Did we really have to nuke Japan?

[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.

I voted "no." I think we should have targeted military targets.

If dropping the bombs were really about getting Japan to surrender then yes. It was really not about that. It was about getting The USSR to back off and getting Japan to surrender to us rather than Stalin and preventing a long drawn out hot war, which could not be sold to the American people.

 

[Theowl32]

You are the one that thinks America and the USSR were allies in August of 1945. Which means you know nothing about the conference of yalta in February of 1945.
you are a liar. You are a fucking American hating scumbag who is ignorant as all fuck.

Keep on telling Truman dropped the bombs for no good reason other than for the fun of it

You lost a long time ago.

Did the USSR declare war on Japan?

Soviet Japanese War 1945 - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

August 8th 1945, USSR declares war on Japan. August 9th the second bomb is dropped.

USSR backs off of Japan and Japan surrenders UNCONDITIONALLY on August 15th.

Short time after, your heroes the rosenbergs betrayed the country, and the USSR became a nuclear power.

Fuck!!!!!

In other words, the Soviet Union entered the Pacific Theater against Japan on the side of the U.S.

Btw, you have not come close to proving Truman dropped the bombs for the hell of it. You trying to sell that is just that fucking ignorant. You have not come close.

I've made an effective case. You've responded with the same basic argument of a toddler sure that they're right. Your argument boils down to, "NUH UH!!!"

You think I responded with no ugh? You piece of ignorant bloviated shit. I provided the motive and the real choices. I provided the timeline and when the Cold War began.

You had no clue about the conference of yalta. You continue your stupidity by claiming Truman dropped them for the hell of it.

Your attempt at passing commie propaganda with your half baked bullshit and lies did not work.

You lost.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Did the USSR declare war on Japan?

Soviet Japanese War 1945 - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

August 8th 1945, USSR declares war on Japan. August 9th the second bomb is dropped.

USSR backs off of Japan and Japan surrenders UNCONDITIONALLY on August 15th.

Short time after, your heroes the rosenbergs betrayed the country, and the USSR became a nuclear power.

Fuck!!!!!

In other words, the Soviet Union entered the Pacific Theater against Japan on the side of the U.S.

Btw, you have not come close to proving Truman dropped the bombs for the hell of it. You trying to sell that is just that fucking ignorant. You have not come close.

I've made an effective case. You've responded with the same basic argument of a toddler sure that they're right. Your argument boils down to, "NUH UH!!!"

You think I responded with no ugh? You piece of ignorant bloviated shit. I provided the motive and the real choices. I provided the timeline and when the Cold War began.

You had no clue about the conference of yalta. You continue your stupidity by claiming Truman dropped them for the hell of it.

Your attempt at passing commie propaganda with your half baked bullshit and lies did not work.

You lost.

It's common knowledge on the internet that when you start talking about people "winning" or "losing" you make an ass of yourself.

 

[martybegan]

No they were not as evidenced by my already linked source documents all Japan offered was a ceasefire in place with a return to Japan of all land seized since the start of the war.

How many times have you and I done this? You post the link to your source documents, I find the documents showing the Japanese cables intercepted by the U.S. showing them reaching out to the Soviet Union to end the conflict, thus making any invasion or nuclear bombing unnecessary, and you resort to quibbling over semantics.

All that Japan offered was a ceasefire with a return to November 1941 start positions. You know it, I know it and anyone that reads the link knows it. That is not an offer to surrender.

Surrendering with conditions is still surrendering. Eisenhower and MacArthur understood that, why don't you?

That type of surrender is what got Europe WWII out of WWI. Their conditions of no occupation, no disarmament, war crimes to be tried by the Japanese themselves were no-go's.

That is literally the opposite of what happened in WWI. An unconditional surrender by Germany leading to the punishing Versailles Treaty whereby Germany takes full responsibility for the war, must pay the Allies, give up territory, etc.. etc... is what led to the rise of the National Socialists within Germany because they promised to return Germany to greatness.

Germany did not unconditionally surrender in 1918. They got an armistice and then negotiated a peace treaty. Thats what Japan wanted in 1945.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

How many times have you and I done this? You post the link to your source documents, I find the documents showing the Japanese cables intercepted by the U.S. showing them reaching out to the Soviet Union to end the conflict, thus making any invasion or nuclear bombing unnecessary, and you resort to quibbling over semantics.

