Peleiu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Invading Japan would have been no picnic.

[SidneyCarton]

Starting with Peleiu the Japanese Army switched tactics to oppose the U.S. "Island Hopping" strategy. Instead of massive resistance on the beach in a series of "banzai" charges, they turned to a strategy of attrition, where they held out in the volcanic caves and highlands of these islands, and fought long, grinding delaying campaigns.

Who is to say that such would not have been the case on Kyushu and Honshu, targets of Operations Olympic and Coronet?

Furthermore, those who advocate blockade... Assuming a blockade of Japan was both feasible and workable, what is your position on the decade of sanctions we held on Iraq? If our starvation of a generation of Iraqi children was immoral, would it not have been equally so to do so to the Japanese?

Finally, let us consider the Soviet angle for a moment... By the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Army was already in motion, engaging the Japanese in Manchuria, as well as sweeping down Sakhalin and the Kuriles, toward a possible occupation of Hokkaido and northern Honshu. Considering the fate of other regions occupied by the Soviets in east Asia, there is the possibility that, much like on the Korean peninsula, we would still be maintaining an armed border between a U.S. backed South Japan and a pseudo-Stalinist North?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were awful events, horrors without true parallel in human history (if for no other reason than that so little ordinance was necessary to cause so much death) They also stand as awful harbingers of the ultimate cost of total war, which is the total annihilation of the human race. Yet the alternatives in August 1945 were by no means marvelous. Did Truman make the wrong decision, maybe. But as the grandson of two men who enlisted in the Navy in 1945, any alternative would have had more than academic consequences for me and my family, as it would have had for the families of countless thousands, if not millions of Americans and Japanese (as well as likely Russians) that were otherwise spared.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Peleliu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

Edited to add reading material

[endarkenment]

1. war crime. nt.

[Captain Hilts]

5. Agreed. Bombing Pearl Harbor, and invading Manchuria and Nanjing were war crimes. nt

[endarkenment]

82. Indeed. Lots of war crimes were committed.

[BeGoodDoGood]

38. Generational Judgement

You are making a generational judgement on an historical event. You can't replicate the context.

The Japanese burned some of our POW's alive. Look what they did to the Chinese and the Koreans.

They got -exactly- what they deserved.

It was the right policy and it worked, as even a cursory review will show.

Walt

[endarkenment]

84. It was the wrong policy and it was not necessary.

Incinerating cities is just not justified, even if you find it 'what they deserved'. However, how is it that you can pronounce judgement, but others cannot?

[Captain Hilts]

119. I'm really glad Big Fred didn't have to invade the mainland. He was training to do so. nt

[Captain Hilts]

2. Folks here just can't place themselves in the mindset of folks in 1945

who had relatives that had survived those landings and would have to fight another, more tenacious one.

[zipplewrath]

14. I agree

I concur that there is a tendency of folks (not just here by the by) to look at this issue from 21st century eyes, and forget what the people at the time had been through. I will point out however that there is also a tendency to offer up false dichotomies. The discussion is often "either invade or bomb" and some folks try to make the case that neither was necessary. Conversely, one can make a case that if they had chosen not to use the weapon then, it may have been employed as part of an island invasion. And of course there is the real possibility that the fire bombing would have continued and killed many more.

It's war folks. That's why we should avoid it. This was total war. Which is why we should "totally" avoid it.

[SidneyCarton]

26. "Its war folks. That's why we should avoid it"

Words that should be chiseled in granite above every memorial we build.

[Statistical]

115. Yeah nice quote.

The whole idea of war crimes is somewhat silly; War IS A crime.

It isn't like there are good wars and bad wars.

People die, lives are destroyed, homes & businesses swept away.
Heartache, death, and sorrow are all that follows a conflict.
Sometimes it is necessary but more than often it is not.


If you are in a war you end it as quickly as possible.

The bomb did that. It woke up a delusional war council who believed they could hold out and keep their empire by "surrendering" under terms that were insane (keeping military, keeping territory, no war crime trials, no occupation, no disarming).

