A freeper controversy waiting to happen: Enola Gay and the Death Toll

[BurtWorm]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6401-2003Nov5?language=printer

washingtonpost.com




Enola Gay Draws More Flak
Petitioners Want Atom Bomb Deaths Added to Exhibit

By Jacqueline Trescott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 6, 2003; Page C01

A new display of the Enola Gay, the World War II plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, should include information about the number of Japanese killed by the explosion, a group of scholars, writers and activists says in a petition delivered yesterday to the director of the National Air and Space Museum.

The fully restored and reassembled B-29 Superfortress goes on display next month at the museum's new facility near Dulles International Airport.

More than 150 people have signed the petition under the banner of the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy. Peter Kuznick, a historian at American University and the director of the Nuclear Studies Institute, said the petition was delivered to Gen. Jack Dailey, the director of the museum.

The signatories include Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, Daniel Ellsberg, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, economist Gar Alperovitz, political activist Barry Commoner, Julian Bond, authors Kai Bird, E.L. Doctorow, Ariel Dorfman, Kurt Vonnegut and Garry Wills, historian Howard Zinn, Stanley N. Katz, director Norman Lear, sociologist Orlando Patterson and filmmaker Oliver Stone.

...

[nickgutierrez]

1. Kurt Vonnegut, Howard Zinn...

that's an impressive list of signatories.

It only seems fair that if you're going to have a discussion on the plane that dropped the first nuke, that you have something on it about the death and destruction it brought.

[Muddleoftheroad]

3. Only fair

To also include the number of American lives and casualties estimated in an invasion.

Or you can simply say that this plane was used to drop the bomb and not try to make a political statement.

[BurtWorm]

6. Why is it fair to use an abstract hypothetical number

compared to an actual number of deaths? "Yes, hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians really were killed and maimed, but maybe millions of Americans would have died or been even more badly maimed had we not burnt those cities to a crisp."

[weirdmo]

12. a possible point

I think far too many look at this incident in black/white manner. Unfortunately there are very few cases were that manner of thinking applies. First consider the manner of fighting of the Japanese. There bravery and/or insanity in the battlefield is well documented. They very rarely surrendered sometimes out of honor, other times out of fear of what would happen to them. This fear was based mainly on Japanese propaganda and not so much on actual events. In some occassions whole Japanese families committed suicide rather than be allowed to be captured. Additionally consider what became of many American Servicemen who were captured by the Japanese. I don't think I have to go into great detail of the Bataan Death March to illustrate much of a point there.

Something else to consider is the fact that the Allied Bombing Campaign up to that point had already been innocent. Many more people died in the fire-bombings of Tokyo and/or the massive bombing of Dresden than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why only criticsm of the atomic bombings?

A final point that should be made considering this event is the fact that the Japanese for far too long have been given a pass that other former Axis nations(i.e. Germany) did not receive. The Japanese atrocities in many ways equaled in cruetly to the Germans. Still Japan has not done much in the name of making amends for such actions. Rather than do that the focus has been on the atomic bombings.

[BurtWorm]

13. I disagree that Japan has been given a pass on its atrocities

Not in Asia, certainly. And in the US, it's always alarming news when the Japanese try to paper over their guilt in China, Korea and Pearl Harbor.

I agree that the Dresden and Tokyo fire bombings don't get their due attention. But one reason why Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand out is that the bomb didn't just kill and maim civilians who were present. It kept on killing children who hadn't even been born. There's a reason why nuclear weapons have only been used that once in war time (that we know of).

[weirdmo]

27. but....

How many more non-Japanese citizens would have died however if we drew the war out longer than it had been though?

[BurtWorm]

33. Do you have Second Sight?

If so, please, tell me. How many "would have?"

[weirdmo]

36. answer

The answer is simple a lot more than did because Japan surrended when it did.

[BurtWorm]

43. So you DO have second sight, eh?

Why didn't you say so. Then this debate wouldn't just be over "educated guesses" about what "might have been."

[weirdmo]

50. another question

You give a smart-aleck question, you receive the same in the answer...but anyway...

You are using a somewhat murking means to debate this topic. On one hand you seem to be arguing definitively that the act was wrong. On the other you refuse to allow any evidence that such a decision was utimately the best that the men involved made at the time. Perhaps consider this...does it not sway you at all that the Japanese were preparing a rather intensive defensive strategy including civilian fighters, kamikazi planes/subs, and fighting similiar to that seen on Okinawa? Does the fact that American deaths were averted not have any affect on you?

[BurtWorm]

56. Let me ask you a hypothetical: Would it have been justified

to murder hundreds of thousands of Americans if it meant many thousands more would not die?

And the answer to your question, from my perspective, is that I don't believe it was necessary to use those bombs to save American lives. I don't believe killing civilians is ever easily justified. The line that it was in this case is too pat.

[weirdmo]

57. riiight

Ahh but here is the flaw in what you just said....We are not talking about the deaths of Americans here we are talking about the deaths of citizens of a foreign nation that we were at war with. In the case of whose life is more important if one or the other has to die, it is without question which side I would consider....

[BurtWorm]

68. Well, why should I consider your hypothetical if you won't consider

mine?

[weirdmo]

71. huh?

Your logic does not work in the context of the debate...You are referring to the same groups of people...this has to do with two different nations that were at war with each other.

[BurtWorm]

80. You are asking me to consider "what if" the bomb hadn't been used.

The presumption behind that hypothetical is that using the bomb shortened the war and saved lives (which can't be possibly be proven, as it didn't happen). So why is it not fair to ask what if shortening the war required dropping nuclear weapons on American cities? I insist it is fair. In essence we're asking the same question: do you favor killing Americans in this hypothetical. The exact same question.

I insist that not dropping the bomb on Japanese civilians would not necessarily mean more Americans would die. There's no possible way anyone could say for sure what not dropping the bomb would have meant. It took 50 years to construct the "what if" apology using hindsight. Foresight wouldn't have helped.

[Silverhair]

108. 50 Years??? Bull***p!!!!

It definately did NOT take 50 years to come up with the idea that dropping the bomb would save lives on both sides. That idea was the very rationale for dropping the bomb in the first place. And I personally, in the 1950's, was taught that same reason for dropping the bomb.

FDR, in 1942, had set the conditions for the termination of the war - Unconditional Surrender. No negotiated peace. He wanted to be able to root out the governments that had brought such horror to the planet. Unconditional Surrender means EXACTLY THAT!!! If Truman had accepted anything short of that from the Japanese would have left in place their gov't and that would have been like Gulf War I, left the bad guy in power. It would have been political suicide for Truman. Negotiations of any sort were out.

The famous offer of surrender but let us keep the figurehead emperor was not an offer of full surrender. Remember that the militarists that ran Japan claimed to be only the emperor's servants. So keeping the emperor also meant keeping his servants. It meant leaving the current gov't in place.

It was a realistic expectation that the Japanese could be expected to fight for their homeland in the same manner they had fought for Okinawa. Every citizen would have been a soldier. Even the women were being given bamboo spears. Invasion of the homelands likely would have become a war of genocide. It is entirely reasonable to project casualities in the millions for the Japanese.

Dropping THE BOMBs stopped all of that, saving many more lives than it killed, on both sides.

[BurtWorm]

119. Excuse me. You're right that that was Truman's argument.

I should have said, it took 50 years to marshall the "evidence" that Truman was "right." At the time, Truman was better aware than the average American and Japanese that the Japanese government was witholding surrender only because of the sticking point of what to do about Hirohito. The "saving lives" rationalization was constructed for political purposes, to make the bombing appear "moral," before there was any evidence to back it up.

"When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast."
–President Harry S. Truman, August 1945

[ChemEng]

246. How about between 500,000 and 2,000,000

Japanese men, women, and children, and maybe between 100,000 to 500,000 U.S. servicemen. There was plenty of killing left to go in that war if it was conducted in a conventional manner.

So, what does your so-called "second sight" say?

[mumon]

115. I kind of agree with you.

We in America ALL know about the SS, Treblinka, etc., but Unit 731 might as well be a spray cleaner to most Americans.

That said it gets grayer and grayer:

1. There WERE indications that Japan was ready to surrrender, though not on America's terms.

2. It really was a simple twist of fate apparently that Americans did as well as they did in Okinawa- a typhoon that hit a couple of months later would have been devastating had it hit when America was invading.

3. Most Americans STILL don't realize that MacArthur should have been court-martialled for his performance in the Philippines.

4. Japan would have lost the war ANYWAY: has anyone ever seen a map of China occupied by Japan???? Like the Russians, the Chinese contribution to ending WWII is blacked out of most American history books. Because the Communists were responsible. Japan could not really hold the Chinese territory it "held," and was sapping their strength. Big lesson for the Busheviks: Empires cost money.

[Silverhair]

139. Conditional Surrender would have left their war gov't intact.

The ONLY surrender that the American public would accept was absolute, total, no negotitions ABSOLUTE SURRENDER. No if, no nothing. ABSOLUTE TOTAL SURRENDER. So the negotiations weren't happening. Notes may have been passed in embassies, but that means nothing. What part of UNCONDITIONAL don't you understand?

We didn't want to fight the same war all over in ten years. We wanted to totally replace their gov't. And we did.

[Muddleoftheroad]

128. Because you want to cite what happened

Why is part of what happened.

[RichM]

9. What a joke you militarist-nationalists are.

When you incinerate a hundred thousand defenseless civilians, it's a political act. To "not try to make a political statement" is merely to try to cover over evidence of the atrocity, for propaganda purposes.

IOW, "not trying to make a political statement" -- is a very political statement.

[MartinAmbroseForan]

15. How about a plaque

talking about Nanking, Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death march?

[RichM]

107. While you no doubt think you've said something clever, here's the

type of people you are imitating. The list of plaque names you've suggested makes the statement, "The only crimes that we count are the crimes of our enemies. We never mention our own crimes."

Can you think of other people who follow this dictum? Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush come to mind. Bush still justifies his crimes in Iraq by talking about Sept 11, pretending that the US never did anything objectionable before (or after) that. Sharon does the same thing, mentioning only the Palestinian suicide bombers, and never the Israeli provocations.

You're in great company. :eyes:

[Djinn]

20. the "saved lives" furphy

the Yalta conference documents since declassified pretty much put paid to the theory that the bombs were dropped on the CIVILIAN areas of Japan purely in order to lessen US casualties in any land attack (the mythology of Iwo Jima oft stated)

The Japanese had offered a complete surrender their only wish was for the Emporer to be allowed to remain living and being the emperial figurehead in Japan. This was knocked back by the US yet once the bombs were dropped this was exactly what happened. Also the Russians had offered their soldiers for an advance on Japanese occupied Manchuria and were exactly where Stalin had said they'd be when the cargo doors on the Enola Gay were opened.

It's pretty much stated openly in these documents that the OVERRIDING concern was a demonstration of US force to the Russians, the allies by this time had already won the war in Europe and they knew the Japanese had nowhere near enough supplies/resources to hold out fighting in the areas currently under their control they had absolutley no way of fighting on another front. As such they were setting about the business of carving up the post war world map and therefore beginning the cold war - THAT's why they dropped the bomb - it's all in black and white if you choose to look.

It also makes no sense at all that when we bomb people they are innocent bystanders "OOPS but it was for a good cause" but when Osama or Imperial Japan do it's a measure of their evil. Those bombs literally incinerated hundreds of thousands of people, men women and children they should at the very least be counted - it's stupid to say "yes but look what the Japanese did" just as it's stupid to counter the growing lists of dead Iraqi civilians with an argument about how evil Saddam was - nobody argues that the Japanese rape of Nanking or Saddam's torture chambers were abhorent - surely we'd like to think of ourselves as better than that????

[Old and In the Way]

91. Not sure it was necessary to nuke Hiroshima, but I accept that it

was done to shock Japan into surrendering....maybe this saved more "hypothetical" lives. But we discuss this 60 years removed from the conflict.

But I don't know why the nuke was dropped on Nagasaki....there's strong evidence that Japan was beginning the process of surrender. Nagasaki was totally unnecessary, IMHO.

[MessiahRp]

105. Agreed

I almost think we could have nuked a barren area of Japan or off the coast and it would have scared the Japanese shitless... the problem is by dropping it to end one war we sped up the nuclear race which created the Cold War basically and worse makes it nearly impossible to ever truly get every country to eliminate Nuclear WMDs because nobody will ever trust one another enough to do it. So we are stuck for the rest of history having a nuclear threatening society.

