Did we really have to nuke Japan?

[Dante]

No, they couldn't.

They did not care, They had no fuel for the coming winter and the Government run by the Army DID NOT CARE. read the documents, even after 2 atomic bombs the Japanese Government did not surrender. The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II A Collection of Primary Sources

What and who signed what on the USS Missouri?

The Emperor over road the Army and ordered the surrender and even then the Army attempted a Coup to stop the message getting out. Learn a little History.

You said that Japan never surrendered "the Japanese Government did not surrender."

The Government in power at the time of negotiations and at the time of the dropping of the Bombs did not surrender. It was replaced. By the Emperor. The Army ran the Government and absolutely refused to surrender, when the Emperor told them he was surrendering the ARMY STAGED A COUP TO STOP HIM.

Japanese Instrument of Surrender - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
The instrument was first signed by the Japanese foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu

 

[Dante]

However, in his first ever press conference given in Tokyo in 1975, when he was asked what he thought of the bombing of Hiroshima, the Emperor answered: "It's very regrettable that nuclear bombs were dropped and I feel sorry for the citizens of Hiroshima but it couldn't be helped because that happened in wartime."[34]

Die-hard army fanatics opposed to the surrender attempted a coup d'état. They seized the Imperial Palace (the Kyūjō Incident). However, the physical recording of the surrender speech was hidden and preserved overnight, and the coup was quickly crushed on the Emperor's order. Hirohito - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


end of story, Good Night Johnboy

 

[Steven_R]

Steven_R

The US was looking at nearly a million casualties (killed and wounded) to pacify Japan. We're still giving out Purple Hearts ordered for the troops slated to invade Japan...

What moronic reasoning! So what. What does that actually mean?

What it means is we expected nearly a million US casualties. We made a million Purple Heart medals in anticipation of those casualties. Thankfully, the invasion never happened so we didn't have those causalities. So the medals sat in warehouses and have slowly been used up in all the wars and police actions and whatnot since then.

 

[saintmichaeldefendthem]

I don't buy it.

They no longer had a navy or air force to project their armies.

A simple food and trade embargo would have sufficed (enforced by our unchallenged navy).

There was no reason to even attack the Japanese mainland.

I think it was a bunch of sick and demented fucks that wanted to demonstrate the power of their new toy to the communist USSR.

Admiral William Leahy – the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American military decisions in World War II – wrote (pg. 441):

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.

This country is being run by murderous sociopaths.

Hi, The2ndAmendment.

Not too long ago, I was arguing pretty much the same thing. We devastated their fleet, ejected them from the Pacific Islands, bombed their infrastructure into military insignificance, and had them on their knees. That's all true.

But watching Pearl Harbor with my family on December 7th change my mind, not because of anything in the movie, but because I began to contemplate what Japan had done over the last several centuries leading up to Pearl Harbor. Their ruthless military conquests, their harsh treatment of civilians, and the atrocities they committed rivaled only by Nazi Germany left a deficit of justice that needed to be paid.

Historically, I look at how God suffers great injustice, cruelty, and despotic systems for decades and even centuries, but eventually brings it to a crushing end. It's what happened when the Israelites took Canaan, and there are many more examples. Japan had iron fisted control off and on of Siberia, Eastern China, the Koreas, and the Pacific Islands. Their cruelty is the stuff of legends and people had been crying out against their injustice for too long for a just God to ignore.

So rather than looking at Hiroshima as direct reciprocity for Pearl Harbor, it makes more sense to see it through the context of a long history of atrocities, massacres, torture, and suffering inflicted by the Empire of Japan. It was an evil empire that needed to be crushed to end its reign of terror on the Pacific rim. And crush them we did.

And what was the result? Japan has now, for the last 70 years, been a peaceful nation, a democracy that seeks economic success not through conquest but through free trade and capitalism. It's hard to second guess history, or to credibly claim that there would have been a similar result if we didn't bring them to the point of absolute, unconditional surrender.

So as recently as a week ago, I've changed my mind on Hiroshima. I think it was necessary and I think they deserved it.

Again, the bombs being dropped had nothing to do with Japan giving up, or "revenge." Of course many Americans then and now saw it that way.

It had everything to do with the USSR and their encroachment into the region. Again, they were absolute bullies, and they were certainly testing America's resolve. Stalin, rightfully so, knew the American people would not be able to stomach another long drawn out war. He took advantage of that, and he certainly wanted those very valuable trade routes (yes oil.)

The USSR was working some clandestine type of agreement with Japan, who was all too willing to some how save face. At the very least, they would not have to surrender to the United States. That in itself could be sold as a victory.

