Lamh Foistenach Abu! Your thoughts?
My thoughts are that he is wrong. If using the atomic bomb was wrong, so was the whole prosecution of WW2, in all theaters. War is bad ... but either it’s *all* bad, or it’s not. Weapons are just a tool.
If the bombs were bad, then our actions before this point were worse. We had fire bombed entire Japanese cities and towns off the map. From the view of the bombing campaign alone, the two bombs saved tremendously more Japanese lives than it cost.
Lamh Foistenach Abu! Our only mistake was not using atomic weapons in Korea.
A second use would have shown our resolve and there
would have been now doubt about our ability to use
them again.
Nonetheless, I don't see the use of those two bombs as having been necessary either. I'd have saved them for Mecca and Medina. WW-II was basically over, Japan's 75 largest cities were in ashes, and they were looking for a way out. There were 20,000,000 people walking around in forests because the cities in which they used to live no longer existed.
Harry S Truman. The “the Buck Stops Here” Democrat. Never once blamed FDR for getting us into a crazy war in Europe, which hadn’t attacked us.
My thought is that Jimmy Akin is a flaming idiot. The atomic bombs saved millions of both Japanese and American lives. Jimmy Akin knows nothing of history or of war making.
Why? How?
Japan had a national code to never, ever surrender. They where willing to fight to the last man standing.
Had not Truman authorized the use of the Atomic bomb, the war with Japan would have dragged on for years.
The fact that is took two Atomic bombs to make Japan realize that it had absolutely no chance attests to the need to use the Atomic bombs.
It was a courageous act of mercy on the part United States part. This re-writting of history is evil.
The deterrent value since then has saved untold lives more.
The "U.S". is not guilty of anything. Only individual human beings can commit sins and are thereby either guilty or not guilty.
Fortunately for us, the Vatican was not bombed on Dec 7, 1941. Well, maybe fortunately......
When it comes to war you should only use the information available at the time. To do otherwise is akin to suing a racetrack for failing to cash a false ticket printed weeks after the race was ran.
I will always remember that my father was scheduled to be a landing craft crewman running between the attack transport anchorage and the shore. He wasn't expected to survive a week. That was two years before I was born.
The trouble is these people that cry war crimes are safe from possibility that the may have been in the first wave to assault the beaches of Japan. Otherwise they may have a different opinion.
Armchair General Akin: "Let's see now, if I was in charge 60+ years ago, I'd have simply said no to dropping those bombs."
"Would we have lost a huge number of Americans invading the Japanese Islands (many of whom had already been voluntarily fighting for years, to free people they had never met), and maybe have had to kill just as many Japanese civilians as the bombs did anyway, because they would have fanatically defended their homeland?"
"Well, yeah, but I, Armchair General Akin, would have felt morally superior about it, you know what I mean?"
I think not. I think that he is an America hater, some that his cushy American life has permitted him to be.
The Japanese had given ample evidence of their fanaticism and their willingness to sacrifice everything in service to the Emperor. Securing Japan's rapid and unconditional surrender was not worth the unnecessary expenditure of a single American soldier's life. The American people would never have forgiven Truman if they found out that he had the bombs available and chose not to use them, but to allow American soldiers to continue to die in combat. With Germany and Japan defeated, the West knew that they had neither the strength nor will to stand up to the Soviet Union if they decided to advance their interests militarily. Use of the Atomic Bombs against Japan served as a warning to Stalin and was absolutely necessary.
When this subject comes up with my Japanese friends and acquaintances, I always ask them if they have renounced their policy of eating their prisoners. The discussion usually turns to other topics.
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.
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.