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Japanese Balloon Battle
mw2040 writes "Slate reports on a little-known method used by the Japanese during WWII - hydrogen-filled paper balloons with deadly payloads floated without a guidance-system across the Pacific. Both amazing low-tech warfare and a cautionary tale about censorship during wartime. More links (even one for our neighbors to the North) (shamelessly stolen from the article)."
More and more people thinks that high technology is much more efficient to win a war. I don't think it is necessarily true. :)
On the contrary, i think that low tech can be much more lethal because of their simplicity. High technology requires people to be trained and efficient, while low tech can be done nearly by everyone, increasing the deadliness and the frequency of those attacks.
Again, don't underestimate the use of high technology devices as a simple low tech weapon. For instance, dropping a PC on someone can be deadly
Pelops
Precision isn't always a major requirement. For example dropping thousands of bomblets that are designed to detonate upon handling on a city could have a devastating effect on morale whilst doing relatively little damage to buildings and infrastructure. Kids love picking up unidentified stuff, and people get scared when there's a good chance that they might pick up something that's going to blow up.
Decode these
I'm finding it hard to believe that this comment isn't a troll.
Either that or it displays a very real ignorence of the eithics of bombing during WWII.
WWII was an ugly war. Every nation involved did thing which were, then and now, considered unacceptable. Nations still do today. Unfortunatly many still operate on the principle that the end justifies the means. I think this is actually one of the tenents of Neoconservatisim.
May the Maths Be with you!
Explosive, incendiary or poisonous (fake) currency would have a greater affect than curious bomblets. Everyone would pick them up with great harm to themselves, general morale and the economy.
IANAT (I Am Not A Terrorist)
It was quite an engineering marvel, even if the results were sickening(to this day, parts of rural China will still periodically get outbreaks of the plague because of these weapons labs),
Yes, China and India still have plague outbreaks from time to time. But it's absurd to blame that on Japanese weapons of 50 years ago rather than the more obvious lack of sufficient sanitation in rural areas.
Governments give out all kinds of excuses for censorship. That it will "aid the enemy" or "induce panic". In reality they just don't want bad press.
Censorship is a very thorny issue, but we need total freedom of the press for our society to remain free. The story of "embedded" reporters during the Iraq war was a case in point. Embedded was a euphamisim for censored and reporters felt this. Their skewed reports helped continue the culture of lies and exaggeration that prevailed in the lead up to the war. People were misinformed about that war. From start to finish. Far better for us all to get the story , warts and all, rather than have it dripped and filtered to us by biased parties.
Interestingly, the prevailence of high tech media helped retard the effect of censorship during the war. It was difficult, but no impossible, for the army to censor reporters for very long. The press center in Quatar became redundant as feeds were transmitted directly from the field.
High tech media is also the ONLY reason that we are seeing images of torture from prisons in Iraq.
The media also practices self-censorship by limiting the coverage of disturbing imagery. I think they should give people more credit and stop listening to the easily offended.
The truth is never more distorted than during times of war. But this is the most critical time in which the truth needs to be shown, in all its
truth. We might like like the truth, but we NEED to hear it. We have to hold a mirror up to ourselves. Otherwise we'll start to believe all the rethoric and that would be a vert bad thing.
May the Maths Be with you!
After the Rape of Nanking, its very hard to have any sympathy for any Japanese. [my emphasis]
Because all Japanese supported it? I was under the - apparently mistaken - impression that pre-war and wartime Japan was a dictatorship. Or is this another stunning example of generalising to avoid making real points?
This is where the serious fun begins.
It was a terrorist strike plain and simple - drop the bombs, scare the shit out of everyone and get what you wanted. Couldnt they have atleast dropped the bombs somewhere where everyone would know about them but few or none would be harmed? they could at the same time drop a parachute crate over hiroshima with a big American flag on it just to proove that they could have dropped the bombs anywhere. Or maybe America does support terrorism, just like they support torture..
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I would like to know more.
Are you saying that you live in a country where you are scared of being overheard discussing an idea?
Where you can get arrested for a thought.
In Soviet Russia... big borther watches you
In the USA.... its the same
The part that makes me scratch my head is, people actually express a mix of indignation and boredom over the original sources. What they seem to want to watch instead is talking heads -- "pundits" -- spewing nonsense.
Imagine the difference with something like this balloon story. You could interview the Japanese policy makers and have them describe why they chose to do it when they did. You could look at blueprints and documents, talk to the makers, and see how the things worked. You could compare this to other intercontinental weapons -- interesting angle -- to see how their (potential) use might be different. World War II as the genesis of "strategic" weapons and the end of the distinction between combatant and non-combatant populations, you know?
But no, we'd put lots of bilious fools on TV to remind us that the Japanese hated America, or some such stupidity. Because supposedly, the other stuff, the real history, is boring. Or so our TV ratings would seem to suggest. Cut to political ad in which Japanese face "morphs" into the face of myu political opponent. It's depressing.
But then, I actually watch C-Span...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
In an unfortunate coincidence, US made cluster bombs looked very much like, and were the same color as, the "meals ready to eat" packages we air dropped for humanitarian missions. It went poorly. They've since changed the color of the bomblets.
-B
Though this article was intended to demonstrate the dangers of wartime censorship, the actual history demonstrates a quite different viewpoint.
The ballon attack plan was never to cut power lines and blow up family picnics. The Japanese had been working for many years on the effective use of biological weapons, and had every intention of using them with the balloons once they had some idea of whether they were reaching the US. Blowing up picnics should have provided them immediate, specific targeting feedback through the US media - much better targeting intelligence than would have been provided by a bizarre outbreak of bubonic plague in the Pacific Northwest.
Slate's having compared this to burying memos and hiding prisoner abuse scandals, secrets that are kept solely to protect political interests rather than military ones, demonstrates not only a catastrophic failure to understand history, but further weakens the credibility of anyone speaking out against that very same modern politically driven censorship.
Nice going, Slate.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
The casualties are noteworthy because they're the only people killed inside the United States by a foreign military since the Brits burned DC in 1812. There was fighting in Alaska and (obviously) Hawaii during WWII, but they weren't states yet.
-B
Firstly, Little boy and fat man were both A-bombs, the N-bomb was developed far later and never used in actual warfare. Secondly they wern't guided, they were parachute retarded. Thirdly one of the reasons Hiroshima was chosen over Kyoto as the target of the first bomb is that Hiroshima had a larger amount of military infrastruture.
Forthly, the Japaneese started the war in the pacific. They invaded China, Malasia, Singapore and New Guinea amongst others. They sunk British and American merchant ships, they murdered millions of chineese civilians in cold blood, they carpet bombed Darwin, they starved POWs and they torpedoed American warships without declaring war. Basically they started an evil war, and the Americans had to nuke them in order to get them to stop. This is a little different than sending baloons over the pacific in order to help their tyranny over Asia to continue.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
in my Japanese history class (well no shit I'd hear about it there)
Ironically, world war 2 is little known in Japan itself.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"