Stalin, for all intents and purposes, was basically asking Truman, "what they hell are you going to do about it?"

I am not sure if we know what sort of a sick tyrant Stalin was. So, the choices for this country were:

> Allow Japan to surrender to the USSR even after we fought the war and so many died.

> Start up a long drawn out HOT war with the USSR (we probably would have won, considering all of our factories were in working order and we did not lose half the men or hardware the USSR did and why Patton wanted to start it with them). Of course that would have meant 10s of thousands more young American men dying.

> Drop the bomb, and forcing the USSR to back off. The USSR called the bluff after the first drop and after the second drop they were not sure how many we had, so they backed off invading Japan, who became an "American ally" upon their surrender.

Those are the choices. Which one of the 3 would you have made?

Again, there were no choices that were good. I do not believe the Japanese people "deserved" it. I mean innocent women and children and elderly people etc etc are like most citizens in every country. They have little to no clue or care what is happening in some distant land.

However, this is the tragedy. There are different horrifying stories in every war. Thousands of them. Every single war has them, and it is very tempting to demonizing a group of people, a religion, or a race. I do it. It is not right.

Unless you are talking about insidious hypocrites like the American left wing piece of godless shit that is.

You didn't understand my post at all. It's not about what criteria caused President Truman to use nuclear bombs, it's about the longer term justice by which Japan received just reciprocity for centuries of horrible war crimes. In Korea, a nation I spent a year in, there is still deep seated pain and anger over the Japanese occupation that went from 1910 to 1945, when we freed them from Japanese tyranny. It's difficult without writing a whole book to convey the depth of suffering Japan inflicted on its neighbors. The civilian lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were certainly regrettable, but it pales in comparison to what Japanese did to civilians in the countries they occupied, from torture to outright holocaust. Japan had an ass kicking coming to it and we were the ones to mete it out.

 

[Mac1958]

.

It's certainly fair (and probably accurate) to assume that allowing the war to continue would have cost far more lives and involved far more risk. No doubt.

But making the decision to kill that many innocents. Man. I'm glad I'll never be in a position to have to consider an option like that.

.

 

[Dante]

Steven_R

The US was looking at nearly a million casualties (killed and wounded) to pacify Japan. We're still giving out Purple Hearts ordered for the troops slated to invade Japan...

What moronic reasoning! So what. What does that actually mean?

What it means is we expected nearly a million US casualties. We made a million Purple Heart medals in anticipation of those casualties. Thankfully, the invasion never happened so we didn't have those causalities. So the medals sat in warehouses and have slowly been used up in all the wars and police actions and whatnot since then.

so we didn't give out all the purple hearts because we ran out of them?

 

[Dante]

Steven_R

The US was looking at nearly a million casualties (killed and wounded) to pacify Japan. We're still giving out Purple Hearts ordered for the troops slated to invade Japan...

What moronic reasoning! So what. What does that actually mean?

What it means is we expected nearly a million US casualties. We made a million Purple Heart medals in anticipation of those casualties. Thankfully, the invasion never happened so we didn't have those causalities. So the medals sat in warehouses and have slowly been used up in all the wars and police actions and whatnot since then.

Oh, if we had invaded we would have ran out of medals? even funnier

 

[Steven_R]

.

It's certainly fair (and probably accurate) to assume that allowing the war to continue would have cost far more lives and involved far more risk. No doubt.

But making the decision to kill that many innocents. Man. I'm glad I'll never be in a position to have to consider an option like that.

.

The civilians weren't the goal of the bombs; they were just unfortunate collateral damage. The targets were legitimate military objectives (an army group headquarters and a shipyard). More civilians were killed in one night during a fire bomb attack on Tokyo than were killed in both atomic bombings.

It sucks that civilians get caught in the middle in cities like Dresden and Coventry and Tokyo, but that's total war for you.

 

[Steven_R]

Steven_R

The US was looking at nearly a million casualties (killed and wounded) to pacify Japan. We're still giving out Purple Hearts ordered for the troops slated to invade Japan...

What moronic reasoning! So what. What does that actually mean?

What it means is we expected nearly a million US casualties. We made a million Purple Heart medals in anticipation of those casualties. Thankfully, the invasion never happened so we didn't have those causalities. So the medals sat in warehouses and have slowly been used up in all the wars and police actions and whatnot since then.

Oh, if we had invaded we would have ran out of medals? even funnier

No. We made them in anticipation for the invasion. We didn't hand them out because the war ended after Truman opened up some canned sunshine. We had them in warehouses and have been handing them out ever since.

