8/10/2013, 7:09:00 AM · by SeekAndFind · 317 replies
Washington Examiner ^ | 08/10/2013 | Timothy Carney
Posted on 08/06/2023 7:01:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Many thanks for this info!
I wouldn't trust one single word, not even an "and" or "is", from this group!
First good laugh from this thread (besides the OP).
Perfect!
The good one from the other thread (see my link just above) was feckless’:
“I figure we owe them at least one more for Yoko Ono.”
If the Japanese were on the verge of collapse and surrender, then why did it take two? After seeing the damage caused by the first drop, why did they not surrender then? Did the Japanese so disvalue the lives of their citizens, that they dragged their feet untl the second one dropped?
Not only that, but Eisenhower - before being elected President - let it be known that he was willing to nuke North Korea to end that war.
My theory, the US needed to prove to the world that we had a nuclear weapon and it was massively destructive. Without those cities being the test case, many in the world would doubt that the US had nuclear weapons and their power. Nothing says WOW like one plane, one bomb and one destroyed city!
I would think the comments were taken out of context.
Don’t forget that many of their soldiers, in outposts, NEVER gave up at all!
There is no such thing as an “innocent civilian”. A soldier is no more culpable for mankind’s evils than any civilian.
My mother’s oldest brother, an enlisted Marine being “worked up” to invade Japan thought the Hiroshima/Nagasaki A bombs were a great idea!
Having made several landings in the Pacific and surviving Guadalcanal, my uncle thought President Truman was a smart, brave President!
He credited President Truman with saving his life!
As I remember there was a half million japanese troops on the mainline of china.
Had the bombs not gone off the troops would have gone on fighting
“They also sent a warning to the soviets.’s”
Let’s say all of these quotes are correct, and that the Japs were “already finished”. (I wonder if shortly after D-Day, when Germany surely knew that they were “finished” if we should have just stood by and waited for the end?)
I would suggest that dropping the two bombs was still necessary to keep the Soviets at bay, as well as others over the years.
If we hadn’t used them, would they have been more apt to have been used during the Cold War? It is one thing to have the scientists do tests in the desert or some island in the Pacific. It is quite another for the politicians and humanity to see the actual results.
And if we used them once, the Soviets had to think that we would use them again.
I’m sure somebody already pointed it out, but if we had just waited Japan out, the Soviets probably would have gone in first and taken it for themselves.
Quotes (if indeed they are actual quotes) from those not actually fighting the Japs on their own islands. Desk warmers, if able commanders. None with any direct experience fighting the Japs.
Anyone get a veteran of the Okinawa campaign saying the same thing?
Not one single additional American life if we had a way to destroy them.
My uncle was with the Air Force and was some sort of tech guy (radios, radar?) and was on Iwo Jima a couple days after they landed trying to get the runways going.
“Wow? Just two days?”
“Yeah - but the Marines had cleared all the Japs out. Well, sometimes they would snipe at us from the other side of the runway, but they were lousy shots.”
He stayed in that line of work and worked with NASA, etc.
Never mentioned by the no bombs crowd is how many sailors would have died from kamikaze attacks in ships assigned to the naval blockade which was part of their plan. Would have been several thousand before the first boot was planted on mainland Japan.
Back in the late 80's, I was doing research on the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiments in the Civil War. I managed to track down the great- nephew of Robert Gould Shaw, who was the Colonel of the 54th, and died on Morris Island, S.C. on July 18, 1863. To make a long story short, the relative happened to be an elderly Episcopalian Priest named Robert Shaw Sturgis Whitman, who lived in Lenox, Mass., same place that Colonel Shaw's widow was buried. I told him of my interest in Shaw, and he invited me to visit him at him home in Lenox. What an interesting person, and family history. Besides his relationship to R.G. Shaw, Shaw's sister Ellen, who had also lived in Lenox, and who Rev. Whitman remembered visiting as a little boy, was married to General Francis Channing Barlow, of Gettysburg fame (Barlow's Knoll), and later NY State Attorney General who defeated the Boss Tweed Ring. She was his second wife. As well, his father's sister had married Anthony McAuliffe. At the time, I hadn't heard of him, so he told me about the General's "Nuts" message to the Germans. I've since honed-up on my WWII history.
I also learned that Rev. Whitman's father and grandfather had been prominent surgeons in NY City.
Rev. Whitman had paintings of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather hanging on the walls in his dining room. He kindly let me take photos of them. His great-grandfather was Colonel Royal Emerson Whitman, connected with the Camp Grant Massacre in Tucson, Arizona in 1871. A group of vigilante civilians with the help of Mexican Indians attacked a settlement of Pinal and Aravaipa Apaches who had surrendered to the United States Army at Camp Grant, Arizona. After the attack, Whitman tried in vain to bring the perpetrators to justice, but all for nought. It took the jury a very short time to acquit the group of 100 individuals. Whitman is also known for the invention of the Whitman Saddle. Before the Civil War, he was a manufacturer of saddles. He is buried in Arlington Cemetery. His headstone was completed by Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of Mt. Rushmore. Here's Whitman's wikipedia page if you're interested:
And here is the wikipedia page to the Camp Grant Massacre:
I can also recommend the book: "Vast Domain of Blood by by Don Schellie (1968).
The Japanese defense of their homeland would have been devastating for their population. During the island campaign (and there are revisionist anti-American propagandist liars who claim the island-hopping was unnecessary) Japanese KIAs were usually 99+ percent (on Iwo, fewer than 100 of the 20,000+ Japanese forces survived).
US/UK/USSR losses in the annihilation (genocide) of the Japanese population would have been somewhere north of a million.
Incendiary bombing in the last months of the war basically burned to the ground 45 Japanese cities -- and Japan didn't surrender. So, a single nuke dropped on Hiroshima destroyed it, largely through the fire (the city was mostly nicely carved wooden structures) -- and Japan didn't surrender.
It took a second nuke to finally convince the figurehead emperor to grow a pair and order the surrender.
👍🏻 Thanks!!
So how do they explain why Japan didn’t surrender after the first A-bomb?
Don’t believe these quotes anyway.
‘It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing’ --- Why dropping the A-Bombs was wrong
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