Japan's vs America's, etc. Wartime Atrocities

[Half-n-Half]

WOW... its still 9th August for god sake.
statement like that, i find it as offending as "use of brothels prevented local women getting raped".....

It's a question of which is the lesser evil. Would you rather have 170,000 people die, or millions of people die? It is definitely an ugly question and neither is "right", however I will always opt for the lesser evil.

 

[GodEmperorLeto]

WOW... its still 9th August for god sake.
statement like that, i find it as offending as "use of brothels prevented local women getting raped".....

Did you read anything else I wrote? Obviously not. That or you seem to lack an understanding of what the word "condemn" means.

It's a question of which is the lesser evil. Would you rather have 170,000 people die, or millions of people die? It is definitely an ugly question and neither is "right", however I will always opt for the lesser evil.

Yeah. I want people to put themselves in Harry Truman's shoes. Be given a choice of dropping two bombs that end the war tomorrow, or have it go on for another year or two and keep throwing Americans and Japanese into the meat grinder.

That's why I say people are ignorant. Unabashedly, totally, and unrepentingly ignorant when they are condemning the use of the atomic bomb to end the Pacific War.

Understand that I think the use of the atomic bomb was TERRIBLE, especially since it had the potential to set a precedent. Currently, it is held as a deterrent and as a weapon of last resort (as in ULTIMATE last resort). And like I said, Americans generally feel a degree of fear and horror at their own arsenal. We don't even like our own weapons and have made numerous movies, from The Crimson Tide to WarGames that express such fears of our own weapons and provide cautionary tales against their use.

Nevertheless, I would prefer the atomic bomb to have been used twice, and never used again (just as it so far has been) in order to end the Pacific War as soon as it ended.

Also, I have no doubt that if the Japanese or Germans had acquired the atomic bomb, they would have used them, and used them more than we did. And nobody would criticize their use, because anyone who would stand up to do so would find themselves summarily executed.

 

[hplaserjet6p]

wa? The use of atomic bomb must be condemned. i know what condemn means... i always feel disgusted when ppl justify the use.
america tested atom bombs on non-military targets. wanted to scare the hell out of japanese? drop it in the middle of the ocean. why use two different types on hiroshima and nagasaki?

i dont care how americans feel fear at their own arsenal. its your arse.

And, please stop making empty assumptions like japan/germany would have used atom bomb more than america. Typical superiority complex.

 

[Half-n-Half]

america tested atom bombs on non-military targets. wanted to scare the hell out of japanese? drop it in the middle of the ocean. why use two different types on hiroshima and nagasaki?

America at the time had only two functioning atomic bombs. Actually, there was a debate whether to drop the bomb in the ocean to intimidate the Japanese. Two major problems with this:

1.) What if the atomic bomb hadn't worked? It was a very new technology and therefore could have malfunctioned. This could have sent the wrong message to the Japanese that our technology is fallible and would have just provoked the Japanese.

2.) Even if in fact the bomb did work, what if the Japanese were not intimidated and continued on with the war? You would only have one bomb left to use against the Japanese. Hindsight is 20/20, and looking back Japan didn't surrender after one atomic bomb was used, even when it was dropped on Hiroshima. So what makes you think they would surrender after it being dropped in the middle of the ocean?

 

[hplaserjet6p]

America at the time had only two functioning atomic bombs. Actually, there was a debate whether to drop the bomb in the ocean to intimidate the Japanese. Two major problems with this:
1.) What if the atomic bomb hadn't worked? It was a very new technology and therefore could have malfunctioned. This could have sent the wrong message to the Japanese that our technology is fallible and would have just provoked the Japanese.
2.) Even if in fact the bomb did work, what if the Japanese were not intimidated and continued on with the war? You would only have one bomb left to use against the Japanese. Hindsight is 20/20, and looking back Japan didn't surrender after one atomic bomb was used, even when it was dropped on Hiroshima. So what makes you think they would surrender after it being dropped in the middle of the ocean?

1) It would have sent the same message that your technology was falliable whether it was dropped in the middle of the ocean or on top of civillians' head.

