Posted on 08/08/2013 11:15:14 PM PDT by neverdem
If the Germans hadn’t surrendered first, I believe we would have used it on them. Remember the first test of an atomic weapon @ Trinity wasn’t until mid July of ‘45....
He’s just reversed the superior and inferior positions....
Some of our clueless military leaders also made the same suggestion before and after the atomic bombings. There are numerous reasons why doing so would have sacrificed many more lives, not less. One of the foremost reasons were the Japanese plans to murder the Allied prisoners of war en-masse.
On Wake Island, the Japanese commander ordered the beheadings of all of the American civilian construction workers to prevent their recapture when an American naval task force conducted a naval bombardment of Wake. The Japanese commander wrongly assumed the bombardment indicated an iminent amphibious invasion of Wake Island.
In Indonesia and elsewhere the Japanese herded Anglo-American prisoners of war into air raid trenches and other such confined spaces, poured in aviation fuel or other gasolines, and burned the men alive to prevent rescue or for revenge.
Some of japan’s highest ranking military officers ordered preparations to be made for the murder of all Allied prisoners of war, military and civilian along with millions of other people in the Japanese occupied zones. Emperor Hirohito found it necessary to dispatch his own brother, a royal prince of the Empire, to China and Indo-China in a dangerously risky attempt to countermand those murderous orders. Even after the atomic bombings of Japan, these murderous Japanese officers conspired to kidnap the Emperor to prevent the surrender, prolong the struggle, and murder the prisoners of war and countless other people at risk of japanese revenge.
In the end, the loss of Japanese lives were a small fraction of the human lives the Japanese were about to destroy in the most barbarous means imaginable just among the prisoners of war, neutrals, and civilians in the occupied zones. These are lives that are seldom even mentioned much less taken into consideration when the number of Japanese and Anglo-American lives were to be lost by a direct invasion of the Japanese Home islands. So, even if there had been no invasion, the surrender was secured by naval blockade, there still would have been a worse loss of life committed by japanese atrocities. These losses were forestalled by the atomic bomb attacks.
“We didn’t drop a bomb on Germany.”
We couldn’t, because the atomic bombs did not come into existence until aft the Germans had already surrendered in may 1945. The first plutonium core did not become available until the end of July 1945, when the TRINITY test detonated the first atomic fission device at the endo f july 1945.
Lincoln seemed to evolve on those issues.
There you have it. That is the problem with our political amd military leadership today. We don’t win wars anymore. We do not have the will to win wars anymore. The only way to defeat the current radical Islamist enemy is to utterly destroy their will to fight. If anything, our half-measures in this pseudo war on terrorism just provoke continued conflict.
As for the atomic bombings of Japan, those two bombs saved millions of Japanese and American lives. If we had to invade Japan, the slaughter would have been horrific. Our leaders back then understood what had to be done to achieve total victory and they did it. I pray that we avoid wars in the future, but if we must fight them, I hope that we have the will to win. If not, we should stay home.
(i knew a Japanese drafted into the imperial (fascist) army, he did not want to go, but was a Christian and did just that, i.e. acts of kindness to individual Allied (US/UK) POWs such as stealthily bringing extra rations at night when his asshole sadistic superiors were not looking. took big risks, but he knew what his Christian Bible said, even if written in Japanese.....
Thanks for your kind reply and the interesting info.
FRegards,
LH
Are you totally ignorant of US history, or just plain stupid? The first bomb wasn't finished until after Germany surrendered in May of 1945. The reason we bombed Japan in August was because that was when the bombs were finally tested and ready to go.
If we had the nukes before Germany surrendered we would have used them, bet on it. As for dropping a bomb on Germany we dropped many tons of conventional bombs on Germany and laid that country, and parts of France and other countries also, to total ruin.
Also, we did far more damage and killed many more Japanese with our fire bombs than we did with the nukes.
Actually one of the reasons they were murdered was because the Japanese high command didn't want to feed or transport the prisoners to Japan.
When the Japanese commander asked for transport and extra food for the prisoners he was told none would be forth coming and for him to remember the code of Bushido.
This code is the one that prevented any soldiers of the Japanese army from surrendering and it also considered any one who surrendered not worthy of life. In other words the high command was telling the commander on Wake to execute the prisoners.
These messages were decoded using the magic devices we had and the few Japanese codes we had broken. A matter of record.
