Dec 7

[BigRedBuster]

We had to drop The Bomb because they were not going to surrender. Every man, woman and child would have fought us.

Interesting fact - we are still, in 2016, awarding Purple Hearts that were manufactured prior to the end of World War II. They made hundreds of thousands of them in anticipation of the bloodbath that invading mainland Japan would incur.

Dropping The Bomb on Hiroshima was the most humane way of ending that war. We dropped another on Nagasaki because in the immediate aftermath of the first strike, Japanese leadership still wouldn't surrender. We needed their agreement to unconditionally surrender or we'd have to invade.

Let's also consider, as we discuss our justifiable shock & horror over the use of these two weapons, the atrocities wrought by the Japanese Army in the war. Their acts of barbarism in China alone justified that punishment. The Rape of Nanking alone was amazingly horrific.

An interesting fact about all this is that I was able to spend some time with the flight crew of the Enola Gay when they were together publically for the very last time before Paul Tibbets passed away.

He was starting to have health problems from old age and the entire group decided to not do any more public appearances without him. I was sort of behind the scenes of the public appearance so I was able to spend all day with these guys and have private conversations. Great group.

This was one of the most fascinating days I have ever had with anyone from that generation.

Anyway, there was a Japanese journalist trying to get an interview with them. Just after the war, they did some interviews with Japanese press and their words were totally twisted to mean something different than they said. So...this lady was rather frustrated. I had a chance to talk to her also. So...I decided to turn it around and I asked her what is told to the Japanese people about all of this.

She said that absolutely nothing about Pearl Harbor is even mentioned in Japanese schools. They obviously talk about the bombs being dropped. But, many of the Japanese citizens don't fully understand what drug us into war with them.

 

[zoogs]

There are some who question, in retrospect, our decision to nuke Japan. If you ask me, we let them off pretty easy considering all the evil they wrought.

I can't agree here. The war crimes the Japanese military committed were atrocious and on a shocking scale, and they're somewhat under-acknowledged here. That vengeance was exacted directly upon civilians, though, was not right.

I have great difficulty accepting any justifications of what has to be, in my view, an extremely morally complicated aspect of U.S. history. It isn't the only one, and that's OK, too; history is all full of moral complications.

I don't know whether Japan would have definitely surrendered, although the thought is both soothing and necessary to acceptance of the A-bombs. But whatever positives derived from the result, whatever the cause...I can't view the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians as a means to achieve military victory as just. The tragedy of how war transforms us spares no sides, and this was perhaps the most terrible war of all. I'm glad we won.

Somewhat of an aside, I really like this quote from Tolkien -- who fought at the Somme and lived through World War II -- and I think it's duly applicable.

The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all.

 

[BigRedBuster]

There are some who question, in retrospect, our decision to nuke Japan. If you ask me, we let them off pretty easy considering all the evil they wrought.

I can't agree here. The war crimes the Japanese military committed were atrocious and on a shocking scale, and they're somewhat under-acknowledged here. That vengeance was exacted directly upon civilians, though, was not right.

I have great difficulty accepting any justifications of what has to be, in my view, an extremely morally complicated aspect of U.S. history. It isn't the only one, and that's OK, too; history is all full of moral complications.

I don't know whether Japan would have definitely surrendered, although the thought is both soothing and necessary to acceptance of the A-bombs. But whatever positives derived from the result, whatever the cause...I can't view the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians as a means to achieve military victory as just. The tragedy of how war transforms us spares no sides, and this was perhaps the most terrible war of all. I'm glad we won.

Somewhat of an aside, I really like this quote from Tolkien -- who fought at the Somme and lived through World War II -- and I think it's duly applicable.

The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there in peace. War will make corpses of us all.

I think your view here is based on modern war technology. Today, we have the ability to target one house in one small town in the mountains many miles away from a ship in the ocean.

Back then, when we fought countries like Germany, we had to break their backs. I just spent a week in Dusseldorf Germany. That was one of the cities that was basically completely demolished by allied forces trying to defeat Germany. When you see pictures of those cities, there literally wasn't a building that wasn't either completely destroyed or had major damage. Many civilians were killed in those bombing raids that literally lasted for months. The only thing we had were dumb bombs that just literally fell from the sky onto whatever was below.

The only other option was to invade with ground troops which would have cost probably hundreds of thousands of lives or possibly millions. Now, what the Germans were doing, I believe, totally justified that. The atrocities that were being carried out were being done by a regime that was supported by the people even though many of the German people didn't know what was happening to the Jews once they were taken away. That doesn't absolve them from being a part of it and if they end up being a casualty of war, then....sorry....you shouldn't have supported such a horrible person as your leader.