All that Japan offered was a ceasefire with a return to November 1941 start positions. You know it, I know it and anyone that reads the link knows it. That is not an offer to surrender.

Surrendering with conditions is still surrendering. Eisenhower and MacArthur understood that, why don't you?

That type of surrender is what got Europe WWII out of WWI. Their conditions of no occupation, no disarmament, war crimes to be tried by the Japanese themselves were no-go's.

That is literally the opposite of what happened in WWI. An unconditional surrender by Germany leading to the punishing Versailles Treaty whereby Germany takes full responsibility for the war, must pay the Allies, give up territory, etc.. etc... is what led to the rise of the National Socialists within Germany because they promised to return Germany to greatness.

Germany did not unconditionally surrender in 1918. They got an armistice and then negotiated a peace treaty. Thats what Japan wanted in 1945.

Yes, they negotiated being utterly destroyed by the Treaty of Versailles.

 

[martybegan]

All that Japan offered was a ceasefire with a return to November 1941 start positions. You know it, I know it and anyone that reads the link knows it. That is not an offer to surrender.

Surrendering with conditions is still surrendering. Eisenhower and MacArthur understood that, why don't you?

That type of surrender is what got Europe WWII out of WWI. Their conditions of no occupation, no disarmament, war crimes to be tried by the Japanese themselves were no-go's.

That is literally the opposite of what happened in WWI. An unconditional surrender by Germany leading to the punishing Versailles Treaty whereby Germany takes full responsibility for the war, must pay the Allies, give up territory, etc.. etc... is what led to the rise of the National Socialists within Germany because they promised to return Germany to greatness.

Germany did not unconditionally surrender in 1918. They got an armistice and then negotiated a peace treaty. Thats what Japan wanted in 1945.

Yes, they negotiated being utterly destroyed by the Treaty of Versailles.

Germany was not occupied with the exception of the Rhine beachheads, The government was not dissolved. Their army was not disbanded. There was no unconditional surrender, this was a conditional surrender/armistice. Germany could have tried to go back to war in 1919, but I doubt they would have like the outcome.

 

[SAYIT]

America is the greatest nation to ever exist. This is due to its foundation of limited government and maximum individual liberty.

However America has been poorly lead by a criminal gang known as politicians, for some time.

Truman was without a doubt a war criminal. Dropping those bombs on a defeated and defenseless nation, killing scores of women, children, and old people can only be considered a terrible crime against humanity.

Another member of the "I-gotta-bend-over-and-take-it-where-the-sun-don't-shine" club crawls in.

 

[Syriusly]

Japan was a defeated country. It's once powerful navy was left with a couple of submarines and little or no surface ships. It's army was defeated on every front. The clinically insane remnants of the Bushido empire were desperate to negotiate terms with the US but Harry Truman was following orders from his deceased former boss and the clinically insane holdouts in the FDR administration and he refused to negotiate so the Japanese went to Stalin who promised them everything. The biggest issue in the Japanese negotiations was the preservation of the Emperor and the promise that he would not be executed. Ironically that promise was kept after Truman authorized the incineration of two Japanese cities. While the Japanese thought they were negotiating peace terms with Russia (who was a US ally) they were jolted into reality with entire cities destroyed with a single bomb. The use of the Atomic bomb was a hideous example of how degenerate human beings had become in a mere four years.

So....after 150 years of atrocities against its neighbors and attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan is the victim?

Revenge is a very, very bad military tactic. Killing civilians to convince a crazy band of military holdouts to surrender is itself evidence of the loss of humanity in the U.S.. The use of nuclear weapons on civilians was the final indication that the FDR/Truman administration had gone insane and the media at the time was just a propaganda arm of the military.

I agree that revenge is a bad military tactic.

But the use of nuclear weapons on Japan was no worse than, and actually caused much less harm than conventional bombing.

America at the time was convinced that the only appropriate end to the war was unconditional surrender of both Germany and Japan. Germany had already been destroyed and unconditionally surrendered.

Japan was not surrendering- and had made plans for suicidal defense of Japan.

Dropping the bombs- especially the first bomb- made rational sense to leaders who were yes- more concerned about the lives of American soldiers than those of Japanese.

But those bombs probably saved more Japanese lives than American lives.

I can find much to criticize about our conduct in WW2, but I wasn't the one who had to commit U.S. troops to fighting it. By my reading of what American leaders knew at the time, dropping the bomb seemed like a rational decision.

