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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.
I tried to tell a joke to Obama about Hiroshima once...it bombed.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
So which US president(s) visited Hiroshima prior to 1945?
This is all a celebration of Obama. He is in "First President to do X" mode, in a vain attempt to make his terms in office, not look so horrible, when history ultimately judges it to be so.
The only question is if He will apologize for Pearl Harbor or not. You, mean America putting that island in the way of all of those Japanese planes and bombs.
This is ZERO republican, and 100% Obama.
I wonder if he'll get in any golf while he's over there?
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.
If the White House announces something, shouldn't the link be to whitehouse.gov? Like:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/10/statement-press-secretary-presidents-travel-vietnam-and-japan
Cue the millennials' halfwitted observation that the bombs were "unjust" ...
I wonder how many such millennials are here today because their great-grandfather did not have to be part of an invasion of the Japanese home islands.
... a few diplomats were interested in surrender. Diplomats who lived in fear of their beliefs coming to the attention of the militarists who would have promptly executed them for treason. Keep in mind that it was **ONLY** the emperors decision that enabled surrender. Even after that decision militarists assaulted the imperial palace to rescue to emperor from the "treasonous" advisors who were "lying" to him, to find and destroy the audio recording the emperor made to announce the surrender to the Japanese people, etc. The surrender nearly did not happen even after the god-like emperor made the decision. After the first atomic bombing the militarists were training troops/civilians to wear white sheets to protect them from the flash of this new weapon. The films of this looked like a friggin KKK training exercise. To the day of the surrender, the militarists, the people effectively running the country, thought they could inflict so many casualties on the Americans that they could negotiate a peace treaty. The suicide planes and boats were ready, the chemical weapons were targeted on landing beaches, school kids were learning to thrust a bamboo spear at americans, etc. Its is only the emperor's voice on the radio, speaking directly to the people, announcing the surrender, that ended this insanity. And the emperor did not make the decision until after the atomic bombs. He specifically cited these new weapons in his announcement.
And I wonder how many of their "Japanese friends" are only here because the war ended without such an invasion, without a famine inducing blockade that was one alternative to invasion, etc.
And before you start the "they were about to surrender" meme
In the twisted insane mathematics of war, the atomic bombs probably saved lives. We killed far greater numbers of people in the convention firebombing of Japan.
Do you all think it's accidental that as soon as we know who the candidates for president are going to be that Obama's approval ratings go up? It's as if people are saying, "Holy shit. Obama wasn't really so bad after all."
He's currently got a higher approval rating than Ronald Reagan at the same point in their terms.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"To the victor goes the spoil."
And that spoil includes living long enough to write the history books.
It's as true with the Cheyenne as it is with the Japanese... or anyone else. This fact has not changed in all of human history, nor will it.
A world without nuclear weapons? I wonder how many wars would have been fought if there were no nukes to make the superpowers realize they couldn't afford WWIII. That even if they won they'd still lose.
President Carter visited the site after his presidential term was complete.
Sure if they had had nukes at the time that probably would have ended very differently.
But this is history and hopefully it stays that way.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
No tears shed even for the innocent killed?
That doesn't sound very Japanese.
...a world without nuclear weapons...
You'd think these two heads of state, in particular, would already know that the things which come out of Pandora's Box can't just be wished away.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
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.
At any rate, even after the first bomb, the Japanese government dithered on whether to surrender unconditionally.
There are official communications within the government that indicated the military leaders insisted Hiroshima wasn't a nuclear bomb. It was a large-scale conventional bombing (like Dresden) with a dirty bomb at the end, to make it look nuclear. The radiation levels were lower than expected, and the destruction less (see the modern day conspiracy theorists that insist there are no atom bombs), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... was still standing and was near ground-zero. The destruciton wasn't dissimilar to a conventional bombing, with scattered buildings left standing.
Japan surrendered both before and after Hiroshima. Though every surrender before Nagasaki included the conditions that the Japanese government be left as-was (including domination by the military in civilian affairs), and nobody be tried for war crimes. Both of those were unacceptable conditions at the time.
Learn to love Alaska
... and while that may be true, we were responsible for what could easily be considered the two most devastating war actions resulting in the highest number of civilian deaths during any war. If ANY country did today what we did back then we would condemn it as one of the greatest war crimes in history.
It does not matter if Japan was not willing to surrender, to put it in modern context, would it be acceptable for Assad to nuke a rebel stronghold in Syria?
And that's the fact of the matter. The only way the great powers will ever shed their nuclear weapons is when they've found replacements. Besides, what would eliminating them even mean? The expertise to produce them would still exist. It's generally understood, for instance, that both South Korea and Japan could rapidly develop nuclear capabilities, and the only reason they don't is because the US has extended its nuclear shield over them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm always a bit baffled by how the world keeps looking at Germany and Japan's WWII histories. Germany's is 'What we did was horrible, never forget when we did' and Japan's is always 'What was done to us was horrible, never forget what happened to us.'
Anytime I see any sort of WWII memorial sort of thing here and there, it's almost always about either the Holocaust or the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombings. Well, those are two very different things. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, the so-called 'comfort women' (or to call that what it actually was, sexual slavery)...I mean, without even considering Pearl Harbor, let's not pretend that there wasn't one hell of a lead up to the bombings.
It just seems wrong that we spend so much more time talking about the thing that ended the war than the actions, and victims, that made those means necessary.
If you bring your children lets say aged 3 and 4 with you to rob a bank who is responsible when they get hurt?
Here the parents would be in deep shit for reckless child endangerment.
I feel this falls under the same lines. They went to war and they brought their whole country into the conflict with them.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
What? I mean the holocaust happened during the same war even.
The difference between nuking someone and blasting it out of existence using kinetic or other weapons means you can then takeover the territory.
Cue the millennials' halfwitted observation that the bombs were "unjust" and my grandparents should've gone into another brutal, horrifying ground war in Japan.
Why would a ground war have been necessary? By the time the bombs were dropped Japan was no longer a serious threat. Any ship that ventured out of harbour was being sunk, and Jap ground troops around the Pacific had run out of food and ammo (most of those never surrendered anyway). The British had defeated them in Burma (partly because the Jap supply system had collapsed), and it could have been left to Russia to drive them out of China.
Japan has few natural resources, in particular no reliable source of oil. Any attempt to re-supply themselves with strategic materials or to resume building aircraft or warships over the following decades could have been nipped in the bud with some pin-point conventional bombing (seriousy, the USAF was good at that).
A "surrender", conditional or otherwise, was unnecessary - Japan could have been simply cut off and left to get on with fishing and to stew in its own fish juice. But Western politicians wanted something dramatic.
Is it a stronghold or a city? Pretty much anything big enough to be considered a nuke would be too big for the job.
Nukes aren't exactly precise so your going to have so much collateral damage, fallout and the resulting political shitstorm that they wouldn't be worth using even if you had them.
There shouldn't ever be a use for them again unless we decide to go ahead with a WWIII.
So no it would be the wrong tool for the job.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
The parent is obvious flamebait, but I like history, so I'll share some here...
There was an interesting article in Foreign Policy a couple years ago (possibly paywalled link here) which argued that the Soviet declaration of war was what really prompted the surrender. The author bases this on several arguments, among them:
* The atomic bombing of Hiroshima did not particularly stand out in the context of a huge and destructive conventional bombing campaign.
* The Japanese Supreme Council did not discuss the Hiroshima bombing at all, and indeed, did not seem to care much about the destruction of cities.
