Censored Nagasaki Bomb Story Found 1246
EccentricAnomaly writes "In 1945 journalist George Weller snuck past the American occupying forces and became the first American Journalist to see the devastation left by the atomic bomb that fell on Nagasaki. His story infuriated MacArthur, who had it quashed. The Japanese paper, Mainichi, has now published Weller's account. CNN has a story discussing how it was found." From the Mainichi article: "As one whittles away at embroidery and checks the stories, the impression grows that the atomic bomb is a tremendous, but not a peculiar weapon. The Japanese have heard the legend from American radio that the ground preserves deadly irradiation. But hours of walking amid the ruins where the odor of decaying flesh is still strong produces in this writer nausea, but no sign or burns or debilitation."
Nuclear myths (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of people go "OMG! teh nukes!" like Fallout is what would happen after a nuclear war :)
Nuclear myths [aussurvivalist.com]
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European zine. Guns, hacking, survival [eurohacker.mine.nu]
misleading (Score:3, Insightful)
Nevertheless, while nuclear fallout and radiation would not be the main problems a post-nuclear war society would face, that doesn't mean that they are harmless. Fallout
Re:Nuclear myths (Score:5, Insightful)
"Always look on the bright side of life."
That link says some pretty bizarre things. Instead of one 20 megaton warhead, we are supposed to take comfort that MIRVs carry a dozen warheads of "only" 300 kilotons and "therefore" the cities wouldn't really be destroyed. According to Wikipedia, the Nagasaki bomb was a whole whopping TWENTY kilotons. So call me crazy but I figure a MIRV would effectively destroy a metropolis.
Remember, nothing will work. CARS newer than the early seventies won't work. The EMF will take out everything solid-state. In WWII electronics meant tubes and cars were mechanical. Without an intrastructure, will offshore oil rigs have a port to unload in? Will there be oil refining? How will it get transported and distributed? Even if you have a nuke plant outside of town and can string some distribution back up, will even a nuke plant run forever without lubrication or is beef tallow adequate?
A person better hope oil gets distributed because, even with the die-off, those cans in the grocery store won't last long. And plows and combines don't run on hay. How many farmers _have_ work horses (did you know there are differences between riding horses and plow horses?), much less have the equipment and knowledge and two-bottom plow to hitch them up to?
It is tempting to say that we would only slip back to the Romans without oil and electricity but we would still have to relearn how to create the intense fire in a primitive iron foundry.
And there would still be the sticky little problem of overpopulation. Tribes _are_ a social organization. Tribes are not a post-war state of anarchy. And according to my old anthropology book even in established hunter and gather societies:
"Equipped with knowledge of virtually every edible plant and with effective means of exploiting most vegetables and animals, population density varied according to the abundance of resources. It ranged from one person per square mile--and rarely more than this--to one person per 50 to 100 square miles." (Anthropology Today, CRM, 1971)
Do the math of what the first few years of a post-nuke world would be like without an infrastructure for gas and electricity.
In the main, it really needs to be said that survivalists are losers. They are so often people who are marginalized and fantasize that if society were only shattered, they would have the opportunity to rise to the top. Because society hasn't valued them, they dismiss the importance of society. But instead of some noble savage fantasy, a post-nuke world would more likely offer them the opportunity to club a widow to steal the last can of spaghettios from her children.
Censored again... (Score:4, Funny)
by the Slashdot effect.
'merciful' atomic bomb !? (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly disagree with the choice of words here. Selective and proper ? Maybe. Merciful ? definitely not !
Re:'merciful' atomic bomb !? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've said it before and I've said it again. It saved lives.
It saved the lives of approximately One Million US Service Personnel, and it saved the lives of Millions of Japanese Civilians and Soliders -- you see, atleast during WWII, alot of people really took that "Death before Dishonor" thing seriously, and could not be made to surrender. So the only way to force an unconditional surrender was a rather raw display of power. The Bombs were a way of saying, "We don't need to use people to decimate you -- we can do it in a manner that you cannot possibly defend against. Now, will you give up?"
Go here [wikipedia.org] and learn.
Utter and total bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
The argument that it save a million lives has been refuted time and time again. First of all the casualty figures are far from certain and it's far from certain that these were indeed that casulty figures the US had to expect had an invasion taken place.
Further, there are rather strong arguments for the assumption that Japane would have surrendered without an invasion and without the use of atomic bombs.
Finally, you discard all the eveidence that has been brougth to light by historians that suggests that the US did indeed have at least some additional reasons for using the atomic bombs, namely the begining confrontation with the Soviet Union.
Just one quote for you:
""...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63 "
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm [doug-long.com]
Finally:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_H
How about going there and learn yourself...
Re:Utter and total bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
They would, however, have agreed to a conditional surrender, which included, for example, keeping their emperor as head of state.
Funny thing, they got to have their conditions in the end anyway. Therefore the bomb was really useless as far as Japan is concerned. It was dropped for other reasons.
Re:'merciful' atomic bomb !? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:'merciful' atomic bomb !? (Score:3, Insightful)
Please, do elaborate how you came to this conclusion?
So, what you're saying is that anything is okay when it's done in war?
Well, I guess that means stuff like the geneva convention are a waste of time!
Hell, lets send the enemies people into death camps so the better our war machine!
Let us also get the captured enemy soldiers into labour camps too! Get those scum building our railways and what not!
You're totally misunderstanding the points made, and
Re:'merciful' atomic bomb !? (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, I believe you're wrong.
What I often see from those who condemn The Bomb's use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is revisionist morality. We know today, thanks to the experiences at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how terrible are the consequences of nuclear warfare. We didn't know then; we'd had precisely one successful nuclear test. Our knowledge was--as it still is today--sadly limited.
Likewise, if our knowledge of the political situation of WW2 Japan today is so sketchy, how can we expect people of the day to have had any better knowledge? Yes, it's true we insisted on unconditional surrender. Yes, it's true the Japanese were making noises about less-than-unconditional surrender, but the peace factions of the Japanese Cabinet were never able to decide what "less-than-unconditional" meant. And even after the two Bombs were dropped, the war-at-any-price faction of the Cabinet tried to stage a military coup in order to prevent the Emperor from being able to surrender at all. What I read from history is the Japanese government was disintegrating and the militarists were still running things: the peace faction had no unity, but the militarists were quite united in their desire to see the nation burn to a cinder before any surrender would take place.
