The truth about Truman’s bombing Japan

[elektra]

Oh, but there is a rather remarkable story from Okinawa about that.

Towards the end of the Battle of Okinawa, a seven year old Okinawa girl named Tomiko Higa held a white flag and advanced towards US forces with several other people. She became immortalized as "The Girl with the The Flag", and is still famous on Okinawa even if few know of her elsewhere. I was fortunate enough to meet her when I was stationed there, and she actually took myself and several others I worked with on a personal tour of the island, visiting many of the battle sites and other locations and explaining what happened there. Where we toured locations like Hacksaw Ridge, Shuri Castle, Ibaru Ridge where General Buckner was killed, as well as Suicide Cliffs and the Prefecture Peace park.

But as a seven year old girl, Tomiko Higa was obviously not a "soldier".

Thank you for the essays.

You dont realize gipper is a troll and my replys force the troll to come into the light.

It is nice to show off your knowledge but even I and most people here are looking for an easy quick read.

The troll and my attempt to have others see him/her as such is lost in the chapters of history be quoted.

I can write an essay myself. I have the knowledge and sources at my fingertips. What others liknk to, a sentence, i own the book which allows me to put any quote in context refuting revisionest and or opinion comments.

Feel free to look at my pics, feel free to suggest what is missing

 

[gipper]

Oh? That would put us in the middle of the Battle of Okinawa.
Where in Okinawa did a soldier wave the white flag?

Which commander ordered surrender?

Which commanders, soldiers, at which part of the battle, simply surrendered?

Pellegrino’s book is a moving and grueling close-up look at the horrors experienced by the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki both on the day of the bombing and in the days and years afterward. I have the heart of a dried-up raisin but even I got a little teary in places.

There are few opportunities for inspiring “triumph of the human spirit” narratives amid the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombings were titanic, apocalyptic events that mock human scale and comprehension. Pellegrino depicts dazed “ant-trails” of survivors threading through the instantaneously blasted landscapes and past heaps of the dead, dying, and horrifically maimed in the shadow of an eight-mile high radioactive cloud. Fate and the desperate efforts of the rescuers saved some, but many lives literally disintegrated in seconds, minutes, days, and years after the bombs were dropped.

Near the hypocenter, the experience of death was overwhelming and random in a dehumanizing way. For some, it came down to the decision to wear a white shirt or a dark shirt. The white shirt might reflect the intense, instantaneous radiation of the blast with remarkable efficacy; a black shirt absorbed the radiation and incinerated the wearer.

The bottom line for many survivors is that their families, their communities, their city, most of the world they knew, their health, their spiritual equilibrium, even their social status had been annihilated in an event of overwhelming horror. The survivors experienced physical and mental trauma; ostracization; guilt; shame; and lingering illness.

Nevertheless, Pellegrino does document instances of courage, compassion, and ingenuity and people sustaining their humanity through acts of love and sacrifice.

An inspiration for the title of the book is the “double” hibakusha, people who experienced and survived both the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One survivor of Hiroshima goes back home to Nagasaki and tells his co-workers of the awful weapon he had experienced; he warns them if they see a blinding flash—the pika—they must use it as a signal they have a few seconds to seek shelter before the don—the crash, the massive shock wave created by the bomb, arrives.

And so “duck and cover” was born.

 

[gipper]

Oh, but there is a rather remarkable story from Okinawa about that.

Towards the end of the Battle of Okinawa, a seven year old Okinawa girl named Tomiko Higa held a white flag and advanced towards US forces with several other people. She became immortalized as "The Girl with the The Flag", and is still famous on Okinawa even if few know of her elsewhere. I was fortunate enough to meet her when I was stationed there, and she actually took myself and several others I worked with on a personal tour of the island, visiting many of the battle sites and other locations and explaining what happened there. Where we toured locations like Hacksaw Ridge, Shuri Castle, Ibaru Ridge where General Buckner was killed, as well as Suicide Cliffs and the Prefecture Peace park.

But as a seven year old girl, Tomiko Higa was obviously not a "soldier".

It depicts, as the title implies, an utter hellscape of dazed survivors threading their way through the blasted landscape in ant-like lines to nowhere amid flickering whirlwinds of flame, human ash and bone, rivers of corpses, clouds of flies; and slow death brought on by desperate thirst, blast, burn, and radiation injuries, and the longer terms effects of radiation exposure.