The world was tired of war. Not just American soldiers but the entire world, they want it behind them and they didn't want it to be another Germany where the conditions from WWI led to rise of Nazism and WWII.
The world wanted WWII ended for good. Even today Japan has no military power projection although that is changing as WWII becomes a more distant memory.

[eyepaddle]

34. Your last sentence might be the best thing ever written.

To your main point, I beleive the early plans involved using nuclear weapons in a tactical fashion against troop concentrations outside Tokyo. That was considered too dangerous to do with an unitred weapon and was shelved.

That would've been the worst of all worlds an invasion AND nuclear bombing.

[SidneyCarton]

19. Exactly my point.

1945 was more than just a date, it was an entire state of mind, just like 1917, 1968 or even today. Whenever we look at it from outside of that context, it is difficult, if not impossible to fully understand what it was really like.

[dugaresa]

24. my father fought in the pacific

he left for war a healthy virile young man with a head full of wavy hair.

photos of him directly after the war show a much older man who was painfully thin who had suffered malnutrition as a result of supply lines being cut off and who had suffered two bouts of malaria. he came back a decorated soldier (bronze starts) but also used alcohol to numb the pain.

[KittyWampus]

29. May I interject here- it wasn't JUST people who'd been fighting the last 4 years. World War I was

not a distant memory.

[Captain Hilts]

118. VERY TRUE. My grandfather - who had his leg blown off 3 days before the Armistice -

cried when my uncle joined the Navy right after Pearl.

VERY fresh memories.

[damntexdem]

3. How many threads do we need refighting WWII?

How many will we have to see?

[SidneyCarton]

6. Hide thread is your friend, feel free to use him on mine.

[Zywiec]

7. You're just three days away from the Nagasaki hand-wringing

that occurs here yearly following the Hiroshima guilt-trips.

[taterguy]

4. Why are you bringing this up today?

[SidneyCarton]

8. Its august 6, we dropped the bomb today in 1945

And there are innumerable threads on this. WWII is part of the stuff I study for my PhD (though, in fairness the other theatre is more my area) so I thought I'd weigh in.

[taterguy]

9. That was August 6, Japan time. Either a day before or a day after

I can never remember how that International Dateline thingy works

[Chulanowa]

10. Because some people just like the idea of mass murder of civilians

And will continue defending the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as being perfectly okay.

[SidneyCarton]

17. And some people here assume that everyone should be judged to the standards of 2009

They also do not read OP's

Where did I say that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki were perfectly ok?

I put a controversial historical question into its proper context. Unfortunately, context is inconvenient when you are howling condemnation at the top of your lungs. Believe it or not the past is just a little more complex then what passes for historical commentary here on DU.

[KittyWampus]

33. Most people seem to think it was the least bad of several bad options. And the option

which had least casualties.

Haven't witnessed any DU'ers saying it was perfectly okay.

[Chulanowa]

43. Which would have been accepting Japan's offer to surrender with the emperor still in charge

But we nuked them instead.

when you repeat that "we saved millions of lives" propaganda, what you are saying is that it was perfectly okay. You are defending the overwhelming incineration of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and lingering illness in Japan to this day, because you're buying propaganda cooked up by the fuckers who realized they needed to safeguard their own asses after dropping hte bomb. They couldn't really just admit "We did it to scare the shit out of the Russians and keep them from entering the Pacific Theater"

[SidneyCarton]

44. Then put your evidence where your ideology is and debunk my OP.

Otherwise I'm calling bullshit.

[Name removed]

56. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[eyepaddle]

61. You might want to take a look at that 3rd source

That oufit is probably the world's number one source for bullshit "The Holocaust didn't happen History".

Alternately: "Hitler--let's hear his side of things."

[SidneyCarton]

65. 0/3 ain't bad.

Your first link includes anti-semitic buzz words. The second is from a site that also refers to President Clinton as an "American Caligula." You will forgive me if I fail to take either of those sites seriously.

And eyepaddle just noted that your third link also entertains holocaust denial.

