Slashdot Mirror
G-7 Leaders At Hiroshima To Urge More Visits to Nuclear Bombsites (voanews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Sunday leaders from the G-7 countries gathered in Hiroshima Sunday, a gesture which the Japanese government hopes will send a message of peace and nuclear nonproliferation. The seven world leaders will first honor the dead at Hiroshima Peace Park and visit an atomic bomb museum, which the Associated Press calls "a dream come true for many surviving victims, who have for decades campaigned to bring leaders of nuclear states to Hiroshima to see the damage." In addition, Japan hopes that the world leaders will also issue a "Hiroshima Declaration," which reportedly will call for more transparency about stockpiles of nuclear weapons, but also more visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki by both world leaders and young people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
How about all the other Japanese War Crimes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
---
Further, the irony is that the firebombings of Tokyo killed as many people as the nukes did. Where are the protests of that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
---
Finally, would invading have been better?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"During World War II, nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the estimated casualties resulting from the planned Allied invasion of Japan. To the present date, total combined American military casualties of the seventy years following the end of World War IIâ"including the Korean and Vietnam Warsâ"have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there remained 120,000 Purple Heart medals in stock. The existing surplus allowed combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to soldiers wounded in the field."
We are STILL handing out WWII Purple Hearts to this day because we ended up not having to invade. If the Japs didn't want to get nuked, perhaps they shouldn't have started a war of aggression.
1. Japan itself convinced the US to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. When US troops fought the Japanese from island to island on the approach to the big island, they encountered waves of fanatical suicide attacks on land, and from the air. American soldiers were shocked to encounter large numbers of Japanese civilian women who killed their children and then killed themselves in front of the Americans rather than simply surrendering and being given food and water. Japanese sailors at sea who'd been aboard ships that were sunk would frequently swim away from US sailors who were trying to pull them from the water (a centuries' old international naval traditions of plucking enemies from the sea, everyone sailor's true adversary), often choosing to drown themselves. The imperial leadership of Japan had convinced its population that Americans were barbarians who would treat them so badly that death was preferable. This was evil propaganda intended to convince the people to sacrifice themselves to protect their emperor-god from the disgrace of surrender.
2. Japan itself brought-on Nagasaki. After Hiroshima, the US told the imperial Japanese government to surrender or face more, and the imperial Japanese government chose not to surrender. The allies at the time were demanding "unconditional surrender" and when they Japanese, AFTER Nagasaki still refused to unconditionally surrender and instead asked to be allowed to preserve their emperor, the allies compromised and allowed that condition - but the action proved the imperial govt would have been willing to get nuked some more to preserve the moron in the palace. The Japanese negotiations were NOT focused on the Japanese people, who would have been saved BEFORE Hiroshima had the emperor held any concern for his citizens and surrendered THEN.
3. NO American president could have possibly sent American men to invade Japan and die by the hundreds of thousands and then later have been exposed to have had a weapon he could have dropped from one plane with no American casualties at all and won the war. Such a president would have been forcibly removed from office, and tried and executed for treason. This was a WORLD WAR. Millions of people were dead and maimed.
I am one of those Americans who is glad the bomb was developed AND used. I Had family who fought and probably would have died had the bombs not been used, and who rejects the silly out-of-context moralizing by people who have no experience with war and are too young to know anything about REAL war (as opposed to the phone mini-wars we now pretend to wage).
The Japanese proposed conditional surrender terms - some of which would have left the military leaders free, or ever still in power. There was no way in HELL that was going to happen. Unconditional surrender was all we were going to accept, especially after we saw how WWI's terrible peace led directly to WWII in Europe.
Well, I'd characterize it as "The Soviet army ended the war in Europe, and we helped". No slight against the US and other allies, as we pretty much defeated Japan on our own as well, even though we prioritized the war in Europe.
There were *many* reasons for dropping atomic weapons on Japan. I think people stumble a bit when they point to specific events as the "reason", but I'd imagine the answer, like many complex things in life, was made up of a variety of motivations:
* Americans were becoming war-weary, but anything less than total victory would have been seen as a slap in the face to those who fought.
* The Japanese were defending their home territory fanatically, and projections for losses of life on *both* sides were horrendous.
* Russia was planning to invade with their vast manpower and disregard for casualties, and the US feared it would have potentially occupied large portions of Japan, turning it into a communist puppet state like with Eastern Europe.
* Japan seemed unwilling to concede to unconditional surrender, even in the face of certain military defeat, instead adopting a strategy of inflicting massive casualties against invaders to force more favorable terms.
* Many in the US wanted to test nuclear weapons on live targets to learn their destructive potential
* US leaders / military wanted to demonstrate the might of the those weapons to the Soviets and the world at large as a warning against future actions against our interests
* The American people would likely have demanded an impeachment of a President who didn't use the weapons at his disposal to win the war.
It's hard to say how these factors all weighed into the decision and in what proportions. Only Truman would really know that.
Ultimately, though, there's an argument to be made that, whatever forced the Japanese hand into timely surrender ultimately saved many thousands of allied soldiers lives as well as saving the lives of hundreds of thousands or even *millions* of Japanese from the horror and suffering of a protracted land campaign, or mass starvation inflicted by blockades and isolation, as some have argued for (starvation was already becoming a problem). We could also argue that Japan is far better off today having been forced to completely surrender and accept the efforts by the US to help rebuild Japan into a modern liberal democracy.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
No actual problems left so lets go back and wallow in the old ones. The direct result of the bombs, the surrender, the subsequent governance and unwavering economic and military allied status with the US is that Hiroshima is a thriving metropolis worth hundreds of billions and populated by 1.17 million healthy, safe Japanese. But lets set all of that aside and haunt the remnants of a 70 year old war so we can tsk tsk at the US.
Pathetic.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Screw Hiroshima. Visit the site and look at the photos of the Rape of Nanking. Karma's a bitch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.nanking-massacre.co...
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
To this day, a lot of people in Japan refuse to accept that Nanking even happened.
As for the nuclear bombs, we won, they lost, that is how it works. We don't see them as war crimes, thus no one will be tried for it (and they are all dead anyway).
A very compelling case can be made that using the nucs actually saved Japanese lives.
During the war in the pacific, Americans were stunned by the reaction of the Japanese soldiers and civilians. Figh like crazy, then when defeat was imminent, kill yourself. The amount of effort and cost of lives to take small islands was immense.
Yes, the Americans were winning. No they were not happy about the way it was going to happen.
As they closed in on Japan, it was only going to get worse. The casualties on both sides were going to be immense, and to win the war, something akin to genocide would happen if we were to take it on using the methods at hand. We were going to have to kill everyone who didn't commit suicide. Whatever else the rest of the world thinks about our willingness to commit mayhem, we aren't remotely genocidal.
Firebombing worked in a similar way to nucs, but was laborious as hell. A metric shitload of bombs were needed.
So under those conditions, the decision to nuc Japan happened. 1 each bomb that would level 1 each city.
It was a gamble on our part. What would happen if Japan still didn't surrender? After the second bomb hit Nagasaki, it was clear even to the never surrender crowd, they had lost. Lost so completely that with no way to protect their nation, they were just going to disappear completely, and we could do it just by flying over their country and dropping a bomb per city.(note: the amount of fissionable material might have had an impact)
As well, in all of this mess, Russia had just declared war on Japan, and the Japanese knew how the Russkies had carved Germany a new asshole. So Japan could expect the same and soon.
So for all of the hatred toward the nucs and America, using them probably saved lives, American and Russian, no doubt, but also Japanese - in the end.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.