Regarding a "plan to nuke all the defenses on Kyushu before sending servicemen in", you should know as well as anybody else that's what militaries do: they plan. Right now, the United States Government has SIOPs--nuclear warfare plans--which cover every conceivable contingency: limited exchange, strategic exchange, population attacks, strategic resource attacks, infrastructure attacks... militaries make far, far more plans than they will ever use. Militaries make these plans so that, in the event the world takes a direction they weren't expecting, they can have a game plan. If we had a plan to nuke all the defenses on Kyushu, that by itself is no evidence at all unless you also have General MacArthur--himself an opponent of nuclear warfare--advocating the use of that plan.
What I see from history is this. We didn't know what was going on inside the Japanese political machine. (We still don't know today.) We didn't know how the Japanese political machine would react to The Bomb. We didn't know how the Japanese political machinery would react if we didn't drop The Bomb. We. Didn't. Know.
What we did know is we were against a foe which practiced total war, one in which even schoolchildren were forcibly conscripted into helping the war effort. We were against a foe which had commited countless atrocities in China and in the Pacific. We knew from the Battle of Okinawa that they would fight to the last man. All right, so we drop The Bomb and we pray history will be forgiving. It'd be nice to do a demonstration, but... we only have two of these things, and future devices will not be immediately forthcoming.
(Do you know what the Soviet response time was to a nuclear strike in the 1950s and 1960s? Six weeks. Know what our response time was like? Four weeks. Prior to modern nuke design and ICBMs, these things were extraordinarily difficult to maintain. They couldn't be built and put into storage for later use; they had to be built when they were needed. If in the 1950s our nuclear response time was 30 days, what was it like in 1945?)
So if we only have two of these devices, and they must be used within days of final assembly or else the bombs are useless, and we're not going to get more bombs anytime soon... can we really afford to not go after strategic targets?
Hiroshima. Gone.
It wasn't the right choice to make. When dealing in war, atomic or conventional, the only right choice is not to start. But Hiroshima was the least-wrong of a whole passel of bad options. In hindsight, should we have conducted things differently? Of course. But we can't judge Truman based on what we know in hindsight. We can only judge him based on what he knew when he gave the order.
Re:'merciful' atomic bomb !? (Score:5, Insightful)
So? My American/European education is hopelessly biased by propaganda, but the Japanese, a nation with a long history of authoritarian government and absolute obediance by the populace is perfectly neutral? The same government that still portrays the war as a war of American aggression?
Baatan Death March. Rape of Nanking (or as the Japanese call it, the "Nanking incident"). The vivisection and forced cannibalism of American POWs. Sex slaves.
You're going to have to go a long way to make me feel bad about what happened to the Japanese, regardless of how justifiable the bombings were.
Who deserves to be burned alive? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do that. Regularly. I consider it a quality I'm proud of.
Forgotten history is doomed to repeat itself. The USS Arizona, if memory serves, is one of the most popular tourist magnets for Japanese tourists. Why aren't either hypocenter of the atomic bombs detonations a destination for Americans? The Japanese seem keen to remember their lessons.
Deciding that any race is worth more, or less, than another is a quality I never wish to have. Do you really think the US has the high road by comparing the slaughter of 2400 volunteer servicemen to the murder of nearly a quarter of a million women, children and old men in Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Do you honestly expect me to think that it takes 100 Japanese lives to make up for a single American? Or do I add up all the atrocities committed by the Japanese soldiers and then decide how many Germans to slaughter to compensate for Nazi atrocities?
Re:Who deserves to be burned alive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Both sides, pro and con, agree that Japan had committed itself to what's called "total war"--the complete, one hundred percent mobilization of the population towards actions materially significant to the war's outcome. Twelve-year-olds went to school not to learn math and literature and history, but to learn how to use bamboo spears to defend the homeland. Men unfit for military duty and women were forcibly conscripted into working at war-materiel factories. By some estimates, more than 90% of the Japanese population over age twelve was involved with the war effort.
If a government is going to turn essentially its entire population into military targets, the government has absolutely no right to complain when the population is targeted militarily.
I sympathize with your view that people are people. I agree with it wholeheartedly. I agree that you cannot equate 2400 lives at Pearl Harbor with 200,000 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But your own argument undercuts your position. You seem to be saying the 200,000 dead by atomic fire are somehow worse than the 2400 dead by sneak attack.
But as you just said, no equivalency can be drawn.
I do not mean to insult you here, but what I've seen in your responses so far leads me to suspect that in your mind there is a clear answer to whether The Bomb was right or wrong, and that Truman bears the brunt of the responsibility for The Bomb being dropped. I would respectfully submit to you that neither is true, and that the militaristic, atrocity-prone Imperial government holds a great deal of responsibility for the outcome.
This is a tremendous area of gray moral muck, and it behooves us to judge with charity to the deciders and compassion to the victims.
Someday we may have to make our own difficult moral choice in a field of gray muck, and we would like to be judged charitably. Someday we may be the victims of horrific violence, and we would like to be remembered with compassion.
Re:'merciful' atomic bomb !? (Score:3, Insightful)
when is war "merciful"? Was firebombiong of Tokyo "merciful"? Was firebombing of Dresden "Merciful"? Was Battle of Stalingrad "merciful"?
Bombing of Nagasaki was as merciful as other major operation in the war was.
So many questions... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why did MacArthur give Japan only three days to respond after Hiroshima? Why not at least a week?
Re:So many questions... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think a better question would be "Why didn't the Japanese surrender immediately after Hiroshima?"
Re:So many questions... (Score:5, Interesting)
Therefore the demonstration of the atom bomb and it's effects for the USSR was also a part of the desission for Truman when he ordered the use of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yours yazeran
Plan: to go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Censored pictures... (Score:5, Interesting)
Makes me wonder what else has been censored within the last century, particular for historically significant events. Was there anything censored that could have been historically significant had it not been censored?
Re:Censored pictures... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Censored pictures... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the reason is that publishing photos of hundreds of coffins containing dead American soldiers will make the reality of what is happening 'hit home' to the America public --- death of thousands of Americans will no longer be just some abstract number, it will suddenly seem much more real, and it won't seem so much like the US is "kicking ass" over there, as is currently the perception. So there is absolutely no doubt that publishing pictures of hundreds of coffins would cause support for the war to plummet quickly (and almost certainly would have cost Bush his re-election).