2) 3 days?

 

[frostyg02uk]

Hmm the thing with using nuclear bombs is that it poisons the land for years later. 62 years on and people are still being added to the list of victims. My biggest problem with the usage of the A bomb is the fact that it was dropped on civilians. With a bomb that size its not possible to discriminate between goverment officials, soldiers or women and children. Although america predicted the loss of 1million lives i dont think anyone can say for sure that would of happened...it could of been less or even more so I dont think anyone here can say its better to be bombed and burn in the street then have a potential amount of people lose their lives fighting for their country. Ive been through this topic a few times on other threads and ive learnt that not one poster will give any ground on this matter so it is useless to even mention it.

Going back a bit...i dont know why it was mentioned but yeah america does make alot of emissions and refused to sign the Kyoto treaty and is highly responsible for alot of the rainforest disappearing in south america but that has nothing to do with comfort women, any war or Japan. America as a government are war mongers lol and that cant be denied (look at how many wars you have been in in your short history...and how many were on your own soil?) but I think they started off were my country finished so i cant say a thing about war mongering even if it did have anything to do with the topic.

 

[hanbei]

It's a question of which is the lesser evil. Would you rather have 170,000 people die, or millions of people die? It is definitely an ugly question and neither is "right", however I will always opt for the lesser evil.

You are lied to by the absolute falsehood for the self-justification of US government at that time.
The truth was that US government had known prior to the atomic bombings that Japanese unconditional surrender was near.
*** Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

The truth was that the atomic bombings had been conducted mainly for the experimental purpose to assess the destructive capability of the atomic bombs, and the experiment had been conducted on the ground of the racial prejudice.

The truth was that the second bomb on Nagasaki was dropped hurryingly only 3 days after Hiroshima because US was afraid of Japanese surrender before experiment of plutonium bomb.

There is the false theory that the main purpose of the atomic bombings was for intimidating Soviet Union. If that was true, US would drop the bombs on Hokkaido adjacent to Soviet soils.

There exist relations between comfort women and atomic bombings.
You have no right to press for Japanese apology on the comfort women issue until you apologize to Japan for the atomic bombings.
You should not blame others by shelving your own crimes.

US are the far more atrocious nation than Iraq, Iran and North Korea, ceaselessly repeated massacres all over the world.

 

[hanbei]

Japanese navy is now supporting UN forces in Afghanistan by supplying oil to US ships at the Indian Ocean.
But, Democratic Party of Japan, won on the recent election to a majority in the Upper House, has rejected to prolong the navy activity to the next year.

This decision by Mr. Ozawa, the head of the Democratic Party of Japan, may be supported by the majority of Japanese people partly as the retaliation against the US accusation against Japan on comfort women.

The foolish resolution by US House of Representatives may hurt the relationship between Japan and US, and it may do good to China, the potential adversary against the both countries.

 

[hanbei]

Contrary to the astounding economic growth of China, the authoritarian communist party is now facing serious problems, including abysmal corruptions, enormous gap between rich people and poor people, large quantity of riots by poor people, severe environmental destructions, water shortage caused by global warming, recently started out inflation and so on.
We expect the Chinese communist party will be forced to opt military invasion to Taiwan for maintaining their ruling power with averting the frustration of people within several years. A Chinese military cadre warned publicly that they would not hesitate preemptive nuclear attacks against US intervention.
We think Japan will be the next target of Chinese invasion. Now the conservative people of Japan begin to think the necessity of reinforcement of self-defense forces instead of unreliable US nuclear umbrella taking a cue from the comfort women resolution.

 

[Furui]

I don't like atomic bombings and bloody communists' wars. It is better to make free separate nations (e.g. Scotland, Japan, Europe and others). No more invasion and wars.

 

[Capster78]

You are lied to by the absolute falsehood for the self-justification of US government at that time.
The truth was that US government had known prior to the atomic bombings that Japanese unconditional surrender was near.
*** Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

The truth was that the atomic bombings had been conducted mainly for the experimental purpose to assess the destructive capability of the atomic bombs, and the experiment had been conducted on the ground of the racial prejudice.

