Was Hiroshima an act of terrorism?

[tsuke]

LOL..I don't lose any sleep over it. History needs to be judged in context of time and events.
This is an interesting discussion..a lot of "what if's-what could be" that widen the discussion,
but the moves on the chessboard were forced by events and time.

Its not a coincidence that the push to vilify the US for the bomb is beggining now when the people who fought in the war are mostly dead of old age.

Any action we do now will be condemned as terrorism by future liberals as well. If this is the standard I reccomend we just pull out of all hot zones and let the world fend for itself

 

[moon]

Its not a coincidence that the push to vilify the US for the bomb is beggining now when the people who fought in the war are mostly dead of old age.

Any action we do now will be condemned as terrorism by future liberals as well. If this is the standard I reccomend we just pull out of all hot zones and let the world fend for itself

How can you exploit it and control it if you're not occupying it ?

 

[tsuke]

How can you exploit it and control it if you're not occupying it ?

it would be labeled terrorism if we did. better to just leave it alone.

 

[cawacko]

No, it wasn't.

The Japanese were on the point of surrendering anyway!!



http://www.zerohedge.com/contribute...on-america-used-nuclear-weapons-against-japan

I'm talking about the moment we entered the war post Pearl Harbor. How should we have fought the Japanese without using terrorist tactics?

 

[USFREEDOM911]

That had far more to do with Russia gaining the knowledge it needed to build a bomb from people like Klaus Fuchs.

https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1942-1945/espionage.htm

Are you trying to assert that they wouldn't have built one, if we hadn't?

 

[cancel2 2022]

I'm talking about the moment we entered the war post Pearl Harbor. How should we have fought the Japanese without using terrorist tactics?

The way it was fought, my point is glaringly simple, the bombs were not necessary from a military point of view. The motives were expediency and politics.

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[cancel2 2022]

Are you trying to assert that they wouldn't have built one, if we hadn't?

No, did I say that?

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[tsuke]

The way it was fought, my point is glaringly simple, the bombs were not necessary from a military point of view. The motives were expediency and politics.

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if you throw enough bodies at something you never need the hi tech solution. The soldiers didnt need new rifles or tanks or anything. We can just use soviet style warfare and sacrifice millions of people. But they went another way to reduce casualties.

 

[Legion Troll]

if you throw enough bodies at something you never need the hi tech solution. The soldiers didnt need new rifles or tanks or anything. We can just use soviet style warfare and sacrifice millions of people. But they went another way to reduce casualties.

Think so?

 

[USFREEDOM911]

No, did I say that?

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You appeared to be suggesting it.

 

[cancel2 2022]

You appeared to be suggesting it.

Well let me spell it out then , I'm sure that they would have got there eventually but the knowledge gleaned from the Manhattan Project gave them a huge boost.

General Groves had said in 1944 that the bomb was all about subduing the Russians and he said that again 10 years later. Truman met with Oppenheimer in October 1945 and the following happened

Quote:
On October 25, 1945 , Oppenheimer was ushered into the Oval Office. President Truman was naturally curious to meet the celebrated
physicist ... "The first thing is to define national problem ", Truman said, " then the international".

Oppenheimer let an uncomfortably long silence pass and said haltingly, "Perhaps it would be best first define the international problem".

He meant, of course, that the first imperative was to stop the spread of these weapons [ what we call proliferation today] by placing international controls over all atomic technology. At one point in their conversation, Truman suddenly asked him to guess when the Russians would develop their own atomic bomb. When Oppie replied that he did not know, Truman confidently said he knew the answer:

"Never";

For Oppenheimer such foolishness was proof of Truman's limitations.page 329, American Prometheus ..

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375412026/sr=8-1/qid=1142546032/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7446460-2049751?%5Fencoding=UTF8

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n17/steven-shapin/dont-let-that-crybaby-in-here-again

 

[Anvil Kasseri]

Pretty straightforward question. Thoughts?

Not even remotely terrorism.

Terrorists target civilians. The A-bombs were dropped on military targets.

We deliberately targeted civilians in a war. Of course it was terrorism.

That is incorrect. The A-bombs were dropped on military targets.

If you don't think Hiroshima was terrorism, you don't know what the word terrorism means. It was exactly that - designed to cause terror. It doesn't matter what the ultimate goal was.

