I guess she took the advice of an old Texas Republican, Claytie Williams: "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it".
Posted on 03/23/2011 7:22:13 PM PDT by WilliamHouston
Boy, talk about missing the point. Correct me if I’m wrong, but what you are saying is that if the US had fire bombed Port au Prince in 1945, the Haitians would still be living in the burnt out rubble in 2011.
They deserved every bit of it:
Partial list of B-29 missions against Tokyo
* 19 February 1945: 119 B-29s hit port and urban area
* 25 February 1945: 174 B-29s dropping incendiaries destroy ~28,000 buildings
* 4 March 1945: 159 B-29s hit urban area[3]
* 10 March 1945: 334 B-29s dropping incendiaries destroy ~267,000 buildings; ~25% of city[3] (Operation Meetinghouse) killing some 100,000
* 2 April 1945: >100 B-29s bomb the Nakajima aircraft factory
* 3 April 1945: 68 B-29s bomb the Koizumi aircraft factory and urban areas in Tokyo
* 7 April 1945: 101 B-29s bomb the Nakajima aircraft factory.
* 13 April 1945: 327 B-29s bomb the arsenal area
* 15 April 1945: 109 B-29s hit urban area
* 24 May 1945: 520 B-29s bomb urban-industrial area south of the Imperial Palace
* 26 May 1945: 464 B-29s bomb urban area immediately south of the Imperial Palace
* 20 July 1945: 1 B-29 drops a Pumpkin bomb (bomb with same ballistics as the Fat Man nuclear bomb) through overcast aiming at but missing the Imperial Palace[8]
* 8 August 1945: ~60 B-29s bomb the aircraft factory and arsenal
* 10 August 1945: 70 B-29s bomb the arsenal complex
Prior to that it was known as the Army Air Corp.
“The Politically Incorrect Earthquake (Are All Cultures Really Equal?)”
Of course they aren’t.
Whoever was foolish enough to come up with an idea like that in the first place?
Worse, who was foolish enough to BELIEVE it?
Yep, derailed the thread pretty well, too.
The history of WWII includes the unimaginable barbarism and cruelty of the Japanese, just as it does the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe, yet we are not taught the former. You have to go out of your way to read about them.
My Dad served in the U.S. Army in Southeast Asia in WWII, and he almost never talked about it, but I inherited his "trunk" of Army keepsakes and such, and know some of the stories behind them.
Those memories and that history are all true, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with the current Japanese people and their efforts to recover from the earthquake and tsunami, and deal with the reactor troubles.
I think it was rather gratuitous of the article author to throw in the line about Tokyo being burned in WWII, true or not, but it is even more pointless for us to be ruining this thread arguing about it.
As you say, the comparison between Haiti and Japan is the point...
Just...damn. It reads like The Onion.
Haiti made that deal with Satan to become liberated, remember? Voodoo is an official religion.
Haiti is no better or no worse than most sub-Saharan African nations. Why should anyone expect anything different from the population there? Or in New Orleans, for that matter.
I guess she took the advice of an old Texas Republican, Claytie Williams: "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it".
Of course, the fact that we did much of the rebuilding after defetaing their imperial rulers and civiling the Japanese population is glossed over.
You might have added a sarcasm tag on “Oh yeah - apropos of nothing, we just went over there and burned down Tokyo. What a bunch of crap!
I misinterpreted your comment twice.
However the author does make a valid point.
My comment
The difference between Haiti and Japan.
Japan knew that earth quake/ tsunami was a probability and prepared.
Haiti knew earthquake was a probability and did not.
World flooded Haiti with assistance and still have Haiti as was before.
Japan is back and getting back on its game. What has it been 2 weeks.
Prepare for the worst hope for the best.
But, what of the billions of dollars sent to Haiti? We've sent them enough for them to rebuild several times over. But they haven't.
Yes, we did!! And, we also rebuilt much of Europe also. But, when calamities strike in those formerly war torn areas you don’t see the same type of behavior that we’ve witnessed with Haiti. That is the point the author was making, and your derailment of that wasn’t necessary.
1945 - 2011 - let’s see, these two eras are separated by 66 years and a whole lot of changes within the Japanese people themselves. The same is true of the German people, who were just as, or even more barbaric than the Japanese in the 1940’s. The point of this author is not a rehash of what happened during WWII, but a comparison/contrasting of the behavior of the Haitian people and the Japanese people in the current era after suffering catastrophic damage.
I see your point, but the Japanese switched from fighting a bullets and guns war to an economic one, using our liberal free trade policies and the openness of our society against us.
True, but we are just as much to blame for allowing that as they are for engaging in an economic fight.
No need to defend your point. I have/had relatives from the WWII era that share/shared that same sentiment. Just thought the photo was a little “off topic”.
War is Hell. And that war is over.
I'll offer that we were preoccupied with fighting the Russians in the Cold War and got blind sided.
There is no wisdom in having the State Department set your trade policies.
Everyone knows how f****d up Haiti is; “kick ‘em when they’re down” - what a lot of people forget is that the Japanese attacked us as well as most of their Asian neighbors and were ready to fight us until we exterminated them like cockroaches; only their emperor came to his senses in time.
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