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How old are you, can't you do anything for yourself?
Was Hiroshima an act of terrorism?
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How old are you, can't you do anything for yourself?
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Remember to ban Desh in future!!
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I know, I know. Bad mistake on this one. The discussion on this thread is really good for the most part.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
OK, why the distinction between the use of the atomic bomb and the use of fire bombing, developed by the Brits, and which killed more people in Dresdan and Hamburg than were killed by the atomic bombs dropped on Japan? Particularly Dresdan which served no strategic or tactical military purpose other than to terrorize the German population.
You end up going back to my point that these actions are never, ever justified on moral or ethical grounds.
The greatest military general of 19th century summed it up correctly. War is hell.
evince
Truthmatters
why are you trashing truman
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Mott - those aren't acceptable, either. I started the thread because Obama was at Hiroshima this week, and it's a very notable event in history.
It's not enough to say war is hell & that the ends justify the means. Do you then support torture, killing POW's, targeting of all civilians...whatever works?
You don't target civilians ever. The end.
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And Mott - are you saying that something like Dresden is okay in that respect? How about My Lai?
evince
Truthmatters
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/truman-japanwarn/
Primary Resources: A Warning to Japan Urging SurrenderOther Primary Resources
Colonel Paul Tibbets waving from Enola Gay's cockpit before taking off for the bombing of Hiroshima
National Archives
Colonel Paul Tibbets waving from Enola Gay's cockpit before taking off for the bombing of HiroshimaA Warning to Japan Urging Surrender: Excerpts from President Truman's radio address to the American people, August 9, 1945
The British, Chinese, and United States Governments have given the Japanese people adequate warning of what is in store for them. We have laid down the general terms on which they can surrender. Our warning went unheeded; our terms were rejected. Since then the Japanese have seen what our atomic bomb can do. They can foresee what it will do in the future.
The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction.
I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb.
Its production and its use were not lightly undertaken by this Government. But we knew that our enemies were on the search for it. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster, which would come to this Nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first.
That is why we felt compelled to undertake the long and uncertain and costly labor of discovery and production.
We won the race of discovery against the Germans. Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.
We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us.
Primary Resources: A Warning to Japan Urging SurrenderOther Primary Resources
Colonel Paul Tibbets waving from Enola Gay's cockpit before taking off for the bombing of Hiroshima
National Archives
Colonel Paul Tibbets waving from Enola Gay's cockpit before taking off for the bombing of HiroshimaA Warning to Japan Urging Surrender: Excerpts from President Truman's radio address to the American people, August 9, 1945
The British, Chinese, and United States Governments have given the Japanese people adequate warning of what is in store for them. We have laid down the general terms on which they can surrender. Our warning went unheeded; our terms were rejected. Since then the Japanese have seen what our atomic bomb can do. They can foresee what it will do in the future.
The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction.
I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb.
Its production and its use were not lightly undertaken by this Government. But we knew that our enemies were on the search for it. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster, which would come to this Nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first.
That is why we felt compelled to undertake the long and uncertain and costly labor of discovery and production.
We won the race of discovery against the Germans. Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.
We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Agreed this notion of justifying or evaluating acts of war, ex post facto, on moral or ethical grounds is absurd.
evince
Truthmatters
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/japan_no_surrender_01.shtml
The end of hostilities
When Emperor Hirohito made his first ever broadcast to the Japanese people on 15 August 1945, and enjoined his subjects 'to endure the unendurable and bear the unbearable', he brought to an end a state of war - both declared and undeclared - that had wracked his country for 14 years.
He never spoke explicitly about 'surrender' or 'defeat', but simply remarked that the war 'did not turn in Japan's favour'. It was a classic piece of understatement. Nearly three million Japanese were dead, many more wounded or seriously ill, and the country lay in ruins.
To most Japanese - not to mention those who had suffered at their hands during the war - the end of hostilities came as blessed relief. Yet not everybody was to lay down their arms. Tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers remained in China, either caught in no-man's land between the Communists and Nationalists or fighting for one side or the other.
Other, smaller groups continued fighting on Guadalcanal, Peleliu and in various parts of the Philippines right up to 1948. But the most extraordinary story belongs to Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who continued fighting on the Philippine island of Lubang until 9 March 1974 - nearly 29 years after the end of the war.
Lieutenant Onoda... doggedly refused to lay down his arms...
Two years earlier, another Japanese soldier, Corporal Shoichi Yokoi, had been found fishing in the Talofofo River on Guam. Yokoi still had his Imperial Army issue rifle, but he had stopped fighting many years before. When questioned by the local police, he admitted he knew the war had been over for 20 years. He had simply been too frightened to give himself up.
Lieutenant Onoda, by contrast, doggedly refused to lay down his arms until he received formal orders to surrender. He was the sole survivor of a small band that had sporadically attacked the local population. Although one of them surrendered in 1950 after becoming separated from the others, Onoda's two remaining companions died in gun battles with local forces - one in 1954, the other in 1972.
Top
A worthy enemy?