* Soviet mediation was seen as the last hope for avoiding an unconditional surrender.
* Japanese forces were deployed to defend against a U.S. invasion, not a Soviet invasion from the opposite direction.
* Giving the atomic bomb credit for provoking the surrender was politically convenient for the emperor as well as the United States.
It's worth a read if you can actually get to the article. There's a comment on the AskHistorians Reddit about the article by Restricted Data (Alex Wellerstein), which gives the original source of this argument (Tsuyoshi Hasegawa), and offers some historiographical context:
The same comment also points out an important aspect of the "moral" debate:
He also has a related article here.
I don't have much of an opinion on whether the atomic bombing was "justified" or not. Large-scale attacks on civilians were common through the war in both theaters, so focusing solely on the atomic bomb seems rather limited to me.
Visit the
My father was in the 10th Mountain Division in Northern Italy fighting the Nazi's 1945 earning a Silver Star and Purple Heart. His company, being battled tested, was told next stop is the south Pacific... Then the Bomb was dropped and the course of history changed. Nevertheless I am not angry about Obama visiting Hiroshima. It is about time politicians paid attention to the past and understand the terrible power we wield and the horrendous consequence of war. Now maybe a Japanese leader will visit Nanking or a Turkish leader will visit an Armenian site. Bout time I say.
Better make sure the Cherokee don't get the bomb!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
... what could easily be considered the two most devastating war actions resulting in the highest number of civilian deaths during any war
No chance. Even in Japan in WW2, a particular conventional bombing raid on Tokyo caused more deaths. When you start to look at other wars, even in ancient times, there have been far more civilian deaths. The horrific thing about the A-bomb raids however is the sheer efficiency of the killing.
The emperor's advisers were preparing to put frickin' school girls on the beach with primitive weapons to defend the ruling class... it can be argued that convincing the emperor to surrender by hitting Hiroshima and Nagasaki HARD saved tens of thousands of Japanese lives. At any rate, I think the majority of older Japanese understand why it was done, and have accepted it.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I've never heard much about the opinions of elderly Japanese on the necessity of the Americans dropping the bombs. Any sources for this? I'm genuinely curious.
It wouldn't surprise me, but it would strike me as odd to hear an elderly Japanese say the equivalent of "well, I *guess* they had to do it, but still..."
It is mathematically impossible for Obama to beat Reagan's record for vacation time while in office, no matter how are he tries...
Presidents get paid to make decisions, not to dig ditches by the hour. If a vacation helps clear his mind, so he makes better decisions, then that is a good thing. Eisenhower once cut short a meeting on a proposal to send troops into Vietnam because he had an appointment to play golf. If Lyndon Johnson devoted as much time to golf, then 58,000 American casualties could have been avoided.
The lifetimes of those involved.
Time to get over it.
It's time to stop cursing Alexander the Great. But some cultures pass down this hatred as part of their oral tradition to keep the hate alive.
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.
Which Germans offered to surrender?
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...
There were a lot American GIs, a lot of Chinese, a lot of Koreans, a lot Filipinos, a lot of Burmese, and so forth...
There was also my Father, fighting the Nazis from early 1940 until VE Day in 1945, who was told that he would be sent, with his regiment to fight in Japan. I don't know if they would have mutinied, (they probably wouldn't have) but I can tell you he was very angry at the thought of another 2 (or 3 or more) years of war. My father was extremely happy about the atom bombs, they saved millions of lives, possibly including his.
it was far far less than had we NOT dropped the bomb.
Japan had no intention of surrendering and it was going to be a bloody battle all the way through Japan to make it happen.
By dropping the bombs, it solved everything with a lot fewer loss of lives, esp. of Allied lives who were attacked by Germany and Japan.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I believe the reason for the different awareness of WW2 atrocities committed by Germany and Japan amount mainly to cultural differences, but also the generally higher focus and interest in Europe as opposed to the far east, coupled with a well organized Jewish community that naturally has a high interest in clearing up and highlighting the events that took place.
If you had to describe German culture in one word, it would have to be "pragmatic".In the face of overwhelming evidence on the atrocities committed by the Nazis (which many Germans where blissfully unaware of), the only way forward was to accept the facts for what they were, soak in all the guilt and make the best possible thing of it by keeping the memory alive and doing the very best that something similar never happens again. Now it has relaxed somewhat, but throughout the 80's and 90's there were critical documentaries about WW2 and the atrocities on the Nazis in German TV practically every week, and this was also a big topic for all students in German schools.
Japan on the other hand, as most other far-east cultures, has this very important cultural theme of upholding hohor and not losing face. Even when it is irrefutably clear that mistakes are made or something is not right, the Japanese way is to ignore it as much as possible and do business as usual, so that nobody has to lose face (least of all the Japanese culture itself). This is essential, as losing honor, in traditional Japanese interpretation, would basically mean that you should kill yourself. While Japan has westernized and modernized over the last decades, there are still many nationalist elements in Japanese society that do their best trying to silence any voices about Japanese WW2 atrocities while at the same time promoting the theme of the "honorable" and "brave" soldiers who sacrificed themselves for the Japanese Empire.
So obviously, we have two very different ways of dealing with the past here. Then, as I said earlier, there was also the Jewish community actively working to promote awareness for the atrocities committed by the Nazis, something which was lacking in Asia for the Japanese atrocities. The Chinese and Koreans, the main candidates for this endeavor, where too busy with their own problems after WW2.
That is a piss-poor excuse for bad presidents. The president does a lot more than make decisions, this trip to Hiroshima is not "making a decision," it's strengthening our relationship with Japan. It's an act of diplomacy, one of many responsibilities that the president has.
Fuck you. My wife would never have been born if Hitler hadn't been stopped.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Destroying the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, what government working in Iraq, Afghanistan, screwing over our relationships with Russia, China, Saudi Arabia letting Turkey fail to religious fascism, getting walked over by Iran and Cuba. The man should stay home locked away till the end of year if he wants to stop the pain.
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.
No apology of any type should be issued.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why is it that most GOP have never served, are spineless and even here, will be ACs rather than admit who they are?
You lie as much or more than Trump does, and then you wonder why Trump is a such a Piece of SHIT that you folks brought in.
Hell, Trump and trash like you, have more in common with Hitler and the Nazis than the Republicans that made the GOP.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Don't feed the trolls.
source?
About 15% of the people killed in the Hiroshima atomic bombing were Koreans brought over as a slave labor force. They're just classified as Japanese deaths because Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910 and Korea politically ceased to exist. That didn't stop the Japanese from denying them health benefits for surviving the atomic bombings.
On a personal level, Japanese soldiers forced my grandmother to watch as they raped then killed her sister and niece. All as a ploy to coerce my grandfather (the village doctor) into treating their commanding officer. That's the sort of stuff the people against the atomic bombings are advocating the Allies should have let continue for who knows how many more months.
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.
Because the last time we had a World War and left the defeated party to lick their wounds, it left an opportunity for nationalism and revanchism to grab hold. That's how Germany got Hitler, and that's how the world got WWII. Leaving Japan alone would have merely ensured WWIII 20 years later. Except this time they would have had nukes, and their militarism would make North Korea look sane in comparison.
Japan had to be taken down, occupied, and rebuilt from the ground up. AND IT WORKED.
