Nakagawa calls U.S. A-bombing of Japan 'an inexcusable crime'

[Raskolnik]

(AP)Shoichi Nakagawa, a senior Liberal Democratic Party politician has called the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan in 1945 a crime and inexcusable.

Nakagawa, policy chief of the ruling LDP, made the comments after visiting the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, a ruling party official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would only paraphrase Nakagawa's comments late Sunday, but Kyodo News agency and a newspaper quoted him directly.

"The U.S. decision to drop such a thing was truly unforgivable on humanitarian grounds," the reports quoted Nakagawa as saying. "Dropping an atomic bomb is a crime."

Excerpt: full story at http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20061218p2a00m0na027000c.html

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. He's right.

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy.” - Gandhi

[malaise]

2. Bingo n/t

[Raskolnik]

3. I disagree.

What difference does it make? It makes a hell of a lot of difference to the living.

I think the world is much, much better off for Japan having lost the war.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. They had already lost the war before the bombs were dropped.

They were an unnecessary and immoral display of power to frighten the Russians.

[Raskolnik]

8. They were certainly destined to lose, but not for some time.

At a minimum the war would have continued for several more months with an Allied invasion of the larger Japanese islands, at a cost of millions of casualties.

Would that have been the more moral choice?

[everythingsxen]

9. Ding ding ding: We have a winner

[barb162]

143. double ding that!

[NV1962]

230. Treble ding. It's thanks to those two big booms he can freely speak his mind.

Along with the survivors dealing with the memories of DOZENS of millions murdered by Japanese Imperial forces.

Imperial Japan was willing to slaughter its own population as well; thanks to FDR and Truman, they were brought to reconsider. As horrendous as war is -- and particularly the use of nukes -- the few hundred thousands who died, have saved millions of Japanese.

Not to mention of the Allied soldiers.

It's an inexcusable crime that Imperial Japan's role and dirty deeds have been and still are whitewashed in schoolbooks there.

[Lipton64]

258. Japan merely wanted an empire just like any other "modern state" at the time.....

I think it's unfair and hypocritical to refer to Japan as an "aggressor" state. When British thug imperial troops marched into Kenya or into India or into the Sudan - was it not the same thing? They murdered millions in their colonies. Or what about us and all the tens if not hundreds of thousands we killed during our racist, anti-Asian rule of the Phillippines, Puerto Rico(before they were modernized), Guam(same), and Cuba?

Is it the fact that these imperialists were white not make them "aggressors?" Because to my color-blind eye it sure as hell doesn't make a difference what color the skin is of the man who's pointing a gun at your face and taking over your country.

In fact, one issue that angered the Japanese leaders so much was the fact that the United States and other Western powers stopped it from expanding and they wondered why they couldn't be like the rest of the "world powers" and have a grand empire. And when you think about it from an objective point of view, it makes a lot of sense.

[arcos]

273. At the time?

Is it any different now?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. There was no need of an invasion.

Japan could no longer conduct an aggressive war. It was virtually prostrate militarily and economically. It was literally starving.

If you check the history, the Japanese were convinced to surrender, not by the bombing, but by the fear of Communist revolution and the defeat of the Japanese Army by the Russians.

[Raskolnik]

21. So it was a coincidence that Japan surrendered following the bombs?

If you check the history, the Japanese were convinced to surrender, not by the bombing, but by the fear of Communist revolution and the defeat of the Japanese Army by the Russians.

I don't believe that accurately portrays the situation at all.

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

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

[Raskolnik]

They surrendered unconditionally.

We did make some concessions after the fact, but the surrender instrument said "We hereby proclaim the unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters and of all Japanese armed forces and all armed forces under Japanese control wherever situated."

[Name removed]

36. Deleted message

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

[Raskolnik]

40. It continued on our terms, not theirs.

We were smart to do so, but that does not change the fact that Japan did surrender unconditionally.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

29. Try these.

"The Rising Sun, the Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire" - John Toland

"The Pacific War, 1931-1945" - Saburu Ienega

Get back to me after you've done some research.

[Raskolnik]

35. Read the former, not the latter.

And your contention that the atomic bombs were not the real cause of the Japanese surrender does not match the existing facts.

[barb162]

145. So why didn't they surrender?

The fact is they didn't surrender ...until after the bombs were dropped

[BulletTrain1964]

283. Japan had made overtures to surrender as early as May 1945

They tried to go through an intermediary-- the USSR. Little did they know that the USSR was at that time planning an invasion of southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, which were Japanese territory.

[knight_of_the_star]

222. Incorrect

The military leadership and government was ready to fight to the death, and if the Emperor had not stepped in and made his sacred decision after the bombs were dropped they would have ignored the civilian government and dragged Japan down with them into a fight to the death. Both sides were ready for such a fight, we were even stockpiling enough gas to carpet Kyushu for the initial invasion to pave the way for our troops. Think about how many millions would have died from a chlorine/nerve gas soup.

[insultedVeteran]

286. "Nuke what if" "Lets consider the times"

I am a WW2 Roosevelt liberal who "witnessed " much too much horror in WW2.

"At the time" it was a horrific war, and not about whether we should have drop the A-bomb. It was about stopping a seemingly endless struggle with the country who kicked our ass in Pearl Harbor.

A Proud Vet

[piedmont]

14. And probable partioning of Japan w/ the Soviets.

They were chomping at the bit there at the end.

[roamer65]

128. Bingo!

The bombs were a message to the Soviets, "This is our sandbox and stay out of it".

[BulletTrain1964]

281. Incorrect

The nuclear bombings were NOT a sign to the Soviets to "stay out of our sandbox". The Soviets declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945, two days after the Hiroshima bomb, and they continued their invasion of Japanese territory until late October, long after the Nagasaki bomb.

The United States and the USSR had previously agreed at Yalta and Teheran to divide Japan. Roosevelt enticed Stalin to enter the war against Japan by offering him (Stalin) the Kurile Islands and the southern half of Sakhalin, which were Japanese territory. Although the offer was for the Soviets to take back territory that Japan had taken "by force" from Imperial Russia, this would have only convered Sakhalin, since the two southernmost Kuriles had long been recognized as Japanese territory, and the northern Kuriles has been obtained by Japan through peacetime negotiations.

[krispos42]

277. When did the USSR declare war on Japan?

Right after we nuked Hiroshima?

Real brave of them.

[BulletTrain1964]

282. The USSR declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945

As you said, right after the bombing of Hiroshima.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

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[Cant_wait_for_2008]

25. Nonsense! What history book are you reading?

They were not "suing for peace".

[piedmont]

28. yeah, on their terms.

Nothing short of total surrender would end the threat posed by imperial Japan.

[Name removed]

34. Deleted message

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[everythingsxen]

39. Negotiation was attempted...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Debate_over_bombings

Covertly, civilian leadership wanted to end the war, but they were unable to actually do anything. Hirohito and his cabinet had the decision to make and they refused totally, to even discuss surrender. Until the bombings.

[BulletTrain1964]

284. Hirohito did not have a Cabinet

The Prime Minister of Japan had/has a Cabinet. In April-August 1945, the Prime Minister of Japan was Kantaro Suzuki. He tried to get the Soviet Union to act as intermediary for Japanese surrender as early as May 1945. However, unbeknownst to him, the Soviets were busy making plans for their invasion of southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, which were Japanese territory.

[roody]

41. Targeting civilians is a crime.

[Raskolnik]

43. Would it have been preferrable to continue the war?

Would the inevitable millions of additional casualties been a more moral outcome to the war?

[LynnTheDem]

170. Sad to see DUers repeating this bullshit of "saved millions".

"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan."

-Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet

[cool user name]

172. Thank you! n/t

[Raskolnik]

187. Quote-mining, no matter what font or how bolded, is not terribly persuasive.

Could you tell me your reasons for thinking that Japan would have surrendered without at least several hundred thousand casualties?

[LynnTheDem]

191. Why dontcha google the quotes.

Which speak for themselves.

[Raskolnik]

194. You didn't answer the question.

Quote-mining is particularly useless in this matter, because there are hundreds of quotes to support any position you wish to take, often from the same individuals.

Why do you think the bombs were unnecessary to bring about a swift end to the war? The Japanese had shown no indication that surender was imminent without additional U.S. action--quite the opposite.

Do you think Japan would have surrendered without additional conventional bombing and/or an invasion of the home islands?

[LynnTheDem]

203. Do some research.

You are repeating a total myth.

That's a fact.

Have a nice day. :)

[everythingsxen]

204. Wow so a quote equals fact?

Then I guess we were right to invade Iraq, since they had WMD:

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. - Dick Cheney, speech to VFW National Convention, Aug. 26, 2002

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons. - George W. Bush, speech to UN General Assembly, Sept. 12, 2002

No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.- Donald Rumsfeld, testimony to Congress, Sept. 19, 2002

The world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq.- George W. Bush, Nov. 23, 2002

http://www.apfn.net/MESSAGEBOARD/02-10-04/discussion.cgi.25.html

I mean, those are quotes and all quotes are apparently true right? Your quote de facto disproves historians who say that yes the civilian leadership wanted peace, but that the Emperor and his cabinet refused... which means then that since these are qutes as well, they prove Iraq had WMD and was an immediate threat to the US.

[LynnTheDem]

220. Oh it's a bit more than "a quote".

Fact is, Japan tried for peace several times. And yes, that is FACT.

But don't worry about it, if you're happy believing a myth. Much easier than researching and fact-finding. :)

[Raskolnik]

226. You are mistaken in your characterization.

Elements within the Japanese government did put forth peace feelers to both the U.S. and the Soviets. That is a FACT.

Those elements, however, did not have the authority to actually bring about Japan's surrender. That is a FACT.

Those with the authority and ability to surrender, namely the Council and the military leadership, showed absolutely no inclination towards surrender. That is a FACT.

[everythingsxen]

234. Much easier to to re-invent facts to suit your needs

than to actually read the research you supposedly have.

The peace faction seized on the bombing as decisive justification of surrender. Kōichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest advisors, stated: "We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war." Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief Cabinet secretary in 1945, called the bombing "a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war." According to these historians and others, the pro-peace civilian leadership was able to use the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to convince the military that no amount of courage, skill, and fearless combat could help Japan against the power of atomic weapons.

Yes, Japan did want peace. The pro-peace faction of Japan that is. The Emperor and most of his cabinet did not.

But don't worry about it, if you are happy believing that 20,000+ US soldiers dying along with several hundred thousand Japanese soldiers and civilians in a long and protracted engagement is the greater moral choice than dropping two bombs and killing a few hundred thousand civilians and soldiers (after dropping leaflets, warning them to get out btw). Much easier than researching and fact-finding.

[Raskolnik]

205. I have done enough research to know that quote mining not terribly useful

I'm more interested in reasoning than cherry-picked quotes.

[LynnTheDem]

210. Sure, I'll help you with your research.

Are you even aware of the history of the bullshit "millions of lives saved" you blindly quote?

No, obviously you are not. McGeorge Bundy, who admitted he made the figure up. And Truman was constantly embellishing his figure upwards. Very much like bush's ever-changing "rationales" for his bullshit invasion of Iraq;

In June and July 1945, Joint Chiefs of Staff committees predicted that between 20,000 and 40,000 Americans would die in
the one or two invasions for which they had drawn contingency plans. While still in office, President Truman usually placed
the number at about a quarter of a million, but by 1955 had doubled it to half a million. Winston Churchill said the attacks
had spared well over 1.2 million Allies.

Truman's bushism:

August 9, 1945: "this new weapon will result in saving thousands of American lives."

December 15, 1945: "It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities . . ."

Late 1946: "A year less of war will mean life for three hundred thousand - maybe half a million - of America's finest youth."

October 1948: "In the long run we could save a quarter of a million young Americans from being killed, and would save an equal number of Japanese young men from being killed."

April 6, 1949: "I thought 200,000 of our young men would be saved."

November 1949: estimating the cost of an Allied invasion of Japan to be "half a million casualties."

January 12, 1953: Truman raises the estimate to "a minimum one quarter of a million" and maybe "as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy."

The Myths of Hiroshima

The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy."
http://www.latimes.com/sehttp://www.latimes.com/services/site/premium/access-registered.intercept

or

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0805-24.htm

The Casualty Myth

The estimate that up to one million American casualties might occur in an assault on Japan is simply wrong.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/1986/WLT.htm

Hiroshima: The Strange Myth of Half a Million American Lives Saved
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0162-2889(198523)10%3A2%3C121%3AHTSMOH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q

The Hiroshima Myth
Every year during the first two weeks of August the mass news media and many politicians at the national level trot out the "patriotic" political myth that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in August of 1945 caused them to surrender, and thereby saved the lives of anywhere from five hundred thousand to one million American soldiers, who did not have to invade the islands.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/denson7.html

A Postwar Myth: 500000 U.S. Lives Saved
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June/July 1986

Hiroshima Myths Live On

For six decades the belief that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs averted a million American deaths has become part of accepted mythology that still goes unquestioned by a majority of Americans. These exagerated figures offered the psychological justification Americans needed to convince themselves that as horrible as the atomic bombs were, their use was actually humane, given that they saved more lives than they took.

