Re: The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki-Worth it?
Difficult to say, but I feel sorry for all the innocent men, women and children who were killed by the two bombs.
__________________ The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Well, Operation Downfall would have probably eliminated a lot more Japanese, maybe even to the brink of destruction, so it honestly depends. Was it worth it at the time? Yes. Is it worth it again? No.
__________________
The only thing thats with you your whole life is complete and utter darkness.
<.< The Japanese did surrender. And in order to defeat Japan, we would have had to launch a land assault, which would have cost a lot of American lives. Had we just left, they would have built up again and continued their empire.
Not saying whether it was worth it or not, just saying you're wrong.
__________________ In case we find ourselves starting to believe all the Anti-American sentiment and negativity, we should remember England 's Prime Minister Tony Blair's words during an interview. When asked by one of his Parliament members why he believes so much in America , he said:
"A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in... And how many want out."
If we had packed up and left, BobbyD, the Japanese would have just taken advantage of our decision and rebuilt their armies and retaken their lands. It would not have ended World War II, and may have elongated it further.
I heard that actual full-scale invasion would have taken more casualties.
__________________ Yet the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days.
"… his name is Melkor, Lord of All, Giver of Freedeom, and he shall make you stronger than they."
Sauron to Ar-Pharazôn
The term 'nuclear assault on innocents' in the context you are trying to use it is meaningless.
We are talking at a point of the war where massed bomb raids by the US were literally flattening Japanese cities one by one, causing far more casualities than the atom bombs did. The war was already way past the point where civilians were going to be let off and nothing about Hiroshima or Nagasaki changed that.
The only other meaning, then, is the problems of radioactive fallout. This issue was not known to exist at the time. It was only afterwards that this became clear, and it affected those who had been near the US testing sites too, as demonstration of that ignorance- people were sent in to the test blasts immediately afterwards to look at the result, almost certainly fatally.
All the Americans thought they had was a very big bomb. They had been causing the same devastation for ages with large amounts of smaller bombs; their use was to show just how much more efficient such bombing was going to be. But make no mistake- cities were already being wiped out. It is a hideous error of perspective to see this as some kind of moral turning point. This simply does not stand up to any close examination.
So, as to the other issue- did it truly end the war early, or was it needless slaughter?
We will never know. I say that very strongly. We can look at interviews and testimonies from those involved at the time and all we ever get is a mixed message. We see Americans involved at the time being certain that it was necessary to do this to avoid a land invasion, and we see Japanese saying they would never have surrendered even with the atom bombs were it not for the decision of the Emperor to give in, which only came about because of those bombs.
But equally we see prominent American commentators, closely involved with the process, saying that they had every opportunity to get the Japanese to surrender first but decided to use the bombs anyway to impress the Russians, and meanwhile this is echoed by Japanese representatives from the peace party who said it was entirely unnecessary, as the Emperor was about to surrender anyway.
We will never know who was right; this is simply one of the big 'What ifs' of history.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Sep 15th, 2007 at 10:30 PM
Perhaps in a way it was good that those bombs were used, because the consequences made people more wary of nuclear weaponry?
__________________ Yet the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days.
"… his name is Melkor, Lord of All, Giver of Freedeom, and he shall make you stronger than they."
Sauron to Ar-Pharazôn
That amount of suffering and death can never be worth it imo.
Ok it was War and the Japanese weren´t giving up, but nevertheless maybe they should have done a demonstration on some people free area nearby. Or tried some other stuff first, it wasn´t as if the US was in danger of getting invaded soon or loosing the war.
'That amount of suffering and death' was less than other efforts the Allies were already making against civilian targets (and so it is worth noting that a HUGE amount of 'other stuff' had already been tried). Again, what you are referring to here is the nuclear fallout, which I will again repeat that no-one knew would happen so that cannot be part of the argument against its use.
Again, if you are pointing the moral finger, you are pointing it at the wrong place. The use of the A-Bomb was not the point where the line was crossed. The destruction of entire cities with tens of thousands of civilian deaths was already a regular occurrence by this stage in the war.
So let's not forget- if they hadn't killed all those people with the A-Bomb, they would have done it by conventional means. They had already done it to several other places.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Sep 19th, 2007 at 10:21 AM
Ok than, I wonder how many of you have actually STUDIED the alternative to dropping the bomb.
The alternative was Operation Downfall. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Operation Downfall was the planned amphibious invasion of the home islands of the Empire of Japan, and it would have been the second largest military front into and of itself (second only to the titanic clash against Hitlerite Germany and its allies in Europe), and the factors would have eclipsed the bomb damage to a DISGUSTING degree.