 

[HenryBHough]

What every terrorist and tin-pot dictator KNOWS:

So long as America keeps on electing panty-waist liberals (of ANY party) they can do wot they FUCKING WELL PLEASE with no fear of reltribution.

Now...tell me Osama's dead but only if you personally saw his corpse and checked ID.

 

[rightwinger]

Japan was a defeated country. It's once powerful navy was left with a couple of submarines and little or no surface ships. It's army was defeated on every front. The clinically insane remnants of the Bushido empire were desperate to negotiate terms with the US but Harry Truman was following orders from his deceased former boss and the clinically insane holdouts in the FDR administration and he refused to negotiate so the Japanese went to Stalin who promised them everything. The biggest issue in the Japanese negotiations was the preservation of the Emperor and the promise that he would not be executed. Ironically that promise was kept after Truman authorized the incineration of two Japanese cities. While the Japanese thought they were negotiating peace terms with Russia (who was a US ally) they were jolted into reality with entire cities destroyed with a single bomb. The use of the Atomic bomb was a hideous example of how degenerate human beings had become in a mere four years.

So....after 150 years of atrocities against its neighbors and attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan is the victim?

Revenge is a very, very bad military tactic. Killing civilians to convince a crazy band of military holdouts to surrender is itself evidence of the loss of humanity in the U.S.. The use of nuclear weapons on civilians was the final indication that the FDR/Truman administration had gone insane and the media at the time was just a propaganda arm of the military.

I agree that revenge is a bad military tactic.

But the use of nuclear weapons on Japan was no worse than, and actually caused much less harm than conventional bombing.

America at the time was convinced that the only appropriate end to the war was unconditional surrender of both Germany and Japan. Germany had already been destroyed and unconditionally surrendered.

Japan was not surrendering- and had made plans for suicidal defense of Japan.

Dropping the bombs- especially the first bomb- made rational sense to leaders who were yes- more concerned about the lives of American soldiers than those of Japanese.

But those bombs probably saved more Japanese lives than American lives.

I can find much to criticize about our conduct in WW2, but I wasn't the one who had to commit U.S. troops to fighting it. By my reading of what American leaders knew at the time, dropping the bomb seemed like a rational decision.

Could we have gotten the same result without incinerating 130,000 civilians?

Could the first drop have been an a sparsely occupied island where we could have demonstrated the lethality of the weapon and then threatened to start bombing populated areas if they didn't surrender?

 

[Syriusly]

Japan was a defeated country. It's once powerful navy was left with a couple of submarines and little or no surface ships. It's army was defeated on every front. The clinically insane remnants of the Bushido empire were desperate to negotiate terms with the US but Harry Truman was following orders from his deceased former boss and the clinically insane holdouts in the FDR administration and he refused to negotiate so the Japanese went to Stalin who promised them everything. The biggest issue in the Japanese negotiations was the preservation of the Emperor and the promise that he would not be executed. Ironically that promise was kept after Truman authorized the incineration of two Japanese cities. While the Japanese thought they were negotiating peace terms with Russia (who was a US ally) they were jolted into reality with entire cities destroyed with a single bomb. The use of the Atomic bomb was a hideous example of how degenerate human beings had become in a mere four years.

So....after 150 years of atrocities against its neighbors and attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan is the victim?

Revenge is a very, very bad military tactic. Killing civilians to convince a crazy band of military holdouts to surrender is itself evidence of the loss of humanity in the U.S.. The use of nuclear weapons on civilians was the final indication that the FDR/Truman administration had gone insane and the media at the time was just a propaganda arm of the military.

I agree that revenge is a bad military tactic.

But the use of nuclear weapons on Japan was no worse than, and actually caused much less harm than conventional bombing.

America at the time was convinced that the only appropriate end to the war was unconditional surrender of both Germany and Japan. Germany had already been destroyed and unconditionally surrendered.

Japan was not surrendering- and had made plans for suicidal defense of Japan.

Dropping the bombs- especially the first bomb- made rational sense to leaders who were yes- more concerned about the lives of American soldiers than those of Japanese.

But those bombs probably saved more Japanese lives than American lives.

I can find much to criticize about our conduct in WW2, but I wasn't the one who had to commit U.S. troops to fighting it. By my reading of what American leaders knew at the time, dropping the bomb seemed like a rational decision.

