There was no good reason for dropping Nukes on Japan during WW II

Originally posted by DeReK DaRkLy
reply to post by MorkandMindy

 

pearl harbor false flag? no? sorry then i thought you humans had woken up.

Didn't have to be a "false flag"... we just let them attack us as an excuse to drop the bombs...

Is there a genuine source for that newspaper headline?

Originally posted by DeReK DaRkLy
reply to post by MorkandMindy

 

Why, yes in that paper they stated that Japan might strike.... THAILAND!

Why don't people even do a little due diligence? Took all of 15 seconds to find reality.

Originally posted by elias
Look.
Not many people can fully understand the devastation a nuclear weapon causes. It's an all encompassing game ender.
It was the end of world war two. People were angry, tired, and we wanted it to be over. Europe had been taken back, and Hitler killed himself. 1 of the 2 evil empires(in the eyes of the allies) was gone. All manpower in not immediately sweeping Europe for the remnants of the Fuhrer's army were sent to the Pacific to finish the fight, island by island. By that point, much of Japan's Navy and Air Force was gone, and all remaining forces had been called home to defend the homeland in a desperate move of self preservation.
A full invasion of Japan was planned, but ultimately dropped when Truman's administration decided that the atomic bomb was a better decision.
We had sacrificed tens of thousands of lives to take back all these islands, and PACOM didn't want to have anymore body bags to send home. They had what was looking to be a very promising game ender, so they went for it.
It wasn't like they just pushed the button on impulse. They gave the Japanese government several different chances to surrender. They refused, and what happened was entirely to blame on their leaders' arrogance and pride.
I mean, we levelled one city with the most devastating weapon ever developed. And still they said they wouldn't surrender.
So we did it again. And they finally caved. We were prepared to nuke more cities if they were still defiant.
So please do NOT make out the United States to be the aggressor here. The Japanese struck first and sent over 2,000 innocent men, women, and even children to their graves in the attack on Pearl Harbor. They also wounded over 1,100 people in that attack. It was a brilliant, but cowardly and dastardly move.
If you ask me, the Japanese military leadership had it coming. But it was their fault, and theirs alone, that their innocent men, women, and children had to pay the price in a nuclear firestorm.

So what you are saying is that, the Japanese military had it coming, but civilians took the punch, and all after the horror of Pearl Harbour, that does not sound right to me, You forget the conventional b-bombers firestorms, (not nuclear) that occurred after the nuclear blasts, one of the biggest even on the day of surrender, the surrender of which was announced by American military before even those bombers had returned to base. Your opening sentence, beggars belief

reply to post by smurfy


Uh, yes.
The Japanese military DID have it coming. I don't really see how the United States military can not only excuse the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the destruction of most of the ENTIRE PACIFIC FLEET, but the subsequent tens of thousands of Navy casualties as a result of naval warfare across the Pacific.
We chose to end the war quickly, because we had had enough.
And that's always been every country's MO. We bomb them into utter submission. It goes by the name 'shock and awe' today. I honestly don't know why this thread even exists, it seems to be a bunch of Japan apologists crying over spilled milk.
It's in the past. It happened, and it was justified. It sent a message to the entire world that we had suddenly set the standard for 'not to be ****ed with'.

Originally posted by elias
Uh, yes.
The Japanese military DID have it coming. I don't really see how the United States military can not only excuse the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the destruction of most of the ENTIRE PACIFIC FLEET, but the subsequent tens of thousands of Navy casualties as a result of naval warfare across the Pacific.

In wars people die and since the US government of the time CHOSE to intervene in Japans war of aggression against China and others and CHOSE to institute a oil blockade against Japan it should have been ready to face the likely result of taunting and threatening a fascist militarized state. The fact that the US armed forces were essentially caught unprepared everywhere just suggest that people who are aware of events leading up the Pearl harbor should in fact be holding the US navy/ US government responsible for the lack of preparedness.

We chose to end the war quickly, because we had had enough.

