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Dropping "The Bomb" On Hiroshima And Nagasaki Was Never Justified
Submitted by Naji Dahi via TheAntiMedia.org,
August 6th and 9th of 2015 mark the 70th anniversary of the U.S. dropping two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was the first and only time a state used a nuclear device on cities (or civilians) of another state. Some conservative estimates put the immediate death toll of the two bombs at 200,000 people. This is more than the total number of American soldiers killed in the Pacific front of World War II.
Since the bombs were dropped, the U.S. government, U.S. high school history texts, and the American public have asserted that dropping the bombs was necessary. According to one review of American textbooks by Satoshi Fujita, an assistant professor of U.S. modern history at Meiji University,
“…most of the textbooks published by the early 1980s carried the U.S. government’s official view that the nuclear attacks allowed the U.S. troops to avert the invasion of Japan’s mainland and minimize American casualties, thus contributing to an early conclusion of the war.”
American politicians have continued to espouse this view. Primary among them was Harry S. Truman, the one-term president responsible for making the decision to drop the bombs in August of 1945. In his 1955 memoirs, Truman claimed the bombs saved half a million American lives. Truman insisted he felt no remorse and bragged that “he never lost any sleep over that decision,” while simultaneously referring to the Japanese as “savages, ruthless, merciless, and fanatic.” By 1991, George H.W. Bush claimed dropping the bombs saved millions of American lives. Historian Peter Kuznick sums up the ever-increasing number of American lives saved due to these actions:
“…from the War Department’s 1945 prediction of 46,000 dead to Truman’s 1955 insistence that General George Marshall feared losing a half million American lives to Stimson’s 1947 claim of over 1,000,000 casualties to George H.W. Bush’s 1991 defense of Truman’s ‘tough calculating decision, [which] spared millions of American lives,’[11] to the 1995 estimate of a crew member on Bock’s Car, the plane that bombed Nagasaki, who asserted that the bombing saved six million lives—one million Americans and five million Japanese.”
Twenty years ago (the 50th anniversary of the bombings) when the Smithsonian Museum tried to create a thought-provoking display about Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima), the Senate threw a temper tantrum and passed a resolution condemning the move. The resolution stated that
“…the Enola Gay during World War II was momentous in helping to bring World War II to a merciful end, which resulted in saving the lives of Americans and Japanese.”
Of course, none of these figures about saved American lives are true. When President Truman was contemplating dropping the bomb, he consulted a panel of experts on the number of American soldiers that would be killed if the U.S. launched an invasion of the two main Japanese islands. According to historian Christian Appy,
“[Truman] did…ask a panel of military experts to offer an estimate of how many Americans might be killed if the United States launched the two major invasions of the Japanese home islands…Their figure: 40,000 – far below the half-million he would cite after the war. ”[emphasis added]
Americans are socialized to believe that dropping the bombs was necessary to end the war. As recently as January 2015, a Pew poll found that 56% of Americans believed dropping the two atomic devices was justified. Only 34% said it was not justified. This American attitude is understandable given the downplaying of Japanese deaths and the exaggeration of American lives saved in high school history books.
In spite of this public perception, dropping the nuclear bombs was totally unnecessary from a military standpoint. America’s leading generals voiced their concerns before and after the bombs were dropped. General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Western Europe, reacted to the news in a way that contradicts politicians’ narratives:
“During his [Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson] recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives ,” he said. [emphasis added]
General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Pacific, was not even consulted about the use of the bomb. He was only notified two days before the first bomb was dropped. When he was informed he thought “‘…it was completely unnecessary from a military point of view.’ MacArthur said that the war might ‘end sooner than some think.’ The Japanese were ‘already beaten.’”
Tough, cigar-smoking “hawk,” General Curtis LeMay—who was responsible for the firebombing of Japanese cities—was also disappointed with the decision to drop the bomb. In an exchange with reporters he said,
“The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. [emphasis added]”
“You mean that, sir? Without the Russians and the atomic bomb?” one journalist asked.
“The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all,” LeMay replied.
Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, sent out the following public statement: “The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan [emphasis added].”
While Eisenhower, MacArthur, LeMay, and Nimitz believed the dropping of the bombs to be unnecessary, Chief of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy went even further, insisting that even the contemplated invasion of Japan was unnecessary to end the war. He said,
“I was unable to see any justification…for an invasion of an already thoroughly defeated Japan. My conclusion, with which the naval representatives agreed, was that America’s least expensive course of action was to continue to intensify the air and sea blockade…I believe that a completely blockaded Japan would then fall by its own weight. [emphasis added]”
At the conclusion of the war in the Pacific, President Truman appointed a panel of 1000 experts to study the conflict. One third of the experts were civilians and two-thirds were military. The panel issued its report, entitled “United States Strategic Bombing Survey”—a 108 volume publication on the Pacific front. The survey makes the following damning conclusion about the necessity of dropping the the atomic bombs and invading Japan:
“Nevertheless, it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945,…Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. [emphasis added]”
Even the Japanese leaders knew they were defeated. They were even secretly willing to negotiate an unconditional surrender. According to the survey, there was
“…a plan to send Prince Konoye to Moscow as a special emissary with instructions from the cabinet to negotiate for peace on terms less than unconditional surrender, but with private instructions from the Emperor to secure peace at any price.”
If dropping the bombs was not necessary, and if Japan was even willing to contemplate an unconditional surrender, then why were the bombs dropped at all? One reason referenced by several historians was to project American power against the future enemy in the Cold War, the U.S.S.R. As the Christian Science Monitor noted in 1992,
“Gregg Herken…observes…that ‘responsible traditional as well as revisionist accounts of the decision to drop the bomb now recognize that the act had behind…’a possible diplomatic advantage concerning Russia.’ Yale Prof. Gaddis Smith writes: ‘It has been demonstrated that the decision to bomb Japan was centrally connected to Truman’s confrontational approach to the Soviet Union.’”[emphasis added]
Secondly, there was a rather large incentive to use the bomb—to test its effectiveness. On that subject, the most succinct quote comes from Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet. He said, “[The scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before.”
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Manhattan Project (the project to build the bomb) cost the U.S. an estimated $1,889,604,000 (in 1945 dollars) through December 31, 1945. That comes out to $25,051,739,964.00 in today’s dollars. The Center goes on to add:
“Weapons were created to be used. By 1945, the bombing of civilians was already an established practice. In fact, the earlier U.S. firebombing campaign of Japan, which began in 1944, killed an estimated 315,922 Japanese, a greater number than the estimated deaths attributed to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
From a purely numbers perspective, the detonation of the atomic bombs killed fewer people than the firebombing of the 67 Japanese cities with napalm. The sick logic of war is this: having killed close to 316,000 Japanese people by firebombing cities, killing 100,000-200,000 more is just as justifiable.
