♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 15, 2011 21:32:32 GMT
Yes Das! There's no denying the unspeakable horrors of war.
If mankind only learns that terrorism and totalitarianism don't work we can move a step forward.
"The first casualty when war comes is truth!" Sen. Hiram W Johnson
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 15, 2011 23:54:49 GMT
Anna - I'm curious. Are you old enough to remember WWII or did you have parents and relatives who told you about it? Did your family live in a German city that was directly affected by the war? Just wondering.
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♫anna♫
Global Moderator
Aug 18 2017 - Always In Our Hearts
The Federal Reserve Act is the Betrayal of the American Revolution!
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karma:
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 16, 2011 0:45:08 GMT
Anna - I'm curious. Are you old enough to remember WWII or did you have parents and relatives who told you about it? Did your family live in a German city that was directly affected by the war? Just wondering. Oh no Das! I was born long after the war. I have elderly relatives who were captured in East Prussia by the Russians and on the American side an elderly Grand Dad, who served in the US navy towards the end of the Pacific campagne. I have no axe to grind, but am disturbed when any of the countless atrocities out of past wars are seen as acceptable by any sizeable percent of people today.
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Post by mouse on Jun 16, 2011 11:14:57 GMT
In the mind of the president of the United States were surely two reasons for using these new and, as it turned out, enormously destructive weapons. One was of course the way in which the Japanese armed forces, principally the Japanese army, had conduc ted World War II. The barbarities of the war had their beginnings in Japan's war against China, which began in 1937. That same year, when Japanese troops occupied Nanking, the human cost was extraordinary: Between 100,000 and 200,000 people were killed by the occupying troops for no reason at all except what may only be described as blood lust.
Years later, after the end of World War II, the responsible Japanese commander, General Iwane Matsui, was arraigned before a war crimes tribunal in Tokyo and subse quently sentenced and hanged. His excuse for what had happened was that he had not known what was going on; the excuse of ignorance could not, however, absolve him of the responsibility he bore. In the war crimes trials after the war, it was impossible to seize upon subordinate commanders, both for what was described as "the rape of Nanking" and other countless horrors that marked Japanese army actions in China before American entrance into the war on December 7' 1941.
And then there was the event that brought the United States into the war. The "sneak attack"-without a declaration of war-by Japanese carrier planes upon Pearl Harbor resulted in the deaths of 1,000 men on the battleship U.S.S. Arizona, which sank so rapidly that the sailors sleeping below deck could not escape, and nearly 1,500 other deaths aboard ships in the harbor, on the surrounding airfields, and among civilians caught in the machine-gun fire and exploding bombs.
Pearl Harbor was not the only instance of Japanese barbarism that Americans knew. It was followed by the Bataan death march beginning April 9, 1942, during which 72,000 exhausted Filipino and American defenders of the Bataan peninsula were marched for four days a distance of 5O miles without food and water, while Japanese soldiers shot or bayoneted hundreds of stragglers. And there were, in addition, the bestial conditions in the Japanese prison camps endured by military prisoners and interned civilians for the remainder of the war-three and one-half years. And the innumerable instances (seemingly random but nonetheless displaying the Japanese army's contempt for prisoners) of shootings and beheadings that continued until the end of World War II.
All of the above, moreover, were instances of maltreatment of only American prisoners; these instances were multiplied into the tens of thousands when one considered British, Dutch, and other Allied prisoners taken mostly in the war's first months at Hongkong, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and in Burma.
Japan's conduct of the war, in violation of the Geneva conventions drawn up in a series of international meetings but affixed most recently in international law during the mid-1920s, was akin to Nazi Germany's treatment of Soviet prisoners during the war and of the Holocaust itself, the genocides that came out of Germany's appalling racial policies under the Nazi regime.
And then, in calculating why President Truman and leading officials of his administration looked upon nuclear warfare as a positive good rather than terrible savagery, there was the very real issue in the summer of 1945 of the cost of a U.S. invasion of the Japanese home islands. Whatever the historical-one might describe them as emotional-reasons for "getting back at" Japan, there was the frightening cost of an invasion by the U.S. Army and Navy.
