Hiroshima- Those brutal immoral American during WWII

Thanks guys.

Humans ALWAYS have different opinions.

I think one of our main lessons in life is what is seen here everyday on ATS, it's about people with different opinions and dealing with it.

We should always try to understand and respect others opinions, never get too serious, and try to back down if you get too emotional.

Humans need to learn to get along with each other. And try to ignore or learn from our differences.

We all have different opinions, but I hope most of us have one thing in common, a common goal and that's to be a good person and live a full life.

And that's what's most important. We are all in this together, despite the huge complications of life on this planet.

One of the MAIN problems we humans have is that we are TOO serious! People get into heated debates, and start to insult each other, people get too serious over many things(even sport games ) which causes chaos and violence all over the world.

Remember as a child you would look at adults and wonder why they are so serious? Where's that child gone?

So to everyone try to "chillax" whenever you can, it's seriously one of our survival tools in this hard complicated life we have, and makes life worth living, the human race would not survive without chilling out every now and again haha

Why so serious?



[edit on 8-8-2009 by _Phoenix_]

Yeah, I suppose we should have extended the war another year or two. That way, using conventional weapons, we could have slaughtered a few million more Japanese.

Anyone with any sense and any sense of history knows the Japanese were going to fight until the last man, woman and child.

Yes, the enlightened have a much better plan. In hindsight.

Maybe it would have been better to shoot them and blow them up by the millions.

You're right.

Your way is much more humane.

Originally posted by dooper
Yeah, I suppose we should have extended the war another year or two. That way, using conventional weapons, we could have slaughtered a few million more Japanese.

Anyone with any sense and any sense of history knows the Japanese were going to fight until the last man, woman and child.

Who's history are you referring to?
America's history?


www.nuclearfiles.org...

May 28
Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy argues to Secretary of War Stimson that the term "unconditional surrender" should be dropped: "Unconditional surrender is a phrase which means loss of face and I wonder whether we cannot accomplish everything we want to accomplish in regard to Japan without the use of that term."


...

May 28
In a State Department Memorandum of Conversation, Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew describes a meeting with President Truman that day. Grew writes: "The greatest obstacle to unconditional surrender by the Japanese is their belief that this would entail the destruction or permanent removal of the Emperor and the institution of the Throne. If some indication can now be given the Japanese that they themselves, when once thoroughly defeated and rendered impotent to wage war in the future will be permitted to determine their own future political structure, they will be afforded a method of saving face without which surrender will be highly unlikely."

...


May 31
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) reports on receiving a Japanese peace feeler through a Japanese diplomat stationed in Portugal. The Japanese diplomat says that the actual terms are unimportant so long as the term "unconditional surrender" is not used.

It seems if we had merely been willing to negotiate, we could have avoided murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

reply to post by TruthParadox


You start a fight, you better win.

The Japanese were NOT going to make the surrender rules, and thousands and thousands of American family members who were killed by the Japanese weren't going to tolerate it.

Anyone with any sense of courage, conviction, and honor to those who suffered and perished in a damned war started by someone else was only going to have it end one way.

Unconditional surrender.

Boy, it must be nice to sit back some sixty years later and somehow intuit and evaluate what should have been done.

In that day, in that time, with that enemy, after four long years of bloody fighting, you'd have to be one big candiass to settle for anything less than full victory.

Every fight I ever got into, I didn't fight until they stopped swinging. I quit when they were pounded hard enough to never, ever want to start another fight again.

It's . . . educational.

Must have worked. The Japanese to this day, in accordance with their Constitution, don't have a standing military.

Point made.

reply to post by OldDragger


Sir. I believe you are confusing the actions of the Japanese Imperial Army with the civilian population of Japan. (Who at worst we creating armaments because they HAD to.)

I know all of the atrocious actions that the Japanese MILITARY, I'd be the first to note it.

And to those who say "Bombing civilians is a good strategy" Why did we even bother defining human rights? Why did we bother fighting the Axis forces if the same actions are commited by "The good guys" It's utter BS. How would you feel if you wife and child were bombed, when they had NO PART in the war?

reply to post by dooper

Must have worked. The Japanese to this day, in accordance with their Constitution, don't have a standing military.
Point made.

link

Japan's Cabinet last month endorsed a bill to upgrade the Defense Agency to a full-fledged ministry, reflecting the growing role of the military at home and abroad. The upgrade would bolster the agency's status within the government and put it in a better position to negotiate for more funds.

Japan now spends about $43 billion on defense each year, putting it behind the United States, Russia, China and Britain.

It has a standing army of about 150,000, and its air force and navy are among the most powerful in Asia.

No standing army? Point made?

lol

peace

reply to post by dooper

Yeah they were going to fight us to the last man, woman, and child. Is that why the service men usually noted a very polite demeanor towards them while they occupied the towns of Japan? Maybe they were just waiting for them to turn their backs, so they could pull on their black costumes, pull out some shurikens and then gather in ninja hunting groups to track down all the americans in sight. Yup, that's definantly the case.

Part of the problem is there is so much unchallenged propaganda from that era that is still being taught to our kids. They grow up with a view of other cultures that doesn't line up with reality at all. Hate seems to be a very easy thing to teach.

reply to post by letthereaderunderstand

We were bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki for months before the "atomic" bombs were dropped.

Wrong,,,,,,They wanted "Clean" targets as to study the effects.

