Posted on 08/10/2010 5:42:30 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
My thoughts: F@@@ “Mr.” Akin and the horse he rode in on.
I was educated in hs by a few Catholic missionary priests who were POWs under the Japanese in the Pacific islands.
If they were alive today, they would call bullsh*t on this stuff.
Better we should have just blockaded Japan and starved everyone to death?
Such a tactic would have been harder on the civilian population; the army would have kept the limited available rations for the soldiers, actually focusing the inevitable famine on the civilians.
About all I can say, is that many (probably most) good Catholics are just as dismayed as we are about this commentary, as well as the issues you mentioned.
It sucks to be sure.
During the era of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japan was a Nation of Barbarians.
Unit 731, Nanking, the Bataan Death March and “Comfort Women” come to mind.
They were Purified by Fire, and have joined the ranks of civilized nations.
If Imperial Japan had surrendered sooner, the bombs would not have needed to have been dropped. They were the ones who attacked us and insisted on fighting to the bitter end, and they have no one to blame but themselves for the outcome of the war.
Pure. Bull. Sh*t.
We hear this same, tired, old crap every August.
The fire bombing of Tokyo, in the aggregate, killed far more Japanese than either of the nukes. People blanch at the use of the nukes simply because one bomb did it all in each city.
The war against Japan was a desperate struggle, with NO - repeat NO - guarantee that we would win. It was Total War, with the survival of the culture and the nation as the goal. Period.
And make no mistake - the use of the nukes SAVED lives - many of them our own troopers, and many more the Japanese civilians who had been pledged - by their utterly Machiavellian military masters - to die “for the emperor.”
It was a sh*tty, sh*tty war, but the Japanese having begun it, someone had to win and someone had to lose. The Japanese lost, and if you want to know if the nukes were “worth it,” then ask the families of the G.I.s who came home in one piece, rather than maimed or in boxes.
And, for that matter, ask the families of the Japanese who would surely have died in any invasion of the home islands.
If it brings any comfort, think of the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as martyrs to peace.
But have a thought to all those who died in Tokyo and elsewhere as the result of bombs - now mostly forgotten - that weren’t “atomic.”
Most of all, pray for the souls of all the poor, young American kids who just wanted to stay home and play hoops and date Mary Lou, but whose bones are still bleaching on some forgotten Pacific sh*t hole.
Racial discrimination? Bad thing. Allowing abortions? Bad thing. Dropping nukes to deliberately kill civilians? Bad thing. Let’s try not to have things like these mar America’s future.
Too bad my grandfather, Damage Control Office on the Bunker Hill at Okinawa, isn't around to respond to this overweening moral equivalence idiot. He'd gray the guy's hair prematurely. But, then again, when you've lost hundreds of shipmates in a battle a few months before the a-bombs were dropped, it tends to give you a vastly different viewpoint on this subject.
And Hiroshima and Nagasaki were key points in the defense of Kyushu as well as hubs of communication and transport.
My thoughts are along the lines of: “Screw you Jimmy Akin! Fat Man and Little Boy saved MILLIONS of lives, Japanese AND American.”
The life-saving of Fat Man and Little Boy are obvious when you consider that Japan was unwilling to surrender or accept defeat... and we dropped the bombs so close together [time-wise] to make the Japanese think that it was the next progression of our ongoing fire-bombing campaign, which at that point had basically obliterated the Japanese manufacturing capability, into that of simply utterly destroying Japanese cities at will.
All the Japanese cities were legitimate targets and we should have dropped a hundred of them rather than invade Japan and lose any other American lives.
The number of civilians killed is irrelevant. In modern warfare, a worker in a factory is as legitimate a target as the factory. The fact that the worker's families were close by is too bad for them.
When my son was three, I got to introduce him to General Chuck Sweeney who flew "Bockscar" on the second atomic bomb drop. I thanked General Sweeney for his service and my being there to meet him. My father was scheduled to be a landing craft driver in Operation Downfall in October of 1945.
The Islamists warring against the US do not see the distinction and neither should we. If you seek the destruction of the US whether overtly or covertly, directly or indirectly, you are are a legitimate target. If you object to your families getting killed as collateral damage from killing you, stay away from them.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Good thing we had a combat veteran making the decision, not a theologian.
For a detailed history of the US plans for the invasion, see D. M. Giangreco's book "Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947" Includes estimates of US casualties, estimates of how many Japanese the US would have to kill to force surrender, plans to increase the draft.
Also Paul Fussell's piece "Thank God for the atomic bomb"
Dropping the bombs also kept the Soviets, and ultimately the ChiComs out of Japan.
How would you have liked 5-10 years after Tojo’s defeat to have to return to Japan to fight the Reds?
He knows nothing about war and could not care less that untold numbers of our fathers would have been killed during an invasion of Japan. I see absolutely nothing to admire in this fellows willingness to have my Father and others die in Japan 65 years ago so that he can go through life secure in the knowledge that millions of deaths of Americans is somehow morally superior to the deaths suffered in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Good call. I reposted it.
Yep, nothing much tees me off more than someone taking military planners to task, for ending the war. None of us likes the idea of using those nukes. War is hell.
Look at Iwo Jima. The honeycombed passageways in its volcanic mountain’s inner sanctum, held thousands of Japanese troops.
I just read the other day that several Japanese troops didn’t actually surrender until 1950 possibly 1951. Now that’s determination.
I’m sure that if my ship-mates had been blown to bits, before the use of the bombs, I’d be tracking this blithering idiot down to beat him to a pulp.
L
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
I hope so, and to be sure the Catholic church certainly isn’t the only church which is becoming way too liberal.
Oh absolutely.
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