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Post by Big Lin on Jun 13, 2011 12:33:01 GMT
Well, for a start, my grandfather was fighting the Japanese at the time and he said that if it hadn't been for the bomb their soldiers would have fought to the death and countless lives would have been lost.
I've heard the same thing from other veterans who fought the Japanese.
They were fanatical - remember the kamikaze pilots? - and without the bomb many more people - servicemen and civilians - would undoubtedly have died.
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 14, 2011 2:01:42 GMT
Well, for a start, my grandfather was fighting the Japanese at the time and he said that if it hadn't been for the bomb their soldiers would have fought to the death and countless lives would have been lost. I've heard the same thing from other veterans who fought the Japanese. They were fanatical - remember the kamikaze pilots? - and without the bomb many more people - servicemen and civilians - would undoubtedly have died. Dearest Lin, The Japanese soldiers didn't stop fighting because of the atomic bomb, but rather because Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender. If one tiny event was altered these Japanese soldiers would have continued fighting, even if Japan had been reduced to a nuclear wasteland.
Lin, since you like history so much you should delve into the putsch in Japan which attempted to stop the surrender by imprisoning or even killing Hirohito. They were almost successful!
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Post by Liberator on Jun 14, 2011 2:05:28 GMT
Well, for a start, my grandfather was fighting the Japanese at the time and he said that if it hadn't been for the bomb their soldiers would have fought to the death and countless lives would have been lost. I've heard the same thing from other veterans who fought the Japanese. They were fanatical - remember the kamikaze pilots? - and without the bomb many more people - servicemen and civilians - would undoubtedly have died. I think you've got it Lin. The Nazis were fanatical but always felt themselves in some way within European culture. The Japanese simply were not. They had a wholly alien historical viewpoint perverted to serve the militarists of the time (see Yukio Mishima) that was no more going to be impressed by reason or threat withheld than any suicide bomber. We know how they treated their enemies and their own people. It was a perversion of Bushido that the Old World had not really seen since Jinghiz Khan. They had to be totally demoralized so that death before dishonour ceases to be a viable option. They were faced with something so overwhelming that to back down was no more dishonour than it was before the earthquakes and tsunami that they were so familiar with. Hirohito had to stay in charge or most of them would have killed themselves.
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 14, 2011 2:45:10 GMT
Those who applaud or approve of the use of the atomic bomb on non-combattant civilians on this thread are promoting a very dangerous idea!
I'm sure that if a terrorist atomic attack -God forbid- is ever carried out on American or European civilians these terrorists would pretty much see the atomic bomb as a "problem solver" too!
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Post by Liberator on Jun 14, 2011 3:08:56 GMT
In principle I agree with you, but I don't think that any nation today has the same fanaticism that Japan held then. Some Israelis and Al-Qaeda may do, but they are not world belligerents on the same scale. Considering what it has accomplished in ten years, al-Qaeda is vastly over-rated compared to its predecessors letting a small bomb and random hijacking off every two or three weeks.
One of the first rules of war is that whoever breaks the rules generally wins. We can have 'polite' wars like in the past that went on for years and decades between soldiers (but any civilians in the way got short shrift) or we can have all-out wars that don't distinguish enemy side combatants from non-combatants - but are over far faster.
Putting rules on war is putting rules on murder, a contradiction in terms. Yes the nuclear bombing of Japan was a war crime and yes, the USA was right to do it. Had they invaded, it would have been a bloodbath with any Japanese left alive killing themselves in shame.
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 14, 2011 4:13:45 GMT
In principle I agree with you, but I don't think that any nation today has the same fanaticism that Japan held then. Some Israelis and Al-Qaeda may do, but they are not world belligerents on the same scale. Considering what it has accomplished in ten years, al-Qaeda is vastly over-rated compared to its predecessors letting a small bomb and random hijacking off every two or three weeks. One of the first rules of war is that whoever breaks the rules generally wins. We can have 'polite' wars like in the past that went on for years and decades between soldiers (but any civilians in the way got short shrift) or we can have all-out wars that don't distinguish enemy side combatants from non-combatants - but are over far faster. Putting rules on war is putting rules on murder, a contradiction in terms. Yes the nuclear bombing of Japan was a war crime and yes, the USA was right to do it. Had they invaded, it would have been a bloodbath with any Japanese left alive killing themselves in shame. It would have been nonsensical to invade Japan..as if that was the only other option. The blockade against Japan would have completely ruined their economy. And they had virtually run out of kamikazi planes, couldn't produce more and had little or no fuel for them. The kamikazi planes were also no match for the US air force.
