The Nuking of Nagasaki: Even More Immoral and Unnecessary than Hiroshima

[elektra]

So many hypocrites in this thread. Dummies too.


Chris Hedges: Worthy and Unworthy Victims

Chris Hedges got fired for plagiarism.

 

[Open Bolt]

No, the atomic bomb did not have a major impact on the hardliners' decision to accept surrender, as Japanese records show. They were willing to sacrifice many more cities to being wiped by either conventional or nuclear bombs. But the Soviet invasion raised the unacceptable prospect of Soviet occupation.

What the Soviet invasion did was demolish the possibility of using the Soviets as mediators.

Truman and his inner circle ignorantly assumed, or perhaps knowingly adopted the lie, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused Japan to surrender.

It's an easy assumption to make. They were hoping that the atomic bombs would make Japan surrender, and then Japan surrendered the day after Nagasaki.

They took this position to excuse their war crime of nuking Nagasaki just three days after Hiroshima.

It was not even remotely a war crime. We are allowed to bomb military targets when we are at war.

Are you just pretending not to understand the plain import of Togo's statement? Do you understand that Togo was Japan's Foreign Minister and one of the biggest peace advocates in the cabinet?

I see nothing particularly important about Togo's statement.

Togo was detailing the terms for a surrender that he hoped would be brokered by the Soviets.

No he wasn't. He did not detail any surrender terms.

You are totally, totally confused. The Togo-Sato cables are not talking about what the Japanese were offering to the Nationalists; they're talking about what the Japanese would offer to the U.S. to achieve a negotiated peace.

Except, the cables don't talk about what Japan would offer to the US.

Japan was not a dictatorship.

Sure it was. The Japanese Army wielded absolute power in Japan.

You can repeat this myth a million times, but that won't make it true.

Japan's atrocities were no myth.

Some Japanese in some areas did commit war crimes, but we committed plenty of war crimes too.

Eye for an eye. We did what we had to to make Japan stop their reign of terror.

And nuking two defenseless cities when we knew Japan's civilian leaders wanted to surrender on acceptable terms was arguably one of the worst war crimes in world history.

Hardly.

Yeah, of course we were still "at war" with Japan--because Truman refused to do what most of his advisers urged him to do and because he refused to act on the intelligence that Japan's civilian leaders wanted to end the war on acceptable terms.

No. The war continued because Japan was still refusing to surrender. Truman was not ignoring his advisors.

There were no actions to be taken on the intelligence in question.

 

[Open Bolt]

A "negotiated peace" is conditional surrender.

Not necessarily. It can also be ending the war in a draw, much like the Korean War later ended.

It's only vague to you, seemingly. Everyone else is capable of understanding the explicit content of the message.

The only content of the message was that Japan wanted the Soviets to let Prince Konoye come and talk to them about helping Japan to escape the war.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs was not a position of power?

Correct.

Most surrenders are conditional. A truce is not quite the same thing.

Indeed. And the intercepts made it appear that Japan was seeking a truce, not a surrender.

Now you're simply redefining words.

No. He is pointing out that those intercepts are not evidence of a desire to surrender.

Whether or not it says the actual word "surrender" is indeed a minor issue.

Not if it means that Japan wasn't trying to surrender.

A truce is where no side wins, see the Korean War. A negotiated peace, or conditional surrender, is where one side surrenders assuming certain conditions are met. They still lose, but on their own terms.

Yes. And it looked like Japan was trying to achieve a truce, not a surrender.

 

[Open Bolt]

It was motivated by revenge and probably racism

You left out the part where we wanted to force Japan to surrender.

with no regard for human life or human decency.

Weapons are designed to kill people and break things. That's what they are there for.

And that changes what exactly? You know what they say about two wrongs.

Self defense is hardly a wrong.

If Japan didn't want us to nuke them in self defense, then they shouldn't have been attacking us.

 

[Open Bolt]

The US bombing campaign of Iraqi urban centers, called “Shock and Awe,” saw the dropping of 3,000 bombs on civilian areas that killed over 7,000 noncombatants in the first two months of the war.

