Slashdot Mirror
60 Years Since Hiroshima
cryptoz writes "Today is the 6th of August, 2005, exactly 60 years after the first nuclear device was used in a war. Japan remembers what happened, as do those around the world. Elswhere, we remember where the bomb hit, as well as how it worked." From the article about Japan's observation of the anniversary: "The anniversary comes as regional powers meet in Beijing to urge North Korea to give up its nuclear programme, seen by Tokyo as a threat and one of the reasons behind rising calls in Japan to strengthen its defence and seek closer military ties with the United States. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was among those attending the ceremony in Hiroshima, 690 km (430 miles) southwest of Tokyo." We've previously reported on the anniversary of the first nuclear explosion.
Keiko Ogura was eight years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. She still lives in the city.
I wanted to go to school, but my father said 'I have a very strange feeling today - you shouldn't go to school, stay with us'.
That morning I was on the road near the house and all of a sudden I saw a flash of blueish white light - a magnesium-like flash and soon after a big sound with dust, and I was blown away and fell on the ground.
I found myself lying on the ground near the house. I thought the house was just in front of me but I couldn't see it because everything had become so dark and many pieces of wood and roof tiles and rubbish were falling on my head.
And in the darkness there was a strong, strong wind like a typhoon. I couldn't open my eyes but tried to get back to my house and in the darkness I heard somebody was crying - my brother and sister.
I was 2.4km from the hypocentre but houses nearer the hypocentre had caught fire and were burning.
I saw long lines of refugees, just quiet, I don't know why they were so quiet. There were long lines, like ghosts.
Most of them were stretching out their arms because the skin was peeling off from the tips of their fingers. I could clearly see the hanging skin, peeling skin, and the wet red flesh and their hair was burned and smelled, the burnt hair smelled a lot.
And many people, just slowly passed by the front of my house.
Parched
All of a sudden a hand squeezed my ankle. I was so scared but they said 'get me water'. Almost all the people were just asking 'water', and 'help me'.
I rushed into my home where there was a well and brought them water. They thanked me but some of them were drinking water and vomiting blood and [then] died, stopped moving. They died in front of me. I felt regret and so scared. Maybe I killed them? Did I kill them?
And that night, 6 August, my father was so busy looking after the neighbours, but when he came back he said: 'Listen children - you shouldn't give water, some of the refugees died after drinking water. Please remember that.'
Then I felt so guilty, and I saw them many times in my nightmares. I thought I was a very bad girl - I didn't do what my father said - so I kept it a secret. I didn't tell anybody this story until my father died.
There was black rain falling, black rain mingling with ashes and rubbish and oil, something like that. It smelled bad and there were many spots on my white blouse - sticky, dirty rain.
In the morning people were moving, brushing away flies from their skin. My house was full of injured people.
But as a little girl I was so curious. I wanted to see what the city looked like. My house was at the bottom of a hill - I climbed up the hill, near our house, and then I saw the whole city. I was so astonished - all the city was flattened and demolished. I counted just a couple of concrete buildings.
In denial
The next day some of the buildings were still burning, and the next day, and the next day, and for three or four days I climbed the hill to see what the city was like.
I have a brother-in-law. He was living almost at the centre of the city - his family was very close to the hypocentre. Until now his family members were missing and he didn't want to recognise they were all gone, so he refused to say and report the family's names to the officials and he didn't want to visit Hiroshima.
Right now, he is living far away in Tokyo, and only last year he decided to report to Hiroshima city that his family members - his mother and sister - had passed away.
And there were so many people [who saw] so many dead or dying, but actually, most of them made up their mind not to tell anyone about what they saw.
Private Yutaka Nakagawa was a 20-year-old soldier and veteran of the Indonesia campaign, stationed in Hiroshima when the bomb fell on 6 August 1945.
I was in the barracks on the night of the 5 August. There was a warning of an air-raid. But I was in bed.
I think its extremely important that we remember these events, to ensure that the situations and attitudes that led to them can be remembered and the contribution of people who died on both sides to bringing the world to the way it is today. We can't change the past, but we can try to avoid the same situations and circumstances. A generation now are being raised where full scale war between first world countries is a thing of the past, and its important that they can come to respect the happenings of the past.
Business Voyeur
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-71-1794/conflict_war/ hiroshima/
It's a sad day in the history of humanity. The cruelty that we visit upon each other should never be forgotten.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
They were young men hoping to help end World War II. But to their mission's critics, the crews that dropped the atomic bombs on Japan were part of a war crime.
Three men involved in the attack on Hiroshima shared with the BBC their memories of a day that has stayed with them for 60 years.
Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, 84
The day before the mission we sat through briefings on Tinian island where they told us who was assigned to which plane, and we ran through what we were going to do.
About 2pm we were told to get some sleep. But I don't know how they expected to tell us were we dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan and then expect us to sleep.
I didn't get a wink. Nor did most of the others. But at 10pm we had to get up again because we were flying at 2.45am.
They briefed us that the weather was good, but they were sending weather observation planes up so we would have the best information on targeting Hiroshima.
We had a final breakfast and then went down to the plane shortly after midnight.
There was a lot of picture-taking and interviewing going on - by the military - and it was a relief to get in the Enola Gay about an hour before we took off.
We flew in low over Iwo Jima while the bomb crew checked and armed Little Boy (the uranium bomb) and once we cleared the island we began climbing to our bombing altitude of just over 30,000 feet.
It was perfectly clear and I was just doing all the things I'd always done as a navigator - plotting our course, getting fixes to make sure we were on course and reading the drifts so we knew the wind speed.
As we flew over an inland sea I could make out the city of Hiroshima from miles away - my first thought was 'That's the target, now let's bomb the damn thing'.
But it was quiet in the sky. I'd flown 58 missions over Europe and Africa - and I said to one of the boys that if we'd sat in the sky for so long over there we'd have been blown out of the air.
Once we verified the target, I went in the back and just sat down. The next thing I felt was 94,000lbs of bomb leaving the aircraft - there was a huge surge and we immediately banked into a right hand turn and lost about 2,000 feet.
We'd been told that if we were eight miles away when the thing went off, we'd probably be ok - so we wanted to put as much distance as possible between us and the blast.
All of us - except the pilot - were wearing dark goggles, but we still saw a flash - a bit like a camera bulb going off in the plane.
There was a great jolt on the aircraft and we were thrown off the floor. Someone called out 'flak' but of course it was the shockwave from the bomb.
The tail-gunner later said he saw it coming towards us - a bit like the haze you see over a car park on a hot day, but moving forwards a great speed.
We turned to look back at Hiroshima and already there was a huge white cloud reaching up more than 42,000 feet. At the base you could see nothing but thick black dust and debris - it looked like a pot of hot oil down there.
We were pleased that the bomb had exploded as planned and later we got to talking about what it meant for the war.
We concluded that it would be over - that not even the most obstinate, uncaring leaders could refuse to surrender after this.
In the weeks afterwards, I actually flew back to Japan with some US scientists and some Japanese from their atomic programme.
We flew low over Hiroshima but could not land anywhere and eventually landed at Nagasaki.
We didn't hide the fact that we were American and many people turned their faces away from us. But where we stayed we were made very welcome and I think people were glad that the war had ended.
Morris "Dick" Jepson, 83
I was a young second lieutenant in the US Air Force and was designated as the weapons test officer on the Enola Gay.
Enola Gay returns after Hiroshima mission (photo: Smithsonian Institution)
For Dick Jepson, the Enola Gay flight was his first combat mission
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_pr eview.asp?idArticle=5894&R=C62A29C91
This is a wonderful article from the Weekly Standard concerning Truman's choice.
The most salient fact? About 10,000 people per day were dying per day in the Pacific theatre, mostly civilians in Japanese-occupied countries. Any alternative to the bombs that would have caused a one month delay would have wound up with more dead than the bombs themselves.
Remember this before you rattle off about some alternative scheme to end the war.
I thought slashdot had a reputation of reporting news a day or two ahead of others.
You must be new here!
from wikipedia.
The Japanese also engaged in mass killings; millions of Asian civilians and Allied POWs were killed by its military and/or used as forced labour. The most notorious atrocities occurred in China, including the slaughter of almost half a million Chinese during the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731's experiments with biological warfare in Manchuria, with a view to killing a large part of the Chinese population. Japanese war crimes also included rape, pillage, murder, cannibalism and forcing female civilians to become sex slaves, known as "comfort women" .
Truman had another option to end the war -- Godzilla. Yes, Godzilla.
We could have avoided the whole nuclear arms race if we'd only sent it Godzilla. Or giant robots. Ok, the robots wouldn't have worked without a nuclear power source, but still think of it -- Godzilla or giant robots!
Only problem is finding enough butterscotch pudding to control Gozilla. It's his favorite, by the way.
1) more people died previously in (single) conventional bomb strikes (firebombings);
2) Japan had, at that point, lost control of air and sea (over and around) their nation;
3) Japan was starving it's people and urging them to prepare for "millions of honorable deaths";
4) The Emperor wanted to surrender, but the Japanese military leadership refused to allow it;
5) Japan was warned repeatedly by the USA that refusing to surrender would exact a terrible toll;
6) Japan was seriously dragging their heels, taking weeks to decide, preparing for a defensive land war.
Finally, the US ended the stalemate, without a gruesome land war.
No one in the USA wanted to fight an "Iwo Jima" style battle, one in which hundreds of lives were lost just gaining or losing a couple of yards.
Fought on their home islands, the Japanese would have fought terribly, to the last man woman or child, with hundreds of thousands of lives lost on each side to starvation or this hellish land war.
The bomb, in many ways, was a gift for both sides.
Every nation with any useful natural resources or territory ... can only do the sane thing of arming themselves
OK so let me get this straight, Canada should develop nukes to defend itself from the US, is that what you're saying?
Another point, umm, people or nations arming themselves is supposed to REDUCE tension?
Yeah, whatever. Have a nice day.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
yet slashdot missed this immensely important anniversary in a day.
and can say without hesitation whatsoever that this anniversary is getting far less news coverage here, and isn't being talked about by the average Japanese. In general, Japanese are much less political than Americans. I could go into why but that would be a really long post. If you care, start by learning about honne and tatamae.
and remember, our next attack was the main island Kyushuu, with a population ten times that of Okinawa. There is no reason to believe that the Japanese would defend one of their main four islands any less fiercely than they did Okinawa, which is actually a long way from the main cluster of islands and about as much a part of Japan as Hawaii is part of the US.
Actually, as the article I cited notes, our generals and admirals were having second thoughts about the invasion.
The US forces were not planning an invasion until October-November anyway. Those peole would have died had the bombs not worked or Japan not surrendered. The bomb was first an effort to save the lives of American soldiers, and second an effort to forestall serious Russian incursions into Japanese territory. The Russians were our allies, but we knew they wanted parts of the Japanese islands back from losses in the Russo-Japanese War.
Saving the lives of civilians was a poor third at best. The war was already in progress. They would be saved or die as chance would allow. The US was not fighting on the basis of liberating the most subjugated people first. It was moving on the basis of strategic advantage to get at the Japanese home islands and end the war soonest. Saving civilian lives was a byproduct.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I think you have do what has to be done to end the war. Remember, people were estimating that an invasion of Japan would cost one million Allied casulties, and probably at least that many Japanese. Horrible though the two bombs were, they still cost less lives than an invasion would have.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
but a product is a product either way. Truman's first line of reasoning was concerned with American lives, as it should have been. The fact that it also saved allied lives, Japanese lives, forced Japan into a totally-defeated surrender, and prevented a split, half-communist controlled nation were all icing on the cake.
Despite the horrors, the alternatives were worse.
The strategic situation in 1945 may indeed have been such that Truman's decision to drop the bomb saved more lives than it cost. But whenever the world stops to remember Hiroshima and reflect on the destruction that nuclear weapons can inflict on civilian populations, Americans get all thin-skinned and start huffing and puffing about what the Japanese did before the bombings.
These are valid points, but they're largely irrelevant. Nuclear weapons have not been used since, so when we reflect on their actual usage, we have no choice but to recall these two events in 1945- which is unfortunate because they bring in the baggage associated with that particular war that makes Americans lose sight of the larger issue. The point in remembering them really has more to do with the nature of nuclear war itself than some perceived effort to slight the Americans. If someone had dropped a nuclear bomb on the U.S.A., the world would no doubt commemorate that too.
What you refer to as "the US" or "US forces" was a group of people, and it was not entirely homogeneous. Some had good motives, some had bad motives, and most (I think) had mixed motives.
Trying to put the priorities of an inhomogeneous group of people in some kind of order isn't necessarily helpful, even if it is accurate at some level of abstraction.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
The likelyhood of someone dying in war has dropped dramatically since August 9th, 1945. Despite a boom in world population, the annual number of deaths due to war has fallen about 80%.
I will agree, however, that people have odd reactions to minute but spectacular risks (while all but ignoring everyday risks such as driving your car)
IIRC 300,000+ or so were lost in Japan's Rape of Nanking, addition to the hundreds of thousands that were literally raped.
Would you not prefer that a nuke had been dropped, and only 210k killed?
I am more ashamed of the horrible and needless fire bombings of Dresden. Germany was defeated; it was a senseless waste of human life, and a loss of hundreds of years of culture. I can justify the a-bomb, military and industrial targets were hit including the factory that made the torpedoes that hit Pearl Harbor, but Dresden was a city of no military or strategic importance. You can make the case that the a-bomb saved lives by avoiding an invasion of mainland Japan, but there is no justification for what happened in Dresden.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
any physics majors in the house:
What would have happened if we detonated the bomb about 60 miles offshore of Japan in the Pacific instead? More deaths? Less?
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
Here's a film from the Internet Archive:
...
A Tale of Two Cities" (1946)
There is be more
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
The Japanese were not close to surrender on such terms. They completely rejected such terms in secret codes we had intercepted and cracked. They were considering asking the Russians to mediate a cease-fire, leaving them in possession of large chunks of China and leaving their military junta intact, not just the emperor.
Nor should the Japanese have been close to surrender. Our generals were already backing out of their support for an invasion, because it would be too bloody.
Interesting however was that the bomb was not aiming for the factory. It was aiming to kill as many civilians as possible.
via the guardian newspaper A bright green flash No one should again suffer as we did 60 years ago in Hiroshima Keiko Lane Saturday August 6, 2005 The Guardian On the morning of August 6 1945 I was sitting in my garden beside an ornamental pond and singing as I cleaned my brother's shoes. I was seven. My mother was in the kitchen and my 14-year-old brother had already left for work. Suddenly there was a bright green flash on the other side of the house, and with a mighty roar the house collapsed, leaving me buried deep under smashed wood and panelling. My mother was thrown the length of the house and also buried. Luckily she freed herself and searched desperately for me. Article continues She was very slender and less than 5ft tall, yet she found a superhuman strength to move heavy timbers, already starting to burn, and other debris until she found me. I was pulled from the wreckage and my injuries were roughly dressed with bandages torn from her clothes. Next door a young woman was trapped. My mother found it impossible to move the burning wood and, finding no one alive or uninjured nearby to help, she picked me up and ran up the street, leaving the woman still trapped. All that day my mother carried me through the destroyed and burning city, stepping over or around the dead and dying as she made her way to the outskirts of Hiroshima, where she hoped medical help could be found. As I was being carried I saw many charred bodies lying in the streets, including several mothers who had instinctively tried to shelter their children with their bodies but had died, leaving their children still alive, many with terrible burns. In the evening we found an emergency dressing station set up at a still-smouldering elementary school. My mother had carried me more than six miles. I was examined by a doctor, who suspected that I was dying from internal injuries and told my mother to give me nothing to drink in spite of my desperate need for water. Finally, a nearby injured old lady reasoned that if I was dying then a drink of water would do me no harm. Next day a large pit was dug in the playground by some old soldiers and they began to incinerate the dead, of which there were many stacked up against the walls. All day the playground filled with the injured, and as some of them died they were thrown on the fire. In particular I remember a boy of about 12 who was terribly burnt and blind. He kept asking for his mother and as he became more delirious he asked repeatedly for her to cook him some tempura, which apparently was his favourite food. Finally, he also died and was put on the fire. No one knows exactly how many died in Hiroshima, but it is estimated at more than 200,000, of which many were refugee women and children. Those near ground zero were instantly vaporised, leaving behind only a shadow on the ground or wall. Maybe they were the lucky ones, because many of the survivors died in agony from terrible burns. Some took a long time to die. My mother suffered the effects of radiation for many years. I was in and out of hospitals with leukaemia until my mid-20s, and because of the possibility of having deformed babies I decided not to marry until much later in life. My brother had been affected by radiation and was unable to have children. My aunt, who had a silk dressing gown welded to her body and her fingers joined together like ducks' feet, took three years to die. Recently I retraced my journey through Hiroshima with my husband and revisited the school where I received treatment on that dreadful day. It was a moment of mixed emotions, but I did feel strongly that this horror must never be allowed to happen again. The only certain way to ensure this is to destroy all nuclear weapons and ban the making of any more.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
I already know that there's going to be people arguing back and forth that a) Hiroshima was a tragedy that never should have happened, or b) Hiroshima was necessary because it ended the war/punished the Japanese/etc.