Terrorists target civilians.

No civilians were targeted at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So, because the Japanese 2nd Imperial Army was killed too, it was okay?

The Japanese army that was going to try to repel our coming invasion was very much a valid military target.

Because others target civilians, it's okay for America? Bin Laden did that, too. How are we different from him if we do the exact same thing?

We don't do the exact same thing.

How is his action terrorism, but ours isn't?

We didn't target civilians.

War is war. It's hell, but there are rules. One of those rules is that you do not deliberately target innocent civilians.
Targeting innocent civilians? That's terrorism. That's what the people who we call "terrorists" do.

That's why the A-bombs were dropped on military targets.

They wanted to create terror. They weren't going after military targets. They wanted to terrorize.

That is incorrect. The A-bombs were dropped on military targets.

That article talks about civilians as collateral damage. They were not that w/ Hiroshima; they were the targets.

That is incorrect. The targets at Hiroshima were the tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers who were awaiting deployment to resist our invasion, and the military headquarters that was in charge of repelling our invasion.

And read the links that christie posted. The military targets of Hiroshima were secondary.

That is incorrect. The military targets were the reason why Hiroshima was bombed.

It's hard to know what to trust. The victors tend to write the textbooks.

"Japan's Longest Day" was written by Japanese historians.

 

[Anvil Kasseri]

The Emporer was planning to surrender,

Then he should have done so instead of waiting around until we nuked Japan twice.

he only asked for immunity for the royal family and that they have the right to rule to maintain the rule of law in Japan.

He only asked for this after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

You are ignorant of history, Hirohito was allowed to continue to rule, the very terms of his surrender were met.

Actually we rejected his request, but nevermind.

This surrender offer came only on August 10, after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

When you target civilians to specifically target civilians, it is terrorism.

The A-bombs were dropped on military targets.

I am all too aware of how Japan prosecuted the war. There were leaders who did not agree with dropping the bomb, they were fully aware of how the war was being prosecuted.

These leaders somehow forgot to voice their supposed objections to Truman during the war.

 

[Anvil Kasseri]

Well, there is shock and awe. If THAT isn't terrorism, then what the fuck is your definition? Okay, I do admit that Cheney was talking 'shock and awe' before the launch of a remote (by Maher's definition, pussy) attack on Iraq. But to kill people from afar is not actually scaring them more than it is simply pissing them off.

Shock and Awe would have attacked military targets had it been carried out.

It was not carried out. It was misdirection to make Saddam prepare for an attack we were not going to launch and thus be unprepared for our actual attack.

 

[Anvil Kasseri]

A case could be made for deploying a uranium bomb on Hiroshima, but Nagasaki was basically a field test for a plutonium bomb.

That is incorrect. Nagasaki was because Japan was still refusing to surrender.

The truth is that the US had actually run out of viable military targets,

Hiroshima and Kokura Arsenal were both the very definition of a viable military target.

Yet just about everybody who was in a position to know considered the dropping of those bombs to be totally unnecessary.

If they thought that, why didn't they speak up and say it during the war?

Yet most politicians and military leaders at the time considered it both unnecessary and totally immoral to use those weapons against Japan.

If they thought that, they should have spoken out against it during the war. For some reason they didn't.

The USA gave Japan little choice! This was written back in 2001 prior to the Iraq War.
http://www.theamericancause.org/patwhydidjapan.htm

Japan had a choice. They could have chosen to stop committing genocide.

It was perfectly reasonable for us to not sell our oil to people who were using that oil to commit genocide.

Truman was very weak minded and not given to deep analysis as president, he actually believed that Hiroshima was primarily a military target

Truman was correct. Hiroshima was a major military target.

the military facilities were largely left intact whilst the city centre was totally destroyed.

That is incorrect. The A-bomb killed 20,000 soldiers and flattened the military headquarters.

Le May was no peacenik and he said this before the bombs were dropped!

LeMay did not speak publicly about the A-bombs when they were still top secret.

Lemay did not refer to the A-bombs in the past tense before they were used.

Lemay did not oppose the use of the A-bombs before they were used.

The Japanese were on the point of surrendering anyway!!

Then they should have done so instead of waiting for us to nuke them twice.

The way it was fought, my point is glaringly simple, the bombs were not necessary from a military point of view. The motives were expediency and politics.

