Hiroshima is marking the anniversary of the 1945 Atomic Bombing

Let us hope this never happens again.the_ChEeSe_mAn2

Indeed.

[QUOTE="DrTrafalgarLaw"][QUOTE="wis3boi"]

You sorely misunderstand 1940s Japanese culture. Every citizen was trained by the military to take up arms, whether it be rifle or sword or sticks, and fight and die rather than surrender to an invading force. The casualties of civilians would be enormous. You also seem to not care about Dresden

wis3boi

Dresden was carpet bombed by british and american air forces and the place was of significance to germany not for military reasons...it was a cultural and art center for the country. 15 square miles was wiped off the face of the Earth and roughly 50,000 civilians were killed, estimates vary up to 100,000 in some cases. Yet no one talks about this event. Is it somehow okay to overlook it because it was Germany? Or because it was done with conventional ordinance?

My Grandfather was part of the Royal Air Force bombing crew that carried out raids on Dresden. To his dying day he never regretted what he did and felt it was completely justified in light of the nightly bombing raids that were happening in Britain, London, Coventry, Plymouth etc. The scars of which are still visible today.

In his later years he was part of a veteran group and each year they would go over to Germany and other places in Europe and mark their respects with the respective German bomber crews in ode to the lives that they took because of the war.

My Grandfather died shortly after one of these trips when I was 16, he fell badly and punctured a lung (he had emphysema so this was a huge deal). He was assisted by a member of one of the German bombing crews to be re-patrioted back to the UK.

I think one of the other posters in this thread has the mark of what this discussion should be about, not slinging mud left right and centre over who was morally right or wrong. The war was terrible. My husbands grandfather was involved in the Pacific campaign and he still weeps about what he saw there (have you seen a 95 year old man weep about terrors from his youth?) It is impossible for you all to sit here, like the other poster said - well fed, safe and free and pass judgement over what was done. It was done, end of. Horrors were commited on both sides of the equation - what I think is more important is that both sides of that equation should be respected for the losses that they had.

Lets hope it never happens again, for the world's sake.

It's sad that OT believes that they can enter the mindset of 1945 and make judgmentson the basis that they apparently have a higher moral authority.An opinion formed by sitting on the internet in 2012 not having to endure watching over 70 million people die as the world tore itself up. I guess we can all sit here on our high horse and say they were wrong for not wanting to drag the conflict on killing even more people when they had the tools to end it right there.

I guess we can make these decisions and cast down judgment because none of us lost any family or friends in the war fighting overseas. None of us had to endure the harsh rationing to sustain the war effort. None of us had to watch newsreels of the massive amounts of carnage caused by the war.

Nope, we sit here, well fed, well maintained, reading crap on the internet and thus that gives us the right to judge them.

Wasdie

The concept of war has been cheapened and the importance of history is now irrelevant in today's society. What do you expect?

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

[QUOTE="hartsickdiscipl"]

That means that 50% of the city was still standing. Destroying the capital city of a country is never a wasted gesture in wartime. It's massively demoralizing.. not to mention giving you the chance to take out some of the military leadership around the Emperor.

hartsickdiscipl

Yup, making a martyr of their god, that's smart.

He wouldn't have been viewed as a "martyr" if he was incinerated like the rest of the common folk in the blast. He would've been shown to be mortal and very fallible.

They had no delusions about the mortality of their Emperor. The Emperors of Japan had been born, lived, and died for centuries by that point. That doesn't change the God-on-Earth reverence they had for him however.

First our guns are getting taken away, and now we're bombing the Japanese? Thanks Obama!Guppy507

:question: What are you talking about?

[QUOTE="wis3boi"]

[QUOTE="DrTrafalgarLaw"] What about Dresden? I can't say for certain if that was justified or not, a lot of civilians died...but at the time most of the public was already swayed into a german empire. I don't know man...wavey_gravey

Dresden was carpet bombed by british and american air forces and the place was of significance to germany not for military reasons...it was a cultural and art center for the country. 15 square miles was wiped off the face of the Earth and roughly 50,000 civilians were killed, estimates vary up to 100,000 in some cases. Yet no one talks about this event. Is it somehow okay to overlook it because it was Germany? Or because it was done with conventional ordinance?

My Grandfather was part of the Royal Air Force bombing crew that carried out raids on Dresden. To his dying day he never regretted what he did and felt it was completely justified in light of the nightly bombing raids that were happening in Britain, London, Coventry, Plymouth etc. The scars of which are still visible today.

In his later years he was part of a veteran group and each year they would go over to Germany and other places in Europe and mark their respects with the respective German bomber crews in ode to the lives that they took because of the war.

My Grandfather died shortly after one of these trips when I was 16, he fell badly and punctured a lung (he had emphysema so this was a huge deal). He was assisted by a member of one of the German bombing crews to be re-patrioted back to the UK.