Now, take that to Japan and the same things can be said. They had already proved in China and other war situations that they had absolutely no mercy in what they were willing to do to civilians of whomever they opposed.

 

[zoogs]

It's true that legal frameworks and international standards hadn't really caught up with technology for aerial warfare, napalm, or atomic bombs. However, the tactics employed in Dresden, et al. were not met without consternation even at the time. That unease was largely papered over by the victory over the Axis, which was a rather unambiguously good result.

Churchill distanced himself from Dresden in March of 1945, writing to his military commanders:

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests than that of the enemy.

The Foreign Secretary has spoken to me on this subject, and I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.

Note the understanding that the utility of the exercise lay not chiefly in the elimination of military targets, but in the terror inflicted by the civilian destruction. Curtis LeMay said of Tokyo, fully acknowledging that noble ends were justifying ugly means:

LeMay was aware of the implication of his orders. The New York Times reported at the time, "Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, commander of the B-29s of the entire Marianas area, declared that if the war is shortened by a single day, the attack will have served its purpose".[9][10] The argument was that it was his duty to carry out the attacks in order to end the war as quickly as possible, sparing further loss of life. He also remarked that had the U.S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes.[19] This opinion was also reported by Robert McNamara.[20]

Here's the Post on the atomic bombings, which of course was also not met with any issue of precision guidance technology.

I don't think we would accept American civilians to be subject to any foreign determination of "too bad, you are supporting a horrible leader." I shudder to think what the world might deem just visitations upon us in the future.

I'm sorry to derail the thread a little bit, but it's been a good conversation. Pearl Harbor was another great tragedy of the war.

 

[knapplc]

The deaths of civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are astounding. In the actual bombing and its immediate aftermath, more than 200,000 civilians died.

It is not unlikely that the estimates of killed and wounded in Hiroshima (150,000) and Nagasaki (75,000) are over conservative.

LINK

The Japanese were preparing to defend their homeland on a massive scale. Estimates for American casualties ranged from the low tens of thousands to over 200,000. President Truman, probably correctly, surmised that the American public would not stomach such losses and would sue for peace. The US suffered over 70,000 casualties on Okinawa alone - an island guarded by only about 2 1/2 Japanese divisions. As the first link in this paragraph notes, nearly 10 divisions were set to meet the expected American landing force on the Kyushu plains alone.

Okinawa taught the US Command that the Japanese were not averse to wholesale slaughter of civilians in their quest to defend the empire. Over 100,000 Okinawan civilians were killed in the battle.

So the decision to drop the A-Bomb on Japan was devolving into basic math. How many civilians would die in a land invasion? How many Japanese troops? How many Americans killed or wounded? At what cost to the future of both countries?

And let's not forget, the Japanese were absolutely not innocent of the most grievous atrocities. The number of civilian deaths in China alone might well be more than 50,000,000.

That's million. Fifty million. Even if that estimate is off by a factor of ten, that's still five million - and that would be an absurdly low estimate. Death tolls from the atrocities in Nanking alone are estimated to be between 30,000 and 300,000. Men killed, women raped, children murdered.

And that doesn't include the islands the Japanese conquered. That doesn't include the atrocities committed against prisoners of war.

The war had to be stopped. The sooner it was stopped the better, for everyone involved. Yes, it's terrible that it was stopped in this way.

I think it was necessary. I think it saved a LOT of lives, on both sides.

 

[zoogs]

I think it saved a LOT of lives, on both sides.

I think there's a persuasive case to be made against this, summarized well in the Post article I posted previously. "It was necessary to end the war" is what I learned in school, but there's little room for any other view of this while still teaching us that we're fundamentally the good guys. And that is an important educational priority.

To an extent we'll never know, but I think we can all agree wholeheartedly that it was a terrible event in a terrible war that, thankfully, ended thereafter.

"It was necessary to achieve unconditional surrender, rather than surrender + the emperor clause (which came into effect anyway)" makes the case less compelling to me. It also seems the loss of a Soviet role in negotiations is being undersold, and the Japanese resistance in the face of a utterly hopeless situation being extrapolated too heavily. It seems to me that they realized the war was rapidly slipping away, and their priorities turned to preserving the Emperor (and some avoidance of total dishonor) above all else. I can't personally place a lot of confidence in the idea that all other avenues were truly exhausted. I understand that such things happen in war, though.