General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander Europe during World War II:

“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, attempting to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. . . .”

In a post-war interview, Eisenhower told a journalist, “…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

Eisenhower, Dwight D (1999) The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-56. Doubleday & Co., Inc., 312-313. ASIN: B000DZAL8I.

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

General Henry “Hap” Arnold, Commanding General of the US Army Air Forces during World War II,

“It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”

Truman’s own Chief of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy;

“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…. 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

John McCloy, asst Sec. of War

"I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs."
-McCloy quoted in James Reston, Deadline, pg. 500.

Ralph A. Bard,Undersecretary of the Navy

"I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of (giving) a warning (of the atomic bomb) was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted." He continued, "In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn't have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb."
-War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75

Lewis Strauss, Special Asst to Sec. of the Navy

"Primarily it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate... "It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world...".
-The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 145, 325.

Paul Nitz, Vice Chairman, US Strategic Bombing Survey

"While I was working on the new plan of air attack... concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945."
-Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 36-37

"Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands would have been necessary."
-Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 44-45.

Ellis Zacharias, Deputy Director of the Office of Navy Intgelligence
-Ellis Zacharias, The A-Bomb Was Not Needed, United Nations World, Aug. 1949, pg. 29

General Carl Spaatz, commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific
-Herbert Feis Papers, Box 103, N.B.C. Interviews, Carl Spaatz interview by Len Giovannitti, Library of Congress

Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials)

"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
-The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359

Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after interviewing hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, reported:

"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."

"millions of lives saved"? Myth.

[Raskolnik]

212. Again, quote mining is not convincing. Save yourself the time.

You can post hundreds of quotes that support any contention you wish to make. If you can't support those quotes with your own reasoning, you haven't really accomplished anything.

Based on Japanese actions throughout the war, particularly invasion of Okinawa, I find the estimates of several hundred thousand casualties to be fairly conservative. The Council showed no signs of a surrender, the military was adamantly opposed to any surrender (demonstrated by the insurrection following the actual surrender), and Japan's civilian population showed no signs that it would welcome any invasion.

[LynnTheDem]

213. rotflmao!!!

Alright dear, you just carry on believing a myth.

:rofl:

[Raskolnik]

214. Do you have a point other than cut & pasted quotes?

Why do *you* think Japan would have surrendered without further military action?

[LynnTheDem]

215. My dear; the virtually unanimous judgement of the most informed

senior US military commanders (and most the US govt officials) said it very plainly;

There was no military necessity for dropping those bombs on Japan; Japan was already defeated.

I go with the experts; there was no military necessity for dropping those bombs on Japan; Japan was already defeated.

But you carry on believing the myth. After all, there's no way you can prove or disprove it to yourself as that would require researching what the experts of the time said. And that would be "quote mining".

:rofl:

Good bye! :)

[Raskolnik]

216. You have yet to make an argument.

I'll ask again: why do *you* think Japan would have surrendered without additional military action?

[Name removed]

232. Deleted message

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

[Homer Wells]

77. All WAR

is a Crime when you think about it!!!! But it is still a part of the Human Condition.

:shrug:

[Wednesdays]

206. Photo

Colorized photo of people being treated for serious burns, about a mile and a half from ground zero, around 3 hours after the detonation in Hiroshima:



Word is many of the victims' skin "melted" off their fingers and hands (see the schoolgirl's left hand). The army personnel applying the only medication available: cooking oil.

[Guaranteed]

270. KILLING. FUCKING. PEOPLE. IS A CRIME.

That's what WAR IS.

[krispos42]

278. That's the problem with high-altitude bombing

The aim isn't so good.

At high altitude and with bombs, you target can't be hit with more precision than "that section of the city", at least until recently. And trying to hit a target of strategic importance in a city... well, all you can do is not blatantly target residential areas.

[LynnTheDem]

167. That's a myth.

Still repeated by too many Americans, but at least it's down to under 35% nowadays.

[cool user name]

171. They were ready to surrender ... documentary record proves that.

[Joe Chi Minh]

177. They do nothing of the kind. The militarists were holding out - even

after the first A-bomb was dropped.

[LynnTheDem]

218. Hey, stop posting FACTS!

And don't mention that secret memorandum published by Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan on August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, where Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials.

Don't mention NSA has the declassified documents.

And also don't mention the fact that in April and May 1945, Japan made three attempts through neutral Sweden and Portugal to end the war peacefully. Nor the Japanese peace attempts with the US through Portugal, on May 7, and again through Sweden, on the 10th.

And of course I need not tell you not to mention the fact that all of Truman's military top brass told him there was no need to drop the bombs as Japan was already defeated.

Coz mentioning any of that would be FACTS and "quote mining". :rofl:

Oh and whatever ya do, DON'T mention Truman's incredibly unbelievably jaw-droppingly huge total lie that rivals bush's bullshit when he said;

"The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

:wow:

That's one of the world's biggest lies. bush beats everyone in sheer number, but he's tied with Truman for absolute jaw-dropper.
FACT is, almost all of the victims were civilians, (and some US POWs) and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (issued in 1946) stated in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population." Declassified docs at NSA back that up.

[rman]

181. but you seemed to argue at first that Japan would not have lost

if the US wouldn't have dropped the bomb:

"I think the world is much, much better off for Japan having lost the war."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2942631#2942671

Only after it is pointed out that Japan would have lost anyway, you come up with another argument.

How certain can you be that a conventional invasion would have cost anywhere near as many casualties as nuking two large civilian centers? - which btw was declared to be a war crime by the Nuremberg Trial.

So, by today's standards the nuking of Japan definitely was a war crime.

[Raskolnik]

188. I'll clarify:

I think the world is much, much better off for Japan having lost the war, and much better off for Japan having lost the war the way it did.

The estimates for casualties for invasion of the Japanese homelands were in the hundreds of of thousands at a minimum. Past experience (particularly the invasion of Okinawa) supported the notion that any invasion would be resisted to nearly the last man. Do you know of any large-scale engagement with the Japanese that would suggest otherwise?

[SOS]

201. Eisenhower would have made the moral choice

"The emperor, himself, on July 18, 1945, wrote Truman a letter "looking for peace." In his journal, Truman bluntly characterized this message as the "telegram from the Japanese emperor asking for peace." On Aug. 3, 1945, an official’s diary notes that Truman, Secretary of State Byrnes and Chief of Staff Leahy were discussing a telegram "from the emperor asking for peace."
Message: The war is over if the emperor is retained.

Truman, it is believed, dropped the atomic bombs to intimidate the Soviets.

"The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war over Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." — Adm. William D. Leahy.

"I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to (Secretary of War Stimson) 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 our country should avoid shocking world opinion by a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives." — President Dwight D. Eisenhower."

http://www.thedailystar.com/opinion/letters/2005/08/lt0819.html

[roamer65]

287. I have a lot of respect for Eisenhower.

He was a good, moral man with a conscience.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

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

[Raskolnik]

17. Would you have let them keep any conquered territories?

Would you have left their government intact?

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

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[Raskolnik]

24. It is a misrepresentation to call it their "1 condition"

It simply wasn't.

[gulfcoastliberal]

160. What about the rapeof Nanjing by the Japanese?

That,IMO were much more brutal deaths for those 300,000 souls.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/223038.stm

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

252. I think Gandhi covered that in his statement.

Whether the victims were shot, raped, or bayoneted in Nanjing by the Japanese, or they were incinerated, died of the burns, or died of the radiation in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Justifying it by saying "well, they did worse" or "as bad", is the same rationale used by all mass murderers.

[originalpckelly]

4. So was Pearl Harbor...

and the war that it started. Starting a war of aggression is widely viewed as a war crime.

[Selatius]

32. That doesn't detract from nuking women and children one bit.

You may disagree, but I differentiate between attacking a military target and attacking civilians. Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima are apples and oranges. They're both bad; don't get me wrong because I would've condemned both if I had been alive then, but they're not to be considered in the same context.

[originalpckelly]

38. The Japanese have absolutely no ability to criticize us...

they started the war and they did horrible, absolutely horrible things to the native Asian populations and captured American GIs.

The only reason they dropped the A-Bomb is that they knew every Japanese soldier and even civilian would fight to the death, even if the US and the Allies were to use overwhelming force. The casualties of an all-out invasion would have been much higher than the nukes.

[Selatius]

46. We're talking about different things, you and I

They have as much right to criticize us for our faults as we have to criticize them of their faults.

Eisenhower was on record as being against the atomic bombings as he concluded they would've surrendered anyway without a land invasion, and he communicated his position to Truman, but he decided to OK the mission anyway.

[Raskolnik]

47. Not to nit-pick, but Eisenhower didn't really have anything to do with the Pacific theater

[Selatius]

50. True, but his position was rather clear on the issue, and so was the US Strategic Bombing Survey.

They concluded Japan would've surrendered anyway even if the bombs weren't dropped and even if the Soviets hadn't entered the war against Imperial Japan.

[Raskolnik]

53. There is really no doubt the would have surrendered eventually--

Japan could not have prevented the invasion of the home islands, but they could have made the costs very, very high for both their own civilians as well as the U.S.

I would agree wholeheartedly that dropping the bombs was a horrible act. In this instance, however, I believe that particular horrible act was necessary to avoid millions of additional casualties.

[Selatius]

68. The US Strategic Bombing Survey stated they would've surrendered without an invasion.

I had forgotten to mention that part of their conclusion.

[Raskolnik]

71. Leaving aside that strategic bombing advocates are notorious for overstating their effectiveness

That would have required an enormous amount of additional conventional bombing over a period of several months, until the Japanese population was starved into submission. How is that preferable to the two atomic weapons?

[Selatius]

82. No, it wouldn't have by that point of time, in all likelihood.

All of Japan's larger cities had already been reduced to ash, and its industrial capacity to wage war went up in the smoke of those cities. Japan was cut off from resources in the Pacific by the US fleet. Strategically, the war was already lost from the Japanese perspective. The only sticking point was terms of surrender.

The US wanted nothing short of unconditional surrender, but the Japanese wanted one precondition: That Emperor Hirohito would be allowed to remain in place, as he was revered by the Japanese as a holy figure. The US rejected.

Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired the message to his ambassador in Moscow that "Unconditonal surrender is the only obstacle to peace..."

[Raskolnik]

89. That is just not accurate.

The US wanted nothing short of unconditional surrender, but the Japanese wanted one precondition: That Emperor Hirohito would be allowed to remain in place, as he was revered by the Japanese as a holy figure. The US rejected.

That was NOT the position of the Japanese government. There were a few within the government that took that stance, but they were not in any position to actually implement their wishes. It was NOT the Supreme Council's position, and it was NOT supported by the military.

[Selatius]

132. The Emperor himself was pushing for surrender by June 1945.

He and his loyalists were in a deadlock with the militarists on the Imperial Council. The militarists were still holding out for a negotiated settlement. The Japanese government at the time officially rejected the Potsdam Declaration, but they were making diplomatic overtures to the USSR to mediate a settlement between Japan and the US. Nothing came of it, as the US dropped the first atom bomb on Hiroshima. The Imperial Council met again, and the only agreement they could formulate was to continue talking to Moscow to seek mediation as the generals still were holding out. Then Nagasaki was lit up, and the Council took a final vote, and Hirohito was forced for the first time to cast the tie-breaking vote. He voted to end the war. The vote was 3-3 with Hirohito being the tie-breaker. In the end, the US acquiesced to allowing the emperor to stand anyway.

[roamer65]

136. The US payed the Emperor a bit of respect during the latter days of the war.

My great uncle was on the B-29's out of Tinian during the later war years. He even saw the two atomic bombs on the island in summer 1945. The B-29's were under explicit orders NOT to bomb the imperial palace. As my great uncle put it to me, "You don't bomb God".

[piedmont]

86. More people died of fire-bombing than A-bombing

that report assumed that the Japanese would surrender after continued fire-bombing.

[roamer65]

131. True they would have surrendered without the atomic bombings.

The Soviets would have mounted an invasion of Hokkaido, which was the next landmass after the Kuril Islands. Once that started to go poorly for Japanese, which it would have, they would have been running for American arms. Unconditionally. The Japanese would have done it to keep the Soviets off Honshu.

[Buck Rabbit]

242. Yep. The Russians were more than happy to take out Japan.

They had a score to settle; actually three. Just like Stalin gleefully took astronomical casualties for the honor of taking Berlin, pounding it out with Japan would have been no problem.

The fact is that it can not be proven that the dropping of the two bombs caused the Japanese to surrender. Though two cities were destroyed, just as deadly firebombing attacks had happened before. In the gap of time between the first A-bomb being dropped and the Japanese surrender, Russia obliterated a Japanese army of a million men in Manchuria. From a standpoint of continuing a war which event was the bigger blow: losing 160,000 women, children and old people or losing a million soldiers? Take it from the horse's Imperial mouth:


EMPEROR HIROHITO'S SURRENDER RESCRIPT TO JAPANESE TROOPS

August 17, 1945

New York Times.

TO THE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE IMPERIAL FORCES:

Three years and eight months have elapsed since we declared war on the United States and Britain. During this time our beloved men of the army and navy, sacrificing their lives, have fought valiantly on disease-stricken and barren lands and on tempestuous waters in the blazing sun, and of this we are deeply grateful.

Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war against us, to continue the war under the present internal and external conditions would be only to increase needlessly the ravages of war finally to the point of endangering the very foundation of the Empire's existence

With that in mind and although the fighting spirit of the Imperial Army and Navy is as high as ever, with a view to maintaining and protecting our noble national policy we are about to make peace with the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and Chungking.

To a large number of loyal and brave officers and men of the Imperial forces who have died in battle and from sicknesses goes our deepest grief. At the same time we believe the loyalty and achievements of you officers and men of the Imperial forces will for all time be the quintessence of our nation.

We trust that you officers and men of the Imperial forces will comply with our intention and will maintain a solid unity and strict discipline in your movements and that you will bear the hardest of all difficulties, bear the unbearable and leave an everlasting foundation of the nation.


------
edited "before" to "between" in second paragraph

[rebel with a cause]

134. Don't advocate either, but two big differences

Pearl Harbor was a military base, the two cities were not. Also the type of bombs dropped were two different kind. The bombs dropped on the two Japanese cities basically cooked the people who were not not killed quickly by it from the inside out, much like being put into a micro- wave oven.

Our cry to go into the war was "Remember Pearl Harbor" and we sang songs like "We're going have to slap that dirty little Jap." Just as we went into Afghanistan and Iraq, we went in for vengeance. That may have been our right,for Japan and Afghanistan, but then there are a lot of countries out there (including Iraq) that have the right to attack us for what our government has done to them. If they do, are you going to agree that they have the right to drop a nuclear bomb on our cities because of our governments aggressions. Put yourselves in another's shoes instead of sitting on your high horses and feeling that we are entitled to indignations above all others.

I know this is going to anger a lot of you, but I call them the way I see them. And I see that I am not above the poorest of the poor and not beneath the richest of the rich. I am not entitled to any more rights or any less than any one else, and neither are any of you.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

163. exactly.

[ProfessorGAC]

164. A Technical Nit To Pick

Neither microwaves or gamma rays from a nuclear device cook "from the inside out". That's a myth which is not rooted in science.

Any electromagnetic radiation coming from the outside will, by definition, hit tissues on the outside first. There is nothing to stop those external tissues from absorbing the energy so they will, again by definition, be the first to be cooked.

The "inside-out" thing is simply not true, and it lessens your other points when using it as a moral premise.
The Professor

[rebel with a cause]

176. Sorry professor

I am just a sociologist/layman who has read the accounts of how the people suffered as they died on their attempt to escape the hell caused by the atomic bomb. I based my description on that, and others who have described it as such. Since I am not a scientist or a medical doctor, I would never attempt to describe what happened to the victims of the experiment on my own.

[ProfessorGAC]

182. No Need To Be Sorry

Those people were cooked at the speed of light and it doesn't really matter if it's inside or out or the other way around. Vaporized is vaporized and exposure to a 15,000 degree wind is exposure to a 15,000 degree wind. I share your sympathy for those victims.

It's just a the "inside out" thing is a myth that shouldn't be perpetuated. We needn't exaggerate the condition to try to understand the horror. No?
The Professor

[rebel with a cause]

208. No.

I agree that no exaggeration is neccesary. The horror was enough on its own.

[rinsd]

183. Except that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets

They were far from purely civilians installations having munitions factories, Navy harbors, and the staging ground for one Japan's largest army group.

Were there better military targets? Perhaps.

[LynnTheDem]

219. Well said.

What angers me is the fact of this "American superiority complex" far too many Americans suffer from. That and their incredibly deep ignorance.

[rebel with a cause]

227. Do you mean -

the nationalistic view that many have. It always baffles me that we can cry about Pearl Harbor and other national disasters, but when we speak of things this country has done to others, it is always justified. It was just progress. We were bringing them democracy. They were a threat. Better to start a war there so there won't be one here. Better for their children to die than ours. The only time there becomes an outcry from some is when the number of our soldiers to die becomes troublesome.

It goes on and on, and has for centuries. Unfortunately, U.S. citizens are probably not alone in this selfishness.

[Raskolnik]

229. I don't have a problem arguing for the superiority of the U.S. over the Axis in WWII.

None at all. We weren't good guys, because good guys don't firebomb Dresden and Tokyo, but we sure as hell were the much, much, much better guys.

[rebel with a cause]

233. Does that include

The Americans that became millionaires off of their dealings with the Nazis. The war profiteering is sometimes suspected as being the true reason it took us so large to become involved in the conflict.

[Raskolnik]

235. Yes there were profiteers. Yes the U.S. did horrible things, sometimes without justification.

That does not change the fact that the world is a FAR better place because the Allies won. That does not excuse the many wrongs committed by the U.S., nor does is relieve the U.S. of responsibility, but it does provide a context for the choices available to the world at the time.

[rebel with a cause]

236. I agree, I'm glad we won over the nazis and even Japan but

I wish we had not dropped those two bombs. Heck, I wish they had not tested it out on our own guys before they dropped them on Japan.

I am not, and I am sure the other poster is not also, saying that this is the worse country in the world and the only one that does things wrong. But what bothers me is when I hear people excuse what we as a country has done, even being proud of it, and yet cry out for vengence on countries that are doing far less than we are doing even at the same time. There is an old saying, that you should look deep in the mirror until you can see who you really are. Only then can you understand how to make yourself better.

[kenny blankenship]

146. Not to mention the 30 million Chinese killed from 1931-45 by Japan

Frankly Pearl Harbor pales beside what Japan perpetrated on the Chinese mainland. Yeah Pearl Harbor was a "sneak attack" and the start of a war without justification of self-defense, but for all that it was still just a fight between two nation's militaries. In China the Japanese Imperial Army killed civilians like Rosie O'Donnell kills a bag of chips. To celebrate taking the Chinese capital Nanking, the Japanese forces executed ~300,000 Chinese, most of them civilians. That wasn't how many they killed in order to capture the city. That was how many people, stripped of alll means of defense, historical sources tell us that the Japanese killed to pat themselves on the back.

[lunerod]

179. Exactly

Sure dropping the bomb was wrong, but Japan has no room to criticize the US actions during the war. Both sides were equally terrible during that time.

[rman]

184. You compare bombing of civilians with bombing of a military target,

and imply the two are comparable. What was that about war crime again?
Even the number of victims is not comparable.

[sweetheart]

6. Good for Japan, those firebombings were crimes too..

..as well. Curtis le may should have, along with robert macnamara and the whole
command of those war crimes, should have been hung by the neck until dead.

The slaughter that 'the fog of war' exposes in macnamara's own words,
just leaves the viewer aghast. No matter what claim the man has made with
his life, he's particpated in the mass murder of millions of japanese civilians..
.. all so he can preach to uz today about his lessons in life.

Curtis Le May's command dropped the a-bombs too, it was a style thing, and once
a war criminal gets on a roll with the blunt weapons, they just fire until
told to stop.

[Raskolnik]

10. How would you suggest the U.S. have ended the war? n/t

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

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

[piedmont]

33. They did not deserve negotiation...

unless it was to negotiate a total surrender. Additionally, how do you negotiate with a foe that is divided on how to proceed?

And what do we do while negotiations are taking place? Not drop the A-bomb? Stop fire-bombing industrial cities, allowing them to ramp up production of war materials? Keep fire-bombing them and killing as many or more civilians as we did with the A-bombs?

[Zensea]

31. like this?

The bombings were militarily unnecessary according to these folk. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

Those who argue that the bombings were unnecessary on military grounds hold that Japan was already essentially defeated and ready to surrender.
One of the most notable individuals with this opinion was then-General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He wrote in his memoir The White House Years:
"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. 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."<53><54>
Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General Douglas MacArthur (the highest-ranking officer in the Pacific Theater), Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), General Carl Spaatz (commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific), and Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials),<54> and Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph A. Bard,<55> and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.<56>
"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.<57>
"The use of at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.<57>
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after interviewing hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, reported:
"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."<58><57>
The survey assumed that continued conventional bombing attacks on Japan—with additional direct and indirect casualties—would be needed to force surrender by the November or December dates mentioned.
Many, including General MacArthur, have contended that Japan would have surrendered before the bombings if the U.S. had notified Japan that it would accept a surrender that allowed Emperor Hirohito to keep his position as titular leader of Japan, a condition the U.S. did in fact allow after Japan surrendered. U.S. leadership knew this, through intercepts of encoded Japanese messages, but refused to clarify Washington's willingness to accept this condition. Before the bombings, the position of the Japanese leadership with regards to surrender was divided. Several diplomats favored surrender, while the leaders of the Japanese military voiced a commitment to fighting a "decisive battle" on Ky?sh?, hoping that they could negotiate better terms for an armistice afterward. The Japanese government did not decide what terms, beyond preservation of an imperial system, they would have accepted to end the war; as late as August 9, the Supreme War Council was still split, with the hard-liners insisting Japan should demobilize its own forces, no war crimes trials would be conducted, and no occupation of Japan would be allowed. Only the direct intervention of the emperor ended the dispute, and even then a military coup was attempted to prevent the surrender.

[piedmont]

51. read the last half-paragraph of your own excerpt more closely

"Before the bombings, the position of the Japanese leadership with regards to surrender was divided. Several diplomats favored surrender, while the leaders of the Japanese military voiced a commitment to fighting a "decisive battle" on Ky?sh?, hoping that they could negotiate better terms for an armistice afterward. The Japanese government did not decide what terms, beyond preservation of an imperial system, they would have accepted to end the war; as late as August 9, the Supreme War Council was still split, with the hard-liners insisting Japan should demobilize its own forces, no war crimes trials would be conducted, and no occupation of Japan would be allowed. Only the direct intervention of the emperor ended the dispute, and even then a military coup was attempted to prevent the surrender."

It could have gone either way.

And here's another buried gem:

"The survey assumed that continued conventional bombing attacks on Japan—with additional direct and indirect casualties—would be needed to force surrender by the November or December dates mentioned."

So instead of the nukes, let's keep fire-bombing Japanese industrial cities every night for up to 2 or 3 months. And hope that the military faction gives way to the diplomatic faction, and that the diplomatic faction doesn't hold on to unrealistic expectations of what surrender terms they deserve. If, if, but, if...

[Zensea]

55. WHY? Doesn't change my response (I already read it closely enough ...

...as well other parts I didn't excerpt.)

I was simply answering the question:
How would you suggest the U.S. have ended the war?

There's my answer.

The question of the morality is a different question.
If the morality of the action is a simple equation of quantity, then it will always get bogged down in hypotheticals of how many lives were lost or would have been lost comparatively.

But that's not really the way to judge the morality of the action of dropping the atomic bomb.
It's not a quantitative question, that is a question of degree, it's a question of kind.

This is why chemical weapons are considered to be less moral than conventional weapons.

[Raskolnik]

59. The point is that the atomic bombs did not exist in a vacuum.

The morality of using them can only be considered against the alternative, and as your post pointed out, the alternative was a continuation of the war for a minimum of several months (I think the more realistic estimates are longer). That continuation would have resulted in millions of additional casualties, starvation, destruction. Is that preferable to the relatively quick end brought about by the use of atomic weapons?

[Zensea]

61. Yes, in my opinion

Because I think that the use of atomic weapons crosses a line that we as a species should not cross.
Period.

I could debate your choice of adjectives -- the set in stone assumption of millions of casualties, but my opinion is not based on whether or not that hypothetical would have turned out to be true or not.

[piedmont]

78. That reasoning is very flawed.

By that reasoning, one would logically be willing to kill millions of people by fire-bombing to keep from killing them by A-bombing them. Japan's actions already crossed a line that we as a species shouldn't cross and would have kept doing them. To end those actions, we used the atomic bomb.

Why, exactly, is the atomic bomb so much worse than fire-bombing?

edit: spelling, and added "worse" to final sentence

[sweetheart]

94. but you're repeating the myth

... that the bombs saved the lives of 'our boys'. The press release and
every history book whitewashing that crime repeats the same lie.

Fact is, the nuclear bombs were detonated to warn off russia, to show a
belligerance towards the communists who were taking korea and rolling up
japan's occupation in china.

This essay exposes the myth you are repeating from its historical context:
<snip>...
We must be careful not to get bogged down in an argument such as whether or not the firebombing of Tokyo was strategically justifiable, and whether or not the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were strategically justifiable. The fundamental question is why this theory justifying mass killing has persisted for so long even after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is important to ask why the strategy was applied during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and why variants of it are still used to some extent to justify the "collateral damage" of "precision bombing" in wars such as those in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq. At the same time ways should be explored to increase understanding of the fact that killing civilians is a crime against humanity regardless of the asserted military justification, a crime that should be punished on the basis of the Nuremberg and Geneva principles. Finally, it is important to remember that no war has ever been brought to an end simply by indiscriminate bombing and mass killing of civilians. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that such strategies typically strengthened resistance.<snip>

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7868

[Raskolnik]

103. Two points:

1) Dropping the bomb(s) served as a demonstration to the Soviet Union of our capability and our resolve. Simply because an act has more than one purpose, some more noble than others, does not negate its primary purpose. Which was...

