Hiroshima Remembered.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Kramerman
But I am sure you knew this and were just using an example that came to mind. Everybody does it all the time, no biggy.

I wasn't justifying. I was pointing out that the Bible didn't agree with his claim that war is murder nor is it a source for moral thinking about war.

I would never justify anything based on an ancient book of myths, legends and spun history. In other words I am Agnostic but if someone uses the Bible to justify things its best to use the Bible to show their error. Its easy considering the number of contradictions in it such as thou shalt not murder and Jehovah commanding murders of children.

The Bible is an excellent example of how contradictory premises allow a moderatly skilled logician to prove anything at all.

[Ramo]

No, it isn't. Remember that the hotheads in Japanese cabinets planned to carry out a military coup to keep on fighting *even after* the Emperor's speech and surrendering.

You don't think part of the reason was that they were really pissed off when a couple of their cities were wiped off the map?

Besides, America had three (3) nukes. None to be spared for a 'demonstration' that might not have had any effect at all.

And the US used two nukes to force a surrender. If the US gave Japan a little more time, the number would likely be one...

Incidentally, if 'demonstration' hadn't worked out, would you folks then have supported an use of a nuclear weapon against a Japanese city?

No, I would advocate that the US to accept a surrender that didn't include undeifying the Japanse Emperor.

[Urban Ranger]

Hirohito was a war criminal. His avoidance of the tribunal was just a political deal as part of the US "containment" policy. I happen to know some Allied soldiers who fought in the Pacific theatre, they still consider Hirohito as a war criminal.

[Q Classic]

I beg your pardon, if there was even the smallest chance that toasting Hiroshima/Nagasaki would have brought the Pacific war to a end quicker, and President Truaman didn't try that option first, he should have been brought up on Murder charges.

All of his Generals and Admirals were saying that, based upon experience fighting the Japanese from the fall of Corregidor to Okinawa (where my Great Uncle was a Marine, and confirms the stories about civilians tossing themselves off cliffs), the Japanese would fight to the last man standing. Hundreds of thousands, possible millions would be killed on both sides during a invsion of the Japanese Home islands.

Weighed that against the 40,000 each (intially) fatalities of the Hiroshime/Nagasaki bombings, I think that's a pretty good deal.

Truman began each day by looking at the numbers of American soldiers killed the previous day. People like to say he should have known better, or tried to find a way to "minimize" civilian casualties, but in reality I would be amazed if he didn't want some way to just end the dying. And now, people 60 years after the fact, are looking back and griping about what seems to have been a perfectly rational descision, given the circumstances. He wasn't doing it for sh!ts and Giggles.

good god, now i'm lumped into the category of american apologists?

jesus fvcking christ, have you not read ANYTHING i've posted before?

i see it as a murder. but i also see it as a justified killing. i don't give a sh1t about whether truman was right or wrong about bombing the two cities. tactically, sure, it might be sound. strategically, perhaps.

but i don't care.

what i do care about is that japan paid for its sins by being on the receiving end of those bombs.

did you not even glimpse at the second half of that post?

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Q Cubed

you know, i have relatives (two, specifically) that were never seen again because of the japanese occupation force. one of them would have become my great aunt-- but no, she was taken away as a "comfort woman". she probably died after what, maybe a few months of repeated gang rape by one of the imperial japanese soldiers, no?

she was civilian. she wasn't part of any army. did she deserve it? no.

another one of my family members disappeared because he was part of a non-violent resistance movement. he fired no gun, he killed no jap. but they took him and shot him in a midnight arrest, gestapo style.

did he deserve it? no.

you ask me to feel pity for the japanese who died in hiroshima, you ask me to think they did not in some way suffer because of some twisted cosmic retribution for their countries sins, without so much as a second consideration for the mass murders, the brutality, the cruelty the japanese heaped upon the koreans for no better reason than wanting to be like the white man?

you ask me to feel much grief over those hiroshima folk, innocent civilians, after what the japanese military did to nanking? the death toll at nanking was twice that of hiroshima. and unlike your relatives who were baked, their deaths were a long, drawn out process. they didn't die mercifully quick in a matter of moments, no. the chinese there suffered through four months of utter hell.

and you want me to say that the japanese, in some way, did not deserve it?

look. i'll grant, maybe those individuals there didn't deserve to die. but the japanese people as a whole... i can't see it any other way than karma.

when you see what the japanese did to korea, and then see how the japanese are whitewashing their history, you want to kick someone's @$$.

