No matter what you have, no matter what part of history, there is always gunna be someone around to protest it.

nomales can you explain to me why Americans are such pussies as an apology makes a man lerave the service? Do you really have that little self confidence in yourselves as a people? You really do make me laugh.

They were defeated and they were negotiating surrender.


Read this slowly: No. They. Weren't.

Your timeline is off. Unless of course you consider Japan's COMPLETE rejection of every surrender offer, up AND THROUGH Nagasaki, to be "negotiating surrender". I don't.

Like the Japanese should talk. Since when did they EVER apologize to the Chinese, Koreans, the POWS, slave laborers, and everyone else whom I can't remember? What about the Yasukuni Shrine and War Museum, which claims Nanking never took place? What about the comfort women? What about Japan's biological weapons program? They ought to remember why they have the pacifist stance written in their constitution.

It was a total war, complete surrender or destruction, exick. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wartime industrial centers, acceptable targets, under total war concept. Even after the Nagasaki bombing, the High Council STILL pressed for war. Imagine what an invasion would look like.

I say nuke the protesters (with concentrated x-rays or plutonium inhalers) and be done with it.

Then again, napalm is probably safer to handle and its effects are closer to the heat/flash damage of a nuke..

I agree though, there should be an exhibit of the after-effects of the nuke bursts, with a title:

DO NOT fark WITH AMERICA, OR YOU WILL DIE IN AGONY.

And if I were a general in Iraq, facing pro-Saddam protesters? I'd put in poles on both sides of the road from Baghdad to Tikrit and put Saddamite severed heads on the top of each one, medieval style.

Same thing with pinkos.

Kymry, interesting analogy, I like it.

FUBuddy, verrry interesting. Yes, why is Truman such a bleeding-heart hippie? How treacherous of him to think of the United States's "moral stature!"

That's gay.

That fact that US citzens are unable to recognize reality, i.e. that we dropped the bomb for political/ecomonic reasons, is alarming.

Recognizing that fact does not make one less patriotic.

The war was over, and Japan wanted to surrender. The only hang up was some confusion over securing the life of the Emperor. That's hardly a reason to drop two atomic bombs on women and children, especially since we did not demand the life of the Emperor in the end.

Sorry if this upsets you, but the truth is the truth.

I don't blame the japanese for the bombing of Pearl Harbor, that was President Rosevelt's 9/11; in both cases, a president had advanced infomation of an impending attack. In both cases, the president chose to look the other way so he would have an excuse to send the country to war. In both cases, going to war was for self-serving purposes.

They were defeated and they were negotiating surrender.


this is total BS. They refused to surrender, and were gearing up for partisan warfare.

It's too bad they don't have a less infamous B-29 to display, then these guys would have to go back to their PETA meetings.

2003-12-16 03:12:31 PM Darkhop
ExPatBadger, have you read any books about what it took to get Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, etc., away from the Japanese? Every inch paid for with so many lives it's unbelievable. I don't think anyone had the patience for an a-bomb 'warning shot'.

No, I haven't read any books about it. But I don't want to project total ignorance, either. And I don't deny the profound emotional element to the decision.

I'm just unsure that it was clear at the time exactly what the Japanese response would be, and how psychologically effective or ineffective it would be to explode it offshore. If I were to take a side on this, I would have favored a warning shot, because I believe there is a moral obligation to do so first, given the uncertainty.

Of course, I have the luxury of not having to live through that event.

I don't think Clinton apologized for Hiroshima, did he? Where's the link?

There is varying debate about how many soldiers we would have lost had we invaded Japan, I tend to go with the more popular theory that it would have been around the numbers estimated. The US Army even had 500,000 purple heart medals manufactured.

Eeep.

Squee:
"BlobBrain So just returned from your 1945 meeting with Truman? That's a marvelous time-machine you have there."

Yes. Its called a "library." You too might have one of these "time machines" in your town. Turn off your tee vee and go check it out!

So, Emperor-Jay, Can I have a conspiracy Nutjob badge, and Join your fanclub?

FUBuddy, you're reading someone's heavily biased interpretation of declassified documents. Read "The Longest Day" by the Japan Historical Society to get an idea of just how ready the Japanese were to surrender.

I dunno that anyone's mentioned this or not. But the plane that dropped the second atomic bomb has been on public display for many years without any protest I'm aware of. I always found it kinda funny that for some reason none of the protesters ever made a stink about that.

I love it when people complain about one form of war being so much worse then the other. At least nukes are quick.

Sure, the US could have carpet bombed nanking and hiroshima into dust, but why? war is about killing the enemy in the most efficient and expedient way as possible. Dont complain when someone finds a better way to do it.

Hell, you could even validate it by saying "They would have used it against us" - and you KNOW they would have.

Hell, I love Japan now. Good people over there. That's just how it is.(Oh, and dont let my nick fool you - I am not a farking nihilist.)