I just hope a nuclear bomb is never dropped again. That we were the only ones to have ever done it is a justly discomforting legacy to have to carry, I think. Facing that can make us stronger, I think, if only to steel our resolve to opposing such action in the future. The world does depend so on the moral standing of America's commitments.

 

[BigRedBuster]

Knapp's one post points out that the Japanese had no problem killing way more civilians than Either bomb killed and were prepared to kill more with no second thought.

I have never had any sympathy for either German or Japanese civilians who were affected by the war. None. Zip.

They supported the slaughter of millions of innocent people.

It had to be stopped.

We got scoreboard!!! And the world is a better place.

 

[knapplc]

Do the math. Ten divisions of Japanese troops just on the Kyushu plain.

Millions of Japanese civilians, ready to fight to the death for honor and Emperor.

What were they going to do, just surrender? Clearly not, as the troop buildups continued.

As events in World War II go, dropping The Bomb on Nagasaki & Hiroshima aren't even in the top ten of worst things done.

 

[Mavric]

I think it saved a LOT of lives, on both sides.

I think there's a persuasive case to be made against this, summarized well in the Post article I posted previously. "It was necessary to end the war" is what I learned in school, but there's little room for any other view of this while still teaching us that we're fundamentally the good guys. And that is an important educational priority.

To an extent we'll never know, but I think we can all agree wholeheartedly that it was a terrible event in a terrible war that, thankfully, ended thereafter.

"It was necessary to achieve unconditional surrender, rather than surrender + the emperor clause (which came into effect anyway)" makes the case less compelling to me. It also seems the loss of a Soviet role in negotiations is being undersold, and the Japanese resistance in the face of a utterly hopeless situation being extrapolated too heavily. It seems to me that they realized the war was rapidly slipping away, and their priorities turned to preserving the Emperor (and some avoidance of total dishonor) above all else. I can't personally place a lot of confidence in the idea that all other avenues were truly exhausted. I understand that such things happen in war, though.

I just hope a nuclear bomb is never dropped again. That we were the only ones to have ever done it is a justly discomforting legacy to have to carry, I think. Facing that can make us stronger, I think, if only to steel our resolve to opposing such action in the future. The world does depend so on the moral standing of America's commitments.

The premise of your first sentence is basically that the history we are taught is written to show us in a favorable light. Yet the article you are referring to appears to be sourced from people who may be prone to do the same thing from the Japanese point of view. So being skeptical of their conclusions would seem to be prudent.

Point 2 in that article does not seem to align with reality. They try to claim that possibly only 40,000 US deaths would result from invading Japan. That may have been the estimate at the time but, as knapp pointed out, if the battle at Okinawa resulted in 50,000-70,000 US casualties and 100,000 Japanese casualties, so it's obvious that those estimates for invading the Japanese homeland were significantly underestimated. Thus, using them as the basis for the article seems short-sighted at best.

Point 3 seems to try to imply that simply granting the Emperor immunity may have led them to a conditional surrender. That doesn't seem to likely considering the overall mind-set of the Japanese people and especially military at the time. And at best there isn't much offered to back it up. So, again, I'm not really sure pointing that out as a viable option is really being truthful about the situation.

 

[zoogs]

I have never had any sympathy for either German or Japanese civilians who were affected by the war. None. Zip.

How can you not? They were human beings who did not choose the place nor time of their birth, after which it was scarcely possible for them to have another choice. They were themselves blameless victims of a strategic calculation, one we hope (and need) to have been the best of all options.

The ends may be good, but the means -- especially where it involves civilian slaughter -- ought to be critically examined.

The Japanese leadership was not unified at the time of Potsdam, and the Emperor himself said this:

After going over the declaration point by point, the emperor asked Tōgō if those terms "were the most reasonable to be expected in the circumstances". Tōgō said that they were. The emperor said, "I agree. In principle they are acceptable."

There were hardliners, but he does not appear to have been one of them. All alternative, non-invasion paths were not attempted prior to the incineration of two cities. Perhaps that was the only reasonable way to go. We'll never know, because we never tried them.

 

[84HuskerLaw]

It is very interesting to me the transformation of Japan pre/during WWII and them since WWII.

Based on the historical writings I have read and listened to, I think that had we not used the nukes, the war could have lasted another year or longer. The war in the Pacific was extremely difficult (maybe even worse that Europe in some ways). I have read more realistic estimates of perhaps another half a million dead if we continued to conventional war fighting, assuming we could. The United States was very much weakened by the four long years of WWII in general. Many military experts have suggested that we could not likely have sustained more than another 2 years and there was in fact no guarantee that we could even defeat Japan in a conventional way.

