Moral objections on warfare.

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DAVIDICUS said:
Another fact is that the US did not have to A-bomb Japan because negotiations was under way, but the US decided to go ahead just because they wanted to test the bomb.
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That is total BS.

The conditions for peace were clear - "unconditional surrender". The Japanese were trying to negotiate a less than unconditional surrender, and that was unacceptable.

At the same time, the Soviets were entering the war against Japan, and were well poised to occupy most of China and at least the northern islands of Japan. Every week that went by meant more territory under the Soviet thumb.

Finally, there was no reason to have any measure of confidence in any negotiated peace, even if it had been acceptable which it wasn't. The Japanese political situation was so splintered that it was not clear any surrender negotiated by the politicians would be accepted by the military leadership.

The A-Bomb was the best thing that could have happened to Japan. Without it, their country broken into a soviet held region and a US held region, and the cold war would have been focused in Japan even more than it was in E/W Germany. The Emperor would surely have been hanged, and Japanese cultural would have been totally and utterly destroyed. The A-bomb forced them to surrender and surrender immeadiately with no conditions or delaying tactics.

=S=

Lunatic
 
RG, if you re-read my post and GT's right before it, you will see that I was quoting GT and added a at the end indicating that I too found this to be "BS" for lack of a more descriptive and appropriate term.
 
One thing about the Bushido code. It is very honorable. What the Japanese military in WWII did with the Bushido code was bastardize it completely. The ones who truly followed Bushido before them probably rolled in their graves.
 

WELL SAID RG!
 
DAVIDICUS said:
RG, if you re-read my post and GT's right before it, you will see that I was quoting GT and added a at the end indicating that I too found this to be "BS" for lack of a more descriptive and appropriate term.
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Sorry, I think I mis-edited the quotes and sub-quotes within it. My appologies.

=S=

Lunatic
 
The Japanese did not have another choice after the embargo was put to affect They could only have chosen not to continue their war in China before that.

The atrocities that happened was totally wrong, don´t get me wrong on that subject! One can not defend one smaller magnitude atrocity against a larger one. They should not had happen at all.

The war was still basically a colonial war and Hawaii had been annexed on 7 July 1898, and this action was the culmination of more than 50 years of growing US commercial interests in the Hawaiian islands. What happened after the war was that the colonist countries discovered that all of their colonies wanted to be free and some became free after a war with the suppressing colonial countries, one of the last being free was Vietnam. Hawaii the one and only not to become free and instead becoming the 50th state to the US on 29 Aug 1959.

The decision to drop the bomb was a atrocity of an magnitude never equaled in modern history just because of the reasons that I have stated above and can repeat again.

The Japanese was defeated the had no oil and scrapmetal to continue the war effectively and almost the entire war machinery was gone. The only reason for the A-bomb was that it was the only way to test the bomb as the war in Germany was over and that there was No Way the US would have used the bomb in ETO anyhow!. That fact is that one has to understand in the minds of people and military at that time, let´s try it on the Japs!

It was the US military that pressed for the A-bomb to be tested instead of some other wise and by the wars end accepted methods. There were many that opposed the droppings of the A-bomb at high level but they were "bulldozed".

Cheers
GT
 

I may have misunderstood you but Potsdam is in Germany not Japan. Sorry if I misunderstand what you are trying to say.
 
There were also many at the high level that supported it. You can choose to disagree with the decision to drop the bomb, but calling it an atrocity is just not true. They may have been low on gas and scrapmetal, but they would have fought with bamboo spears. We are not talking about the Germans here, we are talking about the Japnese, who were intensely proud and it was a honor to die for the emperor.

To think they would have given up easily is inaccurate. Out of 20,000+ defenders on Iwo Jima, there were 200 prisoners. Only 200 were either captured alive or gave themselves up. They fought with incredible tenacity against a numerically superior enemy (3:1) with no supplies coming from the sea. This scenario played out on Saipan and Okinawa as well. They would have fought even harder for the homelands.
 
The other thing I have to say is I dont think the US had any other choice but to drop the bomb. Believe it or not the bomb saved lives. Had they invaded the Japanese main island it would have been slaughtered. 10's of Thousands of US killed and many more Japanese including woman and children.
 
This is info on the battle of Okinawa, which was the prelude to an invasion of Japan. The casualties are tremendous, for both sides. It would have been worse the further we went into Japanese territory.