Think about it. We made enough medals for the killed and wounded we expected to have in one campaign, that we have been handing them out since 1945 in four major wars (Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iran/Iraq) and still have some left.

 

[Theowl32]

I don't buy it.

They no longer had a navy or air force to project their armies.

A simple food and trade embargo would have sufficed (enforced by our unchallenged navy).

There was no reason to even attack the Japanese mainland.

I think it was a bunch of sick and demented fucks that wanted to demonstrate the power of their new toy to the communist USSR.

Admiral William Leahy – the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American military decisions in World War II – wrote (pg. 441):

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.

This country is being run by murderous sociopaths.

Hi, The2ndAmendment.

Not too long ago, I was arguing pretty much the same thing. We devastated their fleet, ejected them from the Pacific Islands, bombed their infrastructure into military insignificance, and had them on their knees. That's all true.

But watching Pearl Harbor with my family on December 7th change my mind, not because of anything in the movie, but because I began to contemplate what Japan had done over the last several centuries leading up to Pearl Harbor. Their ruthless military conquests, their harsh treatment of civilians, and the atrocities they committed rivaled only by Nazi Germany left a deficit of justice that needed to be paid.

Historically, I look at how God suffers great injustice, cruelty, and despotic systems for decades and even centuries, but eventually brings it to a crushing end. It's what happened when the Israelites took Canaan, and there are many more examples. Japan had iron fisted control off and on of Siberia, Eastern China, the Koreas, and the Pacific Islands. Their cruelty is the stuff of legends and people had been crying out against their injustice for too long for a just God to ignore.

So rather than looking at Hiroshima as direct reciprocity for Pearl Harbor, it makes more sense to see it through the context of a long history of atrocities, massacres, torture, and suffering inflicted by the Empire of Japan. It was an evil empire that needed to be crushed to end its reign of terror on the Pacific rim. And crush them we did.

And what was the result? Japan has now, for the last 70 years, been a peaceful nation, a democracy that seeks economic success not through conquest but through free trade and capitalism. It's hard to second guess history, or to credibly claim that there would have been a similar result if we didn't bring them to the point of absolute, unconditional surrender.

So as recently as a week ago, I've changed my mind on Hiroshima. I think it was necessary and I think they deserved it.

Again, the bombs being dropped had nothing to do with Japan giving up, or "revenge." Of course many Americans then and now saw it that way.

It had everything to do with the USSR and their encroachment into the region. Again, they were absolute bullies, and they were certainly testing America's resolve. Stalin, rightfully so, knew the American people would not be able to stomach another long drawn out war. He took advantage of that, and he certainly wanted those very valuable trade routes (yes oil.)

The USSR was working some clandestine type of agreement with Japan, who was all too willing to some how save face. At the very least, they would not have to surrender to the United States. That in itself could be sold as a victory.

Stalin, for all intents and purposes, was basically asking Truman, "what they hell are you going to do about it?"

I am not sure if we know what sort of a sick tyrant Stalin was. So, the choices for this country were:

> Allow Japan to surrender to the USSR even after we fought the war and so many died.

> Start up a long drawn out HOT war with the USSR (we probably would have won, considering all of our factories were in working order and we did not lose half the men or hardware the USSR did and why Patton wanted to start it with them). Of course that would have meant 10s of thousands more young American men dying.

> Drop the bomb, and forcing the USSR to back off. The USSR called the bluff after the first drop and after the second drop they were not sure how many we had, so they backed off invading Japan, who became an "American ally" upon their surrender.

Those are the choices. Which one of the 3 would you have made?

Again, there were no choices that were good. I do not believe the Japanese people "deserved" it. I mean innocent women and children and elderly people etc etc are like most citizens in every country. They have little to no clue or care what is happening in some distant land.

However, this is the tragedy. There are different horrifying stories in every war. Thousands of them. Every single war has them, and it is very tempting to demonizing a group of people, a religion, or a race. I do it. It is not right.

Unless you are talking about insidious hypocrites like the American left wing piece of godless shit that is.

You didn't understand my post at all. It's not about what criteria caused President Truman to use nuclear bombs, it's about the longer term justice by which Japan received just reciprocity for centuries of horrible war crimes. In Korea, a nation I spent a year in, there is still deep seated pain and anger over the Japanese occupation that went from 1910 to 1945, when we freed them from Japanese tyranny. It's difficult without writing a whole book to convey the depth of suffering Japan inflicted on its neighbors. The civilian lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were certainly regrettable, but it pales in comparison to what Japanese did to civilians in the countries they occupied, from torture to outright holocaust. Japan had an ass kicking coming to it and we were the ones to mete it out.