I think one of the other posters in this thread has the mark of what this discussion should be about, not slinging mud left right and centre over who was morally right or wrong. The war was terrible. My husbands grandfather was involved in the Pacific campaign and he still weeps about what he saw there (have you seen a 95 year old man weep about terrors from his youth?) It is impossible for you all to sit here, like the other poster said - well fed, safe and free and pass judgement over what was done. It was done, end of. Horrors were commited on both sides of the equation - what I think is more important is that both sides of that equation should be respected for the losses that they had.

Only a sick twisted country would be able to do the damage that had happened that day..

USA.

Still, very sad event.

ThisIsTwoFace

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

It's sad that OT believes that they can enter the mindset of 1945 and make judgmentson the basis that they apparently have a higher moral authority.An opinion formed by sitting on the internet in 2012 not having to endure watching over 70 million people die as the world tore itself up. I guess we can all sit here on our high horse and say they were wrong for not wanting to drag the conflict on killing even more people when they had the tools to end it right there.

I guess we can make these decisions and cast down judgment because none of us lost any family or friends in the war fighting overseas. None of us had to endure the harsh rationing to sustain the war effort. None of us had to watch newsreels of the massive amounts of carnage caused by the war.

Nope, we sit here, well fed, well maintained, reading crap on the internet and thus that gives us the right to judge them.

leviathan91

The concept of war has been cheapened and the importance of history is now irrelevant in today's society. What do you expect?

No one is gonna convince me that targeting and extermination a large population is not a moral crime. What, they didn't have moral standards back in the 40s? Then why have Nuremburg Tribunals? Clearly there was a to do-and-do-not standard on how to handle large members of a population.thebest31406

Of course they had moral standards. They looked at the big picture and said, morally, it is better to kill just a few hundred thousand instead of millions to end the war.

Others fared less well. In 1954 physicist Robert Oppenheimer of the Manhattan Project was suspected of earlier Communist affiliations and lost his security clearance. Paul Tibbets was excoriated by leftists and pacifists for destroying Hiroshima. Harry Truman was second-guessed by two generations of historians and pundits who insist that he only permitted the use of the bomb to impress the Soviets.

Some Japanse disagree. They recognize that the war cabinet was determined to go down fighting, and that the Allied invasion would have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths. Despite Hirohito's involvement in conducting the war, he did the right thing by overriding his most fanatical samuri.

*snip*

Though the war ended in 1945, in a real senseit continues today. The decades-long atomic bombing debate peaked in 1003-95 when the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum sparked enourmous controversy over a fiftieth anniversary display built upon the Enola Gay The proposed script's treatment of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki largely ignored the rising toll of American casaulties as the war had continued, and chose to cast the atomic bombs as revenge for Pearl Harbor. The lack of context outraged many Americans-whose taxes fund the museum-for the perception of moral equivalency in the wartime actions of the United Stages abnd Japan. Veterans and military historians were angered by the text's self-rightous tone and the reluctance of the curators responsible for the exhibit to include such objections. With increasing involvment by veteran's groups and the Air Force Association, The U.S. Senate reviewed the text and declared it "revisionist and offensive to many World War II veterans." The result was the forced resignation of the director of the National Air and Space Museum (an astronomer rather than a historian) and reduction of the proposed exhibit.Whirlwind - The Air War Against Japan 1942-1945 pgs 270-271

The above passage is from a book about the air war against mainland Japan by Barrett Tillman. The above passages from the pages listed are very telling. They are also corroborated in other books I have about the Pacific War and the war with Japan. Each of the 31 books I have and have read (though I have more that I haven't read) on said war all agree with each other on how fanatical the Japanese were and how they would fight to the last man, no matter where they were. Unbroken is a telling book about how POWs in Japan saw the devestation of Tokyo on their way to the opposite side of the country and the remnants of the cottage industry that was feeding the Japanese war machine from people's back yards after the firebombing. Outside of the camp in Naoetsu, Louis Zamperini and other POWs watched civilians ready for invasion as I stated in an earlier post.

While Hirohito was not put up for trial, many Japanese military personnel were for war crimes including prison camp guards as well as the war cabinet. Most texts gloss over those trials though and are not as well known as Nuremburg.

I'm not going to jump into the "was it justifed" debate, because none of us know what President Truman knew, and none of us were alive to remember those days. I will however say that I hope there's not a another bomb of that calibur dropped in my lifetime, nor do we ever see a situation where the usage of that of a nuclear bomb is considered as a serious option.

America is the only country in the history of our species to drop nuclear weapons on another country as an act of war.

America is the only country in the history of our species to drop nuclear weapons on another country as an act of war.

Mike-uk

Lets hope it stays that way.

[QUOTE="leviathan91"]

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

It's sad that OT believes that they can enter the mindset of 1945 and make judgmentson the basis that they apparently have a higher moral authority.An opinion formed by sitting on the internet in 2012 not having to endure watching over 70 million people die as the world tore itself up. I guess we can all sit here on our high horse and say they were wrong for not wanting to drag the conflict on killing even more people when they had the tools to end it right there.

