Nagasaki

[Wolseley]

Please, people, do not forget that over 700,000 innocent people were killed in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And most of them were either combatants or potential combatants. As I stated before, the Japanese 2nd Army was vaporized at Hiroshima, which would have been a force we would have had to confront if we had invaded Japan---a force committed to killing American troops. Likewise, the entire Japanese citizenry was being prepared for resistance to US forces, meaning more people committed to killing American troops.

This was a state of all-out war, no quarter asked or given on either side, and all of this revisionist nonsense about the Japanese being the innnocent victims of the oppressive militaristic Americans is a load of balderdash.

I'm inclined to believe that there are always other options, maybe it was hard to find... but it was there. There was a way. Ghandi brought down the British impire in India with non-violent resistance. Why is it that we are so pro-war all the time... it's our society, and it's very sad.

So you're suggesting that our course in World War II should have been to tell the Japanese, "It's okay if you bomb us and kill thousands of our people, we won't do anything. If you invade us, abolish our government, take our teenage girls to serve your army as military prostitutes, kill our young men or turn them into slaves for forced labor, and slice the heads off old women who fail to bow to your soldiers on the streets----that's fine with us. We wouldn't do anything to hurt you"???

I am profoundly grateful that Americans of 60 years ago did not have similar sentiments.

I can't help but tear up when I saw human beings trying to rationaly 'favoring' killing so many innocent people.

See above.

Why must the US be a military Super-Power? Why not, instead, be a Humanitarian Super-Power? We have the resources, we could rid starvation in the world ourselves with all the food we have here. But we don't... it's not good for business. And neither was any less violent way of handling Japan... the Atomic Bomb was less costly, in the long run.

-IGGY

Considering that we prevented three extremely nasty totalitarian regimes from taking over the planet, being Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Soviet Russia, I'd say we didn't do too bad.

 

[Alenci]

Why must the US be a military Super-Power? Why not, instead, be a Humanitarian Super-Power? We have the resources, we could rid starvation in the world ourselves with all the food we have here. But we don't... it's not good for business.

We pay fully one-quarter of the budget of the United Nations... down from one-third.

We are also the largest contributor of humanitarian aid in the world in sheer dollars.

 

[Force]

Sorry, but I don't care for Ben Affleck nor getting my facts from Hollywood movies. A little bit real researching goes a long way. Those facts were around long before the movie.

I can however see with comments like that no real discussion can take place, just petty insults. So sad

I'm saying that by "cutting off an oil source" we did not provoke an unwarranted attack, that had no warning....contrary to conspiracy theorists. You can't possibly think thats the real reason they attacked. Don't you remember the Tripartite Pact, that made the Axis powers?

I mean lets just look at Article Two.

ARTICLE TWO

Germany and Italy recognize and respect the leadership of Japan in the establishment of a new order in greater East Asia.

Look into it.....Anyways...they were trying to neutralize the American navy, were in the middle of a long war with China, they wanted to get rid of us so that they could have complete run of the South Pacific etc. They were part of the axis powers. All those reasons are the real reasons.

They already had it set up that they were going to attack when they went to the peace talks.....So whether or not some government employee intercepted a message over in Japan, (because we had broken a lot of their codes) the thousands of men over in Hawaii didnt know about it. This is still debated anyway, no one knows for sure that the higher ups knew about it. And they say that even if they did they wouldnt know where the attack would be....hmmm seems familiar..."they might attack" thats all you know...I mean come on.

It was a surprise assault.......So NO there wasn't a warning....war is war they did it. But thats their bad.... Im just sick of hearing oh the US deserved what it got because it cut off a supply line....or Japan sent warning....No sorry didnt work like that.

 

[yen]

And most of them were either combatants or potential combatants.

Hardly, Japan was already in an incredibly weakened state by the time of Hiroshima. Even people in the military at that time agreed it should never have happened. Quotes have already been posted.

Force, first off, more was embargoed than just oil, I thought you would've atleast known that. Aside from cutting off ALL exports to Japan (again, more than oil ), FDR also froze Japans assets and demanded that the Japanese get out of Manchuria.

I don't see the US minding it's own business here. In regards to all this, the McCollum Memo that was sent to FDR addressed that this could lead Japan to commit acts of war. It was "all the better" to him if it that happened, because Japan would be seen as the aggressor and make us look innocent.

First off, where did I say the US "deserved" it? This is such a typical response, especially from 9/11 debates, and it honestly makes no since. Provoke and deserve are two different things.

