Ethics and The A-Bomb

[CurveLight]

Midcan makes a good point. If you are one of the dead, how it happened is no longer of any interest.

We did have the history of the way the Japanese were fighting. We were looking at civilian casualties in the range of 65-95% For the living on both sides, the bomb was a lifesaver. But we aren't ever going to fight a war with an enemy like that again. And we have never fought a war in that manner since.

The reasons the cliche "The bombs saved lives" are many of the same reasons Bush supporters were reduced to defending Bush by saying "History will prove him correct."

 

[Madeline]

Midcan makes a good point. If you are one of the dead, how it happened is no longer of any interest.

We did have the history of the way the Japanese were fighting. We were looking at civilian casualties in the range of 65-95% For the living on both sides, the bomb was a lifesaver. But we aren't ever going to fight a war with an enemy like that again. And we have never fought a war in that manner since.

The reasons the cliche "The bombs saved lives" are many of the same reasons Bush supporters were reduced to defending Bush by saying "History will prove him correct."

Well, it's been a year. What say you? He still seems like a lying fuckwhit to me.

And the sad thing is, while he lied about Iraq having the A-Bomb, it now appears he failed to stop IRAN from getting it. Oh joy.

 

[Madeline]

Quartermass has not given opinion in that last post, namvet. He recited facts. Either he has the facts right or he doesn't.

If he's right, what use is it to go on pretending it was all good?

that's the point. no reply to back up what he says. he's using the ole copy and paste trick.

And as President Harry Truman ate his lunch on the Augusta with fellow mass murderers Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, news of the bombing of Hiroshima came in. Jubilantly, he announced to the retinue of sailors around him..

"This is the Greatest thing in History!"

come on. he's a troll.

It's been a few years. Do we still need undiluted jingoism in everyone or else they're a troll?

 

[Madeline]

First thing. The Atomic Bombs were not ready until Summer 1945. Germany surrendered in April. We had no reason to drop said bombs on Germany.

The reality is that it took BOTH bombs to get the Emperor of Japan to over ride his Army Controlled Government and order an immediate surrender. With those bombs we would have starved Japan through the winter killing untold thousands followed by an Invasion of a Home Island which would have seen MILLIONS of dead Japanese civilians and soldiers.

Japan was teaching her civilians to arm themselves with Bamboo spears and human wave charge any invasion. The continued invasion of Japan could have seen the potential elimination of the Japanese race.

The lie that Japan was ready to surrender is revisionist history. Japan under the Army had no intention of surrender. What they "offered" through the Soviet Union was a cease fire with Japan keeping everything she still possessed and the return of Japanese home possessions like Saipan and Okinawa. Japan was offering to let us just stop attacking them. They would retain all of their Chinese, Korean and other possessions and we would return their home island captures.

Here is a link to SOURCE documents verifying that Japan was NOT offering a meaningful surrender, that even after two atomic Bombs the Army controlled government refused to surrender, that the Emperor failed to act until after the second atomic bomb and that the Army attempted a Coup to prevent the Emperor from surrendering.

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources

The atomic bombs were necessary unless one thinks we should have just let Japan keep everything from before the war and not disarm. They SAVED millions of lives.

You're full of shit. The proof is not in what you stated, it is what you completely avoided. There are two simple yet often overlooked fundamental aspects that prove the bombs were not meant to get Japan to surrender.

(1) We had their offer to surrender before we dropped the bombs. It was the same offer we accepted after we targeted civilians with the A-bombs and dropped them.

(2) The bombs were not dropped to intimidate Japan. There were dropped to intimidate Russia.

CurveLight, if this is the truth, then why has no bright lawyer ever sued the US on behalf of Japan for damages of one sort or another?

 

[CurveLight]

RetiredGySgt, in a rather lazy fashion repeatedly points to The National Security Archive 's collection of 77 documents on the atomic bomb and end of world war 2 saying 'the proof is in there'. Rather like tossing a dictionary at a newspaper editor and saying 'here's tomorrow's front page story'.