Fail

[Raskolnik]

91. But you aren't acknowledging that the poster *hasn't read a word* of anything from those sources.

It's not about context, it's not about reasoning...it's just about who can produce the greater volume of cut & pasted quotes. That's how history works, right?

[SidneyCarton]

93. Some days it seems that way.

Those are the days I wonder if trudging through the PhD program is really worth it, everyone thinks you just make shit up anyway.

[Raskolnik]

96. Why bother with "books" and "classes"

taught by "professors" who have spent their lives studying and reasoning through incredibly complex historical events when you can just cut and past quotes?

Bet you feel like a sucker now, don't you?

[SidneyCarton]

97. Yup.

Why bother weighing various evidence to figure out what really happened, in all its bizarre and fascinating complexity, when you can uncritically believe a simplified view of events.

[Chulanowa]

98. Yep. Sorry, Wikipedia just didn't have the subject covered

My apologies for not meeting your journalistic standards, but the library is kind of on hte other side of town.

Might I suggest visiting yours?

[Raskolnik]

100. For someone that just offered up those sources, that's a bold card to play. n/t

[Name removed]

106. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Raskolnik]

107. It's refreshing to see you admit that's how you go about supporting your arguments. n/t

[SidneyCarton]

110. Lazy idiot?

Cute, really, insults are the last resort of the incompetent.

[SidneyCarton]

109. Hmmm...

Wikipedia, or R-W trash that denies the holocaust, uses anti-semitic buzzwords and calls President Clinton an "American Caligula"

Fine, you want some books, try these:

E.B. Sledge "With the Old Breed"
Niall Ferguson "The War of the World: The 20th Century and the Descent of the West"

Or you can keep posting bullshit written by tinfoil hat crypto-nazis on a progressive message board.

[SidneyCarton]

50. Furthermore, we incinerated hundreds of thousands of German civilians too.

approximately 200,000 in Dresden alone, and our bombings of Bremen, Hamburg and Cologne were nothing to sneer at either. Funny how there never is any chorus of condemnation about this.

[BeGoodDoGood]

55. There was some condemnation of Bombing In Europe

The RAF had as its policy the targeting of civilians.

The USAAF did not target civilians per se. However, often the 8th and 15th Air Forces would have the railway station in a city as the secondary target.

The crews knew what that meant. Also, the radar bombing aids were very poor. Targeting a specific factory or facility often meant the bombs were all over the surrounding area no matter how careful the bomb aimers were.

Radar bombing had a good side effect -- it enticed the German Air Force to engage where it could be killed. Over Europe you might get 5-6 days a month where the very accurate visual aids were used. So radar aids got the Force over the targets on most days.

Walt

[SidneyCarton]

58. I realize that.

However the raids on Dresden, Cologne and Hamburg in particular were specifically designed to destroy those cities using incendiary bombs. They were not strategic, the goal was to utterly level the city in the interests of terrorizing the Nazis into surrender.

[BeGoodDoGood]

60. By the Brits, not us

That was British Policy. We acquiesced.

[eyepaddle]

57. The description of the bombing of Hamburg in Gwynne Dyer's

War: The Lethal Custom sounds like something truly out of hell. The firestorm was so intense the streets melted and caught fire, most people trying to flee were stuck in the goo like animals in the La Brea tar pits.

Except they were on fire too.

Let's face it, the world lost it's mind from 1937-1945. And got back only a tenuous grip after that.

[SidneyCarton]

69. "The world lost its mind from 1937-1945"

It was a relapse to a madness we suffered from 1914-18

[eyepaddle]

71. Yeah, I just read Dunnigan's "Dirty Little Secrets of WWII"

It's fairly light reading and all, but in the end he concludes that WWII really started with WW I and didn't finish until the end of the cold war. In some sense you can conclude that world war one lasted from 1914 to 1989.

That's a hell of a long time.

[RaleighNCDUer]

74. I've wondered sometimes how future historians will see it.

After all, during the Hundred Years War nobody called it the Hundred Years War - it was a series of little wars with shifting alliances that sometimes left some areas untouched for decades. Only from the perspective of later centuries can we see it as a single conflict that spanned generations.