It might seem to an onlooker or casual observer that any calculation of an invasion at that time (an invasion that in fact never took place) was so speculative and so likely to partake of estimates and generally of unreality that it was incalculable, that the contemplated invasion was largely theory rather than actuality and that there was thereby no basis on which to make the decision that the president and his advisers did ultimately make, namely, to risk (and, in fact, this is what happened) the deaths of 100,OQO or more Japanese, including many, many civilians-men, women, and children. But the calculus was not at all theory, for there was clear evidence that an invasion would be enormously costly. In retrospect it is improper to say that Truman and his principal assistants took their momentous decision largely out of emotion, memory of Japanese bestialities, and without serious measurement of what the U.S. forces might be up against.
The two benchmarks for the possible cost of invading the home islands were the American invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the spring and early summer of 1945.
The invasion of Iwo proved extremely costly: 6,200 U.S. Marines died on that small island that was so valuable as an airbase for B-29s involved in the bombing of Japan. Some of the bombers that were unable to make their runs or upon return were crippled by antiaircraft or other damage or mechanical failures, were able to land there.
The American preponderance over the Japanese defenders at Iwo Jima was four to one. The invasion of the large island of Okinawa, which was 350 miles south of the southernmost home island of Kyushu, proved twice as costly: 13,000 died, one-third of them aboard ship as a result of the dozens of kamikaze attacks. The pilots of these outmoded planes, which often had no ability to get back to their bases, sacrificed themselves and their planes as bombs. In the single most costly kamikaze attack (on the big carrier U.S.S. Franklin), the cost in U.S. deaths was 1,000 men, and the attack turned the ship into a flaming near-wreck, useless for any further campaigns.
While this carnage was taking place, the Marine and army troops on Okinawa were fighting across the island foot by foot, encountering the defenders who battled until they died. The entire Japanese high command committed hara-kiri. The civilian populace meanwhile served as beasts of burden and frequently as cannon fodder: They were driven ahead of Japanese lines to take the initial fire of the Americans and to detonate mines along the way. American casualties-wounded, missing, and dead-totaled 35 percent of the attacking force, despite the preponderance of U.S. ground forces of two and one-half to one.
By mid-June 1945, the huge question in the minds of American commanders and members of the Truman administration was whether it was possible to persuade the Japanese government and military to surrender. The Japanese military (though clearly beaten) was not willing to surrender. If the decision could have been made by Japan's civilian leaders or even the Japanese people, the war probably would have come quickly to an end, but unfortunately the decision was not theirs: It lay in the hands of the military, and particularly in the hands of army leaders. (By this time the Japanese Navy had virtually ceased to exist, almost all its ships having become either unserviceable or having been sunk.)
Leaders of the Japanese army had decided to fight on, whatever the cost, and thereby honor the Japanese military code of bushido, that of warriors whose careers might be traced back to the distant past. That the struggle, in the early summer of 1945, could not be waged in the manner of past struggles-through man to man clashes-but had to be fought in the twentieth-century manner with weapons, did not concern the Japanese military leaders. They would fight with whatever lay at hand. And the defensive weapons they did have, which was an array of artillery pieces and about 5,000 planes that could be used as kamikazes, were bound to cost the attackers heavily, as on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
By mid-June American military leaders were becoming fearful of what their military services might be up against, and calculations of a tentative sort were made, all of them frightful in their implications. A joint war plans committee, army and navy, came up with an estimate that 25,000 men would be killed in an invasion of Kyushu on two fronts; 40,000 might die if an invasion on a single front was followed by invasion of the island of Honshu, on which Tokyo was located; and 46,000 deaths were estimated as a result of a two-front invasion of Kyushu followed by an invasion of Honshu.
