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Hiroshima (1946)

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Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#81

Post by vacri »

rangibaby wrote: post #70
badminton1 wrote: post #59

There are many views on the bombing. The difference is that Americans do not hide it. It's controversial, but people know about it. Same with Germans. People know about how the Germans behaved in WW2, they're not proud about it, it's learned in schools, and they do not hide it. Japan on the other side, actively hide their actions. Japanese schools present a revisionist version of history in which all their horrible a…

It's not like Japan would be the first country to selectively remember history to make itself look good. I doubt they teach much about Dresden in the UK, or the extermination of Indians in America, or killing literally every Aborigine in Tasmania, or the British forcing the Chinese to buy opium. I went to school in Japan and we didn't learn a sugar-coated version of history. We went to Hiroshima and listened to a tal…

In Australia, the extermination of all Tasmanian aborigines was definitely not taught in highschool, in at least the late 80s when I went. It's not suppressed at all, and plenty of people are aware of it, but it's certainly not taught (or at least, wasn't at that time).

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#82

Post by GunboatDiplomat »

nkoren wrote: post #18
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what to think, but here's an interesting argument. What would the counterargument look like? "When Okinawa was finally declared secure, the cost had been horrific. Some 150,000 Okinawans died, approximately one-third the island's population. An additional 10,000 Koreans, used by the Japanese military as slave labor, died as well. Of the 119,000 or so Japanese soldiers, as many as 112,000 were killed in t…

That's a straw man. There were many alternatives apart from an invasion, such as a submarine blockade (as the navy was proposing), or simply accepting the conditional surrender which Japan had been offering through back-channels for weeks.

A blockade would have meant total famine for the Japanese people, probably killing many more than the bombs did. In fact, in the aftermath of the surrender, millions were close to starvation. And that was with tens of millions of dollars in food aid. It took years to end the threat of famine to Japan.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#83

Post by bluejekyll »

hugh4 wrote: post #60
hasenj wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think would much rather my leaders just sign some sort of an armistice agreement rather than annihilate "enemy" civilians. I mean there are ways to end a war without total destruction. And the logic of killing civilians to save soldiers is just .. no comment.

>I think would much rather my leaders just sign some sort of an armistice agreement rather than annihilate "enemy" civilians. Great idea! Now, how do we persuade the other side to sign that agreement?

You're making the assumption that you -need- the other side to sign an agreement. Japan was completely contained by the US at this point in the war.

This was a decision to hasten the end of the war, but did we ever actually leave? We still have bases in Japan. This was about hastening an end with a guarantee that the US would have full control of Japan.

Please don't misunderstand me though, Japan needed to be defeated thoroughly, it had acted and performed gross injustices against many people in the world. But these bombs were not necessary.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#84

Post by dmfdmf »

I have no problem with America bombing Japan with nuclear weapons. They (and Germany) deserved what they got, they started a world war and we finished it. All this American angst and apologia is coming from the anti-American intellectuals in the US. They have been spreading their propaganda unopposed for decades. The US is NOT GUILTY and owes no apologies whatsoever, Obama's pathetic mea culpa trip to Japan notwithstanding. For all you rationalists who like thought experiments (pretentiously called gedanken experiments by the same intellectuals); imagine what the world would be like if Germany and the Japanese had won WWII.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#85

Post by dannypgh »

dmfdmf wrote: post #84

I have no problem with America bombing Japan with nuclear weapons. They (and Germany) deserved what they got, they started a world war and we finished it. All this American angst and apologia is coming from the anti-American intellectuals in the US. They have been spreading their propaganda unopposed for decades. The US is NOT GUILTY and owes no apologies whatsoever, Obama's pathetic mea culpa trip to Japan notwithst…

Hitler offed himself and Germany surrendered months before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Your thought experiment has no bearing on reality because Germany had already long lost the war.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#86

Post by fenomas »

lotharbot wrote: post #22
nkoren wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This counterfactual loses much of its appeal when you learn that Japan was beaten and had been trying, through back channels, to conditionally surrender for months prior to the bombing. Their sole condition was guaranteed safety for the Emperor: the US refused to grant this, and so the fighting continued. As history shows, the US had no intention of harming the emperor -- so why wouldn't it accept this condition? And…

Seems like every time this topic comes up, there are people who seem to "know" a lot of things, and on occasion they can point to real documentation -- letters that can be traced to people in the presidential cabinet, for example -- but very often the things people "know" turn out to be speculative, or after-the-fact rationalizations, or connecting dots that were known individually by people in different parts of the…

It's many years since I visited, but the atomic bomb museum in Hiroshima has an exhibit that appeared to cover the evidence surrounding this pretty exhaustively.

