Posted on 08/06/2014 8:52:08 PM PDT by right-wing agnostic
Fk em
After being bombed on New Years Day 1945 Europe(German “Operation Baseplate”)...My Dad survived to be loaded on a ship and sent towards the South Pacific...He had just exited through the Straits of Gibraltar when they got the news of the Atomic bombing of Japan...
I am a Baby Boomer that probably would not be here if not for the Manhattan Project and God’s Grace for our Country.
(I have read of hardened Combat Veterans breaking down in tears with the News of the Bomb...they were going to live...
after seeing so much death.)
They had bombs, bullets, beans...but needed the 17 year olds out of High School....(Dad’s youngest brother)
1,000,000 Americans would be dead or wounded in Japan...The war was planned to end in 1948.
Millions of Japanese would have been starved, gassed-Yes we were preparing to exterminate...The Bomb saved us both.
And Yes the Japanese were brutal beyond belief...Bush 41 was shot down near an Island where several Japanese officers were later executed for cannibalism after butchering captured American pilots(on the same raid as Bush 41).
Very few Japanese were punished for war crimes.
Many Pacific Theater Allied combatants were very upset about it.
Surrender or face utter destruction.
Like the Paleostinian Arabs in Gaza, they didn't budge and now they whine about casualties. Sorry, had to get that last one in...
NewsMax, 8/05/2014, Hiroshima Anniversary: Rethinking That Day
The article above is worth reading. Some may consider it revisionist history. According to the author, many, many of our top WWII military leaders opposed the atomic bombing of Japan because (1) Japan was clearly defeated by mid-1945 and (2) they opposed the continued bombing of civilians. The author does not paint a good portrait of POTUS #33 HST.
I’d like the revisionist historians (obviously you are NOT one) to explain to me this: If the Japs were on the verge of surrendering unconditionally before Truman dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, then why did it take them until August 14, 1945— five days AFTER THE SECOND BOMB WAS DROPPED on Nagasaki— to surrender? I hate these anti-American revisionist historians./rwa
[ There are 100 wonderful things about Japan but accurate widespread teaching of Japan’s role in Asia is….so/so. There has been no process of reflection in Japan on her role, as took place in Germany and with things afoot in Asia again, well…such reflection would not now be constructive, probably. ]
I wonder, if we had really forced Japan to repent like Germany would Japan have shifted into a multicultural cesspool of “white-guilt” like Germany is in today and would they now have a Muzzie problem like Germany has today?????
Japan today is still apologetically Xenophobic to a certain degree and that seems to be good thing in light of all this crazy immigration issues that are going on in Europe.
[ Now today, in modern times, is there a culture that is driven by a raid genocidal culture? Who craves world domination? Who exhibit utter inhuman ruthlessness?
I like to think that we missed a golden opportunity after 9/11. Mecca, Medina, and Islamabad should have been flattened with ICBMs without comment and every Saudi dollar findable should have been confiscated. ]
Why do you think that a certain number of pages are blacked out / redacted in the 9/11 report... It all has to do with the Saudis...
Just finished reading James Bradley's 2003 book, Flyboys: A True Story of Courage. You may remember Bradley's father was 1 of the 6 Marines to raise the 2nd flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. It was a disturbing read on several levels. Yes, he described in detail the 6 U.S. Naval aviators who were captured on Chi Chi Jima, executed, and some partly canabalized. He also provided an accouting of the Japanese war crimes trials - most of which I had never heard before.
~5,700 Japanese were indicted for war crimes in tribunals scattered across the Pacific and East Asia. Of these, 920 were executed, 525 received life sentences, 2,944 were sentenced to more limited prison terms, 1,018 were acquitted, and 279 were never brought to trial.
