Posted on 12/07/2022 8:40:19 AM PST by bitt
Actually, this made me laugh.
You’re a funny guy, man, seriously.
Ah yes, good ‘ol Imperial Japan. Wasn’t Hirohito worshipped as a living god?
Get lost, Progtard.
“An arrogant govt combined with an ignorant population is a recipe for disaster.”
That’s a perfect description of our own new “Democracy”.
The biggest mistake was not using a third bomb on Tokyo...
Neither of the bombs used killed as many as the firestorm raids on German cities... Not even close...
The fire bombing of Tokyo was devistating. Pilots on these missions said the induced turbulense was so bad many thought their B-29s were going to fall apart. I read a report of a screen door floating on updrafts over Tokyo at 10,000 feet.
The Allies saw the greater immediate enemy as Naziism. Germany was the most immediate expansionist power (Austria, Czechoslovakia, and then Poland). The Soviets were also expansionist but were in less accessible places - eastern Poland, the Baltic states, Romania and Finland. And in June, 1940 one of the Allied powers was destroyed and occupied by Germany. So that leaves Britain alone fighting for its life against Germany. For another year they had to go it alone until Operation Barbarossa changed the situation. At that point the enemy of my enemy is my friend and Britain started aiding the Soviet Union.
Had the Allies declared war against the Soviets when the Soviets invaded Poland there is a strong possibilty that the Soviets and Germany would continue their cooperation and a very high probability the Allies would have been defeated. After that the Germans and the Russians could face off and the Germans would probably have won.
So the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland was bad but you don't just declare war because someone did something bad. There are other practical considerations.
Correct. Japanese military leaders were okay with more Japanese cities getting bombed by atomic bombs. But they feared an imminent invasion by the USSR, not willing to be a communist satellite of the USSR. Capitulating to the Americans was a better option.
My dad was in the South Pacific when we used atomics on Japan. He would have been part of the invasion. He was glad they were dropped.
In addition, if we invaded Japan our losses would have been great. Japan’s losses would have been in the millions. Their military would be destroyed, and their soldiers killed. Millions of Japanese civilians would have died of disease and hunger. I regret the deaths of the very young and old. They were of no strategic importance. All the others were part of the Japanese war machine. They made equipment for the war machine. Many were part of the war machine. Even a farmer is part of the war machine. His harvest feeds the soldiers and the civilians that make the tools of war. They are legitimate targets.
“Tales like this will die with me and others as time goes on.”
You should write them down and give a copy to the local historical society. Then there’s a chance they’ll survive.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not what we need to regret...
Arm-chair historians can all look back and decide what should have happened from the perspective of having know what a better decision should have been.
What rubbish.
1945 the plan to invade the Home Islands had been laid out and the plan approved. Truman found out the bomb had worked in NM and mentioned it to Stalin.
Stalin already knew it had worked.
There has never been a weapon developed during wartime that was NOT used, the a-bomb, both variations, prove that.
Was Truman right to use them? Yes. They saved more lives than can be counted, an entire generation of people owe their very lives to the use of these two bombs and the subsequent surrender, which happened in spite of a coup attempt to derail Hirohito telling his people it was time to surrender.
My Uncle survived Pearl Harbor. He was stationed on one of the Destroyers that saw minimal damage. He had just left for shore leave. Three years later he was vaporized in an ammunition ship loading accident in the South Pacific.
Exactly right. The Japanese were vicious.
Let me give you the real reason.
They were scared to death of Stalin.
Japan would never have surrendered otherwise. Millions more people on both sides would have died.
Suppose they had declared war on the USSR over their invasion of Poland. OK, Now how do you get at the USSR? Through neutral Turkey? Or neutral Finland? Maybe you can land somewhere in the Baltic states. Oh, they are neutral as well? The only way to get at the Soviets would be a sea campaign in the far north. And then if you put a sizable fleet in the north, the Germans may sally forth against a much reduced British home fleet, a very dangerous proposition for the British. The situation would be similar to the Crimean War. "We'll show them! Hmmm. Where do we land an army?"
There was simply no meaningful action that the Allies could have taken against the USSR at that point.
By the same token, due to geographic considerations, the Soviets could do little to nothing against the Allies. The western diplomats realized this and let the Soviet aggression pass.
Being scared to death of Stalin had nothing to do with it.
They had troops there just after WW1
At that time, they missed the chance.
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