So where in the comprehensive 77 lengthy sections could that magical, much sought-after golden fleece-like 'good reason' to consign the 350,000 civilian population of Hiroshima and the 250.000 civilian population of Nagasaki to the horrors of a nuclear blood bath be hiding?

Perhaps it was Document 29, where on 11 of July Foreign Minister Togo sent the following 'extremely urgent' message to Ambassador Sato:

"We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad Therefore, when you have your interview with Molotov [ in accordance with previous instructions] you should not confine yourself to the objective of a rapprochement between Russia and Japan but should also sound him out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war."

and then on the same day:

".. Japan- as a proposal for ending the war and because of her concern for the establishment and maintenance of lasting peace - has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf

These Documents reveal many desperate attempts by Japans envoys to establish a surrender up to the very end and on August 5th (Document 52). All the while U.S. interceptors secretly listened in, and made Truman's office aware of the full content of these Japanese attempts yet they went ahead anyway, choosing to test one of each type of their new atomic devices, first Uranium, then Plutonium on the living Human guinea pigs; the old men, the helpless women and innocent children behind enemy lines, away from the theatre of war, away from where the soldiers were. America sneaked in, from a safe height and in cowards fashion dropped their devastating bombs on non combatants then ran away.

And as President Harry Truman ate his lunch on the Augusta with fellow mass murderers Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, news of the bombing of Hiroshima came in. Jubilantly, he announced to the retinue of sailors around him..

"This is the Greatest thing in History!"

(Heaped bodies after Hiroshima atomic-bombing of civilian area.)

It has always bothered me that we bombed cities full of non-whites, but not Germany, where the Death Camps existed. Maybe the A-Bomb was not finished before VE Day. Maybe.

But the US confined Japanaese Americans to internment camps and did NOT do so as to Italian Americans or German Americans.

It seems to me there must have been a tremendous temptation to drop the A-Bomb SOMEPLACE, just to show the world what we had. Without using it in warfare, who would ever believe this gruesome weapon even existed?

All these things, together with the second bombing, have made me uneasy. I WANT to believe Truman's decisions were ethically defensible. His comments to those around him do not offend me. It's understandable that he wanted VJ Day at any cost.

But still the doubts persist -- that we bombed a couple of Asian cities and killed millions, instantly or later by radiation poisoning, because we COULD and not because we had no other choice.

I don't know what my Daddy saw or knew. I lost him when I was quite young, and like most WW II vets, he would never discuss what he'd been through. But my Mommy and Daddy were pinkos. They sympathesized with or actually joined the American Communist Party. I rather think if he'd been all good with Truman's decisions, Daddy would not have been such a radical after the war.

Germany surrendered before the nukes were ready but even if that were not the case we would not have used them in Europe because Russia did not pose the same threat for post-War in Europe as in Japan.

Regarding death camps, we didn't bomb those because as a Nation we were anti-Semitic to the point that many quietly thanked the implementation of the final solution. We even turned away Jewish refugees seeking asylum in the US who were eventually killed by Germany. Some claimed we didn't know about them and even if we knew we had no way to get bombers to their locations due to distance. Bullshit. There are ariel photos showing we were bombing around the gas chambers.

There are two main reasons we suddenly became pro-Israel in 1945. The first was creating a nation in the ME the West could use as an entry point to resources in the region. Keep in mind, about two generations before WW2 the British Empire created the nation of Iraq. Literally, both by borders and name. Maintaining control was very difficult with so much geographical isolation. Enter Israel.

The West now has a geographical advantage but more importantly, it obtained a geopolitical goldmine that is still in use today.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

The Japanese had several negotiated settlements on the table. None of them conformed to the conditions set out and agreed to by the allies.

 

[CurveLight]

First thing. The Atomic Bombs were not ready until Summer 1945. Germany surrendered in April. We had no reason to drop said bombs on Germany.