The thing about "unconditional surrender" is that it means "we demand that you surrender and we make no promise to show you or your family mercy when you capitulate." This is the missing "why" that explains why Japanese were willing to fight to the death, just like the missing "why" that explains why radical Muslims want to engage in terrorist acts against the West is the fact that the West is bombing them.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
In addition, the Japanese had organized the Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps, which included all healthy men aged 15 to 60 and women 17 to 40 for a total of 28 million people, for combat support and, later, combat jobs. Weapons, training and uniforms were generally lacking: some men were armed with nothing better than muzzle-loading muskets, longbows or bamboo spears; nevertheless, they were expected to make do with what they had.[53][54] One mobilized high school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself issued an awl and told, "Even killing one American soldier will do. ... You must aim for the abdomen."[55]
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I don't know, I think most of the Japanese are appropriately sorry for what they did. Why'd you ask? 'Cause there's not many, only a few, that still worship their war criminals. So, I'd say the Statute of Limitations has passed and the average Japanese citizen needn't worry any more. Funny that you mention it though.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I don't recall any opinions they had on it (they were very young at the time) other than it's the long past and time to move on. Which the city has done.
It's a large prosperous city with a war museum and an old concrete building surrounded by shrubs and an iron fence near a stream.
Thanks!
There are a few documentaries on the subject - one named Hiroshima (strangely enough) where such sentiments are expressed. One lady seemed only to regret that we studied her like a bug afterwards and made her stand naked, barely pubescent, in front of a bunch of doctors and non-doctors - and did so a number of times as we studied the progress of the folks who were in the area.
However, there are other such sentiments being expressed in a number of the recap documentaries. You can probably pick any two and find one of them with someone in there mentioning it. I'd suggest also Hirohito's War. I don't know if it will give you any insight in that direction but it will actually give some information as to why the war ended when it did and how it did.
It's a myth to say that the bombing made it happen. It's a myth to say that it didn't hasten the choice. It's a myth to discount the Russians stomping down across Manchuria and taking some islands (angry Russians are angry). It's a myth to say that Japan was trying to surrender.
Really, it's rather complicated - as it usually is. People like simple so they remain stupid and polarized and you get threads like this where people who have only chosen one source are adamant about what they believe. The reason I suggest the latter is because much of it is from the Emperor himself. I don't know but I think we can count that as authoritative, don't you?
I believe that the Emperor expressed sorrow at having forced the American's hands. There are those who say we should have staved them out but that's probably the most retarded thing I've ever heard - on the subject. It discounts the continued atrocities and soldiers elsewhere and the blind devotion to war that they had going on. I'm sure (I've not made it far into the thread) that someone will suggest that. It's almost always present in every one of these threads.
I am not, technically, a historian or anything but I'm going to wager that I'm fairly well versed in the history and have opted to get my history from myriad sources and not just the US versions. There are inherent biases so it's important to get as much information as one can and go from there.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Here in the US, we build monuments to our war criminals, and call them, "presidential libraries".
You are welcome on my lawn.
per wikipedia
Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire Hardcover – September 28, 1999
by Richard Frank (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/0...
"Flamebait" doesn't mean "made up", it means "intended to produce Inflammatory comments". Which both of your posts clearly are (and anonymously posted too!).
Sorry to hear about your grandpa, though.
Visit the
except that the American government wanted an empire.
America at the end of WWII could have almost trivially conquered the world. It had an intact industrial base, unmolested population and was producing an atom bomb a month. What other power could have stood up to that? It could have done so for many years after the end of the war.
I thought you weren't retarded?
To those who read my above post. See? I told you there'd be one. *sighs*
Yes, you're RIGHT because there were no atrocity committing Japanese anywhere else on the globe but on that island! Sure thing, you brave warrior cum historian you! Sure thing.
*sighs* I should know better than to go to these threads.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Who took over Hiroshima after a nuclear bomb as dropped on it? Modern bombs are designed to be clean, unlike the first bombs that were designed to simply go off (uncertain at the time).
Meh... Biological agents do that already.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You're implying Americans read? Ha!
No, we don't worship libraries - nice try but no. Still, does Bush have one yet? I really haven't kept track. Note: I don't even *like* Bush - so I don't worship him. If anyone does worship him, I'll call them dangerous and idiots. Probably dangerous because they are idiots.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Does he not realize how many wars have been prevented due to nuclear weapons?
Libertas in infinitum
There was an interesting article in Foreign Policy a couple years ago (possibly paywalled link here [foreignpolicy.com]) which argued that the Soviet declaration of war was what really prompted the surrender. The author bases this on several arguments, among them:
The problem I have with this argument is that you don't hear a lot of serious historians making it. The guy who wrote that article (Ward Wilson) is a full-time anti-nuclear activist, not a historian. In other words, he spends all his time trying to convince people that Nuclear weapons are inherently bad, and should all be gotten rid of.
Now that's a legit opinion, and he's welcome to it. I can certainly think of less noble ways to make a living too. However, its indisputable that 1) He's not an expert on the Pacific theater of WWII, and 2) The existing historical consensus that the nuclear drops precipitated the surrender is very inconvenient for him in his day job.
Wilson's argument is discussed in this question on the history stack, if you're interested.
except that the American government wanted an empire.
America at the end of WWII could have almost trivially conquered the world. It had an intact industrial base, unmolested population and was producing an atom bomb a month. What other power could have stood up to that? It could have done so for many years after the end of the war.
Absolutely false. The US had a population and military very tired of war. One of the motivations for the atomic bombings was to get the war over with as soon as possible. Public support was getting more and more difficult, raising money through bond sales more and more difficult. There was fear of mutiny among some veterans who had fought in the European theatre when transferred to Asia for the invasion of Japan. They feared sending some units home to the US for retraining and reequipping so they were to go east from Europe to Asia. There was a real possibility that the Japanese militarist plan to inflict sufficient casualties upon the US to get the US to abandon unconditional surrender might work. The US public was getting closer and closer to the idea of abandoning unconditional surrender.
The US public would never have supported an attempt at conquest after Germany and Japan's surrender. As for the troops, they only thought of going home, and going home meant going through Berlin or Tokyo. That was the "deal" they had signed up under. Its lunacy to think they'd just go along with conquering additional lands.
The Soviet attack on the mainland of Asia was of little consequence. The Soviets did not possess the ability to launch a large scale amphibious attack on the Japanese home islands. The millions of Japanese troops on the Asian mainland could not be returned to the Japanese home islands for its defense due to the US Naval dominance of the sea. The threat against the home islands was entirely US, either invasion or blockade and famine.
... however these diplomats lived in fear of the militarists learning of their opinions and actions which would have resulted in immediate execution. Surrender was only possible for one and only one reason, the emperor decided so. And even after he decided so the militarists assaulted the imperial palace to rescue the emperor from the "lies" of these "traitors", and to capture the emperor's message to the Japanese people announcing the surrender.
We can argue about what diplomats might have thought and might have wanted and might have secretly made inquiries about
There is quite a bit of whitewashing and revisionism among Japanese sources. They often downplay the "ground truth" of the militarists control of the situation up to the moment of the Japanese people hearing the surrender broadcast of the emperor.
Its not that simple. Letting the war continue for a fraction of a year longer would most likely have resulted in far greater casualties due to disease and famine. These are the real historical killers in time of war, not enemy action. Even a naval blockade with no continued naval or air offensive against the home islands would probably have led to far greater casualties. Now consider a more plausible scenario with a continued naval and air offensive in preparation for an amphibious invasion, vastly increased casualties beyond a simple blockade now. The Tokyo firebombing seems to have had greater casualties than Hiroshima. In the cruel, insane mathematics of war the atomic bombing probably saved lives by ending the war sooner and beginning the humanitarian relief sooner. Even if the war came to an end before an amphibious invasion.