Want proof?
To start with, has anyone looked at the casualty lists for Omaha? With over half the first waves being wiped out by German forces? Remember the last time you saw Saving Private Ryan's beachlanding scene or played one of the Wargames and saw row after row of Americans cut down by artillery and interlocking machine gun fire?
Keep that in mind here.
The differences between those two are this:
1. When we had landed in Normandy, a continuous series of dupes, misinformation, and tricks coupled with a real strategic uncertainty meant that the Germans were literally covering pretty much each and every step of shore from Norway to Yugoslavia with forces, which stretched them out and made a breakthrough easier. This was NOT the case in Japan.
Both sides recognized that the home islands would limit the places where forces could hope to be landed in any number to a relative handful. Thus, the Japanese put literally everything they had into defending those areas. And believe me, though the Imperial War chest had been depleted heavily by roughly a full decade of active war, they still had A LOT of tricks up their sleeves. A LOT. And due to the heavy concentration of firepower, it would likely have put the Channel Wall to absolute shame in terms of density.
2. In the invasion of Europe, in spite of the fact that the Germans had by far more manpower in arms than Japan, the German regulars surrendered at rates that were quite rapid, and Germany did not have much to replace those losses due to the half-assed and dollar-short way they armed the populace as Volksturm, or people's milita.
In Japan, the Japanese were not merely fighting a political war but also a holy war. It was dishonorable to allow the "foreigners" to capture you and this is evident in pretty damn every account given of Japanese forces during the War. And if you think that "samurai spirit" had died in the least, you are dead wrong. Even worse, the Japanese regime had been handing out cheap weapons to the populace, and children barely old enough to walk and elderly barely capable of doing so drilled constantly with Bamboo spears that they were provided. Those unable to fight were literally rigged to explode.
The goal of the Imperial Junta was to turn the entire populace of Japan itself into a military force to resist the foreigners and preserve the honor of the emperor. And they came damn near close enough in the limited time they had to arming the entire populace. Estimates guess that over 86% of the population of Japan was armed by the Japanese War Ministry by the time of the surrender. And the civilians were just as fanatical as the military.
3. Contrary to scenes of German fighters shooting down helpless LVTs like ducks in a pond, the German Luftwaffe was on the verge of collapse, as Germany pitted all its reserves into the fight as soon as they were made. This meant that they had no reserves to commit at a time when the Western Allies had complete and total aerial dominance over most of Western Europe.
In contrast, Japan HAD kept reserves of planes. And they had been rigging them to use them as the first "smart bombs." The Japanese had also grown quite experienced in their use of suicide tactics, as well. This is shown in the sharp ramp-up of losses taken by the supporting ships in Okinawa in comparison to in the normal Pacific campaigns to that point. Combine that with the fact that the Western Allies would have not been able to shut down the Emperor's Air Forces over the entire airspace. Some were going to get through. And those that did would kill an estimated 1.78 Allied soldiers for each pilot that contacted. Do the math.
4. For those who scream bloody murder about "bloody murder of the civilian Japanese," you seem to forget about another slaughter of innocent civilians that would have been ramped up had the Emperor not tossed the towel in.
The Russians had, in Operation August Storm in Manchuria, broken the back of the Kwangtung Army, the Main Japanese army in mainland Asia, though at shocking costs. The Kwangtung had then begun to retreat both into Korea, where they were rounded up by both Western Allied and Soviet forces at the 38th Parallel. However, some had retreated to the Chinese coastline, which was still held by Japan. The Kwangtung would have been caught between two massive armies, those of China and the Soviets, and have been in a hopeless situation. And this would likely have led to an orgy of rape and murder that bypassed much of the Kwangtung's previous atrocities by almost all sources. And that in and of itself would be an accomplishment given that army's dismal regard for human rights at that point and all times prior.
THe Kwangtung would have eventually been torn apart and destroyed, but not before taking hundreds of thousands of civilians down with them.
How strange most of you ***** about civilian casualties while ignoring those deaths that were prevented.
Estimated Western Allied losses in Downfall were anywhere from 400,000-800,000. Japanese predicted casualties numbered in the millions for both regular military and civilians conscripted, and I WILL go so far to say that such losses might literally have wiped out the native Japanese, with few survivors. This is what Allied command prepared for, and what they were prepared to accept if it meant finally crushing the defiant Japanese.
