern muslims these days, and most people can accept that as propaganda now, right? I tend to never believe pro-war propaganda. There is always another way. Based on these quotes from US military leaders, I think a land invasion was unnecessary and the "we'd have lost a million soldiers" line is a false justification.

Any military historian will tell me the Japanese were buying time to regroup, huh Blockhead?
Hanson Baldwin (military editor of the NYT who won a pulitzer for pacific war coverage):
“The Japanese, in a military sense, were in a hopeless strategic situation by the time the Potsdam Declaration (insisting on Japan’s unconditional surrender) was made on July 26, 1945.”
Hopelessly regrouping, got it.

Here's the official record on the topic:

United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946:
“Even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the 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 … 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.”

Let me guess....all the quotes on this page....libtards? Stay classy bud.

vant0037

Blockhead wrote:

1. There are people in this thread that are looking at this from a 2013 point of view, not the 1940's. You can't put your self in the perspective of how "you" or the US looked/Felt about Japan in the 1940's.

Pretty sure you just did that.

Last-12-Exit

Does the public need to know every detail and every decision that is made during wartime operations?
No, that's why we are civilians. I don't give a holy hell why they dropped the bombs. I personally don't think that the Japanese would have surrended. Had there been a land invasion, a lot of us wouldn't have been born. We dropped a horrible weapon not once but twice. And then what? War was over. I'm good with that.

That doesn't mean I want my government to lie, cover up, and destroy documents that make them look less patriotic.

Thirty Bills Unpaid

Blockhead wrote:

At one point in history humans have lobbed Plague infested bodies over enemies' walls into their cities with catapults.

Biological warfare in medieval times. Ingenious really. I wonder if the people behind the walls had any idea what their opponents were doing to them?

Moonpig

Last-12-Exit wrote:

Does the public need to know every detail and every decision that is made during wartime operations?
No, that's why we are civilians. I don't give a holy hell why they dropped the bombs. I personally don't think that the Japanese would have surrended. Had there been a land invasion, a lot of us wouldn't have been born. We dropped a horrible weapon not once but twice. And then what? War was over. I'm good with that.

That doesn't mean I want my government to lie, cover up, and destroy documents that make them look less patriotic.

Dropping 2 atomic bombs onto a civilian population is a war crime, or at least would be considered so if any other country did it. Some are happy to brush it under the carpet and call it a necessary action, for the greater good.

Flying two planes into 2 buildings is an act of terrorism, some people justify such deeds by looking at American foreign policy.

Perspective can be a bitch like that some times.

lukin2006

Drowned Out wrote:

lukin2006 wrote:

They had a way out ... unconditional surrender ... they had no right to demand anything.

if the reason unconditional surrender was so abhorrent to Japanese culture was because the emperor was considered a deity, and the only condition was that they didn't give him up....why was he allowed to remain as a figurehead anyway? ....so this condition was only acceptable AFTER the bombs were dropped....why? We can keep saying there was no other way...but there was no attempt to try another way.

cp3iverson wrote:

As someone who is a self proclaimed WWII fanatic, almost every vet I've spoken with (from various Allied countries) felt that the Hiroshima bombing was absolutely a necessary evil. I value their opinion way more than any great writer. When you're right in the middle of it, politics and potential talks don't matter very much.

Do you consider a war vet more informed than these people?

Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman:
“It is my opinion that the use of this 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 is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

General Dwight D. Eisenhower:
“It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.”

Secretary of War Henry Stimson:
“the true question was not whether surrender could have been achieved without the use of the bomb but whether a different diplomatic and military course would have led to an earlier surrender. A large segment of the Japanese cabinet was ready in the spring of 1945 to accept substantially the same terms as those finally agreed on.”

These aren't some low-level observers, or 'great writers' with no personal involvement.....I would think these are the people Chomsky references when forming his opinion.

As for the comments about the Japanese and how notoriously brutal they were, and Blockheads little hissy fit about ignorance regarding japanese war crimes (while defending dropping nukes, oh the irony).....

War correspondent Edgar L. Jones, February 1946 Atlantic Monthly:
“What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought anyway? We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter openers.”

Sounds pretty brutal. Do people really think there was no propaganda occurring in the Allied countries? How exactly did such a huge percentage of the population base come to believe the Japanese were vermin? I doubt it was personal experience. There are a lot of people who think that about middle-eastern muslims these days, and most people can accept that as propaganda now, right? I tend to never believe pro-war propaganda. There is always another way. Based on these quotes from US military leaders, I think a land invasion was unnecessary and the "we'd have lost a million soldiers" line is a false justification.

Any military historian will tell me the Japanese were buying time to regroup, huh Blockhead?
Hanson Baldwin (military editor of the NYT who won a pulitzer for pacific war coverage):
“The Japanese, in a military sense, were in a hopeless strategic situation by the time the Potsdam Declaration (insisting on Japan’s unconditional surrender) was made on July 26, 1945.”
Hopelessly regrouping, got it.

Here's the official record on the topic:

United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946:
“Even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the 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 … 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.”

Let me guess....all the quotes on this page....libtards? Stay classy bud.