No tears shed even for the innocent killed?
Yes, it's a shame that the Japanese government was so willing to see so many of their own innocent people die. That is entirely, 100%, on them. Luckily the US was able to use the strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to greatly reduce the number of people that the Japanese government would otherwise have sacrificed in horrible, bloody, flaming "conventional" fighting before it was over. But yes, go ahead and shed tears for those victims of the government that the Japanese people allowed to run them into the ruin they experienced. It's a shame. Good thing the US was able to end it abruptly and save so many lives.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
For a guy that crows about "honour" you sure do lie, make stuff up, and toss around a bunch of crap for no particular reason except to hear yourself talk. Why is that?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You're too PC. "Japs" was short-hand much like being called a "yank". It wasn't common to refer to the enemy with as few syllables as possible. It's not always a racial motivator to do so.
It constantly amazes me that the japenese don't appear to harbor extreme hatred to all americans. I know I would if they had nuked my country for whatever reason.
First, the nukes were such a small percentage of casualties. Civilians don't really distinguish between being nuked, firebombed or starved to death.
Secondly, you don't understand the perspective of the Japanese people at the time. After the war they quickly came to understand the truth about the magnitude of the lies their militarist government had told them, manipulated them into war. The Japanese public had a incredible turn of opinion against their former leaders. Many genuinely grew to like General MacArthur during the occupation. Having spent so much time in Asia earlier in his career he was one of the few generals who understood their culture and perspective on the world and was well equipped to co-opt that perspective.
Little things he did had a vast impact. When he first landed in Japan and went into Tokyo for the first time he allowed Japanese troops to line the streets on his route and provide security. He had minimal US security on that drive. The public noted that, was surprised at such "civilized" behavior by the American military. It didn't make sense, it didn't match what they had been told. Plus as people came home and told their stories of interactions with Americans even on the battlefield, the anger at the former government grew. In one documentary I recall a Japanese Army Nurse describing how Japanese soldiers on Okinawa gave them hand grenades to commit suicide with. Hers was a dud and failed to detonate when she tried to use it at a later date. She was wounded by mortars and when an American solder approached her, drew his knife, she expected to be raped and tortured and killed as all the American barbarian soldiers would do such things. She was absolutely shocked when he used the knife to cut open her pants near her wound and began to sanitize and bandage her wound before he moved on to another injured person. As she watched the Americans she began to realize she had been lied to, that they weren't barbarians. She had literally been told that some American soldiers were cannibals. Seeing victorious Americans act in humane and civilized ways was a complete shock to many Japanese given what they had been told for so many years. This had a huge impact on the post-war occupation. Probably the wisest, although most likely a quite unjust thing, that MacArthur did was to allow the emperor to live and continue on in a ceremonial role.
The Axis' offers to cease hostilities & or surrender on their own terms were irrelevant. The lesson learned from WWI was that a negotiated surrender only meant that they would initiate another WW in a generation and an unconditional surrender was the only way of preventing it.
People talk about the trauma of 2 nukes yet completely forget that of two successive world wars and the generations killed and mutilated.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
So, no respect for Jefferson or any of the other founding fathers that were slave owners or benefitted from it?
Attempting to judge a man by modern mores isn't the brightest idea and you need to learn & understand his historical context before judging him.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
No it wasn't. The Japanese had already agreed to cease hostilities and surrender. Their only condition was that their emperor not be deposed.
No their conditionS (plural) were that the emperor not be deposed AND the military leadership not be deposed.
I can't imaging why that was not an acceptable condition.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It is a strong act of a strong leader.
Success is the sum of small efforts - repeated day in and day out.
Saying that using nuclear weapons was better than a ground war shows how little you (and most people) know about the destructive power of nuclear weapons.
Saying that a ground war would have been better shows you know even less about the destructive power of a ground war.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
*sighs* I should know better than to go to these threads.
While you will never likely convince people that nuclear bombs are so evil that literally nothing is worse, there are likely many more people silently reading this thread who may be undecided. Think of it as posting for their benefit.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The Japanese had already agreed to cease hostilities and surrender.
No, they hadn't.
The Germans also offered to surrender in 1943
That didn't happen either. And I can't help but notice you defended that latter point with the following:
In 1943, Wilhelm Canaris [wikipedia.org], 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.
So two observations here. First Canaris is not Germany. He was at best a representative of a faction which may have been attempting to negotiate in good faith or not with the British. And since he got executed, that indicates his faction probably couldn't have delivered on their promises even if they wanted to.
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,
Again, a relatively weak faction is not Germany. And the squashing of the coup leaders indicates they didn't have the power to negotiate a surrender just like Canaris didn't in 1943.
Finally, even if we pretend the situation were as you suggested, why would it be better to accept those terms of surrender? The obvious flaw with this argument is that the Second World War was a rerun of the First World War with the same parties starting both wars. Accepting conditions of surrender that allow Germany to start the Third World War in another generation are not an improvement.
I see no problem with expressing regret. We should all regret the horrible things that occur in a war. And we shouldn't be afraid of apologizing where apologies are appropriate. However, I think it's right that we don't apologize for things that we feel we either had full justification for doing or had no alternative but to do. In this case Obama is not going to apologize, so I don't see what the issue is. We've been at peace and allied with Japan for a long time now. Let's feel free to recognize that the past is the past, it was horrible, and that we are all much better off now working together for continued peace.
That's true. Most people in Western countries think of the Japanese emperor as someone along the lines of Julius Ceasar or Napoleon. In truth they were much more like the Catholic Pope. With one exception: their harem. It was completely official (if not called by that name), and it's the other reason they claim such a long dynasty: each generation they had a huge pool of sons to draw from to select the next emperor (that's actually the only thing that makes the whole over-2000-year-long dynasty believable, beside heavy tapering with records).
I'm not going to discuss the merit of deciding to bomb Japan with atomic bombs, that would be for another post. That said, thinking that Japanese people have "accepted" the bombing as necessary and mostly positive is trying hard to convince yourself that the US are unanimously seen as the good guys, no matter what.
However, when making that kind of judgement, or excuses, it is then necessary to wonder whether the position considered modern was expressed in any way at the time the person considered lived in.
Case in point, there were quite a few very vocal voices against slavery in the late 18th century. Enough to show that on that point at the very least, the US constitution is much less a semi-divine document and much more the result of haggling over specific interests. The point being that you shouldn't be so quick to excuse people because of the "different age" excuse.
The thing is, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are instrumental in that, as the deal was: Japan doesn't attack the US (in some kind of court) about the use of the atomic bomb (and the fire bombings), and beside a very limited number of trials, the US will stay silent about the various atrocities the Japanese Empire did around South-East Asia.
[KGIII] I thought you weren't retarded? To those who read my above post. See? I told you there'd be one. *sighs*
It has become a job to find your above post, but perhaps it's this :-
[KGIII] There are those who say we should have staved them out but that's probably the most retarded thing I've ever heard
I said no such thing about "starving them out", which I would strongly have opposed. I specifically said denying them the import of strategic materials. I had in mind oil, chemicals and metals above certain levels - enough to live on but insufficient to allow resumption of hostilities. With the huge USAAF able to patrol and observe, any warship building and other arms manufacture could soon have been spotted and destroyed. As for Japan building a nuclear bomb, that scenario is no different from any of the other myriad of USA-hating nations we see today.