The Average Japanese of WWII was utterly vicious and sadistic. The rape of Nanking and the general treatment of the Chinese, Philippine and other people who came under their control proves it.
not an easy topic, not an easy decision for Truman but what was the option(?), for a full scale invasion would have killed far more Japanese civilians all over the islands and of course massive casulties for Allied troops going in there and subduing, I also imagine the scores of mass suicide people would have been forced into (brainwashed by their criminal Tojo govt). people have to remember many war criminals got the long rope at Sugamo Prison afterwards and justice was served in many an instance against those lousy fascists and Class-A types (war crimes). and just leave it at that. it is a new Japan and they are a great ally to the United States against bigger fish to fry out here, such as Red China and batty North Korea now.
...remembering also the Dutch POWs in the SW Pacific...
Yes, that is true as far as it goes, however, one of those superior officers responsible for such orders was Terauchi, Field Marshal Count Terauchi, if I remember the name, rank, and spelling at the moment (forgive my error otherwise). He was in particular responsible for much of the atrocities committed throughout the vast regions under his command. He ordered the dismissal and sometimes disgrace of general officers who failed to carry out some of the war crimes he ordered. He was one of the officers the Emperor was most concerned about in addition to those in China when the safety of Allied POWs, neutrals, and civilians became a prime issue as the surrender developed.
A Japanese cargo or Hell ship was being used to transport some of the last walking and emaciated American POW survivors of the Cabanatuan POW camp to japan as slave laborers, when an American submarine sank the Japanese Hell ship. the torpedo tore a large hole in the side of the cargo ship. Some few of the nearly dead Americans were swept out of this hole alongside of the sinking ship. One of these survivors watched as the japanese lowered soldiers in a lifeboat equipped with a machinegun and manned by soldiers with rifles. They began gleefully shooting the American survivors in the water as their own cargo ship sank behind them. As the ship slipped beneath the surface of the sea, it created a large whirlpool and vortex of water into the dark depths of the sea. The lifeboat and the Japanese aboard it still shooting and slaughtering helpless Americans in the water continued even as the vortex sucked them underwater too.
The American submarine surfaced and rescued the survivor who witnessed these events.
An uncle who served two tours of duty in Japan told the story of a Japanese manager who befriended him. This man was a high school student when the atomic bombs took place. He told my uncle those bombs saved his life, because his school class had been assigned to attack the American troops on the beachhead with sharpened bamboo sticks.
There was no hope of avoiding defeat after the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria. Surrender was rational to save their Asian forces and the home island from certain destruction. Truman (as recorded in his diary and by others) was well aware that the Japanese were hopelessly defeated and seeking terms of surrender.
The bombings were the first shot in the Cold War that simultaneously allowed the Japanese to claim victim status and dismiss their own barbarity. The international perspective is definitely a credible argument.
Germany surrendered before the bomb was ready....
The U.S. has had a completely different approach to warfare since 1950 because we wage military campaigns for completely different reasons now. We are now an empire in every sense of the term, and it makes no sense to destroy cities and civilizations when our primary goal is to occupy them and do business with them. In our current position, destroying an "enemy" is a pointless exercise.
The U.S. government had no problem dropping atomic bombs on Japan because as a nation we weren't terribly interested in the Japanese mainland. Our primary interest in the Pacific was the possession and control of Japan's colonies and their resources.
I don’t think there is any doubt the US saw Japan as the key to the balance of power in Asia. The primary American objective may have been not to make Japan a part of our offensive capability as much as keep them out of the Soviet sphere but there was still extreme concern that a politically unstable, economically weak Japan would increase the influence of the domestic communist movement.
How come we didn’t use the bomb on Richmond or Atlanta? Again, proof that we are racist against Asians.
//sarcasm off
The statistics on lives saved by the bombs is obvious, yet they ignore it.
As far as it being an ethnic choice...bombing Japan vs. Germany..well, look at the stats from the firebombings of Dresden and Hamburg. The death totals were also staggering. And MORE Japanese probably died in the multiple bombings of Tokyo than from the two nukes combined.
The two greatest examples of nation building success..Germany and Japan post WW II..both occurred after we'd totally vanquished them..and killed most of their military and political leadership. Compare that to Iraq..where we tried our best to be careful...how's that working out?..More Americans were killed there AFTER Bagdad fell, and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi have been killed in terrorist bombings since the war supposedly ended.
But even if everything they say about killing supposedly innocent Japanese civilians was to suddenly be deemed 100% true, the use of the bombs was still justified by the lives of American troops it saved.
They attacked us...they massacred our troops, and civilians..they started it..
After Pearl Harbor..Adm. Halsey was quoted as saying that "before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell."
The same needs to be said of Arabic.
He would have been at the forefront of an invasion of Japan, so I'm glad the Atomic Bombs were used.
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