But wait, you say, could the Western Allies not starve them out? Technically yes, but that would take YEARS, a constant blockade, and the deaths of more millions of Japanese (let me remind you that food shortages had ALREADY set in on the home islands by 1943, and this war 1945.) So waiting was not a practical solution.
But there was another factor involved. In an apocalyptic fight to the last between the Western Allies and the entire people of Japan, guess who benefits the most? The answer, to the ignorant, would be Stalinist Russia.
The Soviets had invaded Manchuria in August Storm, and had millions of troops on the ground in Manchuria waiting for the OK for invasion. So if the Western Allies were repulsed, than the Russians would step in with dreams of conquest. If the Western Allies would have had to been brutal in any Japanese Campaign, than the Soviets would have been far worse, as these people had NEVER stayed away from committing atrocities against their own people, and from committing ethnic cleansing on a wide scale. If the Western Allies might have killed off most of the populace due to the sheer fanatic defense, than the Russians might have gone and done the whole way and wiped the native Japanese OUT PERIOD.
And than, Stalin would turn Japan into a hardpoint of Communist tyranny in the Far East, a lighthouse projecting Soviet ambition and aims into Asia, to the detriment of Freedom and safety for both Asia as well as Canada and the United States.
And even if Stalin did not invade, the invasion would have bloodied us badly. Imagine loosing 400,000-800,000 veteran, well-trained and equipped troops from all the branches, alongside their gear and support vehicles, and you can see how weakened we would have been.
Historically, only four months after the historical collapse of Japan, the Russians invaded parts of Central Europe that were held by the Western Allies, but they were forced back by them after suffering encirclement and collapse in Leizpig. This was the only truly direct confrontation of the Cold War, and it helped convince the Russian leadership that they could not best us directly and forced them to wait it out, which helped to eventually collapse their system with a minimum of human losses.
DO you think that we could have done the same if we denuded the European formations and funding for Europe to feed its troops into a bloody Pacific meatgrinder? Than you are wrong.
Instead, Truman choose to kill hundreds of thousands to save MILLIONS, and the results of those two bombs are still seen.
Japan was spared occupation of even in part by the Soviets, and thus the Western Allies had full ability to turn the country into a modern Democracy. It served as a bastion of Freedom in the Cold War, challenging Chinese and North Korean forces in Korea and trying to (though failing) do the same against the bloodthirsty regimes of men like Ho Chi Mihn in Vietnam and Pol Pot in Cambodia during the Indochinese Wars.
These islands are a vibrant country and land, rather than a massive graveyard. There are still issues with the Japanese, make no mistake (see Yasukuni Shrine), but it is a far cry from an abandoned no-man's land.
You people forget this.
In the robes of the "moral correctness" you choose to wear, you fail to realize that by condemning the bomb, you are ENDORSING two paths that would have killed MILLIONS and destroyed the nation of Japan as we know it.
from the sole point of learning the nuclear lesson the hard way (which would inevitible) then it was beneficial to learn it when weapons were at their weakest as they were then...
it is likely that the results from the bombing of hiroshimi and nagasaki have prevented further use of more powerful nuclear weapons in the following decades
in short...it was better to learn the lesson then than say, during the cuban missle crisis
i know this is a simplistic view but looking on it with hindsight and ignoring the alternatives at the time...it is valid
besides...you only need to look at Dresden to see that the non nuclear alternatives at the time were just as horrific
You state that this is the alternative as a fact, but it is not, it is speculation.
Yes, I have studied it, but this basic error by you leads me to suspect that when you did you did not pay as close attention as you might. For someone who just sermonised as much as you did, that is a very bad thing.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest the Japanese were about to surrender anyway as the Emperor was persuaded of the need to by civilian bombing, which I had already mentioned if you had bothered to check before blithering on like you did. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria also seems to have been a decisive factor.
The possible post-war partitioning of Japan as being a reason to use the bomb is a view I have some sympathy for, but that's about all you say that really makes any sense, and even then only if you could establish that only the Bomb prevented this, which you cannot. Once more, you can only speculate.
Again, I repeat- we do not know. There is no way you can state with certainty that the alternative would have been worse.
All of this being the case, your cursing of people is contemptible and pathetic.
Incidentlaly the Japanese airforce was finished in mainland Japan. The bombings of the country were almost entirely unopposed. Your commentary about the Red Army at Leipzig appears to be gibberish as well.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Sep 27th, 2007 at 02:10 PM
Ugshank, have you EVER READ ANYTHING about the Japanese military in history? It would appear that you have not, or you would not respond in such a damned stupid way.
