"The greatest thing in history"

[Quatermass]

The Japanese valiant attack on slumbering Pearl Harbour will go down in history as a bold and brave military manoeuvre, with virtually no civilian losses, and certainly more killed as a result of U.S. 'friendly fire'.

The American sneak dropping of Atomic bombs on hundreds of thousands of civilians on the other hand will go down in history as one of the most cowardly endeavours known to Man. A chapter which adequately characterises the modern American nation, and its political leadership.

Unable to face the Japanese in conventional direct warfare. Instead turning on the Japanese soldier's women and children at home, behind the war lines. Vaporising hundreds of thousands of innocents as they make their way to school and as they journey out, shopping.

Continuing the theme, still active and precipitated by Yukon: http://www.usmessageboard.com/military/75083-the-greatest-war-crime.html I again raise the spectre of the Terroristic countenance modern American Imperialism represents (See also: http://www.usmessageboard.com/the-m...ions-of-afghanistan-and-iraq.html#post1156878 ) in order to determine the views of those torchbearers of ethical rectitude that frequent U.S.Messageboard's religious pages.

Ace Japanese fighter/bomber pilots skilfully engage military targets in the daringly orchestrated attack on Pearl Harbour.

The following is an excerpt from: "Hiroshima was no longer a city"
By Mikki Smith ( full article: ISR issue 13 | "Hiroshima was no longer a city" )On August 6, 1945, a single uranium bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy," was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later--and despite the likelihood of an immediate surrender by Japan--a plutonium bomb, "Fat Man," was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Now the whole world--in particular, Russia, the other main contender for postwar dominance--could see the devastating power of these new kinds of weapons. The United States had demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that it would not hesitate to annihilate countless civilian men, women, and children in order to accomplish its aims. The U.S. hoped that such "atomic diplomacy" would secure its position as world superpower in the postwar period.

"The greatest thing in history"
As President Harry S. Truman ate lunch on the Augusta, returning home from his meeting at Potsdam with British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill and USSR Premier Joseph Stalin, he was given the news of the bombing of Hiroshima. Elated, he told the group of sailors around him, "This is the greatest thing in history."(2) The cause for his celebration was the incineration of Hiroshima's infrastructure and tens of thousands of its inhabitants.

Note.
2. Quoted in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 734.

Infanticide victim 4 year old Shinichi Tetsutani's partially melted tricycle remains a poignant icon for the illegal and amoral, unbridled barbarity of U.S. Imperialist aggression.

 

[Kalam]

What a dumbass.

I'm ethically opposed to what we did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but to act as if the Japanese actions at Pearl Harbor were praiseworthy is completely ridiculous. If you truly cared about "imperialist aggression," you'd oppose the attacks at Pearl Harbor. The entire purpose behind the attacks was to cripple America's Pacific fleet so that Japan could continue its imperialistic conquest of eastern and southeastern Asia unhindered. To pretend that the Japanese were morally superior to the European colonizers whose Asian holdings they wanted for themselves, or to the United States, makes no sense whatsoever.

That you've ignored Japan's own war crime, which exceeded America's war crime in severity by far, attests to your hopeless ignorance.

Educate yourself: Nanking Massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Amanda]

O.M.G.

 

[Quatermass]

As per usual Kalam you fail to grasp the point at issue. Could this be a persistent character flaw, in your desperate attempts to court acceptance and favour as a Muslim in the U.S. ?

So where do I voice a support for Japan’s war crimes Kalam ? All my contributions are relentlessly critical of crimes against civilians during periods of war. Where do I take a supporting stance for 1940s Japan’s empire building ambitions in Asia in my post Kalam ? I merely remarked on the contrast between the forthright and bold strike Japan’s navy fleet delivered as opposed to the shameful and impious disregard for all fundamental war conventions displayed in the US response at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In your subjective, patriotic reaction to this event you make foolish assumptions about issues I haven’t raised and fail to recognize the superiority of Japan’s forces in this instance, which only betrays bias.

Their actions at Pearl Harbour serve as a blueprint for military precision, (take note American / Israeli service personnel), for proper conduct during International conflict (take note Abu Ghraib prison guards and Vietnam vet’s) and for a level of personal self sacrifice which surpasses the culture of friendly-fire-now ask questions later that is so redolent in every U.S. manoeuvre.

I don’t suppose you’ll appreciate that an old enemy can teach the World’s bully a thing or two;

But there it is.

Young teenaged girl lies in the agonies of atomic trauma, courtesy of U.S.A.F. heroes.

 

[TofuDog]

quatermass, I'm a little hungry, go make me some eggrolls and a #4.

 

[strollingbones]

the us showed mercy in warning them....they were warned...do you no innocents died at pearl harbor...no women...no children....

