Posted on 05/04/2018 9:37:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Agreed
“We had only 2 atomic bombs. Had the Japanese known that, they would not have surrendered when they did. Fortunately two were sufficient.”
“thpugh our strong propaganda had caused most of the American people to hate the Japanese.“
Seeing tens of thousands of horribly wounded young men coming home to every town in America had something to do with it, too.
L
In late 1937, over a period of six weeks, Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people–including both soldiers and civilians–in the Chinese city of Nanking (or Nanjing). The horrific events are known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, as between 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted. Nanking, then the capital of Nationalist China, was left in ruins, and it would take decades for the city and its citizens to recover from the savage attacks.
On December 13, the first troops of Japan’s Central China Front Army, commanded by General Matsui Iwane, entered the city. Even before their arrival, word had begun spreading of the numerous atrocities they had committed on their way through China, including killing contests and pillaging. Chinese soldiers were hunted down and killed by the thousands, and left in mass graves. Entire families were massacred, and even the elderly and infants were targeted for execution, while tens of thousands of women were raped. Bodies littered the streets for months after the attack. Determined to destroy the city, the Japanese looted and burned at least one-third of Nanking’s buildings.
Though the Japanese initially agreed to respect the Nanking Safety Zone, ultimately not even these refugees were safe from the vicious attacks. In January 1938, the Japanese declared that order had been restored in the city, and dismantled the safety zone; killings continued until the first week of February. A puppet government was installed, which would rule Nanking until the end of World War II.
There are no official numbers for the death toll in the Nanking Massacre, though estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000 people. Soon after the end of the war, Matsui and his lieutenant Tani Hisao, were tried and convicted for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and were executed. Anger over the events at Nanking continues to color Sino-Japanese relations to this day. The true nature of the massacre has been disputed and exploited for propaganda purposes by historical revisionists, apologists and Japanese nationalists. Some claim the numbers of deaths have been inflated, while others have denied that any massacre occurred.
Don't talk to me about Monday-morning quarterbacking this war 75 years later. Call it Karma or whatever, but dropping the bombs put a quick end to a war full of atrocities...
By burying them up to their shoulders and running over them.
The Japanese tested their atomic bomb in February 1945 in a remote part of North Korea. We didn’t test ours (Trinity Bomb) until July 1945, about 5 months later. The only reason an American West Coast city didn’t disappear in a fireball is that the Japanese used all of their fissionable material in their test and had nothing left for a bomb to use on us.
So, I am grateful that we nuked them first, because it was the righteous thing to do.
War is hell. I lived then. They hared us, too, as did the Germans.
Do you have a source for that, please?
Thanks
Most of Honshu is mountainous and they planned to keep fighting there. Huge underground bunkers were being dug near Nagano for the government and royal family. It was a closely guarded secret during the Nagano Winter Games because the Japanese didn't want any reporters snooping around and writing about the WWII plans for Nagano.
Dropping the nukes off-shore would have been moronic.
There were no spare weapons; there would be no more nuclear bombs for months, at the very least.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen simply because they were intact, utterly not out of any form of compassion.
I drive past the perennial debate between a homeless guy and a telephone pole at least a couple times a week. Occasionally its a different homeless guy, but the telephone pole has never yield!
People in the US ALWAYS think our two a-bombs made Japan surrender.
WRONG.
Stalin’s attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria did that:
Japan’s leadership KNEW that the USSR’s entry into the war would probably eventuate a divided Japan AND result in the death of the Imperial Family, CERTAINLY in the hanging of the Emperor.
Look it up:
The day of the playing over the radio of the Imperial Surrender Broadcast came the very day after Stalin’s attack.
Far, far under 1% of the US population knows this.
Did our a-bombs make a huge impression on them? Yes.
Did THAT force the surrender..?
Uh..NO.
The most thoughtful defense of the atom bomb came in an interview from Victor Davis Hanson. His father was in WWII, with some role in the air-force, as I recall.
In the 1960’s or 70’s, when young hippies were ascendent, VDH debated his father about the decision to use the atom bomb. His father simply said: The Japanese were killing 15,000 Chinese, Koreans, Philipinos, and yes, Americans, EVERY DAY. What better plans to end that were available, even with hindsight?
I hate the whole idea of indiscriminantly bombing a whole city as was standard practice in WWII. That said all throughout the Asia/Pacific region an estimated 10,000 people were dying every day due to the war whether through combat or starvation or disease caused by malnutrition. 140,000? That’s just two weeks of war. Without those bombs the war would have continued for several more more months at least if not more than a year. Just add up all those deaths.
What If Operation Downfall had to be launched? There would have been staggering losses especially among the Japanese. If just the Naval blockade continued another 6 months millions of Japanese would have starved to death let alone all the other people throughout the region who would have died. Horrible though it was, those weapons HAD to be used.
A blockaide would have never caused a surrender. They would have reverted to a medieval existence before surrender. They thought of surrender to someone who was obviously too scared to invade would have been laughable to them.
There's been a lot of writing and debate about that, actually. Truman and his generals decided
- No one could guarantee it would work. What if it was a dud?
- There were only two bombs available. Another 6-8 would have been available only by the end of the year
- Any element of "surprise" or shock and awe would be lost
- knowing it existed, Japan Govt would have considered countermeasures
- No Japanese citizens would have seen or experienced it. The government simply would not have told them.
- The Soviets were already re-deploying to East Asia. A quick end was needed to keep them out.
It also gave the "peace faction" and Emperor the "face" needed to confront the war faction. They could argue, that literally, the entire Japanese race was now in danger of extermination.
And at the time of the bombings, American public opinion unanimously supported them.
We all cheered at the news——I knew two soldiers who were in Germany and this prevented them from being sent to the Pacific.
.
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