Could we have gotten the same result without incinerating 130,000 civilians?

Could the first drop have been an a sparsely occupied island where we could have demonstrated the lethality of the weapon and then threatened to start bombing populated areas if they didn't surrender?

I believe that was one of the options discussed.

And again this is purely on memory, but I believe that the reasons it was not chosen was because
a) we had literally two bombs at the time. I don't believe we had a third one ready to use- there was a concern about wasting one bomb.
b) there was a concern that the bombs themselves might fail.

I think it is easy to look back now and second guess the decision, but if you read the discussions, there was an actual plan for the invasion of the Japanese islands- and a projected American casualties of over a million.

With that in mind, Truman's decision seems rational to me- as much as any war could be called rational.

 

[rightwinger]

Japan was a defeated country. It's once powerful navy was left with a couple of submarines and little or no surface ships. It's army was defeated on every front. The clinically insane remnants of the Bushido empire were desperate to negotiate terms with the US but Harry Truman was following orders from his deceased former boss and the clinically insane holdouts in the FDR administration and he refused to negotiate so the Japanese went to Stalin who promised them everything. The biggest issue in the Japanese negotiations was the preservation of the Emperor and the promise that he would not be executed. Ironically that promise was kept after Truman authorized the incineration of two Japanese cities. While the Japanese thought they were negotiating peace terms with Russia (who was a US ally) they were jolted into reality with entire cities destroyed with a single bomb. The use of the Atomic bomb was a hideous example of how degenerate human beings had become in a mere four years.

So....after 150 years of atrocities against its neighbors and attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan is the victim?

Revenge is a very, very bad military tactic. Killing civilians to convince a crazy band of military holdouts to surrender is itself evidence of the loss of humanity in the U.S.. The use of nuclear weapons on civilians was the final indication that the FDR/Truman administration had gone insane and the media at the time was just a propaganda arm of the military.

I agree that revenge is a bad military tactic.

But the use of nuclear weapons on Japan was no worse than, and actually caused much less harm than conventional bombing.

America at the time was convinced that the only appropriate end to the war was unconditional surrender of both Germany and Japan. Germany had already been destroyed and unconditionally surrendered.

Japan was not surrendering- and had made plans for suicidal defense of Japan.

Dropping the bombs- especially the first bomb- made rational sense to leaders who were yes- more concerned about the lives of American soldiers than those of Japanese.

But those bombs probably saved more Japanese lives than American lives.

I can find much to criticize about our conduct in WW2, but I wasn't the one who had to commit U.S. troops to fighting it. By my reading of what American leaders knew at the time, dropping the bomb seemed like a rational decision.

Could we have gotten the same result without incinerating 130,000 civilians?

Could the first drop have been an a sparsely occupied island where we could have demonstrated the lethality of the weapon and then threatened to start bombing populated areas if they didn't surrender?

I believe that was one of the options discussed.

And again this is purely on memory, but I believe that the reasons it was not chosen was because
a) we had literally two bombs at the time. I don't believe we had a third one ready to use- there was a concern about wasting one bomb.
b) there was a concern that the bombs themselves might fail.

I think it is easy to look back now and second guess the decision, but if you read the discussions, there was an actual plan for the invasion of the Japanese islands- and a projected American casualties of over a million.

With that in mind, Truman's decision seems rational to me- as much as any war could be called rational.

This whole thread is what if/revisionist history

The question is: Did we need to kill civilians in order to demonstrate the power of the bomb?

We knew we only had two bombs. The Japanese had no idea how many we had. In any case, it only would have taken a few months to build more bombs if we needed them

 

[regent]

So....after 150 years of atrocities against its neighbors and attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan is the victim?

Revenge is a very, very bad military tactic. Killing civilians to convince a crazy band of military holdouts to surrender is itself evidence of the loss of humanity in the U.S.. The use of nuclear weapons on civilians was the final indication that the FDR/Truman administration had gone insane and the media at the time was just a propaganda arm of the military.

I agree that revenge is a bad military tactic.

But the use of nuclear weapons on Japan was no worse than, and actually caused much less harm than conventional bombing.

America at the time was convinced that the only appropriate end to the war was unconditional surrender of both Germany and Japan. Germany had already been destroyed and unconditionally surrendered.

Japan was not surrendering- and had made plans for suicidal defense of Japan.