As to the Red Army's abortive invasion of our zones in Central Europe, which you believe is "Cr@p" than I must say that you have never seen T-34 Plain near Leizpig, where Red Polish tankers made a suicidal charge into the teeth of Canadian and Belgian anti-tank guns, and (obviously, if you have ever seen the site) failed. You have also not read the excellent if-a-bit-biased "The Heat Before the Cold: The Unsung Confrontation between the West and the East" by Richard Q. Fettel, which I would recommend, if you can find it (it is rather rare).
But than again, you obviously know next to nothing about what the bloody thread is ACTUALLY ABOUT, so why should I expect you to know something like the Elbe River Campaign?
For starters, you think that "there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Japanese were about to surrender anyway" is quite possibly the most idiotic and foolish thing I have EVER heard on this subject. If you had ANY DAMNED IDEA ON THE TEACHINGS OF THE SHINTO-BUDDHIST MIX THAT JAPAN HAS, YOU WOULD NOT HAVE SPEWED THAT BS.
To explain, in the practice of Japanese religion prior to the surrender, the Emperor of Japan was a man of divinity, with his lineage traced all the way through the centuries to Izanagi and Izanami, two deities summoned into existence by the first god, and were tasked with creating the first land in the world, which (long story short) they did, and sent their children to the islands to populate them. Amongst their children are the ancestor of the Emperors and Empresses to the present day, or so the story goes.
Thus, the Emperor is of divine blood, and is the manifestation of a god on Earth. Sound familiar? It should, as it was quite similar to the Divine Rights of Kings ideology based out of Europe, with the difference being that while Europe's monarchs ran afoul of a growing population with their intolerance for reform, the Japanese Imperials were intelligent enough to keep the masses loyal through some limited reforms.
To put this bluntly: to resist the Emperor or refuse to recognize the Emperor is simultaneously both treason (betrayal of the Earthly sovereign) and Blasphemy (betrayal of the Divine), and is quite possibly the most serious crime a mortal can commit, or so goes the story.
Now, in pre-Meiji times, these ideas were not worth the paper they were written on, as the real power rested with the Shogun of Japan (which roughly translates to: Great commander who defeats the eastern barbarians, and is a military rank) who could more or less play the Emperor's strings like some church harp if he so pleased.
However, the Emperor Muhsuhito was not willing to go along with that script, and the arrival of Commandore Perry in Nagasaki gave him the excuse he needed to retake the limelight. In the Boshun War, he defeated the Shogunate and established a regime on the basis of a constitution (based on what passed for the Prussian "constitution") that focused political power on the Emperor's throne. It also stated in no uncertain terms that the Emperor was of divine extraction and a symbol of the gods on Earth.
This effectively makes the Emperor both the political and spiritual head of Japan, to those of you (coughcoughtUshgarakcoughcough) who cannot comprehend anything about Japan's pre-surrender history without having it spelled out for you.
And, even worse from the Allied perspective, was Bushido. The Bushido code's beginnings are shrouded in mystery, but it is obvious from writings that one can access that it has been around since at least 712 AD, where it appears in what is the oldest Japanese tome in known existence. It is something akin to the Chivalry of Europe, but far stronger and further lasting (at least as an established code) than its European cousin. You must understand that Bushido, while covering everything from funeral rites to childrearing, has a heavy emphasis on death, and on dying a "good" one with one's honor intact. Another thing you have to know is that the Bushido code views capture as a VERY dishonorable thing to happen, and something that is to be prevented. You must ALSO understand that another major tenant of Bushido is loyalty to one's superiors. And THIS is easily mollified to the idea that one must unflaggingly support one's spiritual and political leader. And in Japan, that would be the Emperor as head both of the practical power of Japan but also of the religious head of Japan. And that would manifest itself in the fanatic efforts of the Japanese, both civilian and military, against the Allies, and the barbaric damage they inflicted in their wake.
And THAT is why Eisenhower's rose-colored reports on Japan are VERY inaccurate. Eisenhower served in EUROPE, and his analysis of the situation is like treating Japan as a European nation of the time, akin to Romania, Hungary, Russia, Portugal, or Spain, in both doctrine and strategy. And sadly, many people have followed this model of looking at WWII era Japan, including apparently Ushgarak.
But to anybody who has studied this period of Japan, you know why that goes down the Cr@pper immediately. To those of you who do NOT know, let me sum this up.