The reality is that it took BOTH bombs to get the Emperor of Japan to over ride his Army Controlled Government and order an immediate surrender. With those bombs we would have starved Japan through the winter killing untold thousands followed by an Invasion of a Home Island which would have seen MILLIONS of dead Japanese civilians and soldiers.

Japan was teaching her civilians to arm themselves with Bamboo spears and human wave charge any invasion. The continued invasion of Japan could have seen the potential elimination of the Japanese race.

The lie that Japan was ready to surrender is revisionist history. Japan under the Army had no intention of surrender. What they "offered" through the Soviet Union was a cease fire with Japan keeping everything she still possessed and the return of Japanese home possessions like Saipan and Okinawa. Japan was offering to let us just stop attacking them. They would retain all of their Chinese, Korean and other possessions and we would return their home island captures.

Here is a link to SOURCE documents verifying that Japan was NOT offering a meaningful surrender, that even after two atomic Bombs the Army controlled government refused to surrender, that the Emperor failed to act until after the second atomic bomb and that the Army attempted a Coup to prevent the Emperor from surrendering.

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources

The atomic bombs were necessary unless one thinks we should have just let Japan keep everything from before the war and not disarm. They SAVED millions of lives.

You're full of shit. The proof is not in what you stated, it is what you completely avoided. There are two simple yet often overlooked fundamental aspects that prove the bombs were not meant to get Japan to surrender.

(1) We had their offer to surrender before we dropped the bombs. It was the same offer we accepted after we targeted civilians with the A-bombs and dropped them.

(2) The bombs were not dropped to intimidate Japan. There were dropped to intimidate Russia.

CurveLight, if this is the truth, then why has no bright lawyer ever sued the US on behalf of Japan for damages of one sort or another?

You mean like we've been paying off civilians in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc? Or like how Japan is paying off A-Bomb survivors? (not a typo--yes. Japan has been paying A-bomb survivors)

I would guess because it wouldn't get any traction. A recent example is how a Federal court rejected a lawsuit based on "national security." A German Citizen was kidnapped by the US, taken to secret prisons, and tortured before it was discovered he was completely innocent. His whole hellish nightmare lasted for months. Upon his release he sued the US for the above crimes and the case was dismissed for "National Security Reasons."

Without fact checking, I'm confident in saying lawsuits have been attempted and denied.

 

[CurveLight]

The Japanese had several negotiated settlements on the table. None of them conformed to the conditions set out and agreed to by the allies.

The surrender offered by Japan prior to the bombs is the same surrender we accepted after the bombs.

 

[Madeline]

RetiredGySgt, in a rather lazy fashion repeatedly points to The National Security Archive 's collection of 77 documents on the atomic bomb and end of world war 2 saying 'the proof is in there'. Rather like tossing a dictionary at a newspaper editor and saying 'here's tomorrow's front page story'.

So where in the comprehensive 77 lengthy sections could that magical, much sought-after golden fleece-like 'good reason' to consign the 350,000 civilian population of Hiroshima and the 250.000 civilian population of Nagasaki to the horrors of a nuclear blood bath be hiding?

Perhaps it was Document 29, where on 11 of July Foreign Minister Togo sent the following 'extremely urgent' message to Ambassador Sato:

"We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad Therefore, when you have your interview with Molotov [ in accordance with previous instructions] you should not confine yourself to the objective of a rapprochement between Russia and Japan but should also sound him out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war."

and then on the same day:

".. Japan- as a proposal for ending the war and because of her concern for the establishment and maintenance of lasting peace - has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf

These Documents reveal many desperate attempts by Japans envoys to establish a surrender up to the very end and on August 5th (Document 52). All the while U.S. interceptors secretly listened in, and made Truman's office aware of the full content of these Japanese attempts yet they went ahead anyway, choosing to test one of each type of their new atomic devices, first Uranium, then Plutonium on the living Human guinea pigs; the old men, the helpless women and innocent children behind enemy lines, away from the theatre of war, away from where the soldiers were. America sneaked in, from a safe height and in cowards fashion dropped their devastating bombs on non combatants then ran away.