Let me start this reply by first apologizing for not replying sooner. Okay, now lets get down to business:

Q Cubed-I'm sorry about your family's suffering, but please don't misinterpret my statements for trying to justify the Nihongin occupation of Asia....I disagree with it.

The Nihongin practice of "comfort women" is deplorable and totally unacceptable IMO and those that were/are found guilty should pay the price.

What I am trying to justify is those posters who seem to say "Fry, Jap, Fry". It's these poster I'm trying to connect to. Let me try say that, hey, let me bake YOUR families at 4000+ degree's and then cheer the barbeque on.

I personally hate these ppl that think, "Oh, the 'japs' deserve it" when, in actuality, it was the Nihongin's whole freekin society was ingrained to not question authority. PPl have to be more ethnocentric and realize that Western society is NOT the "best" role model on the planet, it's just one other society.

But, once again to restate your remarks, the Nihongin practice of "oppressive occupation" is horrid and should not be ignored despite the U.S. rather lenient stance in the Pacific. If you look at Japanese war criminals, you'll find that they got off on more severe charges than their Nationalist Socialist counterparts. Just another juxtapostion for all of you who think everything was fair in WWII.

[Q Classic]

Q Cubed-I'm sorry about your family's suffering, but please don't misinterpret my statements for trying to justify the Nihongin occupation of Asia....I disagree with it.

The Nihongin practice of "comfort women" is deplorable and totally unacceptable IMO and those that were/are found guilty should pay the price.

What I am trying to justify is those posters who seem to say "Fry, Jap, Fry". It's these poster I'm trying to connect to let them see that, hey, let me bake YOUR families at 4000+ degree's and then cheer the barbeque on.

I personally hate these ppl that think, "Oh, the 'japs' deserve it" when their whole freekin society was ingrained to not question authority. PPl have to be more ethnocentric and realize that Western society is the "best" role model on the planet, it's just one other society.

But, once again to restate your remarks, the Nihongin practice of "oppressive occupation" is horrid and should not be ignored despite the U.S. rather lenient stance in the Pacific. If you look at Japanese war criminals, you'll find that they got off on more severe charges than their Nationalist Socialist counterparts. Just another juxtapostion for all of you who think everything was fair in WWII.

frankychan-- now that we have an understanding, i'm not saying your individual family members deserved such a horrific end. i agree with pretty much everyone in saying, damn, that was awful...

but you'll also have to understand, i don't think it's justifiable in any other way than a sort of twisted karmic vengeance.

i'm sure truman thought it was the only answer. good for him, maybe it did save lives on the american end. we'll never know. that still doesn't change the fact that two hundred thousand died in a bad way. it would be utterly inexcusable except for the small fact that the japanese were just as horrid to their victims in east asia... and thus, i honestly feel that there's a lot less pity to be given to these people when the history of the east asian victims are largely ignored.

so it's not fry jap fry on my end. it's more, you guys suffered. we suffered just as much, if not more. why should you guys get all the pity when you, in a way, deserved it?

[Kramerman]

so it's not fry jap fry on my end. it's more, you guys suffered. we suffered just as much, if not more. why should you guys get all the pity when you, in a way, deserved it?

Tru dat

[Dr. Nick]

DON'T FORGET NAGASAKI! DON'T FORGET NAGASAKI!

[MOBIUS]

No. Ever heard of the "Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere?" Look that up.

