quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:
Those who made the decision and those that carried it out, certainly did not revel in the thing, but knew, with depth of pain, what it meant to do what needed to be done.

I know this, because I have looked in the eyes of my people, that both knew and stood the ground that took the action to bring the end to that war.

And no one, ever, will convince me that it was not the right, moral and prudent thing to do.

I will also spend any and all breath I have, that my grandchildren, understand it.

sigmonkey, couldn't agree more, well said.

Zeke, here's another article you (and anyone here) might want to read and pass on. It's a Victor Davis Hanson piece, so I shouldn't have to say anything more about it.

Our Annual August Debate over the Bombs

I read the article and was reminded of the statement, "the US is the only country to use nuclear weapons".

The truth is that is only because we were the only country that had them.

I suspect Germany and/or Japan wouldn't have had any second thoughts about using them on us.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:

I suspect Germany and/or Japan wouldn't have had any second thoughts about using them on us.

I just finished Erik Larson’s book about Churchill and the Battle of Britain.

Civilians weren’t collateral damage, the Germans targeted population centers to maximize civilian casualties. They also used timed fuses on a percentage of their bombs to deter firefighters and emergency crews from putting out fires and rescuing victims.

Hitler wouldn’t have hesitated to use the atomic bomb if they’d been able to develop it.

I was watching a show about WW2 on the Smithsonian channel last night. They said that in anticipation of the invasion of Japan, the War Dept had ordered 500,000 Purple Hearts. Think about that, during the entire war, the US awarded 1M Purple Hearts and now they were ordering 500,000 more for one campaign.

Great article, thank you for sharing.

quote:

Originally posted by fpuhan:
Zeke, here's another article you (and anyone here) might want to read and pass on. It's a Victor Davis Hanson piece, so I shouldn't have to say anything more about it.

Our Annual August Debate over the Bombs

Don't want none, don't start none. Japan should have considered that possibility when they attacked pearl harbor. Or when they beheaded the defenders of Wake Island, or perpetrated the Bataan Death March, or abused to death thousands of allied POWs, and millions of civilians from occupied countries.

The death toll required to invade the Japanese home islands would have been horriffic. The bomb also saved the lives of countless POWs who almost certainly would have been executed if the war had turned into a slogging march up the Japanese home islands. I just finished reading a biography of one of the Doolittle Raiders, who's captors told him they planned to do exactly that, and I've read the same from other sources as well.

Yes, bombing civilian centers with nuclear weapons was a horrible choice to have to make. But it was the right one. And it's a choice that would never have been necessary if Japan had not chosen the course of action that they did.

Mark Felton has a interesting vid on this subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I34pxr23Nhw

The intentional death of non-combatants is always immoral, but WWI and WWII had millions of such deaths from several causes. Russian leadership killed its own people. Japan committed atrocities against Korea and China. The US firebombed Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden, etc. Hitler firebombed and rocketed London. The Kaiser sank the Lusitania. Examples abound. I think in discussions with friends in a variety of places, be it social media or in person, that we recognize the pain of someone recognizing how horrible one act is, and to offer clarification that all sides were taking similar steps to end the conflict.

Today it seems that Western cultures maintain a strict code of only fighting the military force, to the point of prosecuting their own soldiers for perceived crimes. However, non-Western cultures have persisted in both using civilians as terrorists, as well as combatants-in-camouflage carrying IEDs towards soldiers. Non-Western leaders have even harmed their own people (think Syria). So, to those who deem the US acts against Japan as immoral, at least we can point to our continued growth as a military force to improve fire discipline, control aggression to combatants only, and fire only when certain. I think our technology has made this far more possible than in the first half of the 20th century.

There is plenty of stuff that the United States does that results in collateral damage. We made many attempts to eliminate Castro and the CIA certainly engaged in some pretty sketchy stuff. I do not object to these endeavors but disagree with your position.

Dropping the bombs actually saved lives on both sides, a land invasion would have prolonged the war. After the first bomb, Japan was given the opportunity to surrender, they chose not to.
My Dad was a medic in the Navy, he told stories about seeing American soldiers hanging from trees with bayonets shoved up their a****. Someone mentioned Tojo being hanged after the war?? I thought he was killed in a plane crash near the end, correct me if I'm wrong.

quote:

Originally posted by MMSIG229:
Dropping the bombs actually saved lives on both sides, a land invasion would have prolonged the war. After the first bomb, Japan was given the opportunity to surrender, they chose not to.
My Dad was a medic in the Navy, he told stories about seeing American soldiers hanging from trees with bayonets shoved up their a****. Someone mentioned Tojo being hanged after the war?? I thought he was killed in a plane crash near the end, correct me if I'm wrong.

You aren't thinking of Yamamoto getting shot down by P-38's are you?

quote:

Originally posted by MMSIG229:
Someone mentioned Tojo being hanged after the war?? I thought he was killed in a plane crash near the end, correct me if I'm wrong.

Tojo was tried, convicted and hung. (23 DEC 1948)

Interestingly, he first tried shooting himself and made a mess of it.