Okinawa was the largest amphibious invasion of the Pacific campaign and the last major campaign of the Pacific War. More ships were used, more troops put ashore, more supplies transported, more bombs dropped, more naval guns fired against shore targets than any other operation in the Pacific. More people died during the Battle of Okinawa than all those killed during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Casualties totaled more than 38,000 Americans wounded and 12,000 killed or missing, more than 107,000 Japanese and Okinawan conscripts killed, and perhaps 100,000 Okinawan civilians who perished in the battle.

The battle of Okinawa proved to be the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War. Thirty-four allied ships and craft of all types had been sunk, mostly by kamikazes, and 368 ships and craft damaged. The fleet had lost 763 aircraft. Total American casualties in the operation numbered over 12,000 killed [including nearly 5,000 Navy dead and almost 8,000 Marine and Army dead] and 36,000 wounded. Navy casualties were tremendous, with a ratio of one killed for one wounded as compared to a one to five ratio for the Marine Corps. Combat stress also caused large numbers of psychiatric casualties, a terrible hemorrhage of front-line strength. There were more than 26,000 non-battle casualties. In the battle of Okinawa, the rate of combat losses due to battle stress, expressed as a percentage of those caused by combat wounds, was 48% [in the Korean War the overall rate was about 20-25%, and in the Yom Kippur War it was about 30%]. American losses at Okinawa were so heavy as to illicite Congressional calls for an investigation into the conduct of the military commanders. Not surprisingly, the cost of this battle, in terms of lives, time, and material, weighed heavily in the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan just six weeks later.

Japanese human losses were enormous: 107,539 soldiers killed and 23,764 sealed in caves or buried by the Japanese themselves; 10,755 captured or surrendered. The Japanese lost 7,830 aircraft and 16 combat ships. Since many Okinawan residents fled to caves where they subsequently were entombed the precise number of civilian casualties will probably never be known, but the lowest estimate is 42,000 killed. Somewhere between one-tenth and one-fourth of the civilian population perished, though by some estimates the battle of Okinawa killed almost a third of the civilian population. According to US Army records during the planning phase of the operation, the assumption was that Okinawa was home to about 300,000 civilians. At the conclusion of hostilities around 196,000 civilians remained. However, US Army figures for the 82 day campaign showed a total figure of 142,058 civilian casualties, including those killed by artillery fire, air attacks and those who were pressed into service by the Japanese army.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/okinawa-battle.htm
 
Have to say that many of you dont know what in fact happened to the japaneese prioners. That is the problem when discussing our war. I habe lived with the memories that my famili told me about my relatives fate in the hands of the americans
 

It was at Potsdam where the allies met and told the Japanese empire to surrender or else.
 
 
There is a film from 1944 that includes scenes of American soldiers shooting Japanese soldiers as they are lying wounded on the ground. And there are scenes of a US soldier that dragging a wounded Japanese soldier from his hiding place. The Japanese soldier then has his ankles tied together but the US soldier fires 2 bullets into his knees and when the Japanese soldier screams in pain the American shots him first in the chest and only then in the head.

There are scenes in the film of American soldiers using bayonets to hack at Japanese corpses while they are looting them, taking the dead Japanese soldiers gold teeth which was by the way a widespread practice amongst the US soldiers in the Pacific war and sometimes the Japanese soldier was alive. More examples of atrocities that was committed is that the Gurkha's in Burma collected Japanese ears and heads being collected by Nigerian Soldiers.

When I visited Hawaii for the 3rd time I went to Charles Lindbergh's grave and this is a picture that I took on the lovely island of Maui were he is buried. In his.diaries from the Pacific war, Lindbergh was disgusted and horrified what he witnessed of atrocities that the US soldiers did and he documented some of it during the several months that he spent there. He wrote: - We have always been told that the Japanese soldier fought to the death, that's why there were so few prisoners. The truth of the matter is that we would not allow a Japanese to surrender ! ! (witch meant that they were shot on sight) There are so many cover ups that all of you really have get of the Internet and travel to the places, the people and really read the witnesses reports and read the Now official documents concerning the issue. They were of course classified as Secret after the war.

In the ETO it was also common tho shoot Germans trying to surrender and sometimes POWs were shot and there a also pics that shows US soldiers shooting German POWs.

The truth of the matter if one can look through the cover up to justify the A-bombings is that Japan had been defeated and were starved by the Naval blockade, and could have been like in Rabaul, left to wither on the vine.