People regarded as miracle survivors, untouched by the blast, turned out to be literally the walking dead a few days later:

Strange new infections were appearing—including putrefaction while still alive…With immune systems rendered essentially nonexistent, bacteria that did not normally attack human flesh after death started to take root…other patients fell prey to signs and symptoms never seen before. Two men examined at Omura died from something that liquefied their brains and spinal cords. An infectious amoeba appeared to have been involved, a species that usually restricted itself to causing amoeboid dysentery…were able to drill through the blood-brain barrier and infiltrate the entire nervous system. The simultaneous occurrence of so many opportunistic infections was so rare an event that it would not be seen again until the AIDS outbreak of the 1980s. [pp. 261-2]

The stricken child’s mother found it difficult to go near him and began to shrink away from her own son…on each exhaled breath, there came a stench…of a corpse…The normal bacteria of decay were eating the Ito child’s lungs and his throat, while his tongue—bloating and purple and hot—stank of rotting meat even as he still moved and tried to speak…[250]
Two women complained of having chokingly large objects stuck in their throats. Hachiya and Hinoi helped them to cough up golf-ball-sized clots of blood and phlegm … parasitic roundworms came out of their mouths…”I’ve seen this before!” Hinoi said. “But it happens only when people are already dead. Only when the flesh begins to decay and can no longer support them do parasites abandon their hosts.”… one of the dying women emitted a strangled cry and suddenly spat an amazing wad of red phlegm and tiny white worms onto the ground. “Doctor?” Shoda whispered…”I wonder if there is an operation that removes memories.”[235]

 

[Billo_Really]

Americans need to come to the realization that the bombings of civilians was really mass murder, not unlike what Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were guilty of.

Great column on the subject.

The Atomic Bombing of Japan, Reconsidered
By Alan Mosley
Mises.org

January 2, 2019

Russia’s move, in fact, compelled the Japanese to consider unconditional surrender; until then, they were only open to a conditional surrender that left their Emperor Hirohito some dignity and protections from war-crimes trials. Ward concludes that, as in the European theatre, Truman didn’t beat Japan; Stalin did.

Harry Truman never expressed regret publicly over his decision to use the atomic bombs. However, he did order an independent study on the state of the war effort leading up to August of 1945, and the strategic value of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. In 1946, the U.S. Bombing Survey published its findings, which concluded as follows: “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.” This is an intensive condemnation of Truman’s decision, seeing as Russia did enter the war, and that plans for an invasion had been developed.

As Timothy P. Carney writesfor the Washington Examiner, the fog of war can be a tricky thing. But if we’re forced to side with Truman, or Eisenhower and the other dissenting military leaders, the Eisenhower position isn’t merely valid; it actually aligns better with some fundamental American values. Given all the uncertainty, both at the time and with modern historical revisionism, it’s better to look to principle rather than fortune-telling. One principle that should be near the top of everyone’s list is this: it’s wrong to target civilians with weapons of mass destruction. The deliberate killing of innocent men, women, and children by the hundreds of thousandscannot be justified under any circumstances, much less the ambiguous ones Truman encountered. Whether his decision was motivated by indignation toward Japanese “ pigheadedness” or concern for his troops, Truman’s use of such devastating weapons against non-combatants should not be excused. Americans must strive for complete and honest analysis of the past (and present) conflicts. And if she is to remain true to her own ideals, America must strive for more noble and moral ends—in all conflicts, domestic and foreign—guided by our most cherished first principles, such as the Golden Rule. At the very least, Americans should not try so hard to justify mass murder.

The Atomic Bombing of Japan - LewRockwell LewRockwell.com

We had no choice. Truman had to do what he did.

 

[gipper]

The fact is, Japanese leaders never surrendered until ordered to do so. Japanese soldiers almost never surrendered.

Oh, some were captured indeed, but surrender was almost unheard of. That is why of the almost 5,000 personnel on Tarawa, only 17 Japanese soldiers were captured alive. All of them wounded in the battle and unable to resist being captured. None actually "surrendered".

And that was repeated all through the war. On almost every battlefield, the only Japanese captured were so badly wounded they could not fight on any longer. That is why of the over 21,000 on Iwo Jima, only 215 were taken prisoner. Hell, on Saipan over 5,000 Japanese civilians committed suicide (many from jumping off of cliffs) rather than surrendering.