Also, a week before Pearl Harbor, we were already commited to a war against Japan anyways. The U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands had already agreed that all three of nations would go to war against Japan if the Japanese entered Thailand — which they did a week before Pearl Harbor. So the U.S. was already committed to war a week before Pearl Harbor.

Anyhoo, I'm done with this thread. The petty movie comment above and then thinking this was only about oil shows me this debate won't go far at all. No wonder I don't care to visit the forums much anymore, nobody ever does the research. See ya around.

 

[Wolseley]

"Nobody does the research". Amazing.

What's even more amazing is that if we'd sat on our hands and done nothing, not imposed economic sanctions against Japan, not cut off their imports, etc., and let them have their merry way, NOW we'd have liberals boohooing into their beer about how evil we were for not trying to do anything to help the oppressed Chinese.

You cain't win, I tells ya, you just cain't win against the revisionist liberal mindset. It's like trying to nail water to a wall.

 

[nima]

What's even more amazing is that if we'd sat on our hands and done nothing, not imposed economic sanctions against Japan, not cut off their imports, etc., and let them have their merry way, NOW we'd have liberals boohooing into their beer about how evil we were for not trying to do anything to help the oppressed Chinese.

All speculation, there is no way to know what would be happening, and so that is an invalid point. I prefer to stick with facts, and what did happen.

Also, scary the generalizations being made like that against so called "revisionist liberals". I don't care who you are or which side you are on, such statements show an extreme bias which is never good for debates.

 

[Wolseley]

All speculation, there is no way to know what would be happening, and so that is an invalid point. I prefer to stick with facts, and what did happen.

As are all of the alternative scenarios bantered about concerning "what we should have done instead, because Japan was already beaten, etc.". They're irrelevant speculation as well.

Also, scary the generalizations being made like that against so called "revisionist liberals". I don't care who you are or which side you are on, such statements show an extreme bias which is never good for debates.

LOL. You need to go over to the News & Current Events forum and remind a few folks over there of that.

With two college degrees and a Phi Alpha Theta in history, I've had enough exposure to various interpretations, be it "new" history, "old" history, elitist, Marxist, revisionist, deconstructionist, anti-Semitic, linear, alternative, Fascist, liberal, conservative, and politically correct.

The bottom line is that what has happened, has happened. That's a given, and there's nothing we can do about it. The problems come in when we get competing groups of historians who try to figure out why it happened. Did A combine with B to cause C, yes or no? We all carry an inherent bias, and we look at the past and interpret.

Always remember the old proverb: "College professors and diapers should be changed often----and both for the same reason."

 

[nima]

As are all of the alternative scenarios bantered about concerning "what we should have done instead, because Japan was already beaten, etc.". They're irrelevant speculation as well.

Not exactly. Saying Japan was already beaten isn't just speculation when senior military officials have stated that it was unnecessary as well, and they were the ones with the intelligence reports.

LOL. You need to go over to the News & Current Events forum and remind a few folks over there of that.

Well I'm not those "folks". I am new here but will gladly bring that up in any threads I participate in there as well.

That's a given, and there's nothing we can do about it.

I agree with you there. Debating can't ever change history

 

[Wolseley]

Not exactly. Saying Japan was already beaten isn't just speculation when senior military officials have stated that it was unnecessary as well, and they were the ones with the intelligence reports.

You mean like the senior military officials I referenced in post #7 of this thread?

Gen. George C. Marshall predicted that the invasion would cost, at a minimum, 1/4 of a million American lives, and possibly as much as a million or more.

The Pacific Command gave figures of 20,000 American dead and 75,000 wounded; the Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that the casualty figures would surpass all existing casualty lists for both Europe and the Pacific combined.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur expected to take 50,000 casualites in just establishing a beachhead, and pessimistically warned that the Japanese might simply disband, take to the mountains, and carry on a guerilla war of attrition, the aim being to kill as many Americans as possible, a la' Peleliu and Okinawa. If this came to pass, he predicted a protracted ten-year war with no ceiling on American losses

.

 

[nima]

Or the tons of quotes listed here mentioned earlier in this thread by someone.

doug-long.com/quotes.htm

 

[Force]

Not exactly. Saying Japan was already beaten isn't just speculation when senior military officials have stated that it was unnecessary as well, and they were the ones with the intelligence reports.

