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IJ didn't have nuclear weapons. Or are you asking something different?
What I meant was, is that he said that the US army should have used their nukes on military targets to minimize civilian casualties more, rather than use them cities with heavy civilian populations. But if they were military targets, that makes sense. So instead of using regular bombs on those targets, the nukes just would have had a bigger fear kicker, and that was the point of using them?
What I meant was, is that he said that the US army should have used their nukes on military targets to minimize civilian casualties more, rather than use them cities with heavy civilian populations. But if they were military targets, that makes sense. So instead of using regular bombs on those targets, the nukes just would have had a bigger fear kicker, and that was the point of using them?
Dude you need NJGOAT's GUIDE TO THE ATOMIC BOMING, all your questions are answered:
& besides, IJ attacked Pearl Harbor out of the blue
Quote:
Originally Posted by ironpony
What I meant was, is that he said that the US army should have used their nukes on military targets to minimize civilian casualties more, rather than use them cities with heavy civilian populations. But if they were military targets, that makes sense. So instead of using regular bombs on those targets, the nukes just would have had a bigger fear kicker, and that was the point of using them?
The IJ cities were (& still are) located on the coastal plains around the Japanese islands. The mountainous inland is reserved for terraced crops, parkland, places to get away from the summer heat. The plains included army bases, navy bases, government offices, airports, communications nodes, transportation infrastructure, electricity, manufacturing & especially all the little family & small machine shops essential to the IJ military. They were all legitimate targets, & we serviced them with a vengeance.
The nukes were a single bomb from a single plane - & I believe we announced that we would be dropping an especially destructive bomb on Japan - to add some element of terror, I suppose. By the end of the war, enough information had leaked to the general US about IJ savage mistreatment of POWs, civilians, & neutrals. No one on the US side (nor the allies), TMK, was arguing that the nukes were anything but very powerful bombs, if exotic in composition & exactly how they worked.
Oh okay, I thought the announcement was made hoping that it would cause the Japanese to want to negotiate, not wanting a more destructive bomb to be dropped.
The IJ government deadlocked internally. A fatal flaw
Quote:
Originally Posted by ironpony
Oh okay, I thought the announcement was made hoping that it would cause the Japanese to want to negotiate, not wanting a more destructive bomb to be dropped.
The only Japanese who could negotiate were the War Cabinet (I think it was called). In IJ, the Emperor waited for consensus @ the Cabinet level, & then endorsed it. Since the War Cabinet was made up almost entirely of partisans of the Young Officers & their allies (militarists all), they weren't about to even seriously consider any offer from the US & Allies, especially one that called for unconditional surrender.
So the War Cabinet's consensus was always opposed to accepting any ultimatum from the US & Allies. Oddly, IJ kept hoping that the Soviets would intervene on their behalf with the other Allies. They were quite crushed when the USSR gave the required advance notice that it was abrogating its non-aggression pact with IJ.
The War Cabinet figured that the US was soft, & that we (the US, & also our Allies) wouldn't have the stomach to kill everybody in sight in order to end the war on our terms. IJ's behavior & treatment of POWs & civilians alike hardened our & our Allies' resolve.
humanity has never invented a weapon it did not use..as much as i wish very few against the bombing mention the terrific damage from firebombing 100,000 Tokyo alone viewed from the perspective of fire bombing the a-bomb saved lives as well Japanese lives...
Oh okay, well when talking to my friend who knows more about WWII than I do, he said that if the US just lifted their embargoes on Japan, and allowed Japan to trade, that that would have ended the Pacific War with no further loss of life, and nuclear weapons were unnecessary overkill he says, when they could have just allowed trade, would that have actually worked?
Oh okay, well when talking to my friend who knows more about WWII than I do, he said that if the US just lifted their embargoes on Japan, and allowed Japan to trade, that that would have ended the Pacific War with no further loss of life, and nuclear weapons were unnecessary overkill he says, when they could have just allowed trade, would that have actually worked?
After IJ attacked Pearl Harbor & nearby, invaded the Philippines & captured or killed our military there & mistreated them unto death? No, by then it was much too late for the US to shrug its collective shoulders & turn the other cheek. Besides, the alternative was to leave our dead & wounded in the hands of IJ - we (US government, intelligence agencies, diplomatic sources) already knew how badly IJ treated POWs & civilians.
IJ's War Cabinet wanted a short sharp glorious war. What they got was years of paying for inattention to technical innovation, better training for a mass military, poor logistics, an overindulgence in complicated attack plans @ extreme distances. IJ never had sufficient population, the heavy industry base, nor the raw materials to wage years of war @ their planned peripheries.
& of course, Korea, Manchuria, China were under direct IJ rule, & were suffering mass casualties, looting, & systematic IJ exploitation of resources & population. Nothing was going to put that back, & IJ simply shrugged off the criticism they got from the World - which included trade embargoes.
As for your friend - please give him the forum address & invite him to come on. There's no point in having this discussion @ secondhand. & maybe he has thoughts he'd like to share.
Oh okay, well when talking to my friend who knows more about WWII than I do, he said that if the US just lifted their embargoes on Japan, and allowed Japan to trade, that that would have ended the Pacific War with no further loss of life, and nuclear weapons were unnecessary overkill he says, when they could have just allowed trade, would that have actually worked?
That's false.
The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931. Not satisfied with those gains, Japan kept encroaching on the rump Chinese state until resistance inevitably culminated in offending Japan, which then used that as an excuse to seize as much as it could of the rest of China beginning in 1937. In 1940, in the wake of the Fall of France, Japan invaded northern French Indo-China. Once Hitler invaded the USSR and Japan felt its northern flank secure, it then proceeded to seize southern French Indo-China. All of this was before the U.S./UK oil embargo on Japan.
Japan did not go to war because of trade. Trade was embargoed because Japan had repeatedly undertaken aggressive territorial seizures. The idea that, had the embargoes simply been lifted then the Japanese would have pulled out of Indo-China and China proper, and that the killing would have thereby stopped, is laughable.
Again, the only reason Japan found itself in a crisis where it could not properly obtain through trade the oil that it needed was because it was involved in wars that it started.
And, again, there's the whole idea that Japan had some sort of right to be sold oil. It didn't. No country is required to trade with another.
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& besides, IJ attacked Pearl Harbor out of the blue
