Hiroshima 70 years ago

[bennyboy]

As a guy with a Korean family, let me speak for Korea when I say-- fuck 'em.  How many millions did the Japanese rape, how many cities did they sack?  How many thousands did they do sick medical experiments on?  How much humilitation did they very deliberately inflict on their Asian neighbors?

You're of Korean descent. So we should hold you and your family responsible for what the Kims did and do. They're Korean too after all. And so, fuck all Koreans - that your approach, isn't it?

No, I'm not. I'm Canadian, and mostly white; I said I had Korean family, not that I am in any part Korean. As for your comment: if a couple non-dictator Kims were tortured and killed, nobody, including you, would shed a tear. You'd think: yep, those pricks endangered their families, and the blood of their innocent relatives is on their hands.

In my case, a large part of my family was killed in Hitler's death camps. I still like to make a distinction between Nazi and German or Austrian. And in the case of killing civilians, I certainly do.

Do you cry daily over the innocents lost in the bombing of Dresden? Do you condemn the American military for knowingly killing civilians? Again, I'd say-- fuck 'em. When the men go to an unjust war and commit atrocities, they forfeit the rights of their loved ones to the protections of the goodwill of a moral system.


Now, I agree that the actual reality on the ground is horrific. It's really too bad for all these people that they were bystanders in the insanity of the government of their day and the citizens who followed those governments in warlike ways. No child deserves to burn.

But why should Japanese civilians have been extended civility and protection, when the Japanese laid a path of rape, torture and wreckage across Asia? Should they really get to say "Just kidding. . . we're done," and go back and lick their wounds while all their loved ones remain perfectly safe and healthy? And this while there are thousands or millions buried in mass graves? Thousands of teenage girls having been daily gang-raped in the name of the emperor? Civilians frozen to death in ice water? Elderly with their fingernails pulled out in an attempt to get them to give up their children and grandchildren?

I think that's the real reason for the bombs-- not so much to win the war, but to balance a debt a little before Japan could hide under the protections of a treaty.

[Minimalist]

Don't kid yourself into thinking that we gave a rat's ass about Chinese or Korean civilians.

The bombs were to send a message to Russia that a) we had them, b) they worked, and c) look what they can do.

The Cold War had started the day after VE Day.

[Gawdzilla]

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the military headquarters for their prefects and home to various military industries as well. One of the bombs went off directly over 5,000 troops lined up for morning inspection. Civilians were not targeted, they were living in the targets. The single most destructive raid of the war was in March of '45, when sixteen square miles of Tokyo went up in flames and more than one hundred thousand people died. The military had decentralized ordnance production, moving the "light industry" work into people's homes, in part to save fuel used to move people to and from their jobs.

[Minimalist]

If they were that important Lemay would have taken them out. 

http://fdr4freedoms.org/wp-content/theme...ombing.pdf

From
mid-May to mid-June 1945, the USAAF
wreaked havoc on Japan’s most important
industrial centers, devastating Japanese
industry and killing more than one hundred
thousand civilians. By the end of July 1945,
the USAAF had virtually run out of targets.
With the Japanese economy shattered, its
industrial capacity cut by more than half,
its lines of communication in shambles,
and more than 8.5 million people rendered
homeless, the emperor and civilian
Japanese leadership questioned the wisdom
of continuing the war.

Gen. LeMay had two juicy ones if he had been allowed to hit them.


But don't take my word for it.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

In a trenchant new book, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Praeger, 1996), historian Dennis D. Wainstock concludes that the bombings were not only unnecessary, but were based on a vengeful policy that actually harmed American interests. He writes (pp. 124, 132):

... By April 1945, Japan's leaders realized that the war was lost. Their main stumbling block to surrender was the United States' insistence on unconditional surrender. They specifically needed to know whether the United States would allow Hirohito to remain on the throne. They feared that the United States would depose him, try him as a war criminal, or even execute him ...
Unconditional surrender was a policy of revenge, and it hurt America's national self-interest. It prolonged the war in both Europe and East Asia, and it helped to expand Soviet power in those areas.

General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of US Army forces in the Pacific, stated on numerous occasions before his death that the atomic bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view: "My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender."

General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war."

[abaris]

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the military headquarters for their prefects and home to various military industries as well. One of the bombs went off directly over 5,000 troops lined up for morning inspection. Civilians were not targeted, they were living in the targets.

Oh, well, 5000, is it?

You nailed the reason for dropping the bomb. How could I ovelook that this sizeable force could have changed the outcome of the war? It's a bit more than a regiment after all. The 65.000 to 90.000 civilians got just in the way of eliminating that threat.

[Gawdzilla]

Oh, good god. You missed the whole of my post and focused in on one fucking number?

As for LeMay, there were ten cities on the Do Not Bomb list. The rest of them, except Kyoto, would have been bombed in order as more bombs became available.

[Minimalist]

Try not to sound so blood-thirsty for it.  It sounds unbecoming.

[abaris]

As for LeMay, there were ten cities on the Do Not Bomb list.

You know LeMays overall track record? Up to 1962 when he was but one step away from GungHoing the world into nuclear World War III? He was as big a fuck as Edward Teller.

[Anomalocaris]

Well we did fry Dresden for no more purpose, either.

We foolishly thought we could stun the Russians with how bad ass we are prepared to be.  

We:  If we are willing to kill this many Germans just to make a point to you, imagine how many more of you we would be willing to kill if you make us fight you over Central Europe.

Stalin:  ha!  I personally already keel 100 times more of my own people just so I can sleep better at night.

We:  okay, you can have Berlin.

Pretty much the same thing we tried to do again at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[Gawdzilla]

[quote pid='1016678' dateline='1438993767']
Try not to sound so blood-thirsty for it.  It sounds unbecoming.
[/quote]
The only thing new is the history you don't know yet.