Rp

[Silverhair]

159. There is hope for a nuclear free world.

Really there is.

In the modern history of the world no two democracies have gone to war against each other. One side, or both has always been a GENUINE dictator. (Note: I know lots of us like to call Bush v.2 a dictator, but I am talking about the genuine, police state, butt kicking dictator that would never allow discussions like this to happen. Modern example: Castro)Democracies are peaceful with each other.

Increased trade calms a country down. They become interdependent and can't go to war without ruining their own economy, and others too. Businessmen, except for war suppliers, don't like war as it interrupts business.

As this trend continues, (Some call it Globalization.) countries will find that maintaining huge militaries is too expensive. Especially if they don't have any bad neighbors. Does Germany or France need a large military now? A general European war is now unthinkable. The U.S. & Russia have begun reducing their stockpile of nukes.

We do have a problem of with radical Islam. They seem to hate everybody that isn't Islam.

[MessiahRp]

219. That's not so true...

I really don't think there would be so many violent Islamic Fundamentalists if we weren't sticking our noses in their business all the time. We overthrew leaders, gave certain leaders weapons, threatened agression from our military and sent our religious missionaries over there to tell them that their religion is wrong and they will go to hell if they don't convert.

Hmmmm... I wonder why they're pissed. And this isn't just Iraq, we overthrew leadership in Iran and Afghanistan (a couple of times), we supplied most of these countries with weapons and likely propaganda to continue to fight one another, and we prop up the Jews with US military hardware after they basically stole the Palestinians land and then sided with them. We call Palestinians terrorists for blowing themselves and others up but because the Israelis have that American hardware, their actions are committed with machines guns and missles, and we lie and say it's always self defense against terrorism.

And this is precisely why we can never end Nuclear Proliferation. We have made our country the intrusive evil enemy of every country that either morally disagrees with us or isn't a big money business partner.

The country we fought against to create this one, is nowhere near as evil as what we've allowed our government to become.

Rp

[Military Brat]

194. And the U.S. will always be known as the country ...

... that dropped the nuclear bombs.

[Muddleoftheroad]

229. Yes that's true

And, given the circumstances, a wise decision.

[bpilgrim]

256. they were already scared not to mention militarily crushed by that point

not to mention that they were already talking about surrender months before.

http://www.doug-long.com/debate.htm

:hi:

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

257. Ooooh, they were scared

Considering the Japanese basically helped start a world war that killed millions upon millions and NOW they were losing (note: Losing, not lost.) No wonder they were scared.

Talking about surrender is like talking about the weather. It's easy to talk about it. It's a lot harder to do something about it.

[david_vincent]

7. Welcome to DU!

They were originally going to put the Enola Gay on display with nothing but an indication that the B-29 was the most technologically sophisticated aircraft of its day. Which means that ANY B-29 could be displayed, so... why the Enola Gay? It amounted to a conspiracy of silence on the part of museologists who should have had some sense of shame at the attempted betrayal of their own profession.
BTW, if you haven't yet seen a copy of War Against War!, I urge you to track it down. It's the most astonishing antiwar book I've ever seen.

[Wwagsthedog]

8. Thanks for the reference to "War Against War!"

I thought I'd add the results of my google to find more information:

http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/waw.htm

[nickgutierrez]

11. !!!

That's the exact same page I dug up. :)

[nickgutierrez]

10. I'll try to track it down

<eom>

[MartinAmbroseForan]

17. Frankly I have yet to see a pro-war book

[MartinAmbroseForan]

2. I agree, it should

Could it also say anything about the number of casualties that might have been avoided in the long run by using it?

[BurtWorm]

4. Maybe they could install a magic crystal ball

to make that Apologist Talking Point. You need something to make that mystical number more concrete, especially when faced with an actual number of civilian deaths.

[MartinAmbroseForan]

14. Explain, BTW I am not apologizing

So if we would not have dropped the bomb what would have happened in your view?

[BurtWorm]

16. We did drop the bomb. What is the point of hypothesizing what

might have been? There's only one point I see, and that's to excuse the reality of what did happen.

[MartinAmbroseForan]

18. Why did we drop the bomb?

NOW the fun begins.

[BurtWorm]

22. Two reasons (at least): One official, one geopolitical

The official reason was, as you suggest, to shorten the war because the Japanese government allegedly was not constituted to surrender. That would be "losing face," as ethnologists (to put it politely) might say, and as every "ethnologist" "knows" "the Japanese" cannot abide losing face. I'm not a military historian, but a WWII vet who defended these weapons via this talking point told me Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected as targets because they were militarily significant industrial centers and ports. I don't know if that's true. In any case, the US decided that employing the bomb that they had gone through such trouble to create for use against the Germans, but which the German surrender obviated for use against its intended target, would shock and awe the Japanese into sensing the futility of resisting American technological might.

The geopolitical reason was that the US wanted to send a message to Stalin not to try anything funny after the war.

[MartinAmbroseForan]

24. Context

Context is what's important. The bomb wasn't dropped in a political vacuum.

[BurtWorm]

30. And the *political* context excuses it!?

[MartinAmbroseForan]

32. I see no need to "excuse" it as you say.

I agree with the decision.

[roughsatori]

35. We dropped the bomb because we lacked the spirituality, intelligence

creativity, and will to find anyway better than one where we could shrug off civilian deaths as "collateral damage."

But as every "civilized" Country, after killing others has done, we notated in our history books that it was done for the "higher good" and that we had no other choice.

The numbers of the children who died posted beside that plane might bring that history and choice into question. Hence, some don't want it posted, or will demand further explanation that by killing those children we "saved" the lives of hypothetical children.

[MartinAmbroseForan]

96. Some people are so spiritual

that they are of no earthly good.

[pack1999]

160. Pollyanna

Who attacked first? The Japanese attacked the United States with no provocation and forced us into a war in which we wanted no part.

A nuclear attack was warranted to end the war quickly and prevent the deaths of millions of Americans and Japanese that would have resulted from the only other alternative, a land invasion.

Diplomacy has no place when your enemy has sworn to destroy you and answers your words with bullets.

[bpilgrim]

23. will it also include that all informed military leaders in theater

advised against it and to accept japans surrender TO SAVE LIVES how many WOULD HAVE been saved if we followed their advice?

peace

[midwest_lurker]

5. bbc world news radio covered this last night

same angles. military spokesperson (that might not be technically correct but a military person speaking in defense of) stated many pieces of equipment on dispay are involved with destruction yet require no special notation attached. pride-over-accuracy?

[MrPrax]

19. They should put it in the Holocaust Museum...

next to a PERMANENT Armenian tribute

[Frangible]

21. Firebombs killed more Japanese, but firebombs = good, nukes = bad?

Unless of course, we were just supposed to surrender to the Japanese altogether... really don't see the logic behind this.

[MartinAmbroseForan]

26. Exactly

Let's see...would I want to burn to death slowly or be incinerated in a millisecond...hmmm...let me think that one over.

[bpilgrim]

31. while your thinking that one over

think of dying a slow and painful death for two weeks or MORE from radiation poisoning.

think of the pain in the womb of an unborn child and the years of pain to follow after being born.

and so it goes...

peace

[Name removed]

40. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BurtWorm]

45. Have you ever heard of Clinton's dick?

For god's sake, we're not talking about Nanking! We're talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

[MartinAmbroseForan]

48. Hey, how about you drop the nastiness fella?

I'm not buying what you're selling, deal with it.

[BurtWorm]

51. Kindly don't change the subject, then, okay?

:hi:

[MartinAmbroseForan]

60. Still doesn't excuse that!

Whether you think I am changing the subject or not.

CIVILITY NOW!

[BurtWorm]

64. CIVILITY TOMORROW!

CIVILITY FOREVER!

[bpilgrim]

76. now you use RACIST SLURS

figures...

we are talking about OUR decision to NUKE a defeated nation's defensless cities filled with innocent civilians TWICE.

please stay on topic and quit the RACIAL SLURS.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

130. They weren't defeated

They were still fighting. And you can't be ready to surrender. You either do it or do not. They did not.

[bpilgrim]

162. all military leaders in theater at the time disagree with you

they couldn't even protect their skies at that point we flew with impunity over their skies nor could they feed their own population not to mention that we have documentation that indeed shows they were trying to surrender.

you may refuse to see that due to your agenda but most will.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

179. You don't need air power

To put up a pretty damn good defense on the ground.

They weren't defeated because, shocker, they were still fighting.

My only agenda here is to deflect the ridiculous anti-Truman, anti-Democrat propaganda you are putting forth.

[MadHound]

189. Oh please Muddle, listen to yourself!

You know as well as I do that even with WWII tech, having control of the air means you have control of the ground. Every military man alive at the time knows that we had bombers AND a bomb sight that could destroy ground forces, dug in or not. What do you think the B-29 was? Why was it selected to drop the A-bomb? Maybe, could it be that it couldn't be hit by the Japanese from the ground? And its not like they had much of an air force left. Outside some kamikaze planes, they had virtually nothing.

Combined with the fact that an ongoing, effective blockade of an ISLAND nation that had been decimated and wasn't self sufficient(why did Japan invade China? That's right, for agricultural land and resources), you have the picture before you of a country on its knees, publicly broadcasting it's wish to surrender. Yes, that was surrender with one condition, but it was one that, in the end, we granted anyway.

So what, in the end, did dropping two atom bombs gain us? Certainly not the UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER that was so brazenly trumpeted about(and later quietly dropped). No, not that. In the end it probably saved the lives of maybe, MAYBE a thousand US soldiers. And though I mean no denigration to those sacrifices, but were those lives really worth the price we ultimately paid by dealing death out so casually to hundreds of thousands. For by dealing death and destruction so callously, we not only cost those innocents their lives, but we cost our nation, each and every one of us, a piece of our souls. For it was then that the US truly started down the road to becoming the parriah nation that we see blooming before our own eyes now.

Now we see US forces destroying a nation with both seige and radioactive weapons again. Back in 1945, back when our nation collectively still had a some sense of morals and fair play, the American public discussed, debated and agonized over the question of using the A-bomb, albeit after the fact. However today the use of depleted uranium registers as barely a blip on the "national discussion", even though in the long run our use of DU will kill more innocents and our soldiers more the Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. This callousness cheapening of human life, whether "ours" or "theirs" began with America's first "instantaneous" mass murders, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[Muddleoftheroad]

199. You aren't fighting the right war

Yes, from the air we could blow the hell out of an enemy. Somehow or another, we still lost over 25,000 casualties on Iwo Jima because the Japanese were so thoroughly entrenched.

WWII bombs and bombers were notoriously inaccurate. Close strike bombing was still a new field of endeavor. Clearly, despite all of this vaunted air power, we needed to root out the enemy on Iwo and would have had to do so in Japan as well. And then there is the obvious insurgency. Would you have been prepared to fight every man, woman and child in Japan? That might have been the battle. The casualties would have been staggering.

You and others here keep talking about Japan. What about other Japanese forces in the field? We forced the Japanese to surrender. If we had simply besieged Japan, the other forces would have remained active -- killing and butchering as they had always done.

Now, while I WILDLY disregard your assessment in lives saved, let's look at it for a second. You are saying that by nuking Japan we saved the lives of 1,000 American soldiers. How many thousands more would have been wounded in your underestimation? Another 3,000-4,000? So, the bombings would have saved 5,000 American casualties?

And you think Truman should NOT have bombed? Sorry, Japanese lives weren't his job. American lives were. If the bombing had saved the casualties you suggest, it still would have been the right thing to do.

That said, your estimates are laughably low. Somehow, in your scenario, we would conquer the main island, the capital of the Japanese empire and lose one-fifth the casualties we lost on Iwo Jima. I doubt we could have accomplished that using current military technology.

You too try to link Iraq to Japan. It is a linkage that, at best, is tenuous. Japan was a worldwide threat and nation that dealt death and destruction with every action. They were a rabid dog nation that needed to be dealt with. They were.

[Name removed]

218. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Muddleoftheroad]

221. Racist?

Their armies butchered, raped and killed their way across Asia. Their nation was worse than a rabid dog.

There is NOTHING racist about that fact. There is nothing racist about saying the same of their Axis allies either.

Ask the survivors (there must be a few they didn't kill) of Nanking. Or find a few Death March survivors and let them describe Japan the nation to you.

