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What are you trying to accomplish? Change the history?
He's trying, as I am, to inform you people of the true and factual history, as opposed to the false version of it that you believe is true. But you and others seem insistent upon remaining ignorant to the truth, and therefore any attempt to better educate you is undoubtedly a waste of time.
That President Eisenhower, former Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe in WW II stated that that the use of the atomic weapons on Nagasaki and Hiroshima WERE NOT NECESSARY ... and the fact that he went to Truman weeks before they were used, urging him not to use them, apparently has no relevance to you all. You must be right, and therefore Eisenhower must be wrong .... is that it? You know more about the matter than the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during WW II ?
You also apparently know more than General Leahy, who was Truman's top military advisor, who also insisted that the bombings offered no strategic military benefit, and should not have been used.
Are you aware of these facts, and just reject the opinions of these men? Or are you simply refusing to even acknowledge the existence of this information, so that you can remain blissfully ignorant?
He's trying, as I am, to inform you people of the true and factual history, as opposed to the false version of it that you believe is true. But you and others seem insistent upon remaining ignorant to the truth, and therefore any attempt to better educate you is undoubtedly a waste of time.
That President Eisenhower, former Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe in WW II stated that that the use of the atomic weapons on Nagasaki and Hiroshima WERE NOT NECESSARY ... and the fact that he went to Truman weeks before they were used, urging him not to use them, apparently has no relevance to you all. You must be right, and therefore Eisenhower must be wrong .... is that it? You know more about the matter than the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during WW II ?
You also apparently know more than General Leahy, who was Truman's top military advisor, who also insisted that the bombings offered no strategic military benefit, and should not have been used.
Are you aware of these facts, and just reject the opinions of these men? Or are you simply refusing to even acknowledge the existence of this information, so that you can remain blissfully ignorant?
This issue has long been settled but every August we are subjected to a whole new set of arguments outlining the mistakes of using the nuclear weapons to end the war with Japan.
It was infinitely better to use nuclear weapons to end a war than to start one. People tend to forget is how little we knew about radiation and its effects at the time. It is easy to second-guess after the fact, but our survival, then and now, has hinged on knowing first-hand the devastation of nuclear weapons.
For that reason alone, if OP really wants to apologize to the Japanese which I view it as such an unnecessary act because NOBODY can really change the history, he can make sure history does not repeat itself.
Are you Japanese? Are you part Japanese? I have relatives been put in concentration camp. Like I posted earlier, I am 50% Japanese 25% Hawaiian 25% German/Irish, I am VERY proud of my heritage and I am fully aware of that part of the history.
What you and OP trying to preach is NOTHING new.
I just don't like agenda pusher who think they can change the history. You can argue with me all day long, you can not change the history. It is over!!!
My brother was a United States Recon Marine. He has served THIS country, America. OP viewed us Japanese or mixed Japanese American as just that Japanese, how ignorant can he possibly be?
The only reason no one has used nuclear weapons yet is because we know what they can do and we had to see that to make us not use them again. Ironic as it sounds, the survival of mankind has been at stake. Japanese people have paid the ultimate price. History is just that, history, it is over.
As for disarmament in general, to completely disarm is to ignore the lessons of WWII. It is utter foolishness to think that all countries will disarm, even atomically. Whether it is N Korea, or Iran, or some coalition of Islamic States or someone we don’t yet know, there will always be countries who will use what ever means they have to overcome others, and consequently, our country needs to maintain a strong defense with the most powerful technology available to deter those nations.
Last edited by lilyflower3191981; 08-08-2013 at 12:37 AM..
By using the bomb we showed that we were no better than the enemy. Besides Japan had been trying to surrender, it was well known that Japan could only carry on the war effort for at most several months, they were beaten.
That's a load of Left-Wing Liberal BullSnit
The alternative to using the bomb would have been a ground invasion. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers would have lost their lives.
Not sure where you get your info from oh that's right Fox News
"Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion."
I respectfully disagree with you.
Japan's primary concern was keeping their political system somewhat intact--preserving their emperor's power and minimizing their colonial loss.