Dropping the bombs- especially the first bomb- made rational sense to leaders who were yes- more concerned about the lives of American soldiers than those of Japanese.

But those bombs probably saved more Japanese lives than American lives.

I can find much to criticize about our conduct in WW2, but I wasn't the one who had to commit U.S. troops to fighting it. By my reading of what American leaders knew at the time, dropping the bomb seemed like a rational decision.

Could we have gotten the same result without incinerating 130,000 civilians?

Could the first drop have been an a sparsely occupied island where we could have demonstrated the lethality of the weapon and then threatened to start bombing populated areas if they didn't surrender?

I believe that was one of the options discussed.

And again this is purely on memory, but I believe that the reasons it was not chosen was because
a) we had literally two bombs at the time. I don't believe we had a third one ready to use- there was a concern about wasting one bomb.
b) there was a concern that the bombs themselves might fail.

I think it is easy to look back now and second guess the decision, but if you read the discussions, there was an actual plan for the invasion of the Japanese islands- and a projected American casualties of over a million.

With that in mind, Truman's decision seems rational to me- as much as any war could be called rational.

This whole thread is what if/revisionist history

The question is: Did we need to kill civilians in order to demonstrate the power of the bomb?

We knew we only had two bombs. The Japanese had no idea how many we had. In any case, it only would have taken a few months to build more bombs if we needed them

If we had just continued our regular bombing of Japan I wonder how long it would have taken for Japan to surrender and what shape would Japan have been in after a year or two of regular bombing? These boards also require us to indicate the political good guys and bad guy, so which side, liberal or conservative is now against the use of the A bombs?

 

[gipper]

Japan was a defeated country. It's once powerful navy was left with a couple of submarines and little or no surface ships. It's army was defeated on every front. The clinically insane remnants of the Bushido empire were desperate to negotiate terms with the US but Harry Truman was following orders from his deceased former boss and the clinically insane holdouts in the FDR administration and he refused to negotiate so the Japanese went to Stalin who promised them everything. The biggest issue in the Japanese negotiations was the preservation of the Emperor and the promise that he would not be executed. Ironically that promise was kept after Truman authorized the incineration of two Japanese cities. While the Japanese thought they were negotiating peace terms with Russia (who was a US ally) they were jolted into reality with entire cities destroyed with a single bomb. The use of the Atomic bomb was a hideous example of how degenerate human beings had become in a mere four years.

So....after 150 years of atrocities against its neighbors and attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan is the victim?

Revenge is a very, very bad military tactic. Killing civilians to convince a crazy band of military holdouts to surrender is itself evidence of the loss of humanity in the U.S.. The use of nuclear weapons on civilians was the final indication that the FDR/Truman administration had gone insane and the media at the time was just a propaganda arm of the military.

I agree that revenge is a bad military tactic.

But the use of nuclear weapons on Japan was no worse than, and actually caused much less harm than conventional bombing.

America at the time was convinced that the only appropriate end to the war was unconditional surrender of both Germany and Japan. Germany had already been destroyed and unconditionally surrendered.

Japan was not surrendering- and had made plans for suicidal defense of Japan.

Dropping the bombs- especially the first bomb- made rational sense to leaders who were yes- more concerned about the lives of American soldiers than those of Japanese.

But those bombs probably saved more Japanese lives than American lives.

I can find much to criticize about our conduct in WW2, but I wasn't the one who had to commit U.S. troops to fighting it. By my reading of what American leaders knew at the time, dropping the bomb seemed like a rational decision.

Your entire premise is incorrect.

1. The assholes (FDR and Truman) never should have imposed unconditional surrender on Germany and Japan. This only prolonged the war, destruction, and death. Death and suffering mostly incurred by non-combatants of both nations.
2. There is no need to OCCUPY an foreign nation after war, but since the assholes completely destroyed both Germany and Japan, America was forced to occupy them to protect them from the USSR.
3. Japan was defenseless and unable to continue the war BEFORE Truman dropped the bombs. This proves the bombs were not dropped to end the war.
4. Japan was not going to commit national suicide. You think women, child, and the old people of Japan would have fought an advanced military like the USA. Wrong. They had nothing left and the people wanted peace.
5. It is entirely a myth, concocted by the Truman administration to justify the A bombings, that the bombs saved American lives. They concocted this myth AFTER the bombs were dropped, when they were getting criticism by many leaders in the USA and elsewhere.