[bpilgrim]

238. "They were a rabid dog nation that needed to be dealt with"

dehumanizing a whole race of peoples is 'RACIST' imho though i realize a POPULAR war time propaganda technique.

:hi:

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

243. Reading comprehension

If you note the sentence, it says "nation," not race or people. Their NATION was a threat to the entire world.

[Name removed]

253. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Frangible]

54. Too bad for them, next are you going to rip on us for stopping Hitler?

Sheesh, some revisionist historians.

[bpilgrim]

78. i am stating facts

some can't handle the truth apparently

peace

[Silverhair]

110. That's already been done. There was a Dresden thread. n/t

[BurtWorm]

39. Let's see. Would you want to mutate carcinogenically for years

or be incinerated by a fire bomb? Would you want your unborn child to mutate carcinogenically because her mother was exposed to nuclear fallout?

Decisions, decisions...

:eyes:

[Name removed]

44. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bpilgrim]

28. we NUKED a defenseless nation'cities filled with innocent civilians

TWICE :nuke: :nuke: while they were trying to surrender.

after we ran out of nukes we accepted their 1 condition then the war ended.

now do you see the difference?

peace

[weirdmo]

29. point of clarification

Were they trying to surrender before or after the atomic bomb?

[bpilgrim]

34. before

all informed military leaders in theater recomended that we accept to SAVE LIVES.

peace

[weirdmo]

38. actually

Actually there is plenty of evidence in the ULTRA decodings to suggest that Japan was not going to surrender.

[bpilgrim]

42. well, the military leaders in theater disagreed

and the japanese did finally surrender when we accepted their one condition so it is dificult to accept what may have instead of what actually occured.

got any links?

peace

[weirdmo]

46. here ya go

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0141001461/qid=1068100529/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-1546065-4800169?v=glance&s=books

Additionally what military leaders are you referring to?

[MartinAmbroseForan]

49. hey

good one

[bpilgrim]

