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A Hiroshima Memorial
A Hiroshima Memorial. Friday was the 65th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, an event that that has touched me in many ways.
I never had any doubt for the need to use the bomb in 1945. My father had orders to join his third marine division in Okinawa for the invasion of Japan when it was dropped. If the plan had gone ahead, I would not be writing this letter today. My biochemistry major and math minor at UCLA landed me a summer job as a research assistant at the Nevada nuclear test site in the late sixties where I got to know the men who worked with Dr. Robert Oppenheimer to build the bomb. There, “yields” meant millions killed, not interest paid.
When I first landed in Japan, I made a beeline straight to the Atomic Bomb Victims Hospital to interview survivors 30 years after the attack. I listened to stories about people vaporized, but whose image was etched into solid granite, and the rivers that were choked with countless bodies. Textile patterns were permanently burned into human skin, the light colors reflecting radiation, while dark ones absorbed it. Some 50 of the city’s 150 doctors were killed instantly, and the rest were seriously injured. They were futilely left to treat gamma rays and beta particles with only mercurochrome, or traditional Japanese folk remedies like moxabustion. Tens of thousands showed up at hospitals with no visible injuries, only to die agonizing deaths within the day.
Two weeks after the bomb, everyone’s hair started falling out and immense welts called keloid tumors appeared, classic symptoms of then unknown radiation poisoning. American scientists descended on the city by the hundreds measuring every imaginable parameter with grim precision, such as the heat at ground zero that reached an unbelievable 6,000 degrees, and the melting of ceramic roof tiles to a radius of 1,300 yards. They told the Japanese that no one could live there for 20,000 years. The residents ignored them and moved back in to rebuild as soon as the fires abated.
I met one spry Japanese American woman who grew up in Fresno, California and spoke perfect 1930’s English, but was sent home to Hiroshima to avoid the war. I’ll never forget the massive scars on her forearms where her summer yukata cut off. A barking dog caused her to briefly look away from the curious descending parachute from a lone B-29 overhead, thus saving her face and her eyesight. Her three young children didn’t make it.
For me the experience converted an interesting physics experiment into the greatest source of human misery of all time. As the years went on I met many more Hiroshima survivors, known as bakusha, who after a third shot of Suntory whiskey would talk about the artificial weather the bomb created, the gale force winds and the black rain. Every type of plant strangely flourished after the bomb, but men and women were left sterile, and birth defects skyrocketed. In later years I attended memorial ceremonies where 140,000 candlelit paper boats were placed in the Motoyasu River at night to symbolize the lost souls.
Ironically, those who survived the bomb now have the greatest lifespan of any group in Japan. I guess that if you can survive an atomic bomb, you can handle anything. I’m sure free health care for life and pensions helped too. There was also that one dose of radiation treatment, courtesy of the US government.
Today Hiroshima is a major focus of international pacifist and disarmament groups. The effort is being led in the US by former secretary of state, George Schultz, who has played a key role in cutting American nuclear stockpiles by 75% to 5,113 today. Some 20% of America’s nuclear power is currently generated by plutonium from recycled warheads from the former Soviet Union.
You can learn more about his efforts by visiting the Plowshares Fund at http://www.ploughshares.org/ .To buy John Hersey’s Pulitzer Prize winning Hiroshima, which describes the doomed city immediately after the attack in all its horrific detail, please click here at http://www.amazon.com/Hiroshima-John-Hersey/dp/092389165X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281130125&sr=1-1 . It is not a light summer beach read, but is enlightening and sobering.
To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out-of-consensus analysis, please visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There, you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, and my last two years of research reports available for free. You can also listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio by clicking on “This Week on Hedge Fund Radio” in the upper right corner of my home page.
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Yes, this is exactly correct. My Japanese colleagues tell me they are told in school that it is because a dangerous military government was allowed to attack and run rampant. There is a deep national hazukashi (shame).
But this does not take away the fact that the actual records of the US decision making, the meeting notes and the contemporaneous notes of the participants, show clearly that the Japanese were in fact trying to surrender. They approached neutral third parties to broker a deal, and we have the records of that too. And we know that stopping Stalin, who had been key to winning the war, was now very important... we could not let him take part of Japan and divide it like he had done in Europe.