It is clear from the recitation of some of the evidence that the dropping of the atomic bombs was not necessary to end the war. It was not necessary to obviate the U.S. invasion of Japan (which in and of itself was not necessary) and it was not necessary for an unconditional surrender.
It is time for the United States to stop believing that the infamous nuclear attacks were justified. On that front, there is some hope. Back in 1991, 63% of Americans believed dropping the bombs was justified, compared to 56% today. Clearly, the numbers are heading in the right direction.
The U.S. government could easily nudge public opinion in the appropriate direction by issuing a public apology for the dropping of these weapons of mass destruction on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.S. is capable of doing this. In 1988, the U.S. Senate voted to compensate Japanese Americans for interning them during WWII. In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed a formal letter of apology. The U.S. did the right thing by apologizing to Japanese Americans. It is time to extend this apology to the entire Japanese nation.
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Thank you for reiterating the truth about this murderous country called America.
America has always been a dangerous, war-mongering country. The only difference is that now we can read about it on the internet whereas before you had to find and read a book or know someone connected to the facts.
Our overlords' machine is wearing out, time is on our side.
Fuck you troll. My father was in WWII and told me what the Japanese did to prisoners. My old landlord was the sole survivor of a Japanese pow camp by garroting the guard and escaping. His buddy accompanying him died from the brutal treatment. Things changed after the bomb.
There are few alive that can tell their tales. I do not forget.
Miffed
My father-in-law was an Iwo Jima survivor. He saw the war as an enlisted marine, and he saw a lot. He thought the atomic bomb was a great idea for ending the war. He was there.
I don't believe for a second that Japan was going to surrender.
If you are losing a war and you are planning to surrender then you surrender immediately before you incurr any more damage.
Why would Japan wait another month before surrendering, if they had already decided to surrender? Did they enjoy being bombed?
"We'll surrender at the end of the month, lets just sit through another three weeks of being bombed first" - Bullshit!
Does the Author of this piece think that the rape of Nanking was justified?
It was well worth it. Hell, I wish we had done 8 at once to make Stalin shit his pants.
The fucker who wrote this should be glad that Truman was a socialist pussy and it wasn't dropped on Tokyo.
It was completely justified as it saved lives in total.
So let me get this straight. The citizens of ZH don't trust a single data point the government tells us EXCEPT the one about the number of US casualties saved by dropping the bomb? You all know the traitorous actions taken by FDR to involve us in the war. You know that the military-industrial complex was going to profit from the war.
The problem with the stance taken by many here is that the "saved lives" number is different depending on who you ask. Which is it? 40,000 or 1 million? Some say 1 million on each side. I had an uncle in the war, my dad served during the Korean War. I understand the sacrifice many made. However, innocent lives have to mean something or humanity is lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
Educate yourself.
My earlier comments stand. The Japanese were asking for surrender. The Allied Powers wouldn't give it to them until they had extracted their full pound of flesh.
Uchtdorf, I guess you would rather believe revisionist history rather than the personal accounts of many that were actually there. Politicians and generals rarely if ever speak the truth. Both then and now. I will accept the many personal accounts I have heard rather than this article full of small snippets of quotes from questionable authorities. Perhaps you would rather let the baptists rewrite Mormon history to suit their views?
I get so sick of hearing about the "heroes" of WWII. A bunch of fucking cowards more like it. They could have taken DC and reestablished a republic but instead they chose to kill innocent people halfway across the world to expand the empire.
Also, no generation gets sole authority to write and interpret history, just like no media source has the sole authority to dictate current events. So all this "you can't be a revisionist" is complete BS.
And one last thing to really fuck with your minds, if you have any. If the Nazis were so bad, why weren't they using chemical weapons on everyone? They could have easily dropped them on London and other cities when they had air superiority, but they didn't. Why don't you all grow a pair and realize propaganda has been around for a long, long time in this country.
The #NothingHappenedBeforeMe Stay-Puft Marshmallow pussies are out in full force on this one ...
Let me break this down just once for you.
Revisionist history is the FIRST refuge of the ignorant, incompetent jag-offs of the world. It is not new or original or edgy. It is the hallmark of the mental midget (including dictators like Pol Pot) over the last 5,000 years.
Excellent company you're choosing, twinks.
For those interested in a factual counter to the horseshit, here's one of the better ones.
http://www.pjtv.com/series/afterburner-with-bill-whittle-56/from-the-archives-jon-stewarts-stupid-nuclear-commentary-1808/
Fuck you filth.
THE TITLE OF RUTHLESS GOES TO UNCLE FUCKING SATAN WHO FIREBOMED DRESDEN AND THESE TWO JAPANESE CITIES.
Dropping the "Bomb"s and torpedos on Pearl Harbor was never justified either.
What goes around comes around. If I wanted this liberal guilt trip evil America nonsense I'd just turn on PBS. There is nothing on this month but A-bomb propaganda.
Go fucking run to PBS then.
Read Iris Chang's book Rape of Nanking and tell us about the poor little Japs. They were animals and they needed a sharp education to bring them back into civilisation.
You literally make me sick. I rarely say that.
I've read that book. Its an accurate appraisal of human behavior. NOT japanese bahavior. Like Gaius says, read up about Dresden and you'll see who the real enemy is; your precious little propaganda-fueled candyland you have inside your head will not survive the apocalypse (the great unveiling) when you realize most of the holohoax has also been fabricated. The US is not the good guy- i promise you.
Let's cut to the chase, pussies.
WAR is the most obscene thing humans regularly engage in. More civilians are killed in ANY war than soldiers - this is true throughout recorded history.
And it is only getting worse.
Yet all you SJW pansies screech about how EVIL the things the U.S. has done and how iti is all a conspiracy and only YOU can see the truth and ...
Come an economic collapse, YOU will be the first ones raped & murdered - right next to anyone foolish enough to depend on you for "protection" because you know nothing about reality or the fact that the person next to you nodding their head in agreement is thinking,
"I should kill this fool first when the shit hits the fan so I can take what I want before the crowd arrives."
And spare me your macho, bullshit "I'm ready" nonsense ... I grew up among the old fashioned mafia where those fuckers were ruthless & prepared - and so many of THEM are now dead you could build a walkway to Sicily with the bodies.
A lot of you loons are just anti-American. The bombs were justified. Japan had raped the entire Pacific. Truman did what was necessary. Enough said.
i agree. the japanese would have never ever ever ever surrendered until every man woman and child was dead. if you don't think those bombs were necessary you have no idea about the japanese.
Don't you think they would have carpet bombed tokyo for months before a single soldier stepped on the mainland? Besides, it was when the Russians enetered the war that the Japanese said "OH FUCK! The Russians could be in Tokyo in days!"
Didn't I read some where about a total European and American economic blockade on Japan leading up to the war? As someone has said, what comes around goes around.