Oh the defenseless Japanese..........hmmm are these the same ones who had the "kill order" from their leaders to kill ALL POWs. Thank God we dropped the bombs when we did.....all the allied POWs saved.......wow real defenseless.

 

[Melinda]

Japan dropped attacked Pearl Harbor, a military base. Soldiers should be prepared to die. Not civilians. America killed many civilians and left effects on them that were present decades later. I don't think that is justified.

 

[TScott]

Quote from iggy
Please, people, do not forget that over 700,000 innocent people were killed in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Not even close. The deaths caused by the bomb at Hiroshima was 70,000 while at Nagasaki there were 40,000 deaths. Large numbers, for sure, but no where near the 700,000 you quote.

 

[Force]

Japan dropped attacked Pearl Harbor, a military base. Soldiers should be prepared to die. Not civilians. America killed many civilians and left effects on them that were present decades later. I don't think that is justified.

Umm....nice try but civilians were killed in Pearl Harbor as well as servicemen.

 

[TScott]

Japan dropped attacked Pearl Harbor, a military base. Soldiers should be prepared to die. Not civilians. America killed many civilians and left effects on them that were present decades later. I don't think that is justified.

I find it hard to second guess the reasons for the decision to drop the bombs on Japan. The men who made this decision had just gone through the bloodiest war in history, they had to send a lot of young people off to die because the countries of the Axis found it necessary to have the war in the first place. The world was at peace when the Axis countries decided they wanted to take other countries over and place their people in servitude. Second guessing the decision to drop the bomb? You may as well second guess the decision to fight in the war at all. Why not let Germany have Europe and Japan have Asia?

It seems as though the Japanese were willing to surrender, but we know that there were many within the Japanese Army that wanted to continue the war until the last Japanese was standing. It is known that they had 25 million people lined up to defend the Home Islands. 5 million military and 20 million militia, some armed only with sharpened bamboo spears. They had held back thousands of aircraft for the defense, many of them would been kamikazees thrown at our fleet. I think our leaders just wanted to end the war as quickly as possible.

 

[Higgaion]

Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, later commented: "It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan... The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

 

[Force]

Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, later commented: "It is my opinion that the use of the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan... The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

Funny how you quote someone who wasnt there....the government screwed our boys returning from the South Pacific and wanted relations with Japan later.....lets see what was really going on and what we saved by dropping the bomb(s)-could have been one..or non had they surrendered, but they were stubborn........

"These next quotes are very graphic and disturbing. I include them as a chance for us to imagine the unimaginable, and the severity of the plight of the POW." ​

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"on what looked like a piece of khaki cloth. I slipped back if in mud. It was human flesh that we were walking on. We could smell decayed human flesh all along the road where men had been killed, their bodies were left where they had fallen. The columns of tanks, trucks, and cavalry horses had run over them, pulverizing their bones into pulp. I thought, "These men have given every ounce of strength for their country." ​

John S. Coleman Jr.… Salt Lake Utah…survivor​

"One sound you can never forget is the sound of someone getting a bayonet stuck through him. The Japs loved this sound. They had a sort of "bayonet fixation." These stabbings must have been pure delight to them since they knew their victims couldn't stick them back. Most guys who were stuck with a bayonet were so far gone they couldn't really have cared a **** less. Everyone knew if you couldn't walk you died. Most bayonet thrusts were to the upper body. It makes a bigger target. When the bayonet enters the victim, there is usually an exhaling of air such as when a guy gets punched in the gut. Then, there is that unreal sound of the blade passing through bone and gristle. The Japs developed a great taste for this sound, especially during the later days after I had passed through"​

William R. Evans, Kora Rouge River, Oregon…survivor​

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"A guard walked by with an American head stuck on the end of his bayonet. My stomach turned over at the site. Blood was running from the neck and from the open lids. The teeth were clenched in a ghastly smile and the eyes protruded. I turned my eyes away, but I saw three other Japs, each of them with an American head on a bayonet. They walked in among us and we fell silent, watching them with deadly hatred. Night came at last, yet we continued to stand there. If a man slumped to his knees the guards rushed in, jabbing him with their bayonets or kicking him until he either stood or fell groaning to the ground."​

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Sidney K. Stewart, New York, New York…survivor​

 

[Higgaion]

Force,

I'm fully aware of the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese on American (and other) POW's. What does that have to do with my post or the question of whether using the Bomb was a moral and just decision?

PS- I'll be out of town for a few days.