Originally posted by dooper
You start a fight, you better win.

The Japanese were NOT going to make the surrender rules, and thousands and thousands of American family members who were killed by the Japanese weren't going to tolerate it.

If you truly understand what you're saying - that even though hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved with a little negotiation, we were still justified in murdering innocent men, women, and children, then I feel sorry for you if nothing else.

Sympathy is a very important trait... One which I feel you lack.

Originally posted by dooper
Anyone with any sense of courage, conviction, and honor to those who suffered and perished in a damned war started by someone else was only going to have it end one way.

Unconditional surrender.

That makes no sense whatsoever.
You're literally saying that in honor of those who suffered, we should cause more suffering.

Originally posted by dooper
Boy, it must be nice to sit back some sixty years later and somehow intuit and evaluate what should have been done.

In that day, in that time, with that enemy, after four long years of bloody fighting, you'd have to be one big candiass to settle for anything less than full victory.

We could have had the closest thing to 'full victory' - and it ended up being the outcome after hundreds of thousands of pointless civilian deaths.

America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.

The sad irony is that, as it actually turned out, the American leaders decided anyway to retain the Emperor as a symbol of authority and continuity. They realized, correctly, that Hirohito was useful as a figurehead prop for their own occupation authority in postwar Japan.

www.ihr.org...

This thread is an awful like the other one entitled "64 Years Ago.." at the top of the hot list but here I go anyways.

I think it's interesting how some of you who are playing armchair general view this war but it's really simple.

The Japanese started a fight it couldn't finish. They refused to surrender (regardless of the terms it's irrelevant). They were issued an ultimatum and still refused to surrender.

Japan paid the ultimate price for it's belligerance.

[edit on 8-8-2009 by carnival_of_souls2047]

Originally posted by Miraj
reply to post by TrustMeImaSalesman

 

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.

Actually the toll at Hiroshima was more along the lines of 140,000.

But more importantly, the Hiroshima bombing was also an attack on the military.

Hiroshima was Japan's main military port, and held tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers.

reply to post by Mintwithahole.


What if it takes imprisoning and murdering 12 million civilians and POW's? Anything is justified so long as you think it might help you win, right?

Guess we can forgive the Japanese for what they did in Nanking, too. All those medical experiments were crucial for bioweapons development. And of course bioweapons are okay,since they might bring the other guy to his knees!

Yell you what; screw war. How about next time someone ticks us off, we just hop some dudes up on PCP and have them crash jet liners into populated buildings? That'll save us a TON of money, and evidently is pretty good at screwing up your enemy's day!

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
reply to post by passenger

 

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

Yes, but wanting to sue for peace wasn't going to get them anywhere. They needed to actually sue for peace (and on acceptable terms).

It wasn't until August 10 (after both A-bombs) that Japan started sending messages to us asking to surrender.

Originally posted by Watcher-In-The-Shadows
reply to post by TrustMeImaSalesman

 

Hm, shall we compare the civilian losses at Pearl Harbor to the civilian losses at Hiroshima? And while we are at it we can add all the losses of Nagasaki. And those lost to bombing the main island of Japan. I am not saying the Japanese are blameless in that war but the response was a little overblown as compared to the slight.

There is no requirement to confine the response to the level of injury sustained.

The degree of violence suffered by Japan is instead related to what was required to make them surrender.

reply to post by Oralloy


They had sued for peace. We would not let Hirohito stay on the throne.

Or, more accurately, we had to bigass bombs that we had spent THAT much money on, damned if we weren't going to use them at least to scare the crap out of Russia.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox

Or, more accurately, we had to bigass bombs that we had spent THAT much money on, damned if we weren't going to use them at least to scare the crap out of Russia.

I was just reading how the bomb did not end the war with Japan, but began the cold-war with Russia.

Interesting stuff that...

Thanks for your post...

reply to post by Oralloy

Hiroshima was Japan's main military port, and held tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers.

Can you please post where you get this information?

Hiroshima's civilian population outnumbered the soldiers 6 to 1.

It’s reported over and over again Truman wanted a military target, and instead they bombed an overwhelmingly civilian target.

thanks

Originally posted by TruthParadox

America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.

The sad irony is that, as it actually turned out, the American leaders decided anyway to retain the Emperor as a symbol of authority and continuity. They realized, correctly, that Hirohito was useful as a figurehead prop for their own occupation authority in postwar Japan.

www.ihr.org...

The speculation that Japan would very likely have surrendered had we given a guarantee for the Emperor is a bit of a stretch. Japan was hoping that Soviet mediation would net them even better terms. It's pretty unlikely they would have abandoned the pursuit of even better terms so long as they had some hope of success on the Soviet front.

There are no winners in a war. Only losers. These arguments are childish at best.

One side attacks because it believes it has too. The other defends because it has too. The killing stops when neither side can take it any more. No winners.

When the bombs were dropped they honestly believed it saved huge numbers of American lives. The Japanese were not going to stop. Both sides made stupid decisions. Dropping those bombs may well have saved more lives than it took. That war was real and not based on a conspiracy and is not even a genuine ATS topic. Japan shares equal blame for everything that happened to them. Honesty hurts.

This one is a lesson for the history books. Not a topic for argument.

What gives me chills are the America Haters who stop at nothing to spread hatred for their entertainment. It's like a sickness that is spreading. There is your real conspiracy. A conspiracy of hate for hates sake.