We want to deny responsibility, it was a simple decision, just to stop the war. But it was a actually a complex decision, and history would be different if it had not been done. There are no excuses necessary, no second guessing... that was the decision for lots of well considered reasons. It's not wrong, nor does it make us somehow "less" to feel our own hazukashi, even if just on the one day a year 100's of thousands died.
Who was this neutral third party? All the way back in Febrauary at Yalta Stalin had already made a secret pact to attack Japan ASAP once concluding the ETO. Money was exchanged. Goodies promised. Part of the agreement had been that America would not oppose Soviet control of Eastern Europe-stabbing Churchill in the back in the process. Not that we could have stopped them, but the fact that we were willing to agree to it.
The "surrender" was just the flailings of desperate men without the authority to act, turning on each other, making offers that the Allies had already jointly agreed not to accept. The Germans had done the same thing. And got the same reply. Only complete surrender was acceptable.
NOT TRUE AT ALL....the Emperor himself was ordering officials to surrender.
#509444
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
NonAgresssion, your link to IHR just debunked most validity you had. IHR is a bogus institute, they do not uphold the rigors of peer review and they are nothing more than an opinion megaphone that can choose how much research and factual backing their claims have. Later.
so are you saying the quotations are made up? Please provide evidence. Their paper isnt original research. you can find the original sources cited in the paper.
Please tell me where the evidence is incorrect and i will gladly tell you that i am wrong and adjust my conclusion....i have no problem with that...ive been wrong before, could be wrong here but I haven found any reason to believe so.
ad hominem attacks are getting old
(interestingly, one of the primary sources cited for the several peace overtures by the Japanese was none other than Murray Rothbard. but feel free to dismiss his work because this is a "bogus institute" and an "opinion megaphone"- ie you dont want to accept the evidence.)
Well said. God bless...
http://www.iwu.edu/~rwilson/people.html
Now there is a image that will bury and render ineffective every Trauma Center across a nuked region. If such facilities did not get wiped out by the next attack.
I have dusted off the old cold war books still in the local library and started to restudy the various information availible against nuclear attack. There are about a dozen of these books that will provide much valuable information. But only a few interested people will read and learn. The rest might have to live through a future terror bomb to learn.
As stated in earlier comment Ronald Takaki's "Hiroshima" is a must read
you are opposed to aggression yet you see the USA as the villain in a war they didn't start and were in fact dragged into years after it started, which was and continues to be a controversial stance.
Where's the outrage against the japanese atrocities?
(I lived in Japan for years and quite liked the younger generation, but the older men would still never admit they 'lost' the war. In their minds they took pity on us and surrendered to save american lives.Thank god they that mentality is dying out.)
1) as with most wars, both sides are villains. i am opposed to the initiation of aggression and both sides have done so.
2) japanese govt atrocities are so well known that i didnt think they were worth going over. They were not the point of my posting.
the US was not "dragged" into the war and there is enough evidence now that this is not a questionable position. Please google Stinnet's Day of Deceit and listen to some interviews of Stinnet and read some articles. FDR was hell bent on getting into the war.
It may be shocking to some that politicians would lie people into war, but it is nothing new and should not be shocking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu7GMMIfvoo&feature=related
Thanks.
From the article:
I never had any doubt for the need to use the bomb in 1945. My father had orders to join his third marine division in Okinawa for the invasion of Japan when it was dropped.
And then this:
For me the experience converted an interesting physics experiment into the greatest source of human misery of all time.
What gives Maddy? Which side of the fence are you really on?
No doubt dropt it, even if it meant Greatest human misery of all time?
What followed lost all it's coherence thereafter.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com
you might watch a cartoon or two...
http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/hiroshima-day-first-us-ambassador-visit-to-nuke-crime-scene/
The effects of the atomic bombings were certainly horrible. But the bombings were necessary to end that terrible war. The blame lies squarely on the military leaders of Japan who started the war.
I hope we never have to use nuclear weapons again. But I know that my country is a moral one at heart and will only do so if there is no other option.
+1 to the ending the war part of your comment, but I don't know what we've really got left in the moral department.
An argument could be made that the US Oil embargo of Japan precipitated Pearl Harbor. Truth is a three-edged sword, your truth, my truth, and the REAL truth.
