Um, in case you didn't know your history. Japan hoped to sue for peace as they knew they couldn't win.

What an amazingly foolish and completly WRONG statement.
First about your "little slight: comment.
Was the Facist enslavement of Asia a "little slight"?
The Japanese hoped to destroy American naval power with Pearl Harbor,
against the advice of their best military minds I might add. they hoped that with the Pacific fleet destroyed America would sue for peace.
Very bad plan.
Militarly Japan los the war at Midway, yet they sacrificed the Navy, the JAAF, the JNAF and Japan itself before surrendering.
Quote Wiki all you want, you have no understanding of history, you are a classic example of revisionism. The threat the world faced from facist Germany and Japan was real, and you have obviosly no comprehension of the gravity of that threat.

First ask yourself. How does the pacific fleet headquarters gets attacked by a fleet consisting of these numbers.

Mobile Unit:
6 aircraft carriers,
2 battleships,
2 heavy cruisers,
1 light cruiser,
9 destroyers,
8 tankers,
23 fleet submarines,
5 midget submarines,
414 aircraft

Easy, we didn't know they were there.
Uh, it was 1941, primative radar, no sattelites, no nothing.
I suggest you read some naval history, Japanese and American.
Read about the agonizing ( on both sides), searches to find the enemy in the Pacific. Read about the Decisive Battle theory of naval engagement. read how MOST all the discoveries of fleet positions were by a thread, how battle groups were moved on guesswork, intuition and luck.
READ SOME NAVAL HISTORY!!!!

Want to compare Hiroshima to Pearl Harbor?

Well how many civilians were killed in pearl harbor (Not many, becuase the japanese struck at THE MILITARY)

How many civilians were killed in Hiroshima? 250k with continuing health problems of those who lived.

It's pretty barbaric if you think it's OK to bomb civilians.

It's meaningless to compare.
Read abot Japan during the war. Boo hoo.
You are upset about bombing civilianss?
how do you feel about mass rape, torture and murder of civilians?
I guess it was fine for Japan, as a matter of policy, to offer rewards to soldiers for killing civilians in China to insure non resistance.
a fav was to wrap a woman or child in Gasoline soaked blankets, the force the parents to watch them burn alive. another great time was to bayonet as many civilians as possible. That will keep em in line for the Greater asain Coprsperity Shere.
But i guess Fillipinos, chinese, Koreans, Thais etc don't count.
READ SOME HISTORY!!!

So I take it some of ya'll would have prefered that we launch a full scale ground invasion of Japan?

That makes sense... absolutely no civilians would have died if we had done that instead.

It was the least of 2 evils... thats just how it goes...

Originally posted by XTexan
So I take it some of ya'll would have prefered that we launch a full scale ground invasion of Japan?

That makes sense... absolutely no civilians would have died if we had done that instead.

It was the least of 2 evils... thats just how it goes...

So making the choice to kill civillians instead of choosing to try and not kill civillians, do you think there is no difference?

This is not about what if, statistics etc, nobody really knows what would have happened.

But I must say that if more people set good examples such as NOT killing civillians NO matter what, the future of this planet would be in a better state.

It's all about morals, morals change the world, it shapes it into the world you live in.

Do you think that by thinking that "the end justifies the means" it is setting a good example to the world, to our children?





[edit on 7-8-2009 by _Phoenix_]