Simply tripping me out

[The Professional Fan]

Isn't it mind bending to consider the U.S. deliberately killed roughly 225,000 Japanese in the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The outreach, love, and monetary contributions from the majority of American's over the recent events in Japan creates such a strange dichotomy in my mind. What an amazing study of history. And what exactly have we learned from it? I honestly am not taking any side or a political stance. I just think it's a fascinating thought.

 

[DaRizzle]

you just blew my mind brah....totally

 

[BrianFromWA]

Isn't it mind bending to consider the U.S. deliberately killed roughly 225,000 Japanese in the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The outreach, love, and monetary contributions from the majority of American's over the recent events in Japan creates such a strange dichotomy in my mind. What an amazing study of history. And what exactly have we learned from it? I honestly am not taking any side or a political stance. I just think it's a fascinating thought.

There were more Japanese killed in the island campaigns leading up to that, and many more Americans and Japanese that would've died in an invasion of the home islands (the Marines were planning for "millions" of casualties in a Home Islands campaign, and that's not including the Army). Truman literally saved millions of lives by ordering two bombs dropped.

The interesting study in human nature isn't necessarily that we won't reach out to others...it's that throughout history there are examples that many times bad people come to power and that diplomacy doesn't work in those scenarios. We were practicing diplomacy with the Japanese right up to Pearl Harbor. The advancing German tanks into Russia passed Russians supplies going to their "ally" in Germany. Etc.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

We tend to forgive & forget easily as a nation.

 

[Denny Crane]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_War#Tensions_between_Japan_and_the_Western_powers

In an effort to discourage Japanese militarism, Western powers including Australia, the United States, Britain, and the Dutch government in exile, which controlled the petroleum-rich Netherlands East Indies, stopped selling iron ore, steel and oil to Japan, denying it the raw materials needed to continue its activities in China and French Indochina. In Japan, the government and nationalists viewed these embargos as acts of aggression; imported oil made up about 80% of domestic consumption, without which Japan's economy, let alone its military, would grind to a halt. The Japanese media, influenced by military propagandists,[27] began to refer to the embargoes as the "ABCD ("American-British-Chinese-Dutch") encirclement" or "ABCD line".

Faced with a choice between economic collapse and withdrawal from its recent conquests (with its attendant loss of face), the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters began planning for a war with the western powers in April or May 1941.

 

[BrianFromWA]

The "Japanese Militarism" that the western powers sought to discourage was evidenced by the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, expanding by 1937 to all-out war with China, the Panay attack in 1937, and invasion of French Indochina in 1940. They didn't want to buy their oil and resources and raw materials...they wanted to take over the countries who already had them to form their own "Co-Prosperity Sphere". And of course, signing the Tri-Partite Act with Germany and Italy after the US withdrew from their commercial treaty probably meant they were trying to be peaceful neighbors, right?

Another example of "diplomacy" and "sanctions" and "embargoes" not doing anything to prevent war, other than allowing the aggressor to build up his forces and making it more costly to stem the aggression later. Clausewitz and Sun Tzu had a few things to say about that.

 

[Eastoff]

We tend to forgive & forget easily as a nation.

I agree only "as a nation." If you talk to anyone who was in WWII, they still call them Japs and don't trust them.

 

[Denny Crane]

I don't disagree. The embargoes clearly pushed the Japanese to attack, which was likely the response FDR desired.

 

[julius]

We tend to forgive & forget easily as a nation.

I'm sorry, but what were you talking about?

 

[bluefrog]

Kim Jong Il just donated 500K to the Japanese as well

http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...hat-he-can-do-with-500-000-william-pesek.html

 

[Natebishop3]

The two nukes did an amazing level of damage, but the overall damage of the firebombing raids on Tokyo and other cities was far more devastating.

http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/fire.html

 

[bluefrog]

Having personally spoken with survivors of the atomic bomb attacks I think it is greatest war crime that has gone untried in international courts.

I think it's interesting that people bring Pearl Harbor into the conversation while ignoring current US nuclear doctrine which reserves the right to use nuclear weapons for surprise attack.

