This isn't Hiroshima or Nagasaki, it's Warsaw 1945.
That's why I shed no tears about Dresden.
Posted on 05/29/2016 6:29:04 AM PDT by Arthur McGowan
Much of the historical perspective on the era holds that the Japanese were prepared to fight to their very last man, and that until the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been visited upon their homeland Japanese leaders had no intention of surrendering. But in fact the Japanese had sent peace feelers to the West as early as 1942, only six months after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. More would come in a flood long before the fateful use of the atomic bombs.
In her 1956 book, The Enemy at His Back, journalist Elizabeth Churchill Brown supplied overwhelming evidence to counter the inaccurate views about the close of the war. Beginning in 1949, she plunged into dozens of wartime memoirs and congressional hearings dealing with the conflict. The wife of noted Washington Star columnist Constantine Brown, Mrs. Brown had access to many of "the men who were no longer 'under wraps,'" as she noted. She wrote, "With this knowledge at hand, I quickly began to see why the war with Japan was unprecedented in all history. Here was an enemy who had been trying to surrender for almost a year before the conflict ended."
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...
With so many opposing posts above,i doubt you’ll read this one - but I’ll write this anyway.
Your profile says you’re a priest.
Consider how God directed Israel to handle those who attacked Israel: not accept the first suggestion of surrender, but to DESTROY them utterly to the last child. “Nice” outcomes involved enslaving the survivors. Returning to the status quo wasn’t an option.
In the most generous allowance of the article’s premise, at best Japan wanted to return to the status quo. Having initiated the war, killed millions, caused $billions in damage, they just wanted to stop the conflict and resume the prior peace while retaining and rebuilding the ability to start similar wars again. Japan had a long history of military aggression, and (having stirred a greater enemy than expected) intended to continue such long established ways.
America would not tolerate an end where that long history of aggression would continue. America wanted the war to not just halt, but to END Japan’s aggressive tendencies. We didn’t just want to pause the hostilities, but like Israel proceed to END the enemy’s ability & will to wage war.
It’s one thing to stop fighting a bully because he wants to stop.
It’s another to stop such that he repents his bullying ways.
Israel was a theocracy and God’s chosen people.
No one else receives direct orders from God. All other people and nations must follow the Commandments.
If you want to be laughed at, by a lot of people, keep calling me a lefty.
Japan’s crimes are irrelevant.
The relevant question is: Were the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combatants?
The moral principle that it is a crime intentionally to kill non-combatants is not any sort of revisionism, lefty or otherwise. It’s not a historical assertion or an opinion. It’s a universal moral principle.
Who, in Japan, at that time, was a non-combatant? That’s a question worth discussing.
” ... If Douglas MacArthur said the Japanese were ready to surrender in this communique. I’d believe him. ...”
pleasenotcalifornia might summon a larger dose of skepticism in pondering Gen MacArthur’s claim.
The use of atomic bombs in combat did not merely set off controversies among American citizenry and moral leadership.
It ignited several controversies among senior military leaders. A number quickly made public pronouncements after VJ Day, claiming to have been against the use of the bombs, on moral grounds, all along. As time wore on, additional high rankers claimed to have been hit by moral qualms, at least. Doubts were aired, as the worldwide geopolitical situation refused to remain quiet, but became unstable and threatening with frightening velocity as the USSR challenged the rest of the Allies in Europe, the Communists took mainland China, and conflicts flared around the globe.
All of those leaders had very large egoes - no one reaches flag/star rank without a big share - and many harbored political ambitions. Whether they really did have doubts based on morals is imponderable, but we cannot discount the possibility they were saying they did, to boost their political viability.
On a more pedestrian plane of existence, the US Army Air Forces (who delivered the bombs in action) became a separate armed service just two years after the war ended. This ignited a firestorm of rivalries and controversies, and bureaucraic/political dustups the like of which civilians don’t really grasp.
