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COMMENTS:
Voted : three birds with one stone - weapons testing on a civilan population, scare soviets
Japan had plans to let loose radiological bombs on San Francisco.
Fortunately, the war in Europe was over and they were unable to receive the uranium from the German U-boat U-234.
The date of the attack was supposed to be August 17, 1945.
Voted : two birds with one stone
Definately two birds with one stone;the Japanese were still refusing to surrender because Bushido kept their spirits high so we had no other choice but to destory their morale with one devastating blow.Ofcourse the benefit of showing off our new weapon to the next growing threat, the Soviets encouraged us to nuke Japan.
{the Japanese were still refusing to surrender .
by Corrupt on Aug 17, 2006 8:56am}
Corrupt, what you just stated simply isn't true.
The Japanese government had tried repeatedly to offer surrender with only one condition; the emperor would be safe. Guess what; that's exactly the condition that the USA accepted at the end anyway
The Japanese first offered surrender straight after the Potsdam declaration. The ONLY condition they attached to their surrender was that the emperor would be protected. The USA refused to accept the Japanese offer of surrender. The Japanese tried again at least 3 times, two of those times via the Russians but the Russians apparently didn't pass the Japanese surrender offer onto the USA. The Japanese government also offered surrender by radio broadcasts, but again the leaders of the government of the USA refused to talk about it and pretended that they only wanted an unconditional surrender.
If the USA wanted to simply demonstrate the weapon, they could've used it at sea and told the Japanese military "Watch this!" and given some coordinates for where the bomb would be.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, years later, declared that there was no need to attack Japan with "that awful thing,"
Admiral William Leahy, President Truman's wartime chief of staff, who chaired the Joint Chiefs, said "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 ... in being the first to use it, we adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."
Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "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."
Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE
(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)
"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.
The popular claim that the dropping of the nuclear bombs saved a million lives was fictional BS; McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.
Corrupt and Beelzebubba. The statements you make seem to follow the what the US government wanted people to think was occuring. Lovelynice's explanation makes it appear that you two have purely absorbed what was told without question. IS that true?
Beelzebubba - So the ending of war in Europe meant that this radiological attack would never happen.
So there was no risk or reason to bomb on those grounds. Is that right?
So it appears that Nuking Japan was completely unnecesary in terms of the war against japan.. but very usefull in scaring the new world superpower Soviet Union in to taking the USA seriously.
Anyone disagree
Truly interested -
Voted : Purely dropped to end second world war
If the Soviets did not exist those bombs would have been dropped on the very same dates.
Tommon & Lovelynice how many American and Japanese lives would have been lost if the Allies were forced to take Honshu?While it is unfortunate that so many innocent Japanese civilians had to die when the bomb was dropped if America took the mainland the casuality numbers would be higher than those the bombs created.
The soviets knew that we had completed the bomb before truman did, I doubt they needed a demonstration to prove anything.
Voted : Purely dropped to end second world war
Lovelynice is wearing the tin foil hat today I see.
Voted : two birds with one stone
A major faction of the Japanese government wanted to fight on.. they even wanted to fight even after the 1st bomb went off, before the 2nd nuke was dropped. When the Japanese government surrender. Many of these military leaders and government leaders committed suicide than admit defeat. There were those few Japanese soldiers that hid out on some islands for decades refusing to believe the war was over and Japan was defeated.
The Eastern culture and eastern thoughts were quite different from western thinking. Honour to Japanese meant to follow your duties, complete obedience and submission to your superior. The Japanese truly believe that that Allied forces would do to Japan, what the Japanese forces did to Asia. Rampage, pillage, rape and destroy. Never occur to them that the Allies were not going to do that.
{The Eastern culture and eastern thoughts were quite different from western thinking. by FarEast on Thu Aug 17, 06 10:26pm}
This is just another "So what?".
Yet again, the Japanese government REPEATEDLY offered surrender. Deal with the facts and stop insisting that some WEIRDO LOGIC of yours applies.
{A major faction of the Japanese government wanted to fight on..by FarEast on Thu Aug 17, 06 10:26pm}
That's nice, but it's not relevant because that "major faction" wasn't running the show, was it? If they were, then they wouldn't needed to make a big deal of how they wanted to fight on by attempting a coup.
The MAJORITY wanted to end the war. That's why the Japanese government REPEATEDLY offered surrender.
{how many American and Japanese lives would have been lost if the Allies were forced to take Honshu?by Corrupt on Thu Aug 17, 06 2:14pm}
What a stupid excuse that one is!
The Japanese government REPEATEDLY offered surrender.
Deal with it.
{The soviets knew that we had completed the bomb before truman did, I doubt they needed a demonstration to prove anything.
by herzog on Thu Aug 17, 06 3:16pm}
This excuse doesn't work either.
