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Atomic Japan

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Poll Question: Do you believe it was neccessary for Japan to be nuked at WW2?
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  Quote red clay Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Atomic Japan
    Posted: 29-Dec-2006 at 09:43
Originally posted by Dan Carkner

Perhaps, but you could say after september 11 that americans were "angry, angry at afganistan" -- that doesn't make their policy above criticism. The anger was manipulated to achive the policy.



You can't even begin to compare the two events, and we are talking about 60 years ago. Different times, different perceptions.
    
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  Quote The_Jackal_God Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Dec-2006 at 20:23
funny that Nanking massacre, some say genocide, only gets mentioned once, after two pages.

sure, ask the Japanese what they think about dropping the bombs, but then go ask the Chinese too, and the Koreans, and Filipinos. Why did their little children have to killed and their women be raped by the expansionist Japanese.

US expansionism - try the expansion of self-rule and democracy, yes hand in hand with our capitalism. capitalism, a game the Americans didn't invent, just something we excel at, like football. :)
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  Quote Kapikulu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Dec-2006 at 21:00
Originally posted by The_Jackal_God

funny that Nanking massacre, some say genocide, only gets mentioned once, after two pages.

sure, ask the Japanese what they think about dropping the bombs, but then go ask the Chinese too, and the Koreans, and Filipinos. Why did their little children have to killed and their women be raped by the expansionist Japanese.

 
A barbaric deed cannot be justified with the existence of another barbaric deed.


Edited by Kapikulu - 29-Dec-2006 at 22:19
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  Quote Adalwolf Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Dec-2006 at 22:32
Originally posted by Kapikulu

Originally posted by The_Jackal_God

funny that Nanking massacre, some say genocide, only gets mentioned once, after two pages.

sure, ask the Japanese what they think about dropping the bombs, but then go ask the Chinese too, and the Koreans, and Filipinos. Why did their little children have to killed and their women be raped by the expansionist Japanese.

 
A barbaric deed cannot be justified with the existence of another barbaric deed.


Maybe not, but the Japanese brought it upon themselves.


Edited by Adalwolf - 29-Dec-2006 at 22:33
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  Quote Kapikulu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Dec-2006 at 22:38

Then, once more, why was the second nuke thrown?

We gave up your happiness
Your hope would be enough;
we couldn't find neither;
we made up sorrows for ourselves;
we couldn't be consoled;

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  Quote Adalwolf Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Dec-2006 at 22:49
Originally posted by Kapikulu

Then, once more, why was the second nuke thrown?



Because Japan didn't surrender after the first. Japan was still going to fight, the second convinced the the Emperor to end the war.
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  Quote bagelofdoom Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Dec-2006 at 00:25
Originally posted by Kapikulu

A barbaric deed cannot be justified with the existence of another barbaric deed.



Sure it can.  If the barbaric deed being justified stopped greater barbarism, that is a reasonable justification.  If the deed which is being justified is less barbaric than the deeds to which it is putting an end, it is fully justified.  To argue otherwise is to argue that all violence is unjustifiable. 

Lets say I were a serial murderer, say, that I killed babies.  Now, say that you were able to stop this act by killing me, and only by killing me, and by killing me save a cute little baby that I was dangling over a pond full of sharks; would that not be justified?  Would you not have the right to feel that your act of barbarism, pushing me into a pond full of sharks, was justified in order to save that baby, and all of the other ones which I might have killed in the future? 

As fun as pacifist platitudes are to say, they really don't bear up to any reasonable person's sense of morality. 
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  Quote bagelofdoom Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Dec-2006 at 00:38
Originally posted by konstantinius

Japan would have surrendered eventually, even wihtout the much-feared (US expected 1,000,000 casualties) invasion of the home islands: a massive, 24/7 carpet bombing of Japan by US and Russian air fleets for months on end would have brought the desired effect.


OK, so let me get this straight:  The atomic bomb wasn't necessary because the US and Russia could have accomplished the exact same thing with high explosives and firebombs.  Now, laying aside the fact that the atomic bombings almost certainly entailed fewer Japanese civilian casualties than a further stream of carpet bombings (remember that the firebombing of Tokyo in March of 1945 caused as many deaths as Nagasaki), and the fact that the deaths from the oncoming famine would have numbered in the millions (the famine was only stopped by Douglas Macarthur's distribution of foodstuffs as part of the occupation), and the fact that if Russia had bombed Japan they would have wanted to occupy part of it (one must only look at the differences between North and South Korea to imagine how this might have turned out for Japan's citizens and neighbors) that is still a bad idea simply because it would have meant that the atrocities in mainland Asia would have continued. 