Well, you know what? I don't care about either of those perspectives. Maybe it was necessary, maybe it wasn't, it's history now, and let's treat it as such. But there's one thing about the bomb that nobody in the US seems to realize:
Any country, *any* country, that uses nuclear weapons against another country had better let it weigh on their soul for as long as that country exists. The discussion should be constant, and permanent, and without end. The empathy of the pain that the Japanese people went through should be part and parcel of every conversation about World War II. People should go to sleep every night knowing exactly how serious of a decision that was.
And that's the problem: For every other country whose government's have committed mass murder, whether justifiable or not, there is a sense of history, of ownership of the bad as well as the good, there is a conceivability that they are as much responsible for the past as they are for the present and future.
In the US, we don't have that sense. It's all abstract and textbook, it's all justifications and wartime terminoligy. It's all disconnected and abstracted to the point of science fiction.
So argue all you want about whether it was right, or wrong, or good, or bad, or justifiable, or unjustifiable. To me, I can understand both sides of that debate.
What I can't understand is how most Americans seem to care much about what it means that we sent two Japenese cities into a nuclear hell. Using the bomb was a horrible act, whether or not it was justifiable, and the real tragedy is that the Japanese people were forced to understand that, while we read the headlines, added some notes to the next year's schoolbooks, and then continued on with our lives.
Ask the Chinese survivors of Nanking how many tears they shed for the Japanese after Hiroshima.
Ask the survivors of the Bataan Death March how many tears they shed for Japan.
Ask the Philipinos that survived the Manila Massacre how many tears they shed for Japan.
I bet all of the people that carried up pieces of human remains from Pearl Harbor don't give a shit. I bet the veterans of the Pacific island hopping campaign don't give a shit. Nor the prisoners of war all over Asia.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Utter propaganda developed by the United States for it's own benefit.
Take a look at the scholarly work on the subject. Japan was ready to surrender, they had offered conditional surrender before the bombs were dropped. Of course that was rejected, and no doubt should have been for strategic reasons.
US military officials agreed that Japan was close to surrender, and it's military capability was almost entirely destroyed in the fire-bombings that took place before Hiroshima/Nagasaki. The military dictatorship that influenced and basically forced the Emperor to support it and their ideals has already collapsed under the shame from their losses and failure to defend Japan. Take a look at the 1946 Bombing Survey for more info. Japan was not a significant military threat at the time. Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" is a good starting point. Though if you think he's biased you can find the same referenced info elsewhere. Military officials were clear that Japan was not a great threat anymore. Marshall councilled against using the bomb on civilian populations, as did most other advisors and the creators of the weapons.
No evidence backs up the claim that anywhere from half a million, to a million US lives would be required to take Japan. No data at all supports that, indeed the numbers seem to be drawn out of thin air. There is no accurate measurement of how many lives would be needed to take Japan, especially as many suggest that Japan was close to surrender, had little military might, and might not even need to be invaded at all.
It is clear that Truman lied to the American people when he notified them on the bombing of Japan with nuclear weapons. "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."
Hiroshima was not a "military base". The aim of dropping the bomb was not to hasten Japanese defeat in order to spare US lives, but rather as a strategic move to check Stalin. Stalin was to declare war on Japan and join in any possible invasion. The US did not want to face another East/West Germany situation, with a possible unfriendly government in the region. Instead they wished to have influence in the region, and to show military might. Taking the first step in the Cold War meant that they had to make a show of power, and dropping the Bomb was that step. It showed the region, Stalin, and the world at large that they were in control. An impressive step was needed to assert this power, and indeed Truman no doubt felt that by asserting US authority and making a power play he could prevent the US from having to fight more wars in the future and scede power to unfriendly governments.
So your point is entirely falacious. Often repeated and held as truth in schools and blindly pro-US people, but there is no factual evidence to support it. Please take a look at all the scholarly work on the subject. It is so one-sided as to be ridiculous. Bombing Japan in order to save hundreds of thousands of US lives is a story without any merit at all.
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
actually by 'us' i meant U.S. (united states) government. i shouldve written it in caps.
I always thought Nagasaki gets less attention than it deserves. You always hear about the Hiroshima anniversary, but rarely hear about the Nagasaki anniversary.
So let me remedy that with a link to the San Francisco Exploratorium's exhibition of restored photos taken shortly after the attack, Remembering Nagasaki.
You can't really blame the Americans for throwing the bomb(s).
Noone, not even Einstein, Bohr, Oppenheimer and the rest of the scientists could really predict the devastating consequences of that bomb. Of course, the atomic bomb had been tested, but afterall, you never know what good a weapon really is, before it has been used.
The good thing about the two bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that they were terrible enough to have prevented anybody else from throwing them... afterall... we learned our lesson there (no, I'm not American, but it was a lesson for the entire world to learn).
Just a side-comment. Einstein actually said once, that if he had known what his research would've led to, he would have become a locksmith instead.
Arkanoid
gethostbyintuition()... why not?
ut how does it feel -after all pride and duty- to be part of the nation that fired up such a "baby" at first?
Not bad at all - remember:
The Japanese started the war with us via strike they hoped would prevent the US from challenging them in the Pacific - unfortunately for them they were wrong.
They had ample opportunity to surrender before that - and after the first bomb, but chose not to. It should have been clear to their leadership that there was no way they would win the war.
While the damage was horrific, fewer died than would have if we decided to blockade them and continue to use regular weapons to force a surrender, invading if needed.
A better question is:
Would Japan and Germany have given as liberal surrender terms and as benign an occupation as they experienced under the Allies?
I think the Chineses, Phillipinos, Indo-Chinese, Poles, French, Dutch, et. al. might be able to shed some light on what a German / Japanese victory might have been like.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Hello Kitty...
Perhaps we could have asked her to intervene.
I keep reading posts from proud Americans how the bombs were justified, saved x lives and the world should be thankful for the guardian angel that US is.
Yet no word on the point of view (that I assume was never taught in US schools) that the bombing was unnecessary, as Japan was about to surrender, the wheels were in motion but accidental/intentional communication problems prevented that from happening before the bombs were dropped.
I also cannot discount the point of view that US had used this opportunity to do a real-life test and show the world its new weapon technology, just like recently in Iraq with the bunker busters and stealth fighters, and to ensure its uncontended first page in the world superpower book.
No words on that fact that mostly CIVILIANS were killed in a horrible way in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I'm not defending the Dresden issue if that's what you think.
Paul Fussell's essay, Thank God for the Atom Bomb, should be required reading for those who want to understand the decision to drop the bomb and its historical context.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
As I have cited above, the Japanese were nowhere near surrendering, nor should they have been. They were beginning to whisper about a cease-fire, which would have left their military junta intact and them in possession of large chunks of the asian mainland.
Not meant to be too nitpicky, but it's the 7th of August here in Japan. It has been for about nine hours now, or rather since before your article was printed on the main page.
This is a question that has always confused me in history and, I imagine, will only get worse. How do you keep track of what time things actually happened? I know the use of local and zulu in the military has made things easier, but how do historians keep track? Or is everyone just assumed to be talking about their time zones, and all anniversaries are celebrated as that time comes to other time zones, like new years?
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I did not speak of whether the dropping of the bomb(s) were a good or a bad idea. What I said was, that it's way too cynical to justify the killing of 210K by saying that it prevented many more from being killed. I'm sorry, I didn't make that clear. :-)
However, let me give you my view on the bombing:
I think, in the end, that the nuclear bombing have proved, not to be justifiable, but reasonable. In fact, no one _really_ knew what they were standing with (Einstein later said, that if he had known what he knew now, he would've been a locksmith instead)
And afterall, the raid were so terrible, that it prevented anybody else from using the bomb, so far.
Arkanoid
gethostbyintuition()... why not?
Just dont forget who STARTED the damned war. ( hint, it wasnt the US, who finished it )
The way we finished the war saved a lot more lives then would have been lost if we all kept fighting.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The Japanese soldiers were fanatical beyond belief. The banzai (basically suicidal) charges, the Kamikaze pilots, and so on, gave the Americans a healthy respect for the Japanese commitment to avoid defeat at all costs.
When Truman made the Decision, he put the lives of Allied troops as his first priority. He was right to do so.
and feel fine about the stuff they should feel guilty over.
If truman had the atomic bomb and reasonably believed using this weapon would end the war and would save a million lives he had a DUTY to use it even if the civilian cost was terrible.
If the critics can play monday morning quarterback then so can I. The use of the atomic bomb in the real world as opposed to just tests allowed the world to see how horrible it was and so far has ensured only two have been used in the last 60 years.
If Americans want to feel guilty over something, feel guilty about your SUV's helping to fund terrorism through oil money. we should feel guilty that we have allowed our constitution to be gutted in the name of safety. We should feel guilty that we sent american soldiers over to die in iraq without demanding verifiable proof from their commander in chief for the reasons for going. Theres plenty of things we can feel guilty about without accepting undesserved blame
of stories from the Phillipines, China, Korea and elsewhere throughout the Pacific as to the evil we are fighting?
Or what about the day-to-day horrors going on in Japan, due to the combination of conventional bombings and food shortages? Check out the anime Grave of the Fireflies for a good depiction of these events.
Anecdotes are powerful, but inherently unbalanced.
1421-08-26 AH = 2000-11-24 AD
1422-08-26 AH = 2001-11-13 AD
1423-08-26 AH = 2002-11-02 AD
1424-08-26 AH = 2003-10-23 AD
1425-08-26 AH = 2004-10-11 AD
1426-08-26 AH = 2005-09-30 AD
1427-08-26 AH = 2006-09-20 AD
1428-08-26 AH = 2007-09-09 AD
1429-08-26 AH = 2008-08-29 AD
1430-08-26 AH = 2009-08-18 AD
1431-08-26 AH = 2010-08-07 AD (actually, 1431-08-26 AH begins at sundown on 2010-08-06 AD)
Cthulhu for President! Why settle for the lesser evil?
Maybe comparable to 12/07/41?
The Japanese decidely rejected such terms in their communications with their Russian ambassador. This is historical fact, and apparently MacArthur did not know this at the time of the quote you cited. Note that these intercepts did not become public until the 1990s.
As for the second quote, note the "loss of face" line. The bombs were precisely what Eisenhower was asking for. The Japanese were prepared to fight to the bitter end against conventional weapons. Also note that Eisenhower was referring to bomb and blockade strategies, which while costing few American lives, would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. Remember, 10k a day!
Or do most news stories relating to this fail to mention that it was the U.S. that dropped the bomb, often referring to it as 'when the bombs hit Japan' and not as 'when the US dropped the bombs on Japan'?
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
But how does it feel -after all pride and duty- to be part of the nation that fired up such a "baby" at first?
Actually, I always felt proud and honored to live in the first country to create them. The story of the Manhattan Project is quite fascinating merely from a technical standpoint. It was a huge engineering feat, one which no other world power at the time was in a position to make, and since we were the first to make them, we had a good excuse for using them (not knowing better) that the second and third countries to develop them did not enjoy. People back then thought of these things as conventional explosives, only bigger. Nobody had seen large amounts of ionizing radiation before and there was no general appreciation yet of its hazards.
Now you might say that Truman should have looked at what happened in Hiroshima and decided not to bomb Nagasaki. But that's really expecting a lot of the U.S. to "get religion" on nukes within a week. Just look at all the stupid things that were being done with nuclear power and atomic weapons for decades afterwards. They sent soldiers into zones irradiated with nuclear artillery shells. They flew planes through mushroom clouds. They blasted this crater in an effort to show how canals could be dug with thermonuclear weapons. People were remarkably slow to recognize the dangers for a long time. Even shoe stores in the 50s would irradiate your feet continuously with X-rays to help you get a better fit. It really didn't dawn on people until sometime in the sixties that this stuff is nothing to be trifled with.
We should consider ourselves lucky that so far nuclear weapons have only been used once, and to end a world war. This is not to excuse the jingoistic Japan-bashing from Americans that I see on every Hiroshima anniversary, which is just petty, and profoundly misses the point. But the human race was bound to discover nuclear weapons eventually. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been bombed early on with relatively small nuclear weapons, we might not have been witness to such an early demonstration of the danger they present, and we might have used them to a greater extent in a much larger conflict later on.
There's a better article article at: http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0508/featur e6/multimedia.html
Gotta love that Nat Geo. Life member since forever.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
feel guilty about your SUV's helping to fund terrorism through oil money.
Also feel guilty that although being in an SUV is slightly safer for you, you are SIX TIMES more likely to kill the occupants of the car you crash into than if you were driving an automobile.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
How about we don't have nations? We have different people, like we have different dogs, some with spots and patches, some uniform color, some tall, some short, some with big furs, some with no hair, under one nation?
"I do *not* blame you for this. How could I blame someone I don't even know for policies? I just ask myself how I would manage to be part of a society who "did" it as I do ask myself as part of a nation that was forced to the nazy-system..."
Erm... I'm from Denmark... nevertheless:
I guess that depends on you view on society. Can you blame individuals of a society, for the actions carried out by it? And if so, can you blame all individuals? Or perhaps only, a few responsible persons?
Personally, I don't think of "Americans" as a stereotypical, warmongering, asshole. But I know that they exists within the american society. As well as they do in the danish society and any other society.
In the end, the problem is, that the human brain tends to stereotype in order to comprehend. This sort of ignorance leads to prejudices. These leads to fear, which leads to hate. And hate leads to wars... so it all begins with ignorance and negligence.
In fact, if we are to prevent this from happening ever again, the only sure way, would be to accept all humans as individuals with different thoughts and meanings, and respect their right to have them. Unfortunately... when debating on the net, I'm beginning to loose my faith in the human race. Again, prejudices leads to flaming which are used far too often on the net... *sigh* but that's just me, being sentimental (or perhaps only mental?)
Arkanoid
gethostbyintuition()... why not?
You need to read up on your history. Look at the number of Japanese soldiers who surrendered on every island that we took in the pacific. The numbers are very low. Many islands, with garrisons of 20,000 Japanese soldiers would often only surrender a dozen or so men. The Japanese were FANATICAL, and DID NOT SEE SURRENDERING as an option as long as there were standing soldiers. You live in the west. You have a much different view of death and honor than the imperial japanese army did. Its just like with American troubles in the middle east right now. Americans have a hard time understanding how a man can strap bombs to himself and blow himself up. Its because Muslims have a much different idea of what death means than the west does. And lets not forget, the Japanese committed horrible atrocities all throughout the Pacific and in China.
I'm basically convinced that we wanted to study the effects on real targets, and also implicitly threaten Stalin, and those factors were used to justify the targeting. We hated the Japanese enough to consider their use as human Guinnea pigs to be a trivial aspect.
Not sure how to file this aspect, though it's surely not amusing, but we might well have killed more Japanese and learned more about nuclear war by "humanely" hitting Mount Fuji first. A low-level blast planned to create the maximum visual scarring of Mount Fuji would have also kicked up an enormous amount of fallout, and the long-term fatalities would probably have been very high, though the immediate deaths would have been reduced. Of course, part of our ignorance at that time included ignorance of radiation sickness and fallout.
However, looking at the state of the world today, it doesn't seem like we learned much by it. At least nothing important.
By the way, I've lived in Japan for many years. On a clear day, I can see Mount Fuji from my train station.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Im not an American and I think the use of nuclear weapons was totally outrageous, but I don't think Americans should feel guilty about it, why should they? were you even alive when that happened? As for Iraq, in a democratic society you vote for the government you want and there's not much else you can do outside protesting unless it gets really bad. Should you feel guilty that you didn't drop your life and attempt to overthrow the government because they wanted to invade Iraq? Fuck no. Sure you can feel guilty about your car and wasteful lifestyle, but how you feel isn't going to make any difference, trying to make it a little better might. Sometimes Americans are given too much of a hard time in the world over things they have done but in reality, everyone has something they are guilty of, and you shouldn't have to feel bad about things you personally had absolutely nothing to do with or had no realistic way of changing.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
There are many people who have good reasons to hate the US for its foreign policies, but a sane person wouldn't say that Pearl Harbor or 9/11 were justified because of that. Why you despite this burden the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nanking with the acts of politicians and soldiers is beyond me.
What's your point?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I wonder if these racists have ever gotten out of their comfy little white-bread suburban holes, and gotten to know any Japanese people?
I have. And I have a damn sight more sympathy for my Japanese and Japanese-American friends, than I could ever be able to muster for the trash who would celebrate their murder.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
But how does it feel -after all pride and duty- to be part of the nation that fired up such a "baby" at first?
It feels a whole hell of a lot better than if Japan or Germany developed it first.
an ill wind that blows no good
We all need to see a nuclear bomb detonated in front of us and to see people dying all around us. Watch as radiation totally deforms our bodies and our entire families disappear before our very own eyes. Maybe then, humans won't be so stupid to just rush into anything like nuclear bombs or simply, wars. Yes I said HUMANS, not America/Japan. The decisions we make are unbelievable... STOP BEING STUPID.
also recently removed from it's student's textbooks some very horrific events of it's attempt at world conquest.