Japan was facing a severe starvation and the truth of the matter is that the US knew this. As I told you before the US Navy and many wise high ranking officials was opposed both to the A-bombings of Japan and the invasion for that reason.

Cheers
GT
 

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OH GIVE ME A BREAK! - 3 YEARS BEFORE THOSE AMERICAN SOLDIERS WERE HACKING APART AND SHOOTING WOUNDED JAPANESE SOLDIERS AS YOU SAY, THEY WERE IN HIGH SCHOOLS AND WORKING TO SUPPORT THEIR FAMILIES. GO BACK 2 YEARS PRIOR TO THAT AND I'M SURE YOU'LL FIND MANY OF THOSE POOR JAPANESE SOLDIERS RAPING AND MURDERING INNOCENT KOREAN AND CHINESE CIVILIANS - YES CIVILIANS!

YES - THE JAPANESE WEREN'T ALLOWED TO SURRENDER, HAVE YOU ASKED YOUR SELF WHY?!? BECAUSE IN THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR, NUMEROUS US FORCES ATTEMPTED TO RENDER ASSISTANCE AS REQUIRED BY THE GENEVA CONVENTION TO SURRENDERING JAPANESE SOLDIERS, AND MANY JAPANESE SURRENDERED WITH A GRENADE IN THEIR HAND, KILLING OR MAIMING THE SAME PEOPLE THAT WERE ATTEMPTING TO TAKE THEM PRISONER. I CHALLENGE YOU TO TAKE 5 US POWS THAT WERE HELD BY THE JAPANESE AND TAKE 5 JAPANESE HELD BY THE AMERICANS, I GUARANTEE YOU THE JAPANESE LIVED IN LUXURY COMPARED TO THEIR AMERICAN COUNTERPARTS. MY FACTS DON'T COME FROM THE INTERNET, I HAVE FAMILY AND FRIENDS THAT WERE THERE AND WITNESSED THESE THINGS.

BOTTOM LINE, THE TYPICAL AMERICAN DIDN'T WANT TO FIGHT THE JAPANESE, BUT WHEN WE DID WE DISCOVERED A BRUTAL AND INHUMANE INDIVIDUAL AND WE FOUGHT THEM THE WAY THEY CONFRONTED US. WAS THAT RIGHT?, WE COULD ARGUE THAT POINT AS WELL. YES YOU COULD TRY TO JUSTIFY JAPANESE ACTION BY THE WAY AMERICAN SOLDIERS ALLEGEDLY BRUTALIZED CAPTURED JAPANESE (AND GERMAN AS YOU SAY) SOLDIERS, THE REAL FACT IS, THAT IS MORE OF THE EXCEPTION THAN THE RULE. THE AVERAGE AMERICAN SOLDIER OF WWII WAS NOT A PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER, WANTED TO GET THE WAR OVER WITH AND GET HOME! I ONCE ASKED A FORMER ARMY MASTER SERGENT WHO FOUGHT AT NORMANDY ABOUT THE US BEATING OR SHOOTING SURRENDERING GERMANS, AND HE TOLD ME "WE HAD MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO!" HE ALSO TOLD ME THAT AT LEAST IN HIS COMMAND, CRIMES AGAINST GERMAN MILITARY OR CIVILIAN PERSONNEL WAS NOT TOLERATED AND USUALLY RESULTED IN A FIELD COURT MARSHAL, WHICH MEANT YOU COULD BE SHOT ON SITE!

I WOULD NEVER OFFER AN APOLOGY FOR AUGUST 1945 AND THOSE JAPANESE WHO WANT TO WHITEWASH HISTORY ARE NO DIFFERENT THAN THOSE WHO COMMITTED THOSE ATROCITIES 60 YEARS AGO!

YOU COULD VISIT LINGBERGS OR TOJO'S GRAVE ALL YOU WANT, THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS IN AUGUST 1945 A TRUE EVIL EMPIRE WAS DESTROYED AND IF THE JAPANESE DIDN'T ATTACK PEARL HARBOR, TWO OF THEIR CITIES WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN INCINERATED!
 

Yes what are you pointing out is very wrong also however you have to look at the large picture Japanese soldiers were doing the same, German soldiers were doing the same and Russian Soldiers were even doing so. It is wrong and should not go unpunished but what the US did to Japanese soldiers is a lot less in comparison to what Japanese soldiers were doing. 2 wrongs to not make a right though and yes US soldiers doing so should have been punished (for the most part they were punished for doing such things) also however you can not compare it to what Japanese soldiers were doing.
 
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