I guess we can make these decisions and cast down judgment because none of us lost any family or friends in the war fighting overseas. None of us had to endure the harsh rationing to sustain the war effort. None of us had to watch newsreels of the massive amounts of carnage caused by the war.

Nope, we sit here, well fed, well maintained, reading crap on the internet and thus that gives us the right to judge them.

thebest31406

The concept of war has been cheapened and the importance of history is now irrelevant in today's society. What do you expect?

It was necessary. I don't care if you call it a moral crime, I agree but it was necessary. It was either the world or the Axis. While we weren't perfect, the Axis Powers were the epitome of ideological evil.

Its not like the US bomb an innocent nation. Japan was just downright fvcking sick back then.

Its not like the US bomb an innocent nation. Japan was just downright fvcking sick back then.

MacBoomStick

Still kinda are.

Two things: 1. The Japanese were atrocious to our captured men. An easy example would be what happened to the men at Wake Island. They were barbaric. 2. Read up before you qq how America is so 'bad' and the Japanese were helpless. Then you'll see how it was certainly necessary to drop the bomb. * I wrote a 15 page research paper on this discussion in college. It was the right move.drummerboy91

Exactly, they killed all 99 POWs that remained on Wake after the Japanese sent other POWs and civilians to other camps in Asia. Other captured US personnel in the Marshall Islands were also killed (9 Marines on Kwajalein as well as others, it was nicknamed Execution Island.

To the "it was necessary" camp I just have a question: If the bombs were so necessary them how come men like General Eisenhower, General MacArthur and Admiral Nemitz didn't feel it was necessary at the time? Do you guys know something they didn't?

To the "it was necessary" camp I just have a question: If the bombs were so necessary them how come men like General Eisenhower, General MacArthur and Admiral Nemitz didn't feel it was necessary at the time? Do you guys know something they didn't?

worlock77

MacArthur only had one thing on his mind, the recapture of the Philippines. He was self agrandizing and the irony is, Eisenhower had worked for Mac in the Philippines before WWII and got a transfer out of there due to Mac's inability to do as he was tasked by Roosevelt. Ike knew how inefficient or derelict Mac was in his duties as the officer in charge.

Ike had no idea what was going on in the Pacific and even then, he was complicit in the unneeded deaths of soldiers, especially in the Battle of the Hurtgen Forrest. He has no room to pass judgement on Truman for doing what was needed.

[QUOTE="worlock77"]

To the "it was necessary" camp I just have a question: If the bombs were so necessary them how come men like General Eisenhower, General MacArthur and Admiral Nemitz didn't feel it was necessary at the time? Do you guys know something they didn't?

WhiteKnight77

MacArthur only had one thing on his mind, the recapture of the Philippines. He was self agrandizing and the irony is, Eisenhower had worked for Mac in the Philippines before WWII and got a transfer out of there due to Mac's inability to do as he was tasked by Roosevelt. Ike knew how inefficient or derelict Mac was in his duties as the officer in charge.

Ike had no idea what was going on in the Pacific and even then, he was complicit in the unneeded deaths of soldiers, especially in the Battle of the Hurtgen Forrest. He has no room to pass judgement on Truman for doing what was needed.

It wasn't just those two, and it isn't simply a matter of "passing judgement". Most of our military leaders felt the bombs were not militarily necessary to ending the war. Japan was already defeated, had already attempted to open up peace talks. neither the bombings nor a ground invasion would have been necessary to end the war. The bombs were just about forcing the war to end on American terms, and to demonstrate (especially to the Soviet Union) what we were now capable of.

[QUOTE="hartsickdiscipl"]

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

Yup, making a martyr of their god, that's smart.

Ace6301

He wouldn't have been viewed as a "martyr" if he was incinerated like the rest of the common folk in the blast. He would've been shown to be mortal and very fallible. Obviously there were quite a few in Japan that weren't all that thrilled with his choices at that point in the war anyways, as previously stated by another poster. I doubt they were viewing him in quite the way that some of you seem to think they were. If anything the brainwashed portion of the population would view the total immolation of his capital city as a sign to quit. Of course, the key difference between my idea of how to deploy the a-bombs and what actually happened isn't hitting Tokyo.. it's making a demonstration right off the coast of it first. Detonate the first bomb close enough to break a few windows and scare everyone. I know it might not have worked, but I'd have a clearer conscience knowing that I at least tried.

That's your opinion, which is worthless to me. But thanks for your input.

Only a sick twisted country would be able to do the damage that had happened that day..

USA.

Still, very sad event.

ThisIsTwoFace

To the "it was necessary" camp I just have a question: If the bombs were so necessary them how come men like General Eisenhower, General MacArthur and Admiral Nemitz didn't feel it was necessary at the time? Do you guys know something they didn't?

worlock77