2) I agree with your bolded text: indiscriminate mass bombing was unlikely to bring about an end to the war, unless it was after an extended period of starvation. That's why the use of the atomic weapons resulted in fewer casualties than would have been inevitable by either conventional bombing or an invasion.

[piedmont]

114. You must not have read my post because I said no such thing.

The lives I was talking about were Japanese, not ours. Do not accuse me of lying.

[sweetheart]

135. apologies for any unintended insult

How could you lie, you weren't there. Its just a story, and we're either
'on-story' or 'off-story'. . . and we've all had it hammered in to us that the
nuclear weapons were necessary, that they saved lives, and that we should be proud
of them and embrace them like mother's milk. Its a social narrative that has been
programmed in to every subconscious and consicous transmitter out there.

And no matter what we feel, they dropped the fat boys anyways, and we are the children
of the enola gay who can only look out the rear view mirror at the pretty fireworks
that daddy dropped out of the airplane.

Apologies for any insinuation that you lied or are in any way deviant. :-)

[piedmont]

139. Ah. "You can't see what I can because you've been programmed and can't think for yourself"

That's a good one.

[sweetheart]

148. Its not you, its our whole culture

Its not you, you are repeating dead narratives with virile belief,
where you were not there at all, and have been fed a load of cow
for a lifetime like the rest of uz.

We can't think for ourselves, no. We are handed a dialectic in the
media, and people take one side or the other, with the dialectic itself
designed to be a false conundrum. Then people argue the precedence of
scientific god over religious god proudly confident that the new god
is better than the old one, not seeing that the very thought itself
is a virus, and that by identifying it, all who claim to think it
are trapped to the wheel of its manufacture; in the cynical newsrooms
and boardrooms of our perfect industrail order of corporate war democracy.

It is a good one, the whole population is effectively brainwashed with
anyone who questions the status quo immediately given any failed programming
by the nearby animals in the herd who dutifully repeat the thoughts of others
as the mantra for conformity; how dare anyone break free.

[piedmont]

150. ,,,And we're all just brains in vats, being fed what we think is reality...

No, wait. I'm just a brain in a vat and you all are fiction that's being wired into that brain.

up is down, down is up, and I can't think for myself. :eyes:


You'd make a great Creationist, sweetheart.

[sweetheart]

151. We are knowledge without thought

I doubt there is a single 'thought' on this entire thread that
is unique, rather people are simply modelling the clothes as they've
seen them worn on the catwalk. Since when did the model become the
clothes.

I'm not a creationist, i recognize that our industrial system and its
planners had strategic and long term population control (on edit: class) in their
interests when they developed the institutions of psyops that have
been used on the public for over half a century to ensure
effective control and groupthink... and its working to a charm,
hardly a republican can say something not on faux.

I do like being a creationist :-) but only on tuesdays.

[Zensea]

101. You're looking at it quantitatively

and hypothetically.

That's not the way I'm looking at, as I already stated.

You're entitled to your opinion, I just don't happen to agree with it.
It's not a matter of the type of "reasoning" you are engaging in.

[piedmont]

108. Yes, I am looking at it quantitatively.

That is how it should be viewed.
If I must choose between a course of action that will kill 200,000 of the enemy's people or one that will probably kill some quantity more than that plus our own troops, I know which one to choose. The report in question assumed that fire-bombing would continue. That's one course of action. We dropped the A-bomb and didn't have to fire-bomb. That's another.
Yes, the A-bomb is a horrific weapon. So is fire-bombing.

[Zensea]

115. Should be viewed in your world, not in mine.

Maybe if I was sitting in a classroom or at a table in a coffee shop I'd continue to debate this in specific detail with you, but I see your mind is made up and so is mine.

Generally, I don't believe it is at all obvious that it should be viewed quantitatively. Morality is not always based on quantitative issues.

[piedmont]

119. Then enlighten me on the qualitative differences you perceive.

Again, why is the atom bomb so much worse than fire bombing?



edit: i before e except after c!

[everythingsxen]

7. I don't know..

I have mixed feelings.

On the one hand it was atrocious and horrible. On the other hand the bombings saved a lot of American and most likely, Japanese lives. Without the A-Bomb, the Japanese would have fought inch by bloody inch and given their traditions, would never have surrendered until we had utterly broken them. God only knows how many would have died on all sides.

It also sent a message to Russia and was a prelude to the Cold War.

While I am sure more than a few DUers have their gripes and complaints about the Cold War, it was at least a period of stability.

[piedmont]

19. Think Okinawa, but 1000 times more costly to both sides, with Japan being divided afterward. nt

[KeyLimeDem]

12. Still no apology for Nanking

And now Japan wants to "change" their education
policies to bring back the good old days before WWII. The
Japanese haven't faced up to their actions in Korea,
Manchuria, the Philippines and elsewhere.  

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

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

[Raskolnik]

27. While I believe everyone here agrees Fallujah to be a tragedy, to compare

it to what the Japanese did at Nanjing displays a fundamental misunderstanding of at least one of those occurrences.

[JVS]

15. I don't think this country has asked to be excused for that one.

When the whole country is sorry, we should make sure to send him a note.

[Mend]

23. The Nazis get the most blame for atrocities but what the Japanese

soldiers did to human beings was beyond description. He can object to the bomb but he had better put it into context with an apology for the massive war crimes done by the Japanese.

[scarletwoman]

30. "truly unforgivable on humanitarian grounds" -- absolutely correct!

State-sponsored mass murder must never be rationalized or forgiven. I don't care WHO does it, it's still mass murder and ALWAYS immoral.

sw

[Raskolnik]

37. Would it have been moral to prolong the war at a cost of millions of casualties?

What would have been an acceptable end?

[rollopollo]

42. Raises some interesting issues

Such as: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unforgivable crimes. They were the largest scale use of WMD in recent memory. But if the crimes are unforgivable, what is it that we can do about it now? An apology, financial settlement, more awareness of this issue amongst Americans?

In number terms, the deaths caused by dropping those two bombs are a small fraction of the overall deaths caused in WWII but it certainly sets a dangerous precedent.

Also, its interesting that following WWII we drafted a constitution for Japan that forbid them to have a traditional military, only a self-defense force to be used within national boundaries, but the U.S., was allowed to expand its war machine, despite the fact that we are the only country to have used atomic weapons against civillians in history.

[Zhade]

44. He happens to be correct, as history bears out.

NT!

[Raskolnik]

45. How does history bear that out? n/t

[Zhade]

48. Read the thread, it's already been answered.

NT!

[Raskolnik]

52. No, not really.

Do you think it would have been better to continue the war?

[Zhade]

111. I think you're setting up a strawman argument, as I never suggested that.

It's also a flawed premise, as the Japanese would have surrendered if we'd just given them what they wanted - the token retention of their emperor's title, which is what we gave them anyway AFTER we dropped the nukes.

As I said, the question has been answered. If not to your satisfaction, so be it; I'm on the right side of history, along with most of the world's opinion, on this one and feel no need to try to convince you.

[Raskolnik]

112. I'm sorry, but you are factually incorrect.

...the Japanese would have surrendered if we'd just given them what they wanted - the token retention of their emperor's title...

That was not the position of Emperor, the Supreme Council, nor the military leadership. It was the position of a small minority within the Japanese government, who had no power to negotiate on behalf of Japan.

[Zhade]

121. Actually, I'm not, but as I said, I don't feel the need to correct you.

NT!

[piedmont]

122. The old "I'm right and you're not" argument. Excellent. nt

[Zhade]

123. It IS pretty excellent, when it's true, like in this case.

As has already been shown several times by other informed DUers on this thread.

[piedmont]

126. Good, I'm glad I'm right and you're not...

as has been shown several times by other informed posters on this thread.

[everythingsxen]

129. So if I understand your position Zhade

You have a contrary view to the history books and even a majority of the posters in this thread, yet when you are challenged on your position, you simply say that you do not have to back-up what you are saying with any sort of facts or documentation.

Absolutely fascinating.

[Zhade]

130. Nope. Others have proven it for me. Your position has not been backed up.

But I'm always open to seeing some evidence, if you guys would just post it.

[everythingsxen]

142. And the dodging game continues...

:eyes:

[rman]

186. No point in repeating the same discussion over and over

No point in wasting time.
Some people will never be convinced. But that's ok.

[-..__...]

49. Pot... kettle... black.

So, what's this guys opinion on Pearl Harbor? The Rape of Nanking? The Bataan Death March? Unit 731?

Where those "inexcusable crimes" as well? or has he conveniently ignored that part of Japans history?

[FlaGranny]

80. I used to work with a survivor of the Bataan Death March.

He survived the March and was a Japanese POW. When he was rescued he weighed 80 pounds. His captors were brutal, and even more so because they had contempt for their prisoners because they had surrendered. The Japanese did not surrender.

[originalpckelly]

81. Was he treated to the Japanese version of a manicure?

(Bamboo shoots up fingernails?)

[FlaGranny]

83. He didn't go into a lot of detail.

Most survivors do not like to talk about or remember what happened to them.

[originalpckelly]

88. Poor soul...

My Grandpa used to talk about it to my mom, and she told me.

YIKES!

I can't even begin to understand how painful that must have been. I've been reading a lot about the mindset people have after being tortured, it makes sense why they wouldn't want to relive it.

[Holly_Hobby]

54. War is wrong

Period.

[Raskolnik]

56. Would the world be a better place had the U.S. not fought Japan?

Absolutely not. War is horrible, no doubt, but sometimes it is nonetheless the lesser of the evils available.

[Holly_Hobby]

57. The World would be a better place if NO ONE fought. n/t

[Raskolnik]

60. That wasn't an option.

Should the U.S. have allowed Japan to achieve its goals in the Pacific?

[Holly_Hobby]

62. It's shouldn't have been started to begin with

There would be no war without someone starting it. I don't care if it wasn't an option. Aggression should be kept in check. Power is the problem.

[Kelly Rupert]

64. And how do you propose keeping aggression in check?

Asking nicely? Should we have politely requested that Hitler get out of Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia? Should we have requested that the Japanese stop their forcible assimilation of China? When one party refuses to consent to international law, what do you do if war is never an option? Keep ceding territory and people to tyrants?

[Raskolnik]

67. You didn't answer the question.

Japan's actions and intentions are a given. They are reality, whether you would like to ignore them or not. The question is what the U.S. should have done in response to those actions.

What should the U.S. have done in response to Japan's actions and intentions?

[Kelly Rupert]

58. Oh, and did he apologize for the Rape of Nanjing?

Because if he didn't, he's not interested in reconciliation and justice; he's simply a nationalist stirring the flames.

[rockymountaindem]

66. Amen

Not only the Rape of Nanjing, but also their siezure of Manchuria, the human experimentation, and the rampant brutality in China, the Philippenes, Indochina and Korea. I'll wait until they apologize profusely and explicitly for those things before I start taking their position on the A-bomb seriously.

As a Jew, I have to say that Germany has gone over and above in taking responsibility for the Holocaust and doing what they can to make up for it (as meager as any such efforts may be in comparison to the tragedy of the Holocaust). I have to give them credit for that, and I appreciate their efforts. As an American, I don't think Japan has come anywhere close to apologizing. According to my Japanese history prof, who has lived there off and on for over 20 years and speaks flawless Japanese, about 1/3 of Japan believes that WWII was a *war of self defense* on the part of Japan. It's hard for me to take comments like those in the OP seriously.

However, I do like to see that the DU tradition of periodically rehashing the use of the atomic bomb is alive and well.

[Chico Man]

159. Look at Western colonialization of East Asia

Thats why they think it was self defense. WWII was the culmination of centuries of injustice brought on by all sides. A neccecary clash of civilizations..

[rockymountaindem]

180. That has nothing to do with Japan

They were one of the colonizers starting at the latest in 1895 with the first Sino-Japanese war. Japan did everything they could during the restoration period to act like a western power on the world stage, and during the 20th century they were just as imperialist as anybody else. That's how they got to station forces in Manchuria in 1906, that's how they annexed Korea and Taiwan. Japan was *not* a victim in any sense, except finally a victim of their own ambitions when they decided to take on all comers in 1941. The Japanese, to rationalize their war of choice, spoke of "ABCD encirclement". ABCD stood for America, Britain, China and the Dutch. Nobody in 1937 could reasonably say that China and the Dutch were threatening Japan, except for propagandistic purposes. As late as the 20s, Japan had an alliance with the British. No, Japan was certainly not a victim of injustice.

[Chico Man]

189. Japan's rationale: if you can't beat them, join them

There was injustice on all sides, culminating in a most disgusting show of human brutality during WWII.

Japan had little contact with imperialism due to luck. Their defensive posture brought on by the encircling imperialist powers, a distrust of Admiral Perry and the Black Ships, combined with intense national pride brought on by the Meiji reforms and the defeat of Russia fueled the agression seen in the next century. I must say that I firmly believe the actions of the imperialist powers you speak of was the biggest influence in what Japan was to do in the following decades. They felt they must take a stance to protect themselves, and for this, I cannot blame them. This was a clash of civilizations and was certainly due to get completely out of hand. And this it did.

[Raskolnik]

198. I sure as hell can blame them.

They felt they must take a stance to protect themselves, and for this, I cannot blame them.