53. DWIGHT EISENHOWER for starters...

"...in 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63


~~~

ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

more...
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

japan was defeated as the link you posted noted as well and ready to surrender there was NO military need to drop it then.

peace

[MartinAmbroseForan]

69. Eisenhower was wrong

Not a hard thing to be from the other side of the world and completely removed from the theater of ops.

[bpilgrim]

73. ALL military leaders at that time must have been wrong then

since they ALL felt it wasn't necessary.

peace

[MartinAmbroseForan]

81. Uhh Truman was a military leader

and he thought it was necessary.

[bpilgrim]

84. no he was a leader of the military

a politician i am refering to men of uniform.

and the fact stands.

peace

[MartinAmbroseForan]

97. No, it does not

Truman was the Commander-in-Chief, head of the armed forces.

[MartinAmbroseForan]

41. Defenseless?

Are you talking about another Japan on another planet?

[bpilgrim]

47. i am talking about the DEFEATED imperial japanese military of wwII

in the summer of 45.

and all military leaders in theater at that time agree they were all done they couldn't even protect their air space by that time shortage of pilots material and fuel.

japans last major air battle - The Marianas Turkey Shoot over a year earlier - was a bust - lost over 400 planes - due to the effects of those major problems.

peace

[weirdmo]

52. not really

The Japanese were still very able and extremely willing to defend their homeland up to the bombings...

[bpilgrim]

59. well i'll take the word of the military leaders who were there

do you have nay links to back up your POV?

the japanese didn't surrender until their 1 condition was met.

On August 10, a message was sent to the American, Soviet and British governments. The Japanese Government was ready to accept the Potsdam Declaration "with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as Sovereign Ruler."

more...
http://www.cneti.com/~chs/ww2.htm

peace

[weirdmo]

63. army?

Do you have any links to the opinion of the Army in Japan at that time?

[bpilgrim]

74. we have documentation that shows they were trying to surrender

and we knew it AND we have docs that show OUR military leaders on record stating it wasn't necessary.

thats pretty compelling evidence to me.

peace

[Silverhair]

113. They weren't trying to Unconditionally Surreneder.

Our terms were announce by FDR in 1942. Nothing at all short of Total Unconditional Surrender. No negotions. If Truman had accept any kind of negotiated surrender it would have been political suicide and would have left their gov't in place.

Keeping the emperor would have meant keeping his servants. All the gov't were "his servants".

[Djinn]

171. But Silverhair they DID keep the emporer

The situation that was left after the Japanese surrender was EXACTLY what they'd offered as terms. The Emporer was allowed to stay on, to keep "face"

It is a total furphy to use the more casualties in an invasion of mainland Japan because it was not neccesary to invade, every senior military figure and most politicians knew that Japan could not continue a war across the entire pacific when it had to face the combined armies of the UK/US AND the Russian army who when the bombs were dropped were on their way to Manchuria.

Even without the copious evidence to suggest that the bombing of Hiroshimi was for future strategic reasons rather than to "save lives" there is absolutely NO WAY you can argue the same for Nagasaki - it was a demonstration of power

[Silverhair]

177. There is a huge difference.

In their theory at the time, all the gov't was the servent of the emperor, even though he was only a figure head. If we had agreed to them keeping the emperor as a contition of peace, it would have been agreeing to keeping the servants of the emperor - keeping the existing government. That they put it as a condition mean they were still willing to fight. When they finally UNCONDITIONALLY SURRENDERED, then we were able to graciously allow the emperor to stay while removing the gov't.

I will not comment on the conspiracy theory stuff. I have expressed myself before on CT's. I am surprised that you seem to be accusing FDR of such a conspiracy. I would expect you to accuse a Rep, but not a Dem.

Even after Hiroshima, they weren't ready to surrender. At the staff meeting it was argued by some of the staff that the U.S. had only one bomb, had used it, and they should fight on. We gave them three days. The second one convinced them because they UNCONDITIONALLY SURRENDERED.

But of course in the comfort of your chair, 60 years later, without having to live with the consequences of the decision, you can select which evidence you want to look at that fits your preconcieved notions.

[bpilgrim]

185. the emperor of japan has been a FIGURE HEAD for centuries

and we AGREED to allow japan to maintain this institution which is why the institution remains virtually unchanged to this very day.

that is not a 'notion' that is a FACT.

peace

[MartinAmbroseForan]

62. Yes

[Frangible]

55. And tell me

What did the "DEFEATED" Japanese military do to the emperor when the emperor actually tried to surrender after the bombs?

[bpilgrim]

66. once we meet their one condition japan surrendered...

though some fanatics still were willing to fight though most just needed that one condition met which in the end brought the war to an end.

peace

[Silverhair]

1942, FDR, "We will accept only Unconditional Surrender" n/t

[Frangible]

168. That is not correct

When the military heard the emperor was trying to surrender, they took him hostage at gunpoint and tried to prevent the surrender from being broadcast.

The atom bomb did alter the course of the war in the pacific, for the better. If you read more history you'd undoubtedly come to that conclusion as well.

[bpilgrim]

241. the institution of the emperor remains to this very day in japan

that is not a coincidence.

peace

[MartinAmbroseForan]

58. They were beyond fanatical

Many more would have died had we not dropped the bomb. They were not surrendering, preferring to take as many allied fighters with them as possible and the deaths of their own civilian population be damned.

YOU WANNA MAKE NICE WITH "PEOPLE" LIKE THAT?" Be my guest.

http://www.worldwar2history.info/Okinawa/

An amphibious assault on Okinawa took place on 1 April 1945, and the fighting lasted until June.

Here, for the first time, Americans were invading what the Japanese defenders considered their home soil, AND THE DEFENSE WAS FANATIC IN THE EXTREME. American troops suffered heavy casualties, and the Navy, too, had heavy personnel losses as Japanese suicide flyers, the Kamikazes, sank some 25 American ships and damaged 165 others in a desperate attempt to save the Ryukyus ( a small island off Okinawa).

Among the nearly 35,000 American casualties were General Buckner, who was killed on June 18. He was succeeded by Maj. Gen. Ray S. Geiger, who was in turn succeeded by General Joseph W. Stilwell, who arrived to assume command of the Tenth Army on June 22, 1945.

Capture of the Ryukyus gave Allied naval and air forces excellent bases within 700 miles of Japan proper. Throughout June and July, Japan was subjected to INCREASINGLY INTENSIVE air attack and even to naval bombardment.

[DS1]

61. how many reports have you seen that were written by the Japanese

and I don't mean the military. I'm very familiar the the history of the island hopping campaign, and the decision to use the bomb, however, I'd like to see what sources you have to confirm that the entire island of Japan was ready to fight to the death. I'll even allow American Intelligence reports *snicker*

be back tomorrow

[MartinAmbroseForan]

65. See post # 58

[weirdmo]

67. read this book

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0141001461/qid=1068100529/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-1546065-4800169?v=glance&s=books

[bpilgrim]

70. imagine if we were defending our homeland from invasion

we would be pretty fanatical as well i suppose... shoot we were the ones who dropped the NUKES some might argue that was fanatical as well.

anyways, they were a defeated nation that was trying to surrender when we nuked them.

no denying those facts.

peace

[MartinAmbroseForan]

82. Are you excusing the Japanese warmongers now?!!

beyond belief.

[bpilgrim]

88. we are talking about OUR actions

though you keep trying to shift focus and put words in my mouth.

peace

[JNelson6563]

106. some can never look in mirror and see flaw

Amerika is perfect! Amerika has never made a mistake!! We know for a fact that countless more would have died if we hadn't dropped bomb! Japan's forces were not greatly diminished! It was a trick!! All who disagree are Hitler loving traitors!!

Oy!!

bpilgrim I applaud your efforts to inform fairly. I marvel at your stamina. :-)

Julie

[HEyHEY]

89. Are you really this dense?

He's saying that no matter who started it, if someone was coming at your nation, you'd be defending with all your might. Of course your type is usually the kind to crawl under a rock when the going gets really tough.

[MartinAmbroseForan]

100. So you're from Canada?

[Name removed]

103. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

112. No budget defict, no health care worries, no war against drug users

I'm in agreement with you--I'll bet it's very nice to live in Canada. Their foreign policy seems to concentrate on getting along with other nations of the world, as opposed to bombing them into oblivion.

I've seen a good percentage of your hundred-someodd posts. Your thinking seems to be the polar opposite of my left-wing views. I'm happy that we have such a big tent.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

109. Are you trying to excuse murder on a scale never before seen?

Beyond belief.

[Silverhair]

158. They were not trying to surrender.

All they needed to do to UNCONDITIONALLY SURRENDER was to say, "We quit. Unconditionally." It is that simple. No negotiations needed. If they were trying to negotiate it means they were saying, "We will keep on fighting for these terms."

[HEyHEY]

72. If civilians be damned then how come they stopped as

soon as two cities were completely destroyed.

[bpilgrim]

75. they surrendered when we accepted their 1 condition

after we ran out of nukes.

peace

[HEyHEY]

77. I was just making a point

This guy said that they were going to fight and didn't care about the civilian pop. I say if they didn't care then how come the war ended after a huge portion was murdered.

Are you saying that they offered up the condition (which was what) first...then the bombs dropped?

[bpilgrim]

79. that wasn't completely accurate

as japan only surrendered once their 1 condition was met the recognition of the institution of the emperor.

most folks will fight an occupier for years if necessary and the japanese were certainly capable of it if push came to shove as they proved but they had just 1 condition before they would surrender once that was met the war ended.

peace

[Name removed]

83. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Lars39]

85. That's sick.

[HEyHEY]

86. You've obviously never had a soul

[JaySherman]

90. You think that's funny???

Come and live with me here in Japan and you'll see how funny it is. If you saw the the kids I teach every day and the people I work with, it would put a face on all those people say we "MADE care." Then maybe you might think differently (or not). The us/them "we saved more of our people by killing theirs" doesn't fly when you realize the people being bombed are human beings with families and lives just like you. There's simply no justification and no excuse for indisriminant murder. Nor will there ever be.

:mad:

[Name removed]

93. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bpilgrim]

94. so since they behaved that way gave us an excuse to do the same?

as horrid as they were in battle they at least left nanking standing in the end.

as a matter of fact our current occupation of iraq is very simular to japans occupation of china during wwII started on false pretenses in reaction to alleged TERRORISM and to bring GREATER PROSPERITY and PEACE to the region with a distinctive japanese flavor who also used the term ENEMY COMBATANT.

think about it...

peace

[MartinAmbroseForan]

98. No

It was an excuse to slaughter everyone of them that felt or acted that way so that they couldn't do it to anyone else ever again!

Or would you have preferred we just looked the other way?

[JaySherman]

95. Do some of my own research?

You're so arrogant and condescending you presume I've never done an ounce of research, nor even know a thing about, the Japanese occupation. I've done more research than you'll ever know, little man. And you really should get out more. See the world a bit. Reading books is all well and good, but living in these places tends to broaden one's perspective as well.

[MartinAmbroseForan]

99. So tell me

What do your Japanese friends say about Nanking? The Bataan Death March? Pearl Harbor?

[BurtWorm]

122. So tell me

are you known as McMartin anywhere? Do you live in Union Square by any chance? You sound like someone I used to know.

[tkmorris]

92. He, he, he?

That's how you feel about the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? A giggle? A titter under your hand?

There are people who argue the military neccessity of those bombings. Some say it saved more lives than it cost, making it the best possible answer to a cold equation the Japanese brought upon themselves. I disagree with people who make that claim, vehemently, but I respect their point of view even while disagreeing.

You, however, are another matter. The remarks you have made in this thread are apalling; you appear to lack any empathy whatsoever. I'm afraid I cannot say more due to the rules of this forum and an innate awareness of the futility of doing so. I would however like to thank you. Those people who do believe the bombs were needed will no doubt rethink their position when they see it taken to the extremes that you do.

[MartinAmbroseForan]

101. You misunderstand

My chuckle was for the barbarians who committed the atrocities in China and Nanking. Like I chuckle when I think of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and other crummy examples of the human race.

SO BACK OFF!

[tkmorris]

104. Barbarians eh?

Those barbarians were not killed by atomic bombs. Those bombs killed innocents, men, women, children, babies. An eye for an eye is not justice, it simply makes me as evil as you. Finding humor in the fate of Stalin and Hitler et al makes you more like them, not less.

So no, I don't think I will back off. I think I'll hound all those who fail to live up to human standards. I'll think that anyone who can find laughter in human suffering is an embarassment.

Do have a smurfy day though!

[DisgustipatedinCA]

114. Hitler makes you laugh? Gosh, can I party with you, dude?

Stalin? Mao?

Does the US Army make you laugh? They killed 600,000 filippinos for no reason whatsoever. I thought that was a real knee-slapper.

Hey, did you hear the one about the Hutus and the Tutsis? A million of 'em were dead by the time I stopped laughing about that one.

Or the one about our forefathers committing genocide against native Americans, far outpacing the atrocities in Nanking? Tell me about how that makes you laugh.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

124. Tombstoned

He really wasn't very good at this game, was he?

[Silverhair]

117. No. We never accepted any conditions.

We did indeed allow the emperor to live, but that was our decison. It was not part of any negotiation. They surrendereed UNCONDITIONALLY.

[bpilgrim]

just that we recognize the institution of the emperor

which remains to this very day.

peace

[Djinn]

172. riiight

"our" decision just happened to be identical to the surrender offered by Japan - seems like the sensible thing to have done in THAT situation was accept the terms and save hundreds of thoudsands of lives seeing as that's what "we" ended up doing anyway

[Silverhair]

183. No, there was a distinct difference.

In their view, accepting their terms would have meant leaving the gov't intact. FDR, & later Truman were afraid of maybe fighting the same war again in 20 years. By forcing TOTAL UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, we were able to completely remove any part of their gov't we wanted to. We left the emperor, and it was a good decision to do that, but it was by our graciousness that he was allowed to stay. And they knew it!!! It was not something that they had won on the battlefield. They had been totally defeated and they knew it. From that knowledge, we were able to remove the gov't.

[Silverhair]

161. They were afraid we would destroy the whole country.

They were afraid of it use in battle. They could easily see that a nuke on the battlefield would instantly destroy that areas defense. Remember, their generals didn't know about lingering radioactivity or any of that stuff. They would have thought that you could go into the blast area as soon as the place cooled down from the fireball. That kind of fight would have been impossible for them.

They had no idea how many we had.

[BurtWorm]

87. "YOU WANNA MAKE NICE WITH "PEOPLE" LIKE THAT?"

So the civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were '"people"' we wanna make nice with, eh?

:eyes:

[MartinAmbroseForan]

102. Read the post again

See if you can get it this time. You did not get it the first time.

[BurtWorm]

111. I get it.

You think incinerating hundreds of thousands of those "'people'" is making not nice with their government. I get it. You've made yourself abundantly clear! "he, he, he"

[Virginian]

25. Why we did what we did when we did it..

My American History Professor had an interesting lecture on this. It's been a few years now but I still remember the gist of it.