Fake news. Shock and Awe never happened. It was advertised in a disinformation campaign to throw Saddam's defenses off from our true plan of attack.

 

[Open Bolt]

The first bomb confused the Japanese, nothing like this had ever happened before and they may have thought God was responsible because no weapon of war was anything like this previously

Japan knew what an atomic bomb was from their own atomic bomb program.

And Truman announced to the world almost immediately that the Hiroshima attack was an atomic bomb.

 

[Open Bolt]

Many American military leaders of that day recognized that the use of atomic bombs against civilians was unnecessary and immoral.

Those people were pretty goofy. We didn't use atomic bombs against civilians. We bombed military targets.

The issue is that we used the most terrible weapon in the history of the world to deliberately slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians.

No we didn't. We bombed military targets.

You've got a middle schooler's idea of the war (and war in general) at best.
Atomic bomb or mass invasion were not the only two options.

Your references to "options" (as if we selected one option and went with that alone) is not even remotely how war is fought.

We were pursuing all options simultaneously. And if, despite all the other options that we were pursuing simultaneously, Japan was still refusing to surrender when we were ready to invade, we were going to invade.

In the end, we accepted the only condition emphasized in the overtures to surrender which were floated and about which fdr was informed long before the atomic bombs were dropped.

Except, the surrender overtures did not come until after both atomic bombs had already been dropped.

And we didn't accept that condition. We flatly rejected it.

fdr was informed about feelers for surrender and responded by deriding McArthur for being poor at politics, and he disregarded the notion entirely.

Fake news. Never happened.

So, you are claiming the the US decided to drop atomic bombs on civilians as an act of revenge on behalf of other nations?

The US did not drop atomic bombs on civilians.

We nuked military targets with the goal of trying to make Japan surrender.

The civilian population had been starving for more than a few months already. The "they will never surrender!" nonsense stems from a comic-book level notion of culture that is ignorant of history.

Funny how they refused to surrender on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

A war that might have been ended sooner with less loss of life on both sides. Or don’t you care about at least the American lives that might have been saved?

Japan was the one who refused to surrender any earlier than they did.

 

[P@triot]

The rank hypocrisy is stunning. Some of the same officials that orchestrated the invasion of Iraq, who under international law are war criminals for carrying out a preemptive war, are now chastising Russia for its violation of international law.

Russia isn't going into Ukraine to remove a tyrannical dictator with a history of invading other countries, and you know it. Stop with your disingenuous bullshit and faux outrage. You're a fucking clown when it comes to this topic.

 

[P@triot]

fdr was informed about feelers for surrender and responded by deriding McArthur for being poor at politics, and he disregarded the notion entirely. It is not an unreasonable conclusion that he was not interested in an earlier peace.

Fake news. Never happened.

Unfortunately, fake news is Sensei Snowflakes specialty. He simps for Xi Jinping 24x7.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Wrong.
Nukes are and always were illegal chemical and thermal weapons that are banned.
Bullets do not have to "cleanly kill" in that they usually just go right through, with only a temporary wound.
That is why hollow point and dumdum expanding bullets are illegal.
Gun shots in war are almost never lethal anymore.

But more to the point, NATO trying to put nukes on the Russian border is in violation of several treaties, and is as bad as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Are you suggesting that the US was criminal for forcing the nukes out of Cuba?

You have no idea what you are talking about on any of those issues.

 

[AZrailwhale]

And the Japanese killed well in excess of 10 million civilian non-combatants in China. Even publishing a contest in newspapers to see who could behead 100 people first with a sword.

So tell me, what is your issue with Chinese, that you would dismiss the slaughter of tens of millions, over the bombing of two military cities in Japan?

Note: The above clipping is from a Japanese newspaper. In the sports section, announcing that the contest had gone into "extra innings" as it was too close to decide a winner.