Japan's invasion of Manchuria was no more an act of self-defense than Germany's quest for lebensraum. Japan's systematic rape, torture, enslavement and killing of tens of millions across the Pacific was no more to "protect" Japan than the death camps were for the "protection" of Germany.

If you can't blame Japan for their atrocities during WWII, can you blame Germany for any of their very similar actions?

[Chico Man]

209. I do not blame them for the initial defensive stance

An initial defensive stance that was brought about in a large part by colonial powers in the area... an initial defensive stance that unfortunately morphed into the atrocities you speak of. Nobody can blame Japan for being concerned about colonialism, given the horrible record of colonial powers in East Asia. We all know that "self defense" and "homeland security" often goes far beyond it's original intentions.

You turn my stance into a handy strawman. How could I ever not blame Japan nor Germany for the atrocious actions brought upon humankind? I view the atrocities as one in a long list of atrocities committed by man, tit for tat, throughout human history.

I'm curious as to how you feel about the treatment of Native Americans in this country?

[Raskolnik]

211. It was not a case of defensive posture gone awry--empire was their stated goal

Characterizing Japan's actions as self-defense that went beyond the original intentions is a fundamental micharacterization of the situation.

The invasion of the Pacific rim and the enslavement of tens of millions was not a side effect, it was the primary goal.

[Dunedain]

228. And would have worked too,

if it wasn't for those meddling kids and their dog.

[Chico Man]

247. The primary goal of whom?

The Japanese Govt? And who within the Japanese Govt? Or are you blaming the Japanese people? Good thing we had those internment camps.

Western colonialism of East Asia was a major catalyst.

[Raskolnik]

251. The primary goal of the military, the government, and to some extent, the people.

Japan's actions during the war were not the accidental result of necessary self-defense. Japan's aggressive war was no more legitimate than Germany's, and I believe Japan's civilian population bears at least some responsibility for that, just as Germany's population bears at least some responsibility for the Nazis.

I don't think internment camps were necessary or proper. I'm not at all sure of their relevance, however, other than to provide you with a sense of self-righteousness.

[Chico Man]

253. LOL

I never said they were the "accidental result of necessary self defense." I'm only saying that when one takes a step back at the larger picture in East Asia, one sees that is was only a matter of time before things got out of hand. This is in a large part due to the treatment of East Asians by western powers. Injustice often begets injustice.

When you begin the name calling, you have lost all validity no matter how educated you are on this matter. Furthermore, your utter denial of there being any connection between western colonialism and the aggression of the Japanese is perplexing given your obvious knowledge of history in this part of the world.

No war of aggression is ever legitimate, and the seeds for aggression are often planted many years in advance. I'm only pointing out the obvious in this matter. Western colonialism provided the fertilizer, the spark, the technology, the false legitimacy, and frankly the road map for what transpired over the course of the Japanese imperialist ventures. I repeat, there was injustice on all sides, all sides were arrogant, all sides killed millions of people in the name of their way in utterly horrific manners, and, frankly, I'm just happy I was not alive back then to have experienced it first hand.

Why do most Japanese deny the Rape of Nanjing and the comfort women phenomenon? Because they did not know these things were taking place. Based on your statements, you act as though there were some sort of public referendum of the matter.

This was a clash of civilizations, one that was bound to play out in a dreadful show of aggressive and disgusting human behavior. This was a show that was in the making for centuries, just as we are tending the seedlings of what seems to be another tragic ending in the Middle East.

I'm wonder of you will deny any Western involvement when this one plays out as well?

[Lipton64]

69. I disagree....

Japan has apologized numerous times for its past attrocities and acts but why should they be held to account for the Nanking massacre if we aren't held accountable for our brutal war crimes in the anti-democratic and racist imperial war we waged against Filipino patriots just 40 years previous? We weren't at the time the great dispensers of justice, equality, and democracy as we may have thought we were. We had "colonies" that we were raping and pillaging just like any other thug nation at the time. And I think to separate ourselves from them is not only hypocritical, but setting a very bad example to current and future U.S. officials who may act in a similar manner.(Cheney comes to mind)

Past acts of evil often gives present day justification to horrible criminals......

[Kelly Rupert]

70. Japan apologized numerous times for Nanjing?

I'd like to see a link for that.

Also: You seem to say, "Japan can criticize us because we committed an atrocity. The fact that Japan has committed atrocities is irrelevant. We cannot criticize Japan for its atrocities because we committed an atrocity." That doesn't square.

[originalpckelly]

75. We all seem to be forgetting just one tiny little detail...

THEY STARTED IT!

It's childish, but hell it's true. There wouldn't have been any deaths in WWII if they and the other Axis powers hadn't been such little fuckers.

Let's NOT forget that.

[Chico Man]

158. Japan was following a western pattern of colonialism

They just went too far with it. They were the only east asian country to have any success against western powers, and this gave them a great deal of pride.

[roamer65]

144. Isn't that last statement the truth. It is a known fact that Hitler in his...

early days marveled at how we European Americans treated the Native Americans.:cry:

[SaveElmer]

223. Absolutely correct...nt

[Lipton64]

63. He's very right

I couldn't agree more. My uncle was one of the doctors who treated the victims after the war and without going into so many details - it made him a life-long agnostic.

Not to mention nobody ever discusses the "Axis" victims - the civilians(and even many ordinary soldiers) who were caught up in the mass bombing. People should read up on this and also on The Napalming of Dresden and the massive bombing of Tokyo that intentionally targeted civilians. Such "Allied" war crimes are never discussed in the open sadly. German, Italian, Japanese, and other ethnicities who were complicit with the "Axis" powers also frequently faced DIRECT targeted of civilian populations by Allied air missions. Such attrocities need to be brought to the forefront. I think in the upcoming future over the next few decades the glittering facade of American and Anglo nobility in the war will fade as newer, younger historians look at the conflict in a more impersonal and more objective light.

As Noam Chomsky notes, all post-WW2 American presidents should have been hanged if the Nuremberg criteria were properly applied to them - Democrats notwithstanding.

One should visit Dresden, Germany now and look at all the old castles and such that were brought to the ground by "Allied" bombing.

Keep in mind FDR provoked Japan into attacking us with his embargos, quite-open-and-known anti-Japanese diplomatic manuveuring, his build-up in the Pacific, and his hypocritical policies regarding Japan's "right to empire" when the U.S. and Britain both had imperialist designs and troops occupying not only the region but China as well at the time. The U.S. and Britain even had gunboats that patrolled Chinese river waters to enforce "American and British interests" on sovereign Chinese territory. They even interfered frequently in the war waging between Japan and China such as the USS Panay "incident" in the 30s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panay_incident

American and British gunboats shouldn't have even been on Chinese waters in the first place.

Personally I can't stand FDR because the man was a racist and pro-totalitarian when it came to non-fascist thug regimes.

And I don't really understand what was so noble about defeating fascism and destroying Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan while at the same time fighting the war to preserve the murderous-communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union and the repressive and very-racist British Empire that jailed and killed political dissidents.

Not to mention we had our own little Imperialist racket going on in Cuba, Iceland, and the Phillippines, among other places.

It was like choosing which bucket of acid to dump on one's head instead of not doing dumping any on at all. The United States - by interfering in world affairs - created even bigger problems for the world by making its empire and the dictatorships and empires of our "friends"(if you want to call the communists and the imperialists that) non-accountable to our own cherised principles of freedom, equality, and tolerance.

I think over time we'll be treated as we properly should be as not-so-morally-superior to many of the enemies who really commited "crimes" that we ourselves at the same time justified for ourselves and for our elite group of friends tragically.

[Raskolnik]

72. Do you think the world is better or worse off for U.S. involvement in WWII?

[rockymountaindem]

73. Wow, where to begin

Firstly, Roosevelt did not force Japan into any kind of war by himself. Lets review:

In 1906, Japan recieved rights to militarily protect some of the railroad assets it acquired from Russia during the Russo-Japanese war in Manchuria. This leads to the stationing of the Kwantung army in Manchuria. At the time, this was widely considered a fair conclusion to hostilities. Teddy Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Treaty of Portsmouth that included these concessions.

In 1931, the commanders of the Kwantung army, tired of dealing with petty Chinese warlords operating in Manchuria, summarily annex the whole province in the name of Japan without consulting with the home government. Surrounded by a wave of jingoistic nationalism, the civil government of Japan can find no way to reverse the maneuver. From this point forward, the military begins to control more and more of the Japanese government apparatus, and by 1937 has won the power to bring down the government and force elections if the cabinet won't accept the Army and Navy ministers proposed by the armed forces.

Japan apologized for the Panay incident. Nobody defended them.

In 1937, Japan invades the rest of China, sparking a bloody war which loses Japan what little international support it had left. By 1941, the United States tries to force Japan to end its war of aggression by cutting of supplies of oil, metal and other war materiel. Japan was not "forced" into any war with the US. They were trapped by their own unwillingness to withdraw from China. Was the US not supposed to interfere in Japan's war of aggression? There is no doubt that compelling a Japanese withdrawal from China would have served US interests, but it was also the right thing to do.

Beyond this theatre, if you think the United States and the Western Allies could have defeated Nazi Germany when they did (if at all) without Soviet support, you are sadly mistaken. Siding with the Soviet Union had nothing to do with our approval or disapproval of their system. In fact, the rapid collapse of our relations with them after WWII underscores the fact that this was a marriage of convienence.

[Kelly Rupert]

74. I'm not even going to bother with this one.

After we get past five ridiculous mischaractarizations, it's no longer worth it.

[roamer65]

117. Americans don't like the hypocrisy pointed out on WW2.

Doesn't fit with the neat, clean little version in the school history books. Chomsky is right.

[Raskolnik]

118. Sure we're hypocrites. The U.S. is a bunch of hypocrites that saved a large portion of the world

from a horrible, horrible fate under Japanese rule.

[roamer65]

125. ...and many Japanese civilians died for a "shock and awe" demo for the USSR.

The Soviets were bearing down upon Japan, already having taken the Kuril Islands in the north. Personally, I don't think an American invasion of Japan's main islands would have happened. The Soviets would have done it first, until we dropped those bombs.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/filmmore/reference/interview/holloway05.html

Interesting read on the Soviet view of the bombings.

[slackmaster]

65. Let's apologize, agree that it's inexcusable, and get on with life

The people who made the decision to drop the Bomb are all dead.

We haven't nuked anyone since then, and our national policy has for decades never to be the first to strike with nuclear weapons even in a war.

"The U.S. decision to drop such a thing was truly unforgivable on humanitarian grounds,"

Well gee, what the fuck are we supposed to do about it? What does he want? Klingon justice, where we get ostracized for 10 generations?

:shrug:

[REP]

76. Pearl Harbor, Rape of Nanking, Bataan Death March, "Comfort Women"...

Yes, Japan knows a lot about inexcusable crimes.

[originalpckelly]

79. And let's not forget what they did to the American POWs...

they were starved and tortured. Ask any POW how they felt when the Japanese stuck bamboo shoots up their fingernails.

I can't believe these little SOBs. They have A LOT of nerve.

[Kelly Rupert]

84. I don't think Pearl Harbor was a crime on the same level.

It was an act of war against a military installation. It wasn't very sporting to do it while we were officially at peace, but realistically few wars are started with polite notice of impending air raids. The others, of course, are bona-fide atrocities.

[-..__...]

120. Does anyone know if those atrocities are covered in Japanese history lessons?

[REP]

124. Official Policy is That Hardly Any Women Were Kidnaped/Raped

They claim that the "comfort women" were mostly volunteers from Japan and very few Chinese and Korean (and other nationalities) women were kidnaped and held to be raped repeatedly (12 - 40 times a day) and even if they were, it wasn't government policy. They are waiting for the surviving women to die so they can claim it never happened at all, but there are some Japanese (and other) journalists and historians who are refusing to it go.

[rman]

185. Does anyone know if US atrocities are covered in US history lessons?

Oh wait, the US doesn't commit atrocities.

[Kelly Rupert]

197. Which atrocities does the United States not recognize? n/t

[rman]

243. LOL, were to start

All the support for RW (para)militaries in overthrowing democratically elected foreign leaders who do not have US interests at heart. Which is the prevailing theme in US foreign policy since WW2.
That's just for starters.

[REP]

262. Horrid Foreign Policy Not Quite The Same As Mass Atrocities

I don't know how well or how often the complete history of US foreign intervention is taught (my university covered it in depth), but as egregious as those policies were, it's really not in the same league as atrocities and war-crimes of Nanking or Bataan (to name just two). Those were not just overly-aggressive chauvinistic policies; they were sickening, brutal crimes perpetuated en masse on individuals. It is more akin to handing Indians blankets infected with smallpox on a grander, even more sickening level (due to the extreme violence and torture done on a one-on-one basis and the nearly unimaginable number of victims in Nanking).

To say Japan should have little to say about war crimes in regard to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not to that every other country in the world is above rebuke; it is merely noting that in regard to that war, Japan should first acknowledge its war crimes and atrocities before pointing its finger elsewhere.

[rman]

266. Mass atrocities as a direct consequence of horrid foreign policy

Just look at Iraq: over half a million (and counting) 'surplus deaths' as a consequence of US/western foreign policy.