My vague recollection is that most of it was evidence of perception on the US side that Japan was ready to surrender - as opposed to evidence about specific back-channel negotiations.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#87

Post by engi_nerd »

rangibaby wrote: post #70
badminton1 wrote: post #59

There are many views on the bombing. The difference is that Americans do not hide it. It's controversial, but people know about it. Same with Germans. People know about how the Germans behaved in WW2, they're not proud about it, it's learned in schools, and they do not hide it. Japan on the other side, actively hide their actions. Japanese schools present a revisionist version of history in which all their horrible a…

It's not like Japan would be the first country to selectively remember history to make itself look good. I doubt they teach much about Dresden in the UK, or the extermination of Indians in America, or killing literally every Aborigine in Tasmania, or the British forcing the Chinese to buy opium. I went to school in Japan and we didn't learn a sugar-coated version of history. We went to Hiroshima and listened to a tal…

The eradication of Native Americans was discussed extensively during my public school education in the US. Make of this anecdote what you will.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#88

Post by hudibras »

mevile wrote: post #3

> In the street, the first thing he saw was a squad of soldiers who had been burrowing into the hillside opposite, making one of the thousands of dugouts in which the Japanese apparently intended to resist invasion, hill by hill, life for life; the soldiers were coming out of the hole, where they should have been safe, and blood was running from their heads, chests, and backs. They were silent and dazed. However I ma…

If the U.S. had instead somehow parachuted in 200,000 troops to Hiroshima, and then lined up and shot to death 100,000 men, women, children, elderly people, hospital patients, etc., and then burned every building down to the ground, would that be okay? What if by doing so it would end the war?

Even if there were going to be many U.S. military casualties (which I doubt, although I know this is debatable), that doesn't in any way justify killing civilians. It's a tragedy of World War 2 (and Korea and Vietnam to lesser extents) that our leaders thought this was an appropriate way to fight a war.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#89

Post by refurb »

Scirra_Tom wrote: post #15
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what to think, but here's an interesting argument. What would the counterargument look like? "When Okinawa was finally declared secure, the cost had been horrific. Some 150,000 Okinawans died, approximately one-third the island's population. An additional 10,000 Koreans, used by the Japanese military as slave labor, died as well. Of the 119,000 or so Japanese soldiers, as many as 112,000 were killed in t…

I don't think many people doubt that a land invasion to the bitter end would kill more people than dropping the bombs, but the argument is was the bomb necessary? Some higher ups in the military at the time thought Japan was on the brink of total surrender. "...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." - DWIGHT EISENHOWER (in 1963) "It is my opinion that the use…

If the Japanese were so willing to surrender, why did it take two atomics bombs before they finally did? And keep in mind they tooks days to surrender after the second one.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#90

Post by doall »

badminton1 wrote: post #59

There are many views on the bombing. The difference is that Americans do not hide it. It's controversial, but people know about it. Same with Germans. People know about how the Germans behaved in WW2, they're not proud about it, it's learned in schools, and they do not hide it. Japan on the other side, actively hide their actions. Japanese schools present a revisionist version of history in which all their horrible a…

It's not that Japanese people are hiding their history. If there are clear evidences that are not flawed and could not be denied, they will not deny, but admit and apologize. For example, there was the famous Korean sexual slavery issue coined by Seiji Yoshida that later he and Asahi Shimbun admitted it was a complete fiction. This revealed that the comfort women issue was not about slavery but prostitution.

Why do you apologize for the thing if it wasn't true? The thing which is making complicating is that the Chinese government is promoting hatred towards the Japanese government as a propaganda and is exaggerating the results.

Do you really believe the claims of the country which has the Great Firewall? Do you really believe the country which the government is officially producing anti Japanese movies? Do you believe the country which hides the Tiananmen Square Incident and the ongoing killings of the people in Tibet and Xinjiang?

There are suspicions of the claims and the numbers coming from such country.

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