I would have had no problem with a neutral country negociating a cease fire at least. The terms of surrender were in fact pretty generous and could have been obtained without the atomic bomb.
This talk of "fanatical killer japs" and "the only good Jap is a dead Jap" is largely comic book lingo and mythos! Lets hope that Europeans and Americans aren't being portrayed like that.
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Post by Liberator on Jun 14, 2011 12:11:12 GMT
A lot of the Japanese were more likely to kill themselves than anybody else once captured, and did and there was still a residual in top places as fanatical as anything Al-Qaeda can come up with. It might have been possible to blockade them until everything fell apart but no guarantee that the leadership would have given way unless they were starved out. Some kind of revolution might have possible if things got bad enough. Whatever the ordinary people thought, it's the leadership that had to be convinced.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 14, 2011 17:22:57 GMT
Tinian Island is a small island, less than 40 square miles, a flat green dot in the vastness of Pacific blue ocean. Fly over it and you notice a slash across its north end of uninhabited bush, a long thin line that looks like an overgrown dirt runway. If you didn't know what it was, you wouldn't give it a second glance out your airplane window. On the ground, you see the runway isn't dirt but tarmac and crushed limestone, abandoned with weeds sticking out of it. Yet this is arguably the most historical airstrip on earth. This is where World War II was won This is Runway Able. On July 24, 1944, 30,000 US Marines landed on the beaches of Tinian .... Eight days later, over 8,000 of the 8,800 Japanese soldiers on the island were dead (vs. 328 Marines), and four months later the Seabees had built the busiest airfield of WWII - dubbed North Field - enabling B-29 Superfortresses to launch air attacks on the Philippines, Okinawa, and mainland Japan. Late in the afternoon of August 5, 1945, a B-29 was maneuvered over a bomb loading pit, then after lengthy preparations, taxied to the east end of North Field's main runway, Runway Able, and at 2:45am in the early morning darkness of August 6, took off. The B-29 was piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets of the US Army Air Force, who had named the plane after his mother, Enola Gay. The crew named the bomb they were carrying Little Boy. 6 hours later at 8:15am Japan time, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima . Three days later, in the pre-dawn hours of August 9, a B-29 named Bockscar(a pun on "boxcar" after its flight commander Capt. Fred Bock), piloted by Major Charles Sweeney took off from Runway Able. Finding its primary target of Kokura obscured by clouds, Sweeney proceeded to the secondary target of Nagasaki , over which, at 11:01am, bombardier Kermit Beahan released the atomic bomb dubbed Fat Man. Here is "Atomic Bomb Pit #1" where Little Boy was loaded onto Enola Gay: [/img] The commemorative plaque records that 16 hours after the nuking of Nagasaki, "On August 10, 1945 at 0300, the Japanese Emperor without his cabinet's consent decided to end the Pacific War." This is where World War II ended with total victory of America over Japan. Most people, when they think ofHiroshima and Nagasaki , reflect on the numbers of lives killed in the nuclear blasts - at least 70,000 and 50,000 respectively. But reflect on the number of lives saved - how many more Japanese and Americans would have died in a continuation of the war had the nukes not been dropped. Yet that was not all. It's not just that the nukes obviated the US invasion of Japan , Operation Downfall, that would have caused upwards of a million American and Japanese deaths or more. It's that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of extraordinary humanitarian benefit to the nation and people of Japan . Let's go to this cliff on the nearby island of Saipan to learn why: Saipan is less than a mile north of Tinian .... The month before the Marines took Tinian, on June 15, 1944, 71,000 Marines landed on Saipan .... They faced 31,000 Japanese soldiers determined not to surrender. Japan had colonized Saipan after World War I and turned the island into a giant sugar cane plantation. By the time of the Marine invasion, in addition to the 31,000 entrenched soldiers, some 25,000 Japanese settlers were living on Saipan, plus thousands more Okinawans, Koreans, and native islanders brutalized as slaves to cut the sugar cane. There were also one or two thousand