Was Hiroshima Wrong?

[JBeukema]

And Nagasaki? How many non-combatants were knowingly slaughtered in order to terrorize the government of Japan into granting our demands?

 

[Intense]

War Sucks.



In his vivid, unsparing paintings, U.S. warplanes shower the sky with rivulets of fire, and thousands of corpses � many of them women and children � clot Tokyo's main river. In one piece, flaming victims plummet in agony from a burning bridge.

The paintings are a gripping testament to the destruction as Japan prepares to mark the 60th anniversary this week of the March 9-10, 1945, air raid that killed an estimated 100,000 people in a single night of fire.

"Civilians are defenseless, and this is what it is like when they are killed," said Kanoh, who was 14 at the time and lost both parents and two younger sisters. "I want young people who haven't known war to think about this."

The Tokyo firebombing has long been overshadowed by the U.S. atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which preceded the Japanese surrender that ended World War II the following August. But the burning of the capital, which resulted in more immediate deaths than either of the nuclear bombings, stands as a horrifying landmark in the history of warfare on noncombatants.

More than 300 B-29 "Superfortress" bombers dropped nearly a half-million M-69 incendiary cylinders over Tokyo that night and early morning, destroying some 16 square miles of the city. The attack, coming a month after a similar raid on Dresden, Germany, brought the mass incineration of civilians to a new level in a conflict already characterized by unprecedented bloodshed.

The official death toll was some 83,000, but historians generally agree that victims unaccounted for bring the figure to around 100,000 � overwhelmingly civilians. It is widely considered to be the most devastating air raid in history.

While critics in Japan and elsewhere decry such attacks as war crimes, others say the Tokyo assault took place against a backdrop of the increasing brutality of total war fueled by the militarism of the Axis powers.

The German air attack on Guernica in the Spanish Civil War and the Japanese bombing of Chungking, China, (now known as Chongqing) in the 1930s are cited as early examples of indiscriminate urban air raids � a trend that greatly expanded in World War II.

"At this stage, everybody had been burning down cities," said Thomas Searle, a historian at the Airpower Research Institute, at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. "The Americans certainly weren't out of step in that sense."

The Tokyo attack was aimed in part at demolishing Japanese morale and hastening a surrender. Planners also wanted to wipe out small factories and drive away their employees as a way of choking the economy.

The American decision to go after civilians emerged from the failure of precision bombings against traditional military targets, and accompanied significant advances in technology and bombing tactics. The B-29, for instance, gave the United States greater range and firepower, while innovations such as low-altitude nighttime attacks multiplied the potential for terror and destruction.

That terror was apocalyptic.

The M-69s, which released 100-foot streams of fire upon detonating, sent flames rampaging through densely packed wooden homes. Superheated air created a wind that sucked victims into the flames and fed the twisting infernos. Asphalt boiled in the 1,800-degree heat. With much of the fighting-age male population at the war front, women, children and the elderly struggled in vain to battle the flames or flee.

Survivors say Japan has been slow to come to terms with the bombing's place in history, in part because of the reticence of survivors.

1945 Tokyo Firebombing Left Legacy of Terror, Pain

 

[JBeukema]

War Sucks.

Yep

 

[Big Black Dog]

Nuking Japan wasn't wrong. Sad thing is we had to wait so long to do it.

 

[JBeukema]

Nuking Japan wasn't wrong. Sad thing is we had to wait so long to do it.

So why is this

okay


but this

isn't?

 

[Big Black Dog]

Both were acts of war and should be judged and responded to accordingly. We nuked Japan to end that war. I think we should nuke the terrorists too. Fuck 'em.

 

[JBeukema]

Both were acts of war and should be judged and responded to accordingly. We nuked Japan to end that war. I think we should nuke the terrorists too. Fuck 'em.

So 9/11 was cool, then? Just a part of war?

 

[Anachronism]

And Nagasaki? How many non-combatants were knowingly slaughtered in order to terrorize the government of Japan into granting our demands?

Saving the life of a single American GI would have been worth killing every living thing in Japan so far as I'm concerned. Those two attacks saved the lives of probably 1,000,000 American servicemen. So they were definitely the RIGHT thing to do.

 

[JBeukema]

And Nagasaki? How many non-combatants were knowingly slaughtered in order to terrorize the government of Japan into granting our demands?

Saving the life of a single American GI would have been worth killing every living thing in Japan so far as I'm concerned.