This is one of the BIG LIES repeated over and over again. I dont blame anyone here for repeating the propaganda, but please, be aware of the facts before you are justifying the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. To be intellectually honest, one must read "Hiroshima" by Ronald Takaki. This is where the following facts come from: 1) Japan was already nearing defeat before the bombing. Prior to the nuclear bombing, on July of 1945 the Joint War Plans Committee was confident of victory. 'Already, we have the elimination of practically all Japanese sea traffic between their main islands and points to southward Shanghai.' Japans main army was in China cutoff from supplies and reinforcements, targeted for total destruction by Chinese and Russian foreces then mobilizing." 2) Many high ranking officials did not agree the bombing was necessary or right General Eisenhower said the bomb should not be used because the Japanese were "already defeated," were ""at the moment seeking some wasy to surrender with "a minimum loss of face," and was "no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives." General Douglas MacArthur said it was "completely unnecessary from a military point of view," and the Japanese were "already beaten." 3) The Japanese were already trying to surrender The Japanese had already proposed a surrender plan, that the Americans were fully aware of, whereby they would surrender with the only condition of keeping the position of their emperor. THe US refused sayng they needed and "unconditional surrender." and then dropped the bomb. Oh yeah, then after the bombs were dropped the US let them surrender and keep the emperor anway. THere is more info in this book and from others but i suppose most will read this post, feel uncomfortable with the conclusions, and then go bac the the "we had to do it" position.
The war against Japan was, perhaps even more than that against the Nazis, a gutter-fight. The Japanese political elite was cowed by the fanatics in the
army, with politicians suspected of cowardice either kidnapped or asassinated. The army, driven by their code of "bushido" was prepared to fight to the bitter end and was in fact training women and children to fight using the most primitive of weapons, such as spears, to defend their islands, which in no way understates the considerable reserves of men and materiale they had hoarded against an eventual invasion, which they saw coming after the disasters of 1943. The General Staff was prepared to sacrifice millions of their own people to make the assault on Japan as punishing as possible, in the hope the Americans would either quit or negotiate a more honorable peace.
Given the ferocity of the Pacific campaign and the horrific losses suffered by the U.S. and its allies over now-forgotten islands, such as Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Pelelieu, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, what is it about the Japanese conduct that leads anybody to believe they would not have behaved similarly when the U.S. set foot on Honshu? Why would MacArthur or Nimitz risk the life of even one more soldier, sailor, or marine to see what the Japanese were really up to? What about all the Allied prisoners being starved and worked to death, tortured and abused in Japanese POW camps, who were dying like flies every day? Each day of delay to them--mostly boys and young men in their teens and twenties--meant fewer were likely to ever go home again. What if you were floating in some assault ship about to hit some japanese beach, or your son or brother or husband was? Would you have had any doubt as to whether to use the atomic bomb?
The American public was sick of war by 1945. The rate of conscription was increasing, not decreasing, even as the european war was winding down. The U.S. military viewed the atomic bomb as a weapon that could help achieve this goal, and at the same time realized that the Germans and the Japanese would not have hesitated for one second to use it on us if they had the chance (the Germans had a considerable quantity of enriched uranium but had not been able to build a bomb, mostly thanks to their persecution of Jewish physicists like Einstein who came to the U.S. in the thirties.) Revisionists apply their own prejudices, formed by decades of nuclear-age angst, to a tableau where there were no assumptions about atomic weapons at all except that they were really big and powerful bombs that could deliver gigantic firepower against the enemies of the U.S. and yet risk a tiny fraction of the aircraft and flight crews required in a conventional raid.
You must put yourself in the place of the political and military leaders of the time before you pass judgement on them. As horrible and regrettable as the loss of life was at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I am convinced that they did save American and Japanese lives and shortened the war by weeks if not months. "What-ifs" are amusing intellectual exercizes, but don't begin to address the reality that U.S. politicians and military planners had to contend with in 1945.
This post is factually incorrect on two key fronts
1) The Japanese already were trying to surrender.
2) Nimitz and MacArthur were against nuking japan because the Japanese were more or less defeated by the time the bombs were dropped. (i only posted quotes of MacArthur but NImitz has similar ones.)
please see above comment
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/hiroshima-memorial#comment-509034
to your 1) no, different factions were trying to cut their own self preserving deals. Deals that the Allies had already agree were not acceptable. see my mulitude of posts all over the place.
There was no deal that the controlling militarists could make. The Allies were going to hang them as war criminals. Not much room for negotiating.