Korean "comfort women" (kanji in Japanese), abducted young women from Japan 's colony of Korea to service the Japanese soldiers as sex slaves. (See The Comfort Women: Japan 's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War, by George Hicks.) Within a week of their landing, the Marines set up a civilian prisoner encampment that quickly attracted a couple thousand Japanese and others wanting US food and protection. When word of this reached Emperor Hirohito - who contrary to the myth was in full charge of the war - he became alarmed that radio interviews of the well-treated prisoners broadcast to Japan would subvert his people's will to fight. As meticulously documented by historian Herbert Bix in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, the Emperor issued an order for all Japanese civilians on Saipan to commit suicide. The order included the promise that, although the civilians were of low caste, their suicide would grant them a status in heaven equal to those honored soldiers who died in combat for their Emperor. And that is why the precipice in the picture above is known as Suicide Cliff, off which over 20,000 Japanese civilians jumped to their deaths to comply with their fascist emperor's desire - mothers flinging their babies off the cliff first or in their arms as they jumped. Anyone reluctant or refused, such as the Okinawan or Korean slaves, were shoved off at gunpoint by the Jap soldiers. Then the soldiers themselves proceeded to hurl themselves into the ocean to drown off a sea cliff afterwards called Banzai Cliff. Of the 31,000 Japanese soldiers on Saipan , the Marines killed 25,000, 5,000 jumped off Banzai Cliff, and only the remaining thousand were taken prisoner. The extent of this demented fanaticism is very hard for any civilized mind to fathom - especially when it is devoted not to anything noble but barbarian evil instead. The vast brutalities inflicted by the Japanese on their conquered and colonized peoples of China , Korea , the Philippines , and throughout their "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" was a hideously depraved horror. And they were willing to fight to the death to defend it. So they had to be nuked. The only way to put an end to the Japanese barbarian horror was unimaginably colossal destruction against which they had no defense whatever. Nuking Japan was not a matter of justice, revenge, or it getting what it deserved. It was the only way to end the Japanese dementia. And it worked - for the Japanese. They stopped being barbarians and started being civilized. They achieved more prosperity - and peace - than they ever knew, or could have achieved had they continued fighting and not been nuked. The shock of getting nuked is responsible. We achieved this because we were determined to achieve victory. Victory without apologies. Despite perennial liberal demands we do so, America and its government has never apologized for nuking Japan ... Hopefully, American ever will.
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Post by toby on Jun 14, 2011 17:52:04 GMT
Bush admirer posted.:-And it worked - for the Japanese. They stopped being barbarians and started being civilized.
Toby comments.:- Most of what you say is correct, but not all ! so I will instruct The Japanese were never Barbarians, they are the cleanest people on earth, they are not stupid either, they invented Steel.
All peoples have done brutal things, can we perhaps ask what happened to the Native Americans (commonly called Red Indians), who exterminated them ? Who exterminated most of the South American Indians ?
Lastly, the USA forced Japan into War, some say this was deliberate to defeat the Japanese before they got too strong. The USA applied an Illegal Blockade on Japans Oil Supplies. The Japanese attacked the USA, just like Roosevelt knew they would.
Pearl Harbour attack was no accident, the USA should have been prepared !
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Post by Liberator on Jun 14, 2011 20:50:19 GMT
The USA was prepared - Pearl Harbour was nothing like the strategic disaster that it appeared and most personnel were on shore leave. Possibly they were not expecting quite the strength of attack they got, but they were expecting something.
However, the US did not force Japan into the war; they forced the US into the war. Japan was the first nation in The War before it even was The War - ie nobody cared because it was only the yellow peril imperilling each other and they had not yet got as far as any European colonial possessions. That was the mainland invasions of 1936 and subsequently.