 

[roomy]

I thought it was sliced bread.

 

[editec]

Yes, the Attack on Pearl Harbor was a magnificent military attack.

But your outrage about how badly the USA treated them by dropping TWO ATOMIC weapons, needs to be put into the light of the times, too.

And what were those times? Were they valiant brilliant military actions on the part of the Japanese?

Or were they also a litany of Japanese war crimes against civilians during that time?

We were facing MONSTERS who'd taken over the Japanese culture and turned it from something foreign but understandable, to something truly horrid.

In light of the TIMES, the US response to Japanese aggression was not, repeat, NOT inhumane.

In retrospect, we can and should question whether or not the atomic bombs were absolutely necessary, of course.

But given the following, Japan is just god damned lucky that cooler heads prevailed after Japan surrendered.

What do you suppose the CHINESE would have done to the Japanese had they had the hammer in 1945.

Do you think a single Japanese person would have survived a CHINESE takeover?

Quatermass, you need to read the following to understand the times and the enemy we were facing.

R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."[21] According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 millions in the course of the war.[22]
The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937-38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war, although the accepted figure is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.[23] A similar crime was the Changjiao massacre. In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre, resulted in the deaths of 100,000 civilians in the Philippines and in the Sook Ching massacre, between 25,000 and 50,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore were taken to beaches and massacred. There were numerous other massacres of civilians e.g. the Kalagong massacre.
A Japanese soldier with a "hunt trophy", taken presumably in 1942 during operation sankō, the "Three Alls Policy", as it was nicknamed by Chinese.


Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."


Additionally, captured allied service personnel were massacred in various incidents, including:

• Laha massacre
  [*]Banka Island massacre
  [*]Parit Sulong
  [*]Palawan massacre
  [*]SS Tjisalak massacre perpetrated by Japanese submarine I-8
  [*]Wake Island massacre-see Battle of Wake Island

Note: this is not a complete list of massacres. There were many others.

source

If you STILL think that he Americans were war criminals because we ended the war using atoimic weapons, then I honestly do NOT think you're an honest player, here.

I believe that, given the above, if you still think America was the greatest war criminal of the century, then your anti-American prejudices are blinding such that you cannot honestly evaluate American history.

 

[roomy]

The rape of Nanking was a nice move.

 

[TofuDog]

Quatermass, you all better be good little zipperheads or the US will have to nuke your bony asses again.

 

[Quatermass]

I need no reminding of atrocities the Imperial Japanese army committed with clippings from Wikipedia; these things are already known to me. As mentioned above in my response to Kalam, I am not a supporter of the 20th Century’s Empire of Japan.

I merely compare two methods of warfare in my original post to highlight the degenerate, illegal culture that is most redolent in U.S. military engagements, where civilians are routinely butchered in acts of American Terrorism. A Terrorism that is staged with blessings from Presidential offices, and performed with patriotic zeal by flag waving foot-soldiers on the front lines and obedient U.S.A.F. bomber crews safely above the enemy’s defenceless families.

Further editec, if you are to compare a monarchistic military dictatorship with the imperialist bourgeois state which some consider to represent a 'great democracy' in your arguments of justification for the latter's actions in the war, you actually compliment my position without being aware, for in such a comparison the two systems are brought to an even keel.

Now if your precious capitalist democracy was, and is indeed a higher establishment of civilisation than the rabid emperor system fascism of 20th century wartime Japan, (the “Monsters” as you call them) then its actions should reflect civilisation, and not barbarity, yet they do not. The actions of America constantly reflect an inherent cowardice, and a salient Godless disregard for ethics throughout modern history. Exactly the fruits one would expect from the barbaric dictatorship.

The lives of multitudinous civilian innocents in war zones throughout U.S. Imperialism’s belligerent history are obliterated like ritual sacrifices in an offering to the great American Pagan God of Mammon.

...And contributors to this forum have the audacity to proclaim America is some sort of 'Christian nation'. The art of comedy at least, is not lost in the delusions of a brainwashed people.

Such was the intensity of the explosion radiance ghostly shadows are all that remains of several unknown victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I note with curiosity that editec believes the Dropping of Atomic bombs on the passive families of enemy soldiers:

“...was not, repeat, NOT inhumane.”

This is the reason I’ve raised the issue in the ethics and religion section: To investigate the moral standing of the modern peoples, especially Americans, and their attitudes towards wartime atrocities committed in their names.

 

[Amanda]

The rape of Nanking was a nice move.

I read that book, it was chilling.

 

[elvis]

The Japanese valiant attack on slumbering Pearl Harbour will go down in history as a bold and brave military manoeuvre, with virtually no civilian losses, and certainly more killed as a result of U.S. 'friendly fire'.