Not many American textbooks discuss in great lengths the atrocities commited against Native Americans, either. You won't see a lot of British texts that discuss what was done to the Scots. No country wants to live in perpetual shame of what their forefathers did. If anyone really wants to know, the information is there.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is a wildly different situation for many reasons, not the least of which is that "arabs" do not compose a nation which declare war as a whole.
Your analogy might be apt if all of asia were has been engaged in guerilla war with the US, but in fact, the Japanese were busy slaughtering their neighboring asian nations at the same time they were fighting us.
Also, this ignores the factors of Israel and its dependence upon US assistance to defend itself, as well as the fact that Saddam invited the second most recent major war between the US and iraq by invading, his rich but relatively defenseless neighbor.
Because it wasn't, and such acts aren't. Killing people swiftly and suddenly doesn't make killing better or morally acceptable.
-- Not a
Not only does stubear drive an "evil SUV", but he also suffers from Road Rage. But we can help him! there is hope... :)
;)
LOL I think you've heard that argument before and are kinda fed up of hearing it. This reminds me of when people used to boo, hiss, and throw eggs at people who wore mink coats. As if the mink was an adorable cuddly creature. It's a vicious rodent and deserves to be skinned, hehe. But they ended up winning. No one wears real furs anymore. Good luck with your SUV
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What other military powers would have used the same technology (if they had it and nobody else did) either before Hiroshima or after on their adversary?
Would Japan have used it (ie. at Pearl Harbor)?
Would Germany or Russia or China have used it?
Not justifying or down playing the deaths of innocents...IMHO Hiroshima was a hard earned lesson for everyone (even those that had nothing to do with the conflict). If that detonation had not taken place, what would have?
The rape of Nanking was only one incident, and was completely indicative of Japan's atrocities in Asia (China, Korea, SE Asia). See this:_ Atrocities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_War
The people of China and Korea (both of them) will never forgive the Japanese for what they did in World War II during their totally unjustified quest to create the "East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere" i.e. the Japanese Empire.
It is quite interesting how the war is treated differently in regards to the treatment of Japan and Germany. When one talks about Germany during World War II, all he/she usually talks about is the Holocaust and other acts of Nazi brutality. Rarely is the plight of the German people mentioned. This in my opinion is totally justified. However, when one talks about the Japanese, a quite significant number will choose to talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how terrible it was for the Japanese civilians. The story that the first poster put up may be touching, but if you listen to the stories of the many millions of Chinese and Koreans who were brutalized, this story seems trite and insignificant in comparison. In my opinion much more focus should be put on Japan's war atrocities, just like Germany's war atrocities are commonly focused upon.
As a Chinese native living in the USA, I am surprised daily as to how many people feel sympathy for the Japanese b/c they were nukes, because I can never bring myself to feel such sympathy. To sympathize with them, is to denigrate the millions of my countrymen who were brutally slaughtered.
200,000 may seem like a lot but the United States had to kill over 400,000 Japanese soldiers in the Phillipines alone for McArthur to return. The United States had 14,000 casulaties... 2,000 or so of those were deaths.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
To quote from the article you linked to,
Attacking Dresden could be justified
It was after all a major rail junction and in modern warfare logistics is everything. Your statement that
Dresden was a city of no military or strategic importance
Just doesn't add up. Would it have been possible to destroy the Dresden marshalling yards without area bombing the entire city? Maybe, but at that time area bombing was what the RAFs bomber command and the US 8th airforce were trained and equipped to do, precision bombing was in its infancy. Hindsight may tell us the Germans were defeated by then but they were still fighting, ask anyone with military experience, you don't give your opponent a break because he looks weak, you keep hitting him until he gives up. Brutal? Yes, but war was never a gentlemanly affair.
The destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were likely caused by communication problems, nothing more. When approached with proposals for surrender, Japan's leadership replied with "mokusatsu" -- a typically Japanese response when confronted with an unappealing offer -- "I hear you, but I choose to say nothing". The purpose of this sort of communication is to respond to an offensive offer respectfully whilst saving face, and it usually elicits a better offer. Of course, Americans don't understand that sort of crap, so along came a typically American response -- really bad sunburn for tens of thousands of Japanese. Had these two countries appointed some better diplomats, perhaps it would never have happened. But who cares about diplomacy when you've already decided you are going to annihilate one another?
20/20 hindsight notwithstanding, I have always wondered what would have occurred had we never dropped the bombs. It would be hard for me to believe that the Japanese would ever have surrendered otherwise. At the time, it was seen as a fate worse than death (the "unendurable"), and they were teaching women and children in just about every prefecture to fight with bamboo spears. This seems like determination that could only be broken by a weapon so powerful, awe-inspiring, and magical as an atomic bomb would seem in 1945.
Move beyond the war with Japan's rather explosive resolution and you have more to speculate about that leads back to it. Without our demonstration of the power of atomic weapons in Asia, would the U.S. and Soviets really not have blown the shit out of each other during the cold war? It seems to me that deterrence only works when there has been a demonstration of the consequences of unchecked aggression. This may be reductio ad absurdum, but I did not start caring about my parking tickets until I got a boot [clamp] on my car. The atomic bomb's use brought the power of nuclear weapons out of the abstract, and I for one am very thankful for the success of nuclear weapons today. They have put an end to war between developed nations, leaving our leaders to their inane intrigues and bullying (at least it's not World War III).
This fact leads me to a paradox that I find interesting. Targeting non combatants with nuclear weapons was definitely the wrong thing to do. It is terrorism. But in this case, considering all that could have been, I feel that it was right to do the wrong thing, even if for the wrong reasons.
Contrary to your ignorant statement, America did more for Japan than it's emperor EVER did. We rebuild Japan with a vengence.
Japan's efficiency in manufacturing and business process did not come from some stroke of post-war national pride. It came from the business philosophies of Dr. William Deming.
Deming was the grandfather of Process. His processes, referred to as TQM (Total Quality Management) or TQC (Total Quality Control)
The direct ancestor of Deming's initial work, was the business philosophy which turned Japan into an economic powerhouse in the 1980s, is called Theory Z
The real irony here, is that like so many absolutely brilliant and revoluationary new ideas that originated in America, American businesses rejected Deming's value.
The other factor which created Japan how it is today is General Douglass MacArthur. During the five years diretly following the end of the war, MacArthur put as much fervor and resources into reconstruction Japan, as he did in conquering it. The Japanese, after accepting their defeat, transferred their reverence of Hirohito, and turned it into a devotion towards MacArthur.
If you have ANY copping that a country run by an ages-old dictatorial/monarchical society like Japan was, could possibly be the free and thriving nation it is today, but 10 years earlier, if we hadn't dropped a couple of low-yield hydrogen bombs, then you're insane.
The Japs knew they well 'n truelly beat by Saipan (just read any of the Japanese War ministry papers that were released about 10 years ago), gez by then their war production wasn't even replacing loses by 15% or something, let alone matching war loses, or matching the allies. Even us Aussies alone were almost matching the Japanese in many aspects of war production by then (of course that excludes such things as capital ships 'n subs. Mind you by the last year of the war Japanese aircraft production was abysmal, while such aircraft as Beaufighters, Mustangs & Mosquitoes were being made in Oz). The Japanese only kept fighting because unconditional surrender was unacceptable (which is why unconditional surrender's so rare) as they saw it as a risk to their monarchy.
Actually, the Japs knew they were beat by Midway - they knew the realities of US industrial production (the fact that only 17% of America's war effort was directed at Japan, yet the Americans were more than matching them. These figures become even more spectacular when one realises that Germany was directing arguably 80+% of it's war effort against the Russians) meant they had to force the US to meet it's terms with 6 months of Pearl Harbour or the war was lost. A such Japan had no intention of ever invading Australia, India or the US - their plan was to run amoke, quickly inflicting a number of knockout blows, there-by forcing the allies to accept their terms for peace - recognise the Japanese conquests in China & accept Japanese puppet regimes in the Philipines, Indochina, Malaya & the East Indies. (Going by a doco I saw) by Midway they had given up on the allies accepting terms on the puppet states & just wanted the China conquests recognised, which was still quite rightly unacceptable to the allies. By Saipan their hoped for terms were that the allies would be willing to accept some sort of Japanese hegamony/sphere in Formosa, Manchuria & Korea. By the fall of Germany the Japanese only had 2 conditions left - the monarchy must remain & on paper the surrender must be referred to as a 'negotiated ceasefire' (the Japanese obsession with 'face' is obvious here).
From what I understand the whole 'unconditional surrender' thing started as a policy of faith by Roosevelt & Churchill to Stalin. It became policy in regards to the Nazi regime as an attempt to relieve Stalin's concern/worries/paranoia about the West unilaterally negotiating terms with Hitler. The unconditional surrender policy was only extended to include the Japanese to satisfy American voters, who would otherwise ask 'why are the Germans expected to surrender unconditionally & not the Japs when it was the Japs that attacked us'.
Now lets see what some of America's great war-time leaders thought:-
GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
There is nothing wrong with feeling empathy for those whose lives were harmed by this, regardless if they were on the "good" or "bad" side. They were still human.
There are always many pointless deaths of good people on either side of a war.
Maybe at that time we still weren't sure if the bombs would ignite the atmosphere... dropping it in hilly terrain would help limit the effects if it proved more powerful than we thought, whereas dropping it over a body of water would vaporize a hell of a lot of seawater.
The reality is that anger and racism (or violent nationalism) tend to be diseases that every nation gets at some point. The US has about as much blood on it's hands as everyone else (if you consider the civil war), and our people tend to be just as defensive as everyone else in the world when forced to deal with those realities.
On the asian front - the Chinese brutalized their own people in an attempt to bring about the communist ideal and to throw down the oppression of the Kuomintang. Europeans brutalized one another for centuries to bring religious unity (or at least political unity). Africans brutalize each other to this day to bring about ethnic purity.
Nobody is clean. When we realize that, we'll begin to watch more carefully both what our leaders, the mob-will, and our own hearts end up doing.
Neither the sanctions nor the atomic bombings occured in a vacuum. Actions of a great many parties contributed to both situations.
I have a "Zero Policy" tolerance.
*/
Let me put it in perspective for you.
Japan not mentioning the medical experimentation it conducted on Chinese civilians as well as the number of Korean/Chinese women forced into sexual slavery is sort of like Germany forgetting the "incident" (official Japanese textbook phrasing) where 6 million Jews died.
Would we tolerate the latter? Of course not. Why do we tolerate the former then?
Btw, I've taken US History/US History AP in American high schools., and it has extensive coverage of the oppression that Native Americans suffered, from the time Columbus landed all the way to the Trail of Tears. Do you know how Japanese textbooks characterize the Rape of Nanking?
The Rape of Nanking is described as an "incident" where the Japanese Army met fierce resisitance in taking Nanking (this seems to gloss over the fact that all Chinese troops had withdrawn from the city, and many citizens were displaying Japanese flags from their windows to get in the good graces of the conquerers). This is NOT from the highly disputed minority textbook which doesn't mention it at ALL, but rather from the one which about 40% of Japanese High School students read. In a recent radio broadcst (~2 weeks ago) I heard on NPR, a visiting Japanese psychology professor recalled incidents where college freshmen asked him whether America won the war, or if Japan did.
Imagine the international condemnation of the Holocaust was referred to as an incident, and not covered beyond two sentences in the entire history book. The German people have dealt with their atrocities in WWII; Willi Brandt, a former German Chancellor, KNELT in front of the Jewish Holocaust memorial. When has the Emporer of Japan done the same for the Chinese and Korean people? Don't give me the crap about apologies already being made; what use is there for apologies when the mindset of an entire nation, as reflected through its' educational system, fails to appreciate the extreme pain and anguish it has caused just 50 years before?
Just to be clear, I'm not justifying the use of the atomic bomb on Japanese cities with what I said earlier. It is no less horrific, regardless of Japan's wartime activities. I just wish ensure that certain parts of Japan's wartime past don't get overshadowed.
And that's one of the major reasons the US chose to drop it's two atomic bombs on Japan. The US was convinced that the Japanese would not surrender, at least under any terms the US found acceptable. They were further convinced (probably correctly) that a full scale invasion of Japan was cause an extreme number of casualites on both sides.
The hope, thus, was to convince Japan that they had a new irresistable superweapon. Every effort was made to give the impression that the US possessed a vast aresenal of these bombs, and that they'd just keep dropping them on cities until Japan surrendered unconditonally.
It was such an unprecidented amount of force that it was just totally shocking. Sure, cities were leveled all the time, but it took thousands of bombers with many bombs each to do it, and that's somethign fighter planes could mount a defence against. But here ONE plane with ONE bomb effectively leveled a city. No one had ever seen any power like it, and had the US been telling the truth (in reality those two bombs were all they had at the time), there could be no defence.
Then, of course, there were the after effects which were unknown before that. People who had survived the bomb unscathed, so it seemed, began dying from mysterious problems, later revealed to be from the radiation that was released. So the bomb didn't just kill when it was dropped, it kept on killing even afterwards.
I personally think it is an event to be remembered because it's a demonstration of just how dangerous nuclear weapons are. Those bombs are tame compared to what we have today, and the destruction they unleashed is amazing.
The decision to nuke Hiroshima was appropriate given the circumstances of war. For anyone who seems so 'horrified' at this atrocity, recall that the Japan and Germany initiated the war. Recall that Japan and Germany created a war against humanity with INDUSTRIAL genocide.
Recall that Germany was furiously working on the nuke - if things had been differently, London and Moscow would have been targeted.
Recall that millions of civillians and millitary personel were killed as part of the axis war plans .
I would have been angry if the allied powers had a means to immediately end the war, even at great civillian loss, and chose not to use it for fear of later slashdot-weenies whinning about being "nice" during a war.
I've been to the countries occupied by Japan during the 30s and 40s, and the people to this day go out of their way to say "thanks" for the US millitary efforts sixty years ago. Phillipines, China, Indonesia, Australia...
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
WW2/Japan=nukes dropped and the Iwo Jima flag. Don't bother to tell me otherwise, you commie.
of your post. Japanese are in general apolitical and the younger generation simply doesn't think about Hiroshima (or history in general, for that matter). I once asked one of my Japanese coworkers, a very bright guy, how much they studied WWII during school. His answer was three or four days. I had an entire class entitled "WWII", and probably spent six weeks covering the war (the rest was the cold war and Vietnam).
.3% of the people that died in WWII, yet probably half of the anecdotes that an average American reads. That provides a completely distorted perspective.
The problem I have with anecdotes is that one is almost never exposed to them in proportion. The bombs constitute about
Flamebait? Backed up by evidence to show that the GP's point has no merit and it's flamebait? Mods on crack. Or most likely raised in the US and they have no idea that Tojo had been shamed into non-effectiveness. Japan would've surrendered if various militray actions other than targeted killing of hundreds of thousands of civilans were taken.
Mod me flamebait too. Fuck this garbage, rational thought is flaimebait because it clashes with what you've been raised to believe? Guess what, you're wrong.
that it's way too cynical to justify the killing of 210K by saying that it prevented many more from being killed.
The tally of people killed isn't the entire story. Americans would much prefer that Japanese died than fellow Americans. And that is a good justification; after all, we were at war with a country that attacked us.
It really makes no sense to say that an American should value the life of a WWII-time Japanese person as much as the life of a WWII-time American.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
bomb, though the Japanese were working on bio-weapons.
Of course, Truman had no way of knowing this. If you were him, every day you keep your genie in the bottle is one more day that your enemies have to unleash their own.
You are not being Politically Correct here.
A large percentage of the people reading this group of comments have never read nor appreciated history, and will simply spout the latest left wing hate at you.
Many of the current generation would have succeeded in Germany in the late 30s. And have been absolutely sure that they were the good guys.
I hate sigs, and refuse to have one.
Well you are obviously more informed than I am. I think that future generations shouldn't have their nose rubbed into the mistakes made by the generations before. It's just not healthy. Bad mistakes were made, atrocities were commited. Hopefully if we raise someone as a decent human being they won't do the same. Hopefully. And if they want to know more, the documentation exists to prove what happened.
But I think that you must not twist information around and turn it into something it's not. Silence is one thing. Disinformation is something else entirely and there's no excuse for that kind of behaviour.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
no wonder they were advertising this show on the Discovery Channel:
s ode=0&cpi=24927&gid=0&channel=DSC
http://dsc.discovery.com/schedule/episode.jsp?epi
At 8:15am on August 6th, 1945 the first experimental atom bomb, nicknamed 'Little Boy' was released from the Enola Gay at a height of six miles over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Viewers see what it meant to be struck by a nuclear bomb and survive.
HD Trailers
kudos, when America comes up with a twat they come up with a genuine card carrying grade A one.
They were just barely hinting at a negotiated cease-fire with the Russians as the intermediates. In their mind ("they" being the people in power), keeping the "emperor system" meant keeping the military junta in power with the emperor as its figurehead, and as a sovereign state - not an occupied colony run by Emperor MacArthur.