 

[martybegan]

Japan was a defeated country. It's once powerful navy was left with a couple of submarines and little or no surface ships. It's army was defeated on every front. The clinically insane remnants of the Bushido empire were desperate to negotiate terms with the US but Harry Truman was following orders from his deceased former boss and the clinically insane holdouts in the FDR administration and he refused to negotiate so the Japanese went to Stalin who promised them everything. The biggest issue in the Japanese negotiations was the preservation of the Emperor and the promise that he would not be executed. Ironically that promise was kept after Truman authorized the incineration of two Japanese cities. While the Japanese thought they were negotiating peace terms with Russia (who was a US ally) they were jolted into reality with entire cities destroyed with a single bomb. The use of the Atomic bomb was a hideous example of how degenerate human beings had become in a mere four years.

So....after 150 years of atrocities against its neighbors and attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan is the victim?

Revenge is a very, very bad military tactic. Killing civilians to convince a crazy band of military holdouts to surrender is itself evidence of the loss of humanity in the U.S.. The use of nuclear weapons on civilians was the final indication that the FDR/Truman administration had gone insane and the media at the time was just a propaganda arm of the military.

I agree that revenge is a bad military tactic.

But the use of nuclear weapons on Japan was no worse than, and actually caused much less harm than conventional bombing.

America at the time was convinced that the only appropriate end to the war was unconditional surrender of both Germany and Japan. Germany had already been destroyed and unconditionally surrendered.

Japan was not surrendering- and had made plans for suicidal defense of Japan.

Dropping the bombs- especially the first bomb- made rational sense to leaders who were yes- more concerned about the lives of American soldiers than those of Japanese.

But those bombs probably saved more Japanese lives than American lives.

I can find much to criticize about our conduct in WW2, but I wasn't the one who had to commit U.S. troops to fighting it. By my reading of what American leaders knew at the time, dropping the bomb seemed like a rational decision.

Your entire premise is incorrect.

1. The assholes (FDR and Truman) never should have imposed unconditional surrender on Germany and Japan. This only prolonged the war, destruction, and death. Death and suffering mostly incurred by non-combatants of both nations.
2. There is no need to OCCUPY an foreign nation after war, but since the assholes completely destroyed both Germany and Japan, America was forced to occupy them to protect them from the USSR.
3. Japan was defenseless and unable to continue the war BEFORE Truman dropped the bombs. This proves the bombs were not dropped to end the war.
4. Japan was not going to commit national suicide. You think women, child, and the old people of Japan would have fought an advanced military like the USA. Wrong. They had nothing left and the people wanted peace.
5. It is entirely a myth, concocted by the Truman administration to justify the A bombings, that the bombs saved American lives. They concocted this myth AFTER the bombs were dropped, when they were getting criticism by many leaders in the USA and elsewhere.

1. Unconditional surrender is the reason Japan and Germany are no longer threats to world peace. After WWI conditional surrender was not going to be allowed.

2. Occupation verified compliance, plus do you really want to contemplate Russian troops on the French border in your modified cold war?

3. They were still able to repel any invasion, and had shown that they were willing to fight to the death. Japanese civilians, swayed under government propaganda were willing to commit suicide rather than be captured.

4. No, they were going to fight with pitchforks against any invasion force. Some of the people may have wanted peace, but enough were gung ho to go along with the government.

5. The invasion of Japan plans, as well as the expected casualties are well documented. The order of hundreds of thousands of purple hearts during the war (of which we have not run out of yet) gives lie to your statement of post-war revisionism.

 

[Syriusly]

[
4. Japan was not going to commit national suicide. You think women, child, and the old people of Japan would have fought an advanced military like the USA. Wrong. They had nothing left and the people wanted peace.

Seriously- have you never read about the war?
1945 suicide order still a trauma on Okinawa
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/world/asia/20iht-oki.html?_r=0

TOMAN, Okinawa — Clutching a hand grenade issued by the Japanese Imperial Army and driven by tales of what U.S. soldiers would do with a pretty young woman, Sumie Oshiro recalled,she fled into the forests of Okinawa during the World War II battle known here as the "typhoon of steel."

"At one place, we sat together and hit the grenade on the ground, but it did not explode," she said last week of her flight with friends after Japanese soldiers told them to kill themselves rather than be taken captive.

