100,000 People Perished, but Who Remembers?

The New York Times ^ | March 14, 2002 | HOWARD W. FRENCH

[Bubba_Leroy]

Here is another reason that the Japanese don't want to remember this - it further justifies the use of atomic bombs by the U.S. against Japan.

The Japanese refused to surrender. There was no question that they had lost the war. We firebombed every major Japanese city and still they refused to surrender. It was only after we had dropped our SECOND atomic bomb with the threat of endless more that they finally surrendered.

The Japanese were much like the muslim fanatics that we are at war with today. Now Japan is an ally. There is a lot to be said for bombing a fanatic culture into oblivion.

[cactmh]

Who remembers the rape of Nan King? I bet the Chinese do.

[stuartcr]

Do you consider fighting to the death at the Alamo an honorable thing, or a fanatical thing?

[sphinx]

I once met a survivor of the Tokyo raids. She was a young girl at the time; had to go for water the next day across a bridge covered with the dead. Her attitude now? Japan started the war, waged a dirty war in China and elsewhere, and reaped the whirlwind. Moral: don't start wars, and fight them cleanly if you get into one.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

uh, both?

[Don Myers]

The Japanese shouldn't have started the fight.

[lady lawyer]

After things like Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death March, what kind of attitude was the American military and public supposed to have about the Japanese?

[SodiumWarthog]

Let us also remember that after the first atomic bomb was dropped, the Japanese did not immediately surrender is further proof of their irrationality at the time. Here you had the strongest industrial power in the world prove to you that they have a doomsday weapon and the willingness to use it, and still they thought they could force us to terms by making the thought of American casualties in an invasion unacceptable.

Also remember that even after Nagasaki it took a tie-breaking vote by Hirohito to surrender. Yeah, there's lots about the war they want to forget.

NaW.
(And I like Japan, Germany and Italy so much better now than when they were totalitarian dictatorships...)

[GoredInMich]

Well, an obvious dart at the US war plan to defend itself against enemies, by threatining the use of nuclear weapons to defend itself.

Well, ask a survivor of Bataan or Corregidor about the Japanese.

It was total war. The only thing the Japs understood was force, kinda like Hitler.

US Marines took 12,000 casualties on Iwo Jima, and the US did NOT falter. Why would we deviate from protecting ourselves in this day and age?

The Slimes is a putrid kitty-box liner

[stuartcr]

Is fanatically honorable good or bad, or does it depend on whose side one is on?

[Rebelbase]

The ChiComms have a long memory and will repay Japan for its atrocities one day.

[AzJP]

Or, since the Japanese empire was/had crashed and impotent, we could have easily (easy in 1945) blockaded the island and let them whimper into inertness...without dropping those bombs. We had 'em surrounded. By '45 their air force was down, their navy sunk, and their army hiding in caves.
...'course 'muricans don't think that way. Not then. (Not later at Waco.)
Oh yes, if we'd built a fence around 'em, prison like, and let them figure-out how to feed themselves, McArthur wouldn't have had a job.

[Rebelbase]

Mexico obliterated the Alamo's defenders, and would have obiterated all of Texas had they the resources.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Is fanatically honorable good or bad, or does it depend on whose side one is on?

It depends on whether you attacked the side which ended up who kicking your a$$.

I'd make a point Nanking or sideing with the Nazi's but I'd rather not have to explain myself.

[Junior]

but many people are not aware of the napalm attacks at all.

Because they weren't napalm attacks. Incindiary bombs were used, and napalm is an incindiary device, but it was not used for the massive firebombings that levelled so many cities during the Second World War.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

More selective memory from Japan. High school textbooks glaze over the Japanese Army's criminals acts in China and Korea.
The Japanese militarists knew the war was lost after the Battle of Midway but continued fighting anyway.

[mbynack]

You mean the same approach that we're using on North Korea and Iraq? We would still be fighting WWII if we used that strategy.

[Bernard Marx]

Kudos. You said everything I had in mind, and said it well. I don't give a damn what the Japanese think -- or The New York Times.

[Grampa Dave]

In your great way of stating what should be obvious, but isn't to fuzzy minded liberals, you posted:

The Japanese were much like the muslim fanatics that we are at war with today. Now Japan is an ally. There is a lot to be said for bombing a fanatic culture into oblivion.

Not a single Japanese fanatic, who was killed on a Japanese ship, sub, plane, on the ground, in a cave, in a tank or in Japan ever hurt another innocent person.

Not a single Japanese Fanatic leader killed during WWII or executed for war crimes ever hurt another innocent person!

This is the only way to handle the current Islamic Fanatics, kill all of them and their financial backers!

Give peace a chance by killing all who would kill us! In spite of what the liberals and the others would try to have us believe, dead terrorists harm no one. If dead terrorists can't harm us, then kill all of those still alive! The formula is simple. It worked in WWII and will work now!