And as President Harry Truman ate his lunch on the Augusta with fellow mass murderers Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, news of the bombing of Hiroshima came in. Jubilantly, he announced to the retinue of sailors around him..

"This is the Greatest thing in History!"

(Heaped bodies after Hiroshima atomic-bombing of civilian area.)

It has always bothered me that we bombed cities full of non-whites, but not Germany, where the Death Camps existed. Maybe the A-Bomb was not finished before VE Day. Maybe.

But the US confined Japanaese Americans to internment camps and did NOT do so as to Italian Americans or German Americans.

It seems to me there must have been a tremendous temptation to drop the A-Bomb SOMEPLACE, just to show the world what we had. Without using it in warfare, who would ever believe this gruesome weapon even existed?

All these things, together with the second bombing, have made me uneasy. I WANT to believe Truman's decisions were ethically defensible. His comments to those around him do not offend me. It's understandable that he wanted VJ Day at any cost.

But still the doubts persist -- that we bombed a couple of Asian cities and killed millions, instantly or later by radiation poisoning, because we COULD and not because we had no other choice.

I don't know what my Daddy saw or knew. I lost him when I was quite young, and like most WW II vets, he would never discuss what he'd been through. But my Mommy and Daddy were pinkos. They sympathesized with or actually joined the American Communist Party. I rather think if he'd been all good with Truman's decisions, Daddy would not have been such a radical after the war.

Germany surrendered before the nukes were ready but even if that were not the case we would not have used them in Europe because Russia did not pose the same threat for post-War in Europe as in Japan.

Regarding death camps, we didn't bomb those because as a Nation we were anti-Semitic to the point that many quietly thanked the implementation of the final solution. We even turned away Jewish refugees seeking asylum in the US who were eventually killed by Germany. Some claimed we didn't know about them and even if we knew we had no way to get bombers to their locations due to distance. Bullshit. There are ariel photos showing we were bombing around the gas chambers.

There are two main reasons we suddenly became pro-Israel in 1945. The first was creating a nation in the ME the West could use as an entry point to resources in the region. Keep in mind, about two generations before WW2 the British Empire created the nation of Iraq. Literally, both by borders and name. Maintaining control was very difficult with so much geographical isolation. Enter Israel.

The West now has a geographical advantage but more importantly, it obtained a geopolitical goldmine that is still in use today.

Yes, I know. And here's another nugget for those of you desperately clinging to Catholicism. The Nazis never invaded the Vatican and plundered its treasurers in exchange for the Pope's decision to look the other way as Italian Jews were sent to the camps. If ever you get to see the Sistine Chapel, bear in mind it has been paid for in Jewish blood and Catholic evil.

http://users.binary.net/polycarp/piusxii.html

Pope Pius XII even went on to become the most famous of all the Holocaust Deniers. What a religion...I'm sure if there was a Jesus Christ, he's very proud of the Catholic Church.

 

[namvet]

First thing. The Atomic Bombs were not ready until Summer 1945. Germany surrendered in April. We had no reason to drop said bombs on Germany.

The reality is that it took BOTH bombs to get the Emperor of Japan to over ride his Army Controlled Government and order an immediate surrender. With those bombs we would have starved Japan through the winter killing untold thousands followed by an Invasion of a Home Island which would have seen MILLIONS of dead Japanese civilians and soldiers.

Japan was teaching her civilians to arm themselves with Bamboo spears and human wave charge any invasion. The continued invasion of Japan could have seen the potential elimination of the Japanese race.

The lie that Japan was ready to surrender is revisionist history. Japan under the Army had no intention of surrender. What they "offered" through the Soviet Union was a cease fire with Japan keeping everything she still possessed and the return of Japanese home possessions like Saipan and Okinawa. Japan was offering to let us just stop attacking them. They would retain all of their Chinese, Korean and other possessions and we would return their home island captures.