2) I seem to recall Patton wanting to rearm the Nazis and attack Russia. And the same MacArthur being removed from command for wanting to nuke the Chinese in Korea. So I guess just being a military big shot isn't everything, and that's why the US has civilian control over the military, so in the end, it isn't their call.
as to your points.2
1) IT was the Emperor himself who was ordering officials to explore how to end the war. See post here http://www.zerohedge.com/article/hiroshima-memorial#comment-509444
2) My point is that the Japanese were decimated, the war was nearly over and MacArthur and Eisenhower knew it. Cities were bombed "back to the stone age" as General LEmay said. The Japanese airforce was blown to bits and the US had free reign in the skies and made use of it by firebombing cities to burnt rubble. The place was an unimaginable hellhole and huge numbers of people were already homeless and starving.
"...and that's why the US has civilian control over the military"
Hahahahahah! Oh please, stop. Since when? Can you truly be so utterly duped?
1) On Okinawa, the Japanese garrison of 100,000 men fought to the death, (heroically?) receiving 96% casualties, and sank 35 ships, destroyed 250 tanks, and inflicted 15,000 casualties on the US. For perspective, in two months, this one battle caused 5% of all US KIA for the entire war.
2) over two million Japanese soldiers were based on the home islands, and over one million more were still deployed in China
3) over one thousand kamakazi planes had been held in reserve awaiting for our invasion
4) if the Okinawa ratios held, casualties could be expected as no less the X10 the previous losses.
5) several dozen Kakajima-Kikka JET FIGHTERS were nearing completion
6) Unit 731 BIOLOGICAL WARFARE unit had killed tens of thousands of Chinese civilians in an orchestrated genocide. Plans had been drawn up on deploying the weapons to America, but were awaiting the development of:
8) the K-200 6 engine JET POWERED BOMBER
9) By agreement at Yalta, in exchange for promising Stalin that the Allies would NOT make a last minute side armistace with the Nazis, and nothing less than TOTAL SURRENDER would be accepted, Stalin agreed to nothing less to be accepted from the Japanese.
10) In order to secure Stalins commitment to go to war against Japan once the ETO had been settled, the US GAVE EASTERN EUROPE AWAY, promised return of several islands that Russia had lost in the Russo/Sino war, gave away Chinese territory, and GAVE Russia Tens of millions $$ in ships, munitions, and equipment. THAT DEAL WAS SEALED, and nothing no one could say would break that deal.
11) If your going to be a Monday morning revisionist, learn the history first
12) War sucks. and this was TOTAL WAR. That is why you use all possible diplomacy first, and if you start, look out, we are going to hit you wityh everything we have.
well if you know better than MacArthur, Eisenhower, and even Nimitz...
you didnt address any of my points
the point being that the US militiary had the home island surrounded and could starve them...in other words, there was no need to invade....and the Japanese were already trying to surrender.
"the point being that the US militiary had the home island surrounded and could starve them"
So you would have preferred the starvation of an entire race of people and continued military operations in order to make sure they starved?
Spoken like an elite pacifist who's never missed a meal in his life.
ok, so looks like ill have to repeat it again for the third time: the Japanese had already tried to surrender through the soviet unions (ambasador if i remember correctly). so no, they didnt even have to starve them. there only condition was to keep their emperor. but roosevelt long ago started this unconditional surrender slogan and it had such a ring to it he wouldnt back down. In case your wondering, they got tokeep the emperor in the end AFTER they were nuked anyway.
but nice try to make yourself look like the humanitarian for advocating the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people.
And YOU didn't bother to read MY post. A handful of low level officials made an unoffficial offer to the Soviets. An offer that the Japanese military ruling council would not have accepted. The "surrender" was really just a cessation, the government would stay, and a couple people would get picked to take the fall. A major sticking point of the agreement wasn't just the emperor, it was the military ruling council who were wanted for war crimes!! Not too likely they were going to agree to anything, since they were the ones to be tagged "it".
The unconditional surrender wasn't just a slogan. On several occasions high level Nazi officials had made offers to the WEST for a conditional peace treaty with ONLY the WEST, including one that offered a joint ALLIED/NAZI pact to ATTACK RUSSIA!! Stalin was very afraid that the capitalist Allies would cut a seperate deal with the Nazis. At Yalta, FDR promised Stalin that there would be no seperate deals-for ANY of the AXIS powers.