"We tried to kill ourselves many times, trying to explode the grenade we were given from the Japanese Army," she said.

The three-month battle for Okinawa took more than 200,000 lives - 12,520 Americans, 94,136 Japanese soldiers and 94,000 Okinawan civilians, about one-quarter of the prewar population.

Lieutenant General Robert Blackman, commander of the U.S. Marine forces in Japan, led a low-profile memorial ceremony on Friday, attended largely by American war veterans and relatives.

This Thursday, the 60th anniversary of the the last major battle of World War II, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is scheduled to attend Japan's tribute here.

On Sunday, he led a memorial service on Iwo Jima, a Japanese island where fighting ended in late March 1945, just as the Okinawa invasion began.

Okinawa's trauma over what happened after 545,000 U.S. troops attacked this small archipelago is still deep. People on Japan's southernmost islands want more recognition from Japanese society for their sufferings. But that conflicts with a growing nationalist effort to airbrush the past.

After winning battles to play down Japan's war-era history of forcing Asian women to work in military-run brothels and Asian men to work in Japanese factories and mines, Nobukatsu Fujioka, a nationalist educator, started campaigning two weeks ago to delete from Japanese schoolbooks the accounts of orders from soldiers to civilians here to choose suicide over surrender.

He said there were no such orders. "I confirmed this by hearing people this time," he said.

"People claimed that there was an order by Japanese Army because they wanted to get pension for the bereaved," he said.

Okinawa's trauma over the widespread civilian suicides has been sharpened by the deep belief here that soldiers from Japan's main islands encouraged Okinawan civilians to choose suicide over surrender.

In a display at the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum, a spotlight highlights a glinting bayonet held by a fierce-looking Japanese soldier who stands over an Okinawan family huddled in a cave, the mother trying to smother her baby's cries.

"At the hands of Japanese soldiers, civilians were massacred, forced to kill themselves and each other," reads the caption. Nearby, a life-size wall photo shows the grisly aftermath of a family killed by a hand grenade.

Soldiers seeking refuge from the naval shelling forced civilians out of limestone caves, according to wall captions.

About two weeks into the battle, the Japanese military commander sought to suppress spying by banning the speaking of the Okinawan dialect, a version of Japanese often unintelligible to nonresidents. Armed with this order, Japanese soldiers killed about 1,000 Okinawans, according to local historians.

"To prevent the leakage of secret information, civilians were ordered never to surrender to U.S. forces," read one wall caption inspected by a large high school group on Friday. "In many places, parents, children, relatives and friends were ordered or coerced to kill each other in large groups. These killings were in the wake of years of militaristic education, which exhorted people to serve their nation by giving their lives to the emperor."

Two Japanese history textbooks from the 1990s that talk of Japanese soldiers' "coercing" civilians to kill themselves are on display. Okinawans fear that this history will be dropped from the national consciousness.

"In many cases, hand grenades, which were in extreme shortage, were distributed to residents," Masahide Ota, an Okinawan who fought with the Japanese Army's Blood and Iron Student Corps, said in an interview. "I heard people say they were told by the military to commit suicide using the grenades rather than becoming captives."

After surrendering four months after the fighting ended here, Ota went on to become a leading local historian, then Okinawa's governor, from 1990 to 1998. Now, at 80, he represents the prefecture in Japan's upper house of Parliament.

Okinawans fear that the lack of a written suicide order by Japanese military commanders will prompt editors of Japanese history textbooks to drop all mention of the military indoctrination that soldiers and civilians had to live and die together.

On nearby Geruma Island, Takejiro Nakamura was a civilian, a 15-year-old student when the invasion started.

"For a long time, the Japanese Imperial Army announced that, on other islands, the women had been raped and killed, and the men were tied at the wrists and tanks were driven over them," said Nakamura, now a guide at a museum that bears bullet holes. "Japanese Imperial Army repeated that again and again, and we believed that announcement completely."

 

[Syriusly]

5. It is entirely a myth, concocted by the Truman administration to justify the A bombings, that the bombs saved American lives. They concocted this myth AFTER the bombs were dropped, when they were getting criticism by many leaders in the USA and elsewhere.

What criticism?