How's that not mass atrocity?

You seem to be reasoning that because all (or many) nations are guilty, none have a right to speak of atrocities committed by the other, or that it's always the other one who's worse - at least as seen from US perspective.


on edit:
As far as i know the reality of US foreign policy is not typically taught in high school.
Most people have never even heard of East Timor even though collectively the West is responsible for the extermination of 1/3 of the population. "Timor" isn't even in DU spelling dictionary, nor in the Mozilla dictionary.

[REP]

268. Don't Ask Me To Defend US Policy

When speaking of this comment, I'm keeping my references to US actions during WWII and Japan's actions. I can't - and won't - defend US policy, but I will tell you that what happened in Nanking is so different than Iraq they hardly bear comparison. That is not to say Iraq is in anyway good or acceptible, or that hideous acts have not occurred, but the US does not have an official "Three All" policy as the Japanese army did, and that US troops are not under orders to rape, mutilate, torture and gruesomely kill every living being they encounter, as the Japanese troops were in Nanking.

Just because the US has been and often is wrong in matters of foreign policy doesn't make every criticism of it correct or relevant. Could WWII have been ended without use of the A-bomb is something that will be debated forever and never known for sure. Was it the worst, or most atrocious act of WWII? No, not by a long shot.

[rman]

272. US does not have an official policy of torture -

or more accurately: does not have such publicly announced policy - which is typically not identical to the policy as arrived on by officials behind closed doors, and which is followed by officials (that's why that is actually called "official policy" by some analysts).

If anything, not having an "official policy" (your definition) makes it easier to get away with doing exactly that for which you don't have an official policy.

There will probably always be disagreement on just how bad it was to use the A-bomb.
It's only the single most massive weapon of mass destruction.

[REP]

274. I Think We Agree More Than You Realize

Again, I'm not defending current US policy. I will defend the US's treatment of POWs during WWII - that was something to be proud of; it shames us all that that is no longer the case.

If you wish to compare WWII Japanese policies to current US policies and conduct in Iraq, well, on that there too many comparisons that can be made, and again, that shames us all.

The debate on using atomic weapons in Japan (to some) also revolves on would there have been more loss of life without using them. Many war historians - many quite respectable! - can put forth a convincing case that using them caused less loss of life, given the many factors present. We will never know; it can't be known. I do know that it is everyone's best interest to see to it that they are never used again.

[rman]

275. Many war historians - many quite respectable -

can put forth a convincing case that using them caused more loss of life.

But i assume you already know that.

[REP]

276. And Your Point ... ?

I have seen no one justify the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March. If you have a point to make, knock yourself out. I've tried to be civil and have a thoughtful discussion, but you don't seem interested, so I'll bid you good night.

edit: typo

[Guaranteed]

271. Those things, all parts of that thing called "war." Which is exactly

why you want to end it as quickly as possible.

[roamer65]

85. I love it! It's true.

Japan and the US were BOTH guilty of war crimes during WW2. Manzanar was a war crime, along with the Bataan death march. People across the world are getting the courage to speak out against American hegemony. Very cool.

[Kelly Rupert]

87. There's nothing cool about using atrocities for political gain.

If he had any intent of opening an honest debate with hope of justice, humility, and reconciliation, he would have apologized for Nanking in the same breath.

[roamer65]

90. Very true, but the Bush Crime Family uses 9/11 like its candy.

The hypocrisy is pretty sad, isn't it?

[Kelly Rupert]

92. Yes, and both are rather disgusting for doing so. n/t

[piedmont]

93. Sigh....

Just because the Republicans do it doesn't automatically mean we should.

[Raskolnik]

91. If you honestly think that American actions during WWII are morally equivalent

to those of Japan, you are sorely, sorely mistaken.

What U.S. actions are remotely comparable to Nanjing?

[roamer65]

95. War crimes are war crimes.

Just because one group has more of them does not make you exempt from them. Manzanar was a war crime, along with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So was Nanking and Bataan. I agree with Gandhi's quote up at the beginning of the thread.

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy.” - Gandhi

[Kelly Rupert]

97. Incorrect.

800,000 killed in cold blood, point-blank is not the same as a detention camp. At all. One bit. A force-march of captured prisoners is not the same as the targeting of civilian populations. At all. One bit. All are crimes, but that's not a useful way to look at it. Might as well claim they're the same as eating an ice-cream cone, because all are "actions."

[roamer65]

99. How many were killed in the atomic bombings?

250,000? 300,000? 500,000? How 'bout I explain to what happens to your body from radiation poisoning?

I never brought up that Nanking was right, so stop painting it that way.

Sorry, but if you can't see that ALL killing is wrong, you are incorrect.

I'm going to agree to disagree on this one.

[Kelly Rupert]

106. 214,000 is the high estimate.

The difference is that those were targeted strategic bombings as an attempt to end the war--as outlined in the Potsdam declaration--while the Rape of Nanjing was a systematic slaughter for no purpose but the joy of slaughter.

(You could attempt to explain what radiation poisoning does, but I'll assure you that there is nothing you could tell me that I don't know about radiation or its effects on the human body.)

They are not comparable acts. Brutality to end a greater brutality is not the same as brutality for its own sake, and trying to equate the two is folly.

(I don't know what that stuff about me painting was. I didn't say you called Nanking right. I said that you were claiming that several unlike things were like, and were incorrect to do so.)

[roamer65]

109. The American military had a real debate about dropping...

those bombs, on the grounds exactly of what this Japanese politician mentioned. Many generals were against it. There were proposals to do a test explosion in front of Japanese military and politicians. What we debate here was a hot debate in 1945. I would have sided with the test explosion.

[Kelly Rupert]

113. It was a debate, yes.

And the outcome was a gambit. The choices were:

TEST:

Best case: Unconditional surrender.
Worst case: Conditional/no surrender offered. Invasion, several million dead.

HIROSHIMA:

Best case: 200k dead, unconditional surrender.
Worst case: 200k dead, unconditional surrender.

While a best-case test would have been the best choice, the test also could have led to the worst outcome. I wouldn't have flipped that coin.

[Jim Lane]

153. Can you cite a source for your assertion that the military had a debate?

As far as I know, the military leaders were unanimous in holding that the war could be won without using the atomic bomb and without an invasion of Japan. Some of their observations are collected here: http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

Did any military leader take the contrary position?

The real debate was diplomatic. The purpose of dropping the bomb was to intimidate the Russians, not to win the war against Japan.

[REP]

127. 300,000+ Dead in Nanking; At Least 20,000 Raped

If one had to die in Nanking or Hiroshima - Hiroshima would have been an easier death, even from radiation poisoning.

I'm not saying that nuclear weapons are great or that they should ever be used again but simply that Japan first needs to acknowledge its own past (many refer to the Rape of Nanking as "the Nanking Incident," deny the abuse of women as "comfort women" and even the extent of the Bataan Death march, let alone know about Unit 731) before it lectures us too much about ours during that time.

[Raskolnik]

98. That is baloney, not to put too fine a point on it.

It is possible to distinguish between two acts without giving implicit approval to one or the other. Just because the U.S. committed horrible acts during the war does not mean it is improper, much less impossible, to consider Japanese acts to be much, much worse.

Have you found a U.S. act that compares to Nanjing yet?

[roamer65]

100. Sure, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese guy is right.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind". -Gandhi

[Kelly Rupert]

107. Strategic bombing is not the same as mass murder.

The US believed it had two options:

1. Nuclear bombing. Casualties: 200,000 civilians.
2. Invasion. Casualties: 1M+ combat, incalculable civilians.

At Nanjing, the Japanese had two options:

1. Systematically rape, torture, and kill 800,000 civilians.
2. Don't.


The US picked what it believed was the better of two options, though you can argue the validity of that dichotomy with the benefit of hindsight. Japan picked the most brutal possible action. That is why the situation is not comparable.

[Raskolnik]

110. Then you don't really know what went on at Nanjing.

The worst atrocities performed by the Japanese occurred *after* they had gained military victory. Manchuria, Korea, Indonesia, etc, were all subjected to unimaginable horrors *after* being defeated militarily. Atomic weapons, as horrible as they were, were used by the U.S. to bring about an *end* to the conflict.

If we had continued to drop atomic weapons on Japanese cities after their surrender, you would have a much better argument.

[tritsofme]

96. I'm probably here today because those bombs were dropped.

My father was en route to the Pacific Theater in August 1945, probably to prepare for inevitably bloody the invasion of the Japanese mainland.

That war was not worth one more American life, and Truman without a doubt made the right decision.

[originalpckelly]

104. Glad you're here today, just like I am because of Truman.

These other folks seem to forget that we didn't exactly start WWII, and we also didn't do anything to them which remotely could justify what they did at Pearl.

[Parche]

202. A-BOMB NECESSARY EVIL

I dont care what anyone says, it was right to drop both bombs on Japan.

They were not going to surrender

Admiral Halsey had them surrounded with the 3rd fleet at the time.
They had 6months when they knew they were 'defeated' to surrender.
And they never made an attempt to surrender.
Another decision to drop the bomb, was at the time they had thousands of
POW's in camps that were filled with diseases and the likes.
Some were still being tortured and killed, some had only days to live.
The Japanese Army, stubborn as they were not about to stop and give up.

Alot of people dont realize what they did at Wake Island, Truk, Nanking, Phillipines, Formosa,
Guam, New Guinea............they were savage and horrible.

So there were a few reasons to drop the bomb, to show them that we had the bomb to annihilate
them if they chose to continue, to save the POW's, to show the world we were a major power now,
to save the lives of the soldiers that were going to land on Japan's shores with operation Coronet
and Olympic.

It was the right decision for a stubborn people as they were at the time.

[sweetheart]

149. I'd wager that japanese man wants us to discuss what you said

"truman without a doubt made the right decision" We are always born blind to the sins of our fathers,
told that without those sins we would never come to be.... bollocks.

Bush is comparing himself with Truman, and for the first time since 1945, the US is more foward postured
with nuklear war strategy than it has in some time, and a war has been waging for years where troop
deaths are wearing on mothers ears. Maybe a nuke on bagdhad will show firm resolve and then another
generation will talk about bush like you do about truman.

What truman did was the wrong decision. The japanese man's deliberate diplomatic message, is an
offering to the brainwashed public to back up 2 steps from their invective, from the thousands of
hours of brainwashing they've recieved pointed towards that 'truman was right' conclusion, and
to rather deliberate the cost of that mistake, a mass murder war crime, justified and celibrated
by a people who aggressively war and murder civilians with bombs every few years.

[tritsofme]

280. Much of my "Truman was right" mantra is guided by the fact

that my father might have died in an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

I don't feel the least bit selfish or greedy for feeling that way.

[walldude]

102. Regardless of how I feel about the bombing of Japan

I think I would have to cut this guy some slack. He's coming out of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. Now, I've never been there, but I have been to the Vietnam Memorial and I know how I felt coming away from there. Not knowing what's in that museum I can only judge him by a similar personal experience, and considering how I felt after coming away from The Wall I can't blame the guy for being pissed.

[originalpckelly]

105. He's not the only one, Koizumi stirred up a bunch of controversy...

by going to a Shrine about the Japanese war effort, which pissed off the Chinese. It's almost as if they don't feel bad for being one of the Axis Powers, you know like Germany does.

[Kelly Rupert]

116. Well, to be fair, the Yasukuni shrine isn't dedicated to WWII per se.

It's a shrine to all Japanese war heroes. The problem is, several war criminals are included in the annals, which means that when he shows up to pay his respects to Japanese national heroes, he's also paying respects to the monsters behind the invasion, occupation, and rape of China.

[PsN2Wind]

133. Although, he may be correct

He should remember that we excused lot of "inexcusable crimes" and actions by the Japanese that were also unforgivable.
If the Japanese quit rewriting the history of WWII to make themselves out as the injured party, perhaps we should apologize for ending the war as we did.

[roamer65]

138. Very balanced and absolutely right.

[PsN2Wind]

140. Thanks

There are few countries that don't have actions they've committed in their past that they should apologize for. However I doubt that the way the Japanese teach the history of WWII, there are many in that country that agonize over the decisions made back then as we do here.

[roamer65]

141. Self-analysis is good. It's how we learn from history...

and hopefully not repeat the mistakes of the past, eh?

[sweetheart]

137. This is in response to bush thinking he's truman

Here's the official story of truman and the heros:
http://www.afa.org/media/enolagay/07-02.html

I'm impressed at the japanese subtlety, but its way over the head of bush.

[GreenZoneLT]

147. What's his public record on Shanghai and Bataan?

You can certainly make the argument that area-bombing civilians is a war crime (and the allies killed WAY more people with conventional than nuclear weapons). But a Japanese politician who wants to talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki needs to acknowledge the Rape of Nanking and other atrocities in China and the Pacific, which very, very few of them have ever done.

The Japanese may have been close to attacking San Francisco with a radioactive dirty bomb in 1945, too. A German U-boat, U-234, that was carrying 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide to Japan surrendered instead after VE Day. The History Channel ran a piece the other day claiming the Japanese were planning to pack that dust into high-explosive bombs and drop them from submarine-based seaplanes on San Francisco. Would have killed thousands of people and contaminated the city to the point it would probably have to have been abandoned.