It is true that the Japanese have never been barbarians but they were savages. There is a difference, barbarian we could say is an uncouth rough way of life. Japan was never that. Savage on the other hand, refers to deliberately fostered ruthlessness passing beyond mere brutality into outright sadism. The Germans were not barbarians either, but they made savages of their lower SS ranks.
Japan quite deliberately mixed traditional elements of Bushido and Shinto with politicised Emperor worship and militarization culled from Nazism that went entirely against the more civilized aspects of Bushido.
If you can get through him, Yukio Mishima's tetralogy is quite enlightening. So is Hanama Tasaki's Long the Imperial Way about the Chinese invasion - mainly Nanking, where he was involved. I first picked this up assuming it to be science-fiction, read quite a bit before realising that it wasn't, and by the time I'd finished it, concluded that it might as well be, for all the cultural affinity it has with 'us'. I imagine that JG Ballard's Empire of the Sun would be informative too.
Russell Braddon's The other 100 years war: Japan's bid for supremacy 1941-2041 is also extremely enlightening. You could say that Hirohito was not being entirely deceptive when he said that current policy had not gone entirely to Japan's benefit and others would have to be enacted. Those other policies existed already and have been, are being, enacted.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 14, 2011 22:01:21 GMT
The Hari Kari attacks and the Saipan suicides were indicative of a religious fanaticism. Today's Jahidist suicide attacks are similar.
It's one thing to die for your country while fighting in a just war. It's something else again to die because you've been conned into false beliefs by bogus religious mullahs or priests. That's what happened to those Japanese and that's what's happening in Islam today.
One point that is beyond debate is the fact that the Japanese people are much better off having lost that war than they would have been had they won it. You have to shudder at the thought of governments being commanded by militarists like Togo and Hitler.
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 14, 2011 22:05:16 GMT
And it worked - for the Japanese. They stopped being barbarians and started being civilized. They achieved more prosperity - and peace - than they ever knew, or could have achieved had they continued fighting and not been nuked. The shock of getting nuked is responsible. We achieved this because we were determined to achieve victory. Victory without apologies. Despite perennial liberal demands we do so, America and its government has never apologized for nuking Japan ... Hopefully, American ever will. With all due respect Das, what's wrong with apologizing for nuking innocent civilians? Sure the Japanese should condemn the Bataan death march, Pearl Harbor and the rest of their part in the madness called war.
Maybe the United States Strategic Bombing Survey's authorative 1946 report will put some doubt in your mind!
www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm#jstetw page 26 QUOTE: There is little point in attempting precisely to impute Japan's unconditional surrender to any one of the numerous causes which jointly and cumulatively were responsible for Japan's disaster. The time lapse between military impotence and political acceptance of the inevitable might have been shorter had the political structure of Japan permitted a more rapid and decisive determination of national policies. Nevertheless, it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 14, 2011 22:11:17 GMT
Anna - President Truman was receiving daily casualty reports from the US Military. The Hari Kari suicide attacks wreaked havoc with the US fleet at Okinawa.
We had the A-Bomb. He made the decision to use it on medium size Japanese cities so as to get the full attention of the Emperor and the military leaders. It worked. You can't really argue with success.
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Post by Liberator on Jun 14, 2011 22:49:58 GMT
Maybe Wikipedia isn't the best place but it's always a good start. Whatever the Instrument of Surrender, Hirohito's rescript to the people was so ambiguous that it needed an announcer to explain that he had actually surrendered. The phraseology quoted here is such that it almost sounds as if he was being lenient to them. I don't think we can understand the Japanese of the time (or necessarily the Americans). "C'est payé, balayé, je me fous du passé" All the same, an apology accepting that at the time it seemed the right thing to do, would do no harm. The main subject of the speech was to announce the surrender of Japan, that Hirohito "ordered Our Government to communicate to the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that Our Empire accepts the provisions of their Joint Declaration."
In the speech, Hirohito notes that the war is "Our sincere desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia […]", but "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage".
He then cites "Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives" (Japanese: 加之敵ハ新ニ殘虐ナル爆彈ヲ使用シテ頻ニ無辜ヲ殺傷シ慘害ノ及フ所眞ニ測ルヘカラサルニ至ル); the remark is interpreted to refer to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that occurred days before the speech. He, however, never mentioned the Soviet invasion that had begun a few days before the speech. Finally, and most famously, he says: "However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is unsufferable."