Cygnis-x ...and always someone making money off of it.

Let's review: Mitsubishi Manafacturing, in Nagasaki, worked 24hr. shifts in order to deliver torpedoes that would run shallow enough to do the deed at Pearl (the previous models all went nose into mud).

One of the reasons firebombing Jap cities was considered best option was that small arms, etc. were being assembled in residential neighborhoods (we were having luck rubbbing out centralized manafacturing).

For those who beat their breasts, I have only this: I've been growing Hiroshima's Official Flower in my yard for twenty years (Japanese Rose), it is an attractive flower and it is Yellow...

Snarfangle

If you think there was ever going to be an invasion of Japan, you are sorely mistaken.

Even if we had no A-bombs, there was not going to be an invasion...

Oh btw, if they were negotiating a surrender, and so intent on surrendering, they could have called an armistice till things were ironed out.

That means, everything, all movements would stop in place, while negotiation took place.

So you are a 100% brainwashed sheep to think that Japan was defeated and negotiating a surrender before the bomb was dropped.

03:19:38 PM
stubacka


nomales can you explain to me why Americans are such pussies as an apology makes a man lerave the service? Do you really have that little self confidence in yourselves as a people? You really do make me laugh.

Did you serve biatch? Cause Then you may understand. They started it, we ended it. Now, Im guessing from your pooly writen post that your not from the USA, and as such, suck it.

Umm yeah, the A-Bomb attacks weren't about Japan, they were already beaten, starving, and ready to surrender.

They were about sending a message to the Soviet Union.

vjp -- The Japanese seem to make a very honest effort to erase such things from their history. There were no POW atrocities, no Rape of Nanking, Pearl Harbor was an imminent threat and had to be disposed of, and if the war in the Pacific ever happened at all it was because of aggressive American and British imperialism.

To those that protest this kind of display: face history, then go make your own. Be creative, original, and do something to help mankind. Throwing red paint at the Enola Gay is none of these things. To those bombed in 1945: you should have considered protesting in 1937.

Protesting the past helps no-one.

For the people wondering why the Hiroshima survivors are not protesting the Dresden firebombings, read the first part of this sentence again.

Fark You, Tamika Tomonaga, you whacked out Yoko Ono prototype.

History is history. Not your revisionist happy rising sun land BS you fill Mangas with, about how mighty Nippon defeated the USA. We, these days, try to preserve history, and have a goddamn time of keeping it intact due to protesting twats who want things presented one way or another, sympathetic to their way of thinking.

No crying admission of racial guilt, no chest beating proclaimations of nationalistic pride. Just a farking airplane. THE airplane that did the deed. Its what farking MUSEUMS are supposed to preserve.

Facts are for preservation. Interpretations change. Do not change the facts.

Enola backwards is Alone.

That's gay.

FUBuddy: You are spreading misinformation...

1) We didn't know the long term effects of the a-bomb. Hell the first fireball touched the ground and made "trinitite"

2) We didn't just drop the bomb on a whim. We were going to fire bomb Japan to oblivion. I guess "Shock and Awe" was used in leiu of fire bombs

3) If Stalin would have taken Japan, they would have been in a world of hurt.

4) You need to get past freshman history to have this discussion...

Yo! Look at that big fat ass on the SbB chick!

My grandpa killed a lot of Japanese in the Phillipines, was traumatized for life searching their corpses for intelligence, and he never displayed this "Go USA, bomb everyone!" attitude. It's people who've never seen combat that are the most psyched about the killing.

toraque

it's funny how you mentioned that the attack at pearl harbour wasn't supposed to be a sneak attack. it's coming to light that the USS Ward fired the first shot at a japanese midget sub 4 hours before the raid. this should have tipped the americans off, but didn't.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/microsites/pearlharbour/ms_story.html

This is pretty much the pot calling the kettle black since the Japanese have thus far failed to even mention their atrocities in textbooks...let alone teach them in museums.

Hell...in the most recent edition the only one they mention is Nanking...and even then they qualify it with enough "doubts" that no one actually believes it happened.

And yes...the effects of radiation were horrible...however they weren't intentional. Otherwise, why would we have exposed so many of our best to them without proper protection? At the time...we just didn't understand.

Oh, and there was many reasons we dropped the second bomb. The Russians were considered, plus, the whole "Unconditional Surrender" thing was a big factor.

Saying that there was only one reason shows greatly on the quality of the reading material at your library.

Did we need the second one? Who knows. Does it matter now? Not nearly as much as it did 58 years ago.

2003-12-16 03:22:51 PM
paradroid


I don't think Clinton apologized for Hiroshima, did he? Where's the link?
I got no HTML skillz, and Im feeling lazy.