This is not accurate. If the US government wanted to spare as many US service men's lives as possible they could have reached a independent ( of the rest of the allies) conditional surrender of Japan which would for instance have allowed them to keep Manchuria and other conquered territories. The fact that the US chose a strategy of demanding unconditional surrender may have been the 'correct' historic choice ( end the threat of Japanese Imperialism once and for all) but it was hardly that strategy that would in the short run have saved the most US lives. Also there were at least a few Japanese held Islands that could have been safely isolated and bypassed thus saving tens of thousands of American lives. It is once thing to claim that the war against Germany could have been ended before the winter of 1944 but against Japan the US held all the cards and they squandered not only American lives but hundreds of thousands of Japanese for purely geo-political considerations.

And that's always been every country's MO. We bomb them into utter submission. It goes by the name 'shock and awe' today. I honestly don't know why this thread even exists, it seems to be a bunch of Japan apologists crying over spilled milk.

That has not 'always' been 'every' countries 'MO' but as you state there has been not no shortage of such countries either. The problem is not that this might be a norm but the fact that the US national security state/nation has for all it's claim to the contrary shown itself to be no more or less barbaric than many of the nations it has claimed to fight because of their own human rights/war crime records. If we can agree that the US is just another imperialist minded nation that will indulge in whatever barbarous activities it must to achieve it's imperial aims then i agree that much of this thread has just been crying over spilled blood which, after all, is what everyone else does so why should the US even attempt to be 'better' than the rest?

It's in the past. It happened, and it was justified. It sent a message to the entire world that we had suddenly set the standard for 'not to be ****ed with'.

It is in the past , a episode of history which you do not seem to have much knowledge of, the nuclear weapon usage being even more unjustified than firebombing then defenseless cities with the US thus going some way to proving that they should not be ****ed with. I think that you do do fully grasp the significance of the US government setting up the US public in this way as what they essentially did then is pretty much what the Nazi party did to Germany by committing such terrible war crimes on such a scale that the country could never negotiate a conditional surrender from anything but strength having lost whatever moral capital it had. This was not a problem as long as Germany was strong but in the end it attacked the wrong combination of foreign powers and were eventually undone. Just consider that if and when the US national security makes a similar mistake and forces a foreign alliance into a war it can not win it will also eventually be American citizens who pay the price for their nations war crimes abroad.

And that is not a threat but merely a statement and understanding that history repeats itself and empires can not help but overextend themselves by committing the types of crimes that rallies foreign alliances into being.

It is too bad really as America really had the relative power as compared to the rest of the world to really achieve a new world order that would not be as grossly exploitative as the new world order that perpetuated and deepened. Too damn bad.


Stellar

Originally posted by Wifibrains
Here's the difference and what makes what America did wrong.

Pearl harbour was a military site strategically bombed. The nukes were dropped on cities, the public.

Yes, it is sad that the difference needs to be explained. As the misses article points out what is the difference between firebombing cities and ( for lack of heavy bombers and incendiary bombs) just taking say 80 000 Japanese civilians on Okinawa and gassing them or shooting them to death? Then you can send the Japanese military junta either pictures of the thousands of bodies stacked sky high or invite them to send a delegation to inspect the scene thus proving that you have decided to 'win at all cost' . In moral terms there is no difference between lining up women and children and shooting them in the street and nuking or firebombing them but what it does suggest or prove, especially in the eyes of a Hitler&Stalin and their followers, is that your soldiers do not have the stomach ( they may actually just be moral men, unlike the leadership) to 'do what it takes' thus showing the barbarians 'how it's done'.

Fighting terror with terror may be expedient, and it can be a understood as a recourse of the weak ( if you lack fighter aircraft or bombers or artillery a truck suicide bomb may be one of only a few practical options), but in the strong it may perhaps accurately be be seen as barbaric, and possibly, cowardly behaviour.

Nothing short of terrorism under the guise of war, I think the sickos who gave the orders just wanted to see how destructive their bombs were, not caring how much life would perish, I think they liked it.

edit on 18-10-2012 by Wifibrains because: (no reason given)

[ex]"Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them."

"The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible," he said; he didn't like the idea of killing "all those kids."[5]

mises.org...

