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I wonder if the bombing of Coventry causes any debate and controversy in Germany. Or the Rape of Nanking and the destruction of Manila, etc., etc., etc., cause any debate and controversy in Japan. I have no desire to saddle today's Germans or Japanese with guilt over what their forefathers did. But I find it highly annoying that some people seem to think that it's only the Americans and the British who have anything to feel guilty over.
Indeed.
I studied in Germany and declined a class trip to Dresden as I could tell it was going to be a Schuldfest.
I studied in Germany and declined a class trip to Dresden as I could tell it was going to be a Schuldfest.
Germans seem to own up to it, but the Japanese still have the attitude of "We were just minding our own business, then America nuked us...but we don't hold a grudge."
In the last couple of years of the Vietnam War, I did B-52 "bomb scoring." Even though the fifty 500-lb bomb load devastated an area larger than a football stadium, it was startling how often they totally missed the target.
Through the Vietnam War, the statistic for aerial bombing accuracy was that it took 21 sorties to hit a target. If the Vietnamese thought we were bombing indiscriminately, they sure had good reason. We didn't intend to be indiscriminate--sending aircrews out on re-strike missions was dangerous and wasteful--but statistically we almost always missed what we were aiming at.
I was scoring attacks during the Persian Gulf War as well. For sure, the image-directed Tomahawks and laser-guided glide bombs were awesomely accurate. They amazed me every night with their precision. We never missed what we aimed at. We might not have aimed at the right target, but if we hit it, we had aimed at it.
But the dumb bombs dropped by the B-52 were just as dumb in the Persian Gulf War as they were in the
Vietnam War.
I remember flying into Tan Son Nhut during the war and seeing what seemed to be miles and miles of bomb craters in what appeared to be just empty fields. Perhaps staging areas for N Vietnamese troops.
Why didn't the British stopped America from nuking Japan?
The simple answer is that they had little knowledge of the bomb and no authority to do so anyway.
More specifically, the British (and a helluva lot of others) would have been right there with us invading Japan. Invading a nation made up of numerous islands populated by a people who had been indoctrinated by fascists and would have been ordered to resist at all costs. Normandy on steroids and then Vietnam.
Call me cynical, but something tells me that the British (and a helluva lot of others) breathed a collective sigh of relief that they did not have to do that.
When the war began, my Dad was in Panama, with Mom. He was at the time carrear Navy. But she told me about how there was a knock on the door and his new orders were handed to him, be packed and ready for one of the carriers, as in active, bloody war. He was a raidoman. Mom went home and hung onto every bit of news, but he spent most of the war in combat.
The reality was that most of the areas which could be had been retaken. The rest were going to be reclaimed only with a long, and very bloody war of attrition, with nobody favored to win. Japan despite its victories was running short on the civilian side, with things like food. The western allies were fighting on two sides. Nobody had any guarentees.
But the one thing which was assured was a hell of a lot of people, especially civilians, were going to die. The British were supplied by the US. But it was a time when no one looked to have an advantage.
Japan, which had sit and watched, had the supplies and crews to change that. In the end it well might have ended up as another standoff, as both ran short of supplies of soldiers and guns and ammo. and also food. But in that interum Japan would have lost millions of its own.
The Bomb wasn't well studied yet, and nobody really knew what a powerful one would do. But they did know what the kind of war they were living with was doing. Its ironic that what saved Japan later, when it was able to recover earlier and lose less of its people was the bomb. It completely devistated its first test. There is still some question of the need for the second, if they would have surrendered anyway, but it was important back then for those people that it be "sure" of their surrender. Life could not crawl out fo the dark is it was just a respite.
But the war with Japan was over. How many of us who had fathers or uncles grandfathers in the Navy we would not ever have known then, or maybe not been at all if Japan's war had not been stopped. Of course, it dragged on as the soldiers did not always choose to surrendeer, and left areas strewn with hidden explosives. But if it had been part two, if the US had not been there to be the prime influence with materials to fight with ... if ...,, then many of US might not be here either.
We can project what might have been, and be wrong or right, but given the time, it had everything it needed to become a door open to a very dark place for all of the sides and especially for the future their children gave us.
I've often wondered how history would have played out if The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere had actually lived up to its lofty name. What if the Japanese had treated the people in the lands they conquered far better than the occupying Western powers had? At the very least, it would have made the various western colonial powers real motives for "liberating'"their colonies from a Japanese takeover painfully obvious to everyone.
But of course the Japanese weren't actually interested in co-prosperity, or in ending colonialism. They just wanted to change who was doing the colonizing. And that turned out to be a fatal miscalculation for them.
This of course was an impossibility. The same impulses that drove the Japanese to conquer Asia were the same ones that held that all other peoples were inferior to them, pretty much subhumans. People who welcomed the Japanese as liberators quickly found out that they were far, far worse than their previous European rulers.