Q: Why didn't we invite the Japanese to a deserted island and demonstrate what we could do to them if they didn't sign the treaty?
A: We only had two bombs... and we didn't know if they would work.

Yes, put the facts and figures there. We need to know and to remind future generations that this is not just a big military toy. I has serious effects on innocent people not only the immediate blast, but in illnesses and deformaties for years and generations following the blast. No civilization should have to endure that kind of suffering ever again.

[bpilgrim]

37. we tested them...

we were pretty sure besides there was NO military reason to use them.

peace

[Beaker]

166. the military reason for using the nukes-

was to prevent having to send the military to take the island thru hand-to-hand combat.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

116. Okay, the one thing about this that was never explained to me

I've heard it since grade school - we HAD to drop atomic bombs on the civilian population of two cities in Japan, otherwise we would have lost many more soldiers invading and occupying Japan.

What I don't get is why we ever HAD to invade and occupy Japan. They were already surrendering. So why exactly did we HAVE to invade the Japan and occupy them, especially since we had already beaten them and they were begging to surrender?

Help me out here, sometimes I have a hard time understanding the nuances of foreign policy...

[Bertha Venation]

118. holy crap, look at the threads... a FREEPER controversy waiting to happen?

[BurtWorm]

120. I hate to say I told you so

but I told you so!

;)

[Silverhair]

121. A solution.

The entire reason the "Enola Gay" is on display is that it was the first plane to drop a combat nuke. So go ahead and list the death and damage that came from that nuke. That's part of history. I was taught that in school. Also list the conditions at the time that went into making the decision and the extimate of the lives that would have been lost on both sides by an invasion and conquest of the Japanese homeland.

I suspect that the voices that condemn us for dropping the bomb would now be condemning us for not using a tool that would have stopped the war and the killing, even at the expense of a lot of deaths all at once.

[BurtWorm]

123. The estimate of lives that "would have been lost" is a lie.

Why include a lie with a fact in a museum ostensibly for education?

[Spentastic]

125. Lie?

Hmm that's too strong, but it is merely a hypothesis.

The museum should definitely note that the exhibit was the plane that dropped a nuke and killed thousand of people.

I don't even see why they would be afraid to do that.

[BurtWorm]

127. I'm saying that any "guesstimate" of deaths that might have been

posted to appease the apologists for the bomb would be a lie next to the fact of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths resulting from the Enola Gay releasing its payload. It's a lie because it didn't happen and would be presented as equal to actual fact, which it is not. It's a double lie.

[Silverhair]

131. OK, slight alteration.

So instead you say that the American military estimated the casualties of an invasion and conquest of the Japanese homeland at X and to avoid that Truman dropped the bombs. That would be historically accurate, as that is exactly what happened. Using the military figure is reasonable accurate because the people that were planning the invasion and came up with those numbers didn't know about the bomb. They were trying to get the best numbers they could. At the time they had plenty of experience in estimating casualties and lots of data to go on.

Or perhaps, do you really believe, that the Japanese gov't was ready to "make nice"?

You simply can't consider one side of the problem without looking at the other side. It is entirely reasonable to ask, "What would have happened if...?" And reasonable probabilities can be assesed to different outcomes.

[BurtWorm]

133. The problem is that guesstimates of possible deaths saved

were not the only considerations in Truman's thinking. Perhaps there should also be a mention of the desire the war planners had to shock and awe Uncle Joe at the same time; how many millions of lives do you think they were planning to save by scaring the shit out of Stalin? Unfortunately, including that extra guesstimate would defeat the purpose of making it seem as though Truman's motives were purely focused on the Japanese situation. Too bad. Think of all those extra zeroes they could put on the "might have been" side of the plaque.

[Silverhair]

138. The lives saved reason was sufficient in and of itself.

That Truman may have had an extra reason means nothing. The first reason was enough by itself to justify the use of THE BOMB. Anything else was beside the point. And I submit that Truman was more concerned with a hot war that was raging, than he may have been over what Stalin might do.

There is a very strong human tendency to solve today's proplem today, and worry about a future problem then. That tendency would have been operating then. If the bomb did scare Stalin into not starting a war for central Europe, then that is well and good. Stalin was on the same level as Hitler.

[Muddleoftheroad]

132. Not a lie

I used to commute with a guy who was slated to be in the landing. He had a better perspective on it than you will ever have. He had a wife and child to go home to. The bombings prevented that invasion.

If you want to see how bad it would have been, look up a few facts on Iwo Jima and then multiply them several times over.

[BurtWorm]

134. There is no way you can prove conclusively that the murder of

hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to save the lives of your friend and many of our fathers, grandfathers, etc. There is just no way, unless you can come up with something more convincing than a friend's anecdote. (I've heard those anecdotes, too. They're a balm for guilty Americans' souls.) They were not the sole reasons for Japan's surrender. Nor was saving American lives from Japanese slaughter the only reason for dropping the bomb.

[Muddleoftheroad]

136. Wasn't murder

Yes, you can't prove a negative. However, any rational person can extrapolate the 25,000 American casualties on Iwo Jima to a number several times larger on the main isle of Japan.

Japan had a long time to surrender and did not. Hell, they didn't even surrender after the first nuke. It took two nukes, the threat of imminent invasion and the entry of the Soviet Union into the war to push them to surrender.

Even then, there was a strong push to have a military coup and keep fighting. How readily would that same military have surrendered WITHOUT the nukes.

As an aside, it wasn't murder. All major powers in WWII fought total war against not just the armies, but the means of production. Both cities in this case had both military bases and production centers. If memory serves me right, the Japanese invasion force that had been slated for Midway Island also was launched from Nagasaki.

[BurtWorm]

145. If someone dropped a bomb on NYC because it's a major financial

center bankrolling a war and a major port, is that an acceptable military target? Is San Diego an acceptable military target, seeing as a lot of military personnel are based there?

[Silverhair]

150. In a general nuclear war that is exactly what would have ..

happened. If the Cold War had every gone nuclear, every major & minor city in both the US & the USSR would have vanished. It is easy to argue morality from the space of two generations in a air conditioned room.

[BurtWorm]

154. So we have a fundamental difference of opinion.

You seem not to have a problem with nuclear weapons being used. I do.

[Silverhair]

156. Have you considered the Toyko firebombings.

In the Toyko firebombings, more people were killed than in one night of bombing, than were killed in Hiroshima. The difference is that a lot of B-29s were needed to carry the fire bombs, vs one plane for the A-Bomb. In what way is one more or less moral than the other?

[BurtWorm]

157. Another difference:

Fire-bombing killed 10% of the target population. That's a horrendous amount. But the nuclear bombs killed more than half of the target population, when the radiation sickness resulting in death is factored in.

[Silverhair]

180. Your are being inconsistent.

Your argument, at first, was than the use of the bombs was unnecessary to end the war. To say that it was unnecessary implies that there can be times when using a nuke can be necessary. So it becomes merely a case of showing the evidence of what was necessary. You attempted to counter that the alternate course, since it was not in fact taken, is unknowable. That is pretty silly because humans do that sort of thing all the time. It is a simple excercise in probabilities using events as they were at the time. (Ex: You are about to mistakenly drink a deadly poison, a friend spots the mistake and stops you. You credit the friend with saving your life. But by the logic of your arguement you can't know what would have happened because it didn't happen. You can see by that example why I don't respect your refusal to face the fact that an invasion would have happened, with huge deaths on both sides. The invasion plans were already being formulated.)

Then you say that you are against all use of nukes, under any cirstances. If that were the case then you would have made a different argument. You didn't.

To demonstrate that I am familiar with it, I shall make that argument for you. Here goes:
// While I understand that the bomb on H & N probably saved far more lives than it cost, it still took humanity across a threshold that should never have been crossed. It has made the unthinkable a reality, and a temptation to some governments. By us proving it could be done, we did much of the research for other nations. Simply knowing a thing is possible, and affordable, is a great part of the solution. If we had not developed that bomb it would have been a theory only, and from our higher moral ground we could have influenced other nations to not develop bombs of their own. Stalin was badly in need of resources after the war to rebuild with and would have wanted to pospone something so expensive to him as the original research would have been. But knowing we had it he felt that he needed one too. In fact we helped him get the bomb because his agents stole the research from us. We should have left the genie in the bottle. We got a short term gain at a great long term cost. //

How did I do at making your argument for you? Of course there is a counter-arguement to that one, but I don't really feel like having a dialogue with myself.

BTW - When I was in the Navy as an officer, I was sent to a Nuclear Weapons school. My ship carried nukes at times. Because of that school I consider myself highly knowledgable about them. I wrestled with the moral questions a long time ago.

[BurtWorm]

192. That's pretty damn good!

Thanks!

:toast:

[Silverhair]

203. Thank you.

Like I said, I wrestled with the morals of this thing a long time ago. Being partly responsible for some nukes, (NO ONE is ever soley responsible, it is ALWAYS shared.) made me think about it a good bit. It is one thing to read about nukes, and see films of them. It, for me at least, was something else to have one only inches from me at times. To know that inches from me was the power to destroy an entire city. Well, I'll get off that part of it before it starts to sound like bragging. So I started reading up on the whole thing, the morality of MAD, game theory, so on.

There is a counter arguement to the argument that I gave, and a counter to that and so on.

My conclusions were not arrived at by a simple Listen-to-the-leader-and-don't-ask approach.

My guiding question was: How do you keep the peace in the real world, when being naive means you don't get a second chance?

[BurtWorm]

242. There's just one problem with your analogy about the poison in the glass.

You said, suppose I was thirsty and a friend stopped me from taking a glass from a stranger, which would make me angry until I found out that the glass contained poison. The situation in Japan was more like this: instead of stopping me from taking the glass, the friend takes out a .44 Magnum and blows the brains out of the stranger proffering the glass. In the process, the glass is shattered and the contents lost. The friend explains that he was just trying to protect me from drinking what he believed to be poison, because the stranger is from a family that has a history of poisoning people. The friend could say, "How do keep your friends alive when being naive means you don't get a second chance?"

[Silverhair]

247. Read my post again. I said nothing about a stranger.

You say that you can't tell what might have happened in a course of events that didn't happened, that it is all specualtion. I responded that humans make reasonable projections of possible alternate outcomes all the time. The poison analogy is merely an example of a case in which you would make a projection of an alternate outcome based on a situation at a point of departure. There are threads here on DU that invite people to speculate on alternate U.S. histories, if certain events had been different. The generally accepted rule for such specualtion is that it must be a realistic projection of events as they were at the departure time. (Departure time is the point at which you switch from known history to sprecular history.) My point in the poison analogy is that such speculation of alternate possibilities reasonable.

Our departure point is the dropping of the bomb. The invasion plans were already in place and the force was being gathered. it was codenamed "Operation Downfall", and was scheduled for Nov 1, 1945. Do you understand what that means? It was ALREADY authorized!!!!!!! The troops, ships, etc were already being assembled. The invasion was slightly less than three months away. IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!!!! It wasn't hypothetical.

Our force would have had 650,000 troops, 2,500 ships, 6,000 planes. That is larger than the D-Day force that assaulted Normandy. From captured Japanese documents we know that their high command had correctly anticipated the assault beaches, (Not that hard to do.)and had in place 200,000 troops in dug in defensive positons, (A well dug in unit is a match for several times its strength in attackers.)and 6,000 kamikazes. (The kamikazes had done serious damage to our forces in Okinawa & Iwo Jima. They were dangerous.) The terrain of Kyushu is mountainous, rugged, ideal defensive terrain.

Those are the actual historical forces that were slated for a battle that was ALREADY AUTHORIZED and for which the forces were already being assembled.

In previous battle the Japanese forces had indeed fought to the last man. On the island of Betio, less than 20 Japanese were captured, and those were captured only because they had been incapacitated. We didn't surrender either. I was well known by that time that if you surrendered to the Japanese you could expect to be tortured. In a battle where nobody surrenders you get a LOT more killed than in a battle where soldiers can indivually surrender. It is entirely reasonable to project that both sides would have fought with the same tenacity that they had already been fighting with. The invasion of Kyushu alone would have been a bloodbath greater than that of the dropping of the A-bombs alone. That is a reasonable projection based on killing all of the Japanese defensive force, a lot of their civilians, and about 20,000 fatalities to ourselves. That number is the actual military estimate from the time. Remember, at the time we had a lot of experience in that type of thing.

We were contining to make A-bombs. By the end of October the U.S. had made nine (9) more. (Bet you didn't know that did you?) Given the rugged terrain, the tenacity of the defense, it is entirely possible that the assault could have gotten bogged down. (High level of probability, definately possible.) The pressure would have then been on Truman to authorize battlefield use of the bombs. If he had then authorized them we would have really crossed a threshold. Battlefield nukes have never been used.

During this time the fire bombing of Japanese cities would have continued. Hiroshima & Nagasaki would have taken their turn to be shown the tender mercies of hundreds of B-29s & their fire boms, as well as other Japanese cities. Civilian fatalities would have been enormous, as they were in the other fire bombings. This is a linear projection based on what was already happening. I assume only that the plans ALREADY MADE AND APPROVED continued as planned.

The only thing that could have possibly stopped that invasion would have been the unconditional surrender of the Japanese before the invasion. Given that they had taken horrendous damage from the fire bombing, (Far greater damage than the two A-bombings.) and were still fighting, it is doubtful that they would have surrendered. There is no such thing as "trying to surrender." Either you do or you don't. To surrender all they had to do was to get on the radio and say, "We unconditionally surrender." As late as July 26, 1945 that demand had again been made at the Potsdam conference.


The invasion of Honshu, Operation Coronet & Operation Olympic, was in the planning stage. I will not speculate on them as there is not sufficient information for realistic projections. It diverges into too many probability paths that are pure guesswork. But the invasion of Kyushu was already beginning.

If, after looking at those facts, you still believe that we can't know what would have have happened if we hadn't dropped the bomb, then I must conclude that there is no point if further attempts and that we are simply at an impasse.

[Djinn]

174. Iraq solution silverhair???