Yes. I agree with all of this pretty much.

 

[blackhawk]

Look at the death toll for the U.S. forces at the battles of Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa 2000 killed at Peleliu, 6,800 killed at Iwo Jima, and 12,000 killed at Okinawa to answer this question. First and foremost surrender was not an option to the Japanese of that time for them that was dishonorable and worse than death so no embargo or blockade would have made them surrender when you combine this mindset with the population of mainland Japan and that military planners estimated the combined death toll on both sides would have been well over a million that made the atomic bombs as bad as they were the best option to end the war.

 

[The Irish Ram]

Let me try a different approach.
For anyone on this thread that is a parent, go back with me to a sleepy little town in Iowa. A mama there had 5 baby boys, that she loved and nurtured and tucked safely into bed at night. They grew into 5 wonderful young men who had their whole lives ahead of them. And then Japan decided to force us into a war we never asked for, but Japan insisted on.
And like thousands of other moms and dads, wives and children, that mother knew when she saw the chaplain pull up to her house, that she too had lost a beloved child. She managed to stay on her feet long enough to meet them on the porch and ask, "Which one did I lose?" The answer was, "All of them."
Parents, listen to that line. All of your precious children are dead simply because Japan wanted to kill them.

Those bombs were dropped on an unrelenting country, to put an end to the misery that Mrs. Sullivan and countless others needlessly endured at the whim of the Japanese. That generation didn't have the luxury of sitting back and pondering which Japanese still supported Japan, and which had grown weary of their war. We did what was necessary to bring our men home alive.
And then the greatest generation that has ever walked this earth, was responsible for the magnanimous act of helping the enemy rebuild their nation. Instead of second guessing them from your politically correct couch, thank them for putting their lives on the line so you could have your comfy judgmental couch. Your lack of respect is appalling.

 

[saintmichaeldefendthem]

.

It's certainly fair (and probably accurate) to assume that allowing the war to continue would have cost far more lives and involved far more risk. No doubt.

But making the decision to kill that many innocents. Man. I'm glad I'll never be in a position to have to consider an option like that.

.

The civilians weren't the goal of the bombs; they were just unfortunate collateral damage. The targets were legitimate military objectives (an army group headquarters and a shipyard). More civilians were killed in one night during a fire bomb attack on Tokyo than were killed in both atomic bombings.

It sucks that civilians get caught in the middle in cities like Dresden and Coventry and Tokyo, but that's total war for you.

Let's not white wash history. Hiroshima was targeted specifically for it's population density. The target was a bridge that crossed the Kyuohotaqawa River in the middle of the city, not the military production harbors to the South. The objective was to maximize casualties. And there was no attack on Tokyo that killed 105,000 civilians and I defy you to prove otherwise. Let's stick to the facts.

 

[Steven_R]

It was the fire bombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9-10 1945 (Operation Meetinghouse). Pretty much every historian thinks the official casualty numbers were artificially low and even then those numbers are nearly 100,000.

 

[The Irish Ram]

Let's not whitewash. Japan attacked us, killed our soldiers and tried to conquer the United States. We fought back. They lost. Lesson learned. Move on.

 

[saintmichaeldefendthem]

It was the fire bombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9-10 1945 (Operation Meetinghouse). Pretty much every historian thinks the official casualty numbers were artificially low and even then those numbers are nearly 100,000.

Then actually we're both wrong. The death toll was nearly identical.

 

[The Irish Ram]

It was the fire bombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9-10 1945 (Operation Meetinghouse). Pretty much every historian thinks the official casualty numbers were artificially low and even then those numbers are nearly 100,000.

I wonder why we did that. We should have dropped posies and valentines on Tokyo. What were we thinking!

 

[Unkotare]

Load it on a submarine. (They had at least three subs with four times the range required.)

Naval blockade, moron.

 

[Unkotare]

An embargo wouldn't have done it. They could feed their people....

No, they couldn't.

They didn't give a shit about feeding their people or keeping them alive....

Don't be stupid. Civilians on the mainland (what the militarists considered 'real' Japanese, as opposed to Okinawans, for example) were starving, and had long since grown tired of an extended, futile war and all that came with it. Starving children and old women were not going to die to the last fighting with sticks against a foe who had done what they thought was impossible.

Okinawa proves you wrong, .

You don't understand what you are talking about.

 

[Unkotare]

I don't buy it.