In fact, they had specifically rejected the suggestion by their Russian ambassador concerning the sparing of the emperor.
You are right, however, that we probably would not have invaded. Instead, we would have bombed and blockaded. Of course, at 10,000 deaths per day, this would make the a-bombs look like a miracle.
The Japanese attacked us first. They started the issue.
"occupying places in the middle east" ( in order to liberate the people, BTW ) is not even close to the same concept as what took place back in WWII.
Bombing civilians? Wake up, the axis powers did far more to civilians then we did in those 2 single bombings, which is what it took to end the war. And dont kid yourself, if we didnt do that, the war would have drug on a *lot* longer and a lot more of your precious civilians would have died, on both sides.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm an American, but I've been to China and their museums, and it's very clear that Japan ruthlessly attacked China, using tactics as bad as anything in history.
I suspect you are a college student, because nowhere else that I know of does there exist sympathy with WWII-time Japan.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
I'd love to know if there were more nukes in the arsenal in Aug 1945? Was it just the two, or were there others?
They offered surrender before the bombs were dropped. So they most certainly did see surrender as an option. They just wanted to propose terms to that surrender. More bombing of a non-nuclear nature and the joining of the war by the Soviets very well could've convinced them that non-conditional surrender was the only option.
Your post that suggests the Japanese were entirely irrational is racist flamebait in my view. They would've surrendered with terms before the bombing...so you have no basis for your claim that they were irrationally fanatical and incapable of surrender. Japanese forces were brave and "crazy", by our standards, but not entirely incapable of surrender.
The Japanese wanted assurances that the Emperor would still be allowed to sit on the throne, if you were wathing the current program on the history Channel you would see the well documented history of efforts taken from various members of the Japanese government to try and have the Soviets act as an intermediary with the US government for peace talks. The Japanese were waiting to hear back from the Potsdam conference, which is when Truman made the decision to drop the bomb, and then offered a meaningless ultimatum to the Japanese. He offered peace, after he had already given the order to drop the bomb.
The Japanese were entirely capable of acting in a non-fanatical way. I may be Western, but I do have Japanese family members, so your take on their psychology seems to me to be a bit more negative then what reality would suggest.
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
It's inevitable that someone will talk about how these bombings (along with Dresden) were basically wholesale slaughterings of civilians, by today's definitions tantamount to terrorism and thus (presumably) inherently evil. The other side will always bring up XYZ reasons why the bombings were absolutely necessary, usually saying that they saved more lives in the long run, etc.
Frankly, I think both sides are full of shit.
First, NOTHING was necessary. Even if Japan was never going to surrender, we did not have to invade Japan--by that point in the war, they certainly weren't going to invade us anytime soon. We could have precision-bombed (or whatever passed for precision bombing in 1945) their major factories, blockaded their harbors, and they wouldn't have been a threat to anyone anymore.
On the other hand, in a major conflict that will decide the fate of the world, "terrorism" in any conventional sense of the word is not inherently evil. If you cannot stand against the planes that bomb your cities and ships, targeting the civilians that are making the planes that bomb your cities and ships is perfectly reasonable. Additionally, causing "terror" in your enemy and thus compelling them to surrender is a valid and can SAVES LIVES ON BOTH SIDES.
In a nutshell, no we weren't saints when we vaporized and poisoned hundreds of thousands of civilians (and then invaded them and destroyed much of their culture.) But you don't win wars by being saint-like. In a more one-sided war (like Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan), it is the moral duty of the much superior force to be humane, but in the middle of WWII the victor was anything but assured.
Concepts like "rules of war" and "terrorism" are shams. There is no line in the sand you can draw, no action that is absolutely unjustified if we're talking about the fate of millions or billions of lives. That doesn't mean we're no better than the terrorists, or that there is no right or wrong. Far from it, it means that we simply need to hate and fight them for what they are--closed minded religious bigots whom cannot peacefully co-exist with other ideologies. That is all.
On September 11, they attacked our financial infrastructure and our military headquarters. Considering that they are by far the underdogs, this is (and I urge mods to wait and read and think before doing anything rash) a perfectly acceptable guerrilla tactic for a group so hopelessly out-gunned.
The TACTIC is valid; their REASONS are utter bullshit and that is why we should wipe them off the face of the Earth.
(To even come close to justifying that level of extreme violence, we'd need to do something insanely evil, not just stick up for Israel in the UN and maintain a military base in Saudi Arabia.)
I worry desperately when people say that killing civilians or causing terror is wrong 100% of the time, except for when we vaporize a few hundred thousand civilians but that's ok because of reasons XYZ. It's ok to admit that anything goes in war. Doing so does not legitimize your opponent in the least, because at the end of the day you are fighting for the rights and ideologies and ways of life that will live long after the dead are put in ground. You must always seek to justify your actions (or rather, you must always seek to act justly) , but no single action is inherently unjustifiable.
Just so you know, I happen to think that Hiroshima was justified, Nagasaki wasn't, Afghanistan was justified, and Iraq wasn't, but the point is the criteria you use, not the judgment itself. If you're not consistent in your criteria, don't be surprised when no one takes your own personal "axis of evil" seriously.
Anyway, sorry for the interruption, you may now resume dredging up every questionable action from the United States' and Japan's history.
Aside from death by illness, 99.999% of those held at the US camps walked out healthy, well fed, and un-abused. Has shameful as it was it was not comparable to the death camps. The Atomic bombings, also shameful were sadly unavoidable. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, the classic analysis of wartime Japan by the American cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict gives a good insight into why it had to be done. The soldiers of that era would have fought to the last man on the orders of the emperor. It was kill the Emperor or make him understand that he was outguned. Killing him would have made sure the war never ended. He got the message. And we had to prove it wasn't a fluke or meteor. Oddly, my sig fits this well "If it's not loud, it doesn't work!" -- Blank Reg, from "Max Headroom"
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
From the minutes of the Target Committee Meeting of May 10-11, 1945:
Hiroshima was selected because of the depot, because of the industrial area (which included military manufacturing), and to see how the hills would reflect the explosion.
Truman specifically avoided targeting purely civilian locations, including an order that Tokyo and Kyoto not be on the list. He accepted that civilian losses would be there; his speech stated as much when he said, "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."
Nagasaki was the second target of its day, and was a significant military port.
There is no debate that Japan was not in fighting shape anymore. The Potsdam Declaration (which demanded the disarming of Japan, the dismantling of war industries, the occupation of the islands, renouncement of territorial claims outside of the home islands, institution of a new government, handing over war criminals, and the occupation of Japan until such time as the above conditions were met, under pain of "total destruction", and there would be no negotiations) admitted as much. But the first reaction to the Declaration by the Japanese was to not comment (specifically, "mokusatsu" which may have been misinterpreted as intentionally refusing comment).
Had Japan been considering a conditional surrender? If they had, I've not been able to find anything solid on it. The only terms that I've found commonly suggested centered around keeping the emperor, having no foreign occupiers, and trying their own war criminals. These weren't going to go over well with the exception of keeping the emperor, because there was a severe lack of trust of the Japanese to follow through on their own and not rearm. The emperor had seen enough by this point, and was re-asserting himself to demand the end of the war, but this wasn't coming around fast enough because he still didn't have enough power. After the first bombing, no surrender announcement was made, and even after Nagasaki was hit, it still took four days of internal bickering before the emperor could come out and announce the surrender.
As for the losses, an invasion force of some 650,000 was being prepared. Okinawa had involved some 300,000 Allied troops and took nearly 50,000 casualties, one of four of which were deaths. More than 110,000 Japanese were dead, making for about a 9:1 kill ratio. Had similar rations occurred in a mainland invasion, it would have involve more than 100,000 casualties with 27,000 dead on the US side alone, and a quarter-million dead Japanese. However, the closer to the home islands the fighting got, the more extreme the Japanese became in their defensive efforts, and it's likely that the fighting would have been even more fierce, with losses even higher, because cities would be bombed prior to troop arrival, and it wasn't hard to kill tens of thousands with one raid.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Salon magazine reprinted a fairly balanced Der Spiegel (a German magazine) article about the decision to drop the atomic bomb.
It is easy to get on a high horse, feel morally superior, and use limited hindsight to condemn Truman. The article in contrast makes the point that even with the benefit of hindsight the decision to drop the bomb is a lot more defensible than what people think, since the A-bomb put an end to global wars.
I suppose then, by your logic, that civilians who work in economic institutions (like the ones in the world trade center) for western countries who are involved in proping up undemocratic and tyrannical govt's are the enemy of the oppressed then too.
Of course... when those civilians are on your side, I guess it doesn't count right?
Hypocrite.
I don't mean to make it appear as if I approve of that observation, but that is what modern warfare is. It is total war, all are part of the war, whether they fight on the frontlines or make the bread that serves the army. As it was, the bombs made the terrible possibility of an invasion of Japan unnecessary. That would have been bloodshed.
I think part of the reason that Germany and Japan are looked at so differently is really a combination of ignorance and post-war history. China and parts of Indo-China became Communist, the Koreas had their own war which put aside the reports of Japanese conduct. Beyond that, the Holocaust so greatly dwarfed even the horrible misdeeds of the Japanese that Germany became tainted (and may very well remain so for all time), whereas Japan became a steadfast ally of the West, if not a satellite, then at least the friendliest power in Asia, and a bulwark against Soviet influence.
I do think it is important that Asians understand what the Holocaust meant to the West, and not see that as in any way diminishing the attrocities the Japanese committed (and still, in some cases, seem very unwilling to admit to). The Holocaust was not just an act of unparalleled savagery and butchery, it was an organized mass murder, with the machine of state not only approving of it, but making it into a bureaucracy, a twisting of the notion of civil and military service in a way which had never been seen before.
But at the end of the day, Japan has much blood on its hands. When the Japanese ponder Heroshima and Nagasaki, they should also ponder what their armies did in Asia. The Japanese have blemished themselves much as the Germans have. The Japanese story ought to be one of triumph, of moving so swiftly from a feudal agricultural society in the early 18th century to a Great Power by the end of the 19th, taking a seat beside the Western powers, only to throw it all away in a mad attempt to make Asia into their empire.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Redundant and down to -1 now? I was the first, and maybe only poster, to offer a counter to any of the pro-bombing people in a detailed way, and the only one to provide any info and rational thought.
Total mod-war going on here. You may not agree with some of the opinions, but the facts are there. Seems like the "that's anti-american!" mods are out in force. Total shoot the messenger shit going on here. It's a bleak picture of the US actions, but Truman certainly did not think that Hiroshima was a military base, and Japan certainly was in a position to surrender. No fighters, no AA fire against the Enola Gay? The Americans already "own3d" Japan. That much was clear.
Watch the History Channel! They were in the process of surrender before the bombing, the historians all agree with it!
"It was well established [in the United States military] that the Japanese would have to surrender by the early fall"
"Above all, the United States felt it necessary to demonstrate it's overwhelming military might to the Russians"
If it's on a mainstream program like this on the History Channel... well I'm sorry, but that is the truth. It's not radical anti-american communists who have this view, it's everyone who studied the facts of the case.
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
Its a bit silly saying Japan wasn't interested in a negotiated cease-fire when Japan's whole point in going to war with the US & Commonwealth was to get a negotiated ceasefire in the 1st place. Yep in Dec 41 Japan had no thought of invading India, the US or Oz, their plan was to just run amoke to such a degree that the allies would seek a quick ceasefire & recognise their hegamy in East-Asia. Of course after Midway any potential terms were getting correspondently worse for the Japanese with each season & the Japanese knew it.
Can't this just be an emotionally complex situation? Why does it have to be that because a government involved itself in pointless wars and needless civillian deaths that it is OK to obliterate the innocent population of two of their major cities? We're allowed as human beings to both feel relief that a major threat was removed and remorse that in order to remove it the option we exercized caused the deaths of many, many innocent people. We're also allowed to feel remorse at our actions and sad about the people we've killed without feeling regret that we made the wrong decision.
I won't say whose situation this parallels, because it has become terribly terribly cliche. But just think for a moment where leads the equation "warlike government = ok to kill civillans."
The ______ Agenda
The Japanese military were under orders to fight to the death, not prepare for a surrender. The propaganda that the Japanese were on the brink of surrender is pure BS. They were prepared to fight the bloodiest battles when the invasion of the Japanese homeland started. Read the accounts of the fighting on Okinawa if there is any doubt.
Too lazy to create a sig...
All that is necessary in war is the will to fight. Once that is extinguished, the war is over. The will to fight does not need to be held by both sides. The Jews in Germany were connected with Germany and lacked the will to fight, yet they were the enemy of Germany. They did not choose to be, and yet they were. The Japanese did not resist the war machine of their nation, and provided the economic fuel for it. Furthermore, the emotions of the civilians and the soldiers were towards each other.
Riiiiight. Germany could never get their shit together regarding the bomb and yet their captured scientists were the ones who created it? No. Bad troll. No bridge for you.
I don't know what the British knew about the bomb (in any case, they had their own brain trust doing mindboggling work at Bletchley Park). As for German scientists, they were instrumental in the space program (Werner von Braun, for example), but they had nothing to do with the Manhattan Project. There were refugees from German rule -- Edward Teller from Hungary comes to mind as one major example -- but... aw, what am I doing troll-feeding anyway?
Maybe if you subscribe to the theory that everything that happens, by virtue of sheer existence is unavoidable. Decision upon decision was made, and if at any point in the decision making process a different decision was made, a different result occurs.
Now answer the question: What would the American people have had to say to their President when it became common knowledge that a Super Bomb had been created which could have avoided this needless expenditure of American and Japanese lives?
Yes, Nuclear weapons are in some ways the product of the Devil, but they have resulted in a period of peace between the major nations the duration of which has never before been experienced.
Right, so you would say that because of a secondary source from some amature historians on a cable channel you have the authority to say the bombing was not needed.
Frankly I think the evidence of suicide bombers and no Japanese surrender until after 2 bombings and a decralation of war by Russia is good enough evidence to say that the bombings were needed.
And if you are such a history buff you might have realised that many of Japans fanatical generals were ready to dig in for an invasion because of a profound religious belief that Japan was a land that could survive any storm.
And frankly, no matter what picture who want to paint of america at the time, i STRONGLY doupt that Truman and the military would authorise the bombings if they had clear cut evidence of an imminent surrender.
If they inherited some of their prosperity from their ancestors should they not also be required to make amends for the wrong doings of their ancestors? Even now, the Japaneses are trying to erase any records of the atrocities from their textbooks nor have they sincerely apologized. I'm not asking for retribution or reparation. A simple statement that what they did or their grandparents did was wrong and to let their next generation know about it as well would suffice for most of us. Japan should look to Germany for guidance in the matters of righting a past wrong. They can never fully repair what was done nor should they have to. However, a sincere apology and the acceptance of the truth are not too much to ask for.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
1) Prove that the Japanese were about to surrender.
/. article iterating the story of Pearl Harbor survivors.
Even with all of their 'territories' claimed through war being 'reclaimed' through allied force, they continued to fight with everything they had (a la kamikaze). The dominant pattern of territorial loss and Allied forces moving closer and closer (evidenced by the Tokyo bombing), they continued to put up a fight. It was not in their blood to dishonor theirselves through surrender; they'd made it a habit to commit suicide in the battlefield instead of surrendering.
2) I wonder what you'll write on December 7th, in response to an
3) In a sense, Japan was fortunate it was the US who claimed victory over the Japanese Empire and not the (then) Soviet Union. Look at post-war Germany and the debate that insued then between the Allied nations - with the speculation by Britain and the US of Soviet motives in Germany.
And more on the topic at hand here... two wrongs don't make a right. Surprise attack, dropping nukes -- I'm grateful the war stopped when it did (not necessarily *how* it did), and that even more lives were not taken.
Trivial Omnipotence
Fucking-A, baby.
u-s-a! u-s-a! u-s-a!
Japan DID offer a conditional surrender. The codition was that Japan would be able to keep the emperor.
> Another point, umm, people or nations arming themselves is supposed to REDUCE tension?
That's why the non-proliferation treaty has a clause forbidding the authorized owners of nukes from "inducing" other nations to acquire them.
Arguably our administration's threatening posture toward Iran and North Korea (and Iraq, earlier) is just as much a violation of the treaty as their attempts to obtain the weapons is.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Only the ignorant believe that the raids effect being so horrible that it prevented its further use. Every day we have men bent on killing others over their religion working hard to get a bomb so that they can USE IT. To deter the use of a weapon you presuppose that your opponent values his life more than he values your death. It also supposes that that your opponent is somewhat rational. The Russians and Americans wanted to live.
The Islamic nuts we are facing now want to die and publish that fact! They also are trying if not succeding in getting a bomb. If they get one, little doubt exists that they will use it promptly.
The ignorance of history in this affair shows in many posts as well. Had Japan the bomb and means to deliver it, their leaders admitted that they would have been far less merciful than the Americans. We ignore the fact that these men were killing for a religion just as the Islamic nuts are doing now.