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Post by mouse on Jun 16, 2011 11:18:57 GMT
there are times when the ends justify the means..when the greater good has to be considered
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♫anna♫
Global Moderator
Aug 18 2017 - Always In Our Hearts
The Federal Reserve Act is the Betrayal of the American Revolution!
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karma:
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 16, 2011 19:04:04 GMT
there are times when the ends justify the means..when the greater good has to be considered The approval of using the atomic bomb on innocent non combattant Japanese civilians is a bad thing and makes this world more dangerous to live in.
Think of the possible long term consequences!
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♫anna♫
Global Moderator
Aug 18 2017 - Always In Our Hearts
The Federal Reserve Act is the Betrayal of the American Revolution!
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karma:
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 16, 2011 19:04:55 GMT
Dearest Mouse! You should post the link to the article, which you quote! Introduction: Truman and the Bomb, a Documentary History www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/ferrell_book/ferrell_book_intro.htm In the mind of the president of the United States were surely two reasons for using these new and, as it turned out, enormously destructive weapons. One was of course the way in which the Japanese armed forces, principally the Japanese army, had conduc ted World War II. The barbarities of the war had their beginnings in Japan's war against China, which began in 1937. That same year, when Japanese troops occupied Nanking, the human cost was extraordinary: Between 100,000 and 200,000 people were killed by the occupying troops for no reason at all except what may only be described as blood lust. Years later, after the end of World War II, the responsible Japanese commander, General Iwane Matsui, was arraigned before a war crimes tribunal in Tokyo and subse quently sentenced and hanged. His excuse for what had happened was that he had not known what was going on; the excuse of ignorance could not, however, absolve him of the responsibility he bore. In the war crimes trials after the war, it was impossible to seize upon subordinate commanders, both for what was described as "the rape of Nanking" and other countless horrors that marked Japanese army actions in China before American entrance into the war on December 7' 1941. And then there was the event that brought the United States into the war. The "sneak attack"-without a declaration of war-by Japanese carrier planes upon Pearl Harbor resulted in the deaths of 1,000 men on the battleship U.S.S. Arizona, which sank so rapidly that the sailors sleeping below deck could not escape, and nearly 1,500 other deaths aboard ships in the harbor, on the surrounding airfields, and among civilians caught in the machine-gun fire and exploding bombs. Pearl Harbor was not the only instance of Japanese barbarism that Americans knew. It was followed by the Bataan death march beginning April 9, 1942, during which 72,000 exhausted Filipino and American defenders of the Bataan peninsula were marched for four days a distance of 5O miles without food and water, while Japanese soldiers shot or bayoneted hundreds of stragglers. And there were, in addition, the bestial conditions in the Japanese prison camps endured by military prisoners and interned civilians for the remainder of the war-three and one-half years. And the innumerable instances (seemingly random but nonetheless displaying the Japanese army's contempt for prisoners) of shootings and beheadings that continued until the end of World War II. All of the above, moreover, were instances of maltreatment of only American prisoners; these instances were multiplied into the tens of thousands when one considered British, Dutch, and other Allied prisoners taken mostly in the war's first months at Hongkong, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and in Burma. Japan's conduct of the war, in violation of the Geneva conventions drawn up in a series of international meetings but affixed most recently in international law during the mid-1920s, was akin to Nazi Germany's treatment of Soviet prisoners during the war and of the Holocaust itself, the genocides that came out of Germany's appalling racial policies under the Nazi regime. And then, in calculating why President Truman and leading officials of his administration looked upon nuclear warfare as a positive good rather than terrible savagery, there was the very real issue in the summer of 1945 of the cost of a U.S. invasion of the Japanese home islands. Whatever the historical-one might describe them as emotional-reasons for "getting back at" Japan, there was the frightening cost of an invasion by the U.S. Army and Navy. It might seem to an onlooker or casual observer that any