Photograph showing two Japanese soldiers After early attempts to flush them out had failed, humanitarian missions were sent to Lubang to try to persuade Lieutenant Onoda and his companions that the war really was over, but they would have none of it. Even today, Hiroo Onoda insists they believed the missions were enemy tricks designed to lower their guard. As a soldier, he knew it was his duty to obey orders; and without any orders to the contrary, he had to keep on fighting.
To survive in the jungle of Lubang, he had kept virtually constantly on the move, living off the land, and shooting cattle for meat. Onoda's grim determination personifies one of the most enduring images of Japanese soldiers during the war - that Japanese fighting men did not surrender, even in the face of insuperable odds.
...Japanese fighting men did not surrender, even in the face of insuperable odds.
Before hostilities with the Allies broke out, most British and American military experts held a completely different view, regarding the Japanese army with deep contempt. In early 1941, General Robert Brooke-Popham, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Far East, reported that one of his battalion commanders had lamented, 'Don't you think (our men) are worthy of some better enemy than the Japanese?'
This gross underestimation can in part be explained by the fact that Japan had become interminably bogged down by its undeclared war against China since 1931. Since Japan was having such difficulties in China, the reasoning went, its armed forces would be no match for the British.
The speed and ease with which the Japanese sank the British warships, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, off Singapore just two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor - followed by the humiliating capture of Singapore and Hong Kong - transformed their image overnight. From figures of derision, they were turned into supermen - an image that was to endure and harden as the intensity and savagery of fighting increased.
The end of hostilities
When Emperor Hirohito made his first ever broadcast to the Japanese people on 15 August 1945, and enjoined his subjects 'to endure the unendurable and bear the unbearable', he brought to an end a state of war - both declared and undeclared - that had wracked his country for 14 years.
He never spoke explicitly about 'surrender' or 'defeat', but simply remarked that the war 'did not turn in Japan's favour'. It was a classic piece of understatement. Nearly three million Japanese were dead, many more wounded or seriously ill, and the country lay in ruins.
To most Japanese - not to mention those who had suffered at their hands during the war - the end of hostilities came as blessed relief. Yet not everybody was to lay down their arms. Tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers remained in China, either caught in no-man's land between the Communists and Nationalists or fighting for one side or the other.
Other, smaller groups continued fighting on Guadalcanal, Peleliu and in various parts of the Philippines right up to 1948. But the most extraordinary story belongs to Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who continued fighting on the Philippine island of Lubang until 9 March 1974 - nearly 29 years after the end of the war.
Lieutenant Onoda... doggedly refused to lay down his arms...
Two years earlier, another Japanese soldier, Corporal Shoichi Yokoi, had been found fishing in the Talofofo River on Guam. Yokoi still had his Imperial Army issue rifle, but he had stopped fighting many years before. When questioned by the local police, he admitted he knew the war had been over for 20 years. He had simply been too frightened to give himself up.
Lieutenant Onoda, by contrast, doggedly refused to lay down his arms until he received formal orders to surrender. He was the sole survivor of a small band that had sporadically attacked the local population. Although one of them surrendered in 1950 after becoming separated from the others, Onoda's two remaining companions died in gun battles with local forces - one in 1954, the other in 1972.
Top
A worthy enemy?
Photograph showing two Japanese soldiers After early attempts to flush them out had failed, humanitarian missions were sent to Lubang to try to persuade Lieutenant Onoda and his companions that the war really was over, but they would have none of it. Even today, Hiroo Onoda insists they believed the missions were enemy tricks designed to lower their guard. As a soldier, he knew it was his duty to obey orders; and without any orders to the contrary, he had to keep on fighting.
To survive in the jungle of Lubang, he had kept virtually constantly on the move, living off the land, and shooting cattle for meat. Onoda's grim determination personifies one of the most enduring images of Japanese soldiers during the war - that Japanese fighting men did not surrender, even in the face of insuperable odds.
...Japanese fighting men did not surrender, even in the face of insuperable odds.
Before hostilities with the Allies broke out, most British and American military experts held a completely different view, regarding the Japanese army with deep contempt. In early 1941, General Robert Brooke-Popham, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Far East, reported that one of his battalion commanders had lamented, 'Don't you think (our men) are worthy of some better enemy than the Japanese?'
This gross underestimation can in part be explained by the fact that Japan had become interminably bogged down by its undeclared war against China since 1931. Since Japan was having such difficulties in China, the reasoning went, its armed forces would be no match for the British.
The speed and ease with which the Japanese sank the British warships, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, off Singapore just two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor - followed by the humiliating capture of Singapore and Hong Kong - transformed their image overnight. From figures of derision, they were turned into supermen - an image that was to endure and harden as the intensity and savagery of fighting increased.
I couldn't agree more. How do you look back under the urgency of war, and pick it apart?
What would Harry S do?
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
no my view is based on words having specific meanings and not just what anyone thinks they should mean.
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Desh - can you pretend that I thread-banned you, and stop spamming stuff? I would have, honestly. It just slipped my mind.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Ah no...no we don't get an A. Millions of native Americans, Japanese civilians, North Vietnamese civilians and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilian deaths prove beyond question our ability to be brutal and ruthless in disregard for innocent lives in war. To say we deserve an A for not being brutal is flag waving nationalist drivel and completely ignorant of historical fact.
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No one is lying. He made the decision to vaporize innocents.