“ When his arrest was ordered in September, Tojo tried to commit suicide. According to one story, he got a doctor to put a charcoal mark on his chest to indicate the right place to shoot himself in the heart and fired a shot into his body, but somehow the bullet missed his heart and ended up in his stomach. According to another, he fired four shots at himself without success. Lying bleeding profusely when the military police and accompanying journalists burst in, he was heard to murmur a polite apology for taking so long to die. The press photographers put the gun back in his hand and told him to hold on to it before snapping their pictures of him. He was taken to hospital and patched up, before being moved to the Sugamo Prison in Tokyo. He was bitterly condemned by some Japanese for failing to kill himself as honour demanded.”

https://www.historytoday.com/a...tojo-hideki-executed

Sometime in 2014 I was in China hanging out at my favorite drinking place. I mentioned to the uncommonly buxom Chinese bartender (and one of my best friends in the world) that I had to pack it in early, because I had to fly to Japan in the morning, and she said "FUCK THEM, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DID TO CHINA?"

Even 70 years later, Asia has not forgotten the brutality of Hirohito's Japan.

One of my sons believes that dropping the bomb was immoral as well. His argument is based on his reading of Catholic "Just War" theory and makes a thoughtful argument for his position. We have gone around and around on this subject each August for a few years now.

Because of our annual discussion and disagreement, I have read a lot about the bombing (I just finished Chris Wallace's 'Countdown 1945').

The only point I have changed my mind on is that I think it was a mistake not to first drop one of the bombs as a demonstration. I think the arguments raised against using one as a demonstration are unpersuasive. I don't know if it would have convinced the Japanese to surrender, but it certainly would have made a more compelling case than either the Potsdam Declaration or dropping a bunch of leaflets did.

That being said, using the bomb was no more moral or immoral than firebombing Tokyo. Using the bomb was the "best" option for ending the war quickly. It saved untold American and Japanese lives and thus, in my opinion, was the right thing to do.

These people were flying airplanes into aircraft carriers. No demonstration would have had an effect on them or brought them to the table any sooner. It had to be done.

If we'd been real assholes, we'd have used the anthrax the Brits developed. It was expected to have a 60% mortality rate on humans and livestock, but had a 100% mortality rate when tested. The island off Scotland that was the test site was finally declared safe...

... in 1990.

Seriously? Never occurred to him to put it to his head? WTF

quote:

Originally posted by Icabod:

quote:

Originally posted by MMSIG229:
Someone mentioned Tojo being hanged after the war?? I thought he was killed in a plane crash near the end, correct me if I'm wrong.

Tojo was tried, convicted and hung. (23 DEC 1948)

Interestingly, he first tried shooting himself and made a mess of it.

“ When his arrest was ordered in September, Tojo tried to commit suicide. According to one story, he got a doctor to put a charcoal mark on his chest to indicate the right place to shoot himself in the heart and fired a shot into his body, but somehow the bullet missed his heart and ended up in his stomach. According to another, he fired four shots at himself without success. Lying bleeding profusely when the military police and accompanying journalists burst in, he was heard to murmur a polite apology for taking so long to die. The press photographers put the gun back in his hand and told him to hold on to it before snapping their pictures of him. He was taken to hospital and patched up, before being moved to the Sugamo Prison in Tokyo. He was bitterly condemned by some Japanese for failing to kill himself as honour demanded.”

https://www.historytoday.com/a...tojo-hideki-executed

There is absolutely no question that the Germans and/or Japanese would have used as many atom bombs as needed to win the war, if they had the ability to build them. The entire world is lucky they did not win the race or history would have taken a drastically different course.

Regardless of "demonstrations" Japan did not give up after Hiroshima and dared us to do it again. Only after sacrificing Nagasaki (which the MSM seems to ignore) to save face, did they surrender. While Hiroshima may be on our hands, Nagasaki is on theirs.

Good thing the bluff worked - if they dared a third, our hand would have been exposed.

It is ironic that the only reason some people feel the atomic bomb is immoral today is because it was used. In other words, its destructive potential was demonstrated, and that somehow makes it immoral. Equal indictment should be upon all nuclear weapons, if these people were intellectually honest. IOW, you cannot enjoy living under the security of a nuclear umbrella while advocating the immorality of their use.

Imagine a world where nuclear weapons were not used in WWII, where the world was not aghast at the idea of atomic weapons. Much thought is given to the losses involved in the conventional defeat of japan, but imagine how the Korean War would have played out without the WWII nuclear bombings. Where would the the impetus to de-escalate the Cuban missile crisis be without the WWII demonstration of atomic destruction? Imagine if a first use had been a hydrogen bomb.

I am grateful that the only use of atomic weapons occurred when the weapons were 12kt bombs instead of MIRV capable megaton missiles. The United States’, and the world’s nations, restraint since August of 1944 is the demonstration of morality, just the opposite of what is claimed from the first use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Every decision is made in the here and now, by leaders who are influenced by their own history. The history of the world in 1945 was the horror of aggression that had begun in 1914, and had resulted in three decades of civilian murder. How can that be judged by a world that enjoys the relative security of today’s world? Judging the past using present morals is intellectually dishonest.