Sgt. B.A. Kainer napping at Union Station with August 12, 1945 with newspaper in his lap, headline reads "WORLD WAITS"
Posted on 08/12/2015 4:16:55 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Oppenheimer contributed to our Aug. 9 edition (pg 6) but I didn’t see any mention of plutonium. Kaempffert has a much longer piece in the August 16 edition. Maybe that will shed light.
I guess you know more than the people who fought the war. You can be really obdurate.
That was a WHOLE lot closer to home.
http://4rs.neocities.org/nur16a.html
August 12, 1945:
Colonel Andrus and his 15 Ashcan prisoners are loaded onto a US C-47 transport plane bound for Nuremberg. As they fly above Germany, Göring continually points out various geographical features below, such as the Rhine, telling Ribbentrop to take one last look as he is unlikely to ever get the opportunity again. Streicher becomes air-sick. (Tusa)
What are you referring to. All I said is the Japanese were spread too thin and without the haulage capacity to invade Hawaii.
The people who were there at the time agreed it seems
But there was also Camp Douglas.
Sgt. B.A. Kainer napping at Union Station with August 12, 1945 with newspaper in his lap, headline reads "WORLD WAITS"
Just say something nice about Abe Lincoln.
That will do it for sure.
:-)
http://www.doug-long.com/stimsonx.htm
HENRY STIMSON’S DIARY AND PAPERS:
Aug. 12 to Sept. 3, 1945 Diary Entry [Stimson combined these dates - during his vacation for his health - into one diary entry]:
“We took off at about half past twelve [on Aug. 12], got to Highhold [his estate on Long Island] safely, spent Sunday [Aug. 12] there, and on Monday flew up to Saranac Lake where we were met by cars from the Club and drove over to the Club [St. Hubert’s was “the Club”; it was in the Adirondack Mountains of New York state]. We had a very warm welcome at the Club and I spent three weeks there until Monday, September 3rd when we flew down to Highhold and spent the night there, and on Tuesday morning returned to Washington by air.”
“My stay at St. Hubert’s was very quiet owing to my condition. I put myself under the care of Dr. Goff to whom I had brought a letter from the Walter Reed [Hospital] doctors, and he attended to me very carefully and intelligently.”
“The different points that I remember which took place up there were as follows:”
“I landed [at St. Hubert’s Club] in the middle of the negotiations with Japan and they were consummated on Tuesday the 14th. This of course made great interest and excitement at the Club. Mabel [Stimson’s wife] and I were cheered when we first made our appearance in the dining room and when the news came in that the Japanese had accepted Byrnes’ reply and the Emperor placed himself under the orders of the Allied Commander. We felt of course very happy over this for it showed the complete success of the program which I had urged” [i.e., let Japan keep their emperor to get them to surrender].
“McCloy came up twice I think by plane and he and I worked out a paper after considerable mutual discussion for the treatment of Russia in respect to the atomic bomb. [A copy of this paper can be found at the excellent Nuclear Files web site at Stimson’s Sept. 11 Paper]. I telephoned this paper to Bundy in the [War] Department so that they could have their views ready when I got back. This was done and the paper was prepared embodying our concurrent views for submission to the President. Before I returned [to Washington, DC on Sept. 4], McCloy talked the subject over with Byrnes and found that he was quite radically opposed to any approach to [Soviet Union Premier] Stalin whatever [on international control of the atomic bomb]. He was on the point of departing for the foreign ministers’ meeting [Byrnes left Washington on Sept. 4 to meet in London with foreign ministers from Great Britain and the Soviet Union] and wished to have the implied threat of the bomb in his pocket during the conference. As I will show later [in the Sept. 4 diary entry], he did not get away as I expected before I returned on Tuesday, September 4th, and I myself had a short talk with him on the subject that day. Neither McCloy nor I made much impression on him...”
“On Tuesday, August 14th, when the news arrived of the final surrender of the Japanese we had a little thanksgiving meeting in the Casino after dinner.
Premature V-J Day celebrations
August 12, 1945
Photographer: John H. Boyd
City of Toronto Archives
Fonds 1266, Item 98337
False news reports of a Japanese surrender were released on August 12, causing V-J Day celebrations to break out a few days early.
The Phillepines are ten times closer to logistical support from Japan and occupied China which a comparison with Hawaii illogical.
I'm astounded to see this--I was unaware that any American advocated international control of the atomic bomb. But then, I'm awfully naïve. Was Stimson in favor?
I don’t know. Sorry.
Although I believe Emperor Hirohito told MacArthur that he (the Emperor) would make Japan a Christian nation but MacArthur said no. The people would have to do it themselves.
