Was bombing Hiroshima really needed? New research suggests it wasn't.

[Karmadillo]

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/opinion/12289078.htm

Was bombing Hiroshima really needed?

New research suggests surrender, war's end imminent without it

GAR ALPEROVITZ KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE

Sixty years ago, on Aug. 6 and 9, atomic bombs destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most Americans think the bombings forced Japan to surrender. Further, most believe that they were necessary as the only way to end World War II without a costly invasion.

But new research findings suggest both judgments are wrong.

A just-published Harvard University Press volume by Professor Tsuyoshi Hasegawa of the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the most comprehensive study yet undertaken of Japanese documentary sources. The highly praised study argues that the atomic bomb played only a secondary role in Japan's decision to surrender. By far the most important factor, Hasegawa finds, was the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan on Aug. 8, 1945, two days after the Hiroshima bombing.

Japanese military leaders had long been willing to sacrifice civilians and cities to American conventional bombing. What they really feared, Hasegawa points out, was the Red Army, a force that would directly challenge what was left of Japan's dwindling military capacity both on the home islands and in Manchuria. The traditional myth that the atomic bomb ended the war, he writes, "cannot be supported by historical facts."

A similar conclusion has been reached in a recent publication by another eminent Japanese scholar, Professor Herbert Bix, author of a biography of Hirohito that won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 2000.

more...

[Richardo]

1. ...and they're off.

:popcorn:

[bpilgrim]

167. NO military leader in theater at that time agreed with SHOCK-n-AWE

"THE DECISION TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB" - THE H-NET DEBATE

for an up-to-date, scholarly analysis of the decision please visit this site...
http://www.doug-long.com/debate.htm

In these times with the neoCONs at the helm I believe it is critically important to understand how politics and not military necessity played a role in our decision to nuke and indiscriminately kill a defeated and suing for peace nation's cities, civilian population centers, filled with men, women & children, young and old, friend & foe alike, TWICE.

it fills me with dread that even today, after 60 years, even on DU, that so many people still reflexively repeat the old propaganda that NUKES 'save lives'.

but don't take my word for it, read what our military leaders in theater at the time had to say about it saving lives...
http://www.doug-long.com/ga1.htm

more...
HIROSHIMA: WAS IT NECESSARY?
http://www.doug-long.com

psst... pass the word :hi:

peace

[htuttle]

2. We've had some hellish arguments about that here

I will say that I've heard for years that at least PART of the reason for the two bombs was to show the Russians what they could do.

Personally, I find I can't justify nuking civilians under any circumstances.

[K-W]

5. I think any nation that built the bomb first would have used it.

But that doesnt make it right.

[Brotherjohn]

23. Last month's Smithsonian gives some insight on this. The Soviets WERE...

... a factor. It doesn't sound like this "study" considers anything but the Japanese government's mindset... whether they would have surrendered without the bomb. In addition to this being pure conjecture, it is not the entire picture.

The Soviets wanted to go into Japan, and wanted a surrender by August 15th, or they would have invaded. This would have opened up lord knows what cans of worms with unforseen consequences far into the future... not to mention probably causing hundreds of thousands of additional civilian deaths.

I can't bring myself to justify nuking civilians either, but I'm not the Commander in Chief during World War II. Might I add, we were already fire-bombing Tokyo and other cities, causing sometimes 100,000 deaths at a time.

[Jack from Charlotte]

41. Could you justify burning about 75,000 people to death in Tokyo ....

by the regular firebombing? Because that's what happened on March 3/4 of 1945. Why no bitch about that?

[htuttle]

44. I have

Dresden, too. I can't find any justification to kill someone unless they have a gun in their hand (metaphorically speaking).

But that would be a different thread.

:shrug:

[Leilani]

3. I live in Hawaii

Was bombing Pearl Harbor really necessary?

[gman16]

8. As much as letting it happen n/t

[barb162]

22. so if someone punches you in the face unprovoked, did you let it

happen? If you have the green light and some drunk driver hits you broadside in an intersection going 80mph, did you let it happen?

[Kraklen]

73. unprovoked?

[rinsd]

78. Yeah......

Unless you call our embargo of selling them war materials(steel, scrap iron, and aviation fuel) and jointly freezing their assets (with England and the Netherlands)after they INVADED Indochina provocation.

Which was also some years after they invaded and occupied China.

[RummyTheDummy]

92. Ahh yes. The blame FDR for Pearl Harbor mantra

It's all the rage among Rethug revisionists these days.

[K-W]

9. 2 wrongs dont make a right. EOM

[Tesha]

16. No, but at least Pearl was a legitimate military target.

The women and children of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, and Dresden were not.

Tesha

[rinsd]

66. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo & Dresden were military targets....

...you can argue how vaulable a military target they were in comparison but Hiroshima was as were most Japanese cities filled with factories building military supplies and served as a staging area for the Army and Navy. Nagasaki was a big shipbuilding and military port. Tokyo was the capital city of the government at war. In some bizzaro ironic twist that seems to only come with war, part of the selection process was that these cities had not sustained much damage from conventional bombings so they would be a more effective gauge of the power of the bomb.

Dresden was a large center of industry and the focal point of communications for the rapidly encroaching Eastern front.

One can argue for a higher value military target such as Kyoto in Japan (this was originally on the list BTW) but the above were still military targets.

[Tesha]

69. So you're *FOR* killing civilians?

[Name removed]

75. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Tesha]

137. Hysteria? Do you often accuse folks of that or just women?

> But to claim those cities weren't military targets is just wrong on the facts.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were *FAR LESS* exclusively military targets
than our naval base at Pearl Harbor was.

*TO THIS DAY*, everyone who was within the irradiated area still
dies at a higher rate than the average Japanese civilian. So do the
children they bore later.

Tesha

[rinsd]

139. Sigh.....

I had no idea what your sex was. My reponse of hysteria was someone claiming I rooted for the killing of people which was wrong.

" Hiroshima and Nagasaki were *FAR LESS* exclusively military targets
than our naval base at Pearl Harbor was."

69 civilians died at Pearl Harbor. Death is death. You claimed the above were not military targets, you were wrong. Also the integration of war factories in the midst of civilian populace(Japan tended to used small scale factories that would make specific parts as opposed to the behemoths prferred by the US and Germany), makes "exclusive" military targets difficult to come by.

[Tesha]

145. 69? 69??? WOW! I guess that absolves us for several hundred thousand.

No point in discussing this further with you.

Tesha

[rinsd]

148. I guess you could care less about the 69...

...see two can play this game.

You were wrong, you won't admit you were wrong. You have accused me of cheering on the deaths of civilians and hinted that I was some kind of misogynist.

The point of discussion ended quite some time ago but I'm sure you've had your fun displaying your obviously manufactured rage.

[nadinbrzezinski]

112. You do know that Hiroshima produced Zeros, don't you?

Oh and by the way, I live in a city that in case of war IS a primary Miltary target

[Tesha]

138. Great. Bomb the Mitsubishi factory. Level it. Firebomb its workers.

But the deaths of the kids, old folks, and all the other pure
civilians that we killed that day by nuking the city will
forever remain inexcusable.

*WE* ushered in the age of nuclear war.

Tesha

[damntexdem]

25. Yes, it was ...

if the Japanese were to in one blow destroy American power in the Pacific. They didn't, quite, achieve that; but they came damn close.

They might have actually been successful had they followed up the bombing with an invasion of Hawaii. Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, was essential to the U.S. counterattacks in the Pacific theater.

Of course, the real question was whether there was a need for Japanese imperialism in the first place. To that, I'm sure we'd all answer 'no.'

