Hiroshima Remembered.

[DarthVeda]

I have thoroughly researched the Japanese at that point in time, and any assertation that they were about to surrender is revisionist historian bull****. The armed forces were going to fight to the death and only the hand of the emperor was going to stop them (and did).

Scaring the Russians? We dropped the bomb more or less to stop the Russians from claiming all of China and half of Japan.

I spit on the man who says it wasn't necessary and the Japs were going to surrender. Did it occur to you that surrender had never been their motto from the get-go? Suicide was preferable to surrender.

If you want to point fingers at the body count, look at Dresden or Tokyo's firebombings which caused obscenely higher deathtolls than Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Both cities were not chosen because the U.S. wanted to kill innocent civilians, they were chosen because they were both extremely important nodes (and production centers) for the Army and Navy of the Imperial Japanese Forces.

[Gatekeeper]

I think civilian deaths became common with World War II due to the advances in aerial technology. Combatants were now able to drop bombs and whatnot directly on targets in cities and it was inevitable that civilian deaths would follow.

Gatekeeper

[Q Classic]

The "they deserved it" line is also appalling. Certainly those who perpetrated war crimes like in Nanking deserved punishment, but innocent civilians? No way.

i didn't say those civilians deserved it per se. i said the japanese people as a whole deserved it through karma. i think that the horrors of the atomic weapons could have been avoided-- but the fact that they weren't is something that we have to deal with.
how can you punish the tens of thousands of troops who occupied korea and nanking? the logistics of it all are mindboggling.

i'm not denying that the hiroshima and nagasaki were appalling. all i'm saying is that they don't deserve as much pity and grief as they seem to want.

I'm not trying to exculpate Japanese atrocities at all. But the fact that the Japanese committed them doesn't make it "right" or "fair" that we, who claimed to be better, did the same thing. Same thing goes for Dresden.

neither am i exculpating the americans for using those bombs. their moral advantage from germany was lost on those two days. but that doesn't change the fact that japan as a nation did deserve such treatment.

[Boris Godunov]

What sense does it make that there is Karma on a national scale? Karma doesn't know national borders, AFIK. It only works on an individual level.

Hell, I don't believe in Karma anyway...

[rah]

1915 was not WWII. And besides, that incident was PRed to death to get the US behind the war effort. That outrage was carefully and deliberately orchastrated.

I don't care what the Geneva convention said, look at civilian casualties in WWII on all sides. It was accepted.
Otherwise, all aerial bombardment would have been halted. Fortunately, as mentioned above, advances in technology have given us the option minimize civilian casualties. Times are different.

Rich

[Q Classic]

i believe what comes around goes around. japan was by far one of the harshest colonialists in asia, and possibly the world.

they treated groups of people like sh1t. and it went, and it came back to them.

and now am i supposed to feel sorry for each and every one of them when few western breaths have been spent in any attempt to make the japanese apologize for the atrocities they did in asia? when almost no word has been uttered in public about the destruction of nanking and the occupation of korea?

am i supposed to believe that japanese lives are worth more than korean and chinese lives simply because they were vaporized, burned, or irradiated by atomics?

i feel sorry for them, i do. but not enough to make me believe that they didn't deserve it in some way.

[Pekka]

Go ahead, live in denial if it makes you feel better .
No country deservers that kind of treatment. No matter what. Justifying it by saying war is dirty, war is hell, it stopped the war is... excuses to feel better in my opinion. And every man knows it deep in their hearts.

[rah]

Not every man. Some believe, myself included, that it did stop the war and saved more people's lives. We're all entitled to our opinions. Your's is no more important than mine.

[Pekka]

True true. Well.. I too think it did stop the war. Stopping war is good.. But I think it was a bad way to stop it.
Bah, I know too little about this subject, I might just as well keep my mouth shut.

[rah]

Yes, I agree that there might have been a better way. But in war, answers are not always clear or easy. At least this one worked.

[Q Classic]

Go ahead, live in denial if it makes you feel better .

i should live in denial? you seem to be...

No country deservers that kind of treatment. No matter what.

no country deserves to have its children shipped off to be killed for no reason, or to be used as whores.

Justifying it by saying war is dirty, war is hell, it stopped the war is... excuses to feel better in my opinion.

war is dirty, war is hell, there's no bones about it. it's a pity it had to happen, but i feel very little grief for them.

And every man knows it deep in their hearts.

and every man knows it deep in their hearts that not pressuring japan to apologize for their crimes and atrocities is wrong.
or they should.
except, see, nobody knows. or cares, it seems, not in the west.

[Pekka]

Yep. It might have been the right choice, maybe more people would have died. Something we'll never know.
Damn. Now I'm not sure if it was the right decision or not.. I'll stop figuring it out.

[Pekka]

q cubed, but two wrongs doesn't make it right

[Q Classic]

pekka, see an earlier post.

i know two wrongs don't make a right.

but i think the right wrong can stop future wrongs.

does that make sense?

i think hiroshima was just barely enough to pay for japan's sins. nagasaki was gratuitous.

but the fact that the west--and japan-- refuse to acknowledge the sheer brutality and cruelty of the japanese occupations... while on the other hand heaping loads and loads of pity and grief on the victims of hiroshima...

you will understand, then, why i am a bit miffed?

let's take a look at nanking. originally, the city held only about 250k; during the 30s, when japan was vigorously attacking china, the number swelled to over 1 million.
then nanking fell, with about 800k stuck there.
in the four months of japanese occupation, fron dec 1937 to mar 1938, approximately 400k people were murdered by japanese troops-- men were machine gunned in the mass graves, for instance. 80k women and girls were raped, often repeatedly. even conservative estimates place the death and rape toll at 300k+ and 20k+.

hiroshima: 200k. at best, it's still 100k less. at worst, 50% less.

so all the pity we heap upon the "poor" japanese who died there, they are worth twice as much as those nanking chinese? i barely hear any recrimination against the japanese for what they did there. but no, everybody hears about the atomic.

what about the tens of thousands of "comfort women", women snatched from their homeland and forced into prostitution for japanese troops? in some cases, their quota of men to service was as high as 120/d... 70-90% of them became casualties. you never hear about those, now do you? obviously the horror of a daily rape by 120 different men for weeks, if not months on end, is worth less than that of a mercifully quick death from irradiation.

and then the occupation of korea? some estimates place the death toll in just seven years of a forty-year occupation at close to 1m.
and yet nobody hears about it.

tell me again, why should i feel sorry for these japanese?

the atomic stopped their brutal rule. i feel pity for those caught in it, but it only goes so far. flat out, the wrongs of the atomics may not make it right, but those atomics were deserved.

[rah]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
in some cases, their quota of men to service was as high as 120/d...

If you include a meage 6 hours of sleep and and hour to eat/hygene per day, that works out to a new man every 8.5 minutes. Somehow, I think that's a bit of an exageration.

I'm not saying that it wasn't brutal. I really think it was horrible, but it does seem a bit inflated.

Rich