I have no issue, I was just pointing out that the casualties from the nukes were nothing special; compared to the casualties from the conventional incendiary raids that were happening every night. In 1945, nukes were just considered a better bomb. All the angst about them comes from the post-war period.

 

[gipper]

I have no issue, I was just pointing out that the casualties from the nukes were nothing special; compared to the casualties from the conventional incendiary raids that were happening every night. In 1945, nukes were just considered a better bomb. All the angst about them comes from the post-war period.

Yeah mass murdering large numbers of defenseless women and children is just so hoo-hum. Forget about it.

 

[there4eyeM]

Yeah mass murdering large numbers of defenseless women and children is just so hoo-hum. Forget about it.

Reasoning and acting exactly like one's enemies tends to diminish the perception of difference.

 

[Dayton3]

Yeah mass murdering large numbers of defenseless women and children is just so hoo-hum. Forget about it.

Most people killed in modern war can honestly be considered "defenseless".

What difference do their defensive capabilities make?

 

[gipper]

Most people killed in modern war can honestly be considered "defenseless".

What difference do their defensive capabilities make?

LMFAO…you are actually fine with mass murdering defenseless women and children. You’re a sick fuck.

 

[Open Bolt]

Yeah mass murdering large numbers of defenseless women and children is just so hoo-hum. Forget about it.

No such murders. We dropped the justice bombs on military targets.

LMFAO…you are actually fine with mass murdering defenseless women and children. You’re a sick fuck.

Attacks on military targets are not murder.

 

[gipper]

No such murders. We dropped the justice bombs on military targets.



Attacks on military targets are not murder.

Dumb

 

[Open Bolt]

Dumb

It was reasonable of me to correct your untrue claim.

 

[Open Bolt]

This is the kind of juvenile and absurd barbarism that comes from bigotry. It is also the kind of un-American cruelty that one must espouse to defend Truman's decision to use nukes.

It is actually justified anger at Japan's atrocities. Nothing unamerican about it.

How many times are you going to ignore the fact that by no later than July we knew from intercepts and other sources that most of Japan's leaders, including the emperor, were ready and willing to surrender on acceptable terms and that the only issue was the emperor's status in an "unconditional surrender"? You guys just keep ignoring this fact.

That isn't a fact. It is completely untrue.

The military faction opposed surrender until the Emperor ordered them to support surrender.

The hardliners' trump card was the argument that the U.S. would depose the emperor if Japan surrendered, since this was implied in the Potsdam Declaration and in other U.S. statements.

No such thing was implied in the Potsdam Proclamation.

The first draft of the Potsdam Declaration contained a clarification that said the emperor would not be deposed, but Truman removed it.

Actually the first draft said that we would allow Hirohito's dynasty to continue.

That sounded like a statement of intent to execute Hirohito and place his son on the throne.

If Truman had given the Japanese any indication that the Soviet Union would attack them in the near future, this would have caused even most hardliners to support surrender. If the Soviets had signed the Potsdam Declaration, this likewise would have caused most hardliners to support surrender.

True, but so what?

And what if (if history had played out with Japan surrendering before the atomic bombs) humanity was extinct today because the US and USSR no longer had the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to restrain them from nuclear war?

Do you know why the Soviets did not sign the Potsdam Declaration? Because Truman would not let them. He wanted the Japanese to think that the Soviets were still neutral. Truman's deception greatly aided the hardliners and helped them to stall surrender.

That was hardly Truman's motivation.

If the Soviets had been given input into the text of the Potsdam Proclamation, they would have made the terms much harsher and made Japan less likely to surrender.

Is this nonsense how you justify Truman's barbarism in your own mind? Go read the USSBS's report on Japan's prostrate condition as of July 1944. As I've pointed out, by June 1945, the odds of an American bomber or fighter getting shot down over Japan were 3 in 1,000, or 0.003%.

Hardly prostrate. Japan had millions of troops and thousands of kamikazes ready to fend off our invasion.

if Truman had not ignored Japan's peace feelers

They were not Japan's peace feelers. They were unauthorized contacts by low-level officials.