Re:Censored pictures... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then there's the censorship to move or alter public opinion. Is that what is happening in Iraq today? There are way too many conflicting reports about what's really happening there.
For example, one can read Iraqi blogs like Baghdad Burning [blogspot.com] to get an insider view, but there's been claims she exaggerates stuff as well, and I've never
Reporter meant well but didnt know: (Score:5, Interesting)
Nagasaki wasnt the primary intended target. The intended target was Kokura, but the spotter planes that went ahead found it to be completely socked in with clouds, so the bomb plane diverted to their secondary target, Nagasaki.
Re:Reporter meant well but didnt know: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure I would consider the explosion and later fallout going into an unpopulated area to be a "loss".
Not trying to nit-pick your comment, but thousands of people died and generations are still seeing the adverse reprocussions of the radiation poisoning. I guess I just wanted to make sure that a respectful sympathy is honored, most all of those killed by the blast were civilians.
Re:Reporter meant well but didnt know: (Score:5, Interesting)
How does that make it not deliberate? Having secondary targets was standard practice for conventional bombing raids as well. They were planned just like the primary targets were, it's not like they decided to just drop the bomb on some random city just because their primary was visually obscured.
, so they aimed by using radar, which was very poor in those days, and they were WAY OFF, like miles from the intended aiming point.
What? The bomb detonated pretty much right between the two principal targets in the city, both Mitsubishi armaments factories. That's about the best place they could have hoped to put it. And the bomb was placed visually, through a break in the clouds, not with radar.
Most of this info was casually surpressed at the time.
Misinformation should be suppressed, yes.
Re:Reporter meant well but didnt know: (Score:4, Informative)
Hiroshima (Score:4, Informative)
If you found this interesting you might want to read John Hersey's account of the Hiroshima bomb. Published in 1946 and still in print, it's pretty much the definitive version.
It's written in an extraordinarily calm style, almost without emotion, but is strangly fascinating and moving.
Try a search for 'Hiroshima John Hersey'.
1946:THE FIFTH HORSEMAN- Old Radio to listen to. (Score:4, Informative)
Sympathy for the Japanese (Score:5, Insightful)
The Japanese occupied China for 12 years. In just one incident, they slaughtered more than a quarter of a million Chinese in retaliation for the Doolittle raid on Japan. Thousands of prisoners were abused, tortured and murdered by the Japanese. They performed experiments with chemical and biological weapons on living people. Chinese are still being injured by leftover stocks of Japanese chemical weapons, yet the Japanese still refuse to take responsibility for what they did.
While the nuclear strikes were terrible things, when one remembers the brutality and sheer animalistic behaviour of the Japanese, it's hard to not think "what goes around, comes around". The Japanese people were treated a hell of a lot better after their surrender than any of the peoples they conquered.
Re:Sympathy for the Japanese (Score:5, Insightful)
Violence will never end.
Re:Sympathy for the Japanese (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sympathy for the Japanese (Score:4, Insightful)
NYT Lies About HIroshima and Gets Pulitzer (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:NYT Lies About Hiroshima and Gets Pulitzer (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.democracynow.org/static/hiroshima.shtm
Summary:
After the bomb drop on Hiroshima, press are confined to a barge off the coast of Japan. Wilfred Burchett, an independent journalist, decides to go and see things first hand and writes about it ("I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world."). William L. Laurence of the New York Times, and on the Pentagon payroll, writes a series of stories discrediting Burchett and gets the Pulitzer Price. Democracy Now is trying to get the Pulitzer stripped from the NYT.
(sorry, accidentally pushed submit instead of preview)
Classified-Top Secret / Group 4 / Burnbag only (Score:4, Interesting)
The drug was opium. It helps the immune system, mainly kidneys and liver, organize formation, collection and elimination of salts which contain radiation minerals, and thus accelerates curing. Withing a few years after the bombings, the contaminated populations had completely recovered, including hair, reproductive and immune system capacity, and etc.
The reason this is still "top secret" is that the planet's annual production capacity in opium is limited (by geographic and political availability of alkaline soil, accessible mountainous exposures with cheap labor, supervised by loyal warlords, dark nights, for complete formation of plant alkaloids, etc.) to approximately one-tenth of the size of the "national medical reserve" the U.S. alone would require to stabilize its own "designated survivor" population, in the event of a nuclear wars between the U.S. and Russia, China, France, etc. If amongst the powers on this planet, the U.S. maintained exclusive control of the entire production of the planet's maximum production capacity in opium-based pain killers, it would take the U.S. alone ten years to acquire its required "two-balled" military "entirety" for a nuclear war.
Oddly, or contrary to our Hollywood-created popular opinion, survival ("continuity of government") in a nuclear war is not determined by the bombing phase, which is relatively shortlived, using missiles which the media generally portrays as "sexy" and/or "terrifying. Survival in a war by mass contamination, and diplomacy by threat of mass contamination (read: state-sponsored terrorism), is based on not on the bombing phase, but on the longer and economically more arduous restoration phase. This more crucial phase starts with medication-stabilization programs of the government/military/fema, to treat the "designated survivors." The only know treatment for 500rem+ radiation sickness, on a mass contamination basis, is by production control and medical delivery of opium-based painkillers and treatment alkaloids.
That was the purpose of the experiments on Tuskeegee prisonors. (The controlled contamination and experimental treatment of black prisoners was for national-security dosage determinations, required for determination of (a) the size of the designation population which could be expected to survive (with any degree of continuing political stability), and then the ten-year annual production capacity of the planet, for treatment of the U.S.'s designation survivor population alone.
Is it by accident that this article just happens to blotch out and make that word illegible, while be bomb and control the most critical of the opium production areas of the planet, Afghanistan?
Nagasaki as Manhatten? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Informative)
He died in 2002, a whopping 57 years after his "walk in the atomic park".
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because of its heavy weight cellars in the Ore Mountain may contain a high level of Radon, it enters the cellar through earth rifts and doesn't leave it anymore. It can reach levels where it really starts to be a health risk, leading to lung cancer because of the alpha rays (Helium cores), which destroy the tissue of the lung.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:4, Interesting)
All Bulgarian, Cheh and most Caucasus (Russian and Georgian) SPAs are like this.
