Question about Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Commy

reborncareerist wrote:

Maybe ... But this is speculation, with the benefit of hindsight being 20/20. Nobody without a time machine and an awful lot of political clout will ever be able to decisively prove that Japan was open to an unconditional surrender, pre-bombing. Maybe elements of the Japanese leadership (the sane ones) were open to the idea ... But would they have carried the day? And BTW, using "air supremacy over Japan" to force a surrender would have still cost many Japanese lives. In fact, conventional bombs can create firestorms that can kill as many people as a low-grade nuke (without the fallout, granted).
I don't know ... There's arguments either way. Like someone else pointed out, we have the "benefit" of analyzing the situation from our "progressive" 21st century viewpoint.

Agreed, there would have been many killed either way. BUt what we need to take from this is that human beings should not be droppping atomic weapons on civilian centers, should not be fire bombing entire cities, should not be committing genocide on entire religions or races, this is madness.

WE have seen man at his worst, and so we took steps to never let this happen again, we tried to do it with the UN. THe US has since gone on to ignore everythign we've learned from WWII and gone on to create an empire, setting dangerous precedents, including pre-emptive war which is only going to lead to more conflict and perhaps eventually to another world war.

That is why it is important as Americans to hold our gov't accountable, we need to take the power back. A government should be afraid of its people, unfortunately that's not the case in the US. That needs to change.

rebornFixer

Commy wrote:

Agreed, there would have been many killed either way. BUt what we need to take from this is that human beings should not be droppping atomic weapons on civilian centers, should not be fire bombing entire cities, should not be committing genocide on entire religions or races, this is madness.

WE have seen man at his worst, and so we took steps to never let this happen again, we tried to do it with the UN. THe US has since gone on to ignore everythign we've learned from WWII and gone on to create an empire, setting dangerous precedents, including pre-emptive war which is only going to lead to more conflict and perhaps eventually to another world war.

That is why it is important as Americans to hold our gov't accountable, we need to take the power back. A government should be afraid of its people, unfortunately that's not the case in the US. That needs to change.

Fair enough ... I think its reasonable to say that all human civilizations are bad at learning from history. The U.S. happens to be a major world power, meaning that its mistakes are going to have corresponding greater consequences.

Eliot Rosewater

MLC2006 wrote:

nope, the US government had nothing whatsoever to do with provoking an attack from Japan at a time that the US was at peace. :rolleyes: allah.

uhhh... http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html

Byrnzie

SPEEDY MCCREADY wrote:

we should have dropped a 3rd bomb....

maybe even a 4th........

Really? Why?

The Japanese army was already defeated at that point and Japan was already about to surrender. It was simply a show of force and the point at which America sold it's soul to the devil.

Byrnzie

Its Evolution Baby wrote:

Japan was showing no sign of surrender and were using unusual fighting methods like kamikaze missions that showed they were in it for the long haul.

The US didn't want to drag it out and warned repeatedly that we would drop the bomb if Japan did not surrender. Throw in the fact that they attacked our innocent soldiers in Hawaii first and you can see how this went down.

It doesn't make it any less a travesty and there is a reason we haven't dropped the bomb since.

But we weren't totally in the wrong either.

So we're assuming that the U.S had no designs on domination of the Pacific prior to Pearl Harbour? Then what exactly were those soldiers and sailors doing at Pearl Harbour in the first place?
I think people need to do their homework and understand what was going on out there before December 1941.

Byrnzie

Eliot Rosewater wrote:

uhhh... http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html

Kind of makes you think of 9/11.

tybird

Collin wrote:

This bullshit "we didn't know" rhetoric, this "Wir haben es nicht gewusst" bullshit is not something to hide behind. Face the facts, the US killed more than 200,000 innocent people and more than 400,000 people died because of the bombings.

The question is are you ok with killing innocent people to save other people? Please, think hard about what a 'yes' to that quesion means.

Also, you can't use sixty year old logic to justify what happened sixty years ago. I think we should try to learn from the mistakes we made in the past, not try to look for ways to justify them.