A far better point is the fact that the USA Lowered the Sun on two towns of a people who worshipped the sun. It kind of gave the one finger salute to the persons who believed so. Another important point is that In Japan firebomb raids had done many times the damage and done nothing to break the will of Japan. A fair an studied estimate of the casualties of invading Japan by the USA was the death of tens of millions of Japanese and several million of USA. By simple reality, the atomic bombs did save millions of lives of Japan's people and more than justify the raid in this matter.
Gen. W.T. Sherman* (*US ARMY civil war era) noted that we may not be able to win the hearts and minds of these people but we can make war so horrible that their children and their children's children may not stomach war for 4 or 5 generations. Sorry but failing to understand this point begs one's understanding of history. Japan had to see that resistance was futile and thus could come a peace. Without it ending so decisively the war might well be still going on in some way or another. Ending war which is something we have not done well lately requires the loser to understand that his cause has lost. Nothing else will do. It isn't "God" or anything else. It is ending WAR.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
And more people were killed in Dresden than in Hiroshima.
Hiroshima was a civilian city: filled with innocent children etc.... In the very same way New York was a civilian city. My point is, if we let the ends justify the means, we can end up doing tons of stuff we ought not do. The arab world sees the atrocities in palestine etc, and a feeling of desperation overcomes the people, and soon enough suicide bombing becomes rational because its a great tactical strategy. If I hear one more person ask me, "why do they do it", I think from now on i'll just point out hiroshima : because they're desperate to end strife that is occuring in their part of the world.
If it really were 100% "We don't want sympathy, just let it not happen again", I'm sure they'd recognize all ethnicities that were lost. I'll be nice and say right now it's probably at 80%, aggregated of course. I'm quite aware many Japanese would lean towards the 100% part of it, but there's also many ultra-right-wing nationalists, who already are quite successful erasing the parts about Nanking, the Bataan death march, etc etc, and they could be classified as a nice 0%.
As a Chinese citizen living and educated in the USA, I completely understand the significance and the magnitude of the Holocaust. However, most people of the West do not share the same understanding of the suffering of the Chinese during World War II. Read the numbers here:_ War#Chinese_Casualties
I agree with you on most of your points, but I disagree that the Holocaust dwarfed the Japanese war atrocities. Simply by the numbers you can see that the number killed are similar. In addition, most of the Japanese massacres were orchestrated in an attempt to scare the Chinese into compliance with their policies (this succeeded somewhat, but certainly not as much as they would have liked). Obviously Westerners will think that the Holocaust was more important, but there is no need to denigrate the comparable suffering of the Chinese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese
Oh, and before anyone says this, whatever the Communists purportedly did is not relevant in this discussion.
Why does everyone seem so hellbent on the notion that the ONLY way the war could end was with Japan's surrender? (Unconditional or conditional)
...but even the people who call into question the need for an unconditional surrender often seem to assume that surrender was important at all?
...and everyone gets to go home.
Yes, I know about the Potsdam Declaration...
The other solution... is JUST STOP FIGHTING. Let the Japanese "save face". They don't get their country occupied. They don't have to capitulate. Hell, they might even get to keep a colony or two!
The point is that their rampant expansion would've been stopped, and they'd be kicked out of just about everywhere they'd invaded over the past decade or so.
There's an end to the war where nobody has to get bombed. Nobody dies in invasions...
Not just that, but japanese also built a research factory of biological weapons in Manchuria, and tested the weapons on chinese people. and all these japanese abuses, and the inherent japanese and chinese pride made the relations between the two countries just break but, the americans killed a lot of innocent people there's always two sides of the history the germans killed millions of jews and the americans killed thousands of innocent germans at dresden the important fact is that america ended the war, sure it cost a lot of innocent lives, but how many more would die if the war continued? [sorry about the lousy english]
So far gone to wherever it is that you are that you think those are reasonable conclusions. Somehow my statement that there are quite a few similarities between the Holocaust and Hiroshima, has been interpreted to mean that there was no difference. I do not intend to be a pillar of reason. I am directing my words to those that don't make such obvious overgeneralizations. I made a small concession to lesser people in the hopes that they might be helped, and I am not surpised that one of them has the audacity to think that he is part of my intended audience. I only appear to be a fool to such a person, so it's really no big loss.
That this is listed under "Science" is nauseating, but what can you do?
"Memorandum for Chief, Strategic Policy Section, S&P Group, OPD, Subject: Use of the Atomic Bomb on Japan", Department of War report, April 1946:
"the Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were merely looking for sufficient pretext\to convince the die-hard Army Group that Japan had lost the war and must capitulate to the Allies."
Russia's intervention the second week of August, 1945
"would almost certainly have furnished this pretext, and would have been sufficient to convince all responsible leaders that surrender was unavoidable."
The study concluded that even an initial November 1945 landing on the island of southern Japanese island of Kyushu would have been only a "remote" possibility and that the full invasion of Japan in the spring of 1946 would not have occurred.
Some other dates worth remembering, while we're digging up WWII bones...
April 9 through June 6
December 13
May 20
September 18
September 1
Not familiar with the dates? I can't say I am surprised. What's the rape of Nanking or the founding of Auschwitz compared to the unspeakable human brutality of the Hiroshima bombing?
There was a LOT more to WWII than August 6.
Japan DID offer a conditional surrender. The codition was that Japan would be able to keep the emperor.
Along with:
- the Japanese get to disarm own troops
- no war crimes trials
- limited occupation
All terms clearly unacceptable to the Allies - since the Potsdam Declaration was pretty clear.
Also note these were the terms the Japanese wanted after the first bomb - so any earlier ones would be equally unacceptable; even if their offer was clear and unambiguous.
They may have not believed that US had enough uranium for a second bomb. If so, they were proven wrong in that belief.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Ignoring the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some of your points are a little off centre.
Germany and Japan started the war. Hmm, for a six word summary, it works. The counter argument here is that it was the Treaty of Versailles that was the impetus for WWII. The German people were subjugated (yeah, they lost the first time), and it created the turmoil which allowed the rise of Nazism. They were pushed so far down, that they felt it was important to fight back to the top in order to regain their status as a nation.
The Japanese, on the other hand had been fighting the Russians and Chinese for a while, and WWII gave them an opportunity to implement their expansionist plans on a wider scale (plus colonialism was an issue in Asia). I wouldn't say that Japan started WWII, but they were instrumental in bringing the US into the war with the Pearl Harbour Attack.
It has been suggested that the plans for the Holocaust were heavily influenced (or even created) by the Imam of Palestine, and Hitler found that it worked well with his Aryan ideals. For an interesting exercise, it is possible to trace direct links back to Hitler with the current Israeli / Palestinian issues (hint Arafat is the key). Remember that the Jews were not the only non-combatants placed in camps. My own grandfather (a Dutchman) was placed in a forced labour camp in Germany.
I will give you the Philippines for having been grateful to the US, especially as they were once a US colony themselves, but I disagree with your other points. Australia was never occupied by Japan. They were bombed a number of times, but no land war (although rumours suggest minor investigative probes on remote coastlines). It was Australian troops who first turned back the Japanese on land, in New Guinea, on the Kokoda Track, and who were instrumental in leading the clearance of Indonesia and Timor. West of Singapore, and on the mainland, it was mainly the British and the Commonwealth troops who fought the land and air war.
The Australians, as a general rule, resented the US military presence in Australia (read about the riots in Brisbane).
Where the US was instrumental was in the Island and Naval war that was needed to clear out the Japanese from the actual Pacific theatre.
InfoSec that matters, when it counts.
Did they? There were some in Japan who wanted to start on negotiating a conditional surrender. But did they have the power to make this reality? Personally, I dont think so.
Was that the only condition?
To whom did they offer such?
Did they actually offer a surrender, or offer to talk about it?
Funny, cause if that was the *only* condition, how is it that Japan still has their emperor, but that offer was not accepted?
emt 377 emt 4
Also feel guilty that although being in an SUV is slightly safer for you, you are SIX TIMES more likely to kill the occupants of the car you crash into than if you were driving an automobile.
Better them than me.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Speaking of entirely irrational racist flamebait... http://www.superdickery.com/propaganda/1.html
"Superman says: You can slap a Jap with War Bonds and Stamps!"
We'd probably use nuclear energy to get the oil out, as you cant exactly lug one on your car but it can be attached to the powergrid that feeds the refinery.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
How many times, and could you have rented a truck or SUV for those instances? Obviously that will cost extra money, but that cost is offset against improved gas mileage of a smaller car. From my personal impression, most trucks I see on the road are empty.
Let me be clear: some people really need bigger vehicles. My question is whether you've actually done the math and come to the right conclusion, or whether the "cargo capacity" is just an excuse for something less rational. That is, how much money did you save by buying an SUV instead of renting one when you needed it?
Anyway, what is not okay is parking a truck in a space clearly marked "compact only", or driving recklessly knowing that you won't suffer as badly in a collision with a smaller vehicle. I'm sure you don't do that, but please don't say it doesn't happen a lot. With the greater weight and power of these vehicles comes greater responsibility on the road.
Note, finally, that I have not used foul language. If you decide to use any in response to this post, there will not be a discussion.
And if you study your history you would learn about the Rape of Nanking and other assorted Japanese atrocities. The Japanese militaristic state was a danger to the world and had to be stopped, just as much as Nazi germany.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
>What's the logic in that?
It may be hard to understand, but there was a spirit of retailation that was barely met by the atomic bombs. Japan crossed one line when it attacked the US. It crossed other lines when it *continued* fighting the US. The US finally, after years of trying alternatives, escalated to a level where there was no mistaking "enough is enough."
ONLY Japan could have stopped the course that led to the bombings. The Japanese people share this burden because they failed to put economic, social, and political pressure on their government to prevent or stop the war with the US.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
You can read Joi Ito's New York Times Op Ed on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki here.
Don't put advice in your sig.
in early 1945 the US placed an order for purple hearts in anticipation of the invasion of Japan. To this date those medals are still being issued. The US military fully expected to suffer more casualties invading Japan then It has taken in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf all combined. A sobering thought.
A good movie to watch is a made for TV movie called Hiroshima made in 1995. It shows the Japanese perspective as well as President Truman's decision to use it the bomb.
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data.
You're absolutely right. In fact, many people there still highly regard Chairman Mao, despite the fact that he is responsible for 10's of millions of his own people dead (more than Hitler and Stalin combined, I think). At least they pretend to regard him highly.
I was merely pointing out that Japan did horrible things, and was assuring the other poster that college campuses are really the only places where that is overlooked.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Become the Tao, you should!
Go back and read history again. Had the war NOT ended, in November of 1945, the allied armies would have invaded the southern most island of Japan. In March of 1946, the allied armies were to invade the main island of Japan, east and north of Tokyo (Operation Olympic, Operation Coronet). It was well known, and reported that had the allied armies invaded mainland Japan, the CIVILIAN population of Japan was prepared to attack the armies invading, with sticks, knives, shovels, which would have forced the armies to shoot and kill every last one of them. Think of all the civilian destruction that would have been required to finally end the war with a conventional invasion. By dropping the A-Bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, countless thousands of lives were spared on both sides. Was the A-Bomb a horrible instrument of death and destruction? Well, any war is a horrible thing to have to go through. By dropping the bomb, perhaps the death of a few, allowed many to survive. Had the president of the U.S.A. not dropped the A-Bomb, and had invaded Japan, after the war, had it been known we had the means to end the war sooner, with fewer lives on both side lost, the public would have called for the impeachment, if not lynching of the president.
Get some perspective folks. The estimates of total dead for WWII range from 40-60 million!!! With the majority of those dead being civilians! Maybe if there was video of the Rape of Nanking, extermination of the Jews, Russia's ethnic cleansing which killed millions of civilians (did I mention that Russia was our Ally in WWII?!?!) and the other countless atrocities during JUST WWII people would feel differently about Hiroshima/Nagasaki... just maybe.
Someone please mod parent up. This is the most insightful thing I have heard in this debate in a long time.
As a Chinese native living in the USA, I am surprised daily as to how many people feel sympathy for the Japanese b/c they were nukes, because I can never bring myself to feel such sympathy. To sympathize with them, is to denigrate the millions of my countrymen who were brutally slaughtered.
Were you born before the cold war? I think a large part of the reason that the USA is sympathetic to the Japanese is because for decades there was the constant threat of there being a "nuclear holocaust". That's not to say that threat has truly disappeared, though most Americans I think now think there's more risk from a rogue group inside the countries which made up the Soviet Union than there is of Russia attacking us unprovokedly.
And that finally word is the fine point. While it's certainly true that Japanese civilians were in the war effort, it wasn't the many Japanese civilians that were in China and Korea raping and murdering those countries. And while certainly Japanese prospered and allowed these acts to occur, either by intentional ignorance or acceptance of such acts, there's still greatly a feeling of empathy that as individuals they had very little control over what their country and military is doing, let alone the response of another country.
So, I can sympathize with the many Japanese who were killed or had their lives effected by the nuclear arms dropped on their country. And I can realize that in some small part such is their own doing. It's also why when bin Laden and others bomb the US, it's hard to simply mark him as a terrorist and say that there's absolutely no justification for his acts. The people of the US, just like the people of Japan, need to change their country to stop brutalizing and raping other countries, be it their people, their land, or their souls.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
I'd have started by dropping the first bomb on the Tokyo side of Mt. Fuji, on a nice, clear day. The entire population of Tokyo would witness the power of a single nuclear bomb, yet death would have been minimal.
I'd then have given the Japanese notice that if they did not surrender within the next twelve hours, I would begin dropping similar bombs on heavily-populated areas, until there was no one left to surrender.
I don't know if the Japanese would have surrendered faster, but if they didn't, the second bomb would be dropped in the most densely-populated area of Tokyo... because I don't mess around.
I'm guessing, though, that after bombing Mt. Fuji in such a highy-visible way, the Japanese would have surrendered. What do you think?
Here's what I find odd: If it really was "certain" that Japan would have surrendered in a few months, why the hell not surrender right then? What, you think they enjoyed strapping kids into flying bombs and dropping them on U.S. ships for nothing?
Apparently you believe that this imminent surrender should have been obvious to the U.S. government thousands of miles away. Surely it should have been even clearer to the Japanese government and military!
I don't think either side expected Japan to surrender any time soon. It just doesn't make sense. In addition to what I've already mentioned, we know that many Japanese who heard the emperor surrender were so convinced they were winning that they didn't even understand what he was saying. They certainly didn't expect a surrender. Also, the spirit of that nation was completely broken. What does that tell you? It tells me that their loss was a complete shock to them.
And if they did expect to surrender, that's even worse. The delay could only be so they could inflict more casualties on the other side. If they expected to surrender anyway, those casualties would have been pointless, except perhaps to the emperor's ego. In other words, it's his fault. He should have surrendered sooner!
Anyway, it hardly matters. America never used a nuke again, although we could have( and probably should have. Hello, Mr. Stalin! I'm thinking of you!!!) If nuking Japan was a war crime of any sort, it was a first offense, and we've certainly been model citizens since.
Besides, consider the benefits that Japan received by being broken and remade. Pre-war Japan was a brutal, backward, hostile and dangerous place - not somewhere you want to be unless you were a highly placed male, and certainly no one you'd want for a neighbor. Post-war Japan is one of the greatest success stories of all time - wealthy, stable, free, and quite peaceful. Or to put it in slashdot terms: atom bomb == anime; no atom bomb == watercolors paintings of Mount Fuji. You tell me which is better!
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
I'm not excusing the Japanese, and so far as I'm concerned, compared to Germany, they got off rather easily. The Emperor was permitted to remain on the throne, and though the constitution forbid Japan from becoming a military nation,the new economy made it a major economic power, an industrial empire if you will.
As to Communism, I wasn't bringing up the Communists to denigrate them. I should have clarified myself a little. It was merely an explanation as to why the attrocities committed in Asia were forgotten. The Japanese became allies, and the Nationalists were tossed out of China. Cold War politics pretty much guaranteed that there was an attitude that the Japanese evils weren't discussed. In Europe the Iron Curtain hung over everything, and people didn't seem to forget so easily. It's changing a bit now, and Japan is finally receiving some criticism from its allies, but the whole issue behind textbooks bothers me exceedingly. The German people were forced to face their actions. The concentration camps, gas chambers and ovens stand as a monument so that they cannot forget what they did.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Japanese are still not apologizing. In the late 90s, a chinese historian wrote the book "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II".
The author Iris Chang eventually committed a suicide due to the stress of translating all the chinese holocaust stories. The Japanese committees were not apologizing and accused her of telling countless lies in her book.
Many of the current generation would have succeeded in Germany in the late 30s.
Indeed. And that's why we have the president we have.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
By August 1945, the Big Six (the people really running Japan) were fighting for sovereignty, not conquest. Without the bombs, they may well have gotten it.
Lest you think this is better than the bombs, remember the 10,000 dead per day, multiplied by a few months this settlement would have taken. Then consider the cost to the world that a hostile Japan would have brought. The fact that we defeated Japan so soundly, and they embraced this defeat, was a critical point in their history. Letting them settle into some sort of face-saving draw would have left a hostile, militaristic, proud Japan. Beyond that is pure speculation, but none of the results I can come up with are particularly pretty.