Radon containing water works miracles on arthritis, joints problems as well as many forms of eczema. While it usually fails to provide permanent cure it provides 3-4 months of relief or gives medications a better chance to work.
In btw, the feeling is weird... 20 minutes in a warm pool of such water makes you feel like your joints have started to melt. They feel like rubber.
The mechanism is still unclear, but it is not the Radon which is the active agent. It is the way its decay changes water properties.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:4, Interesting)
Granite and marble are both naturally radioactive, as are bricks used for building materials. The US capitol building has a natural background radation of 30 microrems per hour. which is higher than EPA limits for "safe" LINK [junkscience.com]
Strom Thurman and Congress brain damage jokes may now start.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Has to be asked- was it entirely a coincidence that the camp was situated near the manufacturing facilities?
I doubt it; it seems a logical tactic to discourage bombing of the most likely targets. If so, the Japanese were likely not the first, and certainly not the last to use prisoners as hostages in this manner.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Insightful)
They Japanese were big on forced labor camps. Given this, I'd say there is a pretty obvious reason for the camp to be located near manufacturing facilities.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really easier than you think - it's all about dilution of responsibility. During the Vietnam War someone noted that while in theory nobody would accept burning children alive, some children are being burnt alive due to decisions made in a long chain of command where everyone is responsible for just a tiny bit of the whole process - from workers in plant making napalm bombs, to the pilot who is "just following orders", to Robert McNamara, who deals just with abstract figures, maps, tables etc. So you would be just the guy who draws an arrow on the map. Or the guy who is just pressing the button. In your own conscience, you would feel 100% innocent.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:4, Insightful)
very well put and it is a thought that perhaps more americans charging off to war in hopes of financing college should think of
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:4, Insightful)
And you would be lying to yourself. The guy who draws the arrow is as guilty as the guy who presses the button, who is as guilty as the guy who gives the order, and so on.
I agree that that's the way people rationalise it to themselves, but convincing yourself that you're 100% innocent doesn't make it true.
Of course, were I ever to find myself in the same situation, doubtless I would act in the same way; I'm not saying I'm any better. We're all human in the end.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:4, Insightful)
And thus are part of a shared responsibility for it. If we live in a society with a representative government, then the policies of that government are the responsibility, to some extent, of the people who live in it. Responsibility is not exactly the same thing as moral culpability: responsibility can be collective (e.g., a company has to honor its debts even if no person who created the debt is still there.)
But it is a problem to think that you can enjoy all the benefits of a nation-state without sharing in the responsibility for the actions of that nation-state, particularly if there is some representative system at hand.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason is multi-part but basically that was simply how Japan worked. Instead of big, mega factories, often you had small cottage industry that served the greater factory. Its actually a very nice model in peacetime.
The casualties were even worse than they needed to be. Fearing incendiery attacks, the Japanese organized to pull down wooden structures. However, they did not organize to haul away said piles of wood which ended up burning more efficiently that way.
If you look at what the japanese were doing to prepare themselves for the inevitable invasion by the Allies (including the Russians) you will no doubt come to the conclusion that dropping two atomic bombs was by far better than having a poorly armed population attempting to fight it out. They were trainng young women to fight with bamboo spears. It would have been a sensless slaughter that Japan probably would not have recovered from. I think the question is quite well answered in the book "Downfall."
Also, there is a film put out by Showtime in 1995 called "Hiroshima" that I thought was very well balanced. It does portray the Emperor in a more heroic light than I think he deserves but for the most part I think it does show the intentions of everyone involved quite well. Its 3 hours long. I got a copy off of Half.com. Its hard to find but well worth it.
--Pete
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not quite. What they were actually saying was "give the blockade more time." It had been up for months prior, slowly starving the islands, but there was no sign of wavering in the Japanese military command. Instead, they send the Yamato off with no fuel (thanks to the blockade), with the intent of beaching her on Okinawa and acting as static guns.
"Then there is the whole world of diplomacy and surrender, which, I assure you, was in fact an option."
Diplomacy? With the same country that had negotiators pretending to negotiate a peaceful resolution to their invasion of China with the US while an attack fleet was steeming towards Pearl Harbor at the same time? "Fool me once, shame on you..."
What conditions would they push for in that diplomacy? That the US abandon support for China? Hang on to some of the islands they grabbed in 1941?
Yes, there were parts of the Japanese government looking for peace, but they had no power in their government. Those in power were waiting for the eventual invasion of the home islands and forcing the US into a pyrrhic victory in order to negotiate from more strength. And to that end they gave spears to children. They only surrendered when the atomic bombs demonstrated there was no hope to make the victory costly for the US beyond the price tag of the bombs.
"The United States was very clear on insisting on unconditional surrender, and many parts of the Japanese power structure were ready for this,"
Yeah, the parts that had no power. These were some of the same voices that said going to war with the US was a bad idea back in 1941, but if anything they lost influence as Japan lost captured territories over the years (since it became easier to see us as filthy gaijin invaders).
"and then allowed the emperor to stay anyway."
Not in the way they wanted. The constitution MacArthur forced down their throats, the one that reduced the political influence of the emperor to that of a figurehead at best, is not one that they would have accepted voluntarily. One of the less etherial reasons parts of the Japanese government wanted to leave the emperor's office unchanged is that the military forces effectively ruling the country used their power in his name. They knew that, if their offices relied more on a popularly-elected legislature, they'd be replaced with people like the peaceniks they were busy supressing.
John of England got to keep his throne, too. But there was still the little matter of the Magna Carta...
Re:"just following orders" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"just following orders" (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. Read up on the war. The Japanese imperial government forced elementary-school children to drill with bamboo spears and take on military rank as preparations to 'defend the homefront'. Men unfit for military duty, as well as most women, were forced to work in factories making war materiel. The entire civilian population had been forcibly mobilized by the government into joining a military war effort. The entire population of Japan over age twelve were essentially military draftees. This is called "total war". Today, total war is considered by political thinkers to be a crime against one's own populace, because it makes the entire population a legitimate military target.
I agree that following orders specifically intended to result in civilian deaths is a war crime. I agree that giving orders specifically intended to result in civilian deaths is a war crime.
I just don't see there were very many civilians in Japan.
By your logic there weren't many here, either.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Would Japan have been justified in wiping out a couple of major US cities if it had developed the capability to do so?