Europe has not had this sort of warrior code imprinted onto the entire populace in any sort of scale since the last Medieval knight either hung up his gear or was shot off his horse with an arquebus. Certainly, some groups did indeed fight ferociously, and many to the last man (especially those who knew they would be turned over and hung for warcrimes anyway, like the SS), but these were spontaneous events and largely without pattern.
The only Axis nations that really fought on even when it became unbelievably obvious what the endgame would be were Germany itself, Hungary (due to hatred of the Romanians and the knowledge about what would happen to Transylvania again), and the NDH of Croatia (due to the fact that they would have been shot anyway.)
In the Orient, it was NOT like that. There are thousands of accounts of Japanese forces dying to the last man in all arms of the military, frequently in ways that could have been avoided. POWs were a VERY small fraction of the overall losses.
In Europe, when a nation let a city/airfield/base/town/port be bombed without retaliation, it was almost certainly because said nation had no planes in the area, being either destroyed, captured, knocked out by mechanical problems, or too far away to do anything. The Axis LITERALLY pitched everything they had into battle to the point where they kept to reserves, in accordance with their doctrine on airpower. There are far more reports than you would think of Axis pilots in Europe attempting to intercept Allied bombers accompanied full escorts with literally anything they could get flying and loaded with some weapons, up to and INCLUDING modified civilian planes and antiquated WWI fliers.
However, Japan had developed a relatively unique doctrine in mid-WWII on the uses and nature of the reserve. You naively point out that the Allies bombed major Japanese cities unopposed from the air. This is true, but it does NOT mean that the Japanese had no aircraft, as you stupidly conclude. It just meant that they were of a far different type than you would think.
If you have EVER seen a kamikaze plane, you will see why none of them were scrambled to intercept bombers even when they were technically in range. That is because they have literally been gutted. These were modified planes that more often then not had the very bare minimum for takeoff and flying, and more than one of them had no landing gear or parachute holder ( for obvious reasons.) It was not uncommon to see all weapons taken out off the plane. Why? The answer is simple: explosives. The planes had been gutted to have the maximum possible room for explosives, and thus get more bang for their buck. So, the reason this rather large reserve of aircraft did not engage the around-the-clock bombing of Japan is because they would not have been of any use (save if one managed to crash into a B-17 or B-29 by chance) and would more likely have meant that the plane and pilot would have been lost prematurely. So, in summary, you see B-17s going about routinely bombing Tokyo and you claim that Japan has no aerial reserve, when in reality those gunless planes and their pilots are waiting for the right time, when the Allies more to disgorge on the sacred soil of Japan in their lumbering seafaring iron behemoths, for them to swing out and take the target of their pick.
You dismiss the bloody estimates as mere predictions, like some Star Wars geeks (myself included) guessing what Emperor and King George Lucaszia I of Lucasarts decrees is canon next. This is false. These estimates were drawn up based on the most through and reliable intelligence that we and our allies had, and were drawn up by men who had been fighting the Emperor for around three years, and were VERY familiar with their foe and his strategy. This was not simple guesswork, but complicated, miles-on-miles of estimation and data-gathering, and goes to show how formidable a foe we had in the Empire.
So, with it inherently obvious that the Japanese were not going to surrender, that the estimates were not a group of geriatrics playing poker on Sunday, and that the Japanese were more than ready for much of what we could throw at them, you still say that "I cannot possibly know" that the future of Japan would have been better had we not dropped those two bombs on Japan.
And for once, I shall agree with you. Why? Because I am mortal, and none who inhabit this mortal coil can hope to see the tides and falls of fate and destiny.
However, being unable to see exactly does not mean I am banned from making an informed, educated guess based on solid research and investigation. And, taking into account the cultural, religious, and political factors that would have made the Japanese fight to the point of extinction ALA Paraguay, the possibility of even larger losses to Western Allied soldiers and equipment than the-already-far-too-high number in history, given the possibility of extinction for the native Japanese as a peoples in this battle, given the fact that the doomed Kwantung Army could have gone on a rampage in the meantime, and given the fact that our weakness might have led the already-too-far expanse of Soviet power reach even further, I can say that it is almost certain that it would have been worse if we had not dropped the bomb.
There is the chance that some miracle would have happened, that a coup would have overthrown the Imperial Junta with the new government asking for unconditional peace. However, this was unlikely to the extreme given how heavily Japan was commited in this war. The only peace the Imperial regime would have accepted would have been with many of their conquered territories returned, their conquests in China intact, and the Emperor's divinity unscratched. And this would have been unacceptable, for it would have merely laid the groundwork for further bloodshed, as our inability to crush
Imperial Germany led to the rise of Nazi Germany.
