Truman Lied, Hundreds of Thousands Died (stats, document, bomb, nuclear)
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it was a different time then. dont forget the japanese attacked our navy at pearl harbor, and our army in the phillipines, at wake island, etc. we can not look back at history with todays morality(which is suspect to begin with). we have to see the war as it was in that time and place.
That's not the case at all, and the morality I am citing is not modern. It's called just war theory and has antecedents going back to Cicero and St. Augustine. WW2 represented a devolution, a decomposition, of Western principles of morality. "The Japanese" attacked us at Pearl Harbor and the Phillipines? Yes, the Japanese military attacked military targets on stolen colonies in the middle of the ocean, where we should never have been to start with. In 1941, less time had elapsed since Hawaii was an independent state with a hereditary monarch than has elapsed from that time until the present.
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understand that at the time the japanese people were fully ready to die as a race if need be to try and defeat the US. to that end EVERY japanese citizen worked in the war making industry for japan.
Citation for this incredible claim? Nobody sold food? Nobody made clothes? Nobody was a banker? Nobody was a schoolteacher? I somehow doubt it.
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until the second bomb was dropped, the emperor was NOT going to surrender despite any so called suggestions to a peace initiative. hirohito and hitler both were willing to destroy their own countries to win, and that was the way we had to prosecute the war. the two nuclear weapons we used saved tens of millions of lives in the end.
This is so silly and cartoonish it's barely worth answering; it's too glaringly obvious that if it were true, the nuclear bombings wouldn't have mattered either. They were willing to negotiate a surrender in July. That is a matter of record, and Truman noted it in his diary. You can refuse to believe it, but facts are stubborn things.
That's not the case at all, and the morality I am citing is not modern. It's called just war theory and has antecedents going back to Cicero and St. Augustine. WW2 represented a devolution, a decomposition, of Western principles of morality. "The Japanese" attacked us at Pearl Harbor and the Phillipines? Yes, the Japanese military attacked military targets on stolen colonies in the middle of the ocean, where we should never have been to start with. In 1941, less time had elapsed since Hawaii was an independent state with a hereditary monarch than has elapsed from that time until the present.
Citation for this incredible claim? Nobody sold food? Nobody made clothes? Nobody was a banker? Nobody was a schoolteacher? I somehow doubt it.
This is so silly and cartoonish it's barely worth answering; it's too glaringly obvious that if it were true, the nuclear bombings wouldn't have mattered either. They were willing to negotiate a surrender in July. That is a matter of record, and Truman noted it in his diary. You can refuse to believe it, but facts are stubborn things.
According to Japanese reports they detonated a small nuke on August 11th. That means that they could have used similar weaapons against an invasion force. So your stance might have caused hundreds of thousands of US Casualties.
According to Japanese reports they detonated a small nuke on August 11th. That means that they could have used similar weaapons against an invasion force. So your stance might have caused hundreds of thousands of US Casualties.
Apparently our casualties are not high on his list of concerns.
According to Japanese reports they detonated a small nuke on August 11th. That means that they could have used similar weaapons against an invasion force. So your stance might have caused hundreds of thousands of US Casualties.
No, if we'd negotiated a surrender in July rather than August, there would've been no "invasion force" and therefore no 8/11 nuke (if that story is true, which is dubious in itself)
actually it is quite true that nuking two japanese cities saved lives. you just dont understand the times and the people of japan. if we continued to fire bomb japanese cities, all the would have happened is the people of japan would have gone back to an agrarian society like they were for thousands of years before. they may not have had a navy, or much of an industry, but they would still have fought an allied invasion of their country to virtually the last person.
the government was not going to surrender anytime soon, and the people would have followed their emperor blindly. in fact even after the bombs were dropped and the emperor had decided to surrender unconditionally, there were those in the military that refused to surrender, and to that end they staged a short lived coup. it was defeated fortunately and peace was the result.
and i am willing to bet that you think that germany just decided to stop all hostilities after VE day, right? the reality there was that many nazis continued fighting through terrorist actions until the early 60s. and they attacked both sides of the cold war, where as in japan when the emperor said enough the citizenry quit fighting and go ton with rebuilding the country.
The irony is that massive bombing can be psycholigically detrimental, on all sides. The British and Russians responded to the attacks upon their cities by becoming more unified and determined not to fall. So would Japan. In the end, the use of an atomic bomb and the mass of its destrucion did work because it was bigger and badder than what had been. The threat was to drop a bomb on every Japanese city. Japan didn't know we only had two operational bombs, but could have had enough to carry out that policy in six months at the longest.