Oh GOD NO! NOT A BLOCKADE!!!
(is that anything like sanctions on Iran?)
NUKE EM ALL!!
LET DROP THE BIG ONE NOW!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QbUSjnhv6M
the bomb was never dropped. ever.
Maybe we were out of bombs.
Maybe we were out of just about everything.
Who knows?
It was 70 years ago.
Wow....what tell this comment section is.
And so many close minded, dim-wited, xenophobic, un-informed comments....
America is truly fucked....
ORI, that has been apparent for a long time for those outside the goldfish-bowl of the USA.
The fact of the matter is that the USA declared war on Japan before Pearl Harbor by imposing an oil embargo on Japan.
http://www.theamericancause.org/patwhydidjapan.htm
Not a perfect piece, but it summarizes some key points very well.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/McCollum/index.html
The US is the biggest terrorist state of the world. And I dont give a shit if someones grandpoppy went to war and saw a lot of horrible things. The sad truth is that the dumbest sheep are those who take up weapons against others based on lies of their leaders. I am no pacifist but I will not fight for a cause so rotten as that of the USA.
US oil embargo 1941.
Nanking massacre 1937.
Hmmmmm
Why the fuck do the americans think they are JUSTIFIED in taking REVENGE for other countries and people?
It was a fucking war, the soldiers were thaught to be merciless and perform ethnic cleansing on the enemy, just like what happened in Europe too, just on a smaller scale (not in the balcans).
You nation of fat cunts vaporized two civillian cities and are now beating your chest screaming "WE HAD TO, THEY WERE HURTING THE CHINESE".
What a joke. At least the "raped Nanking" wasn't vaporized.
How long until you vaporize Nanking, since China is in your way too now? I'm waiting for the "WE HAD TO VAPORIZE NANKING, THEY RAPED KYOTO IN WW3!"
Seriously mate. jingoism for war, hate the gov. for all else.
Totally dis-ingenous....
And to add to your oil embargo point, THEY KNEW PEARL ARBOUR WAS A-comin'.
Pearl Harbor was a massive false flag, all the good ships had been moved or were out.
America is a joke.
American's are Awwwwl right....
THEY KNEW PEARL ARBOUR WAS A-comin'.
Oh no they did not!!!! 911 neither. Conspiracy talk.
Karen Silkwood died in a single car accident and the findings from H & N would never be used on the global village.
It takes a pillage dontchaknow?
So as someone who had family that fought for both sides in WW2, (German and American) Dresden was payback for the Blitz. I recognize that for what it was. Total unrestricted warfare by Bomber Harris. The second wave of aerial bombing was timed to coincide with the German fire fighting forces coming out of the bunkers to fight the fires. Dresden was a non military target and the historical cultural center of Germany.
I will also state that Adolf Hitler and his military command was responsible for Dresden. Hitler was a meglamaniac who lead the German people on a path to destruction. Germany brought this upon themselves after they invaded poland in 1939.
The German people followed Hitler and the military command had ample opportunity to take him out and failed to do so.
The German people suffered for following a madman and in the last 70 years had done much to atone for their past.
The same cannot be said of the Japanese.
Political intrigue and conpsiracies aside, WW2 was the last war fought with any degree of clarity around sides of good and evil.
"They were animals and they needed a sharp education to bring them back into civilisation" How many US millitary ventures since their war crimes Philippines to the present day does this comment fit?
Look honestly in your own national historic mirror if you really want to get sick!
A blockade securing an UNCONDITIONAL surrender? I somehow doubt that very much. Maybe tht combined with continued firebombing (ie killing more civillians than the nukes did) would have secured that condtion, but otherwise, you can bet there would have been condtions.
Not that that would be a bad thing.
PLEASE!!!!! The WWII deaths were all simply late term abortions. TOTALLY cool. To be celebrated, even. What's a "life" anyway? Who's to say? What is right and wrong is up to the individual. Yada, yada, yada...
I am leftist, hear me whine.
Yeah, right... I'm sure you have wept for all the babies who have been murdered over the past 40 plus years why you built rockets, flipped houses, and played on your garden tractor. I have not wept for the Germans or Japanese who were killed, but I don't trust any government that would do such a thing (much less celebrate it), and likewise, I don't trust any doctor who would perform an abortion.
So good luck shoving that in your left vs right shallow view of the world, bitch.
The problem with all these people is that's it's a lot easier to fool someone than it is to convince them they have been fooled. If you guys think the rape of Nanking was so bad, what about what we did to the Philippines? I can assure you, the us govt did not give one single flying fuck about a bunch of Chinese peasants the Japanese were killing. It was a back door way for FDR to get us into WWII while still claiming to want peace.
I'm not going to claim "FDR knew the japs were going to bomb Pearl Harbor and allowed it to happen" (although he may very well have) BUT he knew damn well what he was doing by intentionally provoking them into attacking first, and deliberately ignoring the jpgovs attempts to negotiate a peaceful compromise prior to their attack on Pearl Harbor. You back people into a corner, they lash out. No, I'm not saying Pearl Harbor was justified, I'm saying that actions have consequences.
"She wore a sexy little dress, slut had it coming."
She was a goyim tool of the chosenites looking for a false flag. Face it, she deserved it.
likely because Corporal Hitler had personal, very personal experience with the horror of chemical warfare, and decided that it wasn't a stategic option worth employing anymore than it was in WWI when the Kaiser unleashed it circa 1916
The number "40 thousand casualties in an invasion" means nothing; how many would be lost in conquering and pacifying the nation? What if they fought man, woman, and child for the Emperor for the next 10 years?
Dresden lost 25K dead - I guess conventional fire is OK but nuclear fire is a no-no?
I don't know if it was prudent to bomb Japan with those two weapons, what role racism played, what role field research played, what role impressing the Russians played.
I do know I'm more worried about Kiev or Tehran going up in a fireball in the here and now, rather than the there and then.
And I don't know anyone who was in the theater preparing to invade Japan but I can guess their reaction when it was announced the war was over and they'd not be hitting Japanese beaches - fuckin' ecstatic.
Nailed it!
Watch the link I posted.
Up to that point the US gooberment had totally or partially destroyed almost 70 (mostly wooden) Japanese cities through a relentless firebombing campaign. The notion that another one or two cities were significant in the grand scheme of things is childish nonsense. The Soviet declaration of war on Aug. 8th and invasion of Manchuria along three separate fronts on Aug. 9th was of monumental significance by comparison. Japan surrendered a few days later on Aug. 15th.
After the first bomb was dropped the Japanese Emperor stated that the people were committed to fighting until the last one died. You don't know what you are talking about.
"After the first bomb was dropped the Japanese Emperor stated... "
Absolutly rubbish. There is not one iota of reputable evedence of your bullshit. Stop making up history.