So yes, I must say that I, in conclusion, say that the reason Japan remains anywhere near the prosperity that it is is due to the fact that we DID use the bomb. We forced the Imperial regime to surrender, and thus we brought it to become a lantern of freedom in a region that saw the juggernauts of Communism in China and Russia attempt to expand their hold. Thus, I must say that I reject your conclusions, which I find uninformed and naive, and say that I do not believe that the world would have been as good a place as it is today without the bomb.
And for that, I can only give thanks that we chose to do so, and in doing so brought a new democracy into the world, one untainted by the years of division, unease, mutual suspicion, and underdevelopment brought about by the partition of Germany and in particular by Soviet influence.
And the people of Japan, who live and die in a vibrant land rather than a desolate, war-torn graveyard, must be thankful too.
Last edited by Tortoise Herder on Sep 27th, 2007 at 11:35 PM
Yes, I do know what I am talking about, and unlike you I do not childishly lose my temper as you have simply because I have set out clear and simple ripostes to the nonsense you have posted.
Now, you can regurgitate all that stuff about 'not surrendering' all that you like., You can try and tell me all you like that it is stone cold certain fact that they would not have done. You can try and say over and over that I have not read or researched on the matter.
It doesn't matter how often you do all that, because you are still entirely wrong- you are still trying to pass off your personal opinion as definite fact, and very little is more dangerous or more contemptible in historical analysis.
There is a VERY great deal of evidence that says they were ready to surrender, despite this complete myth that you are trying to propogate that it was DEFINITELY impossible.
We have direct witness testimony from Japanese cabinet members at the time saying that surrender negotiations were already inplace. We have direct witness testimony from senior Japanese military officers stating that, honour or otherwise, the ONLY important aspect for the surrender was whether the Emperor backed it. It didn't matter about the small bombs or the big bombs, just the Emperor's opinion. And so to twin with that, we have, again, direct testimony saying that the conventional bombing campaign was about to convince the Emperor, and Russian intervention even more so.
Meanwhile, we have direct testimony from American politicans and senior military officers involved that they knew that the possibility of surrender was there, but the bomb was dropped anyway to scare the Russians. Even bloody General Macarthur said it was not at all necessary to have dropped it, that they were already surrendering anyway, and he was hardly an accomodating man. Admiral Nimitz said the same. Truman's Chief of Staff said the same. All of these views are first hand, and far more expert than you. Nevermind Eisenhower. This is directly from the people who were there, fighting Japan, and including those IN Japan.
So that's what I have- direct first hand testimony contradicting your account. What have you got? Your personal attempts to anlayse Japanese culture at the time, which I submit are very basic and not really taking the reality of the situation into account. It's the same sort of view that said Japanese soliders would never surrender in battle. They still did.
As far as any validity or currency is concerned, your position is bankrupt, whilst mine is backed.
You are trying to ignore all of this, to cut it out. That is the attitude of a fool. This whole area something that has been in serious debate, from the moment the bomb dropped in '45, through massive amounts of varying historical analyses since, all the way into the modern day including recent works by the likes of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. You want to ignpre that debate in favour of just overlaying your own world view.
So all the rest you say is just noise without meaning. You claim certainty- you are simply wrong. Again. We'll never know if it was necessary or not. You cannot state it for sure either way. You seem to have a desperate need to have your narrow view of the situation taken as undeniable fact... that's very depressing to see, and also rather pitiful.
And in the meantime we can mention how the kamikaze programme was a strategic failure and most were simply shot out of the sky, and that we have no reason to think that any tiny dwindling amount of those left could have done anything even if they had not been destroyed on the ground, which they would have been, and we can also mention how you are still not talking about anything significant or historically valuable at Leipzig- sounds like the work of a crackpot to me.
Try not to wear such astonishing blinkers in future. Such self-deception is shaming. If you weant to live in a fantasy world where you can be certain that only the use of the Bomb made Japanese surrender possible, feel free. But to believe such a tenuous view comes with an inherent risk- that people will disagree with you, and do so with very relevant facts and points, and that you may end up looking pretty silly as a result, and have to resort to trying to character-assassinate the person who disagrees with you to try and assert your own confidence. What a shame.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Sep 28th, 2007 at 01:56 PM
When I get a chance I'm going to respond to this whole thing with Japan and what it follows. That guy is soooooo culturally bias. I can't believe a wanna be history buff is that damn deluded.
__________________ "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." - Thomas Gray
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Sep 12th, 2007 04:58 AM
