The biggest mistake the US made

[AZrailwhale]

.

The biggest mistake the U.S. made was not letting Patton invade Russia and not dropping a nuke on Moscow. That's why the world is so screwed up today.[/QUOTE]

Just to play a game, we could say bombing Moscow would not have been morally worse than what was bombed.
Japan was out of the war and just waiting for the last holdouts to admit it.
IF...Moscow, Stalin and Soviet centralized control had suddenly disappeared, the US would have stood astride a world without enemies of any consequence, the greatest armed force ever assembled, and total discretion about where and how to apply its power. Invading Russia would have been unnecessary and, in fact, a tremendous error. In the unlikely event that the Red Army had the co-ordination and will to try to continue to fight, it would have been better to let them attack and destroy them on familiar ground with their logistics extended, rather than the other way. Or, draw them into a massive concentration and nuke that. Either way, populations and US troops would be spared and war ended fairly rapidly.
There was, of course, no way any of that could have happened. Thinking was just too limited. That is why the mistake of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was made, too.
[/QUOTE]
Your “final holdouts” were the Japanese government, the Mikado, the Japanese Army and Navy and the millions of Japanese civilians being trained to fight against an invasion. In their minds, which is the most important place, the Japanese were NOT defeated.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Shocking that even 1 in 6 was a military person. You must be counting recuperating soldiers and young boys dressed up like soldiers going to school and waiting to come of age.
Sad that people perpetuate the falsehood that those two cities were military targets.

Nagasaki was a military headquarters , navy yard and arsenal and Hiroshima was a naval command center and naval base. The super battleship Yamato was built in the naval yard in Hiroshima, her sister Musashi was built in Nagasaki. Both yards were busily building suicide subs and motor boats when the nukes were dropped.

 

[Moonglow]

The biggest mistake the U.S. made was not letting Patton invade Russia and not dropping a nuke on Moscow. That's why the world is so screwed up today.

Just to play a game, we could say bombing Moscow would not have been morally worse than what was bombed.
Japan was out of the war and just waiting for the last holdouts to admit it.
IF...Moscow, Stalin and Soviet centralized control had suddenly disappeared, the US would have stood astride a world without enemies of any consequence, the greatest armed force ever assembled, and total discretion about where and how to apply its power. Invading Russia would have been unnecessary and, in fact, a tremendous error. In the unlikely event that the Red Army had the co-ordination and will to try to continue to fight, it would have been better to let them attack and destroy them on familiar ground with their logistics extended, rather than the other way. Or, draw them into a massive concentration and nuke that. Either way, populations and US troops would be spared and war ended fairly rapidly.
There was, of course, no way any of that could have happened. Thinking was just too limited. That is why the mistake of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was made, too.
[/QUOTE]
Your “final holdouts” were the Japanese government, the Mikado, the Japanese Army and Navy and the millions of Japanese civilians being trained to fight against an invasion. In their minds, which is the most important place, the Japanese were NOT defeated.
[/QUOTE]
The Japs surrendered that is a defeat.

 

[sparky]

history sure is a b*tch.....~S~

 

[whitehall]

The victors write the history books. Japan was defeated by mid 1945. It had no air defense or viable navy and Allied forces were bombing in never ending daylight raids. The former haberdasher from Missouri woke up one morning in April 1945 and found himself president without a clue. The generals and the scientists were in charge and Truman was along for the ride. Truman thought he was bound by the dying and possibly demented former president's policy of unconditional surrender and refused to negotiate. The scientists were dying to use their device on humans and it would be their last chance. They would later pretend that they had nothing to do with the atrocity and that's how it would go down in the history books.

 

[Unkotare]

The victors write the history books. Japan was defeated by mid 1945. It had no air defense or viable navy and Allied forces were bombing in never ending daylight raids. The former haberdasher from Missouri woke up one morning in April 1945 and found himself president without a clue. The generals and the scientists were in charge and Truman was along for the ride. Truman thought he was bound by the dying and possibly demented former president's policy of unconditional surrender and refused to negotiate. The scientists were dying to use their device on humans and it would be their last chance. They would later pretend that they had nothing to do with the atrocity and that's how it would go down in the history books.