Culture plays a huge part in determining how a society reacts. Japanese civilians would have fought down to the last man and done sucide if they were unable to. On Okinawa, US trooped looked on horrified as civilians climbed to the cliffs and jump rather than surrender. Those who died from the bombs saves millions of their own citizens lives. Germany had elements who were going to die to the last man, especially the Hitler Youth, and the true believers, but (relative) sanity prevaled in most. Hitler would have wiped Gernamy off the map before surrendering. His generals knew the game was up and they'd lost and began faking pictures of 'scorched earth' instead of carrying out orders. Japan would have destroyed whatever was left standing. But aside from the Nazi culture, Germany had a western culture and had lost interest in commiting sucide as a nation.
Modern war is NOT fought against just armies but civilians, infrastructure, food supplies and cities. If war ever had a 'moral' component it has been lost. Civilian deaths and suffering is used as a weapon, not just by one party but all. It seems odd and rather quaint the way war was fought in the 17th century, where cities were mostly avoided, and the families of both sides would await who won in a sancuary city together.
In a sense, with our ability to cause massive destruction, we've returned to the days when the barbarian invades like the Norse and the Mongels destroyed all they passed through to win.
It would be nice to wage 'moral war' and spare those not military, but if the other side doesn't and all you get is your own wiped out for nothing since you were going to lose, wouldn't this be a version of ritual sucide?
So instead of dropping two atomic bombs that killed about 200,000 people, the US should have continued to carpet bomb Japanese cities (which killed more people than the atomic bombs) and blockade the country causing a famine.
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Originally Posted by rbohm
actually it is quite true that nuking two japanese cities saved lives. you just dont understand the times and the people of japan. if we continued to fire bomb japanese cities, all the would have happened is the people of japan would have gone back to an agrarian society like they were for thousands of years before. they may not have had a navy, or much of an industry, but they would still have fought an allied invasion of their country to virtually the last person.
Do you have any idea what is wrong with your line of thinking? You seem to be under the impression that Japan wasn't going to surrender while we were carpet-bombing their cities and causing famines. Moreover you believe they would continue to fight the war despite these conventional means of destruction, even if they had eventually caused more deaths than what occurred from the two nukes we dropped on them. As if to believe the Japanese people/government were completely irrational, and would have rather let their entire country become destroyed and their people killed rather than surrender.
At the same time, you believe that the Japanese surrendered because we dropped atomic bombs on them. But if they were so irrational to never surrender even if their country were going to be completely destroyed, then why would they surrender after being nuked?
Is it even remotely possible for either of you to believe that the Japanese had been defeated even without the nukes, and that many in the upper leadership of Japan had been suing for peace for quite some time. And that even the "unquestionable emperor" had wanted to see the war come to an end. And that the surrender of Japan was only a matter of time, and never would have required an American land invasion of Japan.
"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.
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and i am willing to bet that you think that germany just decided to stop all hostilities after VE day, right? the reality there was that many nazis continued fighting through terrorist actions until the early 60s. and they attacked both sides of the cold war, where as in japan when the emperor said enough the citizenry quit fighting and go ton with rebuilding the country.
This is just irrelevant to this discussion. The German's who continued hostilities after VE day has nothing to do with the way Germany was defeated. The Japanese could have just as easily have had splinter militant groups trying to continue the war there as well. As for the emperor, if I recall, he was the one who was desiring peace before our nukes came down, but as you said, he was overthrown by his generals because they wanted to continue the fight.
The simple fact is, the nukes did not save lives overall. Though they did probably save a few American lives, just because it did probably shorten the war by a couple months. And while I do like saving American lives, I don't believe that it justifies the killing of hundreds of thousands of people.
When Truman lied to America that Hiroshima was a military base rather than a city full of civilians, people no doubt wanted to believe him. Who would want the shame of belonging to the nation that commits a whole new kind of atrocity.
I'm glad we did it. And Nagasaki too. It was the right decision. The alternative would have been to invade Japan and that would have conservatively resulted in over 1MM American servicemen killed or injured. So nuking Japan was far and away the right decision as evidenced by their immediate and unconditional surrender. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.
"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his." - George Patton.
No, if we'd negotiated a surrender in July rather than August, there would've been no "invasion force" and therefore no 8/11 nuke (if that story is true, which is dubious in itself)
you are totally misinformed. The Soviet Union didn't even declare war on Japan until August 11th.
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