Japan encompasses abut the same amount of land as California -- but wit. hut the agricultural bounty of the Central Valley. At the same time, it has about three times the population -- has to turn to the sea, and increasingly, to free trade for its food supply.
If you begin to recognize this, you can understand why they are the most insular of the advanced nations, and the more foresighted among them are similarly aware, and have worked hard to overcome it. Neither japan, nor the Western nations, nor the other Asian societies, can afford to repeat the lessons and mistakes of 1930-45.
In the last couple of years of the Vietnam War, I did B-52 "bomb scoring." Even though the fifty 500-lb bomb load devastated an area larger than a football stadium, it was startling how often they totally missed the target.
Through the Vietnam War, the statistic for aerial bombing accuracy was that it took 21 sorties to hit a target. If the Vietnamese thought we were bombing indiscriminately, they sure had good reason. We didn't intend to be indiscriminate--sending aircrews out on re-strike missions was dangerous and wasteful--but statistically we almost always missed what we were aiming at.
I was scoring attacks during the Persian Gulf War as well. For sure, the image-directed Tomahawks and laser-guided glide bombs were awesomely accurate. They amazed me every night with their precision. We never missed what we aimed at. We might not have aimed at the right target, but if we hit it, we had aimed at it.
But the dumb bombs dropped by the B-52 were just as dumb in the Persian Gulf War as they were in the Vietnam War.
Since I guess this thread is anything goes now....
On the note of dumb bombs, they always make a point on how much tonnage was dropped during a war. WW2 was compared to Korea and then Vietnam. With the oft noted statistic that we dropped more tonnage on Korea compared to WW2, then on Vietnam compared to WW2. Most of this indeed was wasted, Vietnam or Korea bombing was not the same as target rich WW2 - my father flew a B26 on interdiction in Korea - nightly flight, simply fly over a pitch dark North Korea and hit supply lines. If there was no target, as there often was not in early 1953, the bombs were dropped harmlessly on a hill side or the ocean as you didn't want to land with a full bomb load (in this case it wasn't indescriminate). Dozens of B26's would do this each and every night. Tons of bombs were simply dropped harmlessly, exaggerating the tonnage dropped rate. I've never seen this explanation given however in history, it's always "we bombed them into the stone age, look how much tonnage we dropped".
So, I read on Quora that a lot of British people are angry with America for nuking Japan during WW2. They consider it a war crime and a crime against humanity but how come the British didn't stop America from nuking it? Why didn't the British threaten to declared war on America, raided the compound the nukes were being made and then saved Japan?
This is the same with Vietnam and Iraq.....
Were you angry with those? Yes.
Were you opposed to those? Yes, definitely.
Then why didn't you stop it? ....
The British can go suck a crumpet for all I care. It’s easy to denounce and cry about something that happened over 70 years ago and you’re not currently being bombed by German Luftwaffe. Who are we kidding? The Brits were almost to the point where they couldn’t stop a paper airplane thrown by one of Hitlers Brownshirts. The worse thing the Axis powers did was Japan to bomb Pearl and Germany made the mistake on fighting on two fronts.
If Hitler knocked GB out of the picture, they would of wrapped up Russia, then they could, along with Japan go after the big kid on the block.
But I guess Japan bombing Pearl, Bataan death march, atrocities comItted by Japanese soldiers against POWs in Japanese POW camps, the rape of Nanjing and many others were not crimes against humanity.
So, I read on Quora that a lot of British people are angry with America for nuking Japan during WW2. They consider it a war crime and a crime against humanity but how come the British didn't stop America from nuking it? Why didn't the British threaten to declared war on America, raided the compound the nukes were being made and then saved Japan?....
Because the Brits were a wasted, worn-damaged nation that had been saved by the U.S. and the Russians. They were in no position of power, beyond Churchill's puffed out lower lip.
So, I read on Quora that a lot of British people are angry with America for nuking Japan during WW2. They consider it a war crime and a crime against humanity but how come the British didn't stop America from nuking it?
What you need to understand is not the crowd on Quora, but the sentiments of the British people in 1945, including those in Churchill's cabinet.
Anger, guilt, shame...these are recent phenomena, not starting until perhaps 20 years after the war when a new generation of adults who had not experienced the war started asking questions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solooriginal
Why didn't the British threaten to declared war on America, raided the compound the nukes were being made and then saved Japan?
You must realize that only a handful of Brits knew, most whom would have used it themselves.
You might want to read about the treatment of US and British POWs and Civilians in occupied Asia. That might clear things up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solooriginal
This is the same with Vietnam and Iraq.....
Very different. Vietnam was an awakening. 2003 Irag War was the full opening of the eyes, not just for the UK but for all, including Americans. The the account holding goodwill windfall of WW2 was now empty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solooriginal
Were you angry with those? Yes.
Were you opposed to those? Yes, definitely.
Then why didn't you stop it? ....
Stop what exactly? How exactly?
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