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GotZoom said:You know. You are right.
I apologize for the assumption.
You are just the kind of guy who would have a fiance who likes to see ...fucking my fiance...on her "man's: (used very loosely) profile.
jimnyc said:Holy crap on a stick! What's with the "we"? It was 3 Marines charged, out of how many? And yes, they will be tried and punished if guilty. I highly doubt this makes it fair to make it sound as if our military supports/condones the murdering of innocents.
tim_duncan2000 said:I know. It's a total slap in the face to the men and women rising their lives for people like him.
insein said:These are Japanese historians speaking for the use of the bomb as a way to end the bloodshed. In fact they were correct. After 6 years of gruesome fighting that cost the lives of 2.6 million japanese, the war ended in just 3 days as opposed to taking 6 more years.
nosarcasm said:war is about making your enemy submit, you have to kill as many of them till they give up. People have tried to ignore that, the Us government does not even do it. It worked for Japan and my home country Germany,
SpidermanTuba said:Who do you think knows more, historians, or high ranking members of the military and department of war that were there at the time?
The bomb was dropped to impress the Soviets, period. If it was solely to cause surrender, we could have dropped it in a relatively unpopulated area and said "You've got 2 weeks. Then we're knocking out a whole city" Sure, we had only one left, but they didn't know that.
The purpose of the bomb was to kill as many people as possible to impress the Soviety.
SpidermanTuba said:Murder is not justified by murder. Are you saying its OK to behave like a terrorist because others do?
SpidermanTuba said:No they weren't, they were preparing to surrender. We dropped the bomb to impress the Soviets.
SpidermanTuba said:Perhapsa these particular Marines aren't normal people.
There was only 3 days between the first and 2nd bombs. It took us here in modern day American over 24 hours to convince ourselves the levees had breached in N.O.
The dropping of the bomb was done soley to impress the Soviets. We did it in a manner which would cause the maximum loss of civilian life in order to bend political wills. THis is the definition of terrorism. Terrorism does not justify terrorism. When the Israelis bomb a Palestinian apartment complex and kill women and children, this does not justify a Palestinian blowing himself up in an Israeli shopping center. both acts are atrocities.
~~~DWIGHT EISENHOWER
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63
~~~ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"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.
"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.
~~~HERBERT HOOVER
On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."
Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.
On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, 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."
quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.
"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs."
- quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142
Hoover biographer Richard Norton Smith has written: "Use of the bomb had besmirched America's reputation, he [Hoover] told friends. It ought to have been described in graphic terms before being flung out into the sky over Japan."
Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 349-350.
In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."
Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351.
~~~GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."
William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.
Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
~~~JOSEPH GREW
(Under Sec. of State)
In a February 12, 1947 letter to Henry Stimson (Sec. of War during WWII), Grew responded to the defense of the atomic bombings Stimson had made in a February 1947 Harpers magazine article:
"...in the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the [retention of the] dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the [Japanese] Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision.
"If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer."
Grew quoted in Barton Bernstein, ed.,The Atomic Bomb, pg. 29-32.
~~~JOHN McCLOY
(Assistant Sec. of War)
"I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs."
McCloy quoted in James Reston, Deadline, pg. 500.
~~~RALPH BARD
(Under Sec. of the Navy)
On June 28, 1945, a memorandum written by Bard the previous day was given to Sec. of War Henry Stimson. It stated, in part:
"Following the three-power [July 1945 Potsdam] conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia's position [they were about to declare war on Japan] and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the [retention of the] Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for.
"I don't see that we have anything in particular to lose in following such a program." He concluded the memorandum by noting, "The only way to find out is to try it out."
Memorandum on the Use of S-1 Bomb, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 77, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 307-308).
Later Bard related, "...it definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn't get any imports and they couldn't export anything. Naturally, as time went on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would then be in a position to make peace, which would have made it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had to bring Russia in...".
quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 144-145, 324.
Bard also asserted, "I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted." He continued, "In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn't have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb."
War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.
~~~LEWIS STRAUSS
(Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy)
Strauss recalled a recommendation he gave to Sec. of the Navy James Forrestal before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima:
"I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. Primarily it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate... My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood... I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest... would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will... Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation..."
Strauss added, "It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world...".
quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 145, 325.