Here is a link to SOURCE documents verifying that Japan was NOT offering a meaningful surrender, that even after two atomic Bombs the Army controlled government refused to surrender, that the Emperor failed to act until after the second atomic bomb and that the Army attempted a Coup to prevent the Emperor from surrendering.

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources

The atomic bombs were necessary unless one thinks we should have just let Japan keep everything from before the war and not disarm. They SAVED millions of lives.

You're full of shit. The proof is not in what you stated, it is what you completely avoided. There are two simple yet often overlooked fundamental aspects that prove the bombs were not meant to get Japan to surrender.

(1) We had their offer to surrender before we dropped the bombs. It was the same offer we accepted after we targeted civilians with the A-bombs and dropped them.

(2) The bombs were not dropped to intimidate Japan. There were dropped to intimidate Russia.

and your full of it. they refused any offer to surrender. they were negotiating with Russia for one.

the bombs were dropped to end the war. using science instead of American blood.

 

[Madeline]

One of you is right and the other is wrong...on the facts.

Is there no good source document to go look-see who's right, namvet? Has there never been a proceeding in the Hague or any sort of international court?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

RetiredGySgt, in a rather lazy fashion repeatedly points to The National Security Archive 's collection of 77 documents on the atomic bomb and end of world war 2 saying 'the proof is in there'. Rather like tossing a dictionary at a newspaper editor and saying 'here's tomorrow's front page story'.

So where in the comprehensive 77 lengthy sections could that magical, much sought-after golden fleece-like 'good reason' to consign the 350,000 civilian population of Hiroshima and the 250.000 civilian population of Nagasaki to the horrors of a nuclear blood bath be hiding?

Perhaps it was Document 29, where on 11 of July Foreign Minister Togo sent the following 'extremely urgent' message to Ambassador Sato:

"We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad Therefore, when you have your interview with Molotov [ in accordance with previous instructions] you should not confine yourself to the objective of a rapprochement between Russia and Japan but should also sound him out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war."

and then on the same day:

".. Japan- as a proposal for ending the war and because of her concern for the establishment and maintenance of lasting peace - has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf

These Documents reveal many desperate attempts by Japans envoys to establish a surrender up to the very end and on August 5th (Document 52). All the while U.S. interceptors secretly listened in, and made Truman's office aware of the full content of these Japanese attempts yet they went ahead anyway, choosing to test one of each type of their new atomic devices, first Uranium, then Plutonium on the living Human guinea pigs; the old men, the helpless women and innocent children behind enemy lines, away from the theatre of war, away from where the soldiers were. America sneaked in, from a safe height and in cowards fashion dropped their devastating bombs on non combatants then ran away.

And as President Harry Truman ate his lunch on the Augusta with fellow mass murderers Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, news of the bombing of Hiroshima came in. Jubilantly, he announced to the retinue of sailors around him..

"This is the Greatest thing in History!"

(Heaped bodies after Hiroshima atomic-bombing of civilian area.)

You are a MORON. Japan wanted the war ended by just stopping it. She wanted to maintain all her prewar territories and have returned to her all her lost prewar territories. That was never acceptable. Anyone that thinks it was is a fool and an idiot. The ONLY thing they proposed, as you highlighted, was to simply stop the war, Japan would pull what was left of her Armies out of Conquered territories since Dec 1941 and have RETURNED to her all original lands she controlled prior to the start of the war. This would include maintaining control of China, Korea and Manchuria. It would include nothing done to Japan about the war she started. No surrender documents. No foreign presence in Japan ever. No dismantling of their military and reorganizing their Government.

Japan had no intent of Surrendering.

As for the dead civilians, ask the Japanese Army leaders why they did not care about dead civilians. Long before we dropped an atomic bomb on Japan they had lost. They refused to surrender. Even after one atomic attack they REFUSED surrender. Even after 2 ATOMIC attacks the Army that ran the Government REFUSED to surrender. It took a DIRECT order from the Emperor to surrender and even then the Army attempted a Military Coup to stop that.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

RetiredGySgt, in a rather lazy fashion repeatedly points to The National Security Archive 's collection of 77 documents on the atomic bomb and end of world war 2 saying 'the proof is in there'. Rather like tossing a dictionary at a newspaper editor and saying 'here's tomorrow's front page story'.