That is incorrect. The motive was to reduce Japan's ability to resist our invasion.

 

[Anvil Kasseri]

Bullshit on steroids, read this and then come back to me!!

Done.

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that concluded (52-56):
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

No one from the Strategic Bombing Survey spoke up to oppose the A-bombs before they were used.

Eisenhower also noted (pg. 380):
In [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude….

Ike's opposition was feeble to the point of insignificance.

Ike only expressed his opposition to a single person (Stimson).

When Stimson reacted by calling him an idiot, Ike decided to keep quiet and not tell anyone else.

Even if Ike had managed to somehow be convincing, he was too late anyway. Stimson had sent the final orders to drop the A-bombs out to the military and then departed the Potsdam conference on July 25. When Ike voiced his opposition in Frankfort on July 27 it was just hours before Stimson departed Europe for home. Truman was still at sea aboard the Augusta when Hiroshima was bombed, and had not been in the same room with Stimson since July 25.

Admiral William Leahy – the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American military decisions in World War II – wrote (pg. 441):
It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

Leahy somehow completely forgot to speak up and oppose the use of the A-bombs during the war when they were actually being used.

General Douglas MacArthur agreed (pg. 65, 70-71):
MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed …. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.

MacArthur somehow completely forgot to speak up and oppose the use of the A-bombs during the war when they were actually being used.

Similarly, Assistant Secretary of War John McLoy noted (pg. 500):
I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted.

History shows that he was completely wrong. Japan had no interest in surrendering to us for as long as they had hope that their Soviet gambit would succeed.

General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force “hawk,” stated publicly shortly before the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan:
The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

He made public statements about the A-bombs before they were dropped when they were still the most closely-guarded secret in US history? And referred to them in the past tense?

No. LeMay made no such statements before the A-bombs were dropped.

The Vice Chairman of the U.S. Bombing Survey Paul Nitze wrote (pg. 36-37, 44-45):
concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945.

Nitze somehow completely forgot to speak up and oppose the use of the A-bombs during the war when they were actually being used.

The commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral.

King somehow completely forgot to speak up and oppose the use of the A-bombs during the war when they were actually being used.

Admiral Nimitz stated “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.”

Nimitz somehow completely forgot to speak up and oppose the use of the A-bombs during the war when they were actually being used.

And someone should have helped the poor guy out with a calendar. Japan offered to surrender on August 10. The A-bombs were dropped on August 6 and August 9.

Why Were Bombs Dropped on Populated Cities Without Military Value?

They weren't.

Hiroshima was a huge military center with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers awaiting deployment to resist our invasion. It was also the military headquarters in charge of repelling that invasion.

Kokura Arsenal was a massive (4100 feet by 2000 feet) arms production complex.

General George Marshall agreed:
Contemporary documents show that Marshall felt “these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave–telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers….”

That's exactly what they did do. Hiroshima was a large military port. Kokura Arsenal was a major arms manufacturing complex. And we dropped leaflets warning people to leave.

Samuel Walker has studied the history of research on the decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan. In his conclusion he writes, “The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisors knew it.”

Alternatives to the A-bomb???

We could have fought the war without using them. Just as we could have fought the war without using tanks or guns or bullets.

Who would be dumb enough to fight a war without using bullets?

For example, Herbert Hoover said (pg. 142):
The Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945…up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; …if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs.

Hoover somehow completely forgot to speak up and oppose the use of the A-bombs during the war when they were actually being used.

And history shows that Japan refused to surrender until August 10, by which time both A-bombs had already been dropped.

Why Then Were Atom Bombs Dropped on Japan?

Because Japan was still refusing to surrender, and the A-bombs reduced Japan's ability to resist our invasion.

If dropping nuclear bombs was unnecessary to end the war or to save lives, why was the decision to drop them made?

False premise. Japan was still refusing to surrender when the A-bombs were dropped.

Especially over the objections of so many top military and political figures?

False premise. Aside from Ike's incredibly feeble objections, no military or political figures were opposing the use of the A-bombs.

New Scientist reported in 2005:
The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.
Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.
“He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species,” says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, US. “It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity.”
[The conventional explanation of using the bombs to end the war and save lives] is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US.
New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman’s main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.
According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was “looking for peace”. Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

That goofy nonsense about annihilating the species should be enough to dismiss the ravings of this lunatic.

