“Kept sinking their merchant marine fleet go ahead with operation Starvation. Continue bombing military targets—wage war. They would eventually run out of food and supplies.
The Japanese sent out peace feelers both to Sweden and the USSR before the end...Eisenhower/Truman knew the Japanese wanted to negotiate surrender. Now WHY he didn’t want it is another matter…” [Phoenix8, post 22]
“You do know what “starvation” means, don’t you?...” [DuncanWaring, post 26]
“The difference is blockading is allowable under the Geneva convention. As long as the intent isnt genocide, which it wouldn’t be.
Also as far as calling/suggesting me inhumane that is laughable. You endorse burning and radiating civilians—children and women alive …not I.
Blocking off food shipments puts the ownership of the deaths of Japanese civilians on THEM not us. Can’t you see the difference?
... they in fact did seek peace terms before much of the mass fire bombings and nuclear attacks. This does support my theory.” [Phoenix8, post 28]
Your approach here isn’t clear.
Are you theorizing that it’s better to starve an adversary’s population than to firebomb urban areas?
The Geneva Convention is not a solve-all document agreed to universally at every point by the signatories. Neither do nations cary it out in honesty and good faith.
The Imperial Germans went on record - quite noisily - against the inhumane results of Allied blockade during the First World War. Folks did starve then. Before much of the Conventions assuredly, but international usage and accepted rules of “civilized” warfare already were in place.
In 1945 the Imperial Japanese weren’t being honest about peace feelers; after American warnings, the senior leaders decided to abide by the principal of “mokusatsu” - approximately, to negate a diplomatic proposal with scornful silence.
Whether Allied leaders knew this at the time is less than clear. The message interception and decoding process was far from the magical key to the kingdom you apparently believe it was. “We’re reading the enemy’s orders before they get them themselves” was more hot air than historical fact.
You seem more interested in flaunting your own morality than in conducting any supportable historical analysis. And your condescension is obvious, in declaring your moral take to be so unimpeachable as to be beyond challenge from the rest of us.
“You seem more interested in flaunting your own morality than in conducting any supportable historical analysis. And your condescension is obvious, in declaring your moral take to be so unimpeachable as to be beyond challenge from the rest of us.”
That’s your opinion. We are speaking of counterfactual history, there is no solid way to support it.
Condescension…? How so? It’s not obvious. You are like almost every other person I debate with on this subject. You get angry because I don’t wish to fully follow the history channel version of war then you try to make me seem like I am getting personal and insulting. The anger is with you and your history channel BRO DuncanWaring.
Beyond challenge? Why would I think that?…you don’t know me and I’m glad.
Let me remind you of who got personal first, it was DuncanWaring
“ You do know what “starvation” means, don’t you?” WHICH IS AN OBVIOUS SLIGHT IM STUPID
“Some humanitarian you are.” WHICH MEANS IM COLD BLOODED, EVIL, RUTHLESS.
“yeah your inhumane” SOS…
You are pissed off because you want and believe with every fiber of your being fire Bombing and radiating Japanese civilians is morally justifiable because The Japanese would fight to the last man, the only alternative solution to an invasion which would kill a million Allied and 10 million Japanese was to radiate civilians to the point they surrendered. That they surrendered was proof to you the path saved millions.
Was that the only path? That’s all I was saying. The Japanese put out peace feelers, we knew it then and now, with pressure from conventional war practices like blockade and bombing combined with negotiation we might have got them to surrender. Perhaps sooner than the way we did. We were pushing UNCONDITIONAL surrender by the Democrat POTUS Eisenhower and Truman after him and the blood thirsty Stalin (Churchill seems to have given mixed messages). A completely STUPID policy. We should have allowed conditions.
All I did was to offer my opinion of an alternative that was never followed the you twist that around and make me seem as if I’m insulting you and your BRO being rude. Even other guys jumping in and insinuating I was for the axis etc. But who knows if the Japanese militarists would have allowed the more pacifist to act, who knows what the Emperor would have done? You for sure don’t.
Here is what I said: “ I don’t think we would have to have invaded just negotiate with them in a conditional manner. My grandfather was an army Air-force engineer in the 821st AEF Battalion in the SW Pacific. I certainly don’t want him to have had to have gone to Japan in a bloody invasion as I possibly wouldn’t be here now if he had.”
How is that being condescending? How is that “FLAUNTING MY OWN MORALITY”??? I’m giving my opinion that’s all.
It’s not —-you are just being argumentative and personal.