[eyepaddle]

77. Now that's a good question

especially when you consider how many different names countries have for the wars involved. At some point people will probably just pick one and stick with that.

Maybe something simple like "The 20th Century."

[SidneyCarton]

79. "The War of the World" by Niall Ferguson.

A good book that addresses this question, I highly recommend it.

[RaleighNCDUer]

81. Thanks - I'll check it out. nt

[proteus_lives]

114. That's a good book.

My copy is rather dog-eared from repeated readings. He's right too, it's all connected.

[Chulanowa]

103. Wait wait wait

You start a thread praising the nuclear annihilation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I point out how asinine that is, and now you want to talk about Dresden?

Fuck yeah, what we did to civilian populations in Germany is barbaric. But we're talking about what happened in Japan, which is the subject YOU brought up to begin with.

[SidneyCarton]

111. When you can find a line in which I praise their nuclear annihilation...

I'll admit you have a leg to stand on in any of your arguments.

Until then, as you give credence to such crap, I've got a Kenyan birth certificate of President Obama I'm willing to sell you at cut rate.

[Turbineguy]

11. Truman was dealing with Stalin

it was already well known by then that he turned Russia into a slaughterhouse. Asking him to play nice would have gone nowhere.

[RaleighNCDUer]

22. So the massacre of Japanese civilians is justified by the message

it sent to Stalin?

That is the WORST possible excuse for it, using them as a pawn in a proxy fight against a third party.

It's one thing to argue that it was necessary to convince the Japanese to surrender, but to send a fucking message to the Soviets?

That's disgusting.

[BeGoodDoGood]

67. The Massacre, if you like, was justified by the message........

it sent to the Japanese government.

I don't think Japanese civilians were massacred. They, or their government, had a power to resist that made bombing them the best option for us.

Unless, of course, you'd rather our dead replace theirs.


Walt

[RaleighNCDUer]

87. The post I was replying to contended it was a message to the soviets, not

the Japanese.

[Turbineguy]

122. I'm not justifying it on those grounds.

Anyway, the bombs happened and I can't take them back.

[Art_from_Ark]

121. You do know that Japan's northern territories had been promised to Stalin,

don't you? It was a deal made at Yalta in February 1945 in which Roosevelt promised Stalin that Stalin could basically get all of Japan's islands north of Hokkaido if the USSR would renege on its non-aggression pact with Japan, which Stalin gleefully agreed to. It's more than coincidence that Russian air and land forces were lined up waiting to invade the northernmost of Japanese islands in August 1945, and that the USSR just happened to declare war on Japan the day after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped. And the Soviets continued to invade and occupy Japanese islands until the end of October 1945, long after the Pacific War had officially ended.

[tularetom]

12. That's uncomfortable for me to contemplate

My dad was present on all those landings and no doubt would have serve in an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

I'm sure my mom welcomed any action that shortened the war and spared him the risk of combat in Japan. And we were happy to have him around for almost 60 years after VJ Day.

Was the cost too high? For mankind, possibly. But it's a decision I'd have to abstain from.

[SidneyCarton]

20. Agreed.

n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. Then they should have accepted a conditional surrender without invading.

:shrug:

[zipplewrath]

18. Easy decision to make now

That's an easy choice to make now, with the comfort of 20/20 hindsight. Not as easy then for a new president, after a long war, with unknown results of choosing such a thing. Surrender terms had been established at Potsdam and a new president was inclined to stand his ground. Truth is, to this day, we don't really know what the japanese would have actually accepted. They wanted to keep their empire, not just their emperor.

[SidneyCarton]

21. Maybe.

Consider though that racism ran far deeper in 1945 than today. We did not accept unconditional surrender from european Germans, would we do so from the Japanese?

I'm not saying that our reason for rejecting this out of hand was honorable, it was informed by deep-seated prejudice, but those prejudices defined the possible, and the unthinkable at that time. We may condemn such behavior as bigoted and short-sighted today, with the knowledge that our own grandchildren will likely do the same to us in their own due time.