calculation of an invasion at that time (an invasion that in fact never took place) was so speculative and so likely to partake of estimates and generally of unreality that it was incalculable, that the contemplated invasion was largely theory rather than actuality and that there was thereby no basis on which to make the decision that the president and his advisers did ultimately make, namely, to risk (and, in fact, this is what happened) the deaths of 100,OQO or more Japanese, including many, many civilians-men, women, and children. But the calculus was not at all theory, for there was clear evidence that an invasion would be enormously costly. In retrospect it is improper to say that Truman and his principal assistants took their momentous decision largely out of emotion, memory of Japanese bestialities, and without serious measurement of what the U.S. forces might be up against. The two benchmarks for the possible cost of invading the home islands were the American invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the spring and early summer of 1945. The invasion of Iwo proved extremely costly: 6,200 U.S. Marines died on that small island that was so valuable as an airbase for B-29s involved in the bombing of Japan. Some of the bombers that were unable to make their runs or upon return were crippled by antiaircraft or other damage or mechanical failures, were able to land there. The American preponderance over the Japanese defenders at Iwo Jima was four to one. The invasion of the large island of Okinawa, which was 350 miles south of the southernmost home island of Kyushu, proved twice as costly: 13,000 died, one-third of them aboard ship as a result of the dozens of kamikaze attacks. The pilots of these outmoded planes, which often had no ability to get back to their bases, sacrificed themselves and their planes as bombs. In the single most costly kamikaze attack (on the big carrier U.S.S. Franklin), the cost in U.S. deaths was 1,000 men, and the attack turned the ship into a flaming near-wreck, useless for any further campaigns. While this carnage was taking place, the Marine and army troops on Okinawa were fighting across the island foot by foot, encountering the defenders who battled until they died. The entire Japanese high command committed hara-kiri. The civilian populace meanwhile served as beasts of burden and frequently as cannon fodder: They were driven ahead of Japanese lines to take the initial fire of the Americans and to detonate mines along the way. American casualties-wounded, missing, and dead-totaled 35 percent of the attacking force, despite the preponderance of U.S. ground forces of two and one-half to one. By mid-June 1945, the huge question in the minds of American commanders and members of the Truman administration was whether it was possible to persuade the Japanese government and military to surrender. The Japanese military (though clearly beaten) was not willing to surrender. If the decision could have been made by Japan's civilian leaders or even the Japanese people, the war probably would have come quickly to an end, but unfortunately the decision was not theirs: It lay in the hands of the military, and particularly in the hands of army leaders. (By this time the Japanese Navy had virtually ceased to exist, almost all its ships having become either unserviceable or having been sunk.) Leaders of the Japanese army had decided to fight on, whatever the cost, and thereby honor the Japanese military code of bushido, that of warriors whose careers might be traced back to the distant past. That the struggle, in the early summer of 1945, could not be waged in the manner of past struggles-through man to man clashes-but had to be fought in the twentieth-century manner with weapons, did not concern the Japanese military leaders. They would fight with whatever lay at hand. And the defensive weapons they did have, which was an array of artillery pieces and about 5,000 planes that could be used as kamikazes, were bound to cost the attackers heavily, as on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. By mid-June American military leaders were becoming fearful of what their military services might be up against, and calculations of a tentative sort were made, all of them frightful in their implications. A joint war plans committee, army and navy, came up with an estimate that 25,000 men would be killed in an invasion of Kyushu on two fronts; 40,000 might die if an invasion on a single front was followed by invasion of the island of Honshu, on which Tokyo was located; and 46,000 deaths were estimated as a result of a two-front invasion of Kyushu followed by an invasion of Honshu.
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 16, 2011 22:45:28 GMT
Two of my very favorite US Presidents. Harry Truman and George W. Bush. Both led America is difficult times. Both were faced with difficult decisions which they made correctly. Harry was a Democrat. George a Republican. I admire them both.