[idlisambar]

4. not sure this one will ever be settled n/t

[ArkDem]

6. Most Japanese historians feel (correctly) that the war was the

fault of America.

[eyepaddle]

11. Please expand on that. nt

[idlisambar]

14. the fault of America?

This view seems as simple-minded as the idea that the war was Japan's fault.

[damntexdem]

27. Yeah, it reminds me of a certain president's argument for the need for ...

war in Iraq.

[barb162]

20. That is simply incorrect

[Shipwack]

30. Possibly not too far from the truth...

I mean, it is possibly true that that is what at least some Japanese historians are saying out loud...

There's a blog by an american living in Japan to help teach the children american language and culture. Here's his entry on a a visit to a Japanese museum:

"According to the text in the museum, the Japanese "expanded their defensive concerns" into Korea, helped "establish order and control" in China, and then were "forced into war" by the war-hungry American government. That whole Axis power thing is barely mentioned, and forget about trying to find anything that would portray the Japanese as something other than a peaceful people minding their own business in the Pacific. I mean, every country puts their own slant on history (while I learned that the American Revolution was a great act of freedom, I'm sure in Britain it's regarded as "those ungrateful little punks starting shit"), but the level of denial and disregard here was just outstanding.

Pictures, the occasional profanity, and other commentary here.

This is an interesting and many times outright funny site.

[idlisambar]

76. "expand their defensive concerns"

That's classic :eyes:

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

7. The mere fact that it took 60 years to even determine that there MIGHT

be a possibility we didn't need to drop the bomb should be enough to discredit the report. Maybe not discredit it, but it should at least provide enough insight to cut Truman some slack.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

10. I know I'm just asking for trouble by posting ANY opinion here but WTH...

Hiroshima was.
Nagasaki wasn't.

And that's all I have to say on this subject. Feel free to overanalyze this post to death and spawn as many flamewars off it as you wish. I'll just lurk.

[charlie]

12. Uh-oh

Here comes the flood. You guys on dialup need to get some icewater now, to pour on your soon-to-be-smoking modems.

[Democracy White]

13. Getting my flame retardant suit on.

It's best to be prepared.

Dee

[Schema Thing]

15. LOL, I guess it was "new" to me, and shocking

when I did the research a couple of years ago.... but the best minds of America back then didn't think we needed to drop the bombs, and even pleaded that we not.

Try having this discussion with Joe and Jill America. They simply will not acknowledge that:

DWIGHT EISENHOWER
ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
HERBERT HOOVER
GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
ALBERT EINSTEIN

and a host of other less famous but just as well placed American's thoughts on the matter should sully their beautiful mind's textbook view that "we had to do it" *sigh*.

[neverforget]

53. I get a laugh seeing General MacArthur as saying we didn't need to

bomb Japan. This is the same guy that wanted to nuke China 5 years later during the Korean War.

[Dark]

83. They said that because they thought the bombs wouldn't do

enough damage to scare the Japanese. They said only a few thousand, at the most, in casualties. They were wrong.

Had we not dropped the bomb, many more Japanese AND Americans would have died. The Japanese were willing to defend their homeland to the death. Even children were being trained to fight Allied soldiers.

The Germans used twelve and thirteen year olds to fight in the closing days of the war. Why wouldn't the military junta that controlled Japan, which was just as ruthless as Hitler, do the same.

Like it or not, the nukes saved many more lives than they cost.

The reason the Japanese feared the Soviets is because the Soviets didn't care about losses. They'd send a million men to their deaths to kill a few Japanese.

I can't blame them for fearing the Russians. But the military junta was prepared to take as many Allied men as they could in order to hold Japan, and power. The nuclear weapons showed them that the Americans could wipe them out while suffering virtually no losses.

[Schema Thing]

141. Untrue.

They said it because they thought it was unnecessary and immoral. They thought the war was already won, and all it really needed was some negotiating on our side (which happened anyway) to cap it off.

In fact, if you were so inclined, you could within seconds have a look at exactly what they said. Something tells me you have google at your disposal.

[Vincardog]

17. Neither city needed to be bombed. The war machine did it to

fund the next 50 years of military spending. These two mass murders were the start of the 'Cold War'. That Fiasco made the war mongers billions. It ended. Now we have Bush's 'War on Terra' costing us A Trillion a week. Most of it unaccounted for.

Follow the MONEY folks.

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[damntexdem]

19. Well, no matter what one's opinion on the bombing itself ...

(and personally, I think it could have been avoided by a "demonstration" elsewhere than on a city), it does seem that analysis 60 years later is just a tad too late to influence a decionmaking process 60 years ago. True, such info is of use for future decisionmaking, but the decisions of 60 years ago were made in a wartime framework.

By the way, was not the USSR declaration of war, on August 8, the result of pre-knowledge of the intended use of the A-bomb, and perhaps to its actual use on August 6? If so, then that declaration might indeed have eliminated any "need" for the Nagasaki bomb but was perhaps contingent on the Hiroshima bombing.

[RetroLounge]

21. Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent...

:popcorn:

RL

[proud patriot]

24. I believe surrender of Japan would of happened without the A-bomb

can I prove it ? Well according to Howard Zinn in
people's history yes it can be proved .

My Grandfather was in the Navy on a Medical Ship .
His ship transported the POW's after Japan's surrender .
He has pictures of Nagasaki harbor that he took there.
The giant Navy Ships in the tiny tiny harbor struck
me as significant . I'm not sure why .

[barb162]

26. Yes it would have happened but not without huge loss of American

lives as the Japanese would have defended their islands fiercely

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

33. Only if the Americans invaded. Which wasn't necessary.

[barb162]

34. They didn't unconditionally surrender until after the secomd bomb

An invasion would have been necessary (if the the bombs hadn't been dropped)and lots of American lives would have been lost. If only the stuff about the Russians doing everything on time could be relied on

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

35. self delete. Inadvertant double post.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

36. Why? What would an invasion have accomplished?

They would still had to have surrendered if they were blockaded. The people were beginning to starve and unrest was growing. The Japanese were without resources, without a navy after the suicide mission of the Yamato, the army was powerless to launch an offensive, the air force was down to obsolete planes and untrained pilots. The militarists on the council were worried about a "bolshevik" uprising. As were the Americans, which is why the emperor escaped the war crimes trials he so richly deserved.

The Japanese government was trying to negotiate a peace through the Russians, and earlier, through the Swedes. Their only demand was that the emperor and the "kokodai" (the national "essence") be left intact. Which is exactly what happened, anyway.

[wuushew]

40. Why was the Emperor responsible for war crimes?

Did that position hold any true political authority? Should we hold the Pope responsible for all the various crimes committed by Catholic political leaders?

I agree completely with the remander of your post on the blockcade of the home islands and non-threat Japan possed in 1945.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

80. He was very responsible. He had ultimate authority.

On a number of occasions he directed military actions or gave his permission to pursue them. He was not, as many think, a mere figurehead controlled by the militarists. The militarists would have had no choice but to obey his commands. He, literally, could have stopped the war at any time.

I refer you to

"The Rising Sun" by John Toland
"Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" by Herbert Bix
"The Pacific War" by Saburu Ienaga
"The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb" by George Feiffer

[rinsd]

104. Agreed....

People should remember that at the time the Empereor was considered a deity to be obeyed without question.

[wuushew]

115. I don't doubt that

but I am simply interested in the ACTUAL legal power he possessed. Was not the system of Japanese government slightly changed when the militarists came into power?