[Raskolnik]

39. A conditional surrender that was not offered is tough to accept. n/t

[ShamelessHussy]

15. Imagine how many would have been saved if we had negotiated terms of surrender in the spring of 45?

http://image.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/Washington,DC_Cherry_Blossoms.jpg

I'm haunted by that # whenever thinking about this terrible issue...

no Okinawa (March through June 1945)

http://www.ww2f.com/honor-service-valor/31553-ernie-pyl...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa

possibly no Iwo (February 19–March 26, 1945)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima

[SidneyCarton]

23. How many indeed.

War unfortunately has a terrible logic all its own. Slaughter is all too easy to begin, even easier to escalate, but surprisingly hard to stop. Hence it ought to be avoided at all costs, and only entered into reluctantly, for once the killing begins...

[zipplewrath]

27. Wanna be more horrified?

It isn't clear that there was any real need to capture Iwo.

[BeGoodDoGood]

45. Sure there was.........

It was an early warning post for the Japs to pick up our B-29 raids and a large number of damaged aircraft landed there. More Air Corps crew landed at Iwo than Marines were killed taking it.

Walt

[zipplewrath]

76. That was not the justification at the time.

Those justifications were created after the fact. The reality is that there were other islands available for B-29 landings. And the vast majority of landings weren't particularly "emergencies". The reasons given before hand were because they intended to use it for fighter escort deployment for the B-29's. It ended up not operating like that (something like only 10 missions were flown from there). And even that excuse could have been from any number of islands in the area that could have been more easily secured.

[Raskolnik]

40. Just like we could have saved a lot of lives by negotiating an armistice with Germany in 1943.

Why didn't we?

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. A detonation in Tokyo Bay would have been equally effective without

being a horrific crime against humanity. The Emperor and his staff would have seen the power of the bomb and KNOWN they could not stand against it. Bombing Hiroshima just delayed the surrender, because none of them witnessed the blast and they were able to discount it, as it was no worse than the destruction of their other cities, including Tokyo.

Seeing it would have made all the difference.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary.

[SidneyCarton]

25. Yes, and had Haig devoted all his forces to a tank-driven breakthrough at Cambrai in 1917,

The horror of Passchendaele might have been avoided.

Hindsight is wonderful, but it changes nothing. This was not how the military, or the political authorities of the time decided to do things. I know that various personnel on the Manhattan Project proposed this, but in fairness, they were likely a little enlightened for the times.

[RaleighNCDUer]

28. My point being the same - what is, is. All the "Hiroshima was necessary"

is based of speculation of what DIDN'T happen, just as the "Hiroshima was unnecessary" is.

Dropping the bomb on two cities that were virtually untouched by the war was the beginning of the American empire.

It was the beginning of the end for us.

IMHO.

[SidneyCarton]

The firebombing of Dresden was the beginning of the end.

Or maybe it was the Spanish-American war.
Or the annexation of Hawaii
Or the massacre at Wounded Knee
Or the innumerable broken treaties with the Native Americans
Or the Trail of Tears
Or the toleration of slavery in the Constitution

etc, etc, ad nauseaum.

We have been an empire since the Louisiana Purchase, and have immorally treated the non-white populations of our nation for at least as long. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were neither a beginning or an end, just another piece in a long running morality play.

[provis99]

30. Haig should have been executed. He was a war criminal

The worst is, the criminal part was on his insistence on the slaughter of his own troops.

[SidneyCarton]

35. Haig was a fool.

Unfortunately, with the exception of Sir Henry Plumer, who was smart enough to blow up the Messinnes Ridge before trying to take it, (and even he wasn't all that creative otherwise) he was much like the other staff officers on the western front. Then again the whole Western front was stupid beyond description.

[Name removed]

48. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SidneyCarton]

51. Opinions expressed in this way do not help.

n/t

[RaleighNCDUer]

53. The women and children of Nagasaki didn't deserve what they got

any more than the women and children of Nanking deserved what they got.