It was war...bombs were dropped on innocents from Hawaii to Singapore to Nanking to Tokyo to Dresden to Stalingard to London to Paris to Rome to Manila and beyond. These innocents were supporting a regime that had butchered millions of other innocents for nearly a decade. Innocents in numbers of this magnitude were going to die until the regime surrendered based on the terms of the victors, whether it occurred through two bombs or thousands of bombs or an outright invasion of the home islands.

Yes, I am okay with killing innocent people to save other people. It's been happening as long as this species has gathered into groups.

Yes, you can apply sixty year old logic to events that happened sixty years ago...simply because it was the basis that they were working. They did not have your 20/20 hindsight or even a working "Magic EightBall." Their decision was based on what they thought and knew at the time.

tybird

Byrnzie wrote:

So we're assuming that the U.S had no designs on domination of the Pacific prior to Pearl Harbour? Then what exactly were those soldiers and sailors doing at Pearl Harbour in the first place?
I think people need to do their homework and understand what was going on out there before December 1941.

Just like you need to do your homework...it was our territory...our soil at the time.

P.S. There still exists no pre-A-bomb documents from the Japanese government that speak of any possibility of surrender.

LikeAnOpeningBandForTheSun

they didnt surrender after the first bomb was dropped. That alone makes the
argument that they were gonna surrender anyway completely invalid.

SPEEDY MCCREADY

Byrnzie wrote:

Really? Why?

The Japanese army was already defeated at that point and Japan was already about to surrender. It was simply a show of force and the point at which America sold it's soul to the devil.

sold its soul to the devil????

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.............................

like i said...

we should have dropped a few more fucking bombs on Japan.....

NCfan

tybird wrote:

It was war...bombs were dropped on innocents from Hawaii to Singapore to Nanking to Tokyo to Dresden to Stalingard to London to Paris to Rome to Manila and beyond. These innocents were supporting a regime that had butchered millions of other innocents for nearly a decade. Innocents in numbers of this magnitude were going to die until the regime surrendered based on the terms of the victors, whether it occurred through two bombs or thousands of bombs or an outright invasion of the home islands.

Yes, I am okay with killing innocent people to save other people. It's been happening as long as this species has gathered into groups.

Yes, you can apply sixty year old logic to events that happened sixty years ago...simply because it was the basis that they were working. They did not have your 20/20 hindsight or even a working "Magic EightBall." Their decision was based on what they thought and knew at the time.

Amen, end of story.

Coming back to life

tybird wrote:

Defend Japanese actions prior to those two events. Nanking? Korean sex slaves? Human experimentation? Geneva Convention, what Geneva Convention? The various "Death Marches"?

Read about Iwo Jima and Okinawa...tiny islands where despite being out-gunned, out-manned and totally surrounded...thousands of Japanese barbarians fought to their death....no surrender sounds so glamorous, does it....then tell me you would send thousands of young men to assault an island with a million of these people living on it. Oh...you would just call off the war because it was the noble thing to do??? No problem with the Japanese re-arming, correct...or re-invading all of their neighbors, eh?

Osama Bin Laden could say something similar, wouldn't make him right.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

Some people like the fact nuclear weapons were created and used.....however, stereotypically, these people are also overweight, out of shape, eat a lot of junk food, and streamline far too many Hollywood movie plots into their daily realities.

NCfan

Byrnzie wrote:

So we're assuming that the U.S had no designs on domination of the Pacific prior to Pearl Harbour? Then what exactly were those soldiers and sailors doing at Pearl Harbour in the first place?
I think people need to do their homework and understand what was going on out there before December 1941.

What are you trying to imply here, that the U.S. was planning to take over the Pacific? Where we trying to make a land grab or something?

And your justfication is that we had a Pacific fleet? Could it be the fleet was there to protect America? Is that so outrageous?

Talk about doing your homework, do you have any idea what Japan had been up to in the Pacific in the years prior to Pearl Harbor?

Also, why is it that we gave 99% of all the territory back to the rightful owners after we conquered the Japanese?