Do you believe that the massive loss of life that further conventional warfare would have entailed is offset by the mere fact that the weapons used to end the war were nuclear? 
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  Quote Kapikulu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Dec-2006 at 01:19
Originally posted by bagelofdoom



Sure it can.  If the barbaric deed being justified stopped greater barbarism, that is a reasonable justification. 
 
 
I truly wonder what more amount of greater barbarism Imperial Japan could have made if there haven't been nuclear bombs! So, for the US theses, heroic US command came and saved millions of people from the dead Japanese Empire's slaughter!
 
I believe, the US, who was able to find and kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in his helicopter, was able to bomb and destroy the Imperial Palace of Japan among with the Emperor, as well, if that was what they wanted to do..
 
Maybe, it was a show of power,ha?An ultimatum to the world about the strengths and capabilities of US...

 
 
Originally posted by bagelofdoom



As fun as pacifist platitudes are to say, they really don't bear up to any reasonable person's sense of morality. 
 
If reason is killing more people, destroying cities, and spreading radiation, and beginning a nuclear race, I deny this kind of a corrupted reason.


Edited by Kapikulu - 30-Dec-2006 at 01:20
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  Quote Adalwolf Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Dec-2006 at 01:44
Originally posted by Kapikulu

Originally posted by bagelofdoom




 
 
[QUOTE=bagelofdoom]

As fun as pacifist platitudes are to say, they really don't bear up to any reasonable person's sense of morality. 
 
If reason is killing more people, destroying cities, and spreading radiation, and beginning a nuclear race, I deny this kind of a corrupted reason.

Angry

That was not the reason! The reason was to force the Japs into surrendering! An invasion of the Japanese mainland would have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions! Have you ever heard of Okinawa? The civilians jumped of f**king cliffs because the Japanese told them the Americans were monsters who would do horrible things to them! Now magnify what happened to Okinawa thousands of times, throughout the entire country of Japan! MILLIONS WOULD HAVE DIED! The Japanese were training their entire population to fight to the last man, woman, and child! Why is that so hard to understand?!


A full scale invasion would have cost millions of lives period. The two atomic bombs caused what, about 200,000 dead? A large number yes, but nothing compared to MILLIONS. I'd say that dropping the bombs were a good thing.

Sorry if this post rambled a bit, I'm sick of people saying dropping the bombs were unjustified. The dropping of the bombs, while lamentable, was, and still is, justified.


Edited by Adalwolf - 30-Dec-2006 at 01:52
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  Quote Kapikulu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Dec-2006 at 02:15
Respecting your view, I still stand behind my own view.As I previously said, it would be done in any other way...Bombardment of Imperial Palace, an official diplomatic touch with the Japs coming with a heavy ultimatum of dropping the second bomb, etc. etc...Many ways for it.
 
As Soviet invasion was launched in Manchuria and blockade have been put over Japan, after some time; in fact several weeks, Japan would be forced and ready to surrender, even though their culture includes to fight till the last man, and respect to the emperor to death.
 
Hirohito, the man who governed the Japanese politics till late 80s, was not that blind to believe a victory would come from the sky.
 
In fact, any reasoning comes insufficient to me against barbarism and violence of such a scale. That shall be where a state reached her top in those areas.


Edited by Kapikulu - 30-Dec-2006 at 02:16
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  Quote bagelofdoom Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Dec-2006 at 02:46
Originally posted by Kapikulu

Originally posted by bagelofdoom



Sure it can.  If the barbaric deed being justified stopped greater barbarism, that is a reasonable justification. 
 
 
I truly wonder what more amount of greater barbarism Imperial Japan could have made if there haven't been nuclear bombs! So, for the US theses, heroic US command came and saved millions of people from the dead Japanese Empire's slaughter!
 
I believe, the US, who was able to find and kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in his helicopter, was able to bomb and destroy the Imperial Palace of Japan among with the Emperor, as well, if that was what they wanted to do..
 