Re:By your logic there weren't many here, either.. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're asking me if the defense plants were valid targets, sure. If the Japanese had somehow been able to bomb Rosie the Riveter, that would've been entirely appropriate within the laws and customs of war. The instant a civilian starts working for a military purpose, they stop being a civilian. In wartime Japan, more than ninety percent of the population over age twelve was working for the war effort. Hence, there were very few civilians in Japan.
Re:"just following orders" (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks, war is not a simple thing, and trying to make it sound simple is foolish. In war, there are things that happen that undeniably should not--I won't justify that. But there are too many people that question things that a) can't be changed and b) try to make all war seem evil.
A) is not so bad, as we can learn from past mistakes--and I think that the military would avoid using nuclear weapons (talking about US military, as well as European militaries) at all costs. There can be, however, a point beyond which it is no use to travel in your inspection of the past.
B) is foolish in the extreme. I had a coworker who, at one point, stated that she felt ALL war was wrong, and there was no point at which it would be justified to fight a war. This is foolish. At some point (and what point that is is debatable) there comes a time where if you do not fight, you allow innocent civilians to be slaughtered by an enemy who will torture and rape and abuse, just because the enemy has the ability to do so (I don't think that the majority of us would have liked it if Nazi Germany had won). In the case of WWII, if no one had opposed Hitler, then we still would have had concentration camps and the Holocaust. I don't think that appeals to most of us.
Does that justify, then, the use of nuclear weapons? I don't know. I do know, however, that there is NO way that you can ever be certain that if we hadn't done that that the Japanese (at that time) wouldn't have ended up winning the war. Maybe we would have had to use the nuclear bomb, but instead of hitting Japan, an enemy-occupied US city (possible). From a military standpoint, you always stop the enemy before they take your land. Especially when it is a war across oceans, where if Japan had taken and held Hawaii, it would have given them a major advantage.
So, "just following orders" is more complicated than you seem to think. That's why we aren't in the military (or I assume you are not). I, at the very least, would want to know why I should storm a particular hill or destroy a particular area. Sometimes an action may seem odd, or even wrong, but in the interest of winning a war, it may be absolutely essential. Without knowing the entire picture, however, you can't always be certain that an action is not the best thing. I'm not talking about rape or abuse or defying the Geneva conventions (those are always wrong, and then the soldier should take the moral ground and refuse, knowing that the senior officer might just have him severely punished (and in some cases killed), but defying the orders all the same), but about taking a village or bombing a particular target. So while I agree that there are some situations and actions that are extremely hard to justify (rape is never justified in my mind), don't be quick to judge a soldier's defense that he was just following orders. If the Milgram studies [ke7.org.uk] taught us anything it was that authority is more powerful than we tend to think, and that most people will obey orders when asked to do something the would never do on their own (shocking someone with a supposedly lethal charge)--just because they were told to do it by someone with authority (experimenter). Think about it a little more before you discount that particular defense!
Re:"just following orders" (Score:5, Interesting)
I would find it hard to believe that there was much talk about "justification" at the time.
My grandmother was in a Japanese prison camp. She was there simply because she wasn't Japanese. She was "different" from them and perhaps that's while they raped and tortured her every day for months. Apparently it didn't matter to the Japanese that she was pregnant at the time. Later her son was born, but babies can't work so they don't get fed. One of the other prisoners (I don't even know his name) smuggled in some food & medicine to try and keep the kid alive. Unfortunately they found him out. The Japanese assembled all the prisoners in the camp to make an example of him. They shoved a fire hose down his throat and pumped water into him at high pressure, his stomach exploded and his internal organs flew all over the place. The prisoners could only watch as he died in agony, trying to pick up all his bits and put them back in.
This is not a unique story and not a particularly bad one when it comes down to it compared to a lot of the stuff that went on. A lot of really [centurychina.com] awful [pandora.be] shit [ideaworx.com] went on in that war.
Dropping atomic bomb(s) on a (comparative) handful of people (compared to the millions dying and in danger) to end the war with Japan is a no brainer. It only seem "wrong" to a lot of people today because they aren't having their internal organs removed and fashioned as a hat.
Re:"just following orders" (Score:4, Insightful)
This, of course, is why people decided that full-blown pacifism is the only way - because once a cycle of violence starts ever step simply escalates and becomes "justified" by the previous atrocities.
Now, granted, the Japanese culture of war was *extremely* harsh and the atrocities commited were extreme. But that doesn't make other atrocities okay.
War is about the demonization of the enemy - the psychology that makes a Japanese soldier feel okay about (horribly) torturing someone to death to maintain order in a camp is exactly the same as the one that lets someone feel okay about killing (horribly) tens of thousand of civilians in an attempt to force an opponent into surrender. War is a nasty, violent, terrible thing and glorifying it only leads to more atrocities - no matter how bad your enemy is.
Re:"just following orders" (Score:4, Insightful)
Not the point - dropping the bomb led to Japan's surrender, which is why (presumably) the people torturing his grandmother stopped doing so, and released her. Otherwise, the torture would have continued.
Re:"just following orders" (Score:4, Insightful)
Um... how? In the example specified, how would "full-blown pacifism" have stopped the torture mentioned in the parent post?
This wasn't a one-time event, people were being put through this on a daily basis both within Japan as well as in Japanese holdings in China, before, during, and even after both atomic bombings. This is one of the reasons why Nagasaki was only three days after Hiroshima, to put a stop to the continual torture.
Of course, if no bombs were dropped and insteaed of forcing surrender out of Japan the US went "full-blown pacifist" and simply stopped prosecuting the war, things wouldn't have changed. There'd be no reason for Japan to release all its Chinese and Western prisoners (they were spoils of war gained "fair and square" as far as the IJA were concerned), they would have continued to be abused until their deaths, at which point they'd be replaced by even more Chinese slaves (and probably more Westerners, too, once Japan decided they needed even more natural resources). The violence wouldn't have ended, in many ways it would have gotten worse, the only difference is that, in your version, Pilate would have been able to wash his hands of it.
They had to be nuked. Sure, that's not something to be happy about, but simpy disliking something doesn't make it less necessary. Contrary to popular belief, violence does solve things, and this is a shining example of it.
And as for the civillian deaths, there was little (if any) difference between "civillian" and "soldier" in the eyes of Japan, both for their enemies as well as their own people. Many (if not most) of those civillians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were drafted by the government to work in factories making war materiel. With Japan prosecuting "total war" like that, it's very difficult to say who was really a civillian and who wasn't.