[KGIII]- on the subject. It discounts the continued atrocities and soldiers elsewhere and the blind devotion to war that they had going on .... Yes, you're RIGHT because there were no atrocity committing Japanese anywhere else on the globe but on that island!
You've lost me there. I (or are you referring to someone else?) did not suggest ceasing hostilities against the Japs elsewhere, if that is what you are trying to say; obviously that needed clearing up. The Russians were already doing that in Manchuria (and being atrocious themselves) and ditto the British in Burma, and the US in the general Pacific area.
Sure thing, you brave warrior cum historian you! Sure thing.
Ad hominen attack.
While it's true that the earlier offers of surrender had caveats, there was at least a negotiation going on and progress was being made. I think it's clear that Japan did better by having the military and warmongering parts of the government removed, but the question is if that could have happened without the bombings.
By the point the first bomb was dropped the writing was on the wall. Many people were starving, it was that bad. All the bombs did was accelerate the process, and not even by that much.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Germany's is 'What we did was horrible, never forget when we did' and Japan's is always 'What was done to us was horrible, never forget what happened to us.'
That's not quite right. It's certainly true that Germany talks about it a lot more, but it's not ignored in Japan either. Both countries consider their civilian populations to be largely victims of what happened, which makes sense. If the people in charge were war criminals, and some of them openly admitted manipulating the population, then everyone who suffered as a result of their actions is a victim.
The British slaughtered millions in the days of Empire and invented concentration camps. We had slavery too. While I acknowledge how bad all that stuff is, it's connection to me some quite remote. Culturally it's easier for me to talk about than it is for Japanese people, but that doesn't mean they aren't aware of it or acknowledge it.
Aside from anything else, the victims of Japan's war crimes won't ever let them forget. Unfortunately making Japan apologise again and again has become a political tool for some, so it's very difficult to resolve the situation.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The issue with honour is that in Germany it's easy to accept that the actions of your ancestors don't reflect on you personally. In Japan people regard themselves as part of many groups. Their family group, their co-workers, their fellow citizens. It's even baked into the language. So when looking at WW2 (and they do) it's much harder to see the actions of those criminals as not reflecting on Japanese people born later.
The way they handle this is to emphasise that most citizens were victims of what happened too. That is the same as in Germany. Most Germans were not fully aware of what the Nazis were doing, and it is accepted that propaganda build on poverty and blame mislead people into voting for that government. That's why they are very much focused on never allowing that to happen again. Japan is a bit different because it didn't have a full democracy at the time.
The principals are the same in both cases. While you could argue that Japan doesn't feel enough guilt, for me the important thing is that they learned from it and have ensured it will never happen again. Individuality is promoted in schools, for example, and the pacifist movement is mainstream and influential.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You can't justify killing one innocent person to prevent crimes being committed against another innocent person.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Uh, wow, while your comments on Canaris are reasonable, your last paragraph is really really garbled.
Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia started WW I, and a few days later they also invaded Russia. Sure, the German Empire as it was then were also busy in the same week (and drew in Britain and France), but so were the Ottomans.
Note the absence of Italy and Japan (which ultimately allied themselves with Britain, France and Russia).
Compare WW II, which started with the Japanese invasion of China (or arguably but less clearly with the Italian invasion of Ethiopia), acting against the British, French and Soviet interests, and trying to draw in Nazi Germany (in particular Italy ceased objecting to the absorption of Austria and the other former bits of the fragmentized Austria-Hungary in exchange for their diplomatic, financial and military support in the Abyssinian conflict, and Japan/Manchukuo started shooting fights at the borders with the Soviet Union).
On top of it, Turkey stayed almost entirely out of World War II (opposing Germany), although it ultimately did join the Allies late in the war. Several of the bits of the fragmentized Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires actively opposed Nazi Germany at various stages during the war.
And this is without having to deal with the question of whether Nazi Germany and the German Empire were fundamentally the same player.
So really hardly "the same players", unless you look only at northwestern Europe and ignore some of the details about the constitutional natures of several of the states there during each war.
Even if you argue (and you can, reasonably) that nationalism and nation-states versus multi-national empires was the key factor in both world wars, WW I was much more about the disintegration of empires run by one dominant ethnic group into several states run by locally dominant and formerly repressed ethnic groups, whereas WW II was much more about a handful of ethnic groups re-establishing dominance over many others in new multi-national empires. That is, thematically, the wars were not so much re-runs as rather mirror-images: old empire -> new republics vs new republics -> new empires.
Yes, GWB has a presidential library. It is located in Dallas.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Production in late 1945 was closer to 2-3 plutonium cores per month, not one. Weapon counts were measured in the hundreds by 1950 and tens of thousands by 1960.
He seems to be trying to dissuade Abe (Japanese PM) from taking a more aggressive military stance and retreating from Japan's pacifist constitution.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You're still using hindsight to use modern values to judge when you're picking out minority opinions as correct when they were not at all guaranteed to become so at the time these men were alive. You yourself, while certainly believing yourself to be morally superior to men in history do not hold the values that will predominate in the future. Using your yardstick, lacking in context as I have been saying would be judged poorly in a few decades.
Mahatma Gandi's are vanishingly rare that can escape from being poorly judged by your yardstick and it is thus of little use when judging the actions of most men.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
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.
You've kind of gone off the deep end at the end of your post which is unfortunate given the well written parts before it. The Allies were obsessed with bringing the Nazi leadership to war crimes trials, no matter the cost. That, not a desire for their own "death camps", is why Nazi offers to surrender earlier failed. it's been known for a long time that both Goring and Himmler separately tried to negotiate complete surrenders to non-Soviet Allies roughly around January 1945, only to be rejected. I think both attempts were in Switzerland. Both offered immediate stops to the fighting in exchange for cutting out the Soviets from any say in post-war Germany (the Soviets had not yet reached Germany) and both wanted their own skin saved from a war crimes trial and them ending up the president of a pro-Western post-war Germany. The Soviet paranoia that the Western Allies, especially the USA, might take this offer was completely off the charts. In the 1970s a famous Soviet TV mini-series used this as a major subplot in a story about a long standing mole placed many years before deep in the Nazi hierarchy. The Soviets were going to fight until the reached Berlin no matter the cost to them, but among the Western Allies, how many soldiers and civilians died in the fighting from January 1945 until the German surrender? Was it really worth this cost just to send under 100 people to the hangman? I'm not sure that it was. But nobody is even asking the question, let alone trying to answer it.
W I was much more about the disintegration of empires run by one dominant ethnic group into several states run by locally dominant and formerly repressed ethnic groups, whereas WW II was much more about a handful of ethnic groups re-establishing dominance over many others in new multi-national empires.
And WW III would have been about something else too. Not seeing the point here.
When a president signs a treaty to end WWII *that* is historic.
A visit is essentially meaningless. Obama's visit to Cuba is also meaningless.
And again, any offers to cease hostilities in both Germany and Japan were based on the leadership and senior military being protected and preserving their positions. The Allies were not going to allow the Axis powers to get away with preserving their political structures just to end the war early. They rightly brought those countries low, occupied them and imposed new governing models on them.
And the results speak for themselves. West Germany and Japan became firm allies and among the strongest economies on the planet.
If the existing power structures had been left in place (as some Germans and Japanese in senior positions hoped) then five years of war would have been utterly wasted. The enemy might have been defeated, but the core would remain, and it would have meant either endless occupation or risking a repeat of the 1930s.