Also included in the Yalta agreements were a huge prize bag of things for Stalin in return for attacking Japan, including giving away things that weren't ours!! Wrapping up the war before Stalin could fulfill his end of the agreement would have negated the deal. Things like giving away sovereign Chinese territory, promising Russia EASTERN EUROPE, dozens of lend lease ships, hundreds of planes, $$$$.
Soviet ambassador? You don't mean Molotov? He's the one who negotiated at Yalta!! The Soviets were playing the Japanese for time in order to redeploy their men and get their piece of the pie.
As for you starvation theory. No. and more no. peasants have no place in a feudal system. Hundreds of thousands, even millions would have died before making an impact. It was ROUTINE for Japanese garrisons to take 90% casualites without surrendering. BTW, ever heard of all of those Japanese soldiers that they found DECADES after the war was over, still "holding their positions"? Just how long do you think that blockade was going to take?
And a final word on military necessity. There ain't no such thing as a minor skirmish when its your butt taking fire. And if you had been drawn #1 man in the landing barge, your attitude about the decision to bomb would be much different. No one wants to be the last KIA of the last bullet fired.
And America was getting exhausted of the war. There had been strikes. Riots. Martial law. Buried in history now, but it happened. How long could America keep sending home those telegrams?
thats an impressive amount of knowledge you have there bob. I appreciate you not just digressing to ad hominems like others have(aside from the monday morning historian comment :)
Although, i think you must reexamine the evidence and reconsider your conclusion as your assertions are not true.
But it is not true that only factions wanted to surrender and that it was limited. IT WAS THE EMPEROR HIMSELF:
"By mid-June, six members of Japan's Supreme War Council had secretly charged Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo with the task of approaching Soviet Russia's leaders "with a view to terminating the war if possible by September." On June 22 the Emperor called a meeting of the Supreme War Council, which included the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the leading military figures. "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers," said Emperor Hirohito. "We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will strive now to study the ways and the means to conclude the war. In doing so, try not to be bound by the decisions you have made in the past."
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."
After reading this, does it sound reasonable to THEN nuke TWO Japanese cities and kill hundreds of thousands to ultimately make nearly the same deal as before? Please reply.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
Thank you for that information. Like most complex issues, no matter how many layers are peeled, the onion keeps stinking.
This tale is very similar to that of Germany. During the course of the war, various levels of Nazi officials had attempted to negotiate deals to end the western war, which was not even part of the overall German vision. At first, as arrogant tryrants to be, offering peace to a battered England for just the promise of fealty. How would the American public have reacted knowing that the ETO could have been over in 1940 without the US ever being involved? There would have been a German ruled EU 40 years early. Later of course as events unfolded, the initiatives devolved into the scramblings of desperate, trying to save themselves. To all of these overtures, the Allied response remained unchanged-unconditional surrender.
So, from the standpoint of consistancy, the treatment of Japan was no different than Germany.
The Japanese moves had some authority, but still lacked support of the military class. At what point could anyone but the Emporer have removed Tojo and the top officials without an army revolt? If the Emperor was truely behind them, then, judging from the speed of action, his resolve must have been tenative. For gosh sakes, he was the EMPEROR. You know, god-king. People were committing suicide for him. He could get on the radio at a moments notice and COMMANDED the military to surrender on the spot. Or was he trying to play both sides of his government?
The Japanese involvement of the Soviets shows how out of touch that they were to the situation. The Soviets had long since agreed to join the PTO, and to the concluding conditions. Allied victory was a foregone conclusion. But saying Japan had already lost is to ignore that minor detail of making it happen remained, along with how many people would have to be killed to do it.
Various delicate negotiations had been conducted for nearly a year. The Tehran conference, Yalta, and Potsdam. Not so much about how to win the war, but the shape of the aftermath. A Japanese surrender would had to have been officially accepted by all of the Allies. A complete overhaul of the plans and treaties. A spontaneous capitulation for anything less then the stated conditions would have undermined a year of a carefully crafted balance of post war power treaties. The very people the Japanese ministers were asking for assistance, Stalin and Molotov, had already signed on to carving up the Japanese pie, with not only the blessings of, but material support from the western Allies!! When the Soviets needed men to face down the Nazis, they conveniently signed a nonaggression pact. That need was now over. The worst thing that could have happened to Soviet postwar designs, not only in Asia, but Europe as well, would have been a premature Japanese surrender. Making it all the more important for the US to end the war quickly. The fate of millions of Chinese and east Europeans could have been saved if the US could get out of its commitments. Coupled with the political aspects of the homefront, strategic exhaustion, and facing an excruciating military campaign, anything that could shorten the war could be viewed as relief.