 

[The Irish Ram]

1. The assholes (FDR and Truman) never should have imposed unconditional surrender on Germany and Japan. This only prolonged the war, destruction, and death. Death and suffering mostly incurred by non-combatants of both nations.
2. There is no need to OCCUPY an foreign nation after war, but since the assholes completely destroyed both Germany and Japan, America was forced to occupy them to protect them from the USSR.
3. Japan was defenseless and unable to continue the war BEFORE Truman dropped the bombs. This proves the bombs were not dropped to end the war.
4. Japan was not going to commit national suicide. You think women, child, and the old people of Japan would have fought an advanced military like the USA. Wrong. They had nothing left and the people wanted peace.
5. It is entirely a myth, concocted by the Truman administration to justify the A bombings, that the bombs saved American lives. They concocted this myth AFTER the bombs were dropped, when they were getting criticism by many leaders in the USA and elsewhere.

1.Those two men didn't barter with enemies. America doesn't negotiate with the enemy. At least they didn't then. Japan didn't get to decide what terms they would accept, if they surrendered. What are ya going to give me wasn't an option for Japan. Just like a defendant in court doesn't get to negotiate his sentence with the judge or tell the judge what sentence he will abide by and which sentence he would reject.

2. Yes there is a need to OCCUPY a foreign nation. Here is the thing about those "surrender talks" that the Russians were having with Japan, when Japan's outlook was bleak. Japan did not want to lose the war.
America and Russia were uneasy allies. Both considered the option of engaging each other after all other obstacles were removed from the fray. If Japan could persuade Russia that 2 are better than 1, and an alliance between Japan and Russia could defeat the U.S. Japan still stood a chance. Russia declined. There was no reason not to believe that Japan wouldn't take a 6 mo. hiatus after the surrender to regroup, look for back up, merge and/or build their own bomb.
Occupation and the dismantling of their military was to insure they were actually sincere about the war being over. We knew how sneaky they were. Pearl Harbor went well for them.

3. They disagree. They were willing to continue the war even after they were hit with the first bomb. They may have been losing battles, but they still wanted to win the war. They were waiting to hear from Russia. 1 bomb later made Russia's decision for Russia. They didn't have a bomb either. Out of the 3 only 1 had the means to end a war without losing soldiers.

4. They were told they were committing suicide, by way of waking a sleeping giant and never took one step back. You bet women children and the elderly would have fought. Causalities were insignificant when winning meant the United States of Japan. Why do you think our military didn't train Americans in kamikaze technique? Our soldiers weren't expendable.
We wanted peace before they attacked us. If peace was their objective, a second bomb would not have been necessary.

5. Bullshit. We were not perceived in the global eye like we are now. Not only was there no criticism, the world was astonished by the valor of our soldiers. We were admired by friend and foe alike for our courage and determination. And humanity. There concentration camps were not quite the same as ours. We had Germans here that didn't want to leave when the war ended.
The war ended because of those bombs. The lives of those worldwide who were no longer being shot to death, lived and went home. Those not yet tortured to death in concentration camps, lived and went home.
Ending the war saved lives.

 

[gipper]

There was much criticism of the bombings...not knowing this, is proof you are uninformed. Some of that criticism is clearly posted in this thread. Read it.

Yes America had to occupy Germany and Japan, only because they destroyed both nations making them unable to defend themselves from the Russian hordes.

The US military originally believed they would lose 40k men had they invaded Japan. The 500,000 American deaths is complete fiction and a lie unfortunately believed by many, even today. The lie was fabricated to convince us that the war criminal Truman, was right in murdering thousands of Japanese women and children in cold blood...really not much different from what the Nazis did in their death camps.

Its all right here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/denson7
html http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico22.html

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

martybegan

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.

It was a weapon, the US spent billions developing it, it was going to get used no matter what. No one really knew enough about it to think it was anything else than just a big regular bomb, because one had never been detonated in anger before.

Plus, if we didn't use it, we probably would have needed or not been able to refuse soviet assistance in the invasion. Want to imagine the cold war with a North ans South Japan?

The danger is ignorance and revisionist history like yours. Read what the government scientists were worried about as they advised the President


geeze!

Yes, there was the chance they talked about with the atmosphere igniting, however most of their opposition interestingly occurred when Germany was defeated. They also were mostly not against detonating it, but wanted a demonstration. The fact that the Japanese Military still wanted to fight after one of its cities was incinerated shows you how well a demonstration was going to work.

And as for the claim of "revisionist history", go fuck a camel dainty.

they talked about much more. Like the Peach here, you have your own version of events, how very odd