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Hiroshima (1946)

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Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#161

Post by thaumasiotes »

the_af wrote: post #156
thaumasiotes wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people are uncomfortable with the concept that the best possible outcome should be considered a crime. (And I'm not limiting this to the circumstances under discussion -- I'm talking about the view that, no matter what situation you're in, there should be a way out that isn't a crime. Such people will, for example, object violently if somewhat incoherently to the fact that, under Qing Chinese law, a man orde…

Note that people who object to committing war crimes are not a kind of legalistic automata that require following the letter of the law no matter what. We do not always decide something is a crime because there's a law that says so. For example, the Holocaust would have been a crime even if the powers at the time had decided that it wasn't. Complicated Chinese (and Japanese) laws about legal and familiar duty are rea…

> Finally, consider there are many people in this world who won't commit some crimes -- such as genocide -- even if there is no way out and refusing will cost them their own lives.

Yes, this viewpoint is more or less the opposite of the viewpoint I describe above, and it is also common. But so is the other one.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#162

Post by loco5niner »

mulmen wrote: post #140
supernova87a wrote: post #3

When I was young in grade school, and learned about the bomb, and its terrifying aftermath, pictures, scars, I thought that this was clearly a wrong against humanity to have been dropped on anyone. Clearly the visceral kind of "this should never happen" reaction that any average person would have. "How could we put the Enola Gay on a stamp to glorify this?" Then, in college and especially after, learning about the eq…

> [...] how do we get people to help themselves get out of the path to war? Philosophically I find this revolting. Who are you, or me, or we to say what some other society should do? That should never be the goal and I don’t think anything good comes from starting with “other people are wrong, we should fix them.” I realize I’m putting hyperbolic words in your mouth here but the point is nobody should be trusted with…

It sounds like you are saying that it's wrong to say "war is bad, let's avoid killing each other".

If true, your "philosophies" are in serious need of self-reflection.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#163

Post by fomine3 »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #114
dreamcompiler wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to overstate how many civilians suffered and died in war crimes perpetrated by Japan before and during the war. The number vastly exceeds the number who died as a result of the American atomic bombs. Breaking Japan's will and ability to make war was the entire world's highest priority in late 1945. Any discussion of "American war crimes against Japan" is meaningless without discussing Japan's crimes agains…

> " It is hard to overstate how many civilians suffered and died in war crimes perpetrated by Japan before and during the war " I'll take a stab at it. If one sums together the estimated deaths in Asia caused by Japan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties ), both military and civilian, one gets totals in excess of 15-22 million. This compares to about 5 million dead in the Holocaust. So basically, J…

You're comparing unrelated numbers.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#164

Post by fomine3 »

valuearb wrote: post #72
rbecker wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Likewise most people don't realize how much more death there would've been on both sides if the US invaded Japan by sea. That's begging the question - was a US invasion the only alternative? https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/08/05/nuclear-war-or... argues that Japan would have surrendered without the bombings. And that's for unconditional surrender - a conditional one would be even more easily achievable.

There was no conditional surrender possible. The Japanese were still demanding to keep their “colonies” in China and elsewhere. Agreeing to that would be agreeing to continue the Japanese holocaust against the Chinese and the peoples in their other captured territories. And from the Allied perspective, after the Bataan death march, the massacre of surrendered US troops and civilians in Wake, and the hundreds of simil…

Saying keep their colonies as holocaust is overkill. Western countries also had their colonies.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#165

Post by Cocktail »

Chathamization wrote: post #105
EarthIsHome wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those interested in arguments about whether the bombings were necessary, there's a good Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombi... I do believe the bombings were a strategic show-of-force to the Soviet Union since they were coming out of the war as a global power; USSR were instrumental in ending the war.

This always seemed like an odd conspiracy theory to me. It supposes that the U.S. is one the one hand so cavalier about dropping atom bombs that they're willing to destroy Japanese cities merely as a show of force to a potential rival, but on the other hand that they're so reserved about using it that they wouldn't use it to gain victory against the country they're engaged in a destructive war with.

I would recommend reading into the firebombing campaing against the Japanese civilian population. It was specifically aimed at maximizing civilian casualties, the same as burning of Dresden. Something which would be interpeted as a war crime and terrorism today, wholly sanctioned by US military high command in the philippines at the time.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#166

Post by Cocktail »

manfredo wrote: post #40
the_af wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I realized that it actually did bring an end to the war This may be the mainstream opinion in the US, but do note it's not the mainstream opinion in other countries. Alternative explanations include that the real purpose of the two bombs was to show the Soviets the nuclear might of the US (this view is suggested in the Hiroshima museum in Japan, but just in case you discount it because Japan is obviously not a neut…

Necessity and justification are two different concepts. Few believe it was necessary - the United States' overwhelming industrial capacity was bound to prevail over Japan. The state of the two countries warmaking capacity was totally lopsided by 1945. Thus it was not necessary to achieve victory. That is brought an end to the war with fewer casualties, both American and Japanese even moreso, is not a difficult claim…

There is something you seem to forget, that lost Japanese lives counted for anything in American eyes. 4 years of war, reports of war crimes and propaganda effectively demonized them and thus their value as humans deteriorated to wholly expendable in American war plans. The reason there was no invasion, was to save American lives as much as possible.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#167

Post by valuearb »

fomine3 wrote: post #164
valuearb wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no conditional surrender possible. The Japanese were still demanding to keep their “colonies” in China and elsewhere. Agreeing to that would be agreeing to continue the Japanese holocaust against the Chinese and the peoples in their other captured territories. And from the Allied perspective, after the Bataan death march, the massacre of surrendered US troops and civilians in Wake, and the hundreds of simil…

Saying keep their colonies as holocaust is overkill. Western countries also had their colonies.

Western powers weren’t committing atrocities like the Rape of Nanking during the 30s and 40s. Japanese troops killed surrendered soldiers, raped and murdered civilians not as a rare or exceptional event, but as a standard act in every country they invaded during the 30s and 40s.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#168

Post by jacobush »

valuearb wrote: post #60
jacobush wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no consensus it ended the war. Rather the opposite. The Japanese generals had larger problems to consider, such as the fact that most targets were already rubble, and the fact that the Soviets were on their doorstep.

Strange, as the Japanese military mutinied when the Emperor ordered the surrender.

Which in no way invalidates what I’m saying?

Just a different outlook on how the war should be handled.

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