Re:"just following orders" (Score:4, Insightful)
What bothers me about this position is that it is purely self-serving. Much like the smug vegan or self-assured decrier of the death penalty, the entire position of 'pacifism' is one of putting your own moral/mental comfort above the physical well-being and reality of others.
Pacifists rarely think through their position enough to find alternatives to the actions they dislike. They simply separate themselves to absolve themselves of responsibility - to make themselves feel good. And I find that reprehensible.
It is the easiest thing in the world to be against something, or to judge it with all the knowledge of history. And it is no better to be blindly 'against' something than to be blindly 'for' it.
Re:"just following orders" (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who live in fear like scared little children are the one's who believe such lies as you just said.
Re:"just following orders" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of the 5 shortlisted targets for the two bombs, none of them would have been particularly free from collateral damage, however.
What's more interesting is the whole question of whether the atomic attacks were necessary to end tha war - I shall say no more on this here but I invite all readers to look into it - it wasn't as easily justified as you may think.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to post a comment as someone who knows some people who were there that day.
There certainly is a strange thing about the effect of the bomb to people. I have no statistics, but my anecdotal experience shows that those who are still alive 60 years after their experience are extremely healthy.
My father was 14 and was 2.5km from the ground zero. He, obviously unscathed, visited the ground zero after a day or two. He is 74 now and plays tennis every day. He does get his conditions checked every year as a survivor. He is apparently an interesting case because he does have half the amount of white blood cells compared to normal. This is somewhat consistent with the well-known effect of radiation. Still, he doesn't even catch cold.
And my father is not an exception. There is a rather well known view among Nagasaki population that some survivors are extremely healthy. This may simply mean that they survived because they are extremely strong. There might be a correlation but it would be really hard to tell which is the cause and which is the effect. Some people may be just lucky that their damaged genes have better ability to repair itself.
On the other hand, people are now starting to talk about the effect on the third generation. There seem to be some concern that instead of the second generation, symptoms are appearing in the third generation. The effect of the bombing in terms of how much the radiation affects the genes is understandably hard to prove. There are many many other factors, and it is practically impossible to isolate the experience in a nuked environment as the major cause of mutation.
Personally, I don't have an opinion whether dropping the a-bombs is justified. It's history and that's what happend, we cannot change it. But if I'm pressed, I'd personally think because of the bomb, I'm here. If there had been no bomb in Nagasaki that day, my father may not have survived till the end of the war. It's well-known that teenager boys had been recruited to become Kamikaze attacker. An elder brother of his was being trained to be one. Another year or so, my father would probably have become one.
Every time I think about the bomb, I have a strange feeling. If my father had been killed on that day, I would not be here to think about the bomb. It was obviously a major event in his life although he always talks about it in a calm manner. I think he is a cool guy.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only permanent radioactivity would be trapped in the fireball and would have been deposited downwind by the 'black rain' (which would be dangerous).
Yours Yazeran
Plan: to go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Informative)
There is still some residual radiation but surpisingly, the vast majority of radioactive fall-out pollution in the region is due to US atmospheric testing in the 50's, and that was way off in the Pacific!
The neutron radiation is also negligable compared to the background pollution.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:5, Informative)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both classical airburst detonations. These typically produce low local fallout as the radioactive material is mostly swept up into the stratosphere as the fireball rises. Although there were certainly many cancer cases, most of these were caused by prompt radiation (ie gamma and neutrons directly from the nuclear reactions in the fireball), and that prompt radiation dies away very quickly (hours rather than days).
I wouldn't like to walk around in a heavy fallout zone either, but those are generally associated with groundbursts or radiological devices rather than airbursts. So I think this reporter was probably okay. See the FAQ at nuclearweaponarchive.org for more info.
Re:So what happened to this reporter? Cancer? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:MacArthur (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know that 'shame' enters into it when dealing with the military. My best guess is that they figured they had a job to do, realised the tactical advantage atomic weapons would bring, and realised that an adverse public reaction would possibly rob them of this advantage.
Quite frankly, I'd assume that the high-ups in the US military saw the general public as little more than a hindrance to their objectives; at best, viewed in a patronising, paternalistic manner.
That having been said, was the target bombed because it was civilian, or was it bombed because of its manufacturing facilities?
Of course, the irony is that, whilst the US military may have been zealous in concealing unpalatable information, the Japanese regime were 100 times worse, and continue to deny or obfuscate their actions during WWII to this day.
Re:MacArthur (Score:5, Insightful)
The Administration doesn't.
The army gets their orders from untrained civilians (in this case). They knew Iraq was a bad idea and being poorly planned, but they took their orders and executed them like good soldiers ought to.
And before you blame them for following stupid orders blindly, the people who are truly at fault are the US citizens for willfully putting such incompetence in charge of such a powerful weapon.
All weapons and wars are terrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Japan got what they had coming to them. Looking at the effects of the atomic bombings in isolation and going "Oh, how awful" is worthless. You have to look at the whole war and take actions like the atomic bombings in the context of the time.
I live in Japan currently, my wife is Japanese and my children are half-Japanese (I am American). I enjoy Japan and I like the Japanese people. It's hard to imagine now how a war like WWII could have been fought by them.
My landlord, at 80+, was in the Army and served during WWII. He's a nice old man who likes to garden and play with my kids. I've never had a conversation with him about what he did during the war though it wouldn't surprise me if he had been running around with a bayonet through Nanking or poking POWs along the Bataan trail. It was what you did at that time and somehow there is a collective insanity that sweeps men up and gives them license to run amok.
My grandfather drove landing boats in the Pacific during WWII. He never talked much about it, but my grandmother told me he used to wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night after he got back. I knew other men from his generation who had been to war and must have been through and done terrible things. Yet they came back and went back to normal lives and did normal things and we sat and ate dinner with them. And we, as a society, condoned what they had done and dreamed up ways to kill more people faster and easier while still being concerned about what kind of car to drive and what kind of school the kids should go to.
Death comes to us one at a time. Each life lost is a tragedy. Atomic weapons changes these tragedies into statistics but make no mistake, each death is still a tragedy. And each life lost to a bullet is just as much a tragedy as one lost to a nuke. War is terrible and destructive and to be avoided. Let's not pretend that some ways of making war are better than others.