My first knee jerk reaction is that the Japs didn't have the sea lift capability to do it, any more than the Germans had the ability to cross the English Channel and invade England when England stood nearly alone
In a few months, Japan took Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Guam, Philippines, and most of Dutch East Indies via storming the beaches. Earlier, they had all but conquered the most populous nation on earth via sea invasion. In that timeframe, they had no unsuccessful sea invasions anywhere. Later, they performed the only successful invasion of United States territory, simultaneously with another US-targeted, sea-based invasion (Midway).
What is your basis for this assertion?
Time and space.
This guy does a pretty good job of laying out the problems Japan would have faced in trying to wrest Hawaii from us:
Invasion: Pearl Harbor!
http://www.combinedfleet.com/pearlops.htm
...the Japanese benefitted in Malaya and the Philippines from brilliant staffwork based on lengthy, in-depth prior reconnaissance of the objectives. By contrast, if the Japanese were to grab Hawaii after a victory at Midway they would have to move very quickly, meaning that invasion preparations would not benefit from the same level of detailed planning. In addition, the Japanese would receive very little in the way of intelligence on American troop dispositions or defensive preparations on Oahu. To a large degree they would be ‘coming in blind’.
Taken together, these factors argue strongly that taking Hawaii wasn’t going to be a walkover. In fact, the Japanese would have had every reason to view this operation with the same degree of trepidation that we regarded invading an island bastion like Rabaul: lots of enemy troops, heavily dug in, and seriously motivated to defend the place tooth and nail. All in all, not a pretty picture. If I were the Japanese commander, I would want more than three divisions. Five would be more like it.
The idea of the Japanese having five divisions to spare for a Hawaiian invasion is completely ludicrous, of course. In fact, the Japanese Army had steadfastly opposed doling out additional combat troops for operations it perceived as being beyond the strategic scope of the conflict. It had put the scotch on operations against northern Australia on exactly the same grounds, and had only reluctantly acceded to the occupation of Rabaul. Subsequently, it had grudgingly gone along with the abortive attempt against Port Moresby that precipitated the Battle of the Coral Sea. Put simply, the Imperial Navy knew that it “could never have coaxed three divisions from the Army for such an enterprise.” (Willmott, “The Barrier and the Javelin”, p. 42) And even if they had done so, and landed them in August 1942, I see no reason why three Japanese divisions would have been succesful against a 100,000 man American garrison, for all the reasons cited above.
So that’s Big Reason #1: The Japanese simply didn’t have the men to take Hawaii from us.
From the Sea
Big Reason #2 is that the Japanese, even at the zenith of their military power, never had anywhere near the logistical capability or the amphibious expertise to transport 60,000 troops to a remote landing site, land them under enemy fire, provide them with sustained gunfire and air support, and keep them supported throughout what could easily be a month-long campaign. The invasion of Malaya, which was the single largest Japanese amphibious operation of the war, had involved a scant three divisions, and they hadn’t been landed all at once, nor had they been landed into the teeth of concerted enemy fire. Furthermore, the Japanese invasion convoys in that campaign had been operating from bases in French Indochina (Vietnam), which were a few hundred miles from the Malayan beaches. British airpower was dispersed, and unable to concentrate against the Japanese landings. By contrast, Hawaii is some 3,900 miles from Japan, and almost 2,300 miles from Truk, which were the only staging areas developed enough for such an undertaking.
Furthermore, the Japanese would unquestionably have been landing directly in the face of heavy resistance at Oahu. The few experiences the Japanese had had with direct amphibious assaults to that point in the war could hardly have proved reassuring to the planners of a Hawaiian operation. In fact, they had been disastrous. An example of this was the initial assault on Wake. This operation clearly demonstrated that the Japanese had nothing in the way of a credible amphibious doctrine a la the U.S. Marine Corps. Instead, when presented with a situation requiring an amphibious assualt, the Japanese usually selected deserted coastlines manned by thinly-spread garrisons. In Oahu, the Japanese would land in the face of a concentrated enemy with substantial forces in reserve. In the face of a large, entrenched garrison possessed of superior automatic weapons and artillery firepower, Japanese forces might well have faced a sneak preview, on a very large scale, of the disaster that befell them on the Tenaru River on Guadalcanal.
In fact, it would not be until early 1944, when the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy began perfecting their respective arts, that a naval force could reliably transport divisional sized units across thousands of miles of ocean, park offshore an island bastion, crush its airpower, land assault troops in the face of heavy fire, and then support the troops ashore for weeks at a time. The Japanese never possessed any of these essentials characteristics of amphibious power projection.
Finally, of course, is the issue of keeping Hawaii in supply once it is taken. Even before the Battle of Midway, Combined Fleet Staff as much as admitted that Japan couldn’t keep Midway in supply even if they captured it! Keeping Hawaii supplied, with its much larger civilian population and garrison, would have been even more difficult. In short, the Japanese simply did not possess the amphibious and logistical wherewithal to assault, capture, and hold the Hawaiian Islands...
I’m sure no expert, but that looks to me like an argument well-developed and persuasive. I had never even wondered about it before, and now I feel enlightened.
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