^^^^^

 

[Unkotare]

Hiroshima - the truth about the bombing -

Written by Kate Hudson The city of Hiroshima stands on a flat river delta on the Japanese island of Honshu. At quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August 1945, the US plane Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city centre, a busy residential and business district, crowded with people going...

cnduk.org

 

[AZrailwhale]

Just to play a game, we could say bombing Moscow would not have been morally worse than what was bombed.
Japan was out of the war and just waiting for the last holdouts to admit it.
IF...Moscow, Stalin and Soviet centralized control had suddenly disappeared, the US would have stood astride a world without enemies of any consequence, the greatest armed force ever assembled, and total discretion about where and how to apply its power. Invading Russia would have been unnecessary and, in fact, a tremendous error. In the unlikely event that the Red Army had the co-ordination and will to try to continue to fight, it would have been better to let them attack and destroy them on familiar ground with their logistics extended, rather than the other way. Or, draw them into a massive concentration and nuke that. Either way, populations and US troops would be spared and war ended fairly rapidly.
There was, of course, no way any of that could have happened. Thinking was just too limited. That is why the mistake of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was made, too.

Your “final holdouts” were the Japanese government, the Mikado, the Japanese Army and Navy and the millions of Japanese civilians being trained to fight against an invasion. In their minds, which is the most important place, the Japanese were NOT defeated.
[/QUOTE]
The Japs surrendered that is a defeat.
[/QUOTE]
After the dropping of two nukes made it plain to the Mikado that the Allies could exterminate the Japanese population without the loss of more than a few bomber crews. That invalidated their "defense" plan of drowning the invaders in an ocean of both Japanese and Allied blood to get a favorable peace settlement.

 

[AZrailwhale]

The victors write the history books. Japan was defeated by mid 1945. It had no air defense or viable navy and Allied forces were bombing in never ending daylight raids. The former haberdasher from Missouri woke up one morning in April 1945 and found himself president without a clue. The generals and the scientists were in charge and Truman was along for the ride. Truman thought he was bound by the dying and possibly demented former president's policy of unconditional surrender and refused to negotiate. The scientists were dying to use their device on humans and it would be their last chance. They would later pretend that they had nothing to do with the atrocity and that's how it would go down in the history books.

That is possibly the most incorrect statement I have ever seen on the internet.

 

[Cellblock2429]

Sorry, this story it is not current events, but I think such things do not have time estimation.

Today the 9 th of August 2015, we live our lives, but 241 000 people had died 70 years ago for no reason. They thought that the WW II was over ... but not for them.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
America believes that its internal and external policies is always right. And this is the biggest of its mistakes. Decided on the genocide in favor of its geopolitical interests - the top of inhumanity. This blood will never wash off from the US history, and the fact that even after 70 years, the US is not ready to admit that committed a terrible mistake says only one thing - the US continues to erroneous and selfish policy, both domestically and abroad.

I am so sorry, I thought we were confident enough to admit the things we had done.

/---/ Here are the people you are making crocodile tears over. Do you thnk the Emperor would have allowed his peole to surrender or ordered them to fight to the death? THe atomic bombs saved hundreds of thousand of both Americans and Japanese.
In what became known as the “Rape of Nanking,” the Japanese butchered an estimated 150,000 male “war prisoners,” massacred an additional 50,000 male civilians, and raped at least 20,000 women and girls of all ages, many of whom were mutilated or killed in the process.

The Rape of Nanking

During the Sino-Japanese War, Nanking, the capital of China, falls to Japanese forces, and the Chinese government flees to Hankow, further inland along the

www.history.com

 

[Cellblock2429]

That is possibly the most incorrect statement I have ever seen on the internet.