Some would say saving the life of a single Palestinian or Afghan would be worth killing every single American and Jew.

Good to know we have our own bin Laden in you.

 

[California Girl]

Both were acts of war and should be judged and responded to accordingly. We nuked Japan to end that war. I think we should nuke the terrorists too. Fuck 'em.

So 9/11 was cool, then? Just a part of war?

Really? You're using these as comparable events? Seriously?

Apple

Orangutan

Compare these instead.... they're about as relevant as your examples are to each other.

 

[JBeukema]

Both were acts of war and should be judged and responded to accordingly. We nuked Japan to end that war. I think we should nuke the terrorists too. Fuck 'em.

So 9/11 was cool, then? Just a part of war?

Really? You're using these as comparable events? Seriously?

Apple

Orangutan

Compare these instead.... they're about as relevant as your examples are to each other.

Why Because we did it and we're always right and they're a bunch of evil muslims with the wrong colour skin?

 

[Anachronism]

Good to know we have our own bin Laden in you.

Bin Laden don't have spit on me.

Had I been POTUS on 9/11/2001, the entire Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a few other areas would have been covered in mushroom clouds by noon, eastern time on Wednesday, September 12, 2001.

 

[MikeK]

And Nagasaki? How many non-combatants were knowingly slaughtered in order to terrorize the government of Japan into granting our demands?

Contemplating the effect of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings today is far removed from the collective American mindset in 1945 which culminated in the kind of vitriolic hatred that comes from years of fear of a powerful and brutal enemy who has attacked the homeland and has killed tens of thousands of fathers, sons and brothers.

I was only ten years old in 1945. One of my uncles was killed by the Japanese in 1943. My father and another uncle were still fighting in the Pacific in 1945. There was constant fear of seeing the Western Union lady who brought the black-bordered telegrams. There was no television but we listened to Gabriel Heatter's War News on the radio every night at 6:30 to hear how many were killed and captured in Europe and how many in the Pacific.

The feeling of pure joy and relief that came with news of the Japanese surrender obscured any sense of remorse about the devastation caused by those bombs. In fact it was years before any suggestion of regret emerged in the U.S.

I went to Japan in 1957 and within weeks after arriving my feelings toward the Japanese people were transformed. I came to like them and respect them and I began to regret what we'd done a dozen years earlier. But because I did experience the provocation and the torment that led to it, while I do regret our having used those weapons I've never felt guilty about it.

 

[Kalam]

Saving the life of a single American GI would have been worth killing every living thing in Japan so far as I'm concerned.

This statement captures the essence of nationalism's perniciousness. It is a pox on humanity.

 

[Kalam]

Really? You're using these as comparable events? Seriously?

Apple

Orangutan

Compare these instead.... they're about as relevant as your examples are to each other.

Let's start by agreeing on an acceptable definition of "terrorism" and go from there.

 

[elvis]

And Nagasaki? How many non-combatants were knowingly slaughtered in order to terrorize the government of Japan into granting our demands?

no they weren't wrong. what about Dresden?

 

[Kalam]

And Nagasaki? How many non-combatants were knowingly slaughtered in order to terrorize the government of Japan into granting our demands?

no they weren't wrong. what about Dresden?

What about Manhattan?

 

[elvis]

And Nagasaki? How many non-combatants were knowingly slaughtered in order to terrorize the government of Japan into granting our demands?

no they weren't wrong. what about Dresden?

What about Manhattan?

You were jumping for joy when that happened, weren't you. Laughing as people jumped. Evil capitalist little Eichmanns, they were.

 

[elvis]

So 9/11 was cool, then? Just a part of war?

Really? You're using these as comparable events? Seriously?

Apple

Orangutan

Compare these instead.... they're about as relevant as your examples are to each other.

Why Because we did it and we're always right and they're a bunch of evil muslims with the wrong colour skin?

It's not about skin color. We had an atomic bomb planned for Germany, in case the Battle of the Bulge had failed.
the World Trade Center was not a military target. Hiroshima was.

 

[elvis]

And Nagasaki? How many non-combatants were knowingly slaughtered in order to terrorize the government of Japan into granting our demands?

would you suggest we should have invaded mainland Japan, split the country in half with the Soviets (Stalin was planning to invade Hokkaido; Truman renegged on FDR's deal with Stalin), or allow Tojo to remain in power?