Most of those disagreements continue today, at a level of intensity that sometimes beggars belief. The senior armed services, US Army and US Navy, accustomed to their status as the sole arbiters of the nation’s military capabilities, seemed offended beyond measure: USAAF, conjured from nothing by a gaggle of college swells and maverick staffers less than a generation before, struck decisive blows in ending WWII, and was bidding fair to dominate major areas of policy.
Sordid? Yes. Petty? Assuredly. Unpraiseworthy? Without a doubt. Avoidable? Not as yet.
To test it on a bunch of warring belligerents who asked for it.
And to save American lives.
It actually was conditional, if it were truly unconditional, Hirohito would have been hung right alongside Tojo.
Your view of the just use of force in the context of all out war is the leftist view. It would have resulted in far greater loss of life. The rest is second guessing.
The bombs were a great gift from the USA to Japan.
They were an entire country taking their meals from the chamber pot of a sawed off, tin god asshole of an emperor, committing unspeakable atrocities in a complete state of unfounded arrogance.
Look at 'em now, a wonderful, peaceful, productive country. No, not absolutely, but by comparison to most other miserable countries, definitely.
In my opinion, and I'm not even close to alone in this, a truce, a treaty, or even a thorough conventional ass kicking would not have achieved this fortunate outcome.
Spiking a couple of million degree footballs worked like a charm.
The notion of not killing (to the point of paralysis) non combatants is a very recent concept.
When two nations are engaged in total war, there are no “non combatants” per your use. There is only “destroy the enemy’s ability, will, and support to wage war”. Every citizen is part of the war effort, even if only “consent of the governed”. One way to end war is to inflict so much damage that the populace compels the leadership to stop fighting; Japan had a pervasive culture of cultish support for the Emperor and his executing the war, and they fully supported winning WWII.
As for the Biblical angle, it is generally accepted that nations may wage war in self defense, and we have the repeated model of God Himself directing the good to END their enemy’s ability and well to wage war. I reject the notion that those OT incidents were special cases where Good allowed & directed violation of the Commandments.
>>Then there was a captured P-51 pilot being tortured by the Japs & who had no knowledge of the atomic program. Hearing his torturers discussing what had just happened to Hiroshima & Nagasaki, he “confessed” that the U.S. had a hundred more atomic bombs ready to go, and that Tokyo was the next target. This was forwarded directly to Hirohito & the imperial war council, and they finally decided the situation was hopeless; either surrender or see Japan extinguished as a people and a culture.
This sounds like an urban legend. I’d need to see documentation for this claim. You have an American pilot picking up conversational Japanese in a matter of days while being kept in a prison facility. Not too dang likely.
The P-51 pilot is mentioned in Wikipedia under “Japanese Surrender”.
In that same cite I learned that the Japs were slow to respond even after both bombs were dropped. So the B-29s were sent back in and pasted Japan in the largest B-29 raids of the war, with conventional bombs.
Nagasaki was bombed on 9 August. It wasn’t until the 15th that Hirohito went on the air and said “uncle”.
If you actually READ the article I posted, you wouldn’t have asked that.
Japan reaped what they sowed.
And btw we bombed many Japanese cities with conventional bombs and thousands upon thousands were killed there too.
Hell we literally immolated 25,000 or more in Dresden when we firebombed the city and razed it. People died for weeks after the attack from horrendous burns and infections. But the Axis started the "total war" gambit and they lost when it was turned around on them.
This isn't Hiroshima or Nagasaki, it's Warsaw 1945.
That's why I shed no tears about Dresden.
Two must reads - what was there and the prior warning for the Japanese - http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/mp06.asphttp://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/mp06.asp
Same here, like I said the Axis started the "Total War" gambit. They apparently didn't realize it went both ways.
Hitler tried to flatten London but the Brits managed to fight them off with superior tactics and the advantage of radar.
But as the saying goes "Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind"
404- Not found.
There ain't anything there ...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.