Actually I did – Japan ostensibly set up the Co-prosperity Sphere in reaction to Western actions such as:

‘Believing they had just as much right as Western powers to acquire and maintain colonies in Asia. Japan considered colonies to be a basic prerequisite to achieving international prestige and becoming a first-rate country (ittô koku). The Western imperialist countries also subjected Japan to a series of coercive acts, insults, and provocations, which caused great anger to fester among the Japanese people. For example, the 1921-22 Washington Conference naval treaties forced on Japan an unfavorable battleship ratio of 5:5:3 for the US, Britain, and Japan respectively. In 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, Western countries rejected the simple Japanese request to have a racial equality clause included in the League of Nations Covenant. In 1924, America passed the Japanese Exclusion Act to shut off Japanese immigration into the US. This series of international affronts to Japanese pride and status provided fuel to Japanese militaristic sentiments and eventually led to Japan attacking the Western powers to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.’

http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/papers/coprospr.htm

Japan in it’s eyes was merely defending itself against Western efforts to weaken and belittle them. In many ways, Japan’s actions are no worse than the US’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ which had led it to annex/conquer Northwestern Mexico (1/2 of the country!, Hawai’I and the Philippines as the most obvious examples within living memory of the thirties and forties. It could even be argued that Japan was merely trying to conquer these places before the Westerners got to them… Were the Western powers better behaved than the Japanese? Maybe there was less killing, although IIRC the Boxer Rebellion was pretty bloody…

Sure the Japanese proved no better than the previous rulers, but then they had great teachers. I do think that it is fairly hypocritical for Westerners to criticise Japan for it’s actions in that respect. Japan’s subjugation of it’s neighbours was because they saw themselves as superior to them – just as the US saw itself as superior to Japan!!!

So yes, they were ‘defending themselves’ - from the West. I’m not saying I agree with that stance – it is just important to understand the ideology before understanding the propaganda.

What? No. The Koreans never had threatened the Japanese IIRC, particularly after Meiji Restoration.

I thought some time in the dim and distant past the Koreans had a pretty powerful nation and that there wasn’t any love lost between the two countries. OK, well as I said I’m not too familiar with that side of things – so perhaps you could enlighten me about the Taft — Katsura agreement, and how it could impact on Korean ‘independence’…

Maybe you should read those papers then instead of using your own imagination.

Riiiight! So, the Manchurian Incident involved a ‘supposed Chinese attack’ involving in Japanese ‘retaliation’. So the papers (using my imagination) would say “Those Chinese bastards attacked us, so we took Manchuria”… Seems fairly clear to me. An interesting point (a taste of things to come) is that the army effectively acted independently of the government, which opposed the occupation after the fact. Maybe you should read about the ‘Manchurian Incident’ – you would then see that my conclusion would seem a logical one…

No, Tojo was already the PM when the Nanjing Massare took place. I don't get what you are trying to say. Given that Tojo is a cold-blooded bastard that still would not absolve Hirohito from being responsible.

Interesting. There you are taking a patronising tone with me and you can’t even get your facts straight… Nanking Massacre 1937. Tojo as Prime Minister: October 1941. With such an obvious flaw in your knowledge as that, it makes one take anything else that you have to say with a pinch of salt…

Someone said that Tojo wasn’t responsible for the Nanking massacre because he wasn’t PM at the time – I’m saying that the likes of he and his army cronies were already more than powerful enough to do what they wanted at the time and therefore as overall commander of the army in Nanking he was responsible. It obviously wasn’t you as you would be contradicting your own error!

No you don't understand. They (the Japaneses) know more or less as to what acutally happened, in a glorified form, and they supported it. They could have been brainwashed to support Japanese militarism, but they still thought it was cool to kill them Koreans and Chinese. More like slaughtered like pigs.