Given that things are pretty "bogged down" in Iraq and there doesn't seem to be a conceivable way to defeat what is most likely foreign fighters who have no concern for Iraqi democracy from continuously killing US soldiers p'raps a little Hiroshimi logic should be put into play - FAR fewer US casualities would occur if the US pulls out all service men and women from the area and nukes the place - that'd sure show Osama AND any lingering Fedayeen who's boss I mean millions of Iraqi's would die but then again had Saddam unconditionally surrendered then they wouldn't have suffered - much like the Iraqis the Japanese in the 1940's didn't have a whole lot of say in affairs of state - political parties had been dissolved and a military strongman took over (most of those who served Tojo btw continued in govt)

Dropping the bombs for whatever reason killed a shitload of people - why is giving them some recognition so unpallatable for some??

[Silverhair]

178. This thread is about WWII & the two A bombs.

I am not going to thread drift into the current Iraq situation. Whole different ball game.

[Djinn]

202. different ball game

when it's dead americans - dead Japanese, well they can be forgotten by history

[Silverhair]

204. Yes, American lives do mean more to me.

I make no apology for that. As for not talking about Iraq in this thread, I like talking about one think at a time. Also, I don't fall for that old debate trick. I've got a few years on me, as my name implies, and have learned a few things about debating along the way.

[Ficus]

126. Hirohito

wouldn't have thought twice about dropping a bomb on LA or San Fran. to save Japaneese lives in an invasion. Same for any country on earth.

[BurtWorm]

129. Wouldn't have thought twice? How do you know what Hirohito thought

even once? It wasn't Hirohito who made those decisions anyway.

[Ficus]

135. you miss my point

It was a calculated decision - not one to just murder civilians. All countries are self interested and do a cost-benefit analysis of their options. It would have cost more for the US to invade - both in terms of lives and in terms of cost both in power to the USSR and to in $$$. I for one and glad to have a democratic Japan now instead of a facist or communist one.

Same would have been true of any other nation - it's not that Truman or America is/are evil murderers.

[BurtWorm]

137. Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot be said with any certainty

to have been the cause of Japan's democracy. If, as you say, countries act in their own self-interest and democracy was the best choice that Japan could have made, then it probably would have arrived at democracy with or without the bomb.

[bpilgrim]

220. actually japan had been progressing towards democracy since the meji

restoration... actually a closer to a constitutional monarchy but one where all male citizens had the right to vote in the late 1800s

folks who live with the disney world view see the japanese from a obscenely distorted narrow pov fostered by the simplistic propaganda put out over 60 years ago.

but look how effective it is they are using it even today to paint our enemies in distinctively offensive and simplistic terms ie good vs EVIL.

it is telling how effective it can be by witnessing the lingering effects of that long ago 'program' that is STILL being faithfully and accurately with suprising conviction and passion/hostility regurgitate their TALES on DEMAND.

pavlov's dogs are barking mad ;->

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

222. More like an imperialist nation swimming in death

There is nothing Disney about what the Japanese did in WWII. But it was pretty simple. They conquered. They raped. They tortured. They killed.

It's not "simplistic" to term what they did "evil." It's just accurate.

[bpilgrim]

231. you lean on your black and white/good vs evil view to support your pov

like a drunk uses a lampost.

they were mostly innocent civilians who died.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

236. Some things are evil

And some things are black and white.

Ending the imperial conquests, rapes and murders popular with Japan was a GOOD thing. What they did was an EVIL thing.

If you can't see that, there is little hope for you.

[bpilgrim]

254. ie NUKING a defeated prostrate nations cities filled with civilians TWICE

"Ending the imperial conquests, rapes and murders popular with Japan was a GOOD thing. What they did was an EVIL thing."

nobody is arguing that, hello...

we are talking about our action at the end of the war.

got it?

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

258. Not defeated, not prostrate to anyone other than their emperor

You are the one defending Japan. I am not.

Japan as a nation was evil. To continue the war with such a nation is to risk losing it. They had their choice and did not surrender until forced to do so.

Ending that war was not evil. Starting it sure was.

[Silverhair]

140. An alternate universe

If we accept the suggestions of some quantum physicists, there exists an alternate universe where Truman decided not to drop the bomb, and everything proceeded logically from that point on.

In that universe we had to invade & conqueor. We did at terrible cost in lives to both sides. It became an actualy genocidal war.
It ended in 1947.

Somewhere, in that alternate univere, there is a DU message board, and the same people that are howling about how terrible it was for to have dropped the bomb are howling about how terrible it was to have not put a quick end to the war, and to have saved all those lives.

[BurtWorm]

141. Multiverses: There's yet another universe where the US didn't bomb

and Japan, which was prepared to surrender because of the threat of the Soviet Union in Manchuria and the Chinese communists in mainland China, surrenders, on schedule, accepting the Potsdam agreement. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives are spared. The US has not become the only power to use nuclear weapons in war. The Cold War, perhaps, goes on anyway as the US and communist powers snarl at each other, threatening to use nuclear weapons, but never actually daring to. Only two events change: the bombs are not dropped.

[Silverhair]

148. If Japan was prepared to surrender, why didn't they surrender?

How long does it take to say, "I quit, unconditionaly."? No try to surrender, either surrender do, or no surrender do, no try. And until you surrender, you are still in the fight, unless the other guy surrenders.

[BurtWorm]

151. Do you think because they didn't surrender immediately

they were planning to counterattack, or might they have been shocked and awed? Was the purpose of Nagazaki to prevent a counterattack or to wrench a surrender out of them? If Hiroshima was necessary, was Nagasaki also necessary?

[Silverhair]

155. Yes. They should have surrendered immediately.

We gave them three days. Then next bomb made them fear that they might face a rain of such bombs. In fact, after the first bomb there were still those who argued that we could not have more than one such bomb and that the fight should continue.

Unconditional surrender was needed so that we could rip out their gov't that had started that war and replace it.

You do not understand the emperor thing. In another post on this thread I have said that they considered themselves as the "servants of the emperor." To have given in to that condition would have been to agree to allow the gov't to remain. By unconditional surrender, which is what they did, we were then able to remove the gov't. To let the emperor live was our decison, not theirs. It was a wise decision, but it still had to be our decision, not something they had managed to slavage from the wreakage of war.

[DrWeird]

142. You're making huge assumptions.

To justify an atrocity.

[Silverhair]

146. No. Just realistic projections of events already in motion. n/t

In any case, my point is that the person doing the complaining would still be complaining.

[BurtWorm]

149. You really have a firm handle on alternative realities!

Not only do you know how many Americans would have died if the bomb hadn't been dropped, but you know exactly how people like I would feel about such circumstances!

I hate to complain, but I'm not complaining: I'm criticizing.

[Silverhair]

152. There's a difference? n/t

[BurtWorm]

153. You really have to ask?

[RummyTheDummy]

143. Nah, it won't bother the freeps.....

They wear the deaths of brown skinned and yellow skinned folks as a badge of honor. However many bodies were stacked like cord wood in Hiroshima and Nagasaki wouldn't be enough for the Freeps. Same as in Iraq.

[MadHound]

144. There was no need for using the bomb, Japan would have surrendered anyway

At the beginning of 1945 Japan was stumbling and looking for a way to end the war. The only terms that the Japanese wished for was the continueing sovereignty of Emperor Hirohito. Other than that, all conditions were open. Realizing this, several ovetures were made by officials on both sides of the conflict. All were consistently blocked by the Roosevelt White House.

<http://sandysq.gcinet.net/uss_salt_lake_city_ca25/zach12.htm>
<http://www.oneworld.org/news/world/bloomfield.html>

The surrender of Japan as we see from the above articles would have been delayed by a matter of only four months at most, with some knowledgeable estimates putting Japan's surrender in mid Sept. 1945. It wasn't a matter of sparing our troops, we had complete air superiority, we had an effective blockade in place around Japan, we didn't need to risk our troops in an invasion when a seige strategy would have worked, and the military and the White House knew this!

No, the reason for use of the atom bomb was simple, and involved post war politics. Russia. Russia had troops poised to sweep the Japanese out of China and the Roosevelt/Truman administration was dead set against having Russia involved in the Pacific theater, for if they were, then by rights Russia would be entitled to the spoils of war there. Poland, East Germany, and the rest of the countries that made up the soon to be Warsaw Pact were enough for Russia, so the political minds thought, no need to add Pacific countries to the list.

The other Russian reason for using the bombs on Japan was the shock and awe factor. The Roosevelt/Truman administration was already gearing up for the Cold War, and the Cold Warriors to be thought that the best way to handle Russia was to put the fear of God into them with a demonstration of the A-bomb. Nothing like killing a few hundred thousand with one bomb to get your point across, so the reasoning went.

So that's what they did. Despite the advice of their own top military brass, despite the moral and ethical problems posed by the death of innocents on a scale unprecedented, they dropped the bomb. Not once, but twice. And then proceeded to accept the very same terms of surrender that Japan had frantically been trying to negotiate for the proceeding six months. All to make a point to the Russians, that we were the biggest, baddest motherfucker on the world block.

Of course US apologists and historians almost immediately began rewriting that piece of history, how we were really saving thousands, hundreds of thousand, no, millions of US soldiers' lives because by dropping the bomb, we didn't have to invade. Of course this completely ignores the reality that Japan at the time was on its knees, and wishing to be done with war. It ignores the fact that the US had complete air superiority over Japan, that we had encircled Japan in an oceangoing blockade so tight that no supplies were able to get through, that Japan's factories, roads, power plants, and other infrastructure had been obliterated by previous US bombing.

No, the US made a military decision to prove a political point. And unfortunetly, Japan was the on the recieving end of that point, with hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians sacrificing their lives and the lives of future generations just so that we, the United States, could fire the opening shots of the Cold War.

[Muddleoftheroad]

163. How many?

How many more Americans, Chinese, British, etc. would have died while Japan twiddled its thumbs about surrendering? How many hundreds of thousands of casualties would have happened had the military decided NOT to surrender. (You must recall that all of the "surrender" talk was going through back channels because the Japanese themselves were afraid of how their own military would react.) There were 25,000 American casualties in the battle of Iwo Jima alone. That would have been dwarfed by an invasion of Japan.

When you are president, you are concerned with the lives of Americans first. So how many Americans would you be prepared to kill to wait and see if Japan actually surrendered? Again, remember, this is the Japan that did a surprise attack not just on Pearl Harbor, but our bases across the Pacific. Remember, this is Japan that tortured, abused and murdered both military and civilians. They were not very trustworthy adversaries.

This is all Monday Morning Quarterbacking. Truman made a tough decision. It worked. The combined efforts of the bombs and the rebuilding of Japan ended a reign of terror that rivaled Japan's German allies. They turned an expansionist imperialist power that had killed millions into a peace-loving democracy. And here, nearly 60 years later, some have the audacity to criticize Truman for it.

Amazing.

[weirdmo]

164. well said....

[bpilgrim]

165. would have been saved if we accepted their 1 condition in the spring of 45

as all military leaders in theater advised, to 'SAVE LIVES'?

nuking a defeated nation's defenseless cities filled with innocent men women and children TWICE while they are trying to surrender won't be forgotton easily.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

167. Same old propaganda from you

Military leaders in the theater don't have the big picture. The top military leader, the commander in chief, does.

They weren't a defeated nation, they will still fighting. And, in your scenario, there is no guarantee the military would have EVER surrendered. But there is a guarantee that the Truman version worked quite well.

This is all just part of the plan where Japan tries to market itself as a victim instead of what it really was -- a monster.

[bpilgrim]

173. part of military leaders job is toknow the battle readiness of their enemy

not only is it THEIR job, their LIFE depends on it.

i suppose you would argue that iraq is not a defeated nation and therefore NUKING baghdad would be a legitamate option?

why is pointing out that all military leaders in theater at the time felt it wasn't necessary 'propaganda'?

"This is all just part of the plan where Japan tries to market itself as a victim instead of what it really was -- a monster."

japan ain't marketing NOTHING i was born and raised in this country and have served in the armed services so cut the bs and spin.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

182. Defeated or not

To be defeated, a nation needs to surrender, lay down its arms and stop fighting. Clearly the Japanese hadn't even vaguely done that until AFTER the nukes were dropped.

As for Baghdad, it is equally clear that the organized military has been defeated and removed from the field of battle. It is not clear that the war is over, however.

What military leaders in the field feel is not necessarily a reflection of reality. It is a piece of reality only. A president gets ALL the pieces of reality available at the time. He has to take into account the likelihood of Japanese actions and how many American lives they might cost. I for one would have been unwilling to risk added American lives, even if that cost Japanese lives.

Japan is indeed marketing itself a victim. Take a look at the list of people who want to amend the Enola Gay information. It includes not only idealists, but also at least the mayor of Hiroshima doing his part to rewrite history.

japan ain't marketing NOTHING i was born and raised in this country and have served in the armed services so cut the bs and spin.

[bpilgrim]

184. they had 1 condition that we finally accepted and then the war ended

and that is why the institution of emperor continues to this very day.

"As for Baghdad, it is equally clear that the organized military has been defeated and removed from the field of battle. It is not clear that the war is over, however."

so... since the war ain't over in iraq are we justified if we nuked baghdad?

"What military leaders in the field feel is not necessarily a reflection of reality. It is a piece of reality only. A president gets ALL the pieces of reality available at the time. He has to take into account the likelihood of Japanese actions and how many American lives they might cost. I for one would have been unwilling to risk added American lives, even if that cost Japanese lives."

well even he admited japan was trying to surrender AND all of his military leaders told him it wasn't MILITARILY NECESSARY.

hello...

"Japan is indeed marketing itself a victim. Take a look at the list of people who want to amend the Enola Gay information. It includes not only idealists, but also at least the mayor of Hiroshima doing his part to rewrite history."

huh?!

what mayor would know better the devestating consequenses of such a device on a CIVILIAN POPULATION then him, who wants to make sure it NEVER happens again by spreading the word?

what is WRONG with that?

btw: they don't need to 'paint themselves as victums' they ARE. the bomb was dropped ON THEM not by them in case you have forgotton.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

187. In case you hadn't notice

WWII was a world war for survival. ALL of the nations involved fought a total war. It's not a good thing. But it is a reality.

Iraq is not a total war and, as such there is no need for a nuke.

As for the surrender, Japan was given conditions and it continued to negotiate and try for better terms. It is the fault of the Japanese that the war continued.

