Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: March 29, 2024, 1:29 am

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
The Hiroshima shadows.
#31
RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
As further evidence of my point I offer the following

Quote:In his 1965 study, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (pp. 107, 108), historian Gar Alperovitz writes:
Although Japanese peace feelers had been sent out as early as September 1944 (and [China's] Chiang Kai-shek had been approached regarding surrender possibilities in December 1944), the real effort to end the war began in the spring of 1945. This effort stressed the role of the Soviet Union ...
In mid-April [1945] the [US] Joint Intelligence Committee reported that Japanese leaders were looking for a way to modify the surrender terms to end the war. The State Department was convinced the Emperor was actively seeking a way to stop the fighting.


Quote:In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)
This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:
 Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
⦁ Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
⦁ Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
⦁ Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
⦁ Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
⦁ Surrender of designated war criminals.

Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):

The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.


Quote:Commenting on this draconian either-or proclamation, British historian J.F.C. Fuller wrote: "Not a word was said about the Emperor, because it would be unacceptable to the propaganda-fed American masses." (A Military History of the Western World [1987], p. 675.)

America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.



Quote:By early July the US had intercepted messages from Togo to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, showing that the Emperor himself was taking a personal hand in the peace effort, and had directed that the Soviet Union be asked to help end the war. US officials also knew that the key obstacle to ending the war was American insistence on "unconditional surrender," a demand that precluded any negotiations. The Japanese were willing to accept nearly everything, except turning over their semi-divine Emperor. Heir of a 2,600-year-old dynasty, Hirohito was regarded by his people as a "living god" who personified the nation. (Until the August 15 radio broadcast of his surrender announcement, the Japanese people had never heard his voice.) Japanese particularly feared that the Americans would humiliate the Emperor, and even execute him as a war criminal.


Quote:Navy Secretary James Forrestal termed the intercepted messages "real evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war." "With the interception of these messages," notes historian Alperovitz (p. 177), "there could no longer be any real doubt as to the Japanese intentions; the maneuvers were overt and explicit and, most of all, official acts. Koichi Kido, Japan's Lord Privy Seal and a close advisor to the Emperor, later affirmed: "Our decision to seek a way out of this war, was made in early June before any atomic bomb had been dropped and Russia had not entered the war. It was already our decision."
Seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy -- myself.

Inuit Proverb

Reply
#32
RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
(June 3, 2017 at 9:00 pm)Shell B Wrote: War and terrorism are different by definition. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of war, not terrorism. Just because something is terrifying does not make it terrorism. That said, it was horrific.

And retrofitting today's mores and information on people in the past is just weird.
Reply
#33
RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
(June 3, 2017 at 9:09 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:
(June 3, 2017 at 9:00 pm)Shell B Wrote: War and terrorism are different by definition. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of war, not terrorism. Just because something is terrifying does not make it terrorism. That said, it was horrific.

And retrofitting today's mores and information on people in the past is just weird.

Yeah, it's just bizarre. This seems very much like a "look away from the bomb-y Muslims" thread.
Reply
#34
RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
(June 3, 2017 at 9:13 pm)Shell B Wrote:
(June 3, 2017 at 9:09 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: And retrofitting today's mores and information on people in the past is just weird.

Yeah, it's just bizarre. This seems very much like a "look away from the bomb-y Muslims" thread.

But my specialization is the opening and closing moves of the US participation in WWII, so I'm not even breaking a sweat.
Reply
#35
RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
(June 3, 2017 at 9:16 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:
(June 3, 2017 at 9:13 pm)Shell B Wrote: Yeah, it's just bizarre. This seems very much like a "look away from the bomb-y Muslims" thread.

But my specialization is the opening and closing moves of the US participation in WWII, so I'm not even breaking a sweat.

It's a fascinating topic. There was a lot more going on than just Pearl Harbor and the nukes.
Reply
#36
RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
(June 2, 2017 at 9:58 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Sorry, no matter what terrible thing you want to call Hiroshima, and most of which I'll agree on..one thing it wasn't...was terrorism.  That's just ignorant.

Because we didn't drop one  slice of baloney on Japan we dropped two slices of baloney on Japan being Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 
We were like hey Japan surrender already they were like no we were like please and they said no.
We were like okay then diplomacy has failed load up the B29's with baloney and we made them surrender because
fuck if they wanted to be wiped off the face of the earth.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization join today. 


Code:
<iframe width="100%" height="450" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/255506953&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true"></iframe>
Reply
#37
RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
(June 3, 2017 at 9:41 pm)Shell B Wrote:
(June 3, 2017 at 9:16 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: But my specialization is the opening and closing moves of the US participation in WWII, so I'm not even breaking a sweat.

It's a fascinating topic. There was a lot more going on than just Pearl Harbor and the nukes.

Yep. And the Op-20-G and S.I.S. work at the beginning and end are well worth reading. I've put a bit of it online. The original thing that got me going, back in 1965, was the Hearings. I read all forty volumes before I joined the Navy.
Reply
#38
RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
(June 3, 2017 at 10:14 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:
(June 3, 2017 at 9:41 pm)Shell B Wrote: It's a fascinating topic. There was a lot more going on than just Pearl Harbor and the nukes.

Yep. And the Op-20-G and S.I.S. work at the beginning and end are well worth reading. I've put a bit of it online. The original thing that got me going, back in 1965, was the Hearings. I read all forty volumes before I joined the Navy.

Awesome, thanks for the links!
Reply
#39
RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
(June 3, 2017 at 10:20 pm)Shell B Wrote:
(June 3, 2017 at 10:14 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: Yep. And the Op-20-G and S.I.S. work at the beginning and end are well worth reading. I've put a bit of it online. The original thing that got me going, back in 1965, was the Hearings. I read all forty volumes before I joined the Navy.

Awesome, thanks for the links!

Start the Hearings with Part 40, it's the summary report. Bread crumbs to interesting parts from there.
Reply
#40
RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
(June 3, 2017 at 2:24 am)Minimalist Wrote: It was a cultural failure.  We did not understand them.  They did not understand us.  John Toland's "The Rising Sun" gives an amazing overview of the multiple fuckups that led to WWII in the Pacific.

It is horrible that even today, humans, as compassionate as we can be, the dark side is that we can also dream up horrible ways to kill each other.

My X wife is Japanese, her grandfather was in the Japanese military.
Reply





Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)