Maybe, it was a show of power,ha?An ultimatum to the world about the strengths and capabilities of US...

 
 
Originally posted by bagelofdoom



As fun as pacifist platitudes are to say, they really don't bear up to any reasonable person's sense of morality. 
 
If reason is killing more people, destroying cities, and spreading radiation, and beginning a nuclear race, I deny this kind of a corrupted reason.


You may deny my reasoning, but you show it rather clearly in your post.  You advocate an alternative to the use of nuclear weapons.  Your sense of moral reasoning says that bombing Hirohito's palace, and no doubt killing hundreds of people, among them innocent women and children, would be a superior way of ending the war.  What else could that be called other than barbaric?  You are saying that the lesser barbarism could be justified if it stopped the war.  You also disagree with the pacifistic nonsense, you simply feel that the atomic bombing was too great of a barbarism. 

As for your specific arguments:
In "The end of the imperial Japanese Empire" Richard B Frank argues that several hundred thousand civilians were dying each month on the Asian mainland, extend that out over the several more months required for Japan to decide to surrender, the month or two more for negotiations, add in the deaths of the famine that the Japanese high commands insistence on war material production would have combined with the blockade to bring about, and you have far more people than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

As for the US' ability to assassinate the Emperor, I'm sure that they could, I am also sure that doing so would have caused very little actual policy change (remember there was an attempted coup when the emperor finally did attempt to impose peace the day after Nagasaki), and would have even further inflamed the Japanese populace, making the eventual occupation much harder. 

Did the bombing send an ultimatum to Russia?  Yes, it did.  However, the two bombings also sent a much more important ultimatum to Hirohito, an ultimatum that ended the war the next day. 
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  Quote Batu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Dec-2006 at 03:43
heywho said that nobody dies in the war? people die in war thousands of bullets kill thousands of people a a-bomb kills thousands the war is over
 
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  Quote Dan Carkner Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Dec-2006 at 08:50
I think people would be singing a different tune about morality if it was their family still poisoned by radiation.  I suspect that many of the most hawkish americans would be pleading ignorance/leniency if *their* country's crimes were actually going to be punished in some way..
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  Quote Dream208 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Dec-2006 at 09:28

True, different backgrounds will put things in different perspective.

What if it was China who dropped the bomb? Would it still be an despicable act?
 
To my humble opinion, none of us really has the right to judge this decision if we did not personally lived through the era.
 
We can not speak of the morality of war unless we or our families experienced the sufferings it had costed.
 
Who is we to condamn a Chinese veteran who cheered the nuking of Japan because his entire family was massacred during the Japanese invasion between 1937~1945?
 
Who is we to condamn a American solider who supported the fire bombing of Tokyo because his life was interupted by the war which Japan started?
 
Of course, my background have prevented me to feel pity for those "innocent" Japanese citizens.
 
But I also believe it is ignorant for us who did not live through the horror of the second World War to judge this event.
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  Quote Cryptic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-Dec-2006 at 09:48
Originally posted by Adalwolf

[QUOTE=Kapikulu][QUOTE=bagelofdoom] 
Now magnify what happened to Okinawa thousands of times, throughout the entire country of Japan! MILLIONS WOULD HAVE DIED! The Japanese were training their entire population to fight to the last man, woman, and child! Why is that so hard to understand?!

A full scale invasion would have cost millions of lives period.
 
I agree fundamentaly.  In the end the Bombs saved lives and suffering, but not exponentially so.
   
The Japanese  national suicide vow was complex.  Only a corps of fanatical junior military officers truly favored it.  The senior leadership did not.  Instead they favored a Tennozan or decisive battle.  A Japanese strategic victory in the Tennozan  would then lead to a negotiated cease fire with the allies.    The sea battle of Leyte was intended to be the Tennozan  When that did not work, the Tennozan concept was shifted to Okinawa.   The next planned Tennozan was scheduled for Kyushu.
 
Also, the willigness of millions of Japanese to commit national suicide was slowly eroding.  Okinawa did see civilian mass suicides.  But unlike Saipan,  most Okinawan civilians did not commit suicide.  More importantly, Okinawa saw the first mass surrender of Japanese military personnel (both Japanese and Okinawan).   A tour of the Tokyo fire raid areas by the Imperial motorcade was also met with open civilian disrespect and hostility.  
 