Well, Defaceing something is stupid, but we DID do some shiatty things to the japanese (During the war we turned all american japanese (who had been living in the US with citizenship) into basicly POWs and shoved them in concentration camps and treated them as criminals)

Spin that.

nomales:

'Cuz I'm lookin' for it on Google, and I'm just not seeing it. ...you'd think it would be all over the place...

This isn't a "far left" or "far right" sort of thing - I seriously doubt the Japanese survivors of the first atomic weapon to be used against humans were interviewed to find out whether they were Republican or Democrat.

And, there is a difference between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. We lost 2,395 soldiers and civilians in Pearl Harbor. After some research, the casualty count was estimated at approximately 130,000 at Hiroshima and 60,000 to 70,000 for Nagasaki - and those are only the casualties caused as a direct result of the attack. Almost all of the Japanese casualties in the attack were civilians. Other not-so-well documented side effects occurred for years after the attack.

For more perspective - Japan lost more than six times as many people as we did, and one hundred and ten times as many civilians as we did, over the course of World War II. We also not only tortured Japanese and other prisoners, but interred our more "suspicious" citizens, including US-born Japanese-Americans, in camps for up to four years.

As for the "if we didn't drop it, we would have lost millions" argument, that was disproved by historians and researchers long ago. WWII documents have been declassified for some time - here's what Truman's own experts had to say about the supposed "millions of lives saved:"

In June 1945, Truman ordered the U.S. military to calculate the cost in American lives for a planned assault on Japan. Consequently, the Joint War Plans Committee prepared a report for the Chiefs of Staff, dated June 15, 1945, thus providing the closest thing anyone has to "accurate": 40,000 U.S. soldiers killed, 150,000 wounded, and 3,500 missing. While the actual casualty count remains unknowable, it was widely known at the time that Japan had been trying to surrender for months prior to the atomic bombing. A May 5, 1945 cable, intercepted and decoded by the US, "dispelled any possible doubt that the Japanese were eager to sue for peace." In fact, the US Strategic Bombing Survey reported shortly after the war, that Japan "in all probability" would have surrendered before the much-discussed November 1, 1945 Allied invasion of the homeland. Truman himself eloquently noted in his diary that Stalin would "be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini (sic) Japs when that comes about."

You can draw your own conclusions.

What bothers me is that there are enough parallels here to wonder what historians are going to say about the attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq (and, coming soon, Syria) in 50 or so years.

Tigger


nomales

I served. One of the things I learned was that apologising for a mistake takes a lot of moral courage. Especially if the other doesn't admit that they made mistakes too. I don't see what the big deal is. Why on earth would that make you quit?


Well, clinton was in office with his getting it on with the intern. I did not want a commander in Chief that could not keep is willy in his pants, or at least get away with it. Plus, I dont feel we made a mistake when we nuked Japan.

BlobBrain You must be going to a bizzaro library then. The name's Sqee btw jackass.

sens Guess they shouldn't have perserved those nazi deathcamps then. Should have bulldozed them all over and forgotten about it.

Huh...and I thought there were no "Gays" in the military.

As has been said , firebombing would have killed a lot probabaly about half the amount killed throught the nukes. Incendiary bombing isn't cans of petrol, its 1800 degrees Fahrenheit and people in underground bomb shelters suffocate as the oxygen literally disappears.

But it doesn't damage military sites that much, so probabaly would have extended the bombing to equal levels of the nuclear bombs and casualties above those in Dresden, including the individual habitat and building materials used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki using the nukes was equal to convential methods.

boot20 Don't even bring it boot20 I got a Masters in history with a BS in Asian studies. America had no idea the human toll, we damn well knew about the scientific outcomes with studies that took place frmo the developing standpoint but we had no idea just how big of a toll it could take.
You need to get out of junior college so we can finish this discussion.

Where are all the farkers who claim that the US knew (beforehand) about the bombing of pearl harbour but ignored it, in order to have an excuse to go to war?

Where are the freaks who claim to have written proof that the japanese were going to surrender before hiroshima, but the US dropped the bomb anyway in order to scare the world?

Its like you guys are on smoke break or something...
/very dissapointed in this weak flame war

Farkin' slant-eyes...

I guess we didn't get enough of them.

FUBuddy: So what do you think should have been done about Japan going wild in the Pacific? Sell them more weapons, say, hey, it's not our problem? We started the embargo on oil and war materials because the Japanese forced the issue. Our response was completely justified.

As for your assertions that the Japanese were ready to surrender to the Russians, I've only come across accounts that the japanese peace feelers were simply that, not diplomats with complete decision making control over the situation. They understood that sooner or later the Russians were going into Manchuria, but they weren't sure of Russian post-war intentions and certainly wouldn't have given their complete surrender to their Russian enemies easily. And that's if the leading staff of the military would even have allowed that to happen in the first place.

Misinformation? Different points of view from different sources. Try to remember that historians really can't prove anything, they just try to get enough evidence to argue something or other.