Posted on 05/10/2016 9:34:31 AM PDT by Zakeet
This month, President Obama will become the first incumbent American president to visit the Japanese city of Hiroshima since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945.
That bomb - and a second atomic blast on Nagasaki on Aug. 9 - effectively ended World War II; Japan surrendered six days after the Hiroshima bombing. However, the human costs were huge. Estimates of those killed go as high as 150,000, and even for those who survived, it was a hellish, life-altering experience.
[Snip]
In the first Gallup poll from 1945 just after the bombings, a huge 85 percent of Americans approved the bombings. However, figures from 2005 show a significant decline to 57 percent. Meanwhile, another poll conducted by the Detroit Free Press in the United States and Japan in 1991 found that 63 percent of Americans thought that the bombings were justified in a bid to end the war, while just 29 percent of Japanese did.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
As far as I'm concerned, sir, that's the quote of the day.
If anyone knows a better one, I'd like to see it.
Of course, 70 years have passed and we are no longer in the midst of a world war.
That said, I once read a book about American POWs in Japan when the bombs were dropped. Two of the prisoners went to Nagasaki and were horrified and full of remorse. They didn’t think it was worth it.
OTOH, I personally asked several survivors and they were all for it.
So did I, but didn't think it needed.
I could easily see yours! ;-)
“War is the solution our enemies have chosen, and I say lets give them all they want.” Quoted by a man that knew what he was talking about, General William T. Sherman
Was it ever proven that Tojo was behind a plot?
Wouldn’t surprise me, those Bushido loving military personnel were crazy enough for anything.
I know some officers wanted to take Hirohito prisoner and pressure him into urging a guerrilla war.
Some junior officers tried to break into the building where the recording was kept and steal it.
Crazy things happen when a war is winding down.
Unfortunately, we should expect it will take more than 8 years to arrest and reverse the heavy anti-America theme prevalent in our K-post grad education system.
No less than Admiral Ugaki led about sixteen zealous flight cadets on a final kamikaze mission the day *after* the surrender was announced.
As I understand it, it is still on display in some artsy-fartsy neighborhood up there:
It’s still there in the Fremont neighborhood — surrounded by the kind of small businesses that Lenin would have collectivized. Irony is a significant industry in Seattle.
I hadn’t known that.
Thanks.
Japanese soldiers were coming out of the jungle for thirty years because they refused to believe the war was over.
Talk about hardheaded!
Bill Whittle covers that in his video as well. And you are right, they were ignored.
An utter disgrace!!
One of the last (”officially” the next-to-last—rumors have persisted of others that “came in from the cold” after him) wrote a very engrossing book about his experience...”No Surrender: My Thirty Year War” by Lt. Hiroo Onoda. IMO it could make for an equally good movie in the right hands.
Glue a shopping bag and a Starbucks cup to his hand....
OK, So?
It’s now on my reading list!
Actually looking forward to reading it.
I like seeing how the other side sees and thinks.
Uneducated is fixable.....stupid isn't.
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