In Japan, more so than other countries, there is a big difference between the way you truly feel and the public face you put on (honne and tatamae).
Having "harmonious" relationships with those around you is very important, even when there is a deep-rooted problem that you are burying. Since discussing politics does not lend itself to harmony, it is not talked about much. If it is not talked about, it tends to be not thought about. Because of that, it isn't covered so much on the news - there sure isn't a Crossfire or Fox here. It is pretty much a one-party system anyway, with the same left-center group having been in power for ages. Hence, most Japanese are fairly apolitical.
ULTRA intercepts, especially those between Togo and the ambassador to Russia indicate, make it clear that unconditional surrender (even preserving the Imperial House) was not an option; the only option was a ceasefire that would have maintained the status quo, and thus completely unacceptable to the U.S.
The primary planning was to make further fighting so bloody that American politicians would want to negotiate a more generous ending.
Most if not all of the plutonium used in both atomic bombs was produced by the B reactor (and several other reactors) at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Washington State. Now it houses Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where energy research is conducted. But we are also cleaning up all the radioactive sludge left behind from the 40s thru the 60s. The city of Richland was established as a government town of mostly prefab houses back during the early days of the war. Before then it was a pioneer town. Richland is located only about 20 miles from the reservation. Now it is a medium city with about 40,000 people in it. I have lived here my whole life and so many people (especially back east) joke around and say that we glow in the dark. Just before Hiroshima, many Hanford workers donated a day's pay to help buy a B-24 (I think) bomber. It was called the "Day's Pay." To that end, one of our two high schools (Richland High School, where I just graduated) has the Bomber as its mascot and we are called the "Richland Bombers." It feels great to live in such a historic gem of a city.
If I tie a rock to someone and throw them in a river, and you subsequently rescue them, I cannot possibly claim to have saved a life!
You are right, Japan attacking us actually made the world a better place. However, they get no credit, as their credit ends precisely where our choices begin.
Without the bombs, we likely would have bombed and blockaded for a few months, forcing an eventual surrender of some sort. However, that surrender would likely not have been complete, but more of a cease-fire with the military junta left intact.
Instead of the Japan that evolved into the wonderful nation of today, we would have had a hostile, militaristic, nationalist dictatorship with an unknown course of evolution. I highly doubt that it would have been anywhere near as good as what we got. Also, depending on the actions of Russia, the bomb and blockade strategy could have wound up with a half-communist nation with a north and south Tokyo.
Honestly, in a geo-political sense, the bombs were grand slams and the results could not have been better. Of course, this would not be sufficient justification if the bombs were likely to have caused more damage than the alternatives, but that is unlikely.
It worked...far too well. But damn, it worked.
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
It is not as if the Japanese set all of their factories outside of town for convenient bombing. Likewise, the soldiers were stationed in the cities. About 40,000 of the 300,000 people in Hiroshima that day were soldiers. Virtually everyone was directly involved in the war effort.
Maybe I just need a pill to fix my scattered way of thinking? Yeah. Or maybe some quality sleep.
But I am willing to abandon that principle, and any other, if that principle is clearly getting significant numbers of people killed. Dragging the war out would have had that effect. Actually, it is impossible to obey that principle and fight a war. To obey it in such times, to its full extent, means to surrender immediately.
One more side point: The ends justifying the means is the entire underlying basis of the welfare state. So if you consider yourself a liberal, I think you should ask yourself why you seem to ignore this principle in normal times, but grab hold of it only when obeying it would result in needless slaughter. Sounds backwards to me.
KAI BIRD and MARTIN J. SHERWIN are coauthors of "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer," published earlier this year by Knopf.
August 5, 2005
SIXTY YEARS ago tomorrow, an atomic bomb was dropped without warning on the center of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. One hundred and forty thousand people were killed, more than 95% of them women and children and other noncombatants. At least half of the victims died of radiation poisoning over the next few months. Three days after Hiroshima was obliterated, the city of Nagasaki suffered a similar fate.
The magnitude of death was enormous, but on Aug. 14, 1945 just five days after the Nagasaki bombing Radio Tokyo announced that the Japanese emperor had accepted the U.S. terms for surrender. To many Americans at the time, and still for many today, it seemed clear that the bomb had ended the war, even "saving" a million lives that might have been lost if the U.S. had been required to invade mainland Japan.
This powerful narrative took root quickly and is now deeply embedded in our historical sense of who we are as a nation. A decade ago, on the 50th anniversary, this narrative was reinforced in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first bomb. The exhibit, which had been the subject of a bruising political battle, presented nearly 4 million Americans with an officially sanctioned view of the atomic bombings that again portrayed them as a necessary act in a just war.
But although patriotically correct, the exhibit and the narrative on which it was based were historically inaccurate. For one thing, the Smithsonian downplayed the casualties, saying only that the bombs "caused many tens of thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima was "a definite military target."
Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands." But it's not that straightforward. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, "Racing the Enemy" and many other historians have long argued it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation.
The Enola Gay exhibit also repeated such outright lies as the assertion that "special leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities" warning civilians to evacuate. The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed.
The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.
The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy." President Truman and his closest advisor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, quite plainly used it primarily to prevent the Soviets from sharing in the occupation of Japan. And they used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace.
These unpleasant historical facts were censored from the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit, an action that should trouble every American. When a government substitutes an officially sanctioned view for publicly debated history, democracy is diminished.
Today, in the post-9/11 era, it is critically important that the U.S. face the truth about the atomic bomb. For one thing, the myths surrounding Hiroshima have made it possible for our defense establishment to argue that atomic bombs are legitimate weapons that belong
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
A few weeks ago on the anniversary of Trinity a giant fire/explosion/mushroom cloud was recreated on the same location: SIMNUKE.
Scott Draves
"The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war over Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender..."
- Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff
"Arnold's view was that it was unnecessary. He said he knew the Japanese wanted peace. There were political implications in the decision and Arnold did not feel it was the military's job to question it."
- Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker,
deputy to the commanding general of the U.S. Armed forces, Henry H. Arnold
"The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with end of the war at all."
- Major General Curtis E. Lemay, commander of the 21st Bomber Command
"The President in giving his approval for these attacks appeared to believe that many thousands of American troops would be killed in invading Japan, and in this he was entirely correct; but (I) felt...that the dilemma was an unnecessary one, for had we been willing to wait, the effective blockade would, in course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials."
- Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and chief of Naval Operations
"I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to (Secretary of War Stimson) 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..."
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
[Back to the Atomic Bomb Controversy Page]
The decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan was heavily criticized almost immediately. Through the years an increasing number of scholars, politicians, activists, members of the military and others have challenged President Truman's conduct in the matter. Among their primary arguments are:
1) President Truman did not use all the options available to him and thus condemned 200,000 innocent civilians to a needless death.
Revisionist historian Gar Alperovitz in his book "The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb" proposes that a "two-step" policy was under consideration by President Truman and his top advisors in the summer of 1945. The first step was to secure Soviet cooperation to attack Japan soon after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the surrender terms offered the Japanese should specifically spell out that the Emperor would be allowed to remain in power upon Japan's acceptance of the terms.
Alperovitz writes that the the Joint Intelligence Committee informed the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff that "a Russian decision to join with U.S. and Britain in the war against Japan would have enormous force - and would dramatically alter the equation: 'The entry of the U.S.S.R. into the war would, together with the foregoing factors, convince most Japanese at once of the inevitability of complete defeat.' It went on (step two): 'If...the Japanese people, as well as their leaders, were persuaded both that absolute defeat was inevitable and that unconditional surrender did not imply national annihilation, surrender might follow very quickly.'"
Doug Long on his web site writes: "Historian and former Naval officer Martin Sherwin has summarized the situation, stating, 'The choice in the summer of 1945 was not between a conventional invasion or a nuclear war. It was a choice between various forms of diplomacy and warfare.'"
The challenging position clearly believes that the use of the atomic bombs was unnecessary because there was a military and political reality in the Pacific that would have brought about Japan's surrender without the tragedies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This contention is "fleshed out" as follows:
Your post is hugely off-topic, but sounds genuine, so I'm curious: What motivated it?
If I still had mod points I'd mod you up. Not that I'm saying everything your saying is necessarilly true, but it is food for thought. I'm surprised that the majoriry of posts are so right wing and pro nuking Japan. The fact is, the propaganda we're fed (Americans) is no less slanted and one sided and full of lies then the propaganda the Japanese, Arabs, Soviets etc. were\are fed. Apparently only an enlightened minority in any society realize this, and question or doubt the offical versions of history and current events. They sure aren't posting on this forum. I think what you said about the Soviet Union and the Cold War is right on target.
This ad space for rent.
that it's way too cynical to justify the killing of 210K by saying that it prevented many more from being killed.
well, it seems that way, because we can never go back and prove the corrolary.
What about everyone who knew more or less what was happening in the German concentration camps before they were actually "discovered" by the Allied forces as they marched through Poland and Germany?
In the small-world picture, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki appear bad. What if we hadn't, and the Soviet Union, which was on the verge of being able to move its forces from Western Europe to Siberia and then to Japan, had instead invaded Japan in the closing days of WWII? The Soviets had about 40 years or so of bad memories to pay them back for...
The nukes were a warning shot to the Soviets as anything else.
We all have our hypocricies. Pick yours carefully.
No, Stalin is held responsible in the deeper sections of the history books for anywhere between 10 and 30 million deaths, mostly through starvation and famine, not methodically like the Nazis.
It's ironic, in a way. Germany to this day bends over backwards to distance itself from Nazi times, knowing that collectively it can never apologize enough. Japan seems to be doing the opposite. If it's not talked about, it never happened.
FYI, the "Rape of Nanking" is a term popularized by Iris Chiang, whose poorly researched and referenced book is really a mockery of historical journalism. Nasty stuff happened at Nanking, but lets not blow the Nanking Massacre (actually the Fourth Nanking Massacre - essentially every time the city had been conquered in its history, the defenders melted into the civilian population and the conquerors metted out revenge on the people for it).
First off, Chiang's reference to Japan as "complicit in the holocaust" is way off. As Rabbi and author Hillel Levine (and former visiting professor in China) wrote in "In Search of Sugihara", the Japanese Consul-General in Lithuania issued visas to over 6,000 Jews fleeing from the Nazis. Lt. Gen Higuchi Kiichiro supported the first conference of Jewish communities in the Far East in 1937, and later aided Jews who had fled to Manchuria (and is mentione in JNF's Golden Book). Col. Yasue Senko did similar. As a body, the Japanese government was unwilling to do anything to interfere with their ally, but had a stated opposition to participation ("Outline of Measures Toward Jewish Peoples", 1938).
Anyways, back to Nanking. The city fell on Dec. 13, 1937, to Japanese forces under the command of Gen. Matsui. In his diary, he wrote at the time that he ordered that anyone who looted or starting a fire, even accidentally, would be punished; he also sought to eradicate the "disdain" for the Chinese among many of his men, who had been fighting them for so long. In the same entry, he wrote "I could only feel sadness and responsibility today, which has been overwhelmingly piercing my heart. This is caused by the Army's misbehaviors after the fall of Nanking and failure to proceed with the autonomous government and other political plans."
He caused conflict with his division commanders when he propose that the memorial for the Japanese war dead also honor the Chinese war dead; they compromised by holding a separate service. After Matsui returned to Japan, he erected a statue of Kannon (the Goddess of Mercy) on Izuyama in 1940, to deify both the Japanese *and* Chinese soldiers.
His Buddhist confessor wrote, after Matsui's death, that ""I am ashamed of the Nanking Incident," said Matsui according to Hanayama.
The statue of Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, erected by Matsui.
"After the memorial service, I gathered up everybody and warned them with tears of anger. Both Prince Asaka and Lieutenant General Yanagawa were there. [I told them] we came all the way to stand on the majesty of the Emperor, but the dignity [of the Imperial Army] was lost at a stroke through the brutal acts of the soldiers. But then everyone laughed. To my displeasure, a certain division commander even uttered, 'of course.'" By all accounts, he was a true "unified asia" believer who saw the Chinese not as enemies, but as future allies and friends whom he wanted to unify against Western intrusion, but was unable to control his war-weary men when it mattered.
The photos in the book are just embarassing - at least the ones that have been traced to their sources. One of Chinese heads on the ground was traced to Sato Susumu, who purchased it in a photographer's studio in Huining, where it was labelled "Heads of Bandits Shot To Death in Tieling" (i.e., killed by Manchurian nationalist Zhang Xueliang's men). Another claims to be Japanese soldiers cutting someone's head with a hay cutter, yet the uniforms are clearly Chinese nationalist (Asahi Shinbun later posted a retraction after posting the picture as it was originally claimed). Another is a cropped image of bodies washing up on a beach downstream from clearly war-devastated area, leaving only the pile of bodies in frame. The photo "Comfort Women Being Rounded Up" is actually a picture from a 1937 edition of Asahi Graph, the
I wish people would stop comparing JÃnsi to God. He's good, but he's no JÃnsi.
What happned to
First off, the US offically apologize for the bombing's many years ago. Where as the Japanese have refused to apologize for the bombing's of Pearl Harbor, or any of the other deeds they have done in WWII. The Japanese are not innocent, and have as much blood on their hands for WWII as the US does.
While we're talking about a 'colored' view of history, what about Japanese text books trying to re-write history to lesson Japan's guilt during WWII? Is this an offical revision of history in the making?
I also find it troubling that
Infact, WWII was the last war in a long list of wars. Anyone remember the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1871)? What about The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)? The Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878)? If you look at the history of Europe, the seeds of WWII *could* be traced back to the early 19th Century, the Napoleonic Wars, and the web of treaties and conflicts that came about because of them.
There was also the mention of hundred's of thousands of Japanese citizens that died in the bomb's. What about the millions of European citizens that died or unknown numbers of Asia's that the Japanese used as fodder.
In conclusion, no side is completely guilty or innocent. All sides deserve some blame for the events that happened. I'm tired of the posts that 'The US is evil for using the A Bomb' or 'But Japan deserved it' posts.
"Does your computer have IP on it?"
Americans pretty much have no conscience anymore. They don't feel guilt about anything. They like to win, no guilt, just win at any cost and enjoy the rewards of conquest.
Is there one american out there that feels guilty about killing thousands of innocent civillians in Iraq and Afghanistan? I haven't met one.
evil is as evil does
Yes, I read the idiotic LAT editorial. As with most of what goes in that Paper it's factually wrong.
Japanese strategy since at least Midway and certainly Marianas was to inflict enough casualties on the US, so that it could keep most if not all of it's gains, including China, Manchuria, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines. As the US island hopped ever closer, the battles got bloodier and resistance more suicidally fanatic. Tarawa, Tinian, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and worst of all Okinawa, all took a terrible toll.
Japanese strategy was to make any invasion of the home islands even bloodier than Okinawa. On Okinawa there were 50,000 Americans dead or wounded, including 22,000 KIA, 5,000 of them sailors. Over 300 ships were attacked by kamikazes operating from Japan, with more than 30 sunk. Two Aircraft carriers were so seriously damaged that they were no longer functional. Over 110,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, and only a paltry 5,000 surrendered, most of them wounded and delirious. An additional 100,000 Okinawan civilians died in the fighting. The fighting itself raged from March until June, 1945.
This is what Japanese war-planners hoped to inflict on Americans, to keep at least Manchuria, along with Southeast Asia. Note that fighting in the Philippines continued right up to the surrender.
Japan was beaten, there was no way it could eke out a victory, it's air defenses were shattered, it's Navy no longer in existence, much of it's Army in China, and massive 1,000 plane air-raids by Curtis LeMay such as the March 1945 Tokyo firebombing had killed over 100,000 people. Fighting after March 1945 was no longer rational but it continued any way in the hope that "enough" US casualties would cause the US to simply back away and leave Japan with it's war gains and keep the militarists in power.
In response to this the War Dept presented Truman with three plans:
*The Navy's plan, continue a total blockade of the Home Islands, with continued fighting in Philippines, China, Manchuria, Southeast Asia, until at least 1947. It was accepted that all 25,000 or so Allied POWs would perish in this starvation strategy and that US casualties would mount into the 200,000 range as major operations continued in the Philippines and action in China was contemplated.
Truman rejected this plan.
*The Army Air Force's plan, under LeMay, was to gather all the B-17 and B-24 bombers from the European Theatre and conduct not 1,000 plane raids but massive 10,000 Plane Raids all over Japan. LeMay believed he would kill on the order of a million to two million Japanese in the inevitable area bombing of Japan's largely dispersed cottage war industries (with conventional bombs) and thus force a surrender. The War however could have continued for another year well into 1946. With again, fighting and dying in other fronts.
Truman rejected this plan.
*The Army had a plan which called for the invasions of Kyushu and Honshu (Olympic and Coronet respectively), the Japanese had clearly anticipated these invasion sites and had a one-to-one match with invading forces prepared with dug in Imperial troops in fortified defenses that had killed so many in Okinawa and Iwo Jima (3-1 advantage for the invader was the measure of invasion success in that time). In addition an astounding 10,000 kamikazes were readied, and the entire civilian population mobilized to fight the invaders (MacArthur simply ignored the "Magic" radio intercept evidence that the Japanese prepared for the invasion, the Navy was on the verge of withdrawing support for the plan as a consequence).