Unconditional surrender was the only option, and it was absolutely right to force both countries to open themselves up without limit to the Allies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It wasn't until the soviets had the bomb until the US couldn't have conquered to world if it wanted to. If the nazi's or japan had gotten the bomb first, I'd seriously doubt that they would not have used it to their full advantage. The rest of the world was understandably paranoid during this period. I don't think there had ever been a previous mismatch in world power where it was not used.
Both Germany and Japan in the final stages of the war made offers to the Allies to surrender conditionally. In fact, the leadership of both countries seemed to think that the specter of ascendant Soviet Union would mean the Western Allies would make the obvious choice to stop their campaigns, and ask them to join in a new campaign against the Communists. There was also the fact that the leadership of both countries knew very well that unconditional surrender would mean they were deposed, taken prisoner and there would almost certainly be some sort of war crimes trials for their conduct in the territories they had occupied.
There was a certain level of delusional thinking in the last days of the war in Germany and Japan. After Hitler's suicide, the Flensburg Government assumed that the Allies would treat it as the legitimate government of Germany after the surrender, and Admiral Donitz was pretty shocked when, once he had signed the instruments of surrender, the Allies quickly dissolved it and the country was carved into pieces.
The situation in Japan was a bit more complex, mainly because, unlike Germany, Japan was not occupied when it surrendered. But the Japanese cabinet was dissolved immediately after the instruments of surrender were signed, the US occupied the country and took over its governance. The Emperor was ultimately retained, largely to create a symbolic continuity, but he was stripped of all powers. There are some that still believe that Japan should have been treated more like Germany, that part of the reason that Japan has never come fully to terms with its conduct during the 1930s and during WWII was because the US allowed the Emperor to escape any serious questions about his own influence on Japanese policy. I'm not of that mind. I think one of the lessons of WWI was that imposing a new constitution and system of government on a defeated country, without some continuity, leads to a disconnect between the people and their government. If the German monarchy had been maintained under, say, Crown Prince Wilhelm, but with a proper constitutional monarchy in place, it may have been less likely that the Nazis would have been able to gain power.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, the Axis Powers needed to be brought low. The Italians did a fairly good job themselves when they strung up Mussolini on a meat hook. Unfortunately, in Germany and Japan, that wasn't likely to happen, but one way or the other, their ability to violate world peace needed be to dealt with on a permanent level. The atrocities they committed in the territories they occupied demanded the absolute dissolution of their governments and permanent alterations to how future governments were formed and conducted themselves.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The actions amount to the US refusing to sell Japan oil, which Japan needed so it could continue its march across Asia, and commit plenty of atrocities along the way.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Total War could never discriminate between "innocent" and "guilty". When you move to defeat a country in Total War, you remove all capacity for it to fight, and that is going to mean significant civilian casualties. If any country should be familiar with this concept, it is the United States, since the Shenandoah Valley campaign during the Civil War was one of the first examples of how Total War is fought.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The unconditional surrenders of Germany and Japan were intended to dissolve the governments and leaderships of those countries. The leadership were to receive no protections, no amnesties, they were to be removed absolutely from power and their ultimate fate was purely in the Allies hands. That was absolutely essential to rebuilding those countries, and assuring that the Nazis in Germany and the militarists in Japan couldn't maintain any power base. The errors made after WWI, particularly in Germany, where the Allies didn't break up the German General Staff and essentially allowed the Weimar Republic to employ those chief military planners as "civilian advisers" meant that in a very real way, the German Army did not terminate at the end of WWI, and that lead to many woes afterwards. Do you think that Hitler invented Blitzkrieg? Do you think violations of Versailles began with Hitler? The fact was that the Weimar Republic was playing fast and loose with the Versailles restrictions, and that much of the German campaign seen in the first two years of the Second World War had been meticulously planned for twenty years.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
insults void of a point...typical
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
At the end of WWI, the Germans signed the Armistice while there were no invading boots on German soil. The German Army then launched on a very impressive campaign to deny their responsibility and claim they were doing just fine until they were stabbed in the back by civilian authorities, in one of the more impressive cases of military failure of moral courage I've seen.
Hitler and other conservatives argued hard that the Germans had not been beaten in the field, and used that lie to push for rearmament and a new war. The Allies were particularly anxious to make sure WWII didn't end in another twenty-year armistice (a French comment on the Treaty of Versailles), and wanted to make sure the Germans knew that they had been defeated militarily.
Also, in January 1945 the West was still reeling from the large German offensive in the Ardennes, popularly known as the Battle of the Bulge. The offensive had been contained by the end of the year, but still looked dangerous. (The Germans launched their last large-scale attack in the West at the very end of 1944.) The Western Allies really did want the Soviets to continue fighting.
You say that the Soviets were going to fight until they reached Berlin, but that wasn't at all obvious to the Western Allies at the time. The Red Army had expelled the invaders from the prewar Soviet Union in 1944, and had continued West from there, so there was no clear reason they wouldn't effectively stop pushing and let the Germans mass against the Western Allies. In 1944, the Soviets were still facing and killing many more Germans than the West did, and Western leaders were seriously worried about Soviet commitment. One big reason why the West wouldn't entertain a separate peace was that they feared Stalin would learn of it and do the same.
Also, your timing is wrong. In January 1945, Hitler was very much in charge, and the Germans were fighting hard in the West. Their morale started to waver in March and pretty much collapsed in April. I don't remember the details, but I believe the "surrender" offers you refer to came in April, when Goering and Himmler thought (incorrectly) that they could negotiate independently of Hitler. Their attempts were why Doenitz wound up as Fuhrer after Hitler's death; he was the high commander outside Berlin that Hitler thought he could rely on.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You know it was the democrats who authored the Trail of Tears and removal of the Indians in general, right?
To this day, the only Indian tribes that are not mired in utter poverty are the ones who got off government assistance. By the way this is the same government assistance that is imposed by the democrats.
Along with shoving slavery down the throats of everyone in the South, Democrats will always be able to point to how "consequential" they were.
Glad to the gun loving Republican woman replacing the architect of Indian suffering on the $20 bill.
The problem is not a lack of diplomacy. The problem is democrats.
After everything that had happened, and two nukes, the Japanese surrender was done with an arguably unconstitutional intervention from the Emperor. Nobody at the time knew if the Minister of War would go along with it, or if he'd order the Japanese Army to fight on. There were several raids in Tokyo by those who wanted to continue the war, including one in the Imperial Palace with the intent of stopping the surrender.
My conclusion is that I don't know what else would have caused the Japanese to surrender. I know how it proceeded historically, but I don't see surrender in other conditions as anything but speculation.
I do know that the nukes made a very large impression on Japanese leadership. In his announcement of surrender, the Emperor specifically mentioned"a new and most cruel bomb", and lumped the destruction of the Japanese navy, the continuing liberation of Japanese-occupied territory, the Soviet attack, and the destruction of the Japanese economy under "developments not necessarily favorable to Japan".
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There was no progress on negotiations. They were stalled in the Japanese Liaison Council, their top decision-making body. The Japanese hawks didn't care about the suffering of the Japanese people in the sense you're imagining, partly because it was obvious from the outset that the Japanese would have to suffer to win.