Your determination to remain ignorant is not promising.
The Bomb is a reminder of a time when America actually sought capitulation from a true, mortal enemy, versus today where it creates them out of thin air to keep the endless military and industrial contracts going.....
I love how you guys can all manage to see through the bullshit of today's wars, and talk about 'how could these dumbass kids volunteer to go get blown up fighting a war entirely based on lies' and yet still think WWII is somehow sacrosanct.
Let me spell it out for you - it was fought for the same bullshit today's wars are fought over. If America hadn't intervened in World War I , hitler wouldn't have happens. Stalin probably wouldn't have either. Those two men were a direct consequence of American intervention in that war. Without Stalin, there would have likely been no Mao, no pol pot. Without American intervention, there would have been no sikes-picot agreement, carving up the former ottoman Turk empire in a manner pleasing to western powers that sowed the seeds of conflict in the Middle East.
You guys can keep living in your dream world that this one was the " good war" but you are wrong. It was no different than today's.
Revisionism at best, but granted Empires always leave historical problems whereever they ruled. Don't stop with the British or French. It is a never ending story.
The "revisionism" label from the likes of you and your fellow travellers means please don't confuse what the gooberment has told us with the facts.
Squid ink.
Keep fucking the gophers, carl.
America didn't have "fuck all" to do with the outcome of WWI - the Spanish Influenza panic determined the outcome of that war.
Oops, I forgot - that would take years of reading to turn up real facts!
Woodrow Wilson, a real fun supporter of eugenics, was the "moderating" force on the WWI settlements - which did NOTHING to solve the problems that were left INTENTIONALLY unresolved by the victors after the war.
The drugs have addled your brain with your rant "there would have likely been no Mao, no pol pot" as evidence.
Indulge me in an attempt to cut through the clutter of family military stories, accusations of revisionism, etc.
Sometimes... sometimes when somebody comes up from behind and kicks you in the sack so hard you're still gasping for breath 15 minutes later, it is an imperative to hit back so fuckin' hard the fucking fuck doesn't get back up.
Exactly. Which was precisely the response of the Japanese, to hit back as hard as they could, when America leaned on other nations to cut off supplies of materials that they couldn't survive as a modern nation without. We kicked them first, for no good reason. Other than the fact that we didn't want anyone to get anywhere near as powerful as we were. And we knew they were going to attack and ignored it. Why? Because our leaders needed us to get attacked, because without getting attacked, there is no way the American people would have allowed us to enter a war that FDR desperately wanted to get involved in.
Yes - its quite strange. Some commentators here sure do make one scratch their head in disbelief and stare in wonderment
To the victor goes the spoils writing in their little history books. Most Nations in WW2 committed crimes; yet the Allies went Scot free from Nuremberg trials.
70+ years on, people still think of it as the "Good War." And what's happened since? Did "Never Again" really mean anything? Did the "good war" prevent the CIA from letting Nazi's be put on a payroll at the expense of American tax dollars? Americans were hoodwinked by Corporate Fascism, the true winners of WW2 to this very day. The U.S. running tally since WW2 has been 30 million more people dead and numerous countries bombed, overthrown, or leadership assassinated in actual violations of the very things International Laws were setup to prevent. All at the cost of lying to the American public into war after war, using soldiers like cattle, but what do Tyrants care when its not their lives on the line with their pockets lined with money while the Nation is slowly destroyed from tremendous debt.
Its replacing one Empire for another. Its a timeless tale told for centuries of Humanities folly.
Also, as an aside. My Grand Father was in WW2 - but the U.S. dropping Nuclear bombs was a crime by purposeful bombing of Non-Military targets. They hid that truth from Americans for decades. It led to the greatest proliferation of the worst weapon to ever be created by Humanity.
“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” - Straight from the mouth of a U.S. rank and file, Smedley Butler (WW1)
~~~
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." Dwight Eisenhower
~~~
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons" - Admiral William D. Leahy
~~~
"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."- Conversation with General Douglas MacArthur
~~~
And dozens more from that time period...
Yea dat blockade.
The USN and more specifically the submarine service did to Japan what Germany tried to do to England; Completely cut off their maritime trade - as in 95% destroyed. Got so bad at the end there weren't big enough ships to waste a torpedo on; sink them with the deck gun.
It really was one of the most remarkable successes of the war but is seldom talked about.
And why did we do that? Could it have been because Japan was invading and murdering their neighbors?
Why was Germany blockading England? Could it be because they were at war with England and were trying to cut off their supply lines? Who was England invading and Murdering?
I don't understand how you can equate the two.
Oh bullshit. Japan didn't do anything more ruinous to their neighbors than all Western powers, US included, have been doing to undeveloped countries for the last century. You think we treated the Filipino people well when we embarked on a genocidal sweep to subdue their freedom fighters? Think that didn't deserve some retribution? How about what we did to the Hawaiians? How about all the shit we've done in South and Central America with our banana republics? How about the hundreds of thousands we are directly responsible for in the middle east just with the debacle of launching Saddam against the Iranians?
England has been a murderous force on the globe for centuries. Have you forgotten that at one point we had to fight a war against England because we didn't like how they treated their own colonies? And that's when we were the same race. You know how much worse they treated other colonies populated by "savages?"
And if you don't understand that the zietgiest that lead Germany into WWII was a direct outcome of punitive war reparations that nearly destroyed Germany after it was falsely blamed for starting WWI, then you don't understand history at all. And not understanding history is how you arrive at the logic of your post.
Everyone loses in war. Some losses just take longer to make themselves apparent. We might not have lost WWI or WWII from a military standpoint, but what embracing those conflicts and contorting ourselves to make them righteous has done to our societal conscience will end up destroying our country. As Confucius said, when you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves. Our society is in a grave and has been for decades. We are just taking a long time to realize it.
Nailed it!
Thank you, this is the best post I've read so far. All these 'experts' claiming it was justified, and here you have quotes from three people who were in the best position of anyone at the time to make that call, and they say it wasn't necessary, and yet they are still arguing that it was, despite all the evidence available to them that says otherwise, which is readily available to anyone who cares to look.
The very people who would have been involved in planning and executing the invasion of Japan also said that wouldn't have even been necessary anyway. So I guess all these guys are just willing to take Harry Truman's word for it instead.
Before the bomobing, the Japanese were negotiatng surrender. The US imposed a condition that they knew the Japanese would never accept - removal of the Emperor. After the capitulation following the bomb drops, the EMperor was allowed to stay.
The bombs were dropped i) to test them in actual use, ii) to check that they could be delivered without killing the crews, iii) to check the effects of blast etc on undamaged cities (none of the selected targets had ever been bombed conventionally, the were kept intact, iv) to check the effects of radiation on those caught up in the bombing. Oh and v) to deter the USSR.