The decision to bomb had political as well as military dimensions. that's why war is called politics by other means. The two have always been intertwined. You can run the Dresden bombing through the same process and find the same implications.
Interesting to see more layers of onion peeled off, but short of an authenticated letter from Truman stating he just wanted to kill a bunch a people for no reason, the evidence has not substantially changed. Sorry, after it is all said and done, the decision to proceed was the right one.
My support of the bombing is based on the conceptual framework in place at that time. I do not support the indiscriminate bombing of civilians as a military strategy. It was a decision made in a given time and place. It, along with the confluence of numerous factors, worked. That cannot be argued. The Axis started a Total War. We fought back with nearly every means available. Short of the exposure of brazen lies or fraud, attempting to dissect the individual decisions really is MMQ. If the attempt is to expand knowledge of human interaction and gain insight on how to proceed in the future, it can be a useful excercise. Unfortunetly, many are just using this terrible event to advance an agenda.
Thank you for bringing a thought out discussion supported by facts.
as a side note, its real sad that there are this many people here on ZH repeating these myths and have problems seeing things in a different light. Havent most of us learned here in our investing and other areas that the majority view is suspect and EVERYTHING should be questioned.
apparently, mass murders (ie war) is a sacred cow even for the "independent thinkers" here on ZH.
just to let you know, I not only "hear" what you said in your original post here, I also know it to be as close to truth about the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japanese citizens as we'll probably ever get. I've read of how it was (just another) need to experiment with the sociopath's inventions on humans, and it surprises me not, in the light of all the unreal poisons that are used in the name of "war" that miltarised men seek to test.
the other day I listened to a Vietnam Vet describe the decades of ill health he has suffered - he lives in his wheelchair, says his body has open "holes - they plug up one and another appears" - painful, gaping sores, for decades. . . he's not the first I've had occasion to hear tell of first-hand experiences of front line wars, all for the elite profiteering at the expense of humans and their environment.
those Vietnam Vets are in some ways fortunate to have had some kind of medical care and financial support in their years of suffering - those young men and women exposed to the toxic depleted uranium in endless Middle Eastern undeclared wars will never have the luxury of extended care. . . small wonder the military suicide rate is at a record high.
so yes, at least one person "hears" you NonAggressionPrinciple - helpless to stop the forward momentum of the death machines, and the lust to kill.
I know, the revisionists we have running around today don't even have enough smarts to learn the real history before they start twisting it.
It's amazing to me that we forget things so quickly. We forget the huge internet bubble in a matter of a couple of years. I suppose it's not that strange that we forget about the germans, japs, and russians in a matter of a few decades.
Regardless, because we have ignorant people running around, and they seem to be voting, we're doomed to repeat the last century over and over and over again.
What a load of crap; "History Written by the Victors" BS.
The US cowardly nuclear attacks on two civilian populations were more likely designed to discourage the USSR or China from making an attempt on Japan. It was merely a bonus that the Japanese capitulated after the attack, which in all actuality was what the Japanese were ready to do anyway by the time the US developed its first nuclear weapon. But boys need to try out their toys, brutal or not, so the US rushed to get one operational before their last teetering adversary had the chance to say 'Uncle Sam'.
Either that or everyone who fought against them knew how determined and courageous the Japanese soldier was and realized that they would have to suffer egregious losses if they wanted to subdue them in their homeland with conventional weapons and traditional 'feet on the ground' tactics of invasion. So instead the US orchestrated a brace of the most craven acts of terrorism, and I am using that word correctly, on innocent civilians.
The firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden are two more examples of this type of gutlessness perp'd by the allies. My Grandfather was RAF during WWII, and he never got over those attacks for the rest of his life. Not to mention his enduring anguish from watching his colleagues die day after day at the hands of the Luftwaffe. My other Grandfather was in an allied tank unit, and fared little better. By the end of the war both were fully aware that it wasn't the soldiers fighting against them or the innocent civilians murdered in terrorist campaigns that were guilty, but the plutocrats comfortably nestled well in the rear with the gear that sent them to die for the profit of their cronies. End of.