‘More or less’ I told you the reason why I believe (as opposed to know) that the civilians believed in what they were reading. That’s the part of the quote of mine that you omitted BTW. Brainwashing in a cultural manner, could be a way of describing their opinion. Both in ’31 and ’37, Japan felt it had to claim it was the injured party in order to justify it’s attacks against China. Why would it do that if it knew that the Japanese civilians were happy to see Chinese blood flow anyway? The fact that the Japanese leaders felt they had to make up these excuses means IMO that they would also be controlling the media and newspapers etc… I mean why are so many people in Japan still denying it happened? Unless you’re telling me that these papers actually said something like “Nanking is ours and just to celebrate we raped at least 20,000 women”. Do you honest think they would report the rapes in the report of Nanking being taken??? Therefore, assuming they didn’t, you are already talking about an omission of facts to the Japanese public…

Again, Tojo was not in charge of any specific theatres at this point. This is a moot point, though. Because in 1937/12/11, there were large scale celebrations on the fall of Nanjing.

I’ve already said that Tojo was C in C of the Kwantung army from IIRC June ’37 – you know, head honcho, big cheese etc… Therefore I dispute your statement. Furthermore, I put it to you that if as a Japanese citizen you had heard that your nation’s army had just taken it’s enemy’s capital city in a war the enemy started, that you too would be in a large scale celebration! I further put it to you that you have allowed yourself to be contaminated by the idea of instant ‘total news’ a la CNN. We get everything warts and all these days in our cushy democracies when it comes to war reporting. On the one hand we have reports of coalition forces destroying Al-Qaeda positions and on the other hand we have the latest accidental bombing of civilians. Back then your average Japanese civilian probably got the bulk of his/her news via newspaper. You can only write so much in a newspaper, so “Defeating the Chinese army after heavy fighting and taking it’s Capital” was what was probably written; and “300,000 civilians killed and 20,000 women raped” was probably left out… One way to lie is to omit the truth – very easy to do in a totalitarian society…

This is again a moot point. When there is a war people die. We are supposed to avoid civilian deaths in this day and age, but you're talking about more than 50 years ago. There was a war, a long bloody drawn out war with the Axis on one side and everybody else on the other. The Axis were the aggressors and the only way to stop the war was to force them to surrender. The IJA had been slaughtering innocent by the tens of thousands, and each day the war dragged on scores more would die. I don't see how an action that stopped killing on a much bigger scale is immoral.

I agree, at no point have I said not to use the bomb, I just dispute how it was used. What is immoral is that this action could have stopped the killing on a bigger scale and avoided hundreds and thousands of civilian casualties at the same time!

That's still happening in Japan right now. Tojo being worshipped as a hero, and rightwingers are still trying to whitewash their history.

Right! That is exactly what I’m getting at! If they’re doing it now, it is a virtual certainty that they were not telling their civilian population everything vis a vis their massacres and rapes… I’m glad you agree!

Like where? Japan is a packed, small country. It's not like the US where military installations can be put in the middle of nowhere.

Are you trying to tell me that the whole of Japan is some kind of Borg-like Megalopolis without even the odd few square miles of virtually uninhabited land here and there???

IIRC Hokkaido, for example, is pretty sparsely populated and that’s a HUGE island. I’m sure there would be plenty of fairly out of the way military targets – certainly not ones in the middle of a large city!

How many more Chinese and Koreans would be killed by the IJA if the war continued to dragged on? How many Japanese civilians would be starved to death?

???

Well, I doubt even the IJA was going to get through several hundred thousand civilians in the extra few days my method would have taken… You seem to have gotten it into your head that I wasn’t going to use the atom bombs at all…? I would have used them in a less calculated and cold blooded manner is all…

Would it do anything if the 'Boys were dropped in the middle of nowhere? Who would be there to see?

If you are going to debate with me, at least have the decency to not deliberately misrepresent my points.
When did I say drop them in the middle of nowhere??? I said NOT ON A CIVILIAN TARGET. Which could also mean dropping it on some military installation in plain sight of one! Imagine 200,000 witnesses instead of 200,000 dead people? Those people would still have their communications open to tell Tokyo of the explosion and the fact that it might actually be a very good idea to surrender!