Regarding iii) and iv) the cities were kept sealed off by the US after the bombing and capitulation for anyone other than approved scientists and reoprters. This was to 'control the narrative' in modern parlance.
The 'saving the troops' issue was a superficially plausible smokescreen .
Yes, you can be sure Japan would of done thier very best to avoid using the bomb on us, if the situation was reversed. Wake the Fuck up Asshole -
Of course not. But if we are no better than them, then we can't exactly use the rationale that we are defeating a murderous foe then, right? Because if all we are replacing a murderous nation with is another murderous nation in the form of ourselves, then there is no morality involved at all, right? It is a lose/lose situation for the globe, and just a dog eat dog fight between two uncivilized and unscrupulous empires willing to do anything to win.
Jesus. Logic, people. Sadly lacking.
Yes, I'm sure you would be willing to sacrifice yourself and your son's and daughters, to the the Japanese front line, too fight that good fight. Put some skin in the game and then will see. Nice to be able to pontificate from the world of comfort and naivety you live in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQnBvs3LTZw
I have no problem dropping the bombs, just with dropping them on a city of women and children who had nothing to do with starting the war.
Weren't there any alternative sites available that would have demonstrated the power of these weapons?
These were the best sites because of geography. Hiroshima was bowl shaped, thus magnifying the destructive power of the bomb. It had nothing to do with military strategy. It had everything to do with sending a message to future opponents.
Hindsight is 20/20. Let's talk about the markets.
The article doesn't explore the other side of the story. Japan is a pricipled society and surrender is not something that they do. It could very easily be argued, therefore, that it took something as awful as a nuclear struke to make the decision to surrender palatable, thereby saving countless more lives and human suffering had the war dragged on for years.
I believe that such difficult calculations were actually carefully made at that time and I have more faith in the integrity of leadership in those days than I do now.
PS. Full disclosure, My Father was an RAF bomber (Lancaster) pilot in WW2 who was one of the few lucky ones to survive, partly because he entered late in the War when the Luftwaffe was already past its peak.
You understate the case. The Japanese _proved_ that dropping an atomic bomb on them was not a sufficient inducement to surrender. They would not surrender until we proved that we had more than one.
Except that can't be argued at all, because they were already seeking peace talks. They only had one condition- not dethroning their silly little emporer and trying him as a war criminal. Which we ended up granting that condition anyway, which, coupled with numerous statements from senior military leadership that an invasion wasn't even necessary before we dropped the bombs, renders your entire argument invalid. NO ONE thought that war would have lasted many more years, few even thought they could hold out a few more months.
And you are a fucking fool if you think the political leadership of those years had more integrity than today's. They didn't. They were just as slimy as today's, you just think that because unfortunately, American history lionizes presidents based on their body counts rather than what theydo to further peace, liberty , and prosperity.
Who was seeking peace talks? The military leadership? the Emperor? Political factions?
Did the military fly the white flag and invite American ships to shore?
THEY covers a lot of territory and as I understand it there was a lot of disagreement up until virtually the moment of the announcement of surrender by the Emperor.
The point of this is to disparage America and somehow tie it all to joos or some other evil cabal that justifies our demise at the hands of just about any other country.
America is BAD
Just don't get it. I guess I could dwell on the girl friend I cheated on forty years ago and decide I should die of cancer as proper penance.
Strange what goes on here.
Seeking peace terms on the non occupation of Japan by the Americans. Hardly peace terms that would have been acceptable, anymore than the Germans suing for peace w/ Stalin on the proviso they, the Red Army, stop at the Polish border. Silly BS
Just one thing...who died in massive quantities during these two bombings? Was it the generals who wouldn't surrender? Was it the emporer who was all important to the Japanese? Was it even the main industrialists/bankers who pushed and enabled the country to go on their killing spree. NO, none of them. It was common everyday people like those in Topeka or Denver who died horrific deaths. Why is it that the ruling elites refuse to kill each other? The first bomb dropped on the war building in Tokyo would have ended the war and killed those most responsible for it.
How many civilians lived in Tokyo? Millions??
What did those 100s thousands of civilians, and by some calculations almost a million in 1945, mainly women, old people and children burned alive had to do with Iwo Jima, american Marines prisoners? Pearl Harbor bombing.That's was pure hate and a crime, not accidental but deliberate genocide, nothing else. Btw during Opeartion meetinghouse in march 1945 even even more japanese civilians were killed when authorized use of chemical weapons(napalm) was executed and as far as I recollect it was the largest lethal use of them in the history of humankind.
Japan was forced into the WW2 by the US not at it s free will. The forgiveness of Japnese is quite unprecedented and unimaginable for the US, and is probably only possible due to their culture. If anything ever happen of that sort to civilians in the US, what do you think would happen?
Libtardious Maximous. Ignorant.
WTF is this doing here?
It scared me too.
Vewy, vewy, scawie...
So is your answer to his question that yes, it is ok to kill hundreds of thousands of noncombatant civilians with a nuclear weapon based on atrocities the soldiers in their army committed? Better hope no one in any of the countries where we have committed actrocoties ever gets ahold of a nuclear weapon and decides the same thing...
Yet it surely seems many here think we should all suffer for the sins of our military and our past. Just not others.
Was Rear Admiral Theobald, author of "The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor," a "Libtardious Maximous" as well?
How about Robert Stinnett?
Cracker, I sometimes enjoy your posts. But you're way off base here. You need to get in the books on this one - the US goaded Japan to attacking us at Pearl. All the previously classified intel is available now. The jury is out, the verdict is in. FDR should have been shot for treason on the White House lawn.
Goaded?
Oh thats right. Our new brave world informs us that we are not responsible for our actions. We well know we have ALL been goaded into destructive acts of recent history. Buying and borrowing shit we didn't need. Tricked into it we were. Manipulated. Damned tricky joos, I say.
Them poor simple Japanese. They knew not what they did. All that murder and shit they perpetrated on their neighbors was just a misunderstanding...like date rape. They just didn't understand that No means NO!
Do not people ever get tired of trying to find something, anything for which they can derive more reason to hate America? I was wondering why so few seemed to have any problem with Mullahs demanding death to America, and then it struck me....many here DO want death to America. If planting the idea of suicide of one's self and culture and hate writ large in their mind is not a symptom of brainwashing and indoctrination, I really don't know what is?
Always discussions of MK Ultra stuff here, and by golly, I think I'm finally starting to see it! Alinsky would be so proud!!
It is precisely BECAUSE I love America that I'm willing to criticize her mistakes. (And FDR was one huge mistake!)
The rest of this nonsense I will not dignify with a response.
I love both America, the country of my birth, and Japan, where I lived for 8 years. My wife is Japanese. I have worked for Japanese companies for most of my 30+ year career. I have had conversations with the elderly about conditions in Japan before, during and after the war. You think the NSA/FBI/CIA are ruthless? Try showing a little dissent in Japan during the war. Summary executions. The commoner was hungry, sick and cold during the madness that their leaders inflicted upon them by attacking Pearl.