The original grand strategy had been to conquer territory and make it so expensive to retake that the Allies would lose interest and accept a peace favorable to Japan. That grand strategy was still working, and the Japanese were working hard on making the upcoming invasion of Kyushu (the southernmost of the Home Islands) as expensive as possible. (The headquarters responsible for that defense was in Hiroshima, BTW.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
For precisely the same reason that we don't talk about the unicorn cavalry divisions. Find something halfway reliable to read about the period. Roosevelt was trying to avoid war with Japan, despite pressure from the US public for more sanctions.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You can find lots of books on Japanese WWII atrocities (counting the war in China from 1936 on as part of WWII).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Except that the peace offer did have conditions attached. That was actually controversial at the time, since Germany had gotten no such assurances. The Japanese people were not going to be exterminated or anything like that, and they were to get the sort of government they wanted. The Emperor relied on that, for example, saying that if the Japanese people wanted to get rid of the Emperor as an institution it didn't deserve to exist. It was a very harsh peace offer, but it wasn't unconditional.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
At that point, the Japanese were starving. The only way to avoid mass starvation would be to supply Japan with food. The Japanese economy had been destroyed, including the destruction of the coal ferries from Hokkaido (the northernmost of the Home Islands).
That didn't mean the Japanese were helpless. The USN was still losing ships from kamikazes while maintaining the blockade. Civilians were still starving in China, Indochina, Korea, Malaya, and parts of the Dutch East Indies. (Malaya was next on the British list, and Korea was about to fall to the Soviets. I don't know when Java and Indochina would have been liberated.)
In my opinion, delaying Japanese surrender a few months would have killed many more civilians than the nukes did.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I tried to read Hasegawa's book, I really did. I just couldn't make it through all the twisted logic of his insane determination to blame the US for everything. I'm told it does have some worthwhile arguments in it, but nobody actually told me what they were, and I was not willing to try to find them.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What ??
... then Poland, etc.
Hirohito was the ceremonial ruler of Japan after WWII. That meant he had a title but no job.
More importantly, you would rather keep a ruler who was taking over the world in power long enough for him to rearm and remobilize?
I'm surprised you would take the German offer of surrender seriously after they stomped on the non-aggression pact and promised they only wanted Austria
You know that party affiliation has shifted over the generations, right?
The Democrats were once the party of racism, right up until they weren't any more, and the Republicans decided to take over that mantle. Right at this very moment, the leader of the Democratic Party is a black man. Now how many self-respecting racists are going to stay in a party that's led by a black guy?
And no, before you finish crafting that snappy comeback, there is no such thing as "reverse-racism".
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/R...
You are welcome on my lawn.
One of the consequences is how little Japanese people know about what the imperial army was up to in the 1930's. Considering that, even today, Japan is essentially an US dominion, that was only possible because the American government allowed it.
I'd suggest asking them to keep him, but it's such a beautiful city and I'd feel guilty doing that to them.
Is he taking Reverend Wright with him? According to his Pastor we dropped the bomb and 'didn't bat an eyelash' about it. They forget to mention the decision was made (one I happen to agree with) by a Democrat President, Harry Truman. Unfortunately, for all of us we don't have any more Democrats like that (or Republicans for that matter) who can make painfully difficult military decisions focused on the total outcome of human lives effected instead of how it effects them or their party politically or how the world may view the action. And it is rarely discussed how much communication took place to Japan's leadership describing the potential damage and capabilities of the weapon. The dropping of millions of leaflets that could not be suppressed by Japanese military leadership helped force the emperor to accept defeat and in the end certainly limited casualties on both sides. It is still a sad statement that the conflict had to resort to such a devastating weapon, nonetheless.
Thanks; I am interested. I should read the history SE more often.
Visit the
I can't cite a book, but I can cite a coworker who told me, when I lived in Japan, that their parents told them that they were trained as children to use bamboo spears to repel any attackers if they should come.
This was, BTW, in Hiroshima City.
Tokyo: 88,000 - 100,000 deaths (USAF)
Hiroshima: 50,000 - 60,000 deaths (USAF)
Hamburg: 42,600 deaths (RAF & USAF)
Nagasaki: 35,000 - 40,000 deaths (USAF)
Stalingrad: 25,000 - 40,000 deaths (Luftwaffe)
Warsaw: 25,000 deaths (Luftwaffe)
Dresden: 22,700 - 25,000 deaths (RAF & USAF)
Phorzheim: 17,600 deaths (RAF)
Darmstadt: 11,500 deaths (RAF)
Kassel: 10,000 deaths (RAF)
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I played that game the other day.
Thanks for the reply. Peace.
The Turks say: What Armenian site? That doesn't exist as only Turks have ever lived in the boundaries of modern Turkey.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
there was at least a negotiation going on and progress was being made.
There was no progress. As outlying islands were being captured (at great cost to both sides), the terms were static. As the Russians were pushing into Manchuria, the terms were static. The "surrender" had terms that looked like a cease-fire, and were unrelated to any "surrender" terms previously negotiated. And they were quite static, before and after Hiroshima. It wasn't until after Nagasaki where the terms changed significantly from the terms offered from long before.
By the point the first bomb was dropped the writing was on the wall.
The writing was that Japan would lose, and Japan would take every last "invader" with them. That was the static writing on the wall for a very long time and didn't change until after Nagasaki, when Japan finally realized there was a way that they could lose without the opportunity of killing millions of invaders.
Japan called the bluff of the first one (that wasn't a bluff) and didn't call the bluff of the second (that really was a bluff). That they were so absurdly wrong on both counts leads to both sides lying about it as much as possible to spin reality.
Learn to love Alaska
I've always enjoyed how people say he "got" Bin Ladin, like he was wearing a uniform and riding in that helicopter, as opposed to sitting in a room staring at a screen. And yes, the same would apply to a republican as well.
We can speculate all we want but it does us no good. It's one of the reasons I tire of the discussion with otherwise intelligent people. (No, not you - see thread for examples.) Unconditional surrender means just that. In the end, we decided it would help keep the population in check by retaining the Emperor. Truth is, it was probably *fewer* lives lost with the war ending the way it did than it would have been without the bomb.
And yes, the Emperor notes learning about the bombs and those having an impact on his choice - see said recommended documentary if you're needing a citation. I think most people just want simple answers. There aren't any.
Well no... There is one. War sucks.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
LOL Everyone wants a simple answer and someone to blame. They really do. And there isn't one. Life is never so binary. The place was a horrific mess and, frankly, the nukes really didn't cause nearly the damage folks seem to think they did. It's important to note, there are people still living there today.
The things is, I'm old. I grew up on the Allied propaganda. Hell, I even served in the Marines and if you aren't familiar with them - let's just say we're keen on history. I've since learned a lot of truths. One of the truths I have not learned is that I can fault the choice to drop the bombs. There has not yet anything come to light that would make me even second guess that choice.
Of all the folks here, I'm probably one of the few to have the misfortune of seeing and participating in combat. I know what (sort of) it's like to be in a position where your actions will result in a loss of life. I regret that we're humans but I can not fault the choice to drop the bombs nor do I have any regret that my country did so.
Lots of people say, "America is the only country to do something so terrible!" To which I say, "Japan is the only country that has deserved it." I implore them to let that sink in.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Thanks. I really didn't/don't have the patience to respond today. He's otherwise intelligent. I have no idea what the hell went wrong with their education.
I really don't think they understand the scope of WWII. The war did not work like that - nor would it have. Ah well... Your rebuttal is +1 in my eyes. (I gots me a friend modifier turned on.)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I'm tempted to make a joke but I've got some good friends in Texas and, besides, they scare me.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Japan called the bluff of the first one (that wasn't a bluff) and didn't call the bluff of the second (that really was a bluff). That they were so absurdly wrong on both counts leads to both sides lying about it as much as possible to spin reality.