/---/ Oh, and we're supposed to just take your word on it. BWHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[Unkotare]

"The New York Times published Anne Harrington’s moving story about Maj. Claude Eatherly, the pilot of the reconnaissance plane for the Enola Gay, who spent the rest of his life haunted by his role in what he considered an immoral attack. The Wall Street Journal, in contrast, published an op-ed by former Los Alamos laboratory official John C. Hopkins, who claimed that the bombing saved an estimated 5-10 million Japanese civilians and 400,000-800,000 American soldiers who could have died in an invasion and was therefore “the lesser of two evils.”

The Hopkins claim was the most recent inflation of estimates building on what Rufus Miles called the “myth of half a million American lives saved.” Secretary of War Henry Stimson originally claimed in his famous 1947 Harper’s article that an invasion was expected to produce “over a million American casualties [wounded and killed] to American forces alone” (emphasis added). Winston Churchill, in his memoirs, claimed instead that the invasion would have produced one million American fatalities and an additional 500,000 thousand allied fatalities. But the serious historians studying this issue come to a different conclusion, finding that the range of estimates of U.S. deaths in the 1945 military records was significantly lower than the mythical half a million figure."

 

[whitehall]

That is possibly the most incorrect statement I have ever seen on the internet.

Did you get through school by labeling arguments "incorrect" without offering an opinion however ignorant?

 

[AZrailwhale]

Did you get through school by labeling arguments "incorrect" without offering an opinion however ignorant?

This is the internet; I offer my opinion. In school I spent my years being a pain in the ass to my teachers, proving them wrong when they put out incorrect information or lied to us.

 

[whitehall]

This is the internet; I offer my opinion. In school I spent my years being a pain in the ass to my teachers, proving them wrong when they put out incorrect information or lied to us.

I rest my case and my original post.

 

[whitehall]

Your “final holdouts” were the Japanese government, the Mikado, the Japanese Army and Navy and the millions of Japanese civilians being trained to fight against an invasion. In their minds, which is the most important place, the Japanese were NOT defeated.

The Japs surrendered that is a defeat.
[/QUOTE]
After the dropping of two nukes made it plain to the Mikado that the Allies could exterminate the Japanese population without the loss of more than a few bomber crews. That invalidated their "defense" plan of drowning the invaders in an ocean of both Japanese and Allied blood to get a favorable peace settlement.
[/QUOTE]
The argument for the use of the most dreaded device in human history?

Your “final holdouts” were the Japanese government, the Mikado, the Japanese Army and Navy and the millions of Japanese civilians being trained to fight against an invasion. In their minds, which is the most important place, the Japanese were NOT defeated.

The Japs surrendered that is a defeat.
[/QUOTE]
After the dropping of two nukes made it plain to the Mikado that the Allies could exterminate the Japanese population without the loss of more than a few bomber crews. That invalidated their "defense" plan of drowning the invaders in an ocean of both Japanese and Allied blood to get a favorable peace settlement.
[/QUOTE]
The defense for using the ultimate weapon is the myth that the Japanese were training mom and pop women and children? This is freaking criminal.

 

[whitehall]

Take the atrocity case by case. Truman was the only president not to have a college education. He was hand picked when FDR was clearly dying during his 4th campaign. As a democrat senator Truman wasn't privy to the details of the monstrosity when he woke up on the morning of April 1945. The generals and the admirals and the nuke geeks were in charge and little Harry was along for the ride.

 

[whoisit]

Japan bears much of the responsibility because of their imperial ambitions and their ability to not surrender when they knew the war was over...

Moon, if you watch this movie, you'll doubt your opinion on this war. I was surprised of the historic facts in the movie. With evidence .

Movie trailer,

 

[Mushroom]

Do you thnk the Emperor would have allowed his peole to surrender or ordered them to fight to the death?