Please explain your position. Better yet, please explain the "homework" you were referring to. What is it that we don't know that would make us see it your way?

tybird

Coming back to life wrote:

Osama Bin Laden could say something similar, wouldn't make him right.

Yes...and that is his point of view. He is allowed to have said point of view. Our goal is to either change his mind, unlikely, or stop any future actions by him. He has declared war against, and we have declared war on him.

The Japanese decided to make war on the U.S., so we fought back. We sat down with our allies....particularly Great Britain and the Soviet Union...and decided how this war was going to end. Unconditional Surrender. The Germans accepted these terms.....as did the Italians. No special treatment was given to the Japanese...and they didn't deserve any. They were willing to fight to the last man, while we thought that there might be a better way. Did we know all of the long term ramifications?? Not no, but hell NO. This was the genesis of nuclear science...only the second and third nuclear weapons ever detonated. There were no exposure studies, no long term effect experiments. There was talk of domestic (peaceful) uses for the bombs until sometime in the 1950's.


World War II is referred to as "Total War" effort. This means that the civilians were in play. Did the U.S. start using "Total War" first??? No, that would be the Axis powers who did that. Who bombed civilians first?? What culture basically invented the suicide bomber?

Talk to a real veteran of the Pacific war....ask them about the Japanese...how they fight.

rebornFixer

MrSmith wrote:

they didnt surrender after the first bomb was dropped. That alone makes the
argument that they were gonna surrender anyway completely invalid.

Point.

rebornFixer

tybird wrote:

Yes...and that is his point of view. He is allowed to have said point of view. Our goal is to either change his mind, unlikely, or stop any future actions by him. He has declared war against, and we have declared war on him.

The Japanese decided to make war on the U.S., so we fought back. We sat down with our allies....particularly Great Britain and the Soviet Union...and decided how this war was going to end. Unconditional Surrender. The Germans accepted these terms.....as did the Italians. No special treatment was given to the Japanese...and they didn't deserve any. They were willing to fight to the last man, while we thought that there might be a better way. Did we know all of the long term ramifications?? Not no, but hell NO. This was the genesis of nuclear science...only the second and third nuclear weapons ever detonated. There were no exposure studies, no long term effect experiments. There was talk of domestic (peaceful) uses for the bombs until sometime in the 1950's.


World War II is referred to as "Total War" effort. This means that the civilians were in play. Did the U.S. start using "Total War" first??? No, that would be the Axis powers who did that. Who bombed civilians first?? What culture basically invented the suicide bomber?

Talk to a real veteran of the Pacific war....ask them about the Japanese...how they fight.

Exactly. And look at the casualty figures. Japanese soldiers had to be killed. Surrender was not an option in most cases. Its sickening, but that was Japanese military doctrine at that time. And this whole attitude was extended to the entire nation. The Allies based their decision on how the Japanese had been fighting them for nearly four years.

Byrnzie

SPEEDY MCCREADY wrote:

and i have a feeling your grandfather......

would like to take some of americas youth....

who have that....

"anti america attitude"

and smack them right upside their fucking heads.....

So now it's 'anti-American' to claim that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan was unnecessary?

Fuck me! Now I've really heard it all!

SPEEDY MCCREADY

Byrnzie wrote:

So now it's 'anti-American' to claim that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan was unnecessary?

Fuck me! Now I've really heard it all!

bleh....

not what i was saying.....

i see alot of people on this board who seem to always have an "anti-american" attitude here....

and they seem to forget how many men and woman have given their lives for this country....

Byrnzie

SPEEDY MCCREADY wrote:

sold its soul to the devil????

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.............................

like i said...

we should have dropped a few more fucking bombs on Japan.....

It was just a turn of phrase. I could have simply said that America sold itself down the shitter e.t.c.
But then I'm talking to a flag waving, gung-ho jingoist who's blabbering about how the U.S should have wiped Japan off the map. Kind of like trying to have a serious debate with a 3 year old whilst he's busy playing a video game.