So where in the comprehensive 77 lengthy sections could that magical, much sought-after golden fleece-like 'good reason' to consign the 350,000 civilian population of Hiroshima and the 250.000 civilian population of Nagasaki to the horrors of a nuclear blood bath be hiding?

Perhaps it was Document 29, where on 11 of July Foreign Minister Togo sent the following 'extremely urgent' message to Ambassador Sato:

"We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad Therefore, when you have your interview with Molotov [ in accordance with previous instructions] you should not confine yourself to the objective of a rapprochement between Russia and Japan but should also sound him out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war."

and then on the same day:

".. Japan- as a proposal for ending the war and because of her concern for the establishment and maintenance of lasting peace - has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf

These Documents reveal many desperate attempts by Japans envoys to establish a surrender up to the very end and on August 5th (Document 52). All the while U.S. interceptors secretly listened in, and made Truman's office aware of the full content of these Japanese attempts yet they went ahead anyway, choosing to test one of each type of their new atomic devices, first Uranium, then Plutonium on the living Human guinea pigs; the old men, the helpless women and innocent children behind enemy lines, away from the theatre of war, away from where the soldiers were. America sneaked in, from a safe height and in cowards fashion dropped their devastating bombs on non combatants then ran away.

And as President Harry Truman ate his lunch on the Augusta with fellow mass murderers Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, news of the bombing of Hiroshima came in. Jubilantly, he announced to the retinue of sailors around him..

"This is the Greatest thing in History!"

(Heaped bodies after Hiroshima atomic-bombing of civilian area.)

It has always bothered me that we bombed cities full of non-whites, but not Germany, where the Death Camps existed. Maybe the A-Bomb was not finished before VE Day. Maybe.

But the US confined Japanaese Americans to internment camps and did NOT do so as to Italian Americans or German Americans.

It seems to me there must have been a tremendous temptation to drop the A-Bomb SOMEPLACE, just to show the world what we had. Without using it in warfare, who would ever believe this gruesome weapon even existed?

All these things, together with the second bombing, have made me uneasy. I WANT to believe Truman's decisions were ethically defensible. His comments to those around him do not offend me. It's understandable that he wanted VJ Day at any cost.

But still the doubts persist -- that we bombed a couple of Asian cities and killed millions, instantly or later by radiation poisoning, because we COULD and not because we had no other choice.

I don't know what my Daddy saw or knew. I lost him when I was quite young, and like most WW II vets, he would never discuss what he'd been through. But my Mommy and Daddy were pinkos. They sympathesized with or actually joined the American Communist Party. I rather think if he'd been all good with Truman's decisions, Daddy would not have been such a radical after the war.

Over 5000 German Americans were arrested and confined, several thousand were not released until 1946.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Quartermass has not given opinion in that last post, namvet. He recited facts. Either he has the facts right or he doesn't.

If he's right, what use is it to go on pretending it was all good?

His facts SUPPORT what I told you. The Japanese simply offered to end the war in place. They would evacuate all territory captured after December 7 1941 and we would return all Territory held by them prior to Dec 7 1941. That simply was not going to happen. It is idiotic to think it would happen.

Once again we did not have a functioning A bomb to drop on Germany before she surrendered and to tell you the truth we had no need to do so, they were not unreasonable fools like the Japanese.

We did however FIREBOMB most of their cities killing hundreds of thousands of Civilians.

 

[namvet]

One of you is right and the other is wrong...on the facts.

Is there no good source document to go look-see who's right, namvet? Has there never been a proceeding in the Hague or any sort of international court?

how about documents on this. from the Truman library archives. there is no doc that says we offered or agreed to any surrender prior to the bombs. it was still unconditional surrender !!!!

https://trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/index.php

 

[RetiredGySgt]

First thing. The Atomic Bombs were not ready until Summer 1945. Germany surrendered in April. We had no reason to drop said bombs on Germany.