 

[Natebishop3]

Having personally spoken with survivors of the atomic bomb attacks I think it is greatest war crime that has gone untried in international courts.

I think it's interesting that people bring Pearl Harbor into the conversation while ignoring current US nuclear doctrine which reserves the right to use nuclear weapons for surprise attack.

How is it any worse than the firebombing or the night raids by the English against the Germans? Tons of civilians died during WWII, and the 200k that were killed by the two atomic bombs is merely a drop in the bucket. Did you talk to those survivors about the atrocities that the Japanese committed during WWII against Asia and the servicemen they captured? Were those ever tried in international courts?

 

[Denny Crane]

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

 

[bluefrog]

How is it any worse than the firebombing or the night raids by the English against the Germans?

It's a very subjective question. I'd say it's worse because casualties were higher the atomic bombs were unnecessary and the effects we longer lasting.

Tons of civilians died during WWII, and the 200k that were killed by the two atomic bombs is merely a drop in the bucket.

I don't get you're line of reasoning here. Lot's of people were killed so no one should be held accountable for a small percentage of them??

Did you talk to those survivors about the atrocities that the Japanese committed during WWII against Asia and the servicemen they captured? Were those ever tried in international courts?

Yes, I spoke with a Korean lady who was forced into prostitution in WWII. Thousands of Japanese were tried for war crimes.

What is the point of bringing this up? Did the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki deserved to be bombed for the actions of Unit 731? Pearl Harbor?

BTW, MacArthur secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with their research on biological warfare. That's why they were never tried

 

[Entity]

I think it's mind bending that the Japanese killed 200,000 civilians in Nanjing, China one at a time. And raped 80,000 women there.

 

[Natebishop3]

It's a very subjective question. I'd say it's worse because casualties were higher the atomic bombs were unnecessary and the effects we longer lasting.

I don't get you're line of reasoning here. Lot's of people were killed so no one should be held accountable for a small percentage of them??

Yes, I spoke with a Korean lady who was forced into prostitution in WWII. Thousands of Japanese were tried for war crimes.

What is the point of bringing this up? Did the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki deserved to be bombed for the actions of Unit 731? Pearl Harbor?

BTW, MacArthur secretly granted immunity to the physicians of Unit 731 in exchange for providing America with their research on biological warfare. That's why they were never tried

The point is, you're calling the bombing of Horishima and Nagasaki a war crime, when millions of civilians were killed as collateral damage by bombings in England, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, etc etc etc. How were those any different other than the fact that they were done with many bombs instead of one? You're putting more value on the lives of the Japanese, why? WWII was a nasty, ugly, unfair war for hundreds of millions of people, yet you've decided to single out these two events as being "war crimes". I think that's ridiculous.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I agree only "as a nation." If you talk to anyone who was in WWII, they still call them Japs and don't trust them.

That's a very good point.

And in some circumstances, people forgive, but not nations.

It's an odd world sometimes.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Having personally spoken with survivors of the atomic bomb attacks I think it is greatest war crime that has gone untried in international courts.

I think it's interesting that people bring Pearl Harbor into the conversation while ignoring current US nuclear doctrine which reserves the right to use nuclear weapons for surprise attack.

While I think we misused the nukes in WWII, I stop short of calling them a war crime. The use of those weapons saved more US soldier lives than it took from Japan. Not that that in and of itself is justification, but it was something that had to be done- as despicable as it was. You are judging history via the decades later arm chair QB method. If you really understood the situation then and how people in the world thought at that time, then I suspect you'd have a different take.

 

[bluefrog]

The point is, you're calling the bombing of Horishima and Nagasaki a war crime, when millions of civilians were killed as collateral damage by bombings in England, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, etc etc etc. How were those any different other than the fact that they were done with many bombs instead of one? You're putting more value on the lives of the Japanese, why? WWII was a nasty, ugly, unfair war for hundreds of millions of people, yet you've decided to single out these two events as being "war crimes". I think that's ridiculous.

They can all be war crimes. What I said isn't mutually exclusive.

I "singled out these two events as being 'war crimes'" because they were brought up in the thread.