Did the Japanese do horrible, unspeakable things throughout Asia? Of course they did. There is no denying that atrocities were committed in the name of the emperor. However, there is no way to connect those crimes to the justifications used by many to drop TWO atomic bombs on so many non-combatants.
Now Iran. How many of their innocent people must we kill, or allow Israel to kill, before our bloodlust is satisfied? What part of we should "avoid all foreign entanglements" do the American people not understand? George Washington was right and every puppet government we've had since at least Woodrow Wilson is wrong. Murderously wrong.
If you don't understand that it is wrong to use our international power to lean on other nations through embargoes and blockades, then we don't learn anything from either of the world wars.
And, what do you know -- we didn't learn anything from WWII -- except that the american people are easily tricked, that all you have to do is engineer an attack, and Viola! Instant acceptance by public opinion for whatever heinous shit you want to unload on other people in other countries, usually in order to benefit a few well connected folks pulling political levers from behind the scenes. Americans are so uninformed that all you have to do is shout "he hit me" and they lose all sense of what happened leading up to that point.
So, here's a thought for you to ponder. Has that tactic been used on the American people before or since? Say, like saying that the Lusitania wasn't carrying war materiel and shouldn't have been sunk? Or, saying that the Gulf of Tonkin actually happened?
Oh that Nanking thing is "taken out of context," like body part harvesting for profit and other Progressive reasons here in the US.
Y'all keep bringing up the rape of Nanking thing. Do you REALLY think the usgov gave a shit about what the Japanese were doing to a bunch of chinamen peasants? Seriously? You do know who our allies are today right? You know what our military has done to civilian populations all over the world? And before you start, no, I do not hate America. I hate what is being done to it by those on charge. And I hate the propaganda that has brainwashed so many otherwise intelligent people.
The way it works is : start war under false pretenses using everyone's patriotism as a cudgel, come up with more reasons later when the first ones wear thin.
If the American govt cared so much for innocent civilian lives like in Nanking, would it then proceed to kill so many of them?
Was the rape of Nanking the same as the rape of the Middle East? just wondering. The United Snakes was no better then that it is now.Just ask the Kurds.
I don't think the author of piece even understands the meaning of the term historical revisionism. Moreover, the intellectual lilliputian bases his argument on the statements of generals and admirals deprived of Victory! and glory on the battlefield, while apparently advocating continued naval blockade and air bombings, which he even admits killed more Japanese than both atomic bombs. So we're left with the notion that Japanese lives don't matter coming from a revisionist peacenik...
I remember the 50th anniversary of the bombings because my brother gave a speech at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial that day. What's done is done, and every alternative available at the time had alternative costs and alternative consequences. It the worst and most intellectually and morally bankrupt form of historical revisionism to promote alternative options with the hindsight of history while ignoring the costs and risks of the alternatives, and then implying that the United States had knowledge of and should have acted upon secret instructions that the a delusional War Council in Tokyo had provided to Fumimaro Konoe who was sent on a dead-end trip to Moscow to swap Russian territorial claims for assistance negotiating with the Americans... Yeah, the author might actually be nutty enough to think the rape of Nanjing was justified (either version of the story).
The "feeler" communicated through the Russian embassy was actually, "We will surrender but we would like the emperor to remain in place". The US replied,"Sorry it must be unconditional surrender". Then the atom bombs were dropped. Again the Japanese government said,"We will surrender but only if the emperor remains in place.". The US thought about it a bit, then said,"well I guess we will have to make do with that.". The rest is history, always written by the victors.
The allies took control of everything. The Japanese religion that claimed the emporer was a god did not continue. The bombs did some good.
Did the emperor remain in place or not? I believed Hirohito remained emperor until the 1970s, too late to look it up. The US accepted the same conditional surrender terms that were offered before the bombs were dropped, but only after they were dropped.
And the Emperor announced his surrender to the Americans of his Empire on nation wide radio, thereby, de facto acknowledging that he was Not the Diety that most Japanese fervently believed due to their indoctrination.
After the U.S. government was forced by the Freedom of Information Act to release them, I read Life Magazine's story of the planned invasion of Japan with all the beachheads that were named after American automobiles and the estimates of the deaths of not just the Allied soldiers and Japanese soldiers, but also the civilians.
I also read "The Divine Wind", the stories of various kamikaze pilots and their commanders. At the end of the book; sorry, it was a long time ago and I don't remember the names of the Japanese generals, there was a chapter about what the discussion was after Hiroshima was A-bombed. One of the generals exclaimed that they needed to get their hands on these bombs and how glorious it would be if they had them.
This is not the attitude of a military that was looking for a way to surrender. Untold thousands of lives were saved by dropping the big ones, not just Allied ones. The civilians were being trained to fight to the death and would have, if not told by the Emperor and the military to not do so.
I, for one, would not have been born, as my father would have surely died as he was stationed in the Pacific and would have been mustered. Many more of us, American and Japanese, would not have been born either.
Difficult decision, but all in all, a necessary evil.
"Why would Japan wait another month before surrendering, if they had already decided to surrender? Did they enjoy being bombed?"
Good point. Japan didn't surrender because of Hiroshima-Nagasaki. In fact, the Japanese military didn't give a hoot about their country's civilians. The USA were carpet-boming Japan anyway, and they didn't budge. These madmen would have carried on to the last Japanase civilian.
The game-changer was Stalin's Red Army, who proceeded to invade Japan-held Manchuria. War on two fronts became too hard to sustain, so Japan surrendered.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/
Which doesn't make Hirodhima-Nagasaki any less of a crime against humanity. Nothing ever can justify the bombing of civilians.
dropping the bombs was the fitting end to WWII. I think all the world leadership & military was insane then and now.
apocolypse now..the horror the horror. the military don't even know they are insane..get me general Ripper:
General Jack D. Ripper:" He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."
gen ripper was partly right in that his counter parts in russia were as nuts as he was...
Our great southern general LEE..marched his men over open fields into the guns of the north, having visited gettysberg, all I can say is ..how could those poor farm lads gone and done that looking at the open kill zone they marched into. insanity is all I can come up with.
my war I did not go anywhere just on orders..sometimes I did a 180 or just called in false locations..
read up on the fight for fallujah, to see insane leadership getting young mush heads killed for nothing..hooorah.
I think by dropping the bomb and demonstrating TOTAL military supremacy we probably avoided WWIII starting in the late 1950's.
So 200,000 Japanese people died? They shouldn't have started a war with the most wealthy and powerful country on the planet.
Sadly they didn't realise this until the US started atomising their major cities.