My guess is that Japan would have collpased after the Kyushu landings.  


Edited by Cryptic - 31-Dec-2006 at 09:52
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  Quote Ikki Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Jan-2007 at 17:14
Originally posted by Cryptic

Originally posted by Adalwolf

[QUOTE=Kapikulu][QUOTE=bagelofdoom] 
Now magnify what happened to Okinawa thousands of times, throughout the entire country of Japan! MILLIONS WOULD HAVE DIED! The Japanese were training their entire population to fight to the last man, woman, and child! Why is that so hard to understand?!

A full scale invasion would have cost millions of lives period.
 
I agree fundamentaly.  In the end the Bombs saved lives and suffering, but not exponentially so.
   
The Japanese  national suicide vow was complex.  Only a corps of fanatical junior military officers truly favored it.  The senior leadership did not.  Instead they favored a Tennozan or decisive battle.  A Japanese strategic victory in the Tennozan  would then lead to a negotiated cease fire with the allies.    The sea battle of Leyte was intended to be the Tennozan  When that did not work, the Tennozan concept was shifted to Okinawa.   The next planned Tennozan was scheduled for Kyushu.
 
Also, the willigness of millions of Japanese to commit national suicide was slowly eroding.  Okinawa did see civilian mass suicides.  But unlike Saipan,  most Okinawan civilians did not commit suicide.  More importantly, Okinawa saw the first mass surrender of Japanese military personnel (both Japanese and Okinawan).   A tour of the Tokyo fire raid areas by the Imperial motorcade was also met with open civilian disrespect and hostility.  
 
My guess is that Japan would have collpased after the Kyushu landings.  


Clap Totally agree with your example about Okinawa, a fact very few times counted by the pronukes. Three points i should change, in my opinion, first Japan was just totally colapsed in the summer of 1945, second the japanese was negotiating the peace, so was only a question of time the surrender, that mean, the victory was assured and specially when the soviet was going into the asiatic war.
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  Quote Cryptic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Jan-2007 at 22:47
Originally posted by Ikki

 
Three points i should change, in my opinion, first Japan was just totally colapsed in the summer of 1945, second the japanese was negotiating the peace, so was only a question of time the surrender, that mean, the victory was assured and specially when the soviet was going into the asiatic war.
 
I agree that Japan was totally collapsed.  But the Japanese military leadership in favor of one more Tennozan did not  know it.  My guess is without the nukes, they would have wanted one try at a decisive victory on Kyushu.
 
Also, Japan was negotiating, but with too many conditions.   The terms given to the Japanese were the same as Nazi Germany (Unconditional surrender).  The "hawks" in the Japanese govewrnment wanted many conditions.  Most of these were not acceptable the the USA including 1. War Criminals are tried by Japanese courts 2. Japan keeps core Imperial territories (Taiwan and Korea) 3.  Japanese military units are disarmed by Japanese Authorities.  4. No military occuaption of Japan 
 
In the end, the allies had just a few choices:
- Blockade and starve Japan into surrender.  This still kills perhaps a million civilians and could lead to Soviet occupation of Japan
- Land on Kyushu.  Japan then collapses, but hundreds of thousands of civilians still die
-  Nuke them and then force a surrender with fewer terms. 
 
In the end Japan surrendered with technically only one condition (Emperor keeps throne).  In addition, U.S. President Truman strongly stated that  Japan's continued existance as a sovereign people was guaranteed and that the Emperor would not have to sign the surrender document.       
Originally posted by Kapikulu

 
As Soviet invasion was launched in Manchuria and blockade have been put over Japan, after some time; in fact several weeks, Japan would be forced and ready to surrender,
 
I think it would have taken 3 to months, not weeks to starve out the determined Japanese.  In the meantime, there would have been famine in Japan (the rice harvest had failed and winter was approaching) and thousands of U.S.  sailors would have been killed by Kamikaze attacks.
 