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 14, 2011 23:27:32 GMT
Anna - President Truman was receiving daily casualty reports from the US Military. The Hari Kari suicide attacks wreaked havoc with the US fleet at Okinawa. We had the A-Bomb. He made the decision to use it on medium size Japanese cities so as to get the full attention of the Emperor and the military leaders. It worked. You can't really argue with success. Hirohito wanted to surrender in the spring of 1945! He wasn't the absolute ruler that the people on the outside considered him to be. The demand of "unconditional surrender" complicated matters for the worse.
Using the atomic bomb on civilians is a very dangerous precedent, which may boomerang someday. We'll have to agree to disagree on whether or not the atomic bombing of civilians solves problems. I disagree! It creates more problems and dangers that it could ever "solve". "Even if" it shortened the war a few weeks the danger of setting this "precedent" outweighs any possible temporary "gains". Page p. 420 QUOTE:The fact is that as far as the Japanese militarists were concerned, the atomic bomb was just another weapon. The two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were icing on the cake, and did not do as much damage as the firebombings of Japanese cities. The B-29 firebombing campaign had brought the destruction of 3,100,000 homes, leaving 15 million people homeless, and killing about a million of them. It was the ruthless firebombing, and Hirohito's realization that if necessary the Allies would completely destroy Japan and kill every Japanese to achieve "unconditional surrender" that persuaded him to the decision to end the war. The atomic bomb is indeed a fearsome weapon, but it was not the cause of Japan's surrender, even though the myth persists even to this day.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 14, 2011 23:54:25 GMT
Much as I admire you Anna (and usually agree with your posts) I must disagree on this issue. Harry Truman made the right decision and the war ended a few days later. There is nothing to apologize for.
Have the Japanese apologized for Pearl Harbor? Have the Germans apologized for electing Hitler?
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 15, 2011 0:40:37 GMT
Much as I admire you Anna (and usually agree with your posts) I must disagree on this issue. Harry Truman made the right decision and the war ended a few days later. There is nothing to apologize for. Have the Japanese apologized for Pearl Harbor? Have the Germans apologized for electing Hitler? Dearest Das, Hitler was never elected chancellor. He was appointed chancellor by daffy Hindenburg. The people had no voice in that decision.
I don't think anyone expects people, who weren't involved in the decision making to "apologize" for wrong, desasterous or evil decisions. Most of us weren't even born at the time of WW2.
The Japanese nowadays don't approve of the Pearl Harbor attack and contempary Germans don't approve of Hitler. We can ignore the tiny dissenting fringe elements that exist in every society here.
I'm satified with disaproval or at least the admission that something in history could have been done better.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 15, 2011 0:55:33 GMT
-->I'm satified with disaproval or at least the admission that something in history could have been done better.
I agree with that Anna. No one I know would blame present day Germans for Hitler or present day Japanese for the militaristic leaders of WWII.
That was a sad chapter in world history. We're all happy that's in our rear view mirrors.
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 15, 2011 2:20:05 GMT
-->I'm satified with disaproval or at least the admission that something in history could have been done better. I agree with that Anna. No one I know would blame present day Germans for Hitler or present day Japanese for the militaristic leaders of WWII. That was a sad chapter in world history. We're all happy that's in our rear view mirrors. AMEN Das! My main concern here is actually not the unchangable past, but the here and now. I don't want terrorists to have any support in the belief that killing innocent civilians achieves any real goals.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 15, 2011 19:31:37 GMT
Anna - WWII was a really terrible war in terms of civilian casualties. The bombing of London, the bombing of German cities like Dresden, the dropping of A Bombs on Hiroshima and worst of all, the Holocaust.
In the interim we've seen civilian massacres in Cambodia, Bosnia, Saddam's Iraq, Rwanda, and elsewhere.
I wish the world would never go there again but I'm afraid that's probably wishful thinking. As we're seeing today with Ghadafi, brutal dictators generally don't go quietly. For them, power is more important than civilian lives.
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