No nation ever "tries to surrender." Surrender is quite a simple act. They simply had to say, "We surrender." They did not and the war continued.

Calling the Japanese, "victims" is much like calling a man who breaks into your house, who rapes your wife, kills your children and steals your money a "victim" when you shoot him.

[Silverhair]

190. Some did exactly that in a self defense thread.

There were those who called a burglar the victim when the occupant shots the burglar.

[bpilgrim]

193. so a 'TOTAL WAR' justifies NUKING a defenseless nations cities TWICE

filled with innocent civilians even when they are trying to surrender?

i disagree.

the war on terror is not a total war? why?

unconditional surrender is NOT the norm btw.

"Calling the Japanese, "victims" is much like calling a man who breaks into your house, who rapes your wife, kills your children and steals your money a "victim" when you shoot him."

i wouldn't blow up his hometown, missing the actual perps, but killing most of the inhabitants without warning and call that justice either.

i would simply call the cops and expect them to arrest him with as much caution and minumum violence as possible not just to him but to his surroundings.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

195. Talk about muddying the waters

You keep insisting on trying to insert Iraq into this picture. It doesn't apply. It's not a total war. End of story.

Again that concept of, "trying to surrender." I don't see why you don't grasp that surrender is an easy act. The Japanese wanted to insert terms, so the DIDN'T surrender until we nuked them.

You use a false analogy for your talk about blowing up the hometown. This was a hometown filled with factories and military equipment and supplies and soldiers all located in a nation prepared to fight to the death.

Prepared, that is, until they realized there might be no glorious fight to the death. That we would simply destroy their cities one at a time.

As for calling the cops, our troops WERE the cops. And we shut them down.

[bpilgrim]

206. 'end of story'

u said it. gn

peace

[Silverhair]

169. They weren't trying to surrender.

Their one condition would have left the gov't intact, and that we could not allow. You continue to refuse to address that fact.

[bpilgrim]

175. August 3, 1945 Truman agrees Japan looking for peace...

"The diary of Walter Brown--an assistant to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes-- records that aboard ship returning from Potsdam on August 3, 1945 the President, Byrnes and Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the President, "agrred Japas looking for peace. (Leahy had another report from Pacific) President afraid they will sue for peace through Russia instead of some country like Sweden." (See p. 415, Chapter 33)"


# Intercepted cables on July 12-13 showed Japan's Emperor had intervened to attempt to end the war. (See pp. 232-233, Chapter 18) Many other "peace feelers" had preceded this move. (See Chapter 2)

# Intercepted cables showed Japan responding positively to a U.S. offer of a surrender based on the "Atlantic Charter" as put forward in an official July 21, 1945 American radio broadcast. The key clause of the Charter promised that every nation could choose its own form of government (which would have allowed Japan to keep its Emperor).

more...
http://www.doug-long.com/guide1.htm

"Their one condition would have left the gov't intact, and that we could not allow. You continue to refuse to address that fact."

then how do you explain the institution of the emperor remaining in japan to this very day?

peace

[Silverhair]

176. Sueing for peace is NOT unconditional surrender.

They were attempting to salvage their gov't from the war. It meant there were things that they were still willing to fight for. Since FDR didn't want to fight the same war again 20 years later, he set the conditions for peace as UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER. Truman could not accept anything less.

Unconditional surrender does not require notes through third party countries. It only requires the surrendering country to get on the radio and say, "I quit, unconditionally." It is that simple.

[bpilgrim]

181. they had 1 condition that we finally accepted after we ran out of nukes

true but THINK of how many LIVES could have been SAVED on BOTH sides if we had followed our military leaders advice and accepted their surrender earlier.

and so it goes...

peace

[Silverhair]

188. Here are some facts:

On July 21, 1945 Unites States makes direct appeal by radio to japan to quit war or face total destruction.

July 25, Tokyo radio broadcasts appeal for terms lesss severe than unconditional surrender. (They wanted to keep the militarist gov't)

July 29, Japan formally rejects surrender ultimatum.

Aug 31 U. S. warns Japan that eight more of her cities face destruction.

Aug 6 First A-Bomb

Aug 9 Second A-Bomb

Aug 10 Japan asks for peace but insets proviso that the Emperor retain his power. (Still trying to save the gov't)

Aug 11 Allies reply that Emperor must take orders from the victorious Powers. (That is still unconditional surrender.)

Aug 14 Japan surrenders. Emperor not to retain powers. And he didn't. We let him live, but the gov't was dismantled, some war criminals were tried and executed.

Aug 19 Japanese surrender delegation arrives in Maila to meet McArthur.

Aug 28 USAAF technicians land at Atsugi airbase.

Aug 30 McArthur lands at Atsugi. Other troops pour in.

Sept 1 Americans begin occupation of Japan

Sept 2 Instruments of surrender are signed on the USS Missouri in toky Bay.

[bpilgrim]

191. the emperor of japan has been a FIGURE HEAD for centuries

and remains virtually unchanged to this very day.

japan was defeated and trying to surrender we have the documents that demonstrates this and i have provided links.

EVERY military leader at that time have gone on record to say that NUKING a defeated nation's defenesless cities filled with innocent civilians TWICE was NOT necessary.

yet you still choose to hang on to the propaganda that was fed to us by our gov after everything we now know.

i understand it is a hard truth to swallow for any human being but we can't change the facts that we now know.

peace

[Silverhair]

197. Yes, a figure head, but with symbolic authority. He had...

to surreneder even that symbolic authority. He had to take orders from us. If he had been allowed to keep his symbolic authority, the the gov't would have stayed in place.

[MadHound]

198. A few more facts for you

Japan was making appeals for surrender, even as far back as Feb of 1945. Japan even tried using the Pope as an intermiedeary. The entreaty was rejected, for the FDR White House didn't want even the whiff of "Popery" about any negotiation.

Japan was even publicly broadcasting their appeals for surrender. No, they dropped keeping the current government, even they weren't stupid enough to believe that we would let that one go. Yes, they wished for Hirohito to retain his sovereignty, meaning they wished him to retain his figurehead status and be immune from war crimes. Guess what, that's exactly what he got AFTER the bombs were dropped.

Along with that we also promised that there would be no war crimes trials for anyone. Instead we were to keep the research, notes and sometimes the very scientists related to Japan's human research experiments. So much for justice.

So what, really, did the bombs accomplish for us? Just what we had hoped for, putting the Russians on notice, that was the reason for that display of genocidal might. And the Russians thus started building their own bombs, and thus did the Cold War nuclear nightmerry-go-begin.
Hurrah for genocidal madness.

[Silverhair]

201. Look at the dates that I posted.

When, on the 11th, we replied that the Emperor had to take orders from us, it took them three days to respond. If they were so all fired ready to surrender, how come it took so long? Because they knew that clause, (Emperor take orders from us.) was in fact, unconditional surrender. My memory is not clear on this, but I think we even made him renounce his "God-on-earth" status. Without the clause of the emperor taking orders from us, their gov't would have stayed intact.

As I asked: If they were so anxious to surrender - why did it take three more days after we delivered our demands the 11th?

[bpilgrim]

205. the emperor only took part in two actions during wwII

anouncing it and declaring it ended as his symbolic role demanded.

the top leaders, mostly military, of japan at that time were tried and hanged - 6 - along with one civilian and that was it.

fyi: many returned to gov after the war with our blessing.

anyone who reads the history of japan understands the symbolic role of japan's institution of emperor and it's symbolic and ceromonial role in the actuall governing of japan.

ask any DU'er who knows japans history :hi:

peace

[MadHound]

170. Well, I would say not that many casulties would have occured.

Here is why. We had the air superiority over Japan, we had the capability for high altitude conventional bombing if needed. We had Japan surrounded with a virtually impenatrable blockade, with Japan's infrastructure and agriculture decimated. A siege war is notoriously easy on casulties for those who are doing the besieging.

And if you would read the links provided, you would see that it wasn't all hush hush. In fact the wish for negotiating a surrender was publicly broadcast in Japan and abroad. And the Japanese military didn't revolt. So there goes that line of reasoning.

As for the suprise attack upon Pearl Harbor, well, in the continuing discovery of new material, it may have not been such a suprise(at least for certain members of government) at all. And it is interesting to note that while yes, Japan tortured, killed and abused many people. They did medical experiments on living humans, just like the Germans did. And yet where were the Pacific equivalent of the Nuremburg trials? Oh that's right, there were none, because the US agreed to drop them in exchange for the detailed notes and information from those very same human experiments. So much for American compassion and nobility. So much for American justice.

And in fact your whole line of reasoning here seems to be along the old "eye for an eye" mantra. Well, setting aside Ghandi's comments on that subject(a man your avatar modeled himself on), let's look at who really cast the first stone in US-Japanese relations. Oh, that's right, that wonderful man who forced the Japanese to trade with him at gunpoint, Robert Perry. And while this occured one hundred years earlier, the Japanese have very long memories, debts are carried over for generations, as are feuds. And then there is the messy little matter of both European and US colonialism, along with our missionary work which was unwanted(in fact it was expressly forbidden), and the fact that Japan, out of all of our allies in WWI, didn't get jack shit from the treaty of Versailles. So, yes, while I don't condone Japanese actions during WWII, I can see and understand their reasons for doing it.

And this is not Monday Morning Quarterbacking as you so blithely put it. It is cutting through the bullshit history that we all have been taught since we were kids. It is wishing to hold those who were responsible accountable for a war crime. It is wanting American as a country to admit, for once, that in this particular instance, we were wrong.

It is understandable that in the heat of war many atrocities are committed, that is only human.

It is the civilized thing to do to admit to these atrocities afterwards, and make amends for them. There are still people in Japan who are literally scarred and deformed from our actions at Hiroshama and Nagasaki, both those who experienced it directly, and their children and grandchildren ravaged by disease and disfigurement. It is past time that we made amends for the atrocitiy that we visited upon them.

[Muddleoftheroad]

186. "Not that many"

Spoken no doubt from the comforts of home. For a leader, one unnecessary death of your troops is a burden. Thousands is a lot to bear.

Now to your easily defeated points:

Air superiority is great for massed combat and lousy for insurgency. We had air superiority in Vietnam and lost. We have it now in Iraq and it helps us little. We had air superiority at Iwo Jima as well. We only had 25,000 casualties there including more than 6,000 dead.

Yes, we could have besiged Japan for years. What of the other Japanese troops on the mainland and on other islands? What would that have cost us in money, material and men? What justification do you have for choosing Japanese lives over the Americans who would have died?

The direction the Japanese military took at the ened was a very close thing, and that takes into account the impact of two nukes on their psyche. Remove that and you remove their desire for surrender and decrease the immediacy of the emperor's support for such a surrender. The Japanese inquiries for a surrender also were being handled through the Soviet Union all because they feared a direct open move might upset their OWN military.

I am amazed you bring up the old Pearl Harbor argument. So now, in this thread on DEMOCRATIC Underground we are maligning not just Harry Truman, but the greatest Democratic president we have ever had in FDR. Interesting.

Now you want to even criticize the peace. America was victorious over Japan and immediately moved into a rebuilding program AND prepared the world to fend off the new menace of the Soviet Union. So, you would have preferred more trials and less peace?

Actually, I am not for an eye for an eye. The Marshall Plan was a masterstroke. And would that Abraham Lincoln had lived to truly reconstruct the south. Rebuilding nations after war creates friends instead of enemies. It's what we need to do more of in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The point I was making is that Japan had not been trustworthy in peace or honorable in war. That makes for dicey peace negotiations and another reason we wanted an unconditional surrender.

OK, so now we are back to Perry and blaming him for WWII? I guess, in theory, everything prior to the war caused the war. But come on...

This is exactly Monday Morning Quarterbacking. It is people who have the benefit of nearly 60 years of history, analysis, second-guessing, rationalization and idealism saying that they could have done better. When, in fact, the final result would be hard to duplicate and virtually impossible to surpass.

Yes, America is responsible for dropping the bomb and I for one am glad Truman had the courage to do it even though he probably knew at the time that history would criticize him for doing what needed to be done. I don't jump up and down at the deaths of the Japanese because I am not from the era that suffered their madness and butchery. But I am not sorry for us ending such atrocities either.

America has been wrong lots of times, even in my own family's history with slavery we were wrong. But America was so correct in this that I remain amazed that some still fall victim to the revisionist history coming out of Japan.

You know, just as there are still people in Japan who are scarred by the nukes, there are still people all across the Pacific whose nations were traumatized by the murdering bastards who followed the Rising Sun. There are still survivors of Nanking. Still Korean comfort women who live with the horrible treatment they received from their Japanese "masters." There are still survivors of Bataan and other Japanese victories.

We didn't start the war, we just ended it. And when that happens, it's better for the enemy to die than for your own people.

The day I truly see JAPAN come to terms with what it did in WWII will likely never come. But the propaganda machine sure wants us to feel bad for winning.

[MadHound]

196. Really

"For a leader, one unnecessary death of your troops is a burden. Thousands is a lot to bear." So for you, the death of thousands of soldiers or one is worth the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, innocents, children? So much for being a global citizen, so much for being your brother's keeper.

And yes, air power is not good for insurgency, but what I'm trying to point out here is that there was no need for dealing with ground forces, no need for invasion. Japan was surrounded, cut off from resources, food, and aid. And while yes, a seige is costly in dollars, the residents of Hiroshima and Nagisaki instead paid that bill with their lives. With all military experts of that time and since saying that Japan would have surrendered by Dec of 1945, it would have at most cost us a few million. Yippee, we saved a few million, woo hoo.

And don't be so shocked Muddle, I really have no smelling salts if you're feeling faint. If you do any reasonable research in *gasp* reputable journals and books, you will find a raging debate over Roosevelts knowledge of Pearl Harbor. In fact as more and more material from that period becomes available more and more scholars are coming down on the side that FDR knew. It is being discussed in journals, magazines, books, DU, and, oh no, even for the TV folk on the History Channel. Take deep breathes now, there you go.

"Now you want to even criticize the peace. America was victorious over Japan and immediately moved into a rebuilding program
AND prepared the world to fend off the new menace of the Soviet Union. So, you would have preferred more trials and less
peace?"

I'm not sure what you mean by this, why would I criticize peace? Are you upset that I think there should have been trials for Japanese war criminals? What happened to your sense of American justice? Or is the only American justice you're interested in the summary kind, delivered by, oh, say, a B-29?