The only battle of the entire war that saw significant numbers of soldiers captured was Okinawa. Where a lot of the soldiers actually did surrender. However, by that time Japan was also using a large number of conscripts who were forced into uniform from Okinawa itself as well as Korea. And as they did not have the same culture and beliefs as Japan, they were not as suicidal as their counterparts from the mainland and were willing to surrender.

But surrender of those who were culturally from Japan? Almost never. American subs even reported after sinking Japanese ships trying to render aid to the sailors in the water. And the Japanese sailors swimming away from the sub or drowning themselves as culturally to the Japanese surrender and being captured was the ultimate shame one could suffer. And death was preferred to surrender.

Stop believing Hollywood and big government myths.
A couple of years ago an American writer named Greg Mitchell wrote an informative book on the huge cover-up orchestrated by the US government on the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Japan, and the censorship of the first Hollywood movie on the subject.[1] The government was in possession of much live film footage shot by the US military of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki that Mitchell says would have shocked viewers, with ghostlike ruins and babies with burned faces. He includes many of these original photos in his book, and details the extensive efforts to hide the facts and evidence of the use of the atomic bombs and the tapestry of lies created after the fact to justify this atrocity and present it as a necessary evil.

The Hollywood movie arose because the film industry wanted to warn the people of the world about the coming dangers of a nuclear arms race, Mitchell claiming the early scripts presented a shocking picture that would definitely have provoked disarmament, but the eventual Hollywood version of the official narrative was that the bomb was absolutely necessary to end the war and save American lives.

He writes that as the scripts were increasingly revised the bombing became not only justifiable but even admirable. Robert Oppenheimer, the prominent Jewish physicist primarily responsible for the development of the bomb, was assured that in the movie his character would display “humility” and “a love of mankind”. But that’s not quite how it was. “At the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb on July 16, 1945, “Oppenheimer was beside himself at the spectacle. He shrieked, “I am become Death, the Destroyer of worlds.”[2]
Japan â Ending a War and Saving Lives?

 

[gipper]

We had no choice. Truman had to do what he did.

Mass murderer and war criminal.

 

[gipper]

Oh, but there is a rather remarkable story from Okinawa about that.

Towards the end of the Battle of Okinawa, a seven year old Okinawa girl named Tomiko Higa held a white flag and advanced towards US forces with several other people. She became immortalized as "The Girl with the The Flag", and is still famous on Okinawa even if few know of her elsewhere. I was fortunate enough to meet her when I was stationed there, and she actually took myself and several others I worked with on a personal tour of the island, visiting many of the battle sites and other locations and explaining what happened there. Where we toured locations like Hacksaw Ridge, Shuri Castle, Ibaru Ridge where General Buckner was killed, as well as Suicide Cliffs and the Prefecture Peace park.

But as a seven year old girl, Tomiko Higa was obviously not a "soldier".

Why do you believe in myths? Are you stupid?

Claims were fabricated that the use of the atomic bombs would shorten the war by a year, which was 100% false since the Japanese had already repeatedly offered to surrender, as well as claims that use of the atomic bomb would save at least half a million American lives, also patently untrue. In fact, the bombings saved no American lives since it was already abundantly clear that no invasion of Japan would be necessary to effect a surrender, and in fact the prospect of a physical invasion was never even on the table. But the bombings did needlessly claim at least an additional nearly one million Japanese lives, even though Wikipedia states this at little over 100,000.
Another myth created by Hollywood was that the targets – Hiroshima and Nagasaki – had been chosen for their military value, but in truth both were entirely civilian cities and were chosen only because they hadn’t been bombed before and could clearly demonstrate the destructive power of this new weapon.
The final movie was presented as “basically a true story” to the countless Americans who saw it. The New York Times called it a “creditable re-enactment”, and praised its handling of the moral issues of a “necessary evil”. A popular news magazine praised its “aura of authenticity and special historical significance”. And the “humanitarian bombing” of Hiroshima entered American mythology as factual American history. But that’s not how it was.
Japan â Ending a War and Saving Lives?

 

[Billo_Really]

Mass murderer and war criminal.
View attachment 795128

He would've killed more GI's with an invasion force.

 

[gipper]

Oh, but there is a rather remarkable story from Okinawa about that.