But go ahead, glory in the UNNECESSARY MASSACRE OF CIVILIANS. Ignore my contention that if the Emperor saw the first bomb first hand, he would have immediately sued for peace. What the FUCK is this "boo hoo for the Japs"? Racist bullshit, unworthy of any progressive board.

[SidneyCarton]

54. Ok, agreed about the racist bullshit.

And I chastised him on it too.

Did Hirohito ever say that he would have immediately sued for peace (on the terms of unconditional surrender demanded by the Allies) had he seen a detonation like the one you describe?

If so, can you cite it (as a historian I would be fascinated to know this).

If not, then this is just conjecture, you are assuming what Hirohito would do, not knowing for certain.

[RaleighNCDUer]

72. True, it is conjecture, but he was already wavering. Peace feelers had gone

out. I really do think that witnessing an atomic detonation has a different effect than hearing about an atomic detonation, or even seeing the effect of one.

I think it would have been worth the chance, using one for an up-close demonstration, followed by a warning that the NEXT would take out a city.

I have always believed that using the bombs hurt us more than it did them.

[SidneyCarton]

78. I'm not saying you're wrong, using a second bomb on a city as collateral might have worked.

I would agree, that this hurt us more than them, the very vehemence with which we are carrying out this conversation, 60+ years after the fact proves that.

[BeGoodDoGood]

59. Glory in Living in some Unattainable Utopia

People need to get some stones.

Walt

[comrade snarky]

108. Are you the same poster

WhiskeyPapa from another site I'll not name?

Your style reminds me of him, he also signed all his posts "Walt".

[jody]

31. Another "The Invasion That Didn’t Happen", link below.

http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2009/June%202009/0609invasion.aspx

[rug]

32. Japan didn't need to be invaded.

[SidneyCarton]

36. Would you like to elaborate on that ...

[rug]

37. They had lost their offensive capability.

The USSR was about to invade Manchuria.

Vital commodities were scarce.

The war was over.

Surrender would have been achieved by siege, negotiation or coup.

It was just a matter of time, nothing that warranted nuclear incineration or that required a massive invasion.

[Raskolnik]

42. So starving millions of people to death was the preferrable option? n/t

[rug]

47. Yes, although death by starvation and disease was not likely to reach the millions,

perhaps not even the hundreds of thousands who ultimately died from the atom bombs, and certainly not the numbers who would have died in an invasion.

[Raskolnik]

63. If you look at Japan's available food and medicine stocks in 1945, I think it is *very* likely

that a blockade would have resulted in deaths in the high six figures at a minimum.

[rug]

64. May be, but the social collapse may have hastened the war's end before the figures reached that high

[SidneyCarton]

70. Social collapse may have led to civil war.

Those kind of wars are rarely known for their low body counts.

[rug]

86. A nation in the midst of civil war is in a precarious position to resist an invasion.

IF this scenario occurred and IF an invasion was necessary, it was not likely to be as bloody as X-Day contemplated.

[Raskolnik]

73. If you think that the Japanese populace would have overthrown the government and the Emperor

before the body count rose into the millions, I respectfully submit that you do not have a good handle on the mindset of the Japanese population at the time.

[rug]

85. That's rank speculation.

[Raskolnik]

88. Based on the Japanese population's conduct over the course of the war.

Look at Okinawa and Iwo Jima and tell me that that the Japanese populace was likely to overthrow their government because they had to skip a meal or two.

[rug]

89. The condition of Japan in August 1945 was something more than skipping a meal or two.

[Raskolnik]

90. Yeah, it was. And there wasn't a hint of rebellion to be found (other than the attempted coup by

hard-liners who didn't want to surrender even *after* the bombs, of course).

My point is that the Japanese populace was not prone to civil disobedience, and *nothing* indicates that they were on the verge of overthowing their government to hasten surrender. I've read a lot of oral history from Japanese civilians during that time, and I've never seen ever a suggestion that such a notion would have found fertile ground anywhere in Japan.

[rug]

92. There is a difference between social collapse and overthrowing a government.

Japan was on the verge of a social collapse. The government simply could not simulataneously maintain its infrastructure, its civilian population and its military. When the society collapsed, the government would follow. There was no need for "overthrowing the government".