The capability all existed; a sub-based Japanese seaplane dropped incendiaries on Oregon in 1942, trying to start wildfires. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lookout_Air_Raid

Certainly, the Japanese were working on an atomic bomb and would have used it without hesitation.

http://vikingphoenix.com/public/JapanIncorporated/1895-1945/nzisub4j.htm

[Jim Lane]

152. The no-bombing, no-invasion alternative: Just wait a week

The U.S. knew something Japan didn't: that the USSR had agreed to enter the war against Japan when 90 days had elapsed from the German surrender. When V-E Day came in early May, the Soviet declaration of war was scheduled for early August. Right on schedule, the USSR declared war. The largest army in the world attacked Japan's holdings in Manchuria. This development also dashed Japan's hope that the Soviets might act as intermediaries in brokering a negotiated peace. Faced with this catastrophic development, Japan surrendered.

Would the Soviet action have precipitated Japanese surrender without the A-bombs? No one can say for sure. What we can say for sure is that the timing of the bombings made it impossible to find out.

The U.S. would have lost nothing by waiting to see the result of the Soviet action. The invasion of the Japanese home islands wasn't expected to begin any earlier than November 1.

The reason that the U.S. didn't wait (according to Gar Alperovitz in his book Atomic Diplomacy:Hiroshima and Potsdam) was that the government wanted the chance to use the bomb in war, so that the demonstration would help intimidate the USSR in the postwar power struggle. In other words, the bomb wasn't dropped out of fear that Japan would fight on, at great cost to American lives in an invasion. The bomb was dropped out of fear that Japan would not fight on -- that the Soviet entry into the war would trigger a surrender, thus depriving the U.S. of the chance to show the power of its new weapon.

Hence, Mr. Nakagawa is correct to condemn the atomic bombings.

[momster]

154. Except a few more thousand lives on both sides

so I take exception to your comment: "The U.S. would have lost nothing by waiting to see the result of the Soviet action. The invasion of the Japanese home islands wasn't expected to begin any earlier than November 1."

This is like GWB saying 'I'm not ready to make an announcement on Iraq just yet.' That's easy for him to say, wearing his best suit, standing behind a mike on a pleasant winter's day. Not so easy for those sitting on a sand-encrusted time-bomb in the middle of a war zone. Or Okinawa, or Bataan, or you name it.

One might also take a look at just how the Soviets took Berlin. Violence to the civilian population, looting of museums and private homes, disappearance of a wide variety of people, many of whom were never heard from again, including Raul Wallenberg. Had the Soviets invaded Japan, they would have spent 50 years there, just as they did in East Germany. Which would mean, of course, that the contributions that the Japanese have made to the world since the war probably never would have happened.

[Jim Lane]

174. Uh, what thousands of lives would those be?

I didn't say to wait until the USSR invaded Japan, which would have taken quite a while. I said wait a week to see the effect of the Soviet declaration of war and the attack on Manchuria. (For any lurking Freepers who are weak on geography, isn't part of Japan. It's on the Asian mainland. Japan had colonized an area that's now in northeastern China.) Yes, lives were lost in Manchuria, but that happened anyway -- and the U.S. knew it was going to happen, bomb or no bomb.

At the time of the bombing, there was no ongoing combat on Okinawa or other Pacific islands. The bombing didn't save any lives on either side there, either.

[Chico Man]

161. Particularly the second bomb

It was most likely dropped to show we had the capability of producing more than one, and was aimed symbolically at Russia, as you say.

[izzybeans]

155. "I know you are but what am I"

my summary of this thread and international sentiment on war criminals. ...a bunch of thugs tattling on each other like little school children.

"Apologize. You first. No You first. No you. Say uncle. Say uncle. Whaaaa. Mommy!!!!"

[Freddie Stubbs]

156. As was the Rape of Nanking

[Chico Man]

157. He probably believes the Rape of Nanjing was an isolated incident

[La Lioness Priyanka]

162. if killing civilians is wrong for al quaeda..then its just as wrong for us.

japan bombed a military post..we bombed their civilians. huge difference.

[newportdadde]

165. I remember reading McCullough's biography on Truman.

From reading Truman's own words on the subject I do not believe this was a decision that was made lightly. As a WWI veteran himself he honestly believed that millions of Americans would have died attempting to invade the Japanese mainland. They had already proved that they would die to the last man in other fighting along the islands.

Given the prospects of watching American soldiers die in an invasion as well as monumental civilian casualties if invading the Japanese mainland he chose to drop the bomb.

[LynnTheDem]

166. It was. Eisenhower agreed.

General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander Europe during World War II:

“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, attempting to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. . . .”

In a post-war interview, Eisenhower told a journalist, “…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

General Henry “Hap” Arnold, Commanding General of the US Army Air Forces during World War II, wrote, “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”

Truman’s Chief of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy, wrote,

“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…. 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….”

This bullshit of "saving millions" was and is BULLSHIT;

In June and July 1945, Joint Chiefs of Staff committees
predicted that between 20,000 and 40,000 Americans would die in
the one or two invasions for which they had drawn contingency
plans. While still in office, President Truman usually placed
the number at about a quarter of a million, but by 1955 had
doubled it to half a million. Winston Churchill said the attacks
had spared well over 1.2 million Allies.

20,000-40,000; the OFFICIAL ESTIMATE...IF invasion was necessary at all. But hey, let's kill 300,000 civilians anyways! We're AMERICAN! We're SO MUCH more VALUABLE!

Truman's "saving lives" is rather like bush's ever-changing "rationales" for invading Iraq;

August 9, 1945: "this new weapon will result in saving thousands of American lives."

December 15, 1945: "It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities . . ."

Late 1946: "A year less of war will mean life for three hundred thousand - maybe half a million - of America's finest youth."

October 1948: "In the long run we could save a quarter of a million young Americans from being killed, and would save an equal number of Japanese young men from being killed."

April 6, 1949: "I thought 200,000 of our young men would be saved."

November 1949: estimating the cost of an Allied invasion of Japan to be "half a million casualties."

January 12, 1953: Truman raises the estimate to "a minimum one quarter of a million" and maybe "as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy."

Finally, on April 28, 1959, Truman concluded: "the dropping of the bombs . . . saved millions of lives."

[cool user name]

168. It is inexcusable ...

Just because we were the victors, doesn't mean that what we did was right.

[Raskolnik]

195. It was the worst option--except for all the others.

Would you rather the conventional warfare continued until Japan surrendered?

[cool user name]

199. That's not the only option.

Japan was ready to surrender.

We used the bomb for geo-political purposes, not to end the war with Japan. We were the big bad motherfuckers with the greatest weapon ever made and we wanted to show everyone who was running things.

[Raskolnik]

207. Neither the military nor the Supreme War Council was "ready to surrender"

The fact that elements within the government (that did not control the military) were advocating a negotiated surrender does not mean that it was Japan's position. By that logic, Germany was "ready to surrender" after Stalingrad.

[LynnTheDem]

169. General Douglas MacArthur...

Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), General Carl Spaatz (commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Ralph A. Bard,Undersecretary of the Navy, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet all opposed the war crime of atom-bombing Japan.

"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet

I agree with them.

[Jim Lane]

175. A clarification about MacArthur

To say he opposed the bombing might give the impression that he advised against it beforehand. In fact, although he was the general who would have been in command of the invasion of Japan, he wasn't consulted about the bombing. From the collection of quotations that I cited in one of my other posts:

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

(end excerpt from )

That the supreme military commander in that theater wasn't even consulted shows, I think, that the real reasons for the decision were not military.

[Tyo]

173. I think Nakagawa is probably right

However, until the Japanese Ministry of Education starts allowing Japanese textbook writers to present a factual and whitewash-free account of the atrocities that Japan committed during its imperialist period I think Nakagawa should probably back off a little.

[donsu]

178. true, it was a crime - they were just hot to drop the bomb to see what it

would do. once wasn't enough, so they did it again.

disgusting.

[Raskolnik]

190. So the fact that dropping the bombs was what? A happy coincidence?

The fact that there were multiple reasons for dropping the bombs does not negate the larger purpose--namely bring about a swift end to a conflict that had already claimed tens of millions of lives, and was going to claim hundreds of thousands more if it continued.

[donsu]

250. no coincidence - the horror of what the bomb does should never happen

again.

hundreds of thousands more lives gone if the bombs weren't dropped is just conjecture.

[eyepaddle]

192. A whole lot of points, by a whole lot of DUers

While I am very well read on many aspects of the Pacific War, I have not been able to read everything--although that isn't for lack of trying! One factor which has not been addressed at all in this thread is US domestic political pressure to end the war NOW. Not in in a few weeks, or a few months but right-goddamn-now-this-very-second. This had practically reached manic proportions after Germany surrendered with many veteran formations being transferred to the Pacific (which the troops almost universally saw as a death sentence)

There are a ton of points which support how these considerations threw the military's plans awry--such as the introduction of the "point" system to release some of the longest serving veterans. The country as a whole was not in the mood for at least another year and a half of war, but it was also in no mood to let the Japanese off the hook. Operatsions Olympic and Coronet WOULD have occured, and it is quite likely that the fighting would have been savage. Whatever factional disputes there were within the Japanese government would've likely faded after an invasion of Kyushu and Honshu.

We couldn't afford to wait to grind them out in siege warfare, and they couldn't cave to an invasion of their homeland. The atom bombs were seen as a quick way out of that dilemma.

A thin silver lining to those mushroom clouds: maybe seeing the horror of atomic warfare was the only way humans could ever realize that our deadly habit of war cannot go on forever as it always has in our past. A lot of people STILL haven't gotten that message, but many have. I hope we can ratchet up the knowledge that war must stop, ere we do ourselves all in.

[xultar]

193. I agree.

[ieoeja]

196. In defense of the "demons".

Nanking: the Japanese commander was in the hospital unconscious when the Rape occurred. He put a stop to it as soon as he was able. But Japan (1) punished him for it anyway and (2) has apologized repeatedly.

Hiroshima/Nagasaki: I've lost count of the number of times the US has officially apologized for this. But each generation keeps thinking they are the first to point out that it was a bad thing.

Atomic vs Conventional: many Americans lost their lives working on the bomb and even because of the time they spent in the two cities afterwards because WE HAD NO IDEA RADIATION POISONING WAS A BIG DEAL at the time.

Bataan Death March: the Japanese sent trucks to transport the POWs. They badly underestimated the number of prisoners, and noone on the ground informed the higher ups until the whole thing was over (reluctance to point out or admit simple mistakes ultimately doomed Japanese military strategy).

[Rex]

200. War is an inexcusable crime. Period.

Last time I checked, the US didn't start the war in the Pacific. I don't think we needed to drop the bomb on Japan, it was a show of force to the rapidly advancing Russian troops. It was wrong to use, but it was war and we did 'it'. Nakagawa is being somewhat of a hypocrite IMO. How about the Baton Deathmarch? How humane was that or how the Japanese treated occupied China? Plenty of blame to go around.

But yes, we did 'it'.

It will haunt America for the rest of recorded history.

[Seeking Serenity]

217. All right

Which American leader of the time do you want to dig up to put on trial?

What's the point of Mr. Nakagawa's statement?

[ecstatic]

221. Inexcusable and racist... I doubt we would have done that to Germany nt

[Raskolnik]

225. Would continuation of the war been more acceptable?

[rebel with a cause]

231. what , you don't remember the.....

german interment camps we had here? :sarcasm:

[Kelly Rupert]

238. I do know that the Allies killed twice as many German

civilians as Japanese civilians, and do know they killed twice as many German soldiers as Japanese soldiers.

What made the deaths of Japanese more racist than the deaths of Germans?

[rebel with a cause]

239. I believe she was talking about the dropping of the bombs.....

on Japan and not on Germany. if there were more Germans killed, the reason was probably because there was more of them over a greater area. That only makes sense. I was referring to the fact that in the U.S. there was interment camps for American citizens of Japanese descent and not for American citizens with German descent. I grew up in area with a lot of European immigrants and one lone Chinese man. They took his radio and anything electrical they feared he could make into a communication devise. They never bothered one of the EU immigrants, not even the Germans. Now you tell me that is not racism.

[Kelly Rupert]

240. Yes, there were American concentration camps, and they were racist.

But that is totally unrelated to the bombings. That was domestic hysteria, which was not related to the conduct of the war. The war was an emotionless, grim, efficient affair, largely free of racist fear or human compassion. America and Britain had a massive, sustained, comprehensive strategic bombing campaign that involved the deliberate targeting of civilian areas in order to cripple Axis production abilities.

We deliberately targeted and killed German and Japanese civilians alike. They deliberately targeted and killed Russian, British, and Chinese civilians alike.

We would have dropped the bomb on Munich the minute we had it. And had we been able to do so in 1942, we would have saved millions of lives on all sides.

[rebel with a cause]

241. Believe what you will

So be it.

[Kelly Rupert]

248. What evidence, if any, do you have that we wouldn't have nuked Germany?

My evidence for:
1. We engaged in considerable strategic bombing of Germany, killing more Germans than we did Japanese.