Re:All weapons and wars are terrible (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree with you in principle, speaking as a civillian, I would be tempted to argue that ways of making war that seek to keep civillian casualties to a minimum are better than those that pay such things little or no heed.
Re:All weapons and wars are terrible (Score:3, Insightful)
"It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it." -R.E. Lee
You're right! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MacArthur (Score:5, Insightful)
Go read up on the firebombing of Japanese cities, or European cities.
The attack on Tokyo killed far more people, destroyed far more of the city than both of the nuclear weapons. There's little evidence to suggest that radioactivity has caused any more deaths in the last 60 years than the release of toxins in normal fires did in other cities. Cancer clusters just are easier to track.
Even ignoring the fact that it stopped the war early, the use of the nuclear weapons both saved American lives, and saved the lives of countless Japanese civilians who would've been killed in the firestorm that followed a mass bombing of those cities.
War is ugly. Spend a little time learning about weapons systems over the last 500 years, learn about their effects, both immediate and long term before passing judgement. Don't mistakenly assume efficiency at killing equates to the level of inhumanity. And definitely don't base your idea of what these wars were like on a few individual-oriented movies like Saving Private Ryan. Wars for the last hundred years were based on the concept of impersonal massive destruction, most of it far more horrifying than a nuclear blast.
You assume an extra couple of speculative steps (Score:5, Insightful)
So true -- and in general, the point that people take the nuclear weapons as something completely distinct from "strategic" bombing campaigns, on both sides of the war, is ever so appropriate to make. By the time we got to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki moment, those were natural extensions of the logic of those campaigns. Truman (one of my least favorite Presidents) had authorized the use of the bombs as soon as they'd work, and they were used without another decision on his part basically. For us to look back and deal with them alone has to be deeply wrong.
That doesn't mean there isn't something to be learned, though, or that we should accept the rationale that you offer for why they "worked" even on those "logic of the war" terms without scrutiny.
Even ignoring the fact that it stopped the war early, the use of the nuclear weapons both saved American lives, and saved the lives of countless Japanese civilians who would've been killed in the firestorm that followed a mass bombing of those cities.
And now we're off in the land of wishfully-accepted wisdom, positing possible events and their potential consequences. This line of thinking is certainly out there, it's worth thinking about -- and it's exactly where people who want not to deal with the morality of those bombs would like us all to come to a full stop.
Unfortunately "it stopped the war earlier and saved lives on both sides" asks us to accept that those arguments are true when they're essentially speculative. There was very real debate within the US's own armed forces about the potential costs of an invasion. There were different plans among the different services for how the end could come with Japan. They disagreed about what to do, and to suggest that there was a clear answer is a lie. To lump all that together and say "Okay, but it worked because the war didn't go any longer" avoids several questions -- "Why not drop the first bombs somewhere other than on a densely-populated city?" and so on -- and can amount to self-censorship that's just about to that head-in-the-sand point by now.
For one example: When the Smithsonian exhibit around the Enola Gay got neutered in the 1990s, one of the suggested additions to the exhibit, supposedly for "balance," was a display with a purple heart and a (quite high) estimate of the number of Purple Hearts that were prevented by the bombings. Some pretty major right wing influences, stirred up partly by "Air Force" magazine (which is a trade publication largely for purchasers of modern air weapons), wanted those fictional body counts included in the exhibit. Alas, the good folks at the museum are not especially fond of the idea of displaying fictional Purple Hearts. Partly, you know, they feel a responsibility not to insult those who got the real thing. Partly they just don't want to make things up to put on display -- and the proposed revisions weren't to be attributed to any particular primary source, they were meant to be in the neutral narrative voice of the exhibition's information panels. They chose to simply display the plane with almost no exhibit at all. Just a shiny fuselage.
Second example, and the one that horrifies me: Chester Nimitz, judging by both remarks of his own in October of 1945 and by comments of his widow, regretted the bombs horribly.
Re:MacArthur (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MacArthur (Score:4, Insightful)
Too often media focusses on the latter, and we wring our hands about the deaths of 5 in location X, while ignoring the deaths of 5 million in location Y.
When it comes to the deaths of people, Math Matters. Just because something pulls at our heart strings does not make it a a significant effect. Yes, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were bad and the victims suffered terribly, but they were a drop in a huge bucket of human misery that resulted from that war. And there were far larger atrocities that were glossed over completely.
Starvation, for example, is probably a worse way to go than radiation sickness. And when things go bad, it often happens by the 10's of millions, not 10's of thousands.
Re:MacArthur (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Simple. While the japan A-bomb attacks can be justified in some twisted way by the reasoning that it forced Japan to capitulate, the Dresden bombings' target was to destroy the railway infrastructure nearby. The bombings killed a lot of people there and the railway was operating at full capacity just 3 days after the attack.
Re:MacArthur (Score:5, Insightful)
If? The United States "conventionally" bombed Japan mercilessly during WW2. Read up on the bio of Curtis LeMay [wikipedia.org] to get a sense of what that was all about. (He was the Strategic Air Command General who ordered and executed the firebombing of Tokyo, which destroyed about half of Tokyo, a city the size of New York, in one night.)
Cheers,
Richard
there are no clean hands in war. (Score:4, Insightful)
First British Bombing raid on Berlin: 23 Aug 1940
First German Bombing raid on London: 7 September 1940
Re:MacArthur (Score:5, Insightful)
There's the truth of it, by the time time Dresden happened, Germany had become a political football. The focus had shifted from winning the war, to beating the Russians. Under this time pressure, some slighly unethical decisions were made.
Inflicting unnecessary harm on another country always comes back to bite you in the ass, even when they are "paying the price".
Germany paid the price after WWI, and that basically led to WWII.
Re:MacArthur (Score:3, Insightful)
Fair enough wipe out factories with bombing raid , but taking out the entire city , Men , women , children etc. is a little beyond just a military target.
Good thing, too... (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine that you're a military type, and you've got this brand new, super-powerful toy, the Biggest Bomb in the World. It tooks millions to build, and the biggest aspect of all that work was that nobody really knew if it even could be built. But once it is known that one can be built, it's only a matter of time until others do it.
Further imagine that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had never happened, so the Bomb wouldn't be anything real in the public's mind, just another weapon, just another bomb. Military types are prone to exaggerate their own capability, so without having seen the Bomb used against a real city, it would have remained a bomb, not The Bomb. Seeing pictures of a devastated atoll just isn't the same as hearing reports of death from a devastated city.