The reality is that it took BOTH bombs to get the Emperor of Japan to over ride his Army Controlled Government and order an immediate surrender. With those bombs we would have starved Japan through the winter killing untold thousands followed by an Invasion of a Home Island which would have seen MILLIONS of dead Japanese civilians and soldiers.

Japan was teaching her civilians to arm themselves with Bamboo spears and human wave charge any invasion. The continued invasion of Japan could have seen the potential elimination of the Japanese race.

The lie that Japan was ready to surrender is revisionist history. Japan under the Army had no intention of surrender. What they "offered" through the Soviet Union was a cease fire with Japan keeping everything she still possessed and the return of Japanese home possessions like Saipan and Okinawa. Japan was offering to let us just stop attacking them. They would retain all of their Chinese, Korean and other possessions and we would return their home island captures.

Here is a link to SOURCE documents verifying that Japan was NOT offering a meaningful surrender, that even after two atomic Bombs the Army controlled government refused to surrender, that the Emperor failed to act until after the second atomic bomb and that the Army attempted a Coup to prevent the Emperor from surrendering.

The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources

The atomic bombs were necessary unless one thinks we should have just let Japan keep everything from before the war and not disarm. They SAVED millions of lives.

You're full of shit. The proof is not in what you stated, it is what you completely avoided. There are two simple yet often overlooked fundamental aspects that prove the bombs were not meant to get Japan to surrender.

(1) We had their offer to surrender before we dropped the bombs. It was the same offer we accepted after we targeted civilians with the A-bombs and dropped them.

(2) The bombs were not dropped to intimidate Japan. There were dropped to intimidate Russia.

Straight up LIE. Provide a single source to your claim the Japanese offered unconditional Surrender before the Emperor ordered it AFTER 2 Atomic Bombs.

I have in the source documents the actual meetings of the Japanese Government and their refusal to surrender after the first bomb and their refusal after the second until the Emperor intervened.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Midcan makes a good point. If you are one of the dead, how it happened is no longer of any interest.

We did have the history of the way the Japanese were fighting. We were looking at civilian casualties in the range of 65-95% For the living on both sides, the bomb was a lifesaver. But we aren't ever going to fight a war with an enemy like that again. And we have never fought a war in that manner since.

The reasons the cliche "The bombs saved lives" are many of the same reasons Bush supporters were reduced to defending Bush by saying "History will prove him correct."

Well, it's been a year. What say you? He still seems like a lying fuckwhit to me.

And the sad thing is, while he lied about Iraq having the A-Bomb, it now appears he failed to stop IRAN from getting it. Oh joy.

Bush never claimed Iraq had a bomb. That is left wing lying at its finest. As for stopping Iran, are you saying we were wrong for stopping Iraq from returning to research on the bomb by invading but we should have invaded Iran?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

The Japanese had several negotiated settlements on the table. None of them conformed to the conditions set out and agreed to by the allies.

The surrender offered by Japan prior to the bombs is the same surrender we accepted after the bombs.

You are a LIAR. Provide a source document. I have provided a SOURCE document of the Japanese Governments meetings and then did not offered to surrender at all before either bomb was dropped. They offered through the Soviets to end the war in place exchanging territory they captured for territory we captured. After the first bomb they offered much the same.

Provide us a link to a source document.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

One of you is right and the other is wrong...on the facts.

Is there no good source document to go look-see who's right, namvet? Has there never been a proceeding in the Hague or any sort of international court?

I GAVE you a link to SOURCE DOCUMENTS. They INCLUDE the Japanese Governments meetings involving just this. READ them.

 

[namvet]

After Japanese leaders flatly rejected the Potsdam Declaration President Truman authorized use of the atomic bomb anytime after August 3, 1945.

Atomic Bomb-Truman Press Release-August 6, 1945