[Raskolnik]

94. And that "social collapse" was only going to happen after an enormous human toll, if the

previous conduct of the Japanese population to that time was any indication. Those folks didn't tend to give up until they were dead, and even then it was a near issue.

[rug]

101. "Those folks"?

[Raskolnik]

104. Japanese folks during WWII. Who did you think we were talking about?

They were some tough nuts, that's a damn fact.

[SidneyCarton]

95. And then there would have been a heavily-armed failed state...

With large Japanese armies still in service overseas, which would (as occured in China) end up fighting for local warlords. Explain to me again how this is an improvement?

[rug]

99. Explain to me the projected cost of X Day and the actual cost of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The notion of overseas Japanese soldiers fighting local warlords is nonsense. I have never heard the Red Army described as a local warlord.

[SidneyCarton]

46. So I take it you had no problem whatsoever with the decade-long quarantine we did of Iraq.

And how long exactly were we supposed to continue quarantining the Japanese Home Islands, after all they were still having stragglers surrender across the Pacific well into the 1960's.

[rug]

49. As a matter of fact I do, as should you, although Iraq in the 1990s is not Japan in the 1940s.

[SidneyCarton]

52. Well, your reasoning is consistent.

I didn't have a problem with Iraqi sanctions BTW.

I find your assumptions about the deaths from starvation in a prolonged blockade being less than the deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki a bit optimistic.

[RaleighNCDUer]

62. Starvation in the home islands would be highly unlikely.

A blockade would stop technological imports, the necessities for a technological society, but Japan was still largely agricultural at the time and could easily support itself on home grown crops. What they'd lack would be medicines, steel, oil, rubber, etc. All the raw materials they invaded other countries to get. They would have a hard time re-building a nation that had been leveled, when there were no raw materials to rebuild with.

[Raskolnik]

68. "could easily support itself on home grown crops"

I'm sorry to be blunt, but that's just nonsense. Without oil, without fertilizer, and with millions of its young men either dead or off the home islands, Japan was in no position to feed itself.

[eyepaddle]

75. Add to that that where we use trucks to move produce from field to town

the Japanes used small coastal vessels of around 50 tons or so. These small craft were largely immune to submarine and air attack due to their ability to hide and stick close to shore. They were not, however immune to the mining campaign carried out B 29s. The mining of Japan's small harbors shut this coastal trade down. Mass starvation was effectively ensured.

[RaleighNCDUer]

80. Japanese agriculture was not sturdy young men plowing up the prairies.

It was barefoot women working the rice paddies and vegetable gardens. This was the 1940s in Asia, after all. Not the US midwest.

And with millions dead or gone, that's millions fewer mouths to feed. There would likely have been hunger, but not starvation.

[Raskolnik]

83. Are you seriously saying that a nation that did not come close to feeding itself before the war

was somehow going to *gain* that ability after its infrastructure was smashed and nearly all its sources of raw materials were cut off?

Really?

[RaleighNCDUer]

123. They WERE able to feed themselves just fine. It was the raw materials for

industrialization that they lacked - oil, iron ore, rubber, tin, aluminum. They were an agricultural country trying to catch up with the 20th century.

Japanese propaganda claimed the the other powers were trying to 'starve' them as a justification for invading China and SE Asia - they made no such claims when they invaded Korea or Manchuria - but there was no more basis for that claim than for the Germans' need for 'lebensraum'. They grabbed Korea when EVERYBODY was laying claim to parts of China. At the time of the 1905 Russo-Japanese war Russia's far east was essentially wilderness, largely unexplored, inhabited by nomadic tribes. Just a few decades before, WE seized Russian territory that they chose not to contest, then sealed the deal by buying Alaska. Russia's hold on their far east was hardly solid. Do you think the Japanese wanted Kamchatka because they were hungry?

Yes, they had a burgeoning population, but they were having no problems feeding them. The problems were in giving them ships and train and cars - and tanks and cannon.