I do not want to believe that they liked it, even if it could be argued, but they had concerns and in the end decided that it would suit their geo strategic aims best to " kill all those kids", just like the Nazi's and Japanese.

On the positive side of things it does seem to me at least that the ever greater recourse to drones and long range weaponry does in fact indicate that humanities 'leaders' moral development are not keeping pace with the citizenry and that they have to go to ever greater lengths to hide their crimes and pay more and more in terms of resources expended to find&arm the people they still need to commit their crimes for them.

Stellar

reply to post by StellarX


I'm really starting to get tired of people harping like the Japanese were such saints.
Yes, they had innocent civilians.
You are, however, incorrect in your assumption that in the weeks before the bomb dropped that Japan was on the verge of collapse.
Yes, we had stopped facing their military in large scale conflicts. We still occasionally faced them one way or the other, but the big firefights had been won. The leadership would not bow to the firebombings. This is historically accurate.
What you fail to understand is that this is war. Anyone can sit in a chair and say we should have done things differently, because hindsight is 20/20. I will not apologize for my government's actions. Yes, I hate that hundreds of thousands died or were poisoned irreversibly. Nuclear weapons are more devastating than people give them credit for, and there's a reason they've started phasing them out(in a sense).
Yes, we wanted unconditional surrender. Why? Because we were tired. And don't throw the whole 'The USA only entered world war 2 because of China' argument at me.
We entered because of 2 reasons(in the pacific theater) that should be clear and present to you.
1. Pearl Harbor was bombed, and 70 percent of the Pacific Fleet was sunk or damaged to the point of long term repair, as well as the loss of thousands of military personnel and civilians. That attack was unprovoked.
2. Further aggression in the Pacific forced us into a long term naval conflict that culminated in the systematic eradication of the Japanese held islands.

In a purely military mindset, this was the perfect opportunity to test the nuclear weapon's effects on a large populace. At the time, we knew nuclear debris was radioactive. We just hadn't had the time to see how it would affect the human body. So they decided to test them, while also knowing that this would end the war.
We almost used them again in Vietnam, and in my opinion we should have.
It was the perfect opportunity to show Japan, the Soviet Union, and our allies that we were not to be trifled with. And for a while, it worked.

Also, before you reply, you should look up the Rape of Nanking before you so quickly think of America as the big bad aggressor.
The Japanese had it coming.

Unfortunately the Japanese proved to be no better than barbarians during WWII. Take the Baatan death march, this is one of the most brutal acts commited in WWII or any other war for that matter. The Japanese showed little regarding for human rights and seemed intent on inflicting as much terror on their enemy as possible.

The Philipines alone showed just how brutal the Japanese overloads were and how they seemed to enjoy prisoners living in inhumane conditions. I have no problem with the bombing of both cities, or we could have simply let the Komakazi pilots keep killing allied forces in the name of their emporer.

reply to post by FortAnthem


That was the war crime . 2 cities were bombarded with Nuke Unnecessarily

Originally posted by Catacomb
What war has ever been won without ground troops occupying another country it is at war with?

What war has ever been won, period.

Any act of war is unnecessary and is orchestrated by people who´s interest it serves and not the people of the warring nations. Can you even imagine the horror of having to live through an event like the atomic bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki? I can´t, but it must have been truly horrofying. I´m pretty sure most of the killed and affected people knew nothing about the real reasons for the war and would rather have lived than die proud for an unknown and unjustified cause. No sane person wants its country to participate in a war, especially not on their own soil. No child thinks we should bomb another nation because they think different or have something of value we could steal, yet they . It´s in the process of growing up ("education") where we are taught that only "our" culture is good and we should eliminate anyone else who is different and that stealing resources from poor nations only serves their own best interest. Divide et impera.

Originally posted by RationalDespair

Originally posted by Catacomb
What war has ever been won without ground troops occupying another country it is at war with?

What war has ever been won, period.