The truth was that the second bomb on Nagasaki was dropped hurryingly only 3 days after Hiroshima because US was afraid of Japanese surrender before experiment of plutonium bomb.

There is the false theory that the main purpose of the atomic bombings was for intimidating Soviet Union. If that was true, US would drop the bombs on Hokkaido adjacent to Soviet soils.

There exist relations between comfort women and atomic bombings.
You have no right to press for Japanese apology on the comfort women issue until you apologize to Japan for the atomic bombings.
You should not blame others by shelving your own crimes.

US are the far more atrocious nation than Iraq, Iran and North Korea, ceaselessly repeated massacres all over the world.

If you actually believe this than answer this question. Why did they not surrender after the first bomb was droped. If they were so close to surrenduring I would think It would not have taken 2 bombs to get them surrender.

 

[Kirakira1232]

If you actually believe this than answer this question. Why did they not surrender after the first bomb was droped. If they were so close to surrenduring I would think It would not have taken 2 bombs to get them surrender.

There is no one agreed reason among historians why the two bombs were dropped. That question still has quite a lot of controversy attached to it. Why wouldnt Japan surrender after 1 atomic bomb? On that note why drop the bomb on Nagasaki so quickly after Hiroshima? Some say the Japanese were already defeated before the first bomb, others say it was America's way of showing that they had real nuclear muscle. Who knows?

No one knows for sure. Sure there are lots of theories that may or may not be true but I havent seen any historian say they know for sure the true motives behind the atomic bombings.

The only thing I do know is that I dont wish for anything like that to happen again.

 

[Yan]

I haven't read all messages on that thread but here's my opinion about that:

We're in 2008 and the past cannot be changed. There has been a lot of atrocities during wartime, we need to keep it in memory because it's really important to learn from our errors. Instead of USA, Japaneses have learnd from their errors. They learned that war isn't good. I know there's military troups in Iraq but it's only for humanity help.

Take a look on USA. They make war in Iraq without even taking care of material consequences. I'm against Iraq war. I think it's really important to have a good defence against terorism but I don't believe the official reason of Iraq war. The truth is Bush attacked Iraq because he wants petrole.

Japan has already been a criminal country but they learnd from their past mistakes and they became a great country.

USA has already been a criminal country and they still are because they didn't learn from their past mistakes and they're still making war.

 

[tokapi]

The truth is Bush attacked Iraq because he wants petroleum.

Japan has already been a criminal country but they learnd from past mistakes.USA has already been a criminal country and they still are because they didn't learn from their past mistakes and they're still making war.

Iraq .... oil oil oil oil

Japan plays " supporting role " in the American Empire

 

[Sensuikan San]

Just musing while browsing .....

An interesting, perhaps revived, thread, the subject of which has been tackled on several other threads if I recall. But in grave danger of drifting "off topic".

My recommendation to hanbei, kirakira1232 and capster78 is to read "Rising Sun" by John Tolland.

I feel they would all have most of their questions answered there - in substantial detail.

Respectfully,

ﾆ淡ﾆ停?｡ﾆ停?

 

[mael]

Contrary to the astounding economic growth of China, the authoritarian communist party is now facing serious problems, including abysmal corruptions, enormous gap between rich people and poor people, large quantity of riots by poor people, severe environmental destructions, water shortage caused by global warming, recently started out inflation and so on.
We expect the Chinese communist party will be forced to opt military invasion to Taiwan for maintaining their ruling power with averting the frustration of people within several years. A Chinese military cadre warned publicly that they would not hesitate preemptive nuclear attacks against US intervention.
We think Japan will be the next target of Chinese invasion. Now the conservative people of Japan begin to think the necessity of reinforcement of self-defense forces instead of unreliable US nuclear umbrella taking a cue from the comfort women resolution.

This, and the other posts on this thread which you have written are excellent.

I just felt compelled to encourage you.

Being out from the trees makes it possible to see the forest is my take on your perspective. Most refreshing.