The problem is that both these were unacceptable to the Allies. Would a surrender of Germany that offered to retain the status of the Nazi party and Austria have been accepted?
You may argue that Japan tried to surrender but the US bombed them anyway - but such a simplistic view is totally false. Japan was not at any stage prepared to match the terms required by the US to end the war. These were the same terms offered to Nazi Germany and the same terms that had been on the table for close to two years.
My God....We're a number of years away from Hiroshima and still we have 'revisionist' readings on what went on at the time. We proabably always will have them. Par for the course. I can only say that perhaps one day soon maybe 50, 75, 100 years from now the things said apologetically about Hiroshima will also be said about the prosecution of the war by the Allies in WW II. Won't surprise me since today we have a habit of only rememebring things that happened 5 minutes ago. The word 'Nazi' will probably have morphed into maybe a name for a car...;-)...
I'll probably be dead by that time but if I hear a peep that it was the Allies fault I will get up and speak at the podium, anytime, anywhere. It's the least I can do.
My God....We're a number of years away from Hiroshima and still we have 'revisionist' readings on what went on at the time. We proabably always will have them. Par for the course. I can only say that perhaps one day soon maybe 50, 75, 100 years from now the things said apologetically about Hiroshima will also be said about the prosecution of the war by the Allies in WW II. Won't surprise me since today we have a habit of only rememebring things that happened 5 minutes ago. The word 'Nazi' will probably have morphed into maybe a name for a car...;-)...
I'll probably be dead by that time but if I hear a peep that it was the Allies fault I will get up and speak at the podium, anytime, anywhere. It's the least I can do.
Indeed. You see how the Liberals have turned on Jewish folks and Israel. In some Liberal circles, it's almost chic to them now to be anti-semitic.
And rather offended at the attempts at revisionist history going on here. We can have a debate if you like about the merits of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and on Nagasaki, but a real debate demands facts, and a lot of posts have been short of them.
The Japanese had sent a small delegation to approach the USSR in early August to mediate terms for a peace treaty favorable to Japan. What were those terms - to hold on to pieces of their recently acquired (and lost) empire? Likely armistice rather than defeat, which would have been something of a stalemate in the Pacific. However, after the first bomb was dropped at Hiroshima, the Soviets declared war on Japan, and immediately invaded Manchuria. The Soviet-Japanese state of war ended only in 1956, and they shot down a B-29 en route to POWs in Korea immediately after the surrender. So at least two assumptions could be suggested. One, the US had some anticipation that the Soviets would enter the war (a major subject at Tehran and at Yalta, yet the Soviets would not formally declare war until immediately after the bomb was dropped). The other is that the Japanese had some notion that the Soviets would enter the war. They did have an army staged across from Manchuria. It's a widely held assumption that the Japanese overtures toward the Soviets in May-July of 1945 were largely because the Japanese government had concluded that Churchill and Roosevelt already had made concessions to Stalin to join the war against the Japanese. The Soviets did signal in April 1945 that they would not renew their neutrality pact in April 1946. The Japanese Imperial War Office had a short window to draw out the war to a better conclusion than unconditional surrender.
While Japan was making overtures in Moscow, the War Office at the Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo was publicly concluding that "We can no longer direct the war with any hope of success. The only course left is for Japan's one hundred million people to sacrifice their lives by charging the enemy to make them lose the will to fight." Admiral Suzuki, the prime minister of Japan, on June 9th declared Japan would fight to the end rather than unconditionally surrender. Japanese officers had been very successful in pushing men to fight through starvation and with a low number of soldiers opting to surrender at Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The use of kamikaze pilots had increased in the last year of the war as Japan's fate was quickly becoming imminent.