Do you know absolutely 100% that North Korea has nuclear weapons?
Have you seen them test any yet?
The Soviets didn't know for sure that the USA really had until the US military nuked a couple of cities full of civilians to prove the point.
{If the Soviets did not exist those bombs would have been dropped on the very same dates.
by Jinn_the_Kafir on Thu Aug 17, 06 10:50am}
That's BS and you know that.
Looking at the timing makes it clear. What were the Soviets about to do up north, when the bombs were dropped?
{Rampage, pillage, rape and destroy. Never occur to them that the Allies were not going to do that.
by FarEast on Thu Aug 17, 06 10:26pm}
Funny enough, the USA's military DID engage in quite a bit of rape, pillage, and destroy. Raping 30,000 Japanese women in one prefecture alone in just a few months, according to the Japanese National Police records.
And look at what they did the Okinawans! They lost nearly everything, and still most of their land is taken by the USA's military for it's own purposes.
Lovelynice - I am stunned by the responses from Jyn down to Far East - There's about 5 of them.
What wierdo's.
They all seem to ignore the fact that the Japanese tried to surrender several times. They all seem to have taken personal insult and are throwing shit at us purely for qustioning motives of an historical event.
Corrupt - There would have been no casualties at all if USA had accepted surrender
HErzog - Fine - So why did they drop the bombs on an already defeated JApan... was it simply a test of the weapon?
Jappy - What?
^ Sorry - Corrupt - Rephrase my statement to you. Would there have been less casualties, if surrender had been accepted?
You really dont know what the Japanese are like. What they did our countries and the rest of Asia. There is severa huge reasons why China and South Korea are opposing Japan like they are right now.
Okinawans.. you mean look what the Japanese culture and Japanese soldiers did to the Okinawans. They rather kill themselves or let the Japanese soldiers kill him than surrender. To surrender was dishonourable and the Japanese soldiers told them they would get raped and murdered like what the Japanese soldiers did to the asian women on other asia countries. Even when they surrender, many actually try to blow themselves up or killed allied soldiers as they try to surrender. It was happening so much that. Allies soldiers were not expecting civilian men, and women to kill themselves and try to kill allies soldiers after they surrender.
Yes, Allies soldiers did do many bad and horrible things. Allies knew it was wrong, even if they had problems dealing with it and trying to solve it. Japan did not see it as wrong. It was right and proper to kill, pillage, and rape for their soldiers.
The Japanese Military had a huge control of the Japanese government. That make they a major faction. Many of the military leaders committed suicide upon the complete surrender of Japan. Any attempt for peace or surrender had to be on terms that was acceptable to the Japanese military. The civilian japanese leaders want to surrender on terms already talked about. The military leaders wanted to keep fighting, hoping that the carnage of fighting on Japanese mainland would force an armistice and a less total victory for the allies. They didnt want occupation of Japan or anything that view as complete defeat of Japan. The leaders were still divided until the Emperor finally force the decision on surrender. The military leaders still wanted to reject the surrender, but the Emperor told them to wait before making a final decision. As the Emperor is absolute rule, it was only honourable to obey his decision.. even if it mean they have to kill themselves in the end to save their own personal honour. Before that The Emperor just stood on the fence and not taking side. The Emperor personally wanted to surrender like the civilian japanese leaders, but didnt take any action about it until at the end. Even after the first bomb fell, the civilian and military leaders were still split on which surrender to accept. Plus the Emperor had to go around making sure all the senior commanders of his forces were not considering a coup and that they would back a surrender.
There was a military coup, but it was attempted by lower members of the military to protect the Emperor and the honour of the Palace. The commanding-general of that rebellion force was shot by a lower military officier because he refused to support the coup. They attempted to stop the surrender announcements, when it failed some of the leaders of coup committed suicide.
FarEast - Crazy shit.
So it seems the war may not have been practically over before the bombs were dropped. IF they hadn't have been dropped fighting may have continued for a long time afterwards.
So I suppose it was just handy(bad word for curcumstances) for the US they wanted to finish the war in Japan just as a new world power emerged to challenge US.
When the Japanese did manage to surrender why did the US not accept it?
I was trying to post what FarEast said but my comment wouldn't go through lol -.-
Anyway, IMO, it was two birds with one stone. The US was able to show to what-used-to-be-Russia that if there was going to be one nation to challenge its rise to world-powerdom, it would be the United States.
And, like FarEast said, it was also useful in gaining a military surrender from Japan.
{You really dont know what the Japanese are like
by FarEast on Fri Aug 18, 06 7:57am}
Yes I do. I happen to be half-Japanese and have lived in Japan for years.