They no longer had a navy or air force to project their armies.

A simple food and trade embargo would have sufficed (enforced by our unchallenged navy).

There was no reason to even attack the Japanese mainland.

I think it was a bunch of sick and demented fucks that wanted to demonstrate the power of their new toy to the communist USSR.

Admiral William Leahy – the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American military decisions in World War II – wrote (pg. 441):

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.

This country is being run by murderous sociopaths.

Hi, The2ndAmendment.

Not too long ago, I was arguing pretty much the same thing. We devastated their fleet, ejected them from the Pacific Islands, bombed their infrastructure into military insignificance, and had them on their knees. That's all true.

But watching Pearl Harbor with my family on December 7th change my mind, not because of anything in the movie, but because I began to contemplate what Japan had done over the last several centuries leading up to Pearl Harbor. Their ruthless military conquests, their harsh treatment of civilians, and the atrocities they committed rivaled only by Nazi Germany left a deficit of justice that needed to be paid.

Historically, I look at how God suffers great injustice, cruelty, and despotic systems for decades and even centuries, but eventually brings it to a crushing end. It's what happened when the Israelites took Canaan, and there are many more examples. Japan had iron fisted control off and on of Siberia, Eastern China, the Koreas, and the Pacific Islands. Their cruelty is the stuff of legends and people had been crying out against their injustice for too long for a just God to ignore.

So rather than looking at Hiroshima as direct reciprocity for Pearl Harbor, it makes more sense to see it through the context of a long history of atrocities, massacres, torture, and suffering inflicted by the Empire of Japan. It was an evil empire that needed to be crushed to end its reign of terror on the Pacific rim. And crush them we did.

And what was the result? Japan has now, for the last 70 years, been a peaceful nation, a democracy that seeks economic success not through conquest but through free trade and capitalism. It's hard to second guess history, or to credibly claim that there would have been a similar result if we didn't bring them to the point of absolute, unconditional surrender.

So as recently as a week ago, I've changed my mind on Hiroshima. I think it was necessary and I think they deserved it.

Again, the bombs being dropped had nothing to do with Japan giving up, or "revenge." Of course many Americans then and now saw it that way.

It had everything to do with the USSR and their encroachment into the region. Again, they were absolute bullies, and they were certainly testing America's resolve. Stalin, rightfully so, knew the American people would not be able to stomach another long drawn out war. He took advantage of that, and he certainly wanted those very valuable trade routes (yes oil.)

The USSR was working some clandestine type of agreement with Japan, who was all too willing to some how save face. At the very least, they would not have to surrender to the United States. That in itself could be sold as a victory.

Stalin, for all intents and purposes, was basically asking Truman, "what they hell are you going to do about it?"

I am not sure if we know what sort of a sick tyrant Stalin was. So, the choices for this country were:

> Allow Japan to surrender to the USSR even after we fought the war and so many died.

> Start up a long drawn out HOT war with the USSR (we probably would have won, considering all of our factories were in working order and we did not lose half the men or hardware the USSR did and why Patton wanted to start it with them). Of course that would have meant 10s of thousands more young American men dying.

> Drop the bomb, and forcing the USSR to back off. The USSR called the bluff after the first drop and after the second drop they were not sure how many we had, so they backed off invading Japan, who became an "American ally" upon their surrender.

Those are the choices. Which one of the 3 would you have made?

Again, there were no choices that were good. I do not believe the Japanese people "deserved" it. I mean innocent women and children and elderly people etc etc are like most citizens in every country. They have little to no clue or care what is happening in some distant land.

However, this is the tragedy. There are different horrifying stories in every war. Thousands of them. Every single war has them, and it is very tempting to demonizing a group of people, a religion, or a race. I do it. It is not right.

Unless you are talking about insidious hypocrites like the American left wing piece of godless shit that is.

You didn't understand my post at all. It's not about what criteria caused President Truman to use nuclear bombs, it's about the longer term justice by which Japan received just reciprocity for centuries of horrible war crimes. In Korea, a nation I spent a year in, there is still deep seated pain and anger over the Japanese occupation that went from 1910 to 1945, when we freed them from Japanese tyranny. It's difficult without writing a whole book to convey the depth of suffering Japan inflicted on its neighbors. The civilian lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were certainly regrettable, but it pales in comparison to what Japanese did to civilians in the countries they occupied, from torture to outright holocaust. Japan had an ass kicking coming to it and we were the ones to mete it out.

So, killing all those civilians wasn't a military objective? Just for the visceral pleasure of revenge?