The people of Japan had been psychologically indoctrinated and conditioned to ABSOLUTELY HATE Americans and it is quite unlikely that the military and even most of the people would have actually stopped fighting, even upon a terribly difficult and bloody invasion of the main island of Japan. We would have had to use mass quantities of conventional bombing (millions more would have died in that manner so maybe we saved Japanese lives actually) and our supplies and capacity to continue was waning. There was good reason to believe that Japan would literally NEVER surrender and would fight indefinately. Some Japanese soldiers continued the fight for decades after Japan did surrender. Japan even attacked our navy ships AFTER the signing of the surrender documents, after the bombs, and we gave them a chance to surrender after the first bomb BEFORE hitting them the second time.

The race to build the nuclear bomb was extremely desperate for two reasons particularly. First, we were deathly afraid the Germans would get one first and we would have lost everything. Germany would have used 50 or more and destroyed North America. Secondly, the war effort was literally everything America could muster - we were fighting with every last man, woman and child in the effort and raw materials (fuel, steel, etc etc) were extremely short. And with the absolute evil despicable 'war crimes' methods of Japan and of course intense fear that Japan would launch large scale attacks on the U.S. mainland at any point, there was just no way we could NOT use the bombs.

The use of the bombs had the positive effect, in my view, of 'convincing' the Japanese people to STOP and give up the fight. It took this massive 'shock and awe' to effectively wake them from their zombie or robotic mindset.

 

[BigRedBuster]

I have never had any sympathy for either German or Japanese civilians who were affected by the war. None. Zip.

How can you not? They were human beings who did not choose the place nor time of their birth, after which it was scarcely possible for them to have another choice. They were themselves blameless victims of a strategic calculation, one we hope (and need) to have been the best of all options.
The ends may be good, but the means -- especially where it involves civilian slaughter -- ought to be critically examined.

The Japanese leadership was not unified at the time of Potsdam, and the Emperor himself said this:

After going over the declaration point by point, the emperor asked Tōgō if those terms "were the most reasonable to be expected in the circumstances". Tōgō said that they were. The emperor said, "I agree. In principle they are acceptable."

There were hardliners, but he does not appear to have been one of them. All alternative, non-invasion paths were not attempted prior to the incineration of two cities. Perhaps that was the only reasonable way to go. We'll never know, because we never tried them.

I'll modify my statement by saying I feel sorry for the children but nobody else.
The German adult citizens knew their government was invading other countries and committing atrocities in doing so. They also knew the Jews were being robbed of all positions and shipped off in cattle rail cars like animals and did nothing about it.

Let's say our government started rounding up anyone who was Hispanic no matter if they were citizens or not and loading them up on the rail road. At the same time we were invading Canada and slaughtering there people who don't fall in line.

Other countries have to invade us to stop us. If I died in that invasion even though I'm not in the military, it's my own fault. I didn't work to stop my country from doing what caused it.

I'm not innocent.

 

[zoogs]

I don't know. I'd say you would be innocent, just as you *are* innocent of the Bush regime's prosecution of the Iraq War (whether or not you supported it), or the Obama administration's drone program, or their complicity in Saudi Arabia's war with Yemen, or the mess in Syria.

If the U.S. ever had to be stopped in that manner, then enemy forces that resort to indiscriminate slaughter of civilians...well, it's the kind of thing that can't surprise anyone in war. But it would be one of the monstrous things that happens, and those countries who decided to make military targets out of civilians might justly be vilified for doing so. They would, of course, have their justifications that it was strictly necessary. Even if they weren't wrong, I'd maintain the innocence of the victims.

 

[MLB 51]

Knapp's one post points out that the Japanese had no problem killing way more civilians than Either bomb killed and were prepared to kill more with no second thought.

I have never had any sympathy for either German or Japanese civilians who were affected by the war. None. Zip.

They supported the slaughter of millions of innocent people.

It had to be stopped.

We got scoreboard!!! And the world is a better place.

This part of your statement is invalid. I had family trapped behind the wall in East Berlin. They did everything they could to get out.

 

[BigRedBuster]

Knapp's one post points out that the Japanese had no problem killing way more civilians than Either bomb killed and were prepared to kill more with no second thought.

I have never had any sympathy for either German or Japanese civilians who were affected by the war. None. Zip.

They supported the slaughter of millions of innocent people.

It had to be stopped.

We got scoreboard!!! And the world is a better place.

This part of your statement is invalid. I had family trapped behind the wall in East Berlin. They did everything they could to get out.

The wall didn't go up till after what we are talking about happened.