{Okinawans.. you mean look what the Japanese culture and Japanese soldiers did to the Okinawans.
by FarEast on Fri Aug 18, 06 7:57am}
No, I mean what the US military did to the Okinawans. The Okinawan population was decimated. Almost the only males who survived were the young boys who'd been sent to the Japanese main island of Honshu as families feared what would happen, and did.
People had their land stolen away from them by the USA military, and the USA military continued to take more land from the locals over the decades.
Okinawan women were raped too.
That happened everywhere the USA military setup bases in Japan, not in an organised manner, but in huge numbers. Tens of thousands of Japanese women were raped by American soliders in the first few months of Occupation, and that's in official Japanese National Police records. The American soldiers were very rarely punished for this crime.
Half the Okinawans depend on the USA military for their livelihood and businesses, but the other half hate the American military and what the soldiers still get away with. It's only been in the past decade that Japanese courts have been "allowed" to try and imprison USA soldiers who have broken Japanese laws, and for decades, everytime a USA soldier raped a Japanese woman, the soldier could run off to the local USA military base and get away with it.
The Japanese Military had a huge control of the Japanese government. That make they a major faction....
by FarEast on Fri Aug 18, 06 7:57am
I guess, I have to repeat this again, since FarEast is totally ignoring reality -
The Japanese government REPEATEDLY offered surrender.
Deal with it.
The military did not want surrender. The military controlled Japan. I'm not arguing ethics for or against the atomic bombings, I'm just saying that, even had the US accepted the surrender transmissions, the military and its leaders would probably not stop fighting.
{The military did not want surrender. The military controlled Japan... by himself809 on Fri Aug 18, 06 6:43pm}
You've got two problems with this.
The miltary controlled the government. The government which the military controlled offered surrender many times, and is on record doing so. They even had Shigemitsu trying to negotiate such a surrender for 11 months straight. That means those running the miltary and therefor the government were offering surrender.
And it wasn't a ruse. They were serious.
Therefore what you're claiming is simply not true.
And the facts still stand; The Japanese government REPEATEDLY offered surrender.
Deal with it
Truth be told, the only people who will ever really know the facts are the ones who were there. So it's very possible that either or both of us are wrong.
However, is it not possible that the portion of the Japanese government that favored surrender sent the surrender transmissions, without the support of the military? If you can give me evidence that the military leaders in the government supported these transmissions, you'll probably sway me.
From a Japanese side which been known to edited their history (Of course, I have to admit other asian countries done the same thing an edit their own history constantly). Ask the other asians from the surrounding asian countries. From their experiences they have an extremely negative view of the Japanese. There is a reason why China and Korea get really tense every time Japan does something (I would believe if China and Korea has control back then, they would have dropped more than two). They really got pissed when the PM of Japan believe visiting and giving respect to the Shrine that included "what they believe is WW2 war criminal". Here is an highly, educated Japanese leader, who should really know better too. Japanese might consider American rude and arrogant, but the rest of Asia considered the Japanese rude and arrogant.
Exactly.. The Allies did it and the Japanese did it. The Allies knew it was wrong, but had difficult time dealing and solving it as I mention. The Japanese soldiers did because they actually thought it was the right way and proper way. Guess what, the Japanese been screwing over Okinawan for decades longer than what the Allies did.
Civilian government leaders and military leaders usually never agree on things especially when they both control considerable amount of power. At least the Emperor was finally able to break the stalement and force the surrender terms to be accepted.
Also im not surprised that almost no Okinawans male survived. Especially after centuries of Japanese culture where surrender and doing anything to dishonour yourself or your family is so disgraceful it is better to fight to the death. The Allies spend years shocked that Japanese soldiers were so willing to fight to the death after finding themselves in a hopeless situation and it was better to surrender to save the lives of their men in Western military thinking. Japanese culture back then didnt allow this. To surrender was to disgrace yourself and your family. Japanese soldiers had complete contempt for Allies leaders that surrender just to save the lives of their men from a hopeless situation.
Considering Japan was rather racist toward the Okinawans anyways. Convincing and letting the Okinawan mens fight to the last was not surprising. Like I saided, the Allied would demand surrender from the Japanese soldiers and Okinawan civilian hiding in the holes. There been situations they say they surrender, come out, run toward the closest allied soldiers and blow themselves up with grenades given to them by Japanese soldiers. Or the Japanese soldiers would kill the okinawan civilians themselves so they wont get capture. Or they refused to surrender, forcing the allies to take extreme deadly force on the holdouts which usually include a few defiant Japanese soldiers and so many innocents okinawans that got caught up in the Japanese soldier's refusal.
All these Allied soldiers that saw their fellow soldiers get killed by people who surrendered first, only to blow themselves up with the closest allied soldier they can reached. I would think they have a really hard time believing anything a Japanese person saided after that.
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