I think there is another way to interpret the deaths of 200,000 Japanese citizens. Most of them were no more guilty of starting the war than you or I are guilty of droning wedding parties in Afghanistan. The Japanese government and military had taken full control of the scared populace, which is the direction we are heading now.
The Boys of Bluffdale are taking notes on this topic, doncha know?
Japanese army officers were fanatics in the '30. They assassinated enemies left and right. Also, army behavior during the war was abominable. Fact.
I tend to the theory that the bombs were demonstrations of US power and will. The officers quoted show that even then there were doubts about the need for the bombs but I am sure there were many who wanted the Japs to pay as they had made others pay.
I think there was also a short-sighted fascination with a new weapon that probably influenced the decision but much killing and hideous treatment short circuited the moralizing of later years.
If the Japs indicated they were interested in surrender, I'm not aware of anything done to explore that, though I'm not well read here. I understand they also sought to avoid war in the first place and proposed concessions but were turned away. The lead up to war in the Pacific and Europe bears re-examining.
The Japanese civilians were not guilty, yet so many here seem miore than happy for American civilians to pay the price for their government's evils. Double standard, no? This is a stupid conversation about only one thing.
Disparagement of America and Americans.
So many here, many Americans themselves, so full of hate for America.
And so willing to excuse virtually ANYTHING another country might do.
A full court press on internal destruction.
Alinsky all the way baby.
I seriously suggest you read The Glory and the Dream by William Manchester.
Were you aware that at the start of WWII there were only seven bridges across the Mississippi River?
Or this?
David Woolner wrote that in June 1939, which was three months before England declared war on Germany, "the roughly 180,000-man U.S. Army ranked 19th in the world--smaller than Portugal’s!"
Hardly the world's most wealthiest and powerful country at the time.
Manchester's "The Glory and the Dream" was a huge success when it was published ... and then the MSM turned hard left and has consigned it to oblivion.
Unfortuately, it is FULL of FACTS - and the only thing SJW's hate more than FACTS and more than AMERICA ... is themselves.
Yes, lets ask those many Americans, Chinese and Indonesians murdered by The Japanese, not killed in battle, but MURDERED. Oh that's right...they're dead and most of their loved ones too. So lets write some more revisionist history to demonize the victors.
We now see many on this site posting their love and appreciation of Hitler, the misunderstood "superman" who only did what he did to preserve his master race.
We watch the progressives demand we atone for our evil deeds using things like abu Ghraib, where we "humiliated" dozens.
I understand fully when foreigners desire to revise their history to make them feel better about it, but we see Americans making claims of our mass murder of other nations populations, nations we were at WAR with, when those nations themselves do not dare make such claims. We see constant attacks leveled at our historical figures, demanding Jefferson be removed from a place of honor. This is a level of self destruction and treachery I would have never imagined.
And we worry about the FED....really? We have much, much bigger problems to deal with. People intent on tearing at our very foundations at a moment when we are about to topple as it is.
How much does it pay to drill holes in the hull of our floundering ship anyway???
murdered by The Japanese
Oh, so that justifies the US killing Japanese civilians by the 10'000s?
Yup.
I think they declared war on us.
If you haven't noticed, since revisions of our more politically correct view of war, we have never won another. Every single one has been fought and many died, and nothing resolved. No winners, just a participation trophy. Yet the conflicts persist. Funny though. We absolutely defeated Japan and Germany and they are our strongest allies today with some of the strongest economies (until our recent and final recession). Funny ain't it.
Aren't you confusing allies with vassals?
Yes
My father was one of the first into Changi.
He refused to knowingly buy anything Japanese until the day he died.
And I got a Jewish friend who drives a German VW. He apparently got over it.
Much of this is comparing warts. Has the US been better in many respects? Yes, but not all respects.
Humanity is corrupt, hence God.
Nice post steeped in the entire history of mankind.
That's the beauty of humanity. We forget...unless it is a religious slight of which can be passed down and embellished for generation upon generations. We can forget almost overnight that excessive debt is slavery. We can forget in a week that excessive booze can kill us. We can forget a lot of things, things we should NEVER forget. Best of all we seem to never remember that there is NEVER something for nothing, and it usually turns out to be our most expensive "purchase".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changi_Prison#History
Lol, so your dad fought for the country that goaded Japan into war (by enforcing a trade embargo on them right when they were at war in China and had no choice but to either attack, or back down to the biggest bully on the planet).
He fought for the country that knew damn well they were about to be attacked at Pearl Harbour, and allowed thousands of their own sailors to die, so that an incensed US public would allow the war mongers to enter WWII (where your own father suffered).
Yeah, Japan chose to fight a country that up till then had been their ally, instead of backing down to the most aggressive tyranical empire since Roman centurians marched into Europe. The Japs had moxie back then.
Yeah, they fought in ways we find horrifying. I guess burning whole cities alive is better than abusing prisoners from the evil empire that forced you to fight.
Fuck the troll though. Lulz. Asshole.
Like the USA are real role models today with POW's, get your head out of your ass Miff and think for yourself. Do you think it's okay to drop nuclear bombs on innocent people? Is this really a hard question? Yours and all the other non thinker comments tells me the next false flag they pull, you losers will be all for whatever TPTB tells you what's the best course of action, no matter how psychotic.
And Fuck you Miff!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nice! I guess you thought had to be sure you made your point.
Wow. For the first time I not only disagree with Miff - I VIOLENTLY disagree.
I do not dispute what the Japanese did to their prisoners. But what Americans did to them then - as now - was just as bad. My grandfather was in WWII, serving in Germany. He refused to say anything about what he saw over there, other than "It wasn't like you read in the books. There were no good guys."
I also actually studied the war, in depth, but from a far, far different perspective: that of Antony Sutton, Carroll Quigley, Gary Allen and Larry Abraham etc. Dropping the bomb was a CORPORATE MOVE, period...
...and so was giving the tech to the Russians. To start the cold war. Which made a very larger number of people very, very rich based on the fear of what these weapons can do, and DID - as demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a CORPORATE decision. Nothing more, nothing less...and completely UNNECESSARY.
I'm sure we all appreciate you dedicating your life to discovering the truth of the war and finding time to enlighten us all.
I have little doubt that our government is as corrupt as any other. But what is important is to attack virtually every standard of pride or accomplishment, every revered person of our history, to PROVE America's moral putridity. Why is this important? We do not exist in a vacuum. If we are depreciating America, to who's advantage?...because it will be to someone's, some other country's advantage.
Yes, and I've also dedicated myself to studying why there is such a push to demonize the west (and especially the US) at this time, too. Having read Brandon Smith and other dedicated bloggers (who actually footnote what they reference), there is definitely an "evil west::good east" meme that is readily evident just by reading the headlines on mainstream media (or even here on ZH).