IMO, 72 hours was plenty. They could have at least said something. Started a dialogue. Asked for an extension.

Complete silence? That's bad.

Yeah right! In 1931 an earthquake destroyed Napier and Hastings in NZ. It took days for the outside World to realise the true enormity of the disaster…

That was just an earthquake where a few hundred people died – but it still knocked out all communications for a while! Now, you take out a major city, which also happens to be a major communications hub in a country where a private telephone would be a major luxury item back then – not to mention the EMP frazzling communications that survived… Then of course the whole country is a war and communications are f*cked nationwide as that is a natural target of warfare anyway. So, the leaders who are spending all their time planning the defence of Japan from invasion probably aren’t that interested in ‘yet another devastating attack’ by the US, as they’re used to the firebombings anyway. So the clock ticks until the Japanese realise that the Americans have invented an entire new method of mass killing…

NOW do you see what 72 hours is completely inadequate???

Not to mention the fact that Japan had already opened a peace dialogue. Question, were they threatened with Nuclear attack…?

To end even cold-blooded murders on a bigger scale.

Oh, so that’s OK then??? Two wrongs don’t make a right – they merely mean the forfeiture of the moral high ground by the victim of the aggression…

If you have a way to force the Japanese to surrender, that would be better. You have to remember the big picture, of people getting killed in various Japanese occupied territories.

I already told you! Bomb one takes out a target that is witnessed by a large number of people who can then tell Tokyo what has happened in no uncertain terms. An ultimatum of a week is given before the next target is attacked and that the next target will be a civilian target.

If the Japanese do not come to terms, drop bomb two on a Japanese city and give them the same threat as before.

Ad infinitum – or so they think. But then they do not know that the US only had three bombs.

The only argument for me that could possibly justify the use of an atom bomb on a civilian target is that, paradoxically, it is probably the only thing that stopped us from having WWIII as we already knew the practical effects of a nuclear explosion on people and refrained from using! But that is the benefit of hindsight and merely a fortunate side-effect rather than a stated aim…
What I don’t understand is why you seemingly have it in for the Japanese people?

Are you of Chinese, or Korean origin or something – it’s just that normally you’re anti this sort of thing…?

[Q Classic]

obviously, i'm of korean origin. which is why i can view it as a heinous murder, but a perfectly justified one.

I thought some time in the dim and distant past the Koreans had a pretty powerful nation and that there wasn’t any love lost between the two countries. OK, well as I said I’m not too familiar with that side of things – so perhaps you could enlighten me about the Taft — Katsura agreement, and how it could impact on Korean ‘independence’…

yes, the koreans were a pretty powerful nation in the past. but they often did not want to project power to japan-- why would they, as they viewed it as a rather backward nation which had nothing of value to take. korea has never threatened nor invaded japan; japan has invaded korea twice, the second time occupying it for forty hellish years.
if korea's guilty of anything against japan, it's thinking them as the dim and culturally backward thieves that they are.

[Q Classic]

mobius, if you'll look for my posts, you'll see all the details that i've listed about tojo and other things.

again, tojo was not in charge at nanking.

======

the taft-katsura agreement was the justification that japan gave for occupying korea-- korea was "too stupid" in a sense to make good foreign relations agreements, and so was an excuse for japan to tell america and other countries that it would handle korea's politics for them.

[Ethelred]

not to mention the EMP frazzling communications that survived…

That didn't happen. EMP was discovered in the 60'swhen a Bomb was tested at high altidute. High enough to be in the ionsphere. The ions are the actual emmiters of the pulse. Fat Man and Little Boy were set off to low for that.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected because they had not yet been plastered with conventional bombing. Most of Japans other military target areas had allready had the hell bombed out of them. I don't know enough about Hiroshima but Nagasaki was at that point the last unbombed major harbor city and that harbor was a military target. Basicly Japan was running low on things for the US to bomb with something of that nature.