Those people you mentioned were not going to be the first one's leaving a landing craft and storming the beaches of Japan in a possible land invasion ... in many ways I do consider a vet more informed than the generals and the politicians ... after all they are the ones that are asked (selflessly at that), to go and do an unimaginable task, they see the horrors of war first hand, they know the toll it can take. Essentially the allied soldiers stopped 2 evil regimes at the time ... and the Japanese committed terrible atrocities themselves ... war is hell. I have 3 uncle who served in WW2 and the only thing I ever heard them say about the war was everyone was very tired of war ...

satansbed

My opinion on nuclear weapons changes frequently. What I do know is that since there use we haven't seen a war on the scale of either of the world wars since. So that's a good thing. I guess. Idk though. Much greater minds than me have struggled with it.

lukin2006

How many civilian deaths were the Japanese responsible for? It was extremely high, was it not?

satansbed

A couple of good pieces here of various viewpoints

http://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/dataf ... 20Bomb.pdf

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/ju ... 07-09.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 49131.html

cp3iverson

lukin2006 wrote:

How many civilian deaths were the Japanese responsible for? It was extremely high, was it not?

They invaded so many nations that its hard to know. Theres estimates of 3 to 5 million. Some historians say its closer to twenty million because theres so accurate count on China. on top of that their forms of torture were probably the worst i've ever heard of.

I knew a couple who watched them invade their island nation during WWII, bury twenty random citizens up to their heads in the sand during a public showing, and walk down the line with a sword decapitating all of them. Just to strike fear into the public so they'll obey them. Twenty heads to pick up. Needless to say, after they immigrated to America they refused to buy anything that said "Made in Japan".

The bombs were extremely cruel and barbaric but it ended the war months before any best case scenario would have. In a war soldiers only care about their side and rightly so. Theyre always more informed about the enemy than desk people and they couldnt care less about inside government info. It saved tens of thousands of Allied lives. In doing so though it showed once again that war is hell. The Japanese brought us into this mess by bombing us but im guessing the emperor probably regretted that.

Godfather.

cp3iverson wrote:

lukin2006 wrote:

How many civilian deaths were the Japanese responsible for? It was extremely high, was it not?

They invaded so many nations that its hard to know. Theres estimates of 3 to 5 million. Some historians say its closer to twenty million because theres so accurate count on China. on top of that their forms of torture were probably the worst i've ever heard of.

I knew a couple who watched them invade their island nation during WWII, bury twenty random citizens up to their heads in the sand during a public showing, and walk down the line with a sword decapitating all of them. Just to strike fear into the public so they'll obey them. Twenty heads to pick up. Needless to say, after they immigrated to America they refused to buy anything that said "Made in Japan".

The bombs were extremely cruel and barbaric but it ended the war months before any best case scenario would have. In a war soldiers only care about their side and rightly so. Theyre always more informed about the enemy than desk people and they couldnt care less about inside government info. It saved tens of thousands of Allied lives. In doing so though it showed once again that war is hell. The Japanese brought us into this mess by bombing us but im guessing the emperor probably regretted that.

didn't he or someone in his command say "we have waken the sleeping tiger" ?....ha ha that pearl habor move sure bit them on the ass. also if we had not moped up Germany we may never would have had the H bomb right ?

Godfather.

tybird

Godfather. wrote:

cp3iverson wrote:

lukin2006 wrote:

How many civilian deaths were the Japanese responsible for? It was extremely high, was it not?

They invaded so many nations that its hard to know. Theres estimates of 3 to 5 million. Some historians say its closer to twenty million because theres so accurate count on China. on top of that their forms of torture were probably the worst i've ever heard of.

I knew a couple who watched them invade their island nation during WWII, bury twenty random citizens up to their heads in the sand during a public showing, and walk down the line with a sword decapitating all of them. Just to strike fear into the public so they'll obey them. Twenty heads to pick up. Needless to say, after they immigrated to America they refused to buy anything that said "Made in Japan".

The bombs were extremely cruel and barbaric but it ended the war months before any best case scenario would have. In a war soldiers only care about their side and rightly so. Theyre always more informed about the enemy than desk people and they couldnt care less about inside government info. It saved tens of thousands of Allied lives. In doing so though it showed once again that war is hell. The Japanese brought us into this mess by bombing us but im guessing the emperor probably regretted that.

didn't he or someone in his command say "we have waken the sleeping tiger" ?....ha ha that pearl habor move sure bit them on the ass. also if we had not moped up Germany we may never would have had the H bomb right ?

Godfather.

The head of the Imperial Navy supposedly said the "sleeping tiger" bit. That goes back to my earlier point about Japan needing a quick, knock-out punch against the U.S.

Last-12-Exit

Moonpig wrote:

Last-12-Exit wrote:

Does the public need to know every detail and every decision that is made during wartime operations?
No, that's why we are civilians. I don't give a holy hell why they dropped the bombs. I personally don't think that the Japanese would have surrended. Had there been a land invasion, a lot of us wouldn't have been born. We dropped a horrible weapon not once but twice. And then what? War was over. I'm good with that.

That doesn't mean I want my government to lie, cover up, and destroy documents that make them look less patriotic.

Dropping 2 atomic bombs onto a civilian population is a war crime, or at least would be considered so if any other country did it. Some are happy to brush it under the carpet and call it a necessary action, for the greater good.

Flying two planes into 2 buildings is an act of terrorism, some people justify such deeds by looking at American foreign policy.

Perspective can be a bitch like that some times.

A war crime? For a weapon that never existed for any other war prior? In 1945, it was not a war crime.
And honestley, if you think about it, when is something ever a war crime when the winning side commits it.