Perhaps someone here can give a brief description of the Japanese governmental system from the Meiji era until WWII.

[nadinbrzezinski]

123. In the 1930s the military wing became dominant

but the Emperor until the reforms that came after WW II, was a living god

[One_Life_To_Give]

100. If you call holding onto Nanking

an acceptable condition. Which is where the bulk of the Imperial Japanese Army was. I have never seen a credible reference that the Japanese only wanted the sovernty of their empeperor and agreed to a complete and total surrender with Allied occupation, before the second bomb and the Soviets tearing thru the Imperial Army.

Concidering that the Japanese civilians on Okinawa prefered to jump to their deaths rather than accept Allied Occupation. It seems reasonable to assume that any attempt to render their military completly impotent would have been very costly in lives on both sides.

[barb162]

142. for starters "obsolete planes and untrained pilots"

Kamikazes.

Plus the expense of having a whole fleet sitting out there for how long as sitting ducks for kamikazes?

from Wikipedia "Air attacks were the predominant and best-known aspect of a wider use of — or plans for — suicide attacks by Japanese personnel, including soldiers carrying explosives, and boat crews."

It was TOTAL war back then, just like WW1. I think Truman was right in what he did. The bombs ended the war earlier and we didn't have to invade. The Japs, without a doubt, would have used those bombs against us if they had them.

[Kraklen]

64. The surrender wasn't conditional.

The Emperor got to remain on the throne. That's the same condition they were seeking before the bombings.

[Jack from Charlotte]

51. Yup. Honshu was surrounded by our subs. We could have starved them..

to death. All 100 million of them. Seems worse, to me, however.

[rockymountaindem]

131. I know. That seems to be the only other option.

I hear a lot of people in conversations I've had about this (not on DU) say that we should have blockaded them. Ok, if we did that, let's make a very conservative assumption and say that 1% of the Japanese population would have died. That would be 750k people. How is that better than atomic bombs?

[Jack from Charlotte]

46. No question about it. They were blockaded and starving....

They were completely surrounded by US subs that blew up any ship in or out. So is that what everyone wanted? Rather than nuke 150,000 or firebomb they same number but via conventional bombing .... you'd rather we just starved 75,000,000 million Japanese to death before going in?

Seems much more cruel to me.

[wuushew]

48. Do we know for a fact Japan could not feed itself?

Was the 20th century carrying capacity of Japan insufficient for the non-military nutritional needs of the populace?

Rice crops could be supplemented by potatoes which possess a very high caloric yield per acre. Protein requirements might be more problematic given the impossibility of a fishing fleet, but legumes and domesticated livestock still were available.

[rockymountaindem]

132. We know for certain that even by mid-war

the Japanese civilian population was subsisting on very meager food rations. If there was a total blockade, many people would have starved, particular those not needed for the war effort, i.e. children and the elderly.

[Rapcw]

28. It was avoidable

if the Americans just waited 3 more days, when the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria and the Kurils. The Soviets told the Allies at one of the conferences (Yalta, Potsdam?) that the Soviet Union would enter the war with Japan 3 months after the fall of Nazi Germany. They had been preparing for the invasion and moving supplies as early as April, so they didn't just decide to do the operation after the first atomic bomb dropped. The Japanese probably would have surrendered after such a huge invasion and the loss of large amounts of territory.

[enigma000]

39. It's always in 3 more days

The Japanese were starving and their cities lay in ruins. But they were being trained to fight off the invasion when it came. It was hopeless, for sure, but I don't believe they would have surrendered until it was clear that there was no alternative but destruction.

WWII was a war to the death. Neither the British nor Russians surrendered. The Germans only surrendered after complete defeat. Why would the Japanese be any different? What could be worse than defeat?

I've said "one more day and I will....." enough times to know that this day never does come.

[barb162]

29. too bad the Japanese don't spend more time on the rape of Nanking

and other Chinese cities and the countryside. A bunch of them are still too busy denying the millions of atrocities they caused in China and elsewhere in Asia.

"The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs tells the story in words and more than 400 photographs of the Japanese invasion of China and the sacking of its capital city, Nanking, in 1937-38.

Between December 1937 and March 1938 at least 369,366 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered by the invading troops. An estimated 80,000 women and girls were raped; many of them were then mutilated or murdered.


Thousands of victims were beheaded, burned, bayoneted, buried alive, or disemboweled.

To this day the Japanese government has refused to apologize for these and other World War II atrocities, and a significant sector of Japanese society denies that they took place at all. "
http://www.tribo.org/nanking/

[wuushew]

42. A weakened Red China may have avoided entry into the Korean War

If you play the numbers game who is to say the continued Japanese occupation would have not played out better in the long run.

[barb162]

140. Ah the numbers game

I think the biggest mass murderers of the 20th century were the Chinese (35,000,000) of their own people. Per Genocide Watch.

[MikeNY]

31. I would like to agree with these assertations, but...

If it was not used at that point in time it would have been used in a future war, potentially even more devestating... After such horror was created it ensures that no nations would be willing to cause such a devestating loss of life. Of course, all that was thrown out the window under the Bush administration, which is planning to use tactical nukes on Iran if we are attacked by terrorists again

[Brotherjohn]

49. The Smithsonian article I mentioned above also addresses this.

It was the fear of the American politicians, and some of the scientists, that if the bomb wasn't used at this juncture (at the end of a great war... TO end that war, with some reasoning at least that its use might actually result in fewer net lives lost), then it would likely be used in the future on a much more massive scale in a surprise attack.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki served as a demonstration, as callous a term as that is, of the power of the bomb. It perhaps assured future restraint in using it in a surprise attack, possibly on a MUCH more massive scale.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

32. Having studied the Pacific War to no small degree, I concur.

The Japanese were on their last legs. They had no military power beyond the home islands. They could launch no aggressive military action. All they could do was try and stir up the hungry and desperate Japanese people to resist an invasion with bamboo spears and such.

They were terrified of the Red Army and a popular uprising among their own people. The whole structure was on the verge of collapse. The navy could have easily blockaded all the ports and we could have waited them out. The slaughter of civilians in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo was entirely unnecessary and wanton. The decision to bomb was political. The American people wanted a VJ Day, and Truman & Company feared that the Soviets would end up with Japan as a client state.

A tragic waste of lives and a war crime.

[rinsd]

59. In your studies....

...you surely became aware of the power and influence of propaganda on the Japanese people. And I am sure you are aware what happened in Okinawa(both with our losses to kamikaze, Japanese army losses and the mass suicides of civilians). While they had no "agreessive military" power, they had a defense force numbering 2 million.

"The navy could have easily blockaded all the ports and we could have waited them out. The slaughter of civilians in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo was entirely unnecessary and wanton."

So in your opinion it's better to starve a people out?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

79. I'm well aware of what happened on Okinawa.

Most of the civilian casualties on Okinawa was incurred by American bombardment and bombing, not the mass suicides. Okinawa was the bloodiest single battle for American troops in WWII and convinced some (not all) of the American leaders that the mass killing of civilians was necessary.

You're basing your assumptions on the necessity of invading Japan. I hold that there was no such necessity.

As to "starving them out", I doubt that it would have reached that point. The means to resist by the Japanese military was virtually nil. And, it was getting worse. Also, some of the militarists were against continuing the war, as were the politicians. Pressure was mounting on Hirohito to surrender and he was aware of the hopelessness of the situation. Also, the Japanese were already trying to negotiate a surrender through the Soviets and the Swedes. As it was, their proposals, retention of the emperor and the Kokodai, were accepted by the Americans. Something that could have happened before the bombs were dropped.

The fire bombing of Tokyo, and the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was mass murder of civilians.

[rinsd]

81. A response.....

"Most of the civilian casualties on Okinawa was incurred by American bombardment and bombing, not the mass suicides."

I never implied such.

"Okinawa was the bloodiest single battle for American troops in WWII and convinced some (not all) of the American leaders that the mass killing of civilians was necessary. "

Really, cite examples where US military doctrine switched to predominantly civilian targets? Which military leaders?

"As to "starving them out", I doubt that it would have reached that point."

Because blockades are simply shows of force that do not deny essential goods? Didn't you just argue the populace was already starving?

"The means to resist by the Japanese military was virtually nil"

2 million soldiers who have been indoctrinated all their lives to fight to the death is hardly what I would call nil resistance. Would we have eventually overwhlmed them with or without Russian aid? Certainly, but the casualties were likely to be more catastrophic on both sides.

As far as surrender overtures, consider two things for the metality at the time. There was turmoil in the Japanese government(even a failed coup de tat August 15th after the bombs were dropped)) but a larger factor may have been Japanese duplicty in the peace talks held right up until Pearl Harbor.

[Fescue4u]

37. IT WOULD BE IMMORAL NOT TO Bomb Hirsohima

TO have the power to end the war and not use, allowing hundreds of thousands more die would be very wrong.

Nukeing Hiroshima was the moral thing to do.

[K-W]

47. That is quite a mental tumbling routine. EOM

[Fescue4u]

50. Not to me, its very simple

Kill 170,000 (enemy) people in an instant.

Or let 1 million (enemy and Americans) die over the course of a few months in an invasion.

The moral choice is clear.

(although I would loath to be the person forced to make it)

[Jack from Charlotte]

54. or worse yet.... and it might have been the choise I'd have made....

Just starve the whole country to death. We had them surrounded with our subs. The could not get a ship in or out of the home islands. Starvation had already begun by summer of '45. As president I'd think it was my obligation to end the war by whatever means cost the fewest lives of... MY GUYS....... I'd have starved them a good long time before invading.

I'm for fewer dead Americans..... 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

[Jack from Charlotte]

52. I agree. Any alternative would have been worse.

I feel bad we used the nuke but don't see any difference between using the nuke and regular old firebombing.

[wuushew]

55. Hiroshima and Nagisaki were saved to be show targets

General LeMay had destroyed every target on his bombing list by that stage in the war, the B-29s were sitting idle on the ground.

[Fescue4u]

62. So do you think they should have been killed earlier?

So is it less moral to let them live longer, only to be killed later?

[wuushew]

82. No further bombing was necessary in late 1945

the ideal point of warfare is to prevent your enemy from harming you. Given that a blockaded Japan lacked the raw materials to build any sort of modern weapon that could be offensively used to attack the United States or its forces, one must wonder what the point of further belligerence was. Japan has no coal or oil resources so I fail to see how the war machine would have been able to continue to build steel ships or make aviation fuel for kamikaze attacks. This analogy does not work for Nazi Germany given their ample supply raw materials and credible atomic weapons program.

That situation did not exist earlier in war, so a "legitimate" reason could be said to exist for the firebombing of Japanese military and industrial cities. Given the difficulties posed by the Japanese jet-stream, firebombing was the most efficient tactic that was available to accomplish American target objectives.

Isolating Japan does not hold us accountable for the deliberate murder the way dropping bombs does. A nation or people who chose to starve do so by exercising their own sense of self determination as a country. It is their choice to do so if they wish. The end result in not instantaneous like being roasted in a nuclear fire but a gradual time period where one can continuously reevaluate ones options such as surrender. Additionally I fail to see how a nation committed to fight to the last would differentiate between death by A-bomb, invasion or starvation. The end result is identical, so how did using such weapons improve our leverage?


Are you arguing that we must take certain authoritarian actions because as a nation we intrinsically know what the best outcome is? Just as individual has right to personally commit suicide or use drugs, why can't a nation do the same thing. As long as that country does not affect us why meddle in its culture? I suppose you will say that the United States' motivations are always altruistic in nature and that we were somehow acting in China's best interests by attempting to destroy Japan. If altruism was self-evident then United States would not have waited until the Axis declared war on us to enter WWII.

[Fescue4u]

85. yet...they still had not surrendered

"because as a nation we intrinsically know what the best outcome is?"

Yes, it was better for Japan to not be at war with America.

It took TWO atom bombs to convince them of the error of their ways.

And thank god we did.

[wuushew]

90. That is the NeoCon line straight from PNACs playbook

the humanitarian situation sucked so starry eyed warhawks destroyed the government of Iraq.

the humanitarian situation sucked so starry eyed warhawks destroyed two Japanese cities in 1945 with atomic weapons.

End justify the means thinking, very un-libertarian.

[Fescue4u]

94. Harry Truman bombed Hiroshima

Not no wild eye modern day neocon.

[rinsd]

103. Harry Truman...noted neo-con.....

following the course set by the father of NeoCon philosophy, FDR.

[Catholic Sensation]

153. Father of neocon philosophy is Leon Trotsky

but nice try though... idiot.

[wuushew]

154. I believe that poster was being sarcastic

much like other posts on this thread who did't use the :sarcasm: tag.

Modern Neocons are just as ardent as the earlier Wilsonian interventionists. It is not incorrect to call them such despite whatever differences they may have for following their actions

[Uzybone]

86. The ideal point of warfare?

what bunkum. The point of warfare is to defeat your enemy, nothing more nothing less.

[wuushew]

88. They were defeated

The only thing saved by bombing was the salary and fuel expense maintaing the American war machine in the Pacific.

What amout of dollars equals a Japanese life we deliberately took?

[nadinbrzezinski]

95. They were that is why even on the day of the Surrender

a young Tai Sa atttempted a Coup on the Emperor

[rinsd]

101. He didn't get the "we're defeated" memo? (nt)

[Fescue4u]

97. The value of Japanese life in early August 1945

wasnt enough to buy a cup of cofee.

Conversely, the value of the toenail on the average American GI was worth all the gold in the world.

The Japanese devalued their own lives on December 7th 1941.


for that matter, not even the Japanese valued their own lives (hence the Kamikazees etc)

[Uzybone]

98. They may have been "defeated"

but they were still fighting. And they still had Chinese citizens and Allied POWs under their control (by the way they were executing them as fast as they could towards the end). In total war you just don't sit and wait for your enemy to surrender when you have a weapon that will make them surrender.

[rinsd]

99. "ideal point of warfare is to prevent your enemy from harming you"

Huh?

The ideal point of warfare is to defeat your enemy.

Prevention of an enemy harming you is something that is the ideal point of treaties.

[Silverhair]

161. The point of Unconditional Surrender was...

to remove the Japanese militarist gov't. Any type of negotiated surrender would have left them in power, and would have meant another war one generation later.

[Fescue4u]

38. If Japan had surrendered on August 5th

Then Hiroshima wouldnt have happened.

[Coexist]

43. Have you all seen The Fog of War ?

It addresses a lot of war issues.

[nadinbrzezinski]

45. Ah more revisionism

tell that tot he troops of the multinational force, most of whom were slated to be a non effective force within 48 hours (dead or wounded but out of action)

By the way, both dresden and tokyo fire bombings had more casualties, but in the modern age where war is a game, the concept of total war escapes people

By the way, while we are in revisionism I am sure these same folks will say the holocaust did not happen either

[Javaman]

56. hamburg fire bombings as well.

Yes, indeed the dropping of the bombs shortened the war without a doubt, but you also have to remember, that the Soviets were also actively trying to develop their own version.

So the dropping of the bomb had two effects. Ending the war early and telling the soviets in effect, back the fuck off, we now have the bomb. That false sense of bravado ended soon after when the soviets detonated their own bomb, thus the start of the cold war.

[nadinbrzezinski]

57. Yep but I did not want to go int o the Cold War

one good side effect of that later conflict was the education gap... we could use something like that right at the moment

;-)

[rinsd]

60. "same folks will say the holocaust did not happen either"

Hey that's not fair. It's the Rape of Nanking that never happened!

:eyes:

[nadinbrzezinski]

61. True, but you get the drift

reviosnist history tends to do that

Oh and if you ask the Japaense, the Rape of Nanking never happened... serious, the way that period of history is taught in Japan is not conduicive to learn from the horrors of the time

[rinsd]

68. Oh I know....

...that why I stated it.

Japanese historians conclude WW2 was US fault has about as much credence with me as American historians conclude the Internment was Japan's fault.

[nadinbrzezinski]

70. I know

but when I see posts like this I only can do one thing, ROLL EYES.. and wonder how far revisionists will go?

[Karmadillo]

74. Revisionist history tends to do that? You're joking, right?

You wrongly (unintentionally, I hope) attempt to equate holocaust revisionism with revisionist history. I assume most people who visit this board know that's, at best, silly.

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2003/0309/0309pre1.cfm

Revisionist Historians

By James McPherson

This summer the Bush administration thought it had discovered a surefire tactic to discredit critics of its Iraq adventure. President Bush followed the lead of his national security adviser Condoleeza Rice to accuse such critics of practicing "revisionist history." Neither Bush nor Rice offered a definition of this phrase, but their body language and tone of voice appeared to suggest that they wanted listeners to understand "revisionist history" to be a consciously falsified or distorted interpretation of the past to serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present.

<edit>

Whatever Bush and Rice meant by "revisionist historians," it is safe to say that they did not mean it favorably. The 14,000 members of this Association, however, know that revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship. History is a continuing dialogue between the present and the past. Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time. There is no single, eternal, and immutable "truth" about past events and their meaning. The unending quest of historians for understanding the past—that is, "revisionism"—is what makes history vital and meaningful. Without revisionism, we might be stuck with the images of Reconstruction after the American Civil War that were conveyed by D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation and Claude Bowers's The Tragic Era. Were the Gilded Age entrepreneurs "Captains of Industry" or "Robber Barons"? Without revisionist historians who have done research in new sources and asked new and nuanced questions, we would remain mired in one or another of these stereotypes. Supreme Court decisions often reflect a "revisionist" interpretation of history as well as of the Constitution. Would President Bush and Condoleeza Rice wish to associate themselves with Southern political leaders of the 1950s who condemned Chief Justice Earl Warren and his colleagues as revisionist historians because their decision (which, incidentally, was based in part on the research of historian John Hope Franklin and others) in Brown v. Board of Education struck down the accepted version of history and law laid down by the Court in Plessy v. Ferguson?

more...

on edit: added author and title

[Kraklen]

67. That's pretty sick.

I could equally argue that the holocaust was necessary because it saved thousands of German lives from being sacrificed in ghetto uprisings.

[nadinbrzezinski]

72. Call it what you will

but as a TRAINED HISTORIAN I do understand the reasons for the bomb... sixty years on we may ask... but in 1945 nobody did. I also happen to know some WW II vets who credit their survival to that bomb... and I also know that Dresden, Tokyo and a couple other bombings led to far more casualties

Now here is a question to you... did the US Military know the effects of the bombs? By that I mean the real effect of one bomb on a target and latter nuclear effects?

If you answer yes, you are full of it. Even the US Military was surprised at how effective these bombs were, and the after effects due to rad sickness.

Now if we used a bomb today, we have full knowledge of what they do.

Oh and what you said about Germany, many in the SS used precisely that justification to total Warsaw.

[Kraklen]

77. Ooo, la dee fucking dah, a TRAINED HISTORIAN.

Well, then tell me Professor TRAINED HISTORIAN, why are you unaware that the necessity of the bomb has been questioned since it's use, and not sixty years later?

According to Admiral William D. Leahy, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Truman's Chief of Staff: "The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... In being the first to use it , we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."

"Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'... It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." (General Dwight David Eisenhower Commander in Chief of Allied Forces in Europe).

"It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell." (UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill.)

"Certainly prior to 31 December 1945... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." (US Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946.)

"General Curtis LeMay: 'The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb.'

Field Marshal Montgomery ( Commander of all UK Forces in Europe) wrote in his History of Warfare: It was unnecessary to drop the two atom bombs on Japan in August 1945, and I cannot think it was right to do so .... the dropping of the bombs was a major political blunder and is a prime example of the declining standards of the conduct of modern war.

Truman's Chief of Staff, Admiral Leahy, wrote: "It is my opinion that the use of this 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 blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons ... In being the first to use it, we adopted an ethical standard common to the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in this fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

"The dropping of the first atomic bomb was also an act of pure terrorism. It fulfilled no military purpose of any kind. Belatedly it has been disclosed that seven months before it was dropped, in January 1945, President Roosevelt received via General MacArthur's headquarters an offer by the Japanese Government to surrender on terms virtually identical to those accepted by the United States after the dropping of the bomb: in July 1945, as we now know, Roosevelt's successor, President Truman, discussed with Stalin at Bebelsberg the Japanese offer to surrender....The Japanese people were to be enlisted as human guinea-pigs for a scientific experiment."
- F.J.P Veale, Advance To Barbarism: The Development Of Total Warfare From Serajevo To Hiroshima (California: Institute for Historical Review, 1979), pp.352-53.


On edit: ahh, you cut out that part about this being a new idea, I see. So much for "revisionism."

[nadinbrzezinski]

84. It was questioned and the hearings that were held

as well as the judgment of the last sixty years is... they were used because if they had not, Truman would have faced, and rightly so, IMPEACHMENT

Face it... if we used them today, the world is a different place, but you think the Germans would not have used them on New York? How about the Japanese?

You do understand what the term total war means, don't you?

Five years after Bomber Harris left the service people questioned Dresden too... for the record Dresden caused far more damage to a civilian population.

As to revisionism, yes we ar seeing here all the time, and this thread is proof of it.

I will contend, if the US Military KNEW the effects ten, twenty years down the line, they may have held back. They did not. And that my dear is the result of total war

Now the lesson is not whether we did a booboo, but how to avoid another WW, which is emerging around you. One that you can bet will involve total war, and maybe the use of nukes.

[Uzybone]

89. All those naysayers about the a-bomb

sat silent when we firebombed entire cities in Germany and japan, killing 100K people a night. I think Barbarism started with the first death of the war, not the last.

Hearing a scoundrel like LeMay whine about using the bomb is laughable. The guy would have dropped poison gas on japan is he could get away with it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

91. Hey Lemay and Harris were best of buddies

in Doctor Strangelove they do have a LeMay stand in, who is not as scary as the real deal

[nashbridges]

172. You do realize

That America didn't start the war, don't you?

[One_Life_To_Give]

125. Some of those comments were years afterwards

Lemay and the Bombing Command had other motives to PooPoo the Bomb. As it implied that their strategic bombing campaign wasn't capable. Likewise we have to be careful about MacArthur quotes as he would have backed his troops that they could have gone in and defeated the Japanese if they were so ordered. And he was the one clamoring to drop an even bigger bomb on the Chinese.

[wuushew]

58. kick

:nuke:

[Pewlett Hackard]

63. the war was unnecessary

the US could have negotiated an end to hostilities on Dec. 8. Cut a deal with Tojo and partition the far east, like the deal Hitler and Stalin made in 1939 to divide up Europe. Think of all the lives that could have been saved.

[Uzybone]

93. The Hitler Stalin deal

nice to know that that Hitler certainly kept his end of the deal.

Why do so many people live with heads in the sand?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

106. I Am Sure The Filipinos, the Malays, the Koreans, Etcetera

Would Have Been Happy To See The Americans Surrender Their Sovereignty...

[name not needed]

144. You're kidding, right?

[CubsFan1982]

151. Not to be ad hominem or rude or anything, but...

That's the fucking stupidest thing I've ever heard. Are you insane?

[geek tragedy]

65. Was this study published in 1945? eom

[hootinholler]

71. Hiroshima: Necessary? maybe, Premature? definately...

Truman should have sent a film of the test bomb. Then if it wasn't over, put one over Mt. Fuji, before hitting a city.

Then again who am I to second guess Harry?

-Hoot

[DemocratSinceBirth]

102. I Forgot Where I Read It...

After the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima the military hierarchy in Japan thought America had "shot its wad" and didn't have any more bombs and wanted to fight on....

That pretty much destroys the theory that they would have been impressed by some test...

We have the benefit of hindsight.....

Harry Truman didn't have that benefit...

[hootinholler]

129. My point wasn't that I think they would have been impressed by a test film

It's that we didn't think try it. They didn't have the opportunity to be impressed. What would it have cost? Not much, and it would have solidified our position even more. Think Statesmanship. Same applies with my Fuji proposal.

It's a much stronger rebuttal to the argument of necessary or not when you have: a: Warned them with evidence, and, b: Demonstrated delivery capability, before you incinerate a large population.

I'm not making these statements to be critical for being critical's sake, it's meant more in a lessons learned sort of way. I fully understand there was a much different mindset then.

-Hoot

[Desertrose]

87. of course it wasn't necessary

I'm sorry , but since when is dropping any bomb "necessary"?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

105. Those Bombs That The Union Dropped On The Confederacy's Asses Was

Necessary...

[wuushew]

110. It was the CSA's folly for starting that war

changing economic conditions would have ended slavery as it did in South America.

Knowing that, sacrificing millions of American lives was not worth it.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

114. I Call It Partial Repayment Of A Debt...

We dragged people from their native lands and put them in chains...


How many more years of indentured servitude were they to serve?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

118. And

And approximately 600,000 Americans were killed in the Civil War....

This is but a fraction of Africans who died as a result of the slave trade.....

Some times a debt has to be paid in blood....

Hopefully people learn...

[wuushew]

122. You would need only to compare slavery victims from 1861-1900

Deaths from warfare vs. deaths from slavery until its extinction and take the less costly course of action.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

127. But It Was The Slaves Who Were Dying

and not the ones who were benefiting from their labor and suffering and had the moral obligation to ameliorate it...


Estimates of deaths from the slave trade are of questionable reliability but I have seen estimates of as many 60,000,000 dead...

600,000 soldiers out of which imho 300,000 or so were martyred was but a small price to pay to end slavery and preserve the union...

And as far as southerners abandoning slavery on a date certain they are a stubborn lot... they kept jim crow alive for one hundred years after the emancipation proclamation...

[RummyTheDummy]

96. This thread brings out the worst of DU

Personally, I can seperate the fallacy of the war in Iraq from previous military conflicts this country has been involved in. In other words, some believe that because we were wrong to go into Iraq, every military campaign we have ever fought was wrong as well, including WWII. I call it retroactive history. Slightly different from revisionist history, but horse shit just the same.

[Karmadillo]

109. Revisionist history is horse shit? Talk about bringing out the worst.

History should never be revised? Propaganda of the moment must be accepted as the truth for all time? I already posted the link that follows in a previous response, but your post suggests you missed it.

By the way, isn't history by nature retroactive? One stands in the present and looks back at the past and tries to figure out what happened. Why would one want to privilege the limited perspective of contemporaries as being the only acceptable interpretation of events? For example, plenty of people not all that long ago were writing what a benign institution slavery was. Is it horse shit to write history opposing this view? Same for the decision to drop the bomb. Historians like Alperovitz have examined the historical record and reached conclusions at odds with the view presented to the American people as "the truth". Doesn't mean they're automatically right, but it doesn't mean they're automatically wrong. One has to consider all the views and try to reach the a conclusion that best fits the facts as we currently know them. That's not "horse shit."

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2003/0309/0309pre1.cfm

Revisionist Historians

By James McPherson

This summer the Bush administration thought it had discovered a surefire tactic to discredit critics of its Iraq adventure. President Bush followed the lead of his national security adviser Condoleeza Rice to accuse such critics of practicing "revisionist history." Neither Bush nor Rice offered a definition of this phrase, but their body language and tone of voice appeared to suggest that they wanted listeners to understand "revisionist history" to be a consciously falsified or distorted interpretation of the past to serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present.

<edit>

Whatever Bush and Rice meant by "revisionist historians," it is safe to say that they did not mean it favorably. 14,000 members of this Association, however, know that revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship. History is a continuing dialogue between the present and the past. Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time. There is no single, eternal, and immutable "truth" about past events and their meaning. The unending quest of historians for understanding the past—that is, "revisionism"—is what makes history vital and meaningful. Without revisionism, we might be stuck with the images of Reconstruction after the American Civil War that were conveyed by D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation and Claude Bowers's The Tragic Era. Were the Gilded Age entrepreneurs "Captains of Industry" or "Robber Barons"? Without revisionist historians who have done research in new sources and asked new and nuanced questions, we would remain mired in one or another of these stereotypes. Supreme Court decisions often reflect a "revisionist" interpretation of history as well as of the Constitution. Would President Bush and Condoleeza Rice wish to associate themselves with Southern political leaders of the 1950s who condemned Chief Justice Earl Warren and his colleagues as revisionist historians because their decision (which, incidentally, was based in part on the research of historian John Hope Franklin and others) in Brown v. Board of Education struck down the accepted version of history and law laid down by the Court in Plessy v. Ferguson?

more...

[RummyTheDummy]

113. Sorry. No sale.

NT

[Karmadillo]

116. No problem. I wouldn't try to defend your post either.

n/t

[RummyTheDummy]

119. I wouldn't want to defend yours either.

Baloney should be eaten, not defended.

[Karmadillo]

126. Please enlighten me as to why my post is baloney. I'd be more than

happy to defend it against any reasonable criticism ("baloney" not being a very reasonable criticism).

[RummyTheDummy]

128. No. Not baloney

I was wrong to say that. And I apoligize. My point is this, and it's not far from yours IMO, is that it's justified, even necessary to look back on history and ask questions, forumulate new opinions and come up with different solutions to past problems.

Have we always been on the right side of history? Of course not. But on this particular issue, WWII, I feel very strongly that we were. Sure we did some things wrong. Internment camps for Japanese Americans being one. I think Hiroshima is also a worthy argument as well. I just happen to believe that had we invaded Japan it would have resulted in a far greater loss of life on both sides. I don't believe that it is unreasonable to think that. I hope that doesn't make me a bad person.

I've just been a little bit sensitive about this particular topic lately because of the renewed efforts from the right to discredit FDR and his legacy.

[Karmadillo]

130. No problem.

My posts were not necessarily models of politeness, either. I share your concern about FDR's legacy and wish the Dems would do more to expand it. His Economic Bill of Rights could serve as the basis for revitalization that would stop our ever rightward drift. It's worth noting, however, we'll never be able to do what he called for as long as we hold ourselves hostage to the National Security State and its insatiable demand for our money.

http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/econrights/fdr-econbill.html

<edit>

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

[MisterP]

111. total pacifism is "the worst" of DU?!

[The Straight Story]

107. Japan's agression was not needed either

I am guessing the battles they fought killed more then the two bombs did.

It was war, it was ugly, and a lot of people did a lot of things that were morally wrong and that many may well regret. But it was war, we fought to win. In hindsight we can question whether we did the right thing, and hope we learn from that analysis so we don't do the same things again and again.

We can't fix the past, and our folks running the show back then were humans who made decisions based on the criteria that we end the war and quickly. If we were real assholes the japanese would not have 1/10th of what they have now as we would have kicked them all out and made the island into country club.

We weren't perfect, but I sure as hell stand by those who tried, even when what they did seems now morally wrong in retrospect - from the safety of our own time we don't always see the whole picture imho.

Had it been me I might have ordered the bomb dropped someplace with near zero population to show them what could happen. They used what they had against us and we did the same back.

Maybe next time we will fight a more kind war.

But yes, we can argue all day as to whether or not something was needed, like the bombs. But in the end we still wind up looking at how things were then - a world war, the japanese sucked, hitler sucked, mussolini was sucking, millions were dead or dying, and now that the world has seen and remembers what those bombs did we have globally woken up and have not seen them used since. The effects were more then to end the war, it helped in the long run for people to see how terrible such weapons were. There was no more guesswork or armchair descriptions, we had a hard cold reality.

War sucks, and to believe one can have moral wars where people play nice and always do (and want to do) the nice/right things is a bit naieve - for if this were so then I am guessing they would not engage in a war in the first place.

Yeah I am rambling incoherently :) must be the new meds...

[Pepperbelly]

108. Whatever ...

Third guessing via 60 year hindsight.

[RummyTheDummy]

117. And therein lies the cold hard truth

It's so convienent to sit back so many years later and pick apart decisions made under circumstances we could not possibly understand without the benefit of a time machine.

[nadinbrzezinski]

120. Oh we can, and some of us have

the problem is that it takes a lot of study and readying of primary sources. Our advantage is that we can use our reason to undesrstand... but we can... that is the role of history

But these days there is this amazing effort to revise all wars that we have gotten involved in as bad....

Have we always been on the right side of history? No.. but WW II, we were on the right side, and having talked to plenty of vets, we did what at the time was considered the best decision... and sixty years later we can argue about it, but it was done.

[RummyTheDummy]

124. And that's all I'm really saying

Is it appropriate to look back and question? Of course it is. But there is a persistent theme on DU regarding past wars that seems to say, because this one was wrong, they were all wrong.

[jonnyblitz]

136. nuking civilians is never right under any circumstances, any time

be it 60 years ago or 60 years from now. i can't imagine what mental gymnastics one has to do to justify such evil.

[nadinbrzezinski]

155. I Can, the US Military thought it was truly a bigger boom,

not the effects it had.

And by the by, under the principles of Just War it prevented further evil... so yes I can see where the justification came.

Now today, with all we know, that is another story. but you truly have a problem with this, (as you should) but you should also understand why it was done.... and by the by, we are in the midst of a developing world war... where I am convinced we will end up implementing MAD... today we know the effects. Sixty years ago we did not.

But I guess fire bombing and starvation is fine.

:sarcasm:

those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, I guess you have not learned

[DemocratSinceBirth]

121. 60 Years...

Folks on this thread want to go back one hundred forty and wait for slavery to die of it's own weight....

Not to mention Lincoln didn't have much choice when the south seceded...

[electron_blue]

133. Of course not

The people of this world never needed any nuclear bombs. Not the Japanese, not the Americans.

Thanks for this article.

[really annoyed]

134. Flames, Flames!

Sorry, still think it was wrong to bomb. Even my neo-con parents agree with me on that point.

[Redstone]

135. HIndsight sure is 20-20, isn't it?

Redstone

[noonwitch]

143. Hindsight is 20/20

It's difficult for me to second-guess it, this long afterward.
It did end the war.

We also bombed Dresden with enough TNT to damage the city as badly as Hiroshima, without the radiation and burns. Should we question that, too?

[sintax]

146. World War 2 as "The Good War"

is necessary for the collective psyche of the nation-state of McAmeriWalMartika, as is 'the cowboy'. Nevertheless it is a myth.

The A-Bomb was used for purposes of testing on a real live population, creating real death. And used to beat the chest in front of the 'commies'.

It was MASS MURDER

War is a Racket

[rinsd]

149. Yes, because Nazism and Japanese Militarism would have faded...

...just like slavery!

:eyes:

[sintax]

156. Thankfully the Cavalry came

although only to sweep up and gain accolades.

The myth continues.

Who helped found the CIA with Allen Dulles? General Reinhard Gehlen head of the Eastern front for the Nazis, you know, Auschwitz. Guess "WE" really hated those guys.That's why we brought over fifteen hundred Nazi bureaucrats, in addition to Operation Paperclip, over to the UD to establish and arrange and assist US "intelligence" operations.

Beware of the standard reading of US history. We can only stop living the lie when we stop telling it.

[neverforget]

150. I wouldn't call WW2 the good war but a necessary war that needed

to be fought against militarism and fascism.

[sintax]

157. Militarism and fascism

are of course twin evils and all too present in US culture of conquest, in fact it is in the DNA of the USA.

But the US heroic involvement in WW 2 is a cultural myth and the bombings in Japan were mass murders with absolutely no strategic value. The War Department WANTED to use those bombs.

We can only stop living the lie when we stop telling it.

[neverforget]

171. Whatever. I guess that Japan and Germany invading and occupying

countries was okay then? The Allies shouldn't have done anything? Cultural myth? WTF does that mean? Does that mean we were the bad guys?

[Pepperbelly]

158. what the fuck ever ...

But I did spend significant time at the Arizona Memorial and I can easily understand how infuriated the citizenry was after that attack. Hell, I'm still half mad about it and I wasn't even alive. I just visited the scene of the original crime.

[sintax]

160. Have you seen the images

of the melted faces of the survivors of Hiroshima or examined any photos of the malformed babies post-bombing?

World's Greatest Polluter- The Pentagon

War is a Racket benefitting Lockheed-Halliburton-GE psycopaths.

How many must die before we stop telling the lie?

www.warresisters.org

[Pepperbelly]

162. have you seen the Arizona ...

with the bodies still interred there, bleeding oil into the Harbor these sixty plus years later?

Yeah, it sucks. And so did Pearl Harbor.

[Guitarman]

147. Coulda, woulda, shoulda

It does not matter what anyone thinks sixty years after the fact. If the United States did not use the bomb in an effort to end WWII. Who would have been the first to use it? And against whom? How many more Japanese and Allied Forces would have been killed as a result? How many of us might not be here to discuss it. At any rate, not using the atomic bomb may have created a much worse and deadly sequence of events that has otherwise been avoided.

Personally, I have no problem with what happened. I could not change it if I did have an issue with it. It is done. The Japanese as well as the Germans perpetrated some of the most heinous and evil crimes against humanity. In order to defeat that kind of an evil force, you must be willing to use an equal or greater amount of force to defeat it. Unfortunately, it is not pretty. It cannot always be clean and neat. Innocent people will die. It is the nature of war and why it should be avoided unless there is no other choice.

[jzodda]

152. Interesting

Worth an examination but regardless of what its conculsions are I would argue that the bomb was still necessary.

The Japanese said they would fight to the death and did so by and large in the late island hopping campaign. Since we would have had no way to know they were going to surrender and the inner most levels of Tojos leadership were secretive there would have been no way to add these elements up.

Plus this new evidence goes agaisnt statements made by former members of the cabinet and also statements made after the war by the Emperor. I would like to read how it gets around that

[MrSlayer]

159. It was necessary.

To end the war and to send a message to the Russians.

[Silverhair]

163. How could the Red Army be effective on the home islands?

It takes a Navy to transport an invasion, and the WWII Soviet Navy was next to non-existent.

[Swamp Rat]

164. NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!

My grandfather worked at Los Alamos on the Child Bomb, and White Sands used to be our property. He once said that we're all gonna die in a nuclear holocaust someday. I think he was wrong. I think it will be a 'nukular' holocaust, and it will be mostly brown people that die.

[number6]

165. no

Was bombing Hiroshima really needed?

for the yes people, a question.

how many children would you kill to save 100,000 troops

10, 100, 1000, 10,000 ?

[rfrrfrrfr]

168. Ok lets play that game.

How many more of the POW's (many who were civilians) would have been executed or died of mistreatment while we waited for Japan to surrender.

How many more GI's would have died in Kamakazi attacks on our ships, or in battles on any one of the many other islands we still had troops fighting on? We don't even have to think about the number of deaths if your wishful thinking proved incorrect and we actually had to invade.

How much more time would you have given them to perfect a means of delivering chemical or biological weapons via the baloon bombs they were dropping on the West coast of the states? These only managed to kill one family during the whole war, but that was becuase they were HE bombs not biological ones.

Just because they were essentially defeated doesn't mean they were ready to admit they were defeated, nor that they lacked the capacity to inflict serious casualties on our military.

How many more deaths would you think ok in the korean war when much more powerful weapons were available to use and the potential target list wouldn't have been limited to a few military targets in one country (yes they were military targets) but to cities like Seoul, Beijing, London, Paris, Moscow, New york, Washing D.C, Seattle, and Los Angeles, With no reason to suspect how terrible these weapons actually were. Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been walks in the park in comparison to a bomb dropped on any one of those cities.

Don't think for a minute that the korean war wouldn't have gone nuclear by one side or the other if Hiroshima and Nagasaki hadn't happened. Or if not then than the cuban missle crissis.



Would Japan have surrendered shortly anyway? we don't and can't know the answer to that we can guess that they might have, but thats all it is a guess. We do know for certain that the dropping of the bombs did bring an end to the war.
The war in the Pacific during WWII was horrific, with plenty of attrocities to go around. Anything that ended quicker even if only by a few hours was a good thing

[number6]

169. The Question was ....

How many children would you kill to save 100,000 troops ?

and here's some more

do you know how many children were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki ?

do you know how many people were over 65 ?

do know how many women and children were severely burned
and took weeks and months to die ?

oh and an answer to the question would be ...

no I wouldn't kill any or
1000 or what ever....

[rfrrfrrfr]

170. Um

What about the childern who were dying in the POW camps? are they not childern too? Is one of their childrens lives more valuable than one of ours?.

I called it a game becuase thats what it is when you start trying to say x number of them is equal to y number of ours.

War is not a game. War is Humanity at its worst. No matter how you look at it many thousands of people would have died if the bombs were not dropped. A lot of them civilians and some of them from our side.

I find it very troubling that people are willing to make excuses as to why the bomb shouldn't have been dropped when the country in question is still largely in denial about many of the attrocities IT committed during the war.

The idea that Japan would have surrenedured anyway is nothing more than an educated guess. Its easy to sit here 60 years later, secure in our victory, with all the knowledge about just how terrible nuclear bombs are and say we shouldn't have dropped it. But if you were alive at the time you would have been gambling the lives of POW's, GI's, American civiians, as well as civilians in every single japanese occupied territory. YOu were gambling that more of them wouldn't die from mistreatment or from execution or conventional fighting in the time it took japan to eventually surrender on their own.

And if they didn't surrender? Well then we would be talking about millions of dead Japanese and not just a few hundred thousand not to mention our own casualties.

Remember no one not even the scientists really knew or understood just how devasting the bombs would be. We had one test in a controlled situation. Its true many thought it would be terrible and eventually whether the korean war, Cuban missle crissis, Vietnam or Afghanistan. Some military leader who didn't have Hiroshima and Nagisaki Staring them in the face would have authorized the use of much more powerful weapons on much larger populations.

[Silverhair]

173. Then you would have allowed the Nazis & Japanese militarist to win.

Do you really think a world ruled by them would be good for the rest of the children of the world?

If you are unwilling to kill children in a total war, the all the enemy has to do is send children ahead of his troops when he attacks you. Your morals won't let you shoot, and his allows him to shoot. He wins.

War isn't a football game. That's why it sucks so bad. I have seen war personally and can testify that it sucks real bad.

In Vietnam, if we were in a convoy and a kid got in the road, we didn't stop, we ran over the kid and puked about it if we were a green troop. Reason: If they know that you will stop a convoy for the kid, then they will put a kid in the road on purpose to stop your convoy to make you easy targets.

[bpilgrim]

174. cept Germany was already defeated as well as Japan who was suing for peace

and no one is arguing for their victory, here and that makes your argument a straw-man.

peace

[Silverhair]

176. You are misstating MY point.

I was responding to these statements by DUer "number6". (I guess the name is a reference to the old TV series.) He says:

The Question was ....How many children would you kill to save 100,000 troops ? oh and an answer to the question would be ...no I wouldn't kill any or 1000 or what ever....

That is an absolutist position. If #6 has been in charge of the Allied effort in WWII, the Axis would have very quickly learned of his moral stance and would have used it against him from early in the war. Put some kids in the front lines and his moral stance won't let him shoot. He becomes helpless against an enemy who is ruthless enough to do that.

I strongly dislike smug self-righteousness from arm-chair moralists who don't have the face the real world consequences of their positions. If #6's position had been taken in 1939, Germany would have won.

If a ruthless enemy notices that you will not bomb withing 1,000 yards of a hospital, guess where they will put their SAM launchers?

That is simply part of the grim reality of war, and part of why it is such a horror.

[bpilgrim]

177. well, your point is a straw-man since they were defeated

and japan was suing for peace when we nuked them, TWICE... that is the point of this thread.

and all our military leaders in theater at that time say the same thing, it wasn't necessary then, who i would never call "smug self-righteousness from arm-chair moralists who don't have the face the real world consequences of their positions"

peace

[Silverhair]

178. ALL of our in theater military leaders orders actions...

that involved collateral casualties, including children.

All threads incur thread drift. I was answering the absolutist claim of "number6" that he would not accept any level of children as collateral casualties. It sounds noble and moral, but the real world result of any military leader that tried to adopt that stance would be to lock their military into inaction and defeat.

[maveric]

166. Didnt Japan need to be punished for their atrocities.

Baattan, Nanking, Pearl Harbor, the Phillipines? Totally disregarding the Geneva Convention. One of my patients was at Battan and spoke of the horrors he witnessed as he and thousands of other American and Filipinos were needlessly slaughtered.
The Japanese were not about to just surrender. Ever hear of Bushido?
http://www.shotokai.cl/filosofia/06_ee_.html

[not systems]

175. Revenge is a very bad excuse for incinerating 25000+ children. n/t