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Post by mouse on Jun 17, 2011 6:23:15 GMT
there are times when the ends justify the means..when the greater good has to be considered The approval of using the atomic bomb on innocent non combattant Japanese civilians is a bad thing and makes this world more dangerous to live in.Think of the possible long term consequences""
;; ..it saved countless lives...in war a real winner takes all war ..there are no innocents there is simply the enemy and the enemy civilians ..... and as we have never had a real war since 1945 i think it rather proves my point perhaps you should read what happened to the ""innocents in nanking when the japanese took over there... or the innocents in and around the pacsific under the japanese boot
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♫anna♫
Global Moderator
Aug 18 2017 - Always In Our Hearts
The Federal Reserve Act is the Betrayal of the American Revolution!
e x a l t | s m i t e
karma:
Posts: 11,769
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 17, 2011 14:42:14 GMT
Dearest Mouse! Two wrongs don't make a right! There are innocent non combattant civilians in all societies. It's pretty scary when someone thinks they should be killed.
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Post by arizonavet1 on Jun 17, 2011 16:31:24 GMT
President Harry Truman had a difficult decision to make. He could either order an invasion of Japan itself or he could try the Atomic bomb strategy. Really BA! Saying that Truman only had 2 choices is ridiculous!
There were many other options. The atomic bomb could have been used on a Japanese military base or even on Mt. Fuji where no one lived just to warn the Japanese what kind of bomb the US developed.
Nuking civilians is a very bad, dangerous and evil precident to make! No one should approve of the mass killing of civilians, regardless of their nationality or the "leaders", who claim to be their rulers. The "pro nuke civilians opinion" is also a danger to US security!Anna.... If the killing of 100,000 civilians the previously proven military installations of Hiroshima didn't have the effect of ending the war.....what makes you think that dropping the bomb on Mt. Fuji.....a TRUE civilian target would have a greater effect. Honestly Anna you can't have it both ways.... If dropping he bomb on both cities had no effect.... if only the threat of an attack from Russia motivated them to surrender, (coincidentally, three days after the Nagasaki bomb was dropped on that Naval target) then how in the world, would dropping a bomb where only a few civilians were killed....have the desired effect? MacAurthur had already publically warned Russia to leave the Japanese northern Islands alone....in no uncertain words....Russia had almost no Navy after WW2...even the decimated Japanese Navy could have sunk any Russian ships attacking any part of Japan....easily. Truly, Truman, no war hawk himself, had no choice whatever. They were whipped outside Japan, but very powerful within their main islands. They had been planning for this attack.....hundreds of thousands of American & Japanese would have died. Anna....honest question. How could fire-bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, London & Coventry be considered a valid method of conducting war on military targets,, because they used conventional bombs, but Hiroshima & Nagasaki....."terrorism". Terrorism isn't the killing of civilians....that is a totally unavoidable tragety of war.... It's the intentional targeting of civilians that is terrorism. If the unavoidable deaths of cviilians were terrorism.....and no country wanted to be guilty of it.....then no country could ever defend themselvs from true terrorists, or an invading army.
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Post by arizonavet1 on Jun 17, 2011 16:53:28 GMT
Anna - I'm curious. Are you old enough to remember WWII or did you have parents and relatives who told you about it? Did your family live in a German city that was directly affected by the war? Just wondering. Oh no Das! I was born long after the war. I have elderly relatives who were captured in East Prussia by the Russians and on the American side an elderly Grand Dad, who served in the US navy towards the end of the Pacific campagne. I have no axe to grind, but am disturbed when any of the countless atrocities out of past wars are seen as acceptable by any sizeable percent of people today. Interesting personal footnote Anna. But Anna....neither Hiroshima or Nagasaki was an "atrocity" of any kind.... Within days after the attacks, we entered both cities, cared for the wounded & were instrumental in rebuilding the cities.....we spent many millions. Just a cursory look at China, after Japan invaded would tell you that if they had defeated America, the world would have see the worst atrocities ever visited on civilians. They worked day & night to personally execute thousands of Chinese with everything from pistols & swords. Read "The Rape of Nanking"....horrible be headings of civilians was commonplace. It's totally unfair to confuse atrocities, terrorism, and unavoidable collateral damage. No one but the most ardent pacifists with "buy" that one Anna. As horrible as the Nazi's & the Bushidoists were, we always had respect for the German & Japanese people
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 18, 2011 0:09:54 GMT
Anna - The Atomic Bomb was very new technology. It was still in the laboratory and not in production. They only had two of them.
