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Obama To Become First US President To Visit Hiroshima Since 1945 Nuclear Attack (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: The White House announced U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima, becoming the first sitting American President to do so since the city was destroyed in 1945 by a U.S. nuclear bomb. President Obama and Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit the city on May 27th "to highlight his continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement. Obama said he hoped to visit both Hiroshima and Nagasaki when he first visited Japan in November 2009. "The memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched in the minds of the world, and I would be honored to have the opportunity to visit those cities at some point during my presidency," President Obama said at the time. At least 140,000 people died from the nuclear attack on Hiroshima on August 9, 1945. Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second atomic weapon on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered to Allied forces within a week after that second attack.
There were a lot American GIs, a lot of Chinese, a lot of Koreans, a lot Filipinos, a lot of Burmese, and so forth, who shed no tears for the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan was an aggressor state, an expansionist militaristic empire that caused the peoples of Asia significant grief and death. The atrocities the Japanese committed in Asia have never got the attention they deserved.
At any rate, even after the first bomb, the Japanese government dithered on whether to surrender unconditionally. Even after the second bomb, some officers briefly attempted to kidnap the Emperor to prevent him ordering the unconditional surrender. So all this rubbish that so frequently gets claimed about Japan being ready to surrender before the atomic bombs really is revisionist crapola. Japan wanted a conditional surrender that would have largely left the aristocracy and the military leadership intact, and there was no way the US was going to allow the regime to remain intact. Japan needed to brought low. The Japanese people needed to be brought low, just as the German people needed to be. Yes, the Emperor was ultimately preserved, but largely for continuity. Everything else about Japan was transformed.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
President Carter visited the site after his presidential term was complete.
In total war, there are no innocents. That's why modern war should be avoided.
It was American lives or Japanese lives, and the US rightly decided to save American lives. In the end, an invasion of the Japanese main island would likely have cost a lot more Japanese lives than the two atom bombs.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It was American lives or Japanese lives, and the US rightly decided to save American lives.
No it wasn't. The Japanese had already agreed to cease hostilities and surrender. Their only condition was that their emperor not be deposed. America refused, and fought on. After the Japanese surrendered unconditionally, we decided that it was better to let Hirohito keep his job after all.
So the bombing was not at all necessary to "save lives".
Oh, and one other thing: The Germans also offered to surrender in 1943 (when 90% of American casualties had not yet occurred), and again in 1944 (when 75% of American casualties had not yet occurred). Their only condition was that their soldiers be allowed to return peacefully to Germany. We refused, and the war went on.
You know... I once gave Truman the benefit of doubt; knowing that it was a different kind of war than any in my lifetime, and I wasn't there and making the decisions. I thought there was no way I could crawl into his mind when he was making the decisions. As it turns out, though, Truman kept diaries. And excerpts are published on the internet. I stopped reading when I saw the dehumanizing racism... the references to the Japanese people as "japs" and an individual as "the jap". That showed me what I needed to know about his thought processes and the kind of man he was. And he no longer gets the benefit of my doubt.
Imagine all the people...
Which Germans offered to surrender?
In 1943, Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr (German Intelligence) offered to assassinate Hitler and end the war. Churchill's reply was that the Allies would accept no terms but unconditional surrender. Later in the war, the Nazis executed Canaris for treason.
In July 1944, a coup was launched and an attempt was made to assassinate Hitler. The plan was to kill Hitler, and then immediately negotiate a surrender. The assassination failed, but the coup did not collapse until it was clear that the Allies had refused to negotiate and were unwilling to accept any terms that included soldiers returning home, rather than going to labor camps (where, at least in Russia, most inmates died). From 1944 on, the Allies were fighting for the right to have death camps, and nothing more.
The summary says Hiroshima was on the 9th, followed by Nagasaki three days later, but the Hiroshima bombing was on the 6th of August, 1945, followed by Nagasaki on the 9th.
So they still got that emperor?
Hirohito's son, Akihito is the current emperor of Japan. Their family dynasty dates back to Emperor Jimmu in 660BC, making it, by far, the longest reigning dynasty in history. The main reason for the dynasty's longevity, is that for nearly all of that time, the emperor was just a figurehead with very little actual authority, while the real power was exercised by the Shogun.
No, you just have to somehow manage to miss that the economy turned around from the tailspin it fell into under Bush, people got considerably more access to healthcare, a bunch of idiot prejudice towards the LGBT community got considerably set back, predatory consumer credit practices have been reduced, both of that idiot Bush's wars of aggression have been considerably scaled back...
It's easy to "realize" something when Fox News did your "realizing" for you by filling your head with utter BS.
But the actual facts are other; Obama won't go into history as an incompetent. This congress, however... likely they will go into history as having least approximated doing anything even remotely resembling their jobs. Not incompetence — they were actively trying not to do their jobs, and they succeeded at that — they'll just go down as the winners of the "doing the least possible service for their country" prize.