2. We then spent the next half-century with nuclear missiles aimed at the white people who live in East Germany, Eastern Europe, and Russia.

[Kelly Rupert]

237. The residents of Dresden, Hamburg, Koningsberg, Berlin, and Munich

might have disagreed with you there. All sides targeted civilian-heavy production centers for strategic bombing raids. And, in fact, Germany suffered twice as many civilian casualties as Japan did. Twice. Germany lost 1.2M civilians to war. Japan lost 600k (and inflicted 7M on China).

And if we hadn't targeted production with strategic bombing raids, we very well might have lost. Such was total war.

[eyepaddle]

246. We absolutely would've nuked Germany, in fact

that's why we developed the bomb in the first place, as well as aircraft like the B-36 which was capable of bombing Germany directly from the United States, which would've been necessary had the British not been able to hold out.

The only thing that saved the Germans was the fact that Nazi Germany collapsed two months prior to the Trinity test.

That is if you can consider the the carnage that they suffered in any event "saved." Hamburg and Dresden EACH had more fatalities from their respective firebombings than what the A-Bombs inflicted combined. In Hamburg the bombing was so intense the streets melted.

If we can think of the human race as an individual WWII was pretty much like giving a toddler a lit stick of dynamite, all the power is there, with zero idea of the consequences or the maturity to consider the ramifications. Before industrialization, mechanization and development of nuclear weapons we managed to get away with our species' bloodlust because it never got organized or potent enough to do us all in.

The 20th century changed that.

[hayu_lol]

279. One of the biggest arguments between Churchill and Roosevelt was...

that Churchill wanted to firebomb EVERY city in Germany. To burn all the cities down like Hamburg and the others destroyed by firestorm.

The Japanese have never been open and honest about their activities during WWII. China has charged the Japanese repeatedly for soft-soaping the Manchurian adventure/Rape of Nanking etc.

Was Pearl Harbor a war crime?

Were the balloon bombs, one of which killed a teacher and students in Bly Oregon, war crimes?

The Japanese reaped what they sowed. Let it end there. Do not attempt to rewrite history.

They started the war, we and our allies finished it.

[Octafish]

224. Japan would've nuked USA if they had the bomb.

So would've Germany.

They both had A-bomb programs going.

To avoid defeat -- or to achieve victory -- they'd use it if they had it.

[rman]

244. That's an even weaker excuse than the often heard

"they're doing it to".

First it's "millions would have died during a conventional invasion".
Now we have "they would have used it to"

Doesn't exactly explain why it would be right to use nukes.

[Kelly Rupert]

249. When you have only two options,

What would have happened with the other one matters.

[Octafish]

259. Using the A-bomb when Japan wanted to surrender was a war crime, IMFO.

My point, my Friend rman, is that the Japanese Empire was working on developing the Bomb, as well.

I believe they would have used it, if given the opportunity.

New evidence tracks Japan's efforts to create atomic bomb

Richard Benke
ASSOCIATED PRESS
01-Jun-1997 Sunday

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- When a captured Nazi U-boat arrived at Portsmouth, N.H., toward the end of World War II, the American public was never told the significance of what was on board.

The German submarine was carrying 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide, an ingredient for an atomic bomb, bound for Japan. Two Japanese officers on board were allowed to commit suicide.

Two months later, in the New Mexico desert, the United States detonated the first atomic bomb, a prelude to the obliteration of two Japanese cities.

Unknown to many of the people who built those bombs, not to mention the public, Japan was scrambling to build its own nuclear weapon.

Some of the evidence was the uranium aboard the U-boat that surrendered in the North Atlantic on May 19, 1945, shortly after Adolf Hitler committed suicide.

Documents now declassified, including the sub's manifest, show there were 560 kilograms of uranium oxide in 10 cases destined for the Japanese army, and two Japanese officers were aboard, accompanying the cargo.

'This crazy idea'

"Germany was collapsing. They had a lot of good uranium. Somebody got this crazy idea of taking it to Japan," says physicist Herbert York, director emeritus of the University of California's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.

CONTINUED...

http://vikingphoenix.com/public/JapanIncorporated/1895-1945/jp-abomb.htm

Those days were total war. There are other articles regarding a uranium mine the Japanese were working in Korea.

http://39th.org/39TH/hc/hc_japan_a_bomb.html

http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/jp-hung.htm

Still, knowing Japan was ready to surrender, there's no excuse for Truman or LeMay.

According to James Carroll in "House of War," Truman used the bomb as a warning to the commies, particularly the Soviets.

There's no way of knowing what would have happened. If Germany or Japan had the Bomb, I really do believe they'd have used it on us.

Here are the descendants of mass murder...

[rman]

265. i see

Sorry for taking your comment the wrong way.

[Name removed]

245. Deleted message

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

[rolleitreks]

254. It was the best of bad options. imo. A tragedy, not a crime. n/t

[dave_p]

255. The crown, the bomb and the lost paragraph

Apologies for a tardy and wordy response, but here’s my take:

To me there are two key points to the Hiroshima issue:
1. Japan was defeated militarily;
2. Uncertainty over the fate of the throne was preventing agreement in Tokyo on surrender.

By the middle of 1945 Japan’s political leaders wated peace, but without some indication that the throne would survive, not even Emperor Hirohito could overcome the military diehards who placed protecting the institution of the throne above obedience to the Emperor’s wishes.

The US Joint Intelligence Staff had predicted as early as April 18 that Soviet intervention (likely by summer or autumn) would trigger Japan’s rapid collapse - a position restated by the Combined Intelligence Committee on July 6.

By June 22 the Japanese Cabinet was resolved on peace after Hirohito’s direct intervention. But the issue of the throne remained the key issue: "Should the Emperor system be abolished, they would lose all reason for existence," Japan’s prime minister Suzuki had earlier said of his people in a thinly-veiled public peace feeler on June 9.

Decrypted messages in July confirmed to US leaders the Japanese government’s desires to end the conflict. At Potsdam on July 18 President Truman noted, “Stalin had told PM of telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace”.

Many in Washington realised that uncoonditional surrender was an unacceptable pill for Japanese if it meant losing the throne. Gen Marshall had already made known the Joint Chiefs’ preference for keeping Hirohito as a ceremonial head of state under a future US occupation regime.

On July 2 President Truman’s Committee of Three submitted to him the terms it had been asked to draw up for the proposed Allied ultimatum demanding Japan’s surrender. Paragraph 12 indicated a postwar constuitutional throne for Hirohito, echoing the recommendations of the Joint Staff Planners.

But on the way to the Allied summit conference at Potsdam in mid-July, Truman and acting Secretary of State Byrnes for some reason dropped Paragraph 12. The ultimatum was presented to Churchill and Stalin with no mention of the throne’s future, cutting the ground from under the civilians in Tokyo.

The ultimatum was published on July 26. Eleven days later the first of the new weapons struck Hiroshima. Three days after that came Nagasaki’s turn. Yet there was still no surrender. Hirohito’s ministers still couldn’t prevail over the military without some implication that the throne would survive.

What changed the deadlock created by Truman and Byrnes? It wasn’t the bombs, it was the US response to a Japanese request for clarification of the surrender demand on August 12, three days after the second bomb: “the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers” was all that was needed for Hirohito to impose his insistence that Japan surrender.

Japan’s surrender thus wasn’t ultimately unconditional. The throne had been saved – the only issue that had prevented progress since late July and earlier. The condition was accepted by both sides in the form of a US “clarification” that could have been offered and accepted weeks or even months before Hiroshima – and had indeed been draft US policy in early July.

The bombings were needless. The casualty estimates projected for the planned 1945-46 invasion of Japan are themselves controversial. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had in April projected 376,000 US fatalities in the two operations, far fewer than the millions sometimes claimed. And “Operation Downfall” was already fading into the background of political calculations by mid-summer, even before the bomb’s effectiveness became known on July 16.

If the US terms of early July had been carried into the Potsdam Declaration, in accordance with the wishes of US military leaders, Churchill and outgoing Secretary of State Stettinius, the war could have ended at the end of July or the beginning of August.

Why did Truman and Byrnes do it? Misplaced loyalty to the the late President Roosevelt (who had already modified his own “unconditional surrender” demand in Italy’s favor in 1943)? Or a desire to demonstrate the new weapons’ power to the Soviets (who already had their own means of finding out)?

We may never know. But it was at best a crime of political incompetence in discarding terms which could have saved so many lives; at worst a cynical sacrifice of civilian populations to warn an ally of US strength. It had nothing to do with military necessity.

What does it mean for us? It means when we’re told that there’s no option but a particular action, we need to examine what the options might be, and to reconsider the policy turns and assumptions that left us with the option we’ve been presented with. And it means we have to distinguish myth from fact, and not take legend for granted.

[Kelly Rupert]

256. Welcome to DU. If you can bring a tenth that level of thought

to a tenth of your posts you will enrich the community indeed.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

257. Well said. History isn't as black and white as many would like.

[neverforget]

260. You are correct that Japan was defeated militarily but they weren't acting like

it. Their navy was almost completely destroyed; their air force was reduced to inexperienced pilots and kamikazis; their army was defeated and isolated on the Pacific islands and their forces on the Asian mainland were effectively cutoff from the home islands. This was what Japan looked like in the summer 1945. Any rational leader would have surrendered because they were defeated. What did Japan do? They sent Kamikazis to sink American ships, sortied some of their warships including the battleship Yamato with just enough fuel for a one way trip to fight the Americans off of Okinawa. This force was intercepted and sunk before it reached the American fleet off of Okinawa. If you look at the island battles in the Pacific, the Japanese didn't surrender but fought to the death. On rare occasions would a Japanese soldier surrender willingly. It was the Bushido code.

It was with this in mind, right or wrong, that the decision to drop the bombs were made. Japan was defeated but they hadn't surrendered when asked too and all logic told them they couldn't win.

Here's a link to casualities both military and civilian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

What I found surprising was that the Allied civilians made up 50% for all the killed and the Axis civilians 5%. Total Japanese civilians killed were 600,000. But if you look at China, Indonesia and French-IndoChina they have a total of 12 million civilian dead.

[dave_p]

263. Here's why

But they fought for the throne, because nobody had told them they could keep the throne.

As I said, the bombs didn't bring the surrender: the simple statement that "the Emperor... shall be subject" did that.

Stimson, Forrestal and Grew had recommended on July 2 a statement that a peaceful postwar Japanese regime "may include a constitutional monarchy under the present dynasty", but that provision was excluded from the subsequent ultimatum.

Bushido commanded loyalty to the Emperor. Only a threat to the institution of the throne could override his commands, and the August 12 clarification made it impossible for the military to invoke that threat.

Five million Japanese soldiers surrendered after August 15. Very few resisted Hirohito's surrender proclamation.

In terms of ending the war, the bombings were unnecessary.

[ShaneGR]

261. Strong possibility he wouldnt even be alive if we hadnt

A wholescale invasion of Japan would have cost the lives on far more Japanese than dropping those bombs.

[dave_p]

264. The invasion that wasn't

Invasion was receding from the minds of US leaders who knew after May that the USSR would intervene by August 9, bringing the collapse of Japan's position on the Asian mainland. By July 12 they knew too that Hirohito wanted peace.

The choice wasn't limited to invasion vs. the bomb. What finally counted was the offer of a postwar throne, which most of Truman's key advisers urged between May and July, and which the US finally conceded after the August bombings.

[Marr]

267. I don't think it's nearly so easy to condemn the dropping of those bombs as

many people seem to think it is.

In the context of the time, the US had just fought a war in Europe as well the Pacific- and we'd lost alot of lives. If atom bombs would bring the war to a decisive end and avoid an actual ground invasion, I know I'd have supported it. I mean Jesus- after that sort of national trial, would you really weigh the lives of your enemy's population against your own troops at all? Today, in a place like Iraq for instance, it'd be a different situation- but then? There? I seriously doubt that I would.

I do think that establishing a sort of nuclear precendent for post-war planning was a large part of the decision as well- but even that isn't something I can condemn easily. Imagine being in that moment- the international scene was very different from what it is today. I'd certainly want the US to have as strong a hand as possible in post-war geopolitics.

Again, it's easy to sit here and condemn this action or that action- but put in it's context, it's more muddled.

Also, I think Nakagawa's particular complaint comes off as more than a little audacious. Isn't this like a German complaining that the firebombings were inexcusable? Ugly, yes- but hardly unprovoked. Japan, as I understand it, teaches it's history about the same way we do- the home team was always right and righteous, and the shameful bits are edited out.

[dave_p]

285. It wasn't the bombs

"If atom bombs would bring the war to a decisive end and avoid an actual ground invasion, I know I'd have supported it."

That's the problem: they didn't end the war to any extent that hadn't previously been possible without them, and they weren't necessary to prevent an invasion.

Acting Secretary of State Grew had asked Truman as early as May 28 to offer in his May 31 address to preserve the Japanese dynasty, thereby removing "the greatest obstacle to unconditional surrender by the Japanese".

The offer wasn't made until eleven weeks later, after the two bombings: Japan surrendered within 48 hours, something the bombs hadn't accomplished.

[Guaranteed]

269. And I suppose attacking Pearl Harbor was an "excusable" crime, on the part

of the Japanese?