 

[bluefrog]

While I think we misused the nukes in WWII, I stop short of calling them a war crime. The use of those weapons saved more US soldier lives than it took from Japan. Not that that in and of itself is justification, but it was something that had to be done- as despicable as it was. You are judging history via the decades later arm chair QB method. If you really understood the situation then and how people in the world thought at that time, then I suspect you'd have a different take.

I'll concede that I have a very liberal definition of "war crime".

Although, there were people who objected to it at the time:

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons." (Admiral William D. Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441).

 

[Denny Crane]

The Japanese may have been willing to surrender, but there were a number of other factors involved.

For starters, the terms of the surrender weren't acceptable to FDR and Truman. They wanted complete and total surrender so they could rebuild Japanese society without an emperor. The terms the Japanese offered were less than acceptable. They didn't surrender after the first bomb, either.

The Japanese were preparing for an invasion of their islands by arming every civilian. As Brian pointed out, the US was planning an invasion and expected casualties in the millions. At least half a million americans alone.

The Japanese repeatedly fought to the death of every last soldier and were willing to kamikaze airplanes into ships, etc. There was no reason to expect any different when their homeland was the battlefield.

And there was a rush on the americans' part because they did not want to share the invasion and later the spoils of war with the Russians. To do so would have meant a good chunk of Japan and perhaps China ending up as soviet satellite countries, like eastern european nations became during the cold war era.

It was obviously horrific to drop even one a-bomb. I never want to see another one used, that's for sure.

 

[Natebishop3]

They can all be war crimes. What I said isn't mutually exclusive.

I "singled out these two events as being 'war crimes'" because they were brought up in the thread.

You didn't just single them out as "war crimes", you said they were the "greatest war crime that has gone untried in international courts". That separates them from any and all of the other bombings that occurred during WWII because none of them were tried as war crimes. Firstly, I take issue with the fact that you think it's a war crime at all, but secondly I think it's false to think that it's worse than any of the other bombing raids made during that war.

The Japanese were/are a proud nation. They were not surrendering. They were sending their young men on kamikaze missions, not just by plane, but also strapped to giant torpedoes. The United States and our allies were looking at major casualties if it came to invasion of the Japanese mainland, and rather than sacrifice the lives of thousands of Americans, they decided that two messages were needed to end the war. Unfortunately it cost the lives of 200,000 Japanese, but the war ended right then and there. You can sit back and judge the actions of our grandfathers with your 21st century morals, but it's silly to think that the dropping of nuclear weapons should have been tried as war crimes at that time.

War is ugly, especially when you're the soldier in the fox hole or the civilian living in the middle of a war zone. It's not our fault that Japan attacked us. It's not our fault that they refused to surrender until the bitter end. Do you object to the bombing of German cities? The English conducted night raids on German targets with little to no regard for human life. Their objective was to destroy the German will to fight, and that's exactly what Truman's intentions were when he had those two bombs dropped. They wanted the war over. Period. Would you have preferred that we firebombed those cities instead? How many would have died to fire rather than radiation?

How many would have died on either side if we had invaded? You can play the 'what if' game all night, but the fact remains that we dropped those bombs and war ended. Mission accomplished.

 

[MARIS61]

Isn't it mind bending to consider the U.S. deliberately killed roughly 225,000 Japanese in the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The outreach, love, and monetary contributions from the majority of American's over the recent events in Japan creates such a strange dichotomy in my mind. What an amazing study of history. And what exactly have we learned from it?

Few humans learn from their mistakes.

The Japanese should have learned that Karma is real, but they didn't.

The rest of the world should have learned that nuclear energy is far too dangerous to be left in the hands of mere humans, but they didn't.

 

[MARIS61]

The "Japanese Militarism" that the western powers sought to discourage was evidenced by the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, expanding by 1937 to all-out war with China, the Panay attack in 1937, and invasion of French Indochina in 1940. They didn't want to buy their oil and resources and raw materials...they wanted to take over the countries who already had them to form their own "Co-Prosperity Sphere". And of course, signing the Tri-Partite Act with Germany and Italy after the US withdrew from their commercial treaty probably meant they were trying to be peaceful neighbors, right?