The US made more atomic bombs. They tested two more of them in 1946 less than a year after the two dropped on Japan. If Japan hadn't surrendered, it would have experienced more of them and the US would have had reason to build an assembly line for making them in bulk.
You can't justify killing one innocent person to prevent crimes being committed against another innocent person.
Where does this maxim apply in this thread?
One of the complaints about them is that they were only 3 days apart. This didn't give Japan enough time to surrender. But 3 days apart was deliberate in order to "prove" they could be delivered 100 or so a year, if Japan didn't surrender. If Japan hadn't surrendered, it'd have been months after Nagasaki to the next bombing. So Nagasaki was a bluff. The US wouldn't have halted the invasion to wait a year for more. Russia was making inroads into Japan-occupied China, and the US would have wanted to invade Japan as quickly as possible to ensure Russia had no hand in Japan's reconstruction.
There is no plausible argument that the US would have held up military action waiting on an atomic bomb after Nagasaki. Sure, if the war lasted more than 1 more year, we'd end up dropping them again, but that's unrelated to whether Nagasaki was a bluff.
Learn to love Alaska
Arguing that killing innocent Japanese citizens with atomic bombs was justified because it saved the lives of other innocents (either other Japanese civilians, or Chinese/Koreans, or US soldiers etc.)
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I've heard this as well, it is probably hard to tell really. The bombs being distinct points in time are easy to point to and are the accepted rationale.
However from what I heard it wasn't so much about where the Japanese had troops deployed for defense, but rather the eventual outcome. I think the leaders knew what was coming, if they decided to unconditionally surrender or not, they were going to lose, and have an occupying force.
Would you prefer that force to be the Americans, or the Soviets? From what I have heard in many cases the Soviets could be just as brutal as the Japanese during the war, so there is that. There is also the fact, that it is more than likely Japan would have become a Soviet state (until it all broke up later of course).
So yeah, taken all those considerations the bomb while perhaps helped in the decision, may have been a convenient excuse to essentially pick a winner, what was probably thought of at the time as the lesser of two evils.
Not as much has changed as you might think.
... how does that happen in a racist party?
Planned Parenthood was originated to reduce the black population. To this day leadership at Planned Parenthood have been documented trying to cooperate with reducing the number of black people.
Tell Robert Byrd about the change in party affiliation. A grand kleage in the KKK was the longest serving senator in US history and a democrat.
I can also point to MLK's granddaughter, a Republican. Herman Cain, Ben Carson, were getting the highest poll numbers for periods of time
33% of democrat primary voters in 2008 listed race as a distinguishing factor in their voting, and you're going to tell me there is not such thing as reverse racism?
Sounds like a confession to me.
To make your argument that "not much has changed", you just quoted events that occurred between 80 and 60 years ago.
That Joe Louis was a hell of a fighter, right? Google, "token black". Yes, yours is the party of racism. It's as clear as day.
And no, there is no such thing as reverse racism. It simply cannot exist.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Doesn't one have to actually do something wrong to be considered a war criminal? I suppose you could call Obama a war criminal for intentionally causing ISIS by pulling out of Iraq, but the Iraqi president didn't really give him much of a choice on the matter.
If you are trying to claim that Bush is a war criminal, I would like for you to point to exactly what laws were broken, and by who exactly. After all, congress declared both wars under his presidency, so everyone in congress (which was mostly D at the time) is just a fallible for believing Saddam's claim that he had WMD and was refusing entry to weapons inspectors. Though I suppose if you had some kind of time machine, you might be able to stop the war, but frankly, when so many believe that the weapons exist, how would you stop it?
Oh, and the weapons that we thought were there, they were found, and they really were there, but don't let facts get in the way of your sound bite.
http://www.iraqwatch.org/gover...
http://politics.slashdot.org/c...
http://www.thepoliticalinsider...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Though on reflection, you could have just as easily been speaking of many other presidents that oversaw wars, I don't think any president of the US has ever committed war crimes though.
In fact, I don't know that many presidents ever even served in any wars...but I could be wrong.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
What excuse did Japan have?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
If Japan hadn't surrendered, it'd have been months after Nagasaki to the next bombing.
An invasion of Japan wouldn't have happened overnight.
There is no plausible argument that the US would have held up military action waiting on an atomic bomb after Nagasaki. Sure, if the war lasted more than 1 more year, we'd end up dropping them again, but that's unrelated to whether Nagasaki was a bluff.
The US wouldn't have to. The atomic bombs that were made, were ready when the US would need them to be ready.
First, what innocent Japanese citizens?
Second, there are more than two Japanese citizens here. It's not killing one to save a second. Instead, it's killing 250k to save about ten times that number in direct war deaths and the remaining modern infrastructure in Japan (which in turn saved about 100 million Japanese from even greater privation).
Start by citing a reputable source.
Here's a few on the Bush war crimes. By the way, Bush, Cheney and members of their administration were actually tried and convicted for war crimes. But you would know that if you paid attention to websites other than the far-Right version of The Onion, known as The Political Insider.
http://www.esquire.com/news-po...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because clearly, Malaysia has authority in these matters. It is nice to see that trying someone in absentia in a country that no one recognizes as authoritative is totally the same as trying someone in the hague for war crimes.
Again, what laws were broken, and what crimes were committed. You need to give examples, or you are just blowing hot air again.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
OK, here's an example that was used in the Malasian trials:
You are welcome on my lawn.
So, was there some kind of proof that Bush had ANYTHING to do with this? Did he order the torture of these people? Did he personally pull this guy's fingernails?
When the torture was exposed, Bush ordered the program ended. Wouldn't it follow that perhaps he didn't know what the military/CIA was doing?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Sounds like you're saying that when a black person is in one party they are representational of a non-discriminatory body of collectively-minded people, but in the other party they are just a token.
.. unless your preference is simply to be biased against the other party.
That could be true, but if you're going to make that claim you can't say, 'We're not racist because we have a guy with ethnicity X'. By your own criteria this is inconclusive
>> "There is no such thing as reverse racism"
So you are on board with 33% of democrats saying they use race as a factor in deciding who to vote for?
That sounds racist to me, and, worse yet, highly superficial.
Maybe you don't understand how war crimes work.
And yes, he ordered the torture:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's correct.
It's not just that we have a guy of ethnicity X, but that the leader of the entire party is of ethnicity X.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because clearly:
They advised the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Department of Defense, and the president on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques: mental and physical torment and coercion such as prolonged sleep deprivation, binding in stress positions, and waterboarding, and stated that such acts, widely regarded as torture, might be legally permissible under an expansive interpretation of presidential authority during the "War on Terror".
Is exactly equivalent to:
The court heard how Abbas Abid, a 48-year-old engineer from Fallujah in Iraq had his fingernails removed by pliers; Ali Shalal was attached with bare electrical wires and electrocuted and hung from a wall; Moazzam Begg was beaten, hooded and put in solitary confinement, Jameelah was stripped and humiliated, and was used as a human shield whilst being transported by helicopter. The witnesses also detailed how they have residual injuries till today.
So clearly, Bush must have directly ordered the expanded torture used on these people.
The point I was making is that the examples given in court were so far above waterboarding (that while scarey, doesn't actually injure the person), that perhaps they were performed by people who were not under direct orders, but were acting on their own. These don't sound like the kinds of things the president would order who had already gone to the attorney general to ask what was acceptable by law. Why even bother to ask if you didn't care to stick to what was ruled legal?
I have intentionally not bolded two of the accounts from trial, those two don't even count as torture as far as I know. The beating is questionable though, it depends on what exactly he means by that.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?