Truman had tentatively endorsed this plan, which projected 100,000 to 200,000 dead, subject to unanimous War Dept approval which was collapsing with Admiral King on the verge of bailing on the plan from the codename "Magic" radio intercepts. Far from being pulled out of the air as the LAT lamely asserts, War Dept planners based this on OKINAWA and if anything they were conservative. Area bombing of Le Havre on the day after D-Day k
Well, I probably phrased that badly. I would say I was "awed" and nothing more. Although I would go as far as "proud" for the moon landings, even if I wasn't born yet.
Fact: Not too many of us were born or fought in WWII.
:P
Fact: The odds of us winning the war with less casualities on either side than what the atom bombs caused were VERY much not promising.
Fact: We DID drop the bombs, they DID end the war.
Ya know, I'm a pretty liberal guy personally. But to be quite honest, america did what it thought it had to to protect IT's citizens. That's what governments are supposed to do (partly). Whether what happened is right or wrong is a debate that I'm sure will keep going long after we're all dead. Point is that it was done and it stopped the war. Who are we to judge them? We weren't there, we can't. IF there are any WWII Vets on slashdot, they have a right to judge, they fought in the war, they fought and watched friends, sometimes family die. We didn't. Humans are still a type of animal... and just like an animal, we have an overpowering urge to survive. Simple point is that I'll probably get modded flamebait, but is there one person here who can un-equivocally prove that there was another way? Nope.
*sits back and watches many slashdotter heads explode*
did at the time. Part of the wonders of hindsight. Nor were these generals privy to the cracked diplomatic intercepts. If you would have read the article, you would have learned that the Japanese darned well did have an ability to fight, so much so that our generals and admirals were balking at the idea of an invasion. In any case, you are being selective, as over 90% of people were for it at the time. I am sure there is a 9:1 quote ratio in my favor from the time period.
The Japan/Pearl Harbor hypothetical involves unintended consequences, while the US/Hiroshima does not.
Japan choose an evil for its own ends. It backfired, and the world, in the long run, benefited.
America choose what it considered to be the lesser evil. In hindsight, we were probably right, though one can never be sure of alternate histories.
I do not see the same reasoning being used in these two scenarios.
Ask yourself an honest question. How many dead Chinese would it have taken for you to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. If not 10,000 a day, how about 20,000? 50,000? Or is their no number? Would you set on your hands and let millions die, to keep the bloods of a far smaller number off your hands? What makes that moral?
Many peoples had blood on their hands in the war. The german... well no word anymore there, but there are much more forgotten things. Tschechia had a small holocaust done on the germans after the war by forcing them out of their homes into death marches to Austria and germany (you still can see the abandoned houses of back then in the no mans land between the borders) The usa had the japanese imprisnoment camps, and the atomic blasts (which were due to more modern knowledge unjustified because the japs were to give up already) The Soviet Union bascially did mass rapes on the german and Austrian population in the later days of the war and in the weeks and months after the war (I still have family stories about that). The japanese were basically as brutal as the germans were, the location was just different. The bombing of Dresden basically also was an act of warcrime, because Dresden sort of was a huge refugee camp at that time and had no significant industry, it sort of was a retaliation for the german V2 which were shot against London. Face it war is a bloody mess and it is always those who win who write the books, but the personal stories of families often do not fully reflect the books, because they have a selective view of the history.
The Japanese used chemical weapons against civilians in China during WWII.
Admit it, your hatred doesn't come from the fact the Japanese are also guilty of countless atrocities. You're just jealous b/c Japan makes far superior automobiles than the US. GMC/Dodge/Chevy/Ford continue to make boring, crappy cars, while Toyota/Honda keep churning out innovation after innovation. You know the US automakers are doomed (along with the US dollar BTW), and all you can do is bitch about it on slashdot under the cloak of 'history'.
Erm, Stalin methodically and intentionally caused the starvation and famine, along with the more traditional shootings etc.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Here in Australia the Japanese atrocities are very much remembered. We lost many more servicemen and women to the Japanese than we did to the Germans.
At the time, Australians were very worried about Japan invading. And with good reason, I think. Our troops were fighting them very close-by in Indonesia and other countries. They managed to bomb Darwin, launch an (unsuccessfull) submarine attack on Sydney Harbour, and fly a reconnaissance flight over Melbourne (right at the bottom of Australia).
Most people my age have a grandfather or uncle who fought the Japanese. And they all have stories they don't like talking about.
Serving Suggestion: Defrost
Hiroshima had industrial targets, this much is true. It was not however, a "military base". Pretty much any city in a wartime nation has some targets of military value, that does not make the city itself a military base. Would you call Chicago a military base in and of itself? Would you call an attack or a bombing of Chicago to be an attack against a military base?
"Truman specifically avoided targeting purely civilian locations, including an order that Tokyo and Kyoto not be on the list."
Tokyo was pretty much decimated because of the fire-bombings. If it had not been for that it too would not have been "purely civilian". I don't know how much more of a pure civilian target you can get than dropping a nuclear warhead in the center of a large populated city consisting mostly of civilians.
Let's take a look at more of the radio adress by Truman.
"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. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost."
This seems almost to suggest that the attack on Hiroshima was almost purely against a military target, and "thousands" of lives hadn't already been lost. Certainly seems to downplay the attack in my view.
"Nagasaki was the second target of its day, and was a significant military port."
Why not just attack the military targets in these two cities? Nuclear bombing was for the purpose of destroying the military targets? It most certainly was not military targets that the bombs were needed for. It was an attack on civilian populations, (and if the officially stated reasons are the only ones), an attack to frighten and terrorize the Japanese into submission through it's sheer devestation to entire cities, not as an attack on valid military targets to stop the military.
"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare."
So those who do not follow the rules of war, need to have nuclear weapons dropped on their civilians? That is part of the justification? Surely "intentional" killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, for any reason, is against what anyone would consider the rules of war. But it is justified because the other side did bad things? If we care so much about the rules of war, and treating soldiers, as well as civilians decently, we would not have to stoop to such tactics.
"Had Japan been considering a conditional surrender?"
Secretary Togo was talking to the USSR, the only major nation they were still at peace with, in order to act as an intermediary with the USA. The US, having cracked the Japanese codes, was aware of this and learned of it prior to Potsdam. Efforts were being made by the new civilian government of Japan, (Tojo and the power structure had resigned in shame), to end the war and negotiate a settlement with the USA, and to ensure the survival of the Emperor, which was the paramount concern. Negotiations were certainly being considered throughout the entire war. The plan of Japan's attack on the USA was to destroy the Pacific fleet in order to entirely eliminate the US presence in the region, thereby allowing the Japanese to take the Dutch East Indies, and the oil and rubber resources in the region, which they were in need of for their aggression in the rest of the Pacific Theater. After eliminating the US pacific fleet, they would then sue for peace with the US in order to avoid having to go to war with them on a massive scale, which they knew they could not win. This is very well established as being their strategy, and not just among cracy hippie professors.
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
The evil Japanese deserve to be erased. I have absolutely no sympathy for those animals. Their war crimes will never be forgotten.
As an Australia-born chinese I feel no sympathy for the bombs being dropped in japan. If it weren't for the bombs, many more lives would have been lost in an all out assualt on japan. If neither was done, japan would have continued with committing atrocities against the allies.
There was no avoiding deaths. japan should have thought about that before starting a war with just about every Asia-Pacific nation.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
It all sucked. Granted. However those bombs scared the world (including the US) into never using atomic bombs again. And that happened when they were small 10kiloton. Imagin if the worlds first intro to nukes-used-on-people had been a 100megaton bom? Current bombs are like 10000 of those bombs all at once.
I feel for the innocents that were killed but I am thankful that the lesson was learned while the bombs were so small.
"If Americans want to feel guilty over something, feel guilty about your SUV's helping to fund terrorism through oil money."
And what, pray tell, does your vehicle run on? Do you feel you have the moral high ground from which to preach to the rest of us because your car gets a few more MPG than an SUV?
If SUVs support terrorism, then so are you. It's time to drop that specious argument.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I'm really sorry for the chinese and the other people murdered in WWII by the japanese, and I don't want to justify none of these acts, as they are true atrocities. But that doesn't justify the deployment of mass murdering weapons for the other side. I want to remind you that once you engage in the same behaviour you blame in an opponent, you are no longer justifiable in your rights and no better than him. Thus, I consider the term 'American atrocity in Hiroshima' a very accurate statement, not better in any way than the japanese atrocities in Asia.
More to the point, I feel that the americans are up until now engaged in the same regrettable attitude toward their military might and their disdain for non-american lives, while the japanese are now a rather peaceful (although not enough sorry for their past actions) country.
I really don't sympathize with the japanese for that, but also I don't sympathize with americans either.
I do believe that the present Emperor of Japan had visited a Korean shrine on the island of Saipan in June 2005, but otherwise, apologies from the emperors seem sparse. News reports: [1] [2]
The Prime Ministers on the other hand, seem to have issued many war apology statements.
Too bad your god doesn't ever answer claims like this. This way you can can speak for him trying to justify that horrible war crimes of the US.
If there was no bomb, there may not have been a cold war.
Thats because the allies might have lost if it drug on even longer. That would mean no allies left, no Russia as we know it, so no cold war.
You are an idiot. We were at war with people bent on destroying our way of life. ( and in the case of Hitler, all living people that didnt fit his idea of perfection ) This was not some 'border skirmish'.
The bomb was needed to end the war. Period. Why dont you go throw flowers at the enemy sometime and see what it gets you.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
-Bare in mind that 'what the Japanese did' does not reflect what specific individuals did, and especially not what children did, they were totally innocent of anything but were legitimate targets.
-Being a demonstration attack this would be comparable with terrorism, lets not beat around the bush, the causes and goals might be different, it might have been right for America to win, but its still by definition, terrorism.
-It almost certainly could have been played differently, there are 100's of other possibilities - not using the second bomb, inviting world leaders to watch a test, targeting a less populated area, or perhaps.. targeting Japanese military bases or outposts, or shipping convoys. An underwater blast could have been safely witnessed by many people on a coast and would lift ships in the air right in front of their eyes, what could be more of a demonstration of power?
-What happened 60 years ago has nothing to do with Americans now, you can't blame Americans who were not even born yet or had nothing to do with this, just as you can't blame Japanese now for what ever they did in the war. Similarly you can never pick a country or a city and say that everyone there is guilty, that's part of the reason why terrorists are always wrong and nuking anything is always wrong, not to mention the killing aspect of the wrongness.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The ultimate defense plan for the home islands was brilliant simplicity itself: when it became obvious the Americans would invade from the sea, all of the old men, all women, and all school-aged children would line up on the beaches to meet the inavders with... ...sharpened bamboo spears. As the cowardly American forces charged onto the beaches, this invincible mass of spear-wielding Japanese would cry "Banzai! For the Emperor!" and rush the troops, spearing them all to death.
I am not kidding. I had a chat with a friend's grandmother about this a few years ago. Every day, she said, they'd take a break from whatever work they were doing for defense practice, preparing to meet the Americans head-on, by honing their spear-wielding skills.
"It was crazy," she said. "Those civil defense people were nuts. Civilian with bamboo spears attacking soldiers with carbines and machine guns?"
She told me she thought the Bomb was terrible, "But," she said, "I hate to think about what the alternative would have been. I know for sure I wouldn't be here right now telling you about any of this, and my grandaughter wouldn't be here to be your friend."
Americans get 'really' 'really' defensive, claiming that invasion of the home islands would have resulted in more death.
I understand one's desire to excuse the transgressions of one's own country, since, I'm Irish and it's quite common in Ireland for Republicans and Unionists to pardon their own atrocities, whilst reriding the other side. In reality though, the use of Nuclear weapons on a "city" not a "military target" but a "city", which resulted in some 140,000 thousand people dead is, at best mass murder and probably genocide.
Also, speaking of the supposedly "acceptable" tatical Nuclear weapons Richard Pearl and Dick Cheney want to drop on people... I'd like to that the fundamentalist Christians who keep voting Republican, for bringing their right wing religous war to the world.
WMD ? Yeah... and George Bush has them all !
he uses facts as opposed to the grandparent...
Whew, that took a load off my mind. I guess it wasn't so bad after all.
Most of the posts in this discussion are heated looks as to why the bombing were justified or were not. I think it's time to start questioning why this war happened in the first place.
No, don't worry - this isn't some strange Nazi appologetic post.
Consider WWI and WWII as the same war, just with a 20 year break in it. Things become much different when we see it.
When the United States joined WWI (for whatever reason), we helped bring it all to an end. The Treaty of Versai came into play, which severley crippled Germany.
Rather than just strike out against the German State, we punished all citizens. The left them in a state of despiration, one in which radicalism thrives in. Thus, we have the election of one of histories craiziest bastards, Hitler.
Had the United States not joined in on WWI, or had we not chosen to punish the German populace, WWII would have most likey never been. No holocost; no nukes.
Go back to the Washington days of non-invterventionalism.
"MAKE NO MISTAKE They would have shown no mercy."
And neither did you!
"You should thank God, Ala or what ever higher power you believe in that Japanese or the Germans didn't get the A-Bomb first."
Actually, If they had got the bomb first, I'd probably be thinking along the lines "Good, that the US didn't get it first"... it's always the winner who writes the history. Had the allied nations lost, they would've been portrayed as evil, and Germany/Japan/Italy/whatever would have been portrayed as good.
Yes, the A-bomb saved lives. But wouldn't it be saving lives as well, if 10,000 americans we're killed to make US pull out from some country (say... Iraq, for example), thus preventing another 100,000 Iraqis (and some americans) from dying? Again, it's the winner who writes the history, therefore, US were the good liberator and Nazi-germany was the bad boy (I agree on this, though but I don't know if the opinion would've been like that _if_ Germany had won!). The same goes for Iraq (and anywhere else, for that matter)... US won that war, therefore, US were the liberators, and Iraq were terrorists. In fact... how big is the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists? It only depends on perspective, and perspective is decided by the winner. Freedom fighters too, have caused civilian losses during different wars, but they won, thus making them freedom fighters and not terrorists...
Arkanoid
gethostbyintuition()... why not?
I completely agree with you. The Japanese were so brutal that the Nazis protested it. That's pretty damned bad when Nazis think you're too harsh.
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war. Period. No more atrocities were committed by the Empire of Japan after that, and Japan went on to become an economic power because The U.S. rebuilt them and wrote their constitution.
The people who snivel and moan about the people in thoses cities don't have the big picture. Innocent men, women and children had been dying at the hands of these monsters for years. Killing their people stopped it.
They forced it to be done. Everything that happened is entirely the fault of Japan, and I have to point out that they were developing their own atomic bomb to drop on the U.S.
"To sympathize with them, is to denigrate the millions of my countrymen who were brutally slaughtered."
No, it's not. What a black and white world you must live in.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Hello Idiot, ...and it seems any disdain is only coming from you, and that disdain is towards Americans.
Americans have chosen to lose wars rather than use nuclear weapons. We lost Vietnam, we sort of lost Korea, and now we're fighting a knock-down drag-out war with the muslim cult leaders.
You blather about disdain for non-american lives. How many non-americans have we allowed to kick our asses because we did not want to kill them?
I'll bet you don't have a bit of a problem with Americans dying so your rat-hole country can be on top.
Do you really believe that you shouldn't kill someone who is killing other people? You are obligated to do that. If you don't, that makes YOU complicit in the murders. If you don't have the courage to do what is right, you should just stay in the house with the women and keep your cowardly thoughts to yourself.
What about this Magic intercept then?
WAR DEPARTMENT
OFFICE OF A.C. OF S., G-2
No. 121S - 13 July 1945
"MAGIC" - DIPLOMATIC SUMMARY
I. Tokyo considers surrender on basis of Atlantic Charter....
Cthulhu loves you.
Even so, this was only one area in virtually the entire area of Eastern Asia. The fact of the matter is that the the Japanese killed a comparable number of civilians to the number the Nazis killed in the holocaust.
>>>
The people of China and Korea (both of them) will never forgive the Japanese for what they did in World War II during their totally unjustified quest to create the "East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere" i.e. the Japanese Empire.
>>>
If they will never forgive, they ought to stop demanding apologies. And both sides can remain enemies forever.
Neither side should ever _forget_. But I believe the way it works is perpetrator apologizes, victim accepts apology and forgives, and both sides move on.
I'm sure the Chineese would agree whole heartedly with you.
...
The fact that the other side is a dictatorship and that the population didn't have a say in governmental matters doesn't mean you surrender the right to defend yourself.
Oh, shit. That invading Japanese army is from a country that is a dictatorship. The people didnt have a say in it. Well, we can't very well have innocent civilian casualties on the other side, so lets just roll over and hope for the best. Life in the camps can't be THAT bad!
or
That invading Japanese army is from a dictatorship. Well, since the civilians never really got a say in the matter, lets get the war over as soon as possible! Maybe we can set them up in a peaceful democracy afterewards.