Don't you find it the least bit disturbing, just a little bit ghoulish, that we put to use knowledge gained at the cost of so many lives? Or the technology we used that was bathed in the blood flowing from concentration camps? Or the war criminals that we not only let walk free, but even invited over to the US, to become citizens, to become "contributors" to our society, doctors, scientists, intelligence agents? And yet millions of souls wail for justice to be visited on these malfeactors, yet no price did they pay.

And no, I don't blame Perry for WWII, Don't play that game Muddle, it ill suits both our intelligences.

And yes, there are people still alive on both sides of that conflict who are scarred by atrocities. But unlike you, I absolve neither side of their sins. I look forward to the day when both sides admit to the wrongs they committed, and draw together in a sense of humble brotherhood and forgiveness. Only then will true peace be found.

[Muddleoftheroad]

200. My brother's keeper

In this case, my "brother" was a murdering, raping, looting psychotic. At some point, family loses out.

This was war. Complete and total war for survival. We did not start this horrible war. We did not cause Japan to try to subjugate its neighbors or attack our troops. THEY chose to do so. We stopped them. I might shed tears for the horrors of war, but war, once fought, must be won. And it was, thank God.

Then, we turned around and did something unheard of. We granted them a glorious, honorable, helpful peace. We rebuilt all that their insanity, their barbarism had destroyed.

Suppose we did as you say. How many more American troops would have died blockading Japan? How many more people would have died in China and elsewhere in Asia because Japan DID still had troops other places?

Yes, I have indeed seen many claims that FDR knew something. Usually they are GOP talking points. At best, they have been marginal claims and hypotheses.

There were indeed war crimes trials for the Japanese. They worked. In fact, the whole combination of what Truman did and what Marshall and MacArthur envisioned worked. I am reluctant to try and nitpick because, like a house of cards, change one thing and it all comes tumbling down.

As for Perry, I was not the one to bring him up.

I am all for all of us drawing together in peace. But America needs no forgiveness for what it did to Japan. And Japan still has not owned up to its murderous role in WWII.

[bpilgrim]

210. what a cartoon world view

do you only read u.s. gov issued versions of history?

how naieve

peace

[Silverhair]

212. Looks like he reads peer reviewed reputable historians.

I would certainly take a professional peer reviewed historian over paranoid conspiracy theory kooks.

[bpilgrim]

215. huh... how would you know?

he doesn't even provide ANY links and is actually closer to a verbatum regurgitation of the gov line.

they are not known to be a very reputible source in regards to matters of war.

think about it...

peace

btw: i have cited sources and provided links please share what you find disreputable about them.

[Muddleoftheroad]

225. Japan Thread #682

How many links do you want to their atrocities?

How many links do you want to their rapes?

How much infor do you want about Nanking?

Do you dispute any of this?

[bpilgrim]

226. we are talking about OUR actions not theirs - n/t

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

230. You didn't answer

Any of my questions.

[bpilgrim]

233. i am staying on topic

i advise you to do the same. but to be direct no i don't think innocent civilians deserved it despite the actions of their leaders.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

237. The topic is the bombing of Japan

That said, since you have referenced some things about said nation and called them a, "victim," care to answer:

How many links do you want to their atrocities?

How many links do you want to their rapes?

How much info do you want about Nanking?

Do you dispute any of their atrocities?

[bpilgrim]

240. NUKING a defeated nation's cities that was trying to surrender

against the advice of all our military leaders in theater at the time.

knowing this to be true there is no way i can support that TERRORIST action.

btw: please do not show me others crimes to excuse our own or change the TOPIC.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

244. Nuking Japan wasn't a crime

And your ridiculous talking points don't get any less sad the more you say them.

Presidents do stuff against the advice of leaders in the field all the time. That's because presidents are also aware of diplomatic realities, realities on the homefront, etc.

It's not terrorist to win a war -- especially when you were attacked.

And, they weren't defeated and hadn't surrendered. Nice marketing claim though.

[bpilgrim]

248. right, it was a TERRORIST act

and that is not 'ridiculous' nor a 'talking point' it's a fact,

the reasons given for this act were a LIE.

it is terrorism to NUKE a defeated trying to surrender nation's cities filled with innocent men women and children.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

250. Wow, talk about lies

Your post was full of them.

First off, not a TERRORIST act. That much should be obvious even to those overwhelmed with the Japanese marketing campaign.

Next, as we both know, Japan was not defeated. It still had troops in the field and was still killing people. In case you missed it, the HUGE battle for Iwo Jima (a much smaller island) had cost 25,000 American casualties including over 6,000 dead.

You seem to have either invented or bought into someone else's bogus concept of, "trying to surrender." There is no such thing. Surrender remains a simple act. It only becomes complicated when the nation that wants to surrender, doesn't really want to do so under the terms offered. When that happens, war continues.

Now, quick question, how many military factories, port facilities, etc. did those cities hold?

[bpilgrim]

252. attacking INNOCENT CIVILIANS is a TERRORIST ACT

even in a time of war not only according to me but according to the u.s. gov if you believe their words.

besides i think i just need to state the facts and let them speak but as you see that may be to controversial for even the DU let alone the smithsonian.

now, you are entitled to your opinion as well as i and i am willing to agree to disagree with your conclusions but i refuse to surrender my right to stating the facts.

the japanese lost over 20k killed on iwo jima, practically to the last man as was their fate but by the time we NUKED her she was on her knees looking for a peace agreement with only 1 condition snd the ball was in our court...

and WE acted WE resoted to TERRORISM to 'SHOCK and AWE' the WORLD.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

259. You may have missed this

But WWII was a total war. It was a war for survival. As a result, both sides fought ttoal war not just on soldiers, sailors and airmen, but on means of production, and both Hiroshima and Nagasaki certainly qualify there.

So now you attack DU? I don't get it, they provide the forum for your propaganda and you criticize them?

Your facts are not at issue, it is your conclusions that are outlandish.

Again, I don't care that the Japanese lost 20,000 killed on Iwo Jima. They had an option to surrender and, instead, fought to virtually the last man to continue their tyranny and brutality.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

The Japan we nuked was NOT on her knees. She was still fighting and looking for a peace that she considered favorable.

Losing nations don't get that option.

[bpilgrim]

208. not only did FDR KNOW he provoked it DAY OF DECEIT: The Truth About FDR

DAY OF DECEIT: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor

by Robert B. Stinnett

Pearl Harbor was not an accident, a mere failure of American intelligence, or a brilliant Japanese military coup. It was the result of a carefully orchestrated design, initiated at the highest levels of our government. According to a key memorandum, eight steps were taken to make sure we would enter the war by this means. Pearl Harbor was the only way, leading officials felt, to galvanize the reluctant American public into action.

more...
http://www.liberty-tree.org/ltn/dayofdeceit.html

peace

[Silverhair]

211. Sheesh! Another conspiracy theory. n/t

[bpilgrim]

214. a well documented conspiracy, yes.

do you often disregard and dismiss documented evidence as 'conspiracy theory'?

that won't help you find the truth.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

223. Ah, yes

On DEMOCRATIC Underground. More attacks on FDR. Next you'll be going after JFK for daring to FIGHT the Japanese. Then you'll follow with attacks on Johnson, Clinton and Carter.

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

[bpilgrim]

232. sorry pal this is hostory

and i didn't say what i thought of FDRs actions so stop trying to put words in my mouth.

the only one posting anything offensive here is the racism and hatered spread by you and others in trying to defend our immoral act.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

235. No racism and no hatred

I don't hate the Japanese. I hate what they did. What they did was monstrous and almost competitive with their Axis buddies in Deutschland.

YOU are the one who is claiming we had some sort of tinfoil conspiracy to lure Japan into war. Since the president at that time was FDR, the greatest president of the 20th Century, I take offense at your comment.

The Japanese CHOSE to attack most of Asia and islands across the Pacific. They chose to surprise attack Pearl Harbor. They chose to butcher the citizens of Nanking. They chose to subjugate Korean women and use them as prostitutes.

[bpilgrim]

239. "They were a rabid dog nation that needed to be dealt with"

those are your words are they not?

you act like we were simply minding our own business up till wwII when we were called to save the world from empire.

well manythings the japanese done they learned from us - the west - and was not entirely new so stop pretending it is unless you want us to believe you are ignorant.

now please don't missinterpet my comments into some kind of support for their actions as i deplore all forms of violence especially against civilians who our gov pretends to care so much about no matter who the perpetrater is.

maybe we live in fear due to the knowledge of what WE are capable of.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

245. Yes they are and note they include "nation"

Do you deny their NATION was a rabid dog? Do you deny their NATION was a threat to the world? Do you deny their NATION had slaguhtered millions?

Prior to WWII, we were doing as nations do, making treaties, doing business, protecting our interests. Oh, and preparing for war based on the worldwide militarization going on.

For somebody who claims to NOT be defending Japan, you sure look like you aren't blaming them, you are blaming the West. I guess the West butchered all those folks in Nanking?

[bpilgrim]

249. no they ARE not

and a NATION is made up of its people and they were not made up of 'RABID DOGS' you can argue that the behavior of their leaders were imperial and horribly agressive if you want and that wouldn't be rabid racism generated by war propagandist for a byegone era.

"For somebody who claims to NOT be defending Japan, you sure look like you aren't blaming them, you are blaming the West."

newsflash: the japanese didn't drop the NUKES... WE DID.

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

251. Germany was also a rabid dog nation

And there is nothing racist about that. Obviously, your view is in the minority here since when you called me a racist, it was deleted.

It is possible to call a nation horrible things and not be racist, especially when they did the horrible things that Japan inflicted on the world.

I don't suppose you recall all those wonderful JAPANESE atrocities...

So, you ARE blaming the West and not the nation that started the war, conquered its way across Asia and the Pacific, butchered, raped and tortured people by the millions. You are blaming the nation that defeated them.

Sure, whatever.

[bpilgrim]

255. changing the topic again...

as i stated before dehumanizing people is a popular and effective war time propagandist technique employed very effectively by heads of state to rally support for their wars all over this planet but it doesn't change it from what it is no matter what country tries to defend it.

my view may be in the minority here but as long as i follow the rules nothing will be removed maybe i wasn't clear last time but i wasn't calling YOU a racist but pointing out that what you had SAID was.

i don't expect the other post where i am more explicit to be removed as it will be judged to be within the rules - at least as far as i understand them

and i do recall many of the japanese atrocities since i like reading and learning about the time of wwII especially the pacific theater but has that got to do with our NUKING them onless you are trying to say they DESERVED it because of the sins of their leaders? :shrug:

these facts are clear and UNDISPUTED... they were a DEFEATED, PROSTRATE and trying/ready to SURRENDER nation when we rained hellfire down on innocent men women and children by nuking their cities TWICE.

i understand that that reality is a hard perspective to live with but by being honest with ourselves MAYBE we might prevent another one from happening... at least thats my hope :hi:

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

260. Hard to dehumanize murdering butchers

I think they did it all on their own. All I am doing is stating the obvious.

Well, since the mods killed the post, methinks THEY agreed with my understanding of your personal attack.

Your facts are more like fantasy. They were not defeated. For you to be defeated, a defeat must occur. None had. For them to be ready/trying to surrender is more like marketing copy. It means nothing, it just sounds good. And we attacked cities, as we had done probably hundreds of times before. The difference was the weapon we used, not the tactics.

I am all for preventing the need for another nuke. But, just the same, Truman still made the right choice.

[bpilgrim]

207. you are glad we NUKED a defeated nation's cities filled with INNOCENT

CIVILIANS who's leaders were trying to surrender TWICE and the only thing you got to back you up is 'unconditional surrender' - which is against the norm btw - even though in the end we gave them their one condition :puke:

i imagine this is how terrorist reason as well :crazy:

peace

[Silverhair]

209. They didn't quit fighting.

The reason we demanded unconditional surrender was so we could replace their gov't. We didn't want to have to fight them again in 20 years. The terms they asked for would have let them keep their gov't. When they agreed that the emperor would take orders from us, then that was effective uncondition surrender. The dude might be alive, but he would be subject to us. They could have had that earlier by simple accepting it.That they didn't shows that they were still willing to fight for it.

Surrender is most easy. You don't "try" to surrender. You simply surrender. If you haven't surrendered, then you are still fighting. Really quite simple you know.

[bpilgrim]

213. should we nuke baghdad?

please...

and i told you that not only had virtually nothing changed in regards to the institution of the emperor but that most folks went right back in gov even some of the class A war criminals right after they got out of prison.

fyi: unconditional surrender is NOT the norm, hello...

and they got their one condition in the end which has stood the test of time as well as working with their existing leaders after the war helped things go more smothly in the end NOT like iraq were we are actually carrying out your type of demands which has made it only worse and have caused MORE deaths.

think about it...

peace

[Silverhair]

216. We are at an impasse.

Since you started to go into the CT stuff I lost respect for your scolarship. I have looked at this question long ago, probably before you were even born. I reexamined the issue about five years ago. There has not been anything signifigant revealed in that time. Your insults of reading only U.S. Gov't approved history is beneath an intellegent discussion. Since you desire to start throwing insults, then I am terminating my participation in this discussion with you. I may, or may not, respond to others in this thread.

What is happening now in Iraq is irrelvent to this thread. We are talking about a decision made about 60 years ago, which you, from the comfort of your home, and with no responsibility for the outcome of the decision feel free to complain about. I suppose it gives you a feeling of being morally superior.

[bpilgrim]

217. r u and muddle the same?

"Your insults of reading only U.S. Gov't approved history is..."

was directed at muddle and it was NOT an insult it was a fair charecterization of his and YOUR 'argument'.

and it was YOU who started with the dismisive insults 'CT'

how soon you forget and get confused SILVERhair.

gn

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

227. No we aren't the same

We are different people who, thankfully, see the reality of the situation here.

You however, choose the propaganda view.

[Muddleoftheroad]

224. Read what I wrote

Glad Truman had the courage to do it. It ended the war and saved lives. That works for me.

As for unconditional surrender "against the norm," so dear friend is butchering millions and violating every law of a civilized nation at war. THAT was the Japan we were dealing with. If they didn't like unconditional surrender, they had the option of continued fighting. They chose that option and reaped the result.

[bpilgrim]

228. you said you were glad because they deserved it.

:puke:

peace

[Muddleoftheroad]

234. Putting words in my mouth

You like that don't you?

[jessiepowers]

147. The Enola Gay...

Should be dismantled and destroyed. It is disgusting that Americans could keep such an agent of mass murder around.