What if they had wasted them bombing Mt Fuji and the Japanese failed to get the message?
I think that's the thinking that led to Harry Truman's decision.
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♫anna♫
Global Moderator
Aug 18 2017 - Always In Our Hearts
The Federal Reserve Act is the Betrayal of the American Revolution!
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karma:
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 20, 2011 2:04:21 GMT
Anna - The Atomic Bomb was very new technology. It was still in the laboratory and not in production. They only had two of them. What if they had wasted them bombing Mt Fuji and the Japanese failed to get the message? I think that's the thinking that led to Harry Truman's decision. Hi Das! I trust you agree at least that the surrender of Japan with or without the atomic bomb was imminent as confirmed by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey's authorative 1946 report ( which i posted earlier ). An invasion of Japan would have been absolutely unneccesary.
It could be speculated that a secret agreement not to prosecute emperor of his family for war crimes led to Japan's surrender too! Why insist that the "holy atomic bomb" and it's mass killing of innocent civilians get the credit?
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♫anna♫
Global Moderator
Aug 18 2017 - Always In Our Hearts
The Federal Reserve Act is the Betrayal of the American Revolution!
e x a l t | s m i t e
karma:
Posts: 11,769
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 20, 2011 2:24:35 GMT
Really BA! Saying that Truman only had 2 choices is ridiculous!
There were many other options. The atomic bomb could have been used on a Japanese military base or even on Mt. Fuji where no one lived just to warn the Japanese what kind of bomb the US developed.
Nuking civilians is a very bad, dangerous and evil precident to make! No one should approve of the mass killing of civilians, regardless of their nationality or the "leaders", who claim to be their rulers. The "pro nuke civilians opinion" is also a danger to US security! Anna.... If the killing of 100,000 civilians the previously proven military installations of Hiroshima didn't have the effect of ending the war.....what makes you think that dropping the bomb on Mt. Fuji.....a TRUE civilian target would have a greater effect. Honestly Anna you can't have it both ways.... If dropping he bomb on both cities had no effect.... if only the threat of an attack from Russia motivated them to surrender, (coincidentally, three days after the Nagasaki bomb was dropped on that Naval target) then how in the world, would dropping a bomb where only a few civilians were killed....have the desired effect? MacAurthur had already publically warned Russia to leave the Japanese northern Islands alone....in no uncertain words....Russia had almost no Navy after WW2...even the decimated Japanese Navy could have sunk any Russian ships attacking any part of Japan....easily. Truly, Truman, no war hawk himself, had no choice whatever. They were whipped outside Japan, but very powerful within their main islands. They had been planning for this attack.....hundreds of thousands of American & Japanese would have died. Anna....honest question. How could fire-bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, London & Coventry be considered a valid method of conducting war on military targets,, because they used conventional bombs, but Hiroshima & Nagasaki....."terrorism". Terrorism isn't the killing of civilians....that is a totally unavoidable tragety of war.... It's the intentional targeting of civilians that is terrorism. If the unavoidable deaths of cviilians were terrorism.....and no country wanted to be guilty of it.....then no country could ever defend themselvs from true terrorists, or an invading army. Hi George! I disagree with all bombings where civilians are the prime target. When civilians are accidentally killed or are on a military installation then that's war.
Nanking, Auschwitz, etc. were horrific war crimes, but unlike the atomic bombings no one is claiming these crimes were justified.
Are the murders of an arsonist not as bad as those of other murderers?
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Post by Liberator on Jun 20, 2011 2:32:07 GMT
Long the Imperial Way Hanama Tasaki. There is nothing that we haven't heard since from the likes of the Taliban. How would you go about getting surrender from men who would rather kill themselves? Even after the A-bombs there was a powerful faction opposed to surrender and men who killed themselves or hid out for 20 and 30 years in jungle because they saw it as their holy duty.