The nuclear bomb ended the war. It stoppped the killing.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
A tough lesson for us all to learn, indeed, but let us not lose site of the realities.
Furthermore, would not most other nations have used these weapons as a percursor to invasion with the intent of conquest?
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
what use is there for apologies when the mindset of an entire nation, as reflected through its' educational system, fails to appreciate the extreme pain and anguish it has caused
Yep, that's what they say about the US as well.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I think it's good that the Japanese government is provoked to face this, before it becomes pointless. Although those recent protests in China over the textbooks seemed a bit staged.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
The United States proposed an unconditional surrender, the imperial Japanese government refused. Where is the misinterpretation again?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Rubbish!
Saddam Hussein, Hitler, and others were brutal dictators, imposing rule by torture and murder. Now you have indiscriminate bombings in Iraq by the guys (and their cronies & lackeys) who got booted out of the high positions they used to have--killing civilians daily. What do you think they are going to do if no one is around to stop them? What do you think they are going to do if the US pulls out of Iraq before the Iraqis themselves are ready to deal with these villains who want to bring back the "good old days?"
How big is the difference? Are you serious?
I'm betting the average Iraqi just wants to live a life without fear of getting blown up because he or she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And, I'm pretty sure they do NOT want a return of the "good old days" under another repressive group of thugs who at a moments notice might decide your a troublemaker and make you disappear. Gee, I'm even going to wager they would like to enjoy those old fashioned notions of "..life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..."
It's not the US vs. Iraq. That's just nonsense. It's Iraq and the US vs. those would enslave that nation again, given the chance.
Let me guess, I'm curious, you were born after the Cold War, right?
Your post really points out an oft-cited feature of nuclear WMDs of the last 50 years: they are too big, too effective in a way that amplifies the futile nature of war in the first place. (is there, BTW, any historical example of an 'ideal' war where fighting only rendered the desired consequences of conflict solving?)
;-) they are just about useless against anonymous terrorists. They won't even force people into working for you. On the other hand, guns and tear gas and even plain clubs do the trick.
Actually nukes have really limited use. They won't stop protesting citizens on the town square, (they're in fact pretty good at causing protest
We saw this in WW2 Japan; the wartime government (who were particularily nuts, but still...) witnessed 100.000 people killed instantly and yet did not take this in itself as damaging enough (enter Nagasaki). Now imagine (however terrifying) putting these hundred thousands of poor people in a line and shooting them one by one until the emperor decides to say "stop".
If I were to pick just one weapon to plague human society (hypothetically...), I would choose nukes anytime.
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
I'm a product of American education and I know the atrocities we committed against them. The Pox blankets, the numerous broken treaties, and the massacres. I agree that the US must also live up to its past. Likewise, I think China will one day have to live up to what it did in Tibet.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I must respectfully submit that we *are* holding constant, permanent and without end discussions on the subject.
Do not think, for a moment, that those who hold the position that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified feel any less pain remembering the deaths of thousands of human beings as a result. However, we look at the costs of not doing something and cringe at the inescapable conclusions.
Hindsight is all well and good, but the American decision-makers were human beings, mere mortals. They were not gifted with perfect foresight or wisdom, but with all our human frailties and shortcomings. They were good men, men of honor and decency, who saw a world ravaged by war and conflict and desired to put a stop to it. They had seen evidence of the wholesale slaughter of civilians in Europe and Asia. They had seen truly power-hungry men commit their populations to war to feed their egos. They had seen their own populations go to war and many of them come back shattered by the experience.
Can I regret what they did? Yes, they let the nuclear genie out of the bottle. Can I blame them for what they did? No. They faced a tough decision and made the best one they could given what they knew and what their goals were. Was it a perfect decision? No. Could a better decision have been made? Maybe. But who's to know? Bombing Mount Fuji, as one author wrote, might have had the desired effect, but then again, it might not have. Hitting Fuji may have, instead, filled the Japanese population with a terrible resolve, much as 9/11 galvanized the U.S. What we *do* know is this: The two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended a war that had been filled with some of the most evil, despicable actions against fellow humans that had ever been seen. Whatever evil that the bombs themselves may represent, they at least had the saving grace of ending a long, bloody war.
The 1954 movie Gojira,
which became famous in its shorter, neutralized 1956 version as
Godzilla.
Gojira.
Oil comes from more than one place, my underesteemed chum.
I suppose you carefully choose which gas stations you patronize, making sure they only sell oil and gasoline that doesn't come from the Middle East?
> While I'm sure there were alternative means by which the final defeat of
> the Empire of Japan could have been brought about
Oh, yeah, sure. Eventually. Bear in mind, before the A-bombs were dropped, the US had already turned things around and was gaining ground continually. The US was winning -- gradually. But it was taking a long time. In other words, the atomic bomb did not change the *outcome* of the war (in the broad overall big-picture sense of outcome); what it changed primarily was the *duration* of the war.
Frankly, the US would have won even if Japan had the atomic bomb and the US did not; the outcome was determined by other factors, mainly infrastructure and production capacity and logistical issues. Before the atomic bomb was dropped, the US had already flown a plane over the Japanese capital city of Tokyo on at least one occasion. Japan could not put a plane over or anywhere near Washington D.C. at any time during the war, because there was an entire and rather sizeable continent in the way, controlled substantially by the US (and its allies, e.g., Canada would not have likely allowed a Japanese plane through their airspace either, even assuming a plane existed in that era that could fly that far without landing, which I think was not the case). Japan couldn't put planes over *most* US cities, not even if they could park an aircraft carrier in San Francisco harbor. They couldn't go through Panama, because the US controlled it (and anyway, it would be an unacceptably narrow chokepoint); they didn't have the submarines to go under the north polar cap (nobody did at the time), and Cape Horn (let alone going west and clear around) is so far out of the way as to create very severe supply-line problems. (Also, the British controlled the Falklands and might have had something to say about Japanese ships coming into the Atlantic that way; the allies also controlled the Suez, which leaves the route round the south of Africa, the longest route of all, completely untenable from a supply-line perspective. In short, Japan couldn't put ships in the Atlantic.)
But more than just geography, production capacity and infrastructure were in the way. After Pearl Harbor, Japan had a larger navy than the US. By the time the bomb was dropped, the US had a larger navy than Japan had had at any time during the war. How did that happen? Simple: the US could *build* a navy much faster; the US had more shipyards, more steel mills -- in short, more infrastructure. The US also had more domestic transportation and communications infrastructure, more munitions factories, more weapons factories, more *other* factories that could be converted if necessary, and more ecconomic resources (just compare the GDP of the two countries at that point in history). And if new technology was going to be developed that would impact the outcome, the US also had more universities and more research labs and every other relevant thing. And it isn't just that the US had more of those things because it was bigger; it *was* bigger, but also it was a first-world country, and Japan at the time was not; the US had much more infrastructure per capita, in addition to being rather larger.
Basically, Japan was seriously outclassed in this war. If Japan hadn't brought the US into the war by attacking first, it wouldn't have been anywhere near fair for the US to fight them (but fair sort of goes out the window when somebody attacks you).
Whether the US would have entered the war if Pearl Harbor had not been attacked is an interesting discussion, but even if they had, it is likely that Germany would have been the main focus, and Japan may have been left more-or-less alone. The Japanese leadership miscalculated this rather badly, because they did not have a good understanding of American culture and psychology, thus leading them to conclude, quite erroneously, that attacking would be a good way to keep the US out of the war, or reduce the US to a non-factor in the war's outcome. That didn't work out _quite_
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Limited proxy fighting, tense border "incidents", state-sponsored terrorism, and sneaky underhanded attempts to intimidate and destabilize the other regime were all routine aspects of the Cold War, too. The point is that, however icky these things are, they are not nearly as destructive as a full-scale general war.
I didn't say nuclear weapons would make Pakistan and India like each other or settle their differences in a warm and peaceful way, or that they would quit trying to viciously stab each other in the back every chance they get. I just said nukes have apparently made the two countries forswear the most violent option.
In any case: these were Japanese, not Americans, there is lots of honor involved. I know, its difficult, but it is a different culture. There was lots of talking needed.
During which time the USSR would have taken over half of Japan condemnding large parts of its population to Stalin style repression as happened in Eastern Europe. So you see, the decision wasn't as black as white as after-the-fact simplistic analysis makes it sound.
They did not refuse to surrender, but I guess Truman did not want to wait. Or perhaps, as other claim, wanted to give Fat man a try.
Sorry but the records have long been open. The Japanese war cabinet met the day after Hiroshima and discussed the possibility of surrendering. The war cabinet voted against it. Hirohito voted in favor of surrendering, but nonetheless he was outvoted.
In what way does my argument justify 9/11? Did we attack Al-Qaeda and cause them to "defend" themselves? They have been carrying out attacks for years before 9/11...
Why not destroy military targets instead people who don't even exectly know what their government is doing?
Both cities were valid military targets... the people there were employed manufacturing ammunitions, and a large percentage were military personnel.. If nukes hadn't been dropped, the cities were going to be firebombed.. take a look at the death toll in other cities.. it wouldn't have been better for the Japanese, and it wouldn't have ended the war.
The nukes saved lives on both sides.. but even if you didn't accept the argument that it saved Japanese lives, it unequivocally saved American lives... why should Americans sacrifice even more of its citizens lives in war Japan started.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
The number was a result of a serious pier-reviewed study, and Japan explicitly rejected our offer. The actual number estimated was 250k-400k per month. I chose to use 10k per day as an conservative average within that range.
I am a bit baffled as to why you think "making peace" with a bunch of murderous thugs would have been a great idea in the first place.
To finish that thought even after the second bomb was dropped there were still hawks in the war cabinet who were still arguing about conditions of surrenderment. Hirohito overruled them by taking directly to the airwaves and declaring the defeat of Japan.
So you see, even two bombs were not enough to convince some cabinet members that unconditional surrender was the only option. Most cabinet members were operating under the illusion that they would be able to impose some or all of four conditions for surrenderment. Even in the end the USA acquiesced in one: keeping Hirohito.
From wikipedia:
"There is a great deal of controversy over the number of deaths by starvation during the Great Leap Forward. A mainstream figure is that some thirty million people died during the famine that followed."
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
I tend to think the same, but it's useful to create at least one alternative view of history
- US succeeds in creating atomic bomb
- US uses it at the first chance it gets.
- Other countries see the carnage, and in one voice yell "how much for one of those?"
- USSR has atomic bomb by 1949
- US has H-bomb by 1952
- USSR has H-bomb by 1953.
- 1962 US and USSR destroy each other and allies in nuclear war.
17 years, not bad for speed. In reality of course, they got very lucky and survived without a scratch.
I don't think too many high up people got scared when they learned about Hiroshima. It was not tolerated.
Real men aren't scared to use them "taboo weapons".
And if they see that you're not a real man, you're not going to have a career.
Let's try look for other reasons.
- It was a very crude and indiscriminate weapon, you had to take out a whole city in order to hit a tank.
That's a wasteful approach , and hard to defend. Mass carnage is much less acceptable now than it used to be.
- Nukes escalate easily to bigger weapons in retaliation.
- And it's got a plain bad reputation, which interferes with having the moral highground.
Well, as ideas go, it's not a bad start.
Right now , we have two things: proliferation increasing the chance of nuclear conflict, and the new generation of "manageable nukes", which could be used by the US against for example Iran or Syria.
Nice job.
which I believe contains a reference to the authors of the 250k-400k study. You can go read it yourself. Of course, we cannot know the opinions of the victims, as they are dead. But we can know the opinions of surviving Japanese (who, barring a few peacenik radicals, generally understand Truman's decision, to the extent that they care), as well as the opinions of the Chinese, Koreans, etc who were spared additional years of Japanese thuggery.
It appears as though "Scholarly work" is limited to that which you have read and agree with. Nothing in your assertions suggest that you are well read on the Pacific theater in the Second World War. I would cite the works of the Pulitzer winning biography by Herbert P. Bix on the Emperor Hirohito in which he specifically listed three failed opportunities by the Japanese to seek an end to the war prior to the decision to use the atomic bomb. I would also suggest that you read "Downfall" by Richard B. Frank concerning the final six months of the war in the Pacific in order to review not only the anticipated casualties in the event of the necessity for an invasion of the Japanese islands. I would finally suggest that you read "The Hiroshima Cult" by Robert P Newman in which he eviscerates Gar Alperovitz's silly revisionist opinions. I have found over the years that those who criticize the decision have read only material which seems to support their opinion, ignoring more recent works which use much more current information made available from relaxation due to freedom of information act, as well as additional declassification of government records and documents.
It's an Atomic Bomb. Not a meteor. Even though it's destructive power was terrible, it would not have done much to alter the geography of Mt. Fuji.
Of course not, but it would have scared the shit out of many thousands of people with the mushroom cloud. Which was the point.
Targeting non combatants with nuclear weapons was definitely the wrong thing to do. It is terrorism.
I'm not really convinced that it is terrorism. The definitions of terrorism don't seem to fit that one country being the aggressor. Act of war, or war attrocity, I will take, because the meaning of war fits better when it is country against country.
Moral equivalence from a deranged psychopath, presupposing that the Saddamite regime had a "sovereign right" to murder, rape and torture Iraqis.
The US was desperate to get involved into WWII, and was pressing Japan very hard to start a match. Japan didn't consider themselves up to the full confrontation that was approaching, but maybe they could in one exceptional strike defang the US ,and then from that position convince it that each continue to run its own business for the time being.
The strike would use its limited resources very effectively. It would be a delicate piece of art that would live in history(no kidding). That alone made it worthwile.
The US meanwhile needed two kickoffs, one with Japan and one with Germany. Luckily, Germany promised to play any challenger of Japan.
The US were restrained by a no-kickof rule.
It was allowed to do anything to convince others to a match, and it was allowed to do all it wanted during a match, but it was not allowed to kickoff the match.
When the Japanese kicked off the match with their beautiful movement they immediately saw it was not beautiful enough. The US were surprised by the effectiveness of Japan's first movement, but their precautions limited the damage. They had their two kickoffs and were now free to act.
The European match was a get-there-first kind of match. Capture as much of Europe as they can before the Russians take it. They did a reasonable job on that.
The match with the Japanese was a matter of where to stop. You don't get it for free, but the longer you go on, the more you capture. It's indecent to go home with half a prize when you could 've gotten the whole prize. Especially when you consider what you already spent. At the very last moment they have to really hurry things before Russia takes its share, but then with one last flash, they're home.
And the conquered lived happily ever after.
Still too long. But I've seen worse.
As a Chinese native living in the USA, I am surprised daily as to how many people feel sympathy for the Japanese b/c they were nukes, because I can never bring myself to feel such sympathy.
If a group of people commit atrocities against another another group of people, it doesn't matter how terrible those crimes are: that in no way justifies further terrible acts against a third group of people, just because they share the same race, religion or nationality.
The sort of attitude that they are deserving of such acts against them is the very sort of attitude which puts entire nations to war in the first place.
To sympathize with them, is to denigrate the millions of my countrymen who were brutally slaughtered.
Really? What, I can't have sympathy for both?
Sure, perhaps there should be more sympathy of the crimes committed by the Japanese military, but this does not mean we should stop feeling sympathy for people killed or injured in a nuclear attack. And no, it is not justified to ignore the suffering of the German people either.
What would you have done, had you have been born in Germany or Japan at that time?
What you're effectively saying is that attacks against civilians are perfectly justified as long as they balance the karmic scale. That's the kind of attitude that leads to ethnic cleansing.
The fact is that attacks on civilians is a heinous crime worthy of condemnation and legal repercussions. ALL such crimes - no matter what; there is NO "eye for an eye". To accept otherwise is to embrace anarchy.
FRESH water will run out. There is enough saltwater to last a billion years.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Perverted anime cartoons, and japanese as a whole as uncaring people. I'm not denying the side I heard, I just felt the other side needed mention too.
The Japanese people should be (and most probably are) grateful they got hit with the atomic bombs. Look at what the alternative would have been:
- Without a massive display of force by the US, the military junta in control of the country would not have been deposed.
- Japanese military leaders were seeking a *conditional* surrender that would leave them in control of the country, allowing them to continue to oppress the Japanese populace with the existing caste system.
- Without the bombs, the allies would have been forced to invade. Japanese civilians would have been forced to defend their land to the death, many with nothing more than sharp sticks against heavily armed invaders. The civilian slaughter would have been horrific.
- The "Allies" as of Aug 9, included The USSR, who as part of the invasion force, would have occupied parts of Japan, essentially splitting the country like Korea, and a good percentage of Japan today would be starving and suffering under the police state formed by a communist puppet government.
- Admiral William D. Leahy is recognized by almost every historian to have been wrong in his assessment that the atom bomb was a bad idea. Even Leahy later admitted that.
Any reasonable, honest examination of history shows that Truman made the right call. Any person or group trying to assert otherwise is merely attempting to forward their own agenda by revising history. Or they are just naive.
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams