Posted on 08/06/2008 7:08:42 AM PDT by PurpleMan
I just read Pope John Paul’s address at Hiroshima in 1981. His call was to end war and all war is a crime against humanity.
“Only if you ignore”
I’m not the one saying it. The word was “those.” i.e. historians who say it.
(So then, for the sake of discussion, if one repeats an arguement, he immediately takes ownership of it? Got it.)
And they would be wrong. Japan was militarily active in China long before any oil embargo. Sept 19 Japan invaded Manchuria following the Mukden Incident
http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=18
BTW who is FRD? The US President during WWII IIRC was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Yeah, but “those historians” didn’t post on this thread.
So I responded to you.
You said it better than I ever could. Pope John Paul did not single this attack out by itself. His condemnation is for war entirely which is seconded by many combat veterans. War is death and ruin.
And I suppose the Japanese weren’t guilty of crimes against humanity during the war they chose to start?
I know it’s only sematics, but then you could have written, “Only if THEY ignore the previous five years...”
As does Unit 731,100,516,200 and a whole list of other “special research” units. One of their projects was a ceramic bomb loaded with bubonic plague laden fleas. It was to be used against the Western US mainland. They did actually test it against the Chinese
War is hell....
Correction on my post#63
Sept 19, 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria following the Mukden Incident
If Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been leveled by one atomic bomb each, they would have shortly been burned out by Curtis Lemay’s Twentieth Air Force, flying hundreds of B-29s each carrying thousands of pounds of incendiary bombs. Five months of seeing Tokyo and every other major city in Japan burned to the ground, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions homeless and starving, had not convinced the hard-liners in the Japanese government to surrender. It wasn’t until after we demonstrated to do with one airplane what had previously taken four hundred did Emperor Hirohito bestir himself and overrule his suicidal subordinates.
More people died in one night in Tokyo (around 125,000) and more territory was obliterated (16.4 square miles) than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The only difference was that in Tokyo, it was 336 airplanes carrying napalm, instead of one carrying a nuclear weapon.
No, it’s not really something to celebrate, because so many people did die. But I still thank God for it, because my father’d already been told he was going to get transferred from his motor pool job on Leyte and get sent ashore on Kyushu. I might not be here today if it wasn’t for those bombs making Hirohito come to his senses. After all, the Japanese had THIRTY-TWO MILLION civilians ready to resist to the death, even if they were mostly armed only with spears or sticks.
}:-)4
Um, no. In declining to abolish a practice they knew to be questionable but which was established, the FF were obeying a conservative impulse for limited government. The atomic bombings overturned the established consensus of ius in bello, amounting to an unprecedented bid for expansion of power by the murderous, soulless modern state. People calling themselves conservatives used to understand this.
My cousin Jesse Silvey, MM2C, had just gone on watch in the engine room when the ship blew. His mother, my dad's half-sister, had to get copies of the family Bible record to collect his $10,000 insurance. The only relative of mine lost in the war, and they got him in the first 15 minutes.
My dad was also part of the occupation forces. The only time he ever told me anything about the 3 wars he fought in was when I asked him about the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This was probably in around 1967 when he told me that he had been on a troop ship for 80 days, zig-zagging across the Pacific, on their way to invade Japan. His exact words were "they dropped the bomb, the war was over, and that was allright with your father." I've never forgotten him saying that. I doubt that there was a man on that ship that wanted to march up the beaches of Japan.
I have an Arisaka, Type 99, 7.7 mm bolt action "Last Ditch" rifle here in my closet that was a souvenir of war that he received as a part of the occupation force.
The mother of all insurgencies...
“We used it on them twice and there’s more of them than ever.” - P.J. O’Rourke
God Bless you Oldsailor. You and all of your shipmates. My old Marine dad and my old Sailor uncle used to have famously interesting conversations about those days, through the prism of the competition beetween two services. They loved each other deeply, but always like to tease each other as well.
Oh to be a fly on the wall for more of that....
Crime against humanity? The historical record doesn't show much "humanity" coming out of Japan in those days.
My Dad, who served in the 8th Infantry Division, stated to me many times that Harry Truman saved his life by ordering the bombs dropped. According to the info on the link posted earlier, that division would have been in the second phase of the invasion and gone ashore on the Tokyo plain.
He felt that after just missing D-Day in Normandy and the Ardennes attack that his luck had run out, and that if sent to the Japanese invasion (for which he was training) he wouldn’t have come home.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.