 


Edited by Cryptic - 01-Jan-2007 at 22:54
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  Quote DesertHistorian Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Jan-2007 at 21:22
Even though it was not known by the United States at the time, Japan was also very close in their Atomic bomb program. So close in fact that they detonated a prototype 1 or 2 days before the U.S. bombed Hiroshima, on a small island off the coast of what is now North Korea. They had at least enough materials left to produce another bomb which they planned to detonate in the middle of the U.S. fleet during the invasion in the hopes it would so severely damage the fleet and kill the most of the invasion force that the U.S. would agree to a cease fire and sign an agreement to end the war, leaving Japan to itself.
This information has only be de-classified in the last 10 years, and there was a documentary about it on the History channel titled "Japan's Atomic Bomb".
It is also forgotten that Japan still had many troops in Korea and China that could have been re-called to fortify the main islands, making an invasion even more difficult and costing even more lives.
Japan had also a well established biological warfare unit in Korea that has developed small pox, bubonic plague, and anthrax weapons which had already been used on the Chinese, and they could have used them as well on an invasion force inflicting a very high death rate.
In order to end the war, the U.S. had to drop the atomic bombs, or there would have been even more deaths and carnage than the bombs caused.


Originally posted by Cryptic

Originally posted by Ikki

Three points i should change, in my opinion, first Japan was just totally colapsed in the summer of 1945, second the japanese was negotiating the peace, so was only a question of time the surrender, that mean, the victory was assured and specially when the soviet was going into the asiatic war.


I agree that Japan was totally collapsed. Butthe Japanese military leadership in favor of one more Tennozan did not know it.My guess is without the nukes, they would have wanted one try at a decisivevictory on Kyushu.


Also, Japan was negotiating, but with too many conditions. The terms given to the Japanese were the same as Nazi Germany (Unconditional surrender). The "hawks" in the Japanese govewrnment wanted many conditions. Most of these were not acceptable the the USA including 1.War Criminals are tried by Japanese courts2. Japan keeps core Imperial territories (Taiwan and Korea) 3. Japanese militaryunits are disarmed by Japanese Authorities. 4. No military occuaption of Japan


In the end, the allies had just a few choices:

- Blockade and starve Japan into surrender. This still killsperhaps a million civilians and could lead to Soviet occupation of Japan

- Land on Kyushu. Japanthen collapses, but hundreds of thousands of civilians still die

- Nuke them and then force a surrender with fewer terms.


In the end Japan surrendered withtechnically onlyonecondition (Emperor keeps throne).In addition,U.S. President Trumanstrongly stated that Japan's continuedexistance as a sovereign people was guaranteed and that the Emperor would not have to sign the surrender document.     

Originally posted by Kapikulu


As Soviet invasion was launched in Manchuria and blockade have been put over Japan, after some time;in factseveral weeks,Japan would be forced and ready to surrender,

I think it would have taken 3 tomonths, not weeks to starve out the determined Japanese. In the meantime, there would have been famine in Japan (the rice harvest had failed and winter was approaching) and thousands of U.S. sailors would have been killed by Kamikaze attacks.



    
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  Quote konstantinius Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Jan-2007 at 18:23
Originally posted by bagelofdoom

Originally posted by konstantinius

Japan would have surrendered eventually, even wihtout the much-feared (US expected 1,000,000 casualties) invasion of the home islands: a massive, 24/7 carpet bombing of Japan by US and Russian air fleets for months on end would have brought the desired effect.


OK, so let me get this straight:  The atomic bomb wasn't necessary because the US and Russia could have accomplished the exact same thing with high explosives and firebombs.  Now, laying aside the fact that the atomic bombings almost certainly entailed fewer Japanese civilian casualties than a further stream of carpet bombings (remember that the firebombing of Tokyo in March of 1945 caused as many deaths as Nagasaki), and the fact that the deaths from the oncoming famine would have numbered in the millions (the famine was only stopped by Douglas Macarthur's distribution of foodstuffs as part of the occupation), and the fact that if Russia had bombed Japan they would have wanted to occupy part of it (one must only look at the differences between North and South Korea to imagine how this might have turned out for Japan's citizens and neighbors) that is still a bad idea simply because it would have meant that the atrocities in mainland Asia would have continued. 

Do you believe that the massive loss of life that further conventional warfare would have entailed is offset by the mere fact that the weapons used to end the war were nuclear? 


No, I don't believe that. I'm just saying that nuking Japan twice to end the war wasn't neseccary.
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