~~~PAUL NITZE
(Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)
In 1950 Nitze would recommend a massive military buildup, and in the 1980s he was an arms control negotiator in the Reagan administration. In July of 1945 he was assigned the task of writing a strategy for the air attack on Japan. Nitze later wrote:
"The plan I devised was essentially this: Japan was already isolated from the standpoint of ocean shipping. The only remaining means of transportation were the rail network and intercoastal shipping, though our submarines and mines were rapidly eliminating the latter as well. A concentrated air attack on the essential lines of transportation, including railroads and (through the use of the earliest accurately targetable glide bombs, then emerging from development) the Kammon tunnels which connected Honshu with Kyushu, would isolate the Japanese home islands from one another and fragment the enemy's base of operations. I believed that interdiction of the lines of transportation would be sufficiently effective so that additional bombing of urban industrial areas would not be necessary.
"While I was working on the new plan of air attack... concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945."
Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 36-37 (my emphasis)
The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that was primarily written by Nitze and reflected his reasoning:
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
quoted in Barton Bernstein, The Atomic Bomb, pg. 52-56.
In his memoir, written in 1989, Nitze repeated,
"Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for November 1, 1945] would have been necessary."
Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 44-45.
~~~ALBERT EINSTEIN
Einstein was not directly involved in the Manhattan Project (which developed the atomic bomb). In 1905, as part of his Special Theory of Relativity, he made the intriguing point that a relatively large amount of energy was contained in and could be released from a relatively small amount of matter. This became best known by the equation E=mc2. The atomic bomb was not based upon this theory but clearly illustrated it.
In 1939 Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt that was drafted by the scientist Leo Szilard. Received by FDR in October of that year, the letter from Einstein called for and sparked the beginning of U.S. government support for a program to build an atomic bomb, lest the Nazis build one first.
Einstein did not speak publicly on the atomic bombing of Japan until a year afterward. A short article on the front page of the New York Times contained his view:
"Prof. Albert Einstein... said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war before Russia could participate."
Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb, New York Times, 8/19/46, pg. 1.
Regarding the 1939 letter to Roosevelt, his biographer, Ronald Clark, has noted:
"As far as his own life was concerned, one thing seemed quite clear. 'I made one great mistake in my life,' he said to Linus Pauling, who spent an hour with him on the morning of November 11, 1954, '...when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them.'".
Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times, pg. 620.
~~~LEO SZILARD
(The first scientist to conceive of how an atomic bomb might be made - 1933)
GotZoom said:At least at LSU.
insein said:Japanese historians. Meaning they have studied it and lived through it. Ike was a European Commander and didnt set foot in the Pacific at all.
One bomb broke their will.
This then led to pressure on the Japanese Government to end the war. The second bomb solidified that pressure.
Impressing the Soviets wasnt really a good thing.
Dropping the bomb ended the war many years (and many lives) before a conventional invasion would have.
onthefence said:The killing of enemy combatants is not murder.
I'm not a Marine, but I do take offense at your conclusions that "a messed up Marine slaughtered a family."
This is a war, whether you agree with it or not, and bad things happen.
onthefence said:The Japanese were never preparing to surrender. If they were, they would have done it after Hiroshima.
This Soviet theory is just that, a theory. It is the opinion of some that want to cast a dark shadow of the heros that flew those B-29s into hostile air to unharness an ungodly new force of weaponry, the likes they world had never seen. The men on those aircraft have suffered enough, knowing what the carnage that they unleashed. Stop second guessing what they did.
I am convinced that I am here because of those bombs. If the Japanese had continued fighting, then my Grandfather might not have come home to create my father.
Go back to school and accept the facts put forth my the many and not the opinions of a few.
onthefence said:Also, if all these people were so against this weapon, why did they all oversee the construction of thousands more.
onthefence said:That's the way we feel here in Tuscaloosa. ROLL TIDE!
SpidermanTuba said:
HA HA HA!
I went to the baba game this year. It gave me great pleasure when I was asked by one of your fans "how does it feel to be a one loss team?", before the game, and I was able to respond with certainty "you're about to find out!" HA HA HA HA!!!!
And we will beat you again this year.
SpidermanTuba said:Who do you think knows more, historians, or high ranking members of the military and department of war that were there at the time?
The bomb was dropped to impress the Soviets, period. If it was solely to cause surrender, we could have dropped it in a relatively unpopulated area and said "You've got 2 weeks. Then we're knocking out a whole city" Sure, we had only one left, but they didn't know that.
The purpose of the bomb was to kill as many people as possible to impress the Soviety.
GunnyL said:You can't be THIS dumb, can you?
Who do you think knows more, historians, or high ranking members of the military and department of war that were there at the time?
The bomb was dropped to impress the Soviets, period. If it was solely to cause surrender, we could have dropped it in a relatively unpopulated area and said "You've got 2 weeks. Then we're knocking out a whole city" Sure, we had only one left, but they didn't know that.
The purpose of the bomb was to kill as many people as possible to impress the Soviety.
