Hiroshima 70 years ago

[Dystopia]

The atomic bombs launched on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are just those unfortunate incidents that, no matter how immoral and devastating they can be, will eventually happen during war conflicts. There's all kinds of atrocities happening against civilians, enemy soldiers and even your own. Japanese comfort women is an example, but pretty much every army, specially Germans and Russians raped people during WWII - International Law doesn't matter during conflicts, it's just words on paper, it's an unfortunate reality. I think America could apologize for the bombs, but then every country would have to apologize for every horrible act ever committed. I can't imagine Portuguese ministers apologizing for enslaving millions of Africans, and it's something I, as a Portuguese, would not do because there is nothing to be sorry about - Those were just circumstances of the time.

[Gawdzilla]

They weren't immoral at the time. Retrofitting our prejudices post-Cold War doesn't change that. They were weapons of war and Truman was going to use every single thing he could to end the war. The invasion plans went ahead while the bombs were being built and we were ordering hundreds of thousands of Purple Hearts. Gen. Onishi was telling people that if they could get 20,000,000 people to volunteer for suicide missions they might still win the war.

[Pyrrho]

Japanese civilians were going to die no matter what.  They would either,

A) starve to death during the winter whether we invaded or not,

B) die in absurd human wave attacks armed with bamboo spears, if we landed



Or  c) we could have continued the incendiary raids until there was literally nothing left to burn compounding the slaughter we had already unleashed.

Considering that the terms ultimately given to the Japanese ( they would surrender and the emperor would not be harmed) our insistence on unconditional surrender in the abstract seems to have meant very little.

Yes, the insistence on "unconditional surrender" was a silly bit of nonsense that led to the war lasting longer than it needed to.  The Japanese wanted to surrender, but wanted something other than unconditional surrender.  And they actually got something other than unconditional surrender, despite the U.S. calling it that.  If the U.S. had decided earlier to just lie about the surrender in calling whatever terms were made "unconditional," the war could have ended before the nuclear bombs were dropped.

[Gawdzilla]

The US modified the terms in the Yalta declaration. The Japanese took their sweet time in accepting it.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

And?

And - that piece of shit certainly didn't care how many civilians he killed. The attack on Hiroshima, as well as the one on Dresden (but that was rather the british than the Americans) had nothing to do with military necessities, but everything with a demonstration of power.

The best way to quickly end a major war is to kill all of the enemy's accessible civilians.  After all, they are the ones who operate the war machinery and feed the troops in the field.  Kill enough of their civilians and the troops will have to surrender.  Besides, it costs too much to take on enemy troops if they are at full strength.  Of course that might leave your own civilians open to major attacks but in war everyone fights.  Only fools think that they are safe from attack.

[bennyboy]

how is Pearl Harbor a military target for two countries AT PEACE?

Pearl Harbor was supposed to be attacked 1/2 hour after Japan declared war according to Yamamoto's plan.  It was probably a fuck up but also may have reflected dissension within the Japanese government.  The Army controlled the government, not the Navy.

That's the story, but as I read the appropriate entry on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor both army and navy decided against declaration.

But the internals don't matter.  Clearly, the Japanese forces did not wait until the declaration was issued.  I mean. . . they had radios, right?

[Gawdzilla]

And - that piece of shit certainly didn't care how many civilians he killed. The attack on Hiroshima, as well as the one on Dresden (but that was rather the british than the Americans) had nothing to do with military necessities, but everything with a demonstration of power.

The best way to quickly end a major war is to kill all of the enemy's accessible civilians.  After all, they are the ones who operate the war machinery and feed the troops in the field.  Kill enough of their civilians and the troops will have to surrender.  Besides, it costs too much to take on enemy troops if they are at full strength.  Of course that might leave your own civilians open to major attacks but in war everyone fights.  Only fools think that they are safe from attack.

However, that wasn't how it worked in Japan. The military didn't care how many civilians died, or how much it fucked up the infrastructure. They wanted the entire population to die if that's what it took to save their "honor". 

The sad thing is the "bushido code" they operated under was a bastardization of the original that was foisted on them in the early '30s.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

As for how we practice war now, perhaps if we don't have the moral certainty of our cause to fuck the civilians in a given conflict, maybe we should stay the fuck out of that conflict ??

We are victims of our own BS propaganda against the Nazis and Japanese.  We tried and executed some of them for newly created "war crimes" in the Pollyannist belief that it would reduce such wars in the future.  All of our recent fights have been controlled field tests for new weapon systems.  The result is that a lot of dummies think that we can simply bomb people into submission.  However, the fools don't want to fork over any tax money to do it.

[abaris]

The best way to quickly end a major war is to kill all of the enemy's accessible civilians.

Reflect a bit on what you just said.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The best way to quickly end a major war is to kill all of the enemy's accessible civilians.  After all, they are the ones who operate the war machinery and feed the troops in the field.  Kill enough of their civilians and the troops will have to surrender.  Besides, it costs too much to take on enemy troops if they are at full strength.  Of course that might leave your own civilians open to major attacks but in war everyone fights.  Only fools think that they are safe from attack.

However, that wasn't how it worked in Japan. The military didn't care how many civilians died, or how much it fucked up the infrastructure. They wanted the entire population to die if that's what it took to save their "honor". 

The sad thing is the "bushido code" they operated under was a bastardization of the original that was foisted on them in the early '30s.

As I said before, we would have gladly killed every single person in Japan if they hadn't surrendered.  The nukes saved lives all around.