phadras ,
My condolences to the losses your family endured , I too lost an Uncle in the Pacific . Another Uncle was killed by the Germans in Italy . I wouldn't be writing this today if my Father wouldn't have made it out of his P-51 when his engine caught on fire over England .
I think the most important part of the article that Bry suggested we read (Yes Bry I read all 5 pages ) was at the very end .
"Emotional issues were also at work. Time and again, the question of whether dropping the atomic bomb was militarily necessary has become entangled with the quite separate issue of anger at Japan's sneak attack and the brutality of its military. The Japanese people have an ugly history to confront, including not only Pearl Harbor but the bombing of Shanghai, the rape of Nanking, the forced prostitution of Korean women, the horror of the Bataan death march, and the systematic torture and murder of American and other prisoners of war."
Go to the web sites such as
www.cnd.org/njmassacre/index.html and take a look at the photographs that document the Japanese handiwork in China during the Nanjing massacre .300,000 men , women , and children massacred . 20,000 raped . The photograph of the naked woman with a shaft of some kind shoved into her genetalia really speaks volumes about the barbaric treatment of the Japanese army .
The fact that Japan used biological warfare and that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were where most of their war machine factories were located never came up in that article . Why bring up those facts . The point is that a huge number of Americans had family members killed by the Japanese . The attack on Pearl Harbor , unlike September 11, 2001 , remained very much in the minds of Americans for years. What I am really amazed with is how many diaries and letters have been found by these "expert historians" . I've never known a single person in my life that kept a journal or a diary , and none have held on to mail for 60 years .
Ralph . . . You brought up slavery , my ancestors were enslavened , raped and pillaged by the British in Nova Scotia . They then were seperated from their family members and thrown on seperate boats to relocate while watching the British torch their homes . I hate that this happened to them but I am sure that they would feel that the sacrifices they endured were worth it for the betterment of their children who were lucky enough to be born in the United States . I would be surprised to know that the ancestors of black Americans would think their sacrifice wasn't worth it . I certainly don't condone slavery but that was the norm of the day . You can't look at it with todays wisdom and understand what was happening in those years . Every race on this planet has been enslavened at one time or the other , blacks have been lucky enough to parlay it into major amounts of cash and consideration . I could bitch for the rest of my life about the British and I will never get a shilling out of them . You can keep dragging that old slavery card up but the fact remains . . . blacks are the biggest sellers in the music industry , Tiger Woods is the number 1 golfer in the world , Oprah is the most successful self made woman , Serena Williams #1 Tennis player , Most of college and professional basketball and football players are black , top comedians , top movie draws , etc. . . I think it is a little meaningless to hold on to that history like it happened yesterday . Take a look at the site I mentioned earlier and tell me again that we have done the same . I'm sure David will come in about now and bring up the photographs of Iraqis that Americans have brutally murdered , sorry David , it's not the same thing . We did not purposely bomb civilians . We didnt rape , torture , experiment on , or behead civilians .
You didn't read the article either, did you? The history is not so much speculation as it is comparing the records and writings of the people involved at the time, and those records and writings clearly indicate that the bombs were not necessary to end the war, nor were they believed by the president and his administration to be necessary to secure the end of the war. In fact, the end of the war was delayed and American lives were lost, in order to complete the development of the bombs and use them to negotiate a more favorable end to the war vis a vis the Soviet Union.