The American sneak dropping of Atomic bombs on hundreds of thousands of civilians on the other hand will go down in history as one of the most cowardly endeavours known to Man. A chapter which adequately characterises the modern American nation, and its political leadership.

Unable to face the Japanese in conventional direct warfare. Instead turning on the Japanese soldier's women and children at home, behind the war lines. Vaporising hundreds of thousands of innocents as they make their way to school and as they journey out, shopping.

Continuing the theme, still active and precipitated by Yukon: http://www.usmessageboard.com/military/75083-the-greatest-war-crime.html I again raise the spectre of the Terroristic countenance modern American Imperialism represents (See also: http://www.usmessageboard.com/the-m...ions-of-afghanistan-and-iraq.html#post1156878 ) in order to determine the views of those torchbearers of ethical rectitude that frequent U.S.Messageboard's religious pages.

Ace Japanese fighter/bomber pilots skilfully engage military targets in the daringly orchestrated attack on Pearl Harbour.

The following is an excerpt from: "Hiroshima was no longer a city"
By Mikki Smith ( full article: ISR issue 13 | "Hiroshima was no longer a city" )On August 6, 1945, a single uranium bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy," was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later--and despite the likelihood of an immediate surrender by Japan--a plutonium bomb, "Fat Man," was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Now the whole world--in particular, Russia, the other main contender for postwar dominance--could see the devastating power of these new kinds of weapons. The United States had demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that it would not hesitate to annihilate countless civilian men, women, and children in order to accomplish its aims. The U.S. hoped that such "atomic diplomacy" would secure its position as world superpower in the postwar period.

"The greatest thing in history"
As President Harry S. Truman ate lunch on the Augusta, returning home from his meeting at Potsdam with British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill and USSR Premier Joseph Stalin, he was given the news of the bombing of Hiroshima. Elated, he told the group of sailors around him, "This is the greatest thing in history."(2) The cause for his celebration was the incineration of Hiroshima's infrastructure and tens of thousands of its inhabitants.

Note.
2. Quoted in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 734.

Infanticide victim 4 year old Shinichi Tetsutani's partially melted tricycle remains a poignant icon for the illegal and amoral, unbridled barbarity of U.S. Imperialist aggression.

Nice tricycle. There should be a commemorative coin with the Anola Gay on it. with the mushroom cloud included, of course. Would the Anola Gay be heads and the mushroom cloud be tails, or vice versa?

 

[editec]

I note with curiosity that editec believes the Dropping of Atomic bombs on the passive families of enemy soldiers:

“...was not, repeat, NOT inhumane.”

This is the reason I’ve raised the issue in the ethics and religion section: To investigate the moral standing of the modern peoples, especially Americans, and their attitudes towards wartime atrocities committed in their names.

Your curiosity is sort of curious in light of the facts in this case.

You are curious that I believe that an action leading to fewer deaths of innocent civilians is preferable to an action leading to MORE DEATHS of those same innocent civilians?

Would you have prefered many millions of Japanese dying in an invasion and subsequent hostile occupation to hundreds of thousands dying instantly that would prevent that invasion?

Interesting position you're taking, but hardly a humane one, or for that matter one with a moral outcome, either.

Why do you take such an inhumane position in this case?

Do you really hate the Japs, or something?

Would it have pleased you more if we'd killed tens of millions of Japanese by invading that nation and then having to fight a guerilla war against them?

Because those were TRUMAN's choices as he understood them at the time, you know.

 

[TofuDog]

They shoulda nuked berlin and munich as well.

 

[editec]

They shoulda nuked berlin and munich as well.

In 1945 you would have found a whole lot of people who would have agreed with you, that's for damned sure.

But that wasn't an option.

 

[TofuDog]

why not?

 

[elvis]

why not?

because the allied armies were already in Germany. not the case with Japan.

 

[Old Rocks]

why not?

Because the the European war had ended before we had deliverable bombs.

 

[Old Rocks]

In 1945 one of my uncles was a Marine that had taken part in the invasion of Okinawa. He was sure that we were going to have to invade all of the Japanese Islands in the same manner. When we dropped the bomb, and the Japanese surrendered, he sat down and cried. For he had already given himself up for dead. And now, he realized that he might be going home, after all. The dropping of the bomb was neccessary for two reasons.

The first was to end that Japanese war without having to invade all the Japanese Islands.

The second, if we had not, and the rest of the world had not, seen the devestation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cold war would have ended in a nuclear holocaust. For there were two realizations in that act. One, that one bomb could complete destroy any city in the world. Two, that there was no way possible that one could prevent all of a major nations planes from getting to any place in the world. And all it took was one bomb for one city.

What we did at Hiroshima was a horror. Failure to do it would have allowed even greater horrors. Like all too many choices, only a bad choice and a worst one in this situation.