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Post by mouse on Jun 21, 2011 12:08:19 GMT
your looking at war with todays perspective....you have to look at wars with the mindset of time/era they were in Nanking, Auschwitz were part of war..a part of war which was avoidable/un-necessary..simply hate/degregation and cruelty for the sake of it..man giving into his basest nature..as man often does hiroshima was part of the stopping of war and a message to the japanese AND the russians.....just as dresden etc or the london..and liverpool etc bombings were a lesson...they were to weaken the morale of the troops via their kith and kin..its an old practise and one that has happened in every war on the planet..an other reson for bombings is to weaken the infrastructure..weaken the civilian population..weaken the ability to manufacture weaponry/disrupt food and watwer supplys be thankful we are beyond the siege mentality which was even worse..mass slaughter and the taking of prisoners for slaves if they were fit enough..or as in civil wars mass killings of relative against relat6ive we have wars now but they are more localised and to some extent more long distance....use of stealth bombers and drones but of course after hroshima we then had korea..vietnam and the uk had malaya ..aden..cyprus..mau mau...in all of which there were civilians losses...to say nothing of the civilian killing/murders in ireland and the monsterous excersises in death in irak and afghanistan
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Post by mouse on Jun 21, 2011 12:13:24 GMT
Long the Imperial Way Hanama Tasaki. There is nothing that we haven't heard since from the likes of the Taliban. How would you go about getting surrender from men who would rather kill themselves? Even after the A-bombs there was a powerful faction opposed to surrender and men who killed themselves or hid out for 20 and 30 years in jungle because they saw it as their holy duty. absolutely...or the suicide bombers of today..newyork towers..london tube and bus..bali nightclub..egypt hotel etc etc..all civilians being waged war on
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Post by DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) on Jun 21, 2011 23:35:51 GMT
I had a long layover today at the Phoenix airport during a trip to California. There was a WWII veteran in the boarding area. He is 90 years old and his mind is still sharp. I spent about an hour talking with him. He was in the US Army in the Pacific theater as a construction engineer. He spent most of his time in the Philippines but was also in China briefly. He was never in combat personally but had many friends who were including one fellow who was on the Bataan death march. It was interesting to talk with him.
There is zero doubt in his mind that the A-Bomb is what ended the war. He still hates the Japanese. He think's they were fanatics and not just the military, also the civilians. One point he made was that he knew of an America pilot who was shot down over Japan and parachuted safely to the ground where he was captured. The Japanese military turned him over to the civilians from a nearby town. They murdered him and not in a nice way.
He saw the Japanese civilians and military in the same light. They were fanatics. The massive suicides in Saipan were one example as were 2000 Hari Kari suicide missions against our navy at Okinawa.
He talked a lot about the atrocities committed by the Japanese invaders in China including Nanking. Very cruel.
His friend who participated in the Bataan Death March finally made it to freedom but he almost starved to death. The march was about 75 miles and a huge percentage of the prisoners were killed. There was no food or water. If a prisoner fell out and sat down from exhaustian they would bayonet him and leave him there to die. If another prisoner tried to help him they would bayonet him too. He said one big difference was that the Germans honored the Geneva convention and treated prisoners much better than the Japanese.
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♫anna♫
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The Federal Reserve Act is the Betrayal of the American Revolution!
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Aug 3, 2011 15:59:18 GMT
To sum up the discussion.
Why did Japan surrender in WWII? a ) Emperor Hirohito was granted immunity from war crimes prosecution. b ) The atomic bomb attacks. c ) Russia's declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria. d ) other
So far we have mostly opinions and on this thread.
We seem to agree that the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely non combattant civilians. These two cities were both spared the fire bombing that other Japanese cities suffered. Scientists wished to study the effects of the atomic bomb on humans and thus these cities were spared for the "experiment".
As far as killing non combattant civilians goes we have a philosophical question here. Is it less criminal to kill civilians by dropping a weapon of mass destruction on them and never looking them in the eyes?
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