Another example of "diplomacy" and "sanctions" and "embargoes" not doing anything to prevent war, other than allowing the aggressor to build up his forces and making it more costly to stem the aggression later. Clausewitz and Sun Tzu had a few things to say about that.

"Diplomacy" and "sanctions" and "embargoes" only work when wielded with superior cunning and forethought.

Worked rather well for us during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and may have saved the entire world from destruction.

In human relationships, brawn is an inadequate substitute for brains.

 

[MARIS61]

What is the point of bringing this up? Did the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki deserved to be bombed for the actions of Unit 731? Pearl Harbor?

Yes. Absolutely.

What is the point of asking such a ridiculous question?

 

[bluefrog]

You didn't just single them out as "war crimes", you said they were the "greatest war crime that has gone untried in international courts". That separates them from any and all of the other bombings that occurred during WWII because none of them were tried as war crimes. Firstly, I take issue with the fact that you think it's a war crime at all, but secondly I think it's false to think that it's worse than any of the other bombing raids made during that war.

I made my case as to why I think it was the worse. Can you name a worse war crime that has gone untried?

The Japanese were/are a proud nation. They were not surrendering. They were sending their young men on kamikaze missions, not just by plane, but also strapped to giant torpedoes. The United States and our allies were looking at major casualties if it came to invasion of the Japanese mainland, and rather than sacrifice the lives of thousands of Americans, they decided that two messages were needed to end the war. Unfortunately it cost the lives of 200,000 Japanese, but the war ended right then and there. You can sit back and judge the actions of our grandfathers with your 21st century morals, but it's silly to think that the dropping of nuclear weapons should have been tried as war crimes at that time.

Look above for an admiral who opposed the bombing with his 20th century morals. Many of the bomb's developers also expressed regret after it was used on Japan.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, President Herbert Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

Do you object to the bombing of German cities?

Yes, especially considering the manner in which the allies did it.

The English conducted night raids on German targets with little to no regard for human life. Their objective was to destroy the German will to fight, and that's exactly what Truman's intentions were when he had those two bombs dropped. They wanted the war over. Period. Would you have preferred that we firebombed those cities instead? How many would have died to fire rather than radiation?

How many would have died on either side if we had invaded? You can play the 'what if' game all night, but the fact remains that we dropped those bombs and war ended. Mission accomplished.

Japan was already a defeated country and Russian entrance into the war sealed the deal.

The A bombs were unnecessary.

 

[MARIS61]

The A bombs were unnecessary.

The unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor was unnecessary. Had we completely wiped out the entire populace of Japan I'd be okay with that too.

"War crime" is a ridiculous concept.

War is a crime in and of itself. It does not take 2 willing participants to have a war.

The crime is committed solely by the aggressor and the victim cannot be held accountable for whatever actions he/she takes to defend themselves.

There is no act too heinous to use when defending one's life, and no personal guilt should be attached to a matter not of one's own making.

 

[MARIS61]

I made my case as to why I think it was the worse. Can you name a worse war crime that has gone untried?

That's easy.

Pearl Harbor, an actual crime against humanity, rather than A-bombs used in self-defense.

 

[Natebishop3]

I made my case as to why I think it was the worse. Can you name a worse war crime that has gone untried?


Look above for an admiral who opposed the bombing with his 20th century morals. Many of the bomb's developers also expressed regret after it was used on Japan.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, President Herbert Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."


Yes, especially considering the manner in which the allies did it.


Japan was already a defeated country and Russian entrance into the war sealed the deal.

The A bombs were unnecessary.

That admiral was a moron. The "conventional bombs" were incendiary firebombs that torched Tokyo and killed over 100,000 people in one raid. You think that's better? Fire is just as indiscriminate as radiation. It doesn't care who or what it burns. It goes where the wind blows it. Go look up the San Francisco quake of 1906 and tell me what destroyed San Fran. It sure as hell wasn't the quake that decimated the city.

I already told you I don't think it's a war crime, so why would I think of one that's worse? But since you asked, how about the murder of thousands of American soldiers who were being held in POW camps as the Americans advanced on Japan? That seems pretty bad. Does that qualify?