The timeing of the second bomb certainly looks wrong in retrospect. I think the main reason that the US didn't want to wait was that Russia had begun taking Japanese territory and Japanese held territory. Some of which Russia still holds today.

[SuperSneak]

When I was a teen living in Japan with a host family, I had a very poignant moment with my host father around this time of year. Through stilted english and japanese, we discussed the bombings. It was a bit awkward for both of us, but what he said was that it basically took Japan off the track of fascism, which the people are ultimately grateful for. Also, US aid after the war was totally unexpected and really changed the Japanese culture intrinsically, because it displayed an alien concept that took hold: "mercy".
That being said, the more I get to know the Koreans in my work and personal life, the more respect I have for them. I have never encountered a more hard working, gracious and affable people.
Does anyone "deserve" such a thing? No, I don't wish death on anyone, so far. Had it been me or mine that suffered from Japanese occupation--well, that is not for me to say.
I would hope we wouldn't have to resort to such things, and the irony is that it set the US up as the policeman/thug of the world from that moment on, which I hate about our country and love at the same time.
There are no simple answers...but if it ultimately ended protracted death, pain and suffering for more people, well, mathematically it works for me.

[Ethelred]

Also, US aid after the war was totally unexpected and really changed the Japanese culture intrinsically, because it displayed an alien concept that took hold: "mercy".

I think the US learned from the Civil War and the excesses of Reconstruction plus the mess Europe made of the aftermath of WWI that a defeated enemy must be rehabilitated and that revenge just leads to further conflict. Both Germany and Japan are now nations that the US can deal with. Both now have at least some understanding that we can all succeed together. Germany more than Japan though because Germany has confronted its past whereas Japan is still trying to avoid that to some extent.

[DarthVeda]

Was it right to use the bomb? Hell yes. Drop that bomb twice and as many times more as necessary.

As far as Japan exhausting itself, as far as its military leaders (which were the defacto rulers of Japan at the time) were considered, they still had 76 million in reserve manpower. They had constructed over 5000 Kamikaze aircraft alone for the final battle for the homeisles, and thousands of midget submarines and suicide craft.

Children were being trained to jump under tanks with satchel charges on their backs.

This was not a nation that knew how to quit and only out of the grace of their emperor were they going to bail out.

Anybody that thinks the bomb shouldn't have been used is kidding themselves. Japan was not the westernized democracy loving nation it is today. It was one of the most brutal regimes of all time, and unlike the Germans, Japan never subscribed to the POW treaties that Germany had to follow.
Thousands of Americans, Fillipinos, Chinese, and British died in japanese labor camps for lack of food, overwork, torture. There are thousands of other documented and recorded attrocities by the Imperial Japanese forces. This was not a peace loving nation.

The U.S. wasn't interested in negociated peace with these people, especially when the Japanese were clearly losing the war. Total surrender was the only acceptable out for the Japanese and until the bombs were dropped, they had no intention of accepting this out.

So let's go back in time and not drop the bombs. In the alternative universe, a million Americans, Russians, and British die taking the home Isles from 76 million japanese who are beyond determined to defend their god that was the emperor, and 76 million japanese die in the process. Bushido, the way of the warrior, had been sown into the Japanese for over one thousand years, and was not going to leave on fleeted wings in the nation's time of crisis. Hence the suicide preparations.

Japan in 1945 was a nation with nothing left but suicide. The U.S. gave them an out with surrender that they could not refuse (it was either surrender or be executed, thankfully the emperor was wiser than his military staff).

If they had been ready to surrender, that would have been acceptable, but they were ready to negociate a peace, which was entirely unacceptable under British and American terms. And in the eyes of America at that time, it was entirely possible that the Japanese were trying to surrender seperately to the Russians to avoid an American occupation.