Finally, imagine the Cold War, where both sides have the Bomb, but the world lacked the fear generated by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Imagine both sides with thousands of Bombs, each. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened during that brief interval in history, when only one side had the Bomb, when there was no issue of retaliation, when Mutual Assured Destruction, wasn't even a possiblity, much less a deterrent policy.
What do you think our chances of surviving the last 60 years would have been, without the Fear from Hiroshima and Nagasaki permeating our culture. Sometimes I fear that that Fear is fading, but I hope that enough is left to keep us alive until we hopefully mature as a species.
Re:A quiz! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you think it's Ironic that a Hammer was used to bang something?
It's not Ironic. A bomb that is designed to be dropped from altitude being dropped from an Airplane is... logical.
I know Irony is a hard thing to grasp, but let's put forth some effort, shall we?
Irony would be something like, "They spent years designing their plane for safety during takeoff, but never thought to do something to stop it from crashing during landing."
*Speak* softly. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/tr26
Re:hypocrisy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan had attacked us first. Japan indeed had brought us into the war. The fighting in the Pacific had been extremely bloody, with countless islands and other places won with much bloodshed and cost--and we weren't even to the Japanese mainland yet.
Kamikaze--divine wind--took a pretty rough toll. On the Japanese too for sure, but us as well. It's rather indicative of the extreme lengths to which some Japanese soldiers and commanders were willing to go to win.
Would you have rather we performed a manned ground invasion of the Japanese islands and subdued the entire place by force? The Japanese leaders PROVED by ignoring the nuclear bomb not only before it was detonated but more to the point, AFTER it was detonated, that they would not easily surrender.
Estimates I've read (and common sense as well) have point casualties and destruction on both sides from a ground invasion much higher than the nuclear bombings.
No side can be completely innocent in war. Dresden, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Tokyo for that matter were horrible. So too was the rape of Nanking, and the Japanese push throughout the Asia Pacific.
What choice did we have? This was not a war of our choice, or one that would end without a decisive victory or defeat. What better outcome could there have been?
General Patton once said something like 'no dumb bastard ever won a war by dying for his country--the trick is to make the other dumb bastard die for his.' Somewhat egalitarian if you really think about it.
Re:hypocrisy? (Score:5, Informative)
Much of this 'overgrown bully' stuff is true. The trouble is that the rest of the world is no better, indeed much of it is undeniably even worse. Don't expect that when America's luck runs out the next big kid will be nicer.
Re:hypocrisy? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you explain Omaha Beach as the action of nothing more than an overgrown bully?
Or for that matter, US intervention in WWI?
Or when the US came to the aid of South Korea when it was invaded by Communist armies?
I look around the world, and I see a lot of dead Americans buried in a lot of graves on foreign soil, and I'm afraid I don't see how most of those dead could possibly be construed as the result of the actions of nothing more than an overgrown bully.
Perhaps you could explain this to me.
The Former Soviet Union used to have a technical word, called, 'Neutral.' 'Neutral' was anyone who could not possibly hurt the Soviet Union.
Nations like Hungary [wikipedia.org] and Czechoslovakia [wikipedia.org]?
The Rest of the World will not deal with our stupidy much longer.
I'm more concerned about having to deal with yours.
Re:hypocrisy? (Score:3, Insightful)
> > have hesitated to use it?"
> No, probably not, so?
I agree; this is somewhat of a red herring WRT the Japanese situation, as the Nazis (Japan's allies) had been defeated by this time, and I don't think anyone realistically thought there was a chance of Japan having a working A-bomb. (Although the Nazis *had* shipped support for a 'dirty bomb' to Japan shortly before their defeat, IIRC).
However, remember that
Re:Why the second bomb? (Score:3, Interesting)
While it is beyond me to argue for or against the use of the bombs, I think the point was the following. If you drop one bomb - what with all the confusion that ensues, none of the politicians can make up their mind - was this just a huge conventional attack, like Dresden? Are the witnesses lying? Was this just a fluke? Remember we're talking about politicians here. Politicians are human and suffer the same defense mech
Re:Why the second bomb? (Score:3, Interesting)
Outside of using it to stop war, we also used it as a weapons test, among other things. We hadn't set off too many of these massively powerful devices yet, and we wanted to know which would be the better war-time design.
Now, we know a lot more about the weapons; enough to know that either design wasn't so good, and that newer weapons are mas
Re:Why the second bomb? (Score:5, Insightful)
- How many Japanse soldier were situated in China: hundreds of thousends.
- How many Russian divisions were about to engage the Japanse army in China: 3
- Was the *smallest* russian division bigger or smaller than the complete Japanese presence in China: Bigger
- Didn't the Russian have far better equipment than the Japanese: Yes, the Russians had just fought a war against Germany, the Japanese had fought against peasants.
- What would Russia have done after they would have annihilated the Japanese forces in China: Figure that one out for yourself.
Indeed... (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact of the matter is that Japan was fully prepared to fight an invasion of Japan to the last man/woman/child. The people who decided to pull the trigger on the atomic bomb had just seen firsthand what that kind of scenario was like in Germany.
Do I like the fact that those bombs were dropped on cities? No. Do I think it saved millions of Allied soldiers' (and Japanese soldiers/civilians) lives? Absolutely.
Does the military censor news? Absolutely.
Re:Astounding... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah! They should have called it a "kitten parade"! Or possibly a "neutron-assisted aliveness readjustment"! Or a "celebration of freedom"!
I like "kitten parade" best.
You _do_ realize that it was, actually, an attack? Using an atomic weapon? Hence 'atomic attack'? With no big evil liberal conspiracy? If they'd called it an 'unneccessary atomic attack on a civilian target' _that_ might have been slanted. Just referring to 'the U.S. atomic attack' is simply a handy way of, well, referring to the U.S. atomic attack.
NOT legend: read "Nine Who Survived ..." (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's Great to See... (Score:5, Insightful)
What a load of bollocks. It is our duty to interrogate the past and consider the morality of their actions. In part this informs our own actions (something the US needs big time right now) and it also helps prevent the wartime propaganda infecting subsequent history. People who might have been revered during the war when discovered to have committed heinous crimes against humanity should have all honour stripped from them even posthumously (and for those of a Biblical bent, unto the seventh generation).