Here is the real irony of the Showa Emperor that most do not seem to realize. He was entirely a puppet of his own Privy Council. They made all decisions, and simply put his name to them.

For hundreds of years, the Emperors of Japan had almost no power. Everything was decided and enacted to be done in their name, normally by the Shogun or whoever was filling that equivalent role. That all ended though during the Meiji Restoration, when essentially a "Self-Coup" brought down the 255 years of rule by the Tokugawa Shogunate and allowed the Emperor to take control himself.

However, that was not to last. When he died in 1912, his son Taisho assumed the throne. And he was always sickly and in poor health, starting with contracting cerebral meningitis at less than a month old. And many have suggested he suffered mental deficiencies and other issues as he was almost never seen in public after taking the throne. And before his reign even ended, his Privy Council had largely resumed the old custom of ruling in his name.

And in 1918, only 6 years into his rule he was unable to even attend to the rituals required of his office. Like opening the Diet, officiating at the graduation of Army and Navy officers from the academy, and the rites required of the Emperor under Shinto. So in 1919. 18 year old Crown Prince Hirohito was named as "Prince Regent", taking over those ceremonial duties from his father. And ultimately, that is likely what had led to WWII.

One of the strongest Emperors in centuries if not longer, followed by a sickly Emperor that could barely perform his duties. But instead of a Shogun to assume the mantle, it became largely the military and senior Court Officials. Add into that, a young Prince Regent for 8 years that had absolutely no power, his duties were only ceremonial.

So it is no wonder that when Emperor Taisho passed and Emperor Showa took the throne, things remained the same. The Emperor once again locked away, out of touch with his own people and the Privy Council ruling in his name. He could not even speak or vote in his own council unless they were deadlocked (which happened exactly once during his entire reign).

So in reality, the Emperor would have "allowed" nothing. He was mute in the affairs of the Government, he could do or say nothing. That decision would have been made by the Privy Council, which already showed that they were prepared to fight to the death. And by August 1945, the Privy Council had been replaced by the "Supreme Council for the Direction of the War" (commonly called the "Big Six"). The Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of War, the Minister of the Navy, the Army Chief of Staff, and the Navy Chief of Staff. Only one of which was a civilian (Togo), the other five were all Admirals and Generals.

I have long believed that through Koichi Kido (Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal) the Emperor was able to get the Minister of the Navy (Admiral Yonai) to flip his vote, which ultimately resulted in the deadlock where for the first time he was able to steer them towards accepting Potsdam. And he was the most likely of them to flip, as he was known to have been a large supporter of relations with the UK and US, and against the Tripartite Pact when he was Prime Minister. In fact, it was his public statements against Germany and Italy that forced his resignation in 1940, two months before the Tripartite Pact was signed.

But I have absolutely no doubt that if not for the bombs and invasion by the Soviets, the Big Six would have ordered every man, woman, and child in Japan to fight to the death. Their culture is accepting of suicide, and was full of examples of hopeless fights that were done anyways because honor demanded it. Ranging from the early 18th century "47 Ronin", to even post-war culture like the "Seven Samurai" (which has been remade many times in the US, ranging from "The Magnificent Seven" to "A Bug's Life").

 

[Mac-7]

Sorry, this story it is not current events, but I think such things do not have time estimation.

Today the 9 th of August 2015, we live our lives, but 241 000 people had died 70 years ago for no reason. They thought that the WW II was over ... but not for them.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
America believes that its internal and external policies is always right. And this is the biggest of its mistakes. Decided on the genocide in favor of its geopolitical interests - the top of inhumanity. This blood will never wash off from the US history, and the fact that even after 70 years, the US is not ready to admit that committed a terrible mistake says only one thing - the US continues to erroneous and selfish policy, both domestically and abroad.

I am so sorry, I thought we were confident enough to admit the things we had done.

Get a life

Without nukes an invasion of japan would killed or wounded more than 200,000 American soldiers

And 10 times that many japanese