You need only review Japan's plans for Operation Ketsugo to know they were not preparing for imminent surrender. Rather the Japanese Imperial War Office had made plans of a last ditch defence of Kyushu island (the southern third of Japan. Because Okinawa lasted so long (three months), the War Office hoped the oncoming typhoon season would delay Allied plans for landings, allowing them additional time to make their defenses and a way to end the war with the best-possible terms. They also were counting on continued Soviet neutrality - which goes a long way to explain why a delegation to discuss some overture of peace was sent to Moscow. The 5 000 shinyo suicide boats and 10 000 kamikaze planes devoted to the defense of Kyushu were not an assured safeguard in case Japan could not surrender - they were an assured safeguard rather than Japan surrender.
Your assumptions are ignoring the final outcome of politics in Japan as well. Remember that after Hiroshima, and after Nagasaki, the final vote to surrender amongst the military admirals (who ran the government) was 3 yay, 3 nay. It was Emperor Hirohito's vote that cast the decision decidedly for unconditional surrender. Admiral Suzuki's government was decidedly against surrender only a month earlier. Japan had never lost a war. Never. Can you imagine what that must do to one's psyche, when being demanded unconditional surrender throughout 1944 and 1945? Of the numerous ministers in the government cabinet, only one favored ending the war sooner rather than later, and he did not favor unconditional surrender, but a peace brought through negotiations with Moscow, and it was not until May 1945 that Japan would even approach the subject at the highest level among the "Big Six" group of war ministers. Keep in mind that the last time Japan won a decisive battle in the war was in the spring of 1942, some six months into it. Since June, they had suffered defeat after defeat after defeat, withdrawing from nearly every island taken, launching several failed offensives and only a handful of minor attacks with minimal enemy losses to speak of. They had been losing this war for 38 months by the time the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima was made.
You really should look at why Japan got into the war in the first place and what they hoped to achieve. From the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japan never hoped to defeat the United States. The attack was a desperate move, but just daring enough that they thought they could count on the US distaste for a protracted war to win concessions and maintain an unmolested empire in the western Pacific. From the start, Japan waged war to win a negotiated settlement. They did the same in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. They launched a number of small battles which were indecisive in nature, and had one decisive victory that pushed the Russians to plea for a settlement. That pattern followed what was happening in the Second World War. The same was hoped with the war against the United States. Attrition. They had three years plus of bad defeats, but some costly defeats for the enemy to win (Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa) most recently, that they surely hoped would hurt morale.
You really should finally consider that the war began without a formal declaration by the Japanese at the time of the war, and there was an understandable bias by the US government and media to see the Japanese government (if not people, unfortunately) as shameless and treacherous. So there is some ground that I think must be afforded to the notion that the US felt Japan would fight as protracted a war as it could to gain whatever it could.
Unlike some (most?) here, I don't blame the Japanese War Council for attacking Pearl Harbor, or consider them cowardly for doing so while not formally declaring war on the United States. It was rash, reckless bravado, but I understand what they were trying to do. From a historical perspective, it was a wild shot and had very little upside in retrospect. I do not think this pays any disrespect to the sailors, soldiers, airmen and civilians killed at Pearl Harbor or who died in fighting in the Pacific (or the 10 000 Japanese soldiers who fought for the US in the European theatre while their families served in internment camps) - the nature of war is such, and distance moreso, that we can look back at both sides with some sense of admiration and remorse. Likewise I do not have ill-feelings of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima by Col. Tibbets or on Nagasaki by Maj. Sweeney. Or of the hundreds of bombers that set much of Tokyo ablaze in March bombings of 1945... but am still empathetic to the Japanese civilians who perished or suffered disfiguring injuries, and to the Japanese sons and brothers who knew they would likely perish. It's war. War is Hell. Only Hell is an imaginary place we tell children so that they behave and war a hellish place we don't tell them enough about, so they repeat our mistakes and wage it.
For what it's worth, my dad's father, who was deployed in the European theater, was redeployed in the Pacific, while my mom's father was among the first unites to arrive in Japan after the surrender and first to be deployed to Korea in August 1945 as the Cold War quickly took shape. There are the great uncles and cousins generations removed who served, too. So I have a certain admitted bias, and thankfulness that the war ended early in August 1945 and not after Operation Olympic or Operation Coronet would force a costly peace.
there us only one real RULE in war: Win. All else is immaterial, once you buy into war.
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