All told, that war was a prime example of how every power in pursuit of imperialistic expansionism, and that means practically all the nations involved (not just the losers) will go to heinous lengths to increase their sphere of influence. IE all were guilty of warcrimes.
So please refrain from spouting indoctrinated rote based on 'woulda coulda shoulda' rationalizations for extreme acts of cowardice written by the 'victors'. They all sucked.
Regards
one of the most ignorant posts i have ever read on this site.
"The firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden are two more examples of this type of gutlessness perp'd by the allies."
I hear the Nazi's were the perfect gentleman during the war. Excluding the holocaust ofcourse.
Right back atcha.
Did I say any of the axis were 'perfect gentlemen'? No, I certainly didn't. So holy shit can you miss a point. WHOOSH.
The whole 'they were evil so our evil is justified' meme is not a valid argument. By that line of reasoning if a sociopath murders your child, you're justified in beheading his wife and kids in front of him in an attempt to get him to 'change his ways'. Makes no diff to him, he's a sociopath, but it sure does have an affect on the innocents and their families.
If you can't see how ignorant, and I use that word correctly, it is to defend such cowardice then you are indeed a completely lost and hopeless rube.
Hmm history rewritten.
Do me a favour and go to Hiroshima war memorial, you will like the propaganda that is sprouted through that peice of history when surveying the carnage that is photographed throughout the museum.
It will be obvious when you listen to the diatribe that the 'rewritten' reason that the bomb was dropped was not due to the Japanese agression, nor their insane attempts to control the Pacific asian region with bloodthirtsy force, draconian slave labour and ignorance of basic rights under the UN convention, but simply an arms race between America and the US.
When a government destroys history books and teaches that propaganda in their schools one wonders what they really learned from their suicidal escapades. Obviously nothing and they still deny a lot of what transpired in China and Korea.
So before sprouting off on your tangent learn the facts. One day you may realise the folly of your ways but I doubt it. Ignorance is what ignorance does!
Would it influence your ridiculous statement if you knew that the Japanese Navy had an atomic bomb project that was close to producing a bomb? The Japanese army nuclear project was destroyed in our much more inhumane firebombing of Tokyo. If you knew the obvious fact that the Japanese killed more than 750,000 civilians in Nanking?
It ended the war early and saved innumerable lives, many Japanese.
I thought the Japs murdered about 300,000. after they took control of the city. The GIs who celebrated VE day were about to be sent to the invasion of Japan. Where they and a few million Japs were going to die.
>If you knew the obvious fact that the Japanese killed more than 750,000 civilians in Nanking?
Why is this an obvious fact?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
I would just like to know how it is possible to kill 750,000 civilians out of 250,000 civilians,
or the invalidity of the international research headed by John Rabe.
@GoinFawr
+1000
Tell us, is ignorance really bliss? Reading the tone of your post, it doesn't sound like it. Just to help remove your suffering a bit: The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives and avoided suffering. The destruction, death, and maiming resulting from an invastion of the Japanese mainland was avoided by means of the far few deaths and much reduced destruction and suffering that resulted from Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
To your point about the USSR: If one side effect was Stalin, the single human with the most blood on his hands still alive at the time, deciding to chill the fuck out, wasn't that a good thing? That would be a yes or no type of question. Hint: the answer is yes.
"The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives and avoided suffering"
Oxymoronic conjecture doesn't justify the murder of tens of thousands of women and children. Sorry.
Slants got what was coming to them. Camel jockeys are next.
Junk all the porn avatars. If you want your porn, get it elsewhere. I come for serious discussion on financial issues, not naked pictures of women.
Would love to see some 'standards' by ZH enforced. I can't view ZH with my kids around without the fear of them seeing the porn.
Make an effort to get a life will you? What are your kids running up to your screen with magnifying glasses?
Aye. And your avatar beats the shite out of Homer Simpon dressed as Bond down the barrel of a gun at 72dpi. Oh my god maybe I'm thinking of something original now for ZH: higher rez avatars!!! /drunk
6,000 degrees 2X.
Maybe he's never heard of the Battan Death March or the Rape of Nanking or the subjugation of Korea for decades or the infamous Unit 731.
Yeah, the Japanese of the time were some real humanitarian types.
And yes, if the bombs had not been dropped I too would not be writing this. If it required dropping twenty more it would have been worth it to extinguish this evil for good.
Evil is what it is and you do what you gotta do.