Contrast that with the Wikipedia account of the Nazi war crime trials. The Allies tried 23 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich at Nuremburg with 12 convicted and 10 executed (Martin Bormann was tried in absentia and Herman Goering committed suicide the night before his hanging). After the main Nuremburg trial, the Allies conducted 12 additional Nuremburg Military Tribunals in which 142 of the 185 defendants were found guilty of at least 1 of the charges. Twenty-four persons received death sentences, of which 11 were subsequently converted into life sentences; 20 were sentenced to life imprisonment, 98 were handed down sentences of varying lengths, and 35 were acquitted. Four defendants had to be removed from trials due to illness, and 4 more committed suicide during the trials. 22
Discovered an interesting passage in James Bradley's 2003 book about American aviation in the Pacific theater during WWII, Flyboys: A True Story of Courage.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey was a board of nearly 1,000 experts, about a third of whom were civilian, assembled to produce an impartial assessment of the effects of Anglo-American strategic bombing of Nazi Germany during the European theater of WWII. The Board was not associated with any branch of the military, it was established by the U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and chaired by a civilian, Franklin D'Olier. After publishing its report, the Survey then turned its attention to the efforts against Imperial Japan during the Pacific War, including a separate section on the recent use of the atomic bombs. It concluded with the following comments:
“It seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war; and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
Thank you for posting the Newsmax article; I learned a lot I didn’t know from it. I had posted my previous comment before I read that article. I still think it is unfair for people to judge Harry Truman using information only known through hindsight. FYI, substantially more civilians were killed during the bombing of Dresden, Germany by Britain and the United States than were killed in either of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima or Nagasaki./rwa
Watched an interesting episode on the History Channel a few years back when it still produced history shows unlike today's wall-2-wall pawnbrokers. The episode dealt with the events in Japan and the USAAF XX Bomber Command between the nuking of Hiroshima and the surrender of Japan - which was not unconditional - the emperor was not charged with war crimes but he was clearly guilty of them. Gen. Curtis LeMay continued ordering incendiary bombing strikes of Japanese cities after the nuking of Nagasaki. It was during this period that a small group of Japanese army mid-level officers attempted a coup against the emperor because they learned that he was about to surrender. They failed and committed suicide.
The Japanese detested communism and the U.S.S.R. Uncle Joe had just invaded Manchuria and was rolling over Japanese forces there - many who were captured disappeared in the Soviet Gulag system in Siberia. And the Soviets had just seized most of the Kuril Islands north of Hokkaido Island. It seems the Japanese high command chose to dance with Uncle Sam instead of Uncle Joe.
James Bradley mentioned that in Flyboys. He also went on to write that Gen. Curtis LeMay's XX Bomber Command caused even more death and destruction during 1945 with its incendiary bombing raids of Japanese cities. Bradley cited a quote by LeMay:
“If I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.” quoted in Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, © 1995.
The fact that the Japanese won’t even admit their atrocities is plenty enough for me. They deserved what they got.
“Japan deserved Enola Gay’s visit”.
Just as Iran deserves one right NOW.
The U.S. had broken Japanese diplomatic codes. Towards the end the Japanese were trying to get the Russians - who only made war on Japan in the closing days, and seized islands in Northern Japan which they still hold - to act as an intermediary with the United States, a role the Russians declined. The U.S. learned of these approaches through deciphered cables. The Japanese terms were continued Japanese occupation of Manchuria, and no occupation of Japan by foreign troops. Both of these terms were non-starters with the U.S. The Japanese were completely unrealistic in their appraisal of Western attitudes. The Allies demanded unconditional surrender almost to the end. In the event Truman agreed not to depose the Mikado, but other than that Japanese capitulation was complete.
Prior to Hiroshima, the Japanese cabinet was split on surrender, with the majority voting to hold out. After Nagasaki, not one vote had changed. What did change was that the Emperor took the unprecedented step of speaking during a cabinet meeting in order to announce that it was time to surrender. Even then, there was a last minute coup attempt by young army officers, suppressed by the commander of the Imperial bodyguards, who then went home and committed Hari-Kari.
Under conditions that actually obtained in August 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were godsends for all, except the unfortunate inhabitants of those two cities.
“There’s a museum in Tokyo dedicated to Japan’s ample history of warfare. But if you visit the plainly named Military Museum, you’ll find no reference to the grotesque medical experiments the Japanese army conducted in World War II or the sex slaves it kidnapped.”
I doubt you’ll see displays as to how American Air Force POWs were treated too, by the Japs. I saw that display in Dayton at the Air Force Museum 30 years ago and I’m still dealing with it. To gave you a taste, it made the Germans look like a bunch of angels.
If I encounter anyone wringing their hands over the use of the bombs, I tell them to go research Nanking and get back to me.
I’ve read some of that revisionist history, and I don’t believe it. The Japanese leaders, including the emperor, had to know by the fall of Iwo Jima and Okinawa that the war was hopeless. Yamamoto knew it before he was killed in 1943. They were hoping for a grand conflagration that would have killed millions of Japanese citizens and soldiers and probably over 100,000 thousand American servicemen. The bombs stopped all that.
It is unfortunate that the Gen-X and younger seem to think of Truman as a Genocial evil, when he saved many lives. ‘Saint’ FDR would have dropped it if he had lived... I am no Dem, but in that instance those two were patriotic Americans.
re Your post 18
I don’t think I have ever seen that opinion stated so well.
I’m saving it to spread around (if you don’t mind).
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