And Truman did not ignore them. It was Japan who killed off those peace feelers.

a man who not only nuked two cities when he knew Japan was willing to surrender on acceptable terms,

He did no such thing. Japan was still refusing to surrender when the atomic bombs were dropped.

 

[Open Bolt]

Good grief! I've already refuted this nonsense.

Those facts are not nonsense, and you have not refuted them.

I posted a detailed review of Japan's peace feelers and noted that the emperor, two foreign ministers, senior military officers, and others approved of peace feelers through third parties.

The only contact that had government backing was the request to the Soviets to let Prince Konoye come and talk to them.

This is a dishonest dodge.

Not at all. It is perfectly appropriate to point out that the faction that had actual power did not agree on surrender.

In Japan, there were hardliners in the military who kept thwarting surrender efforts because they were able to argue that the emperor would be deposed in a surrender! That was why it was so critical for Truman to stipulate that this would not happen!

That was not how the hardliners opposed surrender.

They simply said no to surrender in any form. They did not bother with arguments.

The hardliners only backed down on surrender when the Emperor ordered them to do so.

You've simply shifted the goalposts by dozens of yards to try to avoid dealing with facts that refute your position.

He shifted no goalposts, and no facts refute his position.

LOL! You even twist well-known, undisputed history.

No he didn't. His statement is true.

The Japanese surrender offer insisted on the condition that the emperor would not be deposed, even though the Soviets had invaded and we had nuked two cities.

Not even close. The Japanese surrender offer requested the condition that Hirohito retain unlimited dictatorial power as Japan's living deity.

We did not reject that condition.

Oh yes we did. We told them that Hirohito was going to be subordinate to MacArthur.

Truman wanted to convey our acceptance of that condition but to do so in language that would not seem to be a concession on our part.

Truman wanted to clearly convey that the Emperor would not be retaining any unlimited dictatorial power.

The Byrnes Note, which was our reply to the Japanese surrender offer, implied that the emperor would remain in place but that he would act under our authority.

It said that the Emperor would be subordinate to MacArthur.

Most of Japan's leaders read the note as indicating that the emperor would not be deposed, although most--not all, but most--of the hardliners took advantage of the lack of a clear statement to this effect and argued that the note gave no guarantee about the emperor.

The only guarantee the Emperor got was the guarantee that he would no longer have unlimited dictatorial power.

Plus, the Japanese were getting back-channel indications that we would not depose the emperor.

What back channel indications are these?

And, of course, there is also the fact that we did not depose the emperor when we occupied Japan. In fact, the emperor proved to be a great ally and help in getting the Japanese to accept occupation and the transition to democracy.

History turned out pretty good. It is hard to see how the war could have ended any better.

We had the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to deter the US and USSR from nuking each other.

We kept the Soviets out of Japan and were able to use the Emperor to shape Japan into a responsible society.

Perfection.

No, what it proves is that your attitude toward the Japanese is not only hateful and bigoted but that it borders on being sadistic. Your barbaric and vicious posturing is thoroughly un-American.

This melodrama is silly. Most people are angry about Japan's atrocities.

Americanism does not mean you butcher hundreds of thousands of women and children when you know you can achieve an acceptable surrender without killing any more people.

Truman's first hint of an acceptable surrender came only after both atomic bombs had already been dropped.

Truman knew that Hiroshima was a military base. He was under the erroneous impression that this meant there would be no collateral damage.

Truman did not know that the second atomic bomb was even being dropped until after the fact.

Americanism does not mean you side with a murderous tyranny that was twice as bad as Nazi Germany and then hand over Eastern Europe to that tyranny and hand over China to an even worse tyranny.

So now you want to blame Truman for not stopping the Soviets?

He did his best to stop them.

Americanism does not mean you spurn peace offers from an anti-communist, capitalist nation and deliberately provoke that nation to attack you so you can get your country to enter a war on the side of the Soviet Union.

So now you are upset that we didn't support Japan's genocide against their Asian neighbors?