But anyway, no. Oddly enough, we actually wanted to make Japan surrender.

And no military leader whatsoever advised Truman that there was no military need for using the A-bombs.

The US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”.

That problem was easily solved. They simply reserved the A-bomb targets from being attacked conventionally.

He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”.

Stimson was being diplomatic. He was asked a stupid question.

An effort to achieve surrender in order to avoid using the A-bombs???

Surrender was the entire goal. The A-bombs were dropped in furtherance of that goal.

 

[Anvil Kasseri]

But it wasn't the military/political elite who ' refused surrender ' who were incinerated by the hundreds of thousands. It was civilians who were incinerated by the hundreds of thousands.

There were plenty of Japanese soldiers killed at Hiroshima.

What else could that be but a barbaric act of terrorism ?

It was a wartime strike against a military target.

You're an apologist for mass-murder.

Wartime strikes on military targets are hardly murder.

Israel was never worth it- and never will be worth it. The sooner that Israel is forced to comply with the laws that every other state must comply with the sooner that the world can put culture wars aside and start to concentrate on the other looming catastrophes which threaten to engulf it.

A bit off topic, but Israel is definitely worth protecting. And they don't need to be made to comply with the law since they already do so.

 

[Anvil Kasseri]

I think the main point of contention here is whether or not japan was on the point of surrender.

The people who say it was terrorism believe that since the emperor offered to surrender before the US could have granted him all his demands and he would have made the army surrender.

The people who say it was not terrorism but rather necessary believe that the emperor was not fully in command and the army and its generals were who were not advocating surrender.

I guess the real question is who was in effective command at the time? If it was the emperor why did he have to hide his meetings about discussing the surrender from army leadership. Surely they should be part of any discussion.

If anyone says the Emperor offered to surrender before the A-bombs, they are wrong.

The first surrender offer was August 10.

The A-bombs were dropped on August 6 and August 9.

 

[Anvil Kasseri]

I am referring to the top brass of course, if you read this excellent article from the Mises Institute it is all explained. Eisenhower, Churchill, Leahy, Marshall and many other were in total opposition to the use of those weapons.

It is strange how they didn't manage to voice this opposition during the war when the A-bombs were actually being used.

If they were targetting military installations then why was the Hiroshima bomb dropped in the centre of the city rather than where they were located on the periphery?

The military installations were not located on the periphery.

Moreover, the notion that Hiroshima was a major military or industrial center is implausible on the face of it.

Hiroshima was the military port from which Japan had launched all their foreign conquests. At the time of the A-bombing it had tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers awaiting deployment to resist our invasion, and was the military headquarters in charge of repelling our invasion.

The city had remained untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home islands, and never figured in Bomber Command's list of the 33 primary targets.

That's because the A-bomb targets were off limits for conventional bombing.

But the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost.

No it wasn't. The worst estimate was a million American dead and millions more Americans severely wounded.

The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.

Ike's wartime opposition was feeble to the point of insignificance. No other military leader offered any sort of wartime opposition at all.

By early summer 1945, the Japanese fully realized that they were beaten. Why did they nonetheless fight on? As Anscombe wrote, "It was the insistence on unconditional surrender that was the root of all evil."

Truman relented on unconditional surrender when he issued the Potsdam Proclamation, which was a list of generous surrender terms.

Japan had no interest in surrendering to the US regardless of the terms for as long as they had hopes that their Soviet gambit would play out.

 

[Anvil Kasseri]

[h=2]~~~DWIGHT EISENHOWER[/h]"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

I have always respected Ike.

Ike's opposition was feeble to the point of insignificance.

Ike only expressed his opposition to a single person (Stimson).

When Stimson reacted by calling him an idiot, Ike decided to keep quiet and not tell anyone else.

Even if Ike had managed to somehow be convincing, he was too late anyway. Stimson had sent the final orders to drop the A-bombs out to the military and then departed the Potsdam conference on July 25. When Ike voiced his opposition in Frankfort on July 27 it was just hours before Stimson departed Europe for home. Truman was still at sea aboard the Augusta when Hiroshima was bombed, and had not been in the same room with Stimson since July 25.