Towards the end of the Battle of Okinawa, a seven year old Okinawa girl named Tomiko Higa held a white flag and advanced towards US forces with several other people. She became immortalized as "The Girl with the The Flag", and is still famous on Okinawa even if few know of her elsewhere. I was fortunate enough to meet her when I was stationed there, and she actually took myself and several others I worked with on a personal tour of the island, visiting many of the battle sites and other locations and explaining what happened there. Where we toured locations like Hacksaw Ridge, Shuri Castle, Ibaru Ridge where General Buckner was killed, as well as Suicide Cliffs and the Prefecture Peace park.

But as a seven year old girl, Tomiko Higa was obviously not a "soldier".

Fucking pyschopaths! Don’t be a fucking pyschopath!

In May of 1945, several months before the atomic bombs were ready, the self-named “Masters of the Universe” held a meeting at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco to discuss the ending of the war in the Pacific. The issue was that Japan was already suing for peace, and the collective opinion of these gentlemen was, according to Edward Stettinius, then Secretary of State, “We have already lost Germany. If Japan bows out, we will not have a live population on which to test the bomb … our entire postwar program depends on terrifying the world with the atomic bomb … we are hoping for a million tally in Japan. But if they surrender, we won’t have anything.” The advice of John Foster Dulles was “Then you have to keep them in the war until the bomb is ready. That is no problem. Unconditional surrender.” Stettinius replied, “They won’t agree to that. They are sworn to protect the Emperor.” Dulles’ response: “Exactly. Keep Japan in the war another three months, and we can use the bomb on their cities. We will end this war with the naked fear of all the peoples of the world, who will then bow to our will.”[5]

A great many Americans today are fond of justifying their nation’s use of nuclear weapons in Japan by telling us it shortened the war, fully confident their moral superiority remains intact. But in truth, the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki mostly as a “once in a lifetime chance” to witness the effects of nuclear blasts on a human population. It is not widely known that the US dropped two different types of bombs – uranium and plutonium – onto the two cities, these bombings being live laboratory experiments to determine the differences in yield and effect between the two. The US Department of Energy still lists these explosions as “tests”.
After the bombings, there was an almost obscene eagerness on the part of the Americans to get to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ‘examine and catalog’ the results of their new monstrosity. In reviewing the reports of the American presence in these two cities after the blasts, one cannot escape the conclusion that these so-called ‘scientists’ were almost as giddy as schoolboys in viewing their masterpiece of war, and too morally deformed to even consider the horror they had perpetrated.

 

[gipper]

He would've killed more GI's with an invasion force.

Stop posting. You know nothing.

 

[gipper]

He would've killed more GI's with an invasion force.

This is a war crime. We Americans are better than this, but our leaders are just as murderous and ruthless as any in history.

 

[Billo_Really]

Stop posting. You know nothing.

I'm sorry, no GI's would die if we invaded Japan.

 

[Billo_Really]

This is a war crime. We Americans are better than this, but our leaders are just as murderous and ruthless as any in history.

So was Pearl Harbor, asshole!

 

[Unkotare]

Oh? That would put us in the middle of the Battle of Okinawa.

Where in Okinawa did a soldier wave the white flag?

Which commander ordered surrender?

Which commanders, soldiers, at which part of the battle, simply surrendered?

Fill us in with the details. Go ahead and use your memory, we obviously do not need links from someone who knows what they are talking about. So go ahead and tell us the story.

"During World War II, it has been estimated that between 19,500 and 50,000 members of the Imperial Japanese military surrendered to Western Allied combatants prior to the end of the Pacific War in August 1945. Also, Soviet troops seized and imprisoned more than half a million Japanese troops and civilians in China and other places."

 

[Unkotare]

So was Pearl Harbor, asshole!

Who has claimed that it was not?

 

[BackAgain]

They didn’t surrender until we made them surrender. And that took the A bomb. They wouldn’t agree to the unconditional part of unconditional surrender so stop lying, gip.

You fool nobody

Modification. You may fool unkotare.

 

[Billo_Really]

Who has claimed that it was not?

I was just making the point when it comes to Pearl Harbor, Quid Pro quo mother-fucker!

 

[Unkotare]

Who has claimed that it was not?

.

 

[gipper]

So was Pearl Harbor, asshole!

Mass murdering civilians indiscriminately may be the same as attacking a military installation in your small mind, but intelligent people think differently.

 

[gipper]

I was just making the point when it comes to Pearl Harbor, Quid Pro quo mother-fucker!

Stop posting. You know nothing.