Posted on 09/25/2006 1:20:44 PM PDT by pabianice
Wow,that`s a chilling read.
Was that Nimitz that said after we`re done with
the Japs their language will only be spoke in hell.
Same here. Harry Truman probably saved my life too.
I am an Atomic Bomb Baby. My father was an Army medic and in August 1945 he was in Tacoma, Washington, awaiting orders to ship out with the first wave of the Japanese invasion. His unit was told to expect 90% casualties.
I concur. In the past I have discussed the subject at length with my father. Dad was a veteran of three beachhead invasions. He considered himself as a fugitive from the law of averages as it was. His only hope was "Please, God, don't let it be a fire in the tank crew compartment." Absent the bomb, I certainly wouldn't be here.
I had some discussions with a couple of Japanese who would have been involved when I was stationed in Japan in the '70's. They were equally convinced that the use of the Atomic bomb saved their lives.
The Allies started referring to themselves as the "United Nations" around the time of one of the summits -- I forget if it was Tehran, Yalta or Potsdam. The phrase appears in several of Truman's speeches. This was well before the charter was signed in San Francisco and the UN came into formal existence.
The Allies were the basis of the UN -- which is why, to this day, the five permanent Security Council members are the major powers that won WWII.
Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, actually, on the bridge of Enterprise as he reentered Pearl Harbor after the Japanese airstrike.
Me, too. See my #25.
My wife and children very likely wouldn't be here, either, as her grandfather was going to be headed to Japan. Hence, my wife's mother wouldn't have been born, and my wife, and children. So, it's not just the millions of lives that were saved, but the millions upon millions of lives that came into existence after the war, and the succeeding generations, due to not having to invade Japan.
In the case of Japan, kill and be killed. The Japanese government was instructing civilians in tactics like strapping themselves with explosives and rolling under tanks. The Kamikaze pilots were just the tip of the iceberg -- lower-tech suicide attacks could call on old folks and children who wouldn't need much skill, training or a flyable airplane.
Your contention that the bomb was for Joe Stalin is absolutely wrong. We dropped the bomb to save the lives of our soldiers as well as the lives of the Japanese. Harry made the decision, no one else and it was a good humanitarian decision.
I agree that was the primary motivation, and that Truman made the right call. But sending a message to Stalin was also on the table. It was clear from the discussions at the summits that the Soviets and the Western allies were jockeying for position in the post-war world.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively undamaged from the previous waves of bombing -- they were chosen as targets rather than, say, Tokyo, because it made a more effective demonstration of the power of the Bomb. The Japanese leadership was the primary, but not the only, audience. What Truman did not know was how thoroughly compromised the Manhattan Project was, and that the Soviets would have the bomb themselves in only a few years.
My dad was a marine on a troop ship in the Pacific massing for the invasion when the bombs ended the war. It would have been his first, and I'm sure his last, combat.
Debatable. Certainly there were elements in the civilian leadership and diplomatic corps who saw the writing on the wall and wanted to find a way out for Japan, but the military was in control of everything, including all the channels of communication. They (Ithe civilians and diplomats) had made a very tenuous peace overture for the Russians to relay to the Americans, but the Russians basically stalled on them while gearing up for their own invasion of China, Korea, etc., When the Japanese military got wind of it, I believe they arrested the people who had reached out. What few peace signals reached the Americans were so obtusely worded and so buried in a thousand "to the last man, woman and child" messages that they were simply ignored.
I read a fictional account of the invasion once. The book was titled 'downfall' I believe and was written by a army general.
The US was also seriously considering the use of chemical munitions in the invasion and a shipload of mustard gas was already in the Pacific theater.
Ditto.
My father was a C-47 navigator. His squadron was training to carry paratroopers for the invasion.
I once knew a woman whose family was moved from Iwo Jima to Okinawa. Her brother was drafted and never heard from again. Her 7 year old sister killed herself and a group of Marines during the invasion of Okinawa with a grenade given to her by Japanese troops.
At that time, the only thing to do was kill them all and let God sort them out.
If you want to get a real insight into the mind of the Japanese war machine during WWII and increase your understanding of what we were up against read
"The Rape of Nanking"
It seems impossible that humans could be so cruel, but it happened just as the book describes.
It is a really good argument for the 2nd amendment.
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