[slackmaster]

41. True dat

It was already crawling with Japanese.

[TexasObserver]

66. Recommend

[Ichingcarpenter]

102. War and Pain is something that those don't experience it... are just armchair warriors

Trying to justify.......................................legalized murder and genocide.

[Raskolnik]

105. Remind me-- of the combatants in WWII, which ones were engaging in genocide? n/t

[Ichingcarpenter]

112. my father said at the last the war incinderaty bombs

drop on Toyko and other cities were meet with limited resistance

He won the silver star and the flying cross.


He worked on the original 1964 Test Ban Treaty

I BURIED ThREE FRIENDS DURING NAM...............AT ARLINGTON


YOUR LOVE OF WAR
IS WhAT ENDED ThE GREEKS AND AThENS.
NEVERMIND ThIS COUNTRy


Go...............................serve.

[Raskolnik]

113. Nothing you wrote has a thing to do with what I asked.

You brought up genocide, I simply asked you to to remind me which participants in WWII were the ones actually engaging in genocide.

[SidneyCarton]

116. In comparison to what you have suffered, you are right, I know nothing.

What I do know is that there is nothing simple in this world, even killing.

This thread was not meant to argue that Hiroshima or Nagasaki were justified, but to put them in the context of the times. There were other options, and indeed, maybe they would have been better (the argument to blow up one in Tokyo bay, with the threat to drop the next one over a city unless surrender followed has particular merit) yet the decision was not as simple as some have argued it was either.

I am sorry for your loss, I truly am.

[proteus_lives]

117. Great post and the bombings were the right decision.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the best card in a shitty hand.

First off, confronting a revisionist lie. Japan was NOT a defeated nation at the time of the bombings. They were still in the fight. We offered the only terms the Allies would consider. Unconditional surrender. The Japanese were trying to leave the war with their Imperial system of government and a fraction of their empire intact. The US was not going allow this to happen. The Japanese wanted to drown us (and their own population) in blood to get a better peace. They would have welcomed a land invasion.

Blockade: Bad option. There would been millions of civilian deaths while the Japanese army and elites hoarded the supplies and dug in for the invasion that would followed a failed blockade.

Soviet invasion: Stalin wouldn't have blinked at the bloodshed of a land invasion. Then Japan would have been condemned to the same fate as North Korea and China. That would have also provoked another general war in Asia down the line.

Allied invasion: Hundreds of thousands of Allied KIA/WIA/MIA and millions of Japanese deaths. They were preparing thousands of kamikaze planes and boats. All men, women and children were being organized into militias. Plus Japan was trying to sneak in as many divisions as they could from the land army they had left on Taiwan and in China. The Japanese army/navy was preparing for a fight to the death. And the civilians would have followed right behind them. The control of the population was absolute. They weren't even aware that they were losing the war despite the fact that American ships were off the coast and bombers were making daily and virtually uncontested raids. Japanese parents would turning their children over to be strapped with bombs and trained to roll under tanks. Look at this fact. The supply of Purple Hearts ordered for the invasion is still being used today. That's how bad they thought it would be.

As for calling the bombings massacres, it's hard for us to grasp the concept of Total War. In that sense the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate targets. Those people were farming food, building weapons and contributing to the war effort. We live in the age of limited conflict and revised rules towards civilians. This was not so back then. It's easy to condemn people for the their decisions but we really can't.

The Japanese government was responsible for the deaths of the civilians of those cities. Their decisions going back to 1932 made this outcome a certainty.

Japan started this war and we finished it. (And if you think cutting off their oil supplies was the cause, think again. Japan had already invaded China and we were trying to halt their march of aggression.) The American government made the right and best decision it could at the time. They ended the war with as few Allied deaths as possible and with the winning as many political and military goals as they could.

A final, personal note. I'm glad they made the decision they did because my mother's father was serving on a carrier and my father's father's army division was being transfered to the Pacific for the invasion. Dropping the bombs may have saved their and countless other American lives.

[Vidar]

120. I agree on bombing Hiroshima. My dad & two uncles fought in the Pacific.