Any act of war is unnecessary and is orchestrated by people who´s interest it serves and not the people of the warring nations. Can you even imagine the horror of having to live through an event like the atomic bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki? I can´t, but it must have been truly horrofying. I´m pretty sure most of the killed and affected people knew nothing about the real reasons for the war and would rather have lived than die proud for an unknown and unjustified cause. No sane person wants its country to participate in a war, especially not on their own soil. No child thinks we should bomb another nation because they think different or have something of value we could steal, yet they . It´s in the process of growing up ("education") where we are taught that only "our" culture is good and we should eliminate anyone else who is different and that stealing resources from poor nations only serves their own best interest. Divide et impera.

I agree 100 percent.
Good post!

This is self explanatory:-

en.wikipedia.org...

British soldiers who survived on the whole could never forgive the Japanese.

Nanjing....ever hear of it? Manchuria? We have countless movies about the Holocaust, and not to take anything away of how horrible that was...but the Japasnese slaughtered ALOT more people then the Germans....the Asian Hualocost far outweighs what the germans did in terms of civilians killed..... .they piled up pyramids of human bodies in Chinese cities, played games with the civilian victims heads, and experimented in Machuria on prisoners and civilians alike subjecting them to all sorts of biological and chemical weapons being developed.. oh and then there were the rape camps where local women were raped by hundreds of soldiers and killed for sport........I have nothing but respect and love for many Japanese today, and the Japanese that tried to prevent the Imperial tyranny from taking over in the first place....and highly respect much of their older culture the Yamabushi especially.......but the Japanese were also victims of Imperial Japan.....the Atomic bombs killed many but also saved countless lives, both in terms of our troops and many civilians......your historical revision ignores completely what Imperial Japan was....and the horrible war crimes they perpetrated....All the causalities from both bombs still pale compared to the wholesale slaughter by the japanese in Korea and China....go to Nanjing and please explain to ANY Chinese about how it was not right to use nuclear weapons on Japan.....had the Chinese had such weapons the main difference would have been they would not have stopped droping bombs on Japan, until no two story structure remained on their islands.....given what they were put through...not sure I could blame them......

Originally posted by StellarX
In wars people die and since the US government of the time CHOSE to intervene in Japans war of aggression against China and others and CHOSE to institute a oil blockade against Japan it should have been ready to face the likely result of taunting and threatening a fascist militarized state. The fact that the US armed forces were essentially caught unprepared everywhere just suggest that people who are aware of events leading up the Pearl harbor should in fact be holding the US navy/ US government responsible for the lack of preparedness.

The west was "intervening" with the Japanese because they were starting up the good ol' "Greater AsianCo- prosperity Sphere". It sounds pretty cool, but it was nothing more than the Japanese running the show, and every other Asian country would be their slaves.

So, you might want to do some research before making it sound like the West was just picking on poor ol' Japan.

And the US was caught unprepared; they were expecting war with Japan in the Summer of 1942.

I have heard that they dropped the bombs on those locations in Japan because those were sites where the Japanese work working to develop their own nuclear programs, but I don't know if this information is accurate.

Originally posted by TheKeyMaster
I have heard that they dropped the bombs on those locations in Japan because those were sites where the Japanese work working to develop their own nuclear programs, but I don't know if this information is accurate.

It is not accurate at all. Just a fantasy story.

reply to post by TheKeyMaster


There is some evidence that they were indeed pursuing an atomic bomb...whether at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, I don't know.

They would have also been years behind in developing one...not a creditable threat in any case. War would have been long over before anything came of their research.

They had to drop the bomb on somebody to see what would happen.
and most of the brass in the US would likely have had relatives, and or investments, or some connection to that area in Europe...while they most likely had no connections to Japan...

so japan was a safe bet to lay an egg

reply to post by Danbones


There's probably a little truth in that supposition...mores the pity.

But you will note, I hope, that the war in Europe was all but settled by the time the bombs were ready to deploy, while Japan was still very much in the fight. Corralled? Yes. Beaten? Not quite.

Strategically, the bombs were of more use in the Pacific Theatre against Japan then against an all but beaten Germany.

Yeah, I could definitely see the Japan bomb sites claim to being nuclear development areas as being revisionist history.. but it is the most logical explanation as to why they would choose those sites.