The reason is simple: globalization, as dictated by the bankers, *must* happen. For this to occur, the USA must be destroyed financially, morally, etc. and the dollar brought down - and this has been long in the making, since the institution of the FED. And, the BRICS nations must be built up and made to look light years better than the 'evil west', so that after the world has taken a massive beating after the fall of the dollar, a beaten and cowed world populace will accept the BRICS as 'saviors.'
OF course, at the highest levels (the BIS), all the players are the same; they will just create new alphabet titles for their institutions and the ultimate controllers will be the same as the old masters. And, with the world finally under the spell of a 'one world currency', which will eventually be digital, they will have total control. Of everything. Every transaction. Forever. So yes, there are those who are looking to capitalize on depreciating 'murika, and it's the same bastards that created this mess to begin with.
BTW: Brandon Smith's articles can be found on AltMarket.com. He's got quite a lot of good ones from the past couple of years if anyone is interested in reading them. ZH often posts them, but not always.
The Nuremburg Trials were pure show trials. The defense legal teams were not allowed to raise the point that in many cases the Allies did exactly what the Germans did, or worse in some cases (firebombing Dresden etc). Churchill admitted to his Chief of Staff as much, noting they would be in the same place as the Nazis had the trial taken place following a win by the Nazis.
You should broaden your perspective, if you think WWII was purely a "corporate" thing. Yes, people got rich off selling armaments and whatever, but there was a LOT more to it than just that simplistic view. It reminds me of the people who claim the Jews set up the whole WWII thing to get sympathy so they could establish Israel, or the people who claim it was all a deal for the US and the Russians to divide up the post-war world, or the people who claim the Japanese orchestrated their own defeat so they could guilt the US into giving them $ and technology. All are equally dumb, even if elements of some of those scenarios have some truth to them.
There were a LOT of people truly pissed off at the Axis out in the hinterlands of America. Many people didn't need to be drafted. They signed up to fight in droves. Every single uncle on my Dad's side (4 of them) fought in some capacity. And none of them were drafted, and none represented a corporation of any kind at any point in any of their lives. They DANCED when the A-bombs dropped and ended the war. One of my uncles was a flag man on a destroyer and was just getting deployed when the war ended. The enemy went for the flag-men first to try to disrupt communications. That uncle in particulsar was a big fan of the decision to drop the bombs, but all concurred that it was a good move.
> My father was in WWII and told me what the Japanese did to prisoners. My old landlord was the sole survivor of a Japanese pow camp by garroting the guard and escaping.
1) The argument simply doesn't hold since your father was in Europe, not in Japan. Sick murderer Sen. John McCain (McCohen) also told many stories of what Vietnamese did to him, but it all was a bullshit. The bitch betrayed his comrades and fully collaborated with Viet Cong.
Geographically speaking, where is Amerika and where is Japan? What were Americohen Sonderkommando doing in that part of the world (and virtually everywhere else since WWII)? And the Pearl Harbor attack was yet another false flag operation: http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/pearl.php
2) To follow your logic, "Amerika" had to be wiped out from the face of Earth long time ago, judged by the magnitude of its crimes against humanity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States
Obviously, Japanese gov and all involved military personnel had to be punished for genocide and mass murders of Chinese people, but it's not for Americohens to punish Japanese by bombing innocent women and kids (as many already mentioned, same applies to Bombing of Dresden) -- even watching Kaptain Amerika "saves the world" (from who?) type of Hollywood production intended for the imbecile audience doesn't justify that.
3) The irony of the situation is that Americohen propaganda in Japan has been brainwashing Japanese and teaching them that it were Russians who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it's been for a couple generations now. No hope is there among homo-EMO Japanese young people.
PS
Anyway, the whole A-bomb discussion in the context of Japan is a bullshit. No country had a compact enough A-bomb at the time. Hiroshima and Nagasaki underwent the same type of bombing as Dresden did.
Mentioning the A-bomb was just a bluff, just to scare the Russians (similar to the Moon Landing Hoax).
PPS
Even as of now, no one understands the physics of the processes inside the A- or H-bomb explosion, but there is evidence that they have to do with electromagnetism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba:
[...]
The Tsar Bomba's fireball, about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) in diameter, was prevented from touching the ground by the shock wave, but nearly reached the 10.5 kilometres (6.5 mi) altitude of the deploying Tu-95 bomber.
[...]
However, there was no mentioning of any such plasma balls over Japan.
Well, that justifies it then, right? Except, now we're no better than they are.... So if they were horrible, then we were horrible too, right?
Logic, people. Try some.
So was my Late Father. I know of someone who lived through (and another whose Son Lived through) POW Camps, so I'm not going to touch that aspect of it here.
But as for your animosity, you should hear all the negative stuff Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, and others woud say about the Ugly Yankee - I've heard them for DECADES.
Rape, Theft, Paternity, Drugs, Murder/Homicide, etc.,; and the Sailor/Soldier gets Xferred out of there quickly w/o facing any charges.
There's no surpise why the PHI kicked the USA out a few decades ago.
The USA and the JPN - they were Imperial Powers of the Pacific fighting each other in a War.
The USA set up the Bait, JPN bit; and over the Years, the USA's advantages took them over the top.
The ARTICLE, however, is about the necessity of the Nukes on the Civilian Cities. Note that most Admirals and Generals didn't think they were necessary,
Interesting this is, a few years later, several USA Researchers dug up gravesites of children who died in the Nuke Attacks because they wanted to see how the skeletons were affected. Testing Goats in the Asia Pacific Atolls wasn't good enough.
Funny part? TEAM_USA's been doing this since the Spanish American War. They even took over PHI when they declared Independence from ESP; and killed those who opposed.
The USA isn't the "Knight in Shining Armour" as we were taught in our schools. The War Mongering and in this case, the "Nukes on Civilians" over a Foe pleading for Surrender for Months? Not funny.
Truman was an ASS. He went too far with the Nukes on the Civillians (every city was cranking tools and parts for the war, btw), IMHO. I'm surprised that the Admirals and Generals didn't toss him out after that.
For the Tin Foil Hatters: Did FDR Approve of the Nukes? Was his death expected and hidden from the public?
Troll
My step dad was 19 yr old in WW2.
The story of the bomb is very real to me. He went on to be come Navy Air Lt. in 1945.
After graduation, He was a pilot to collect Bikinni Atoll test samples in the late 40s and flew them to DC straight line. He personally held radioation samples in a breifcase handcuffed to his wrist for 18 - 24 hour of flying.
He retired as a Commander in Navy Air, after 22 years. He died at age 94 a few years back -
NoVa
It is no small coincidence that the history revisionists are getting full steam now that those who actually lived are now mostly dead and gone and unable to defend themselves. There is no education, no enlightenment here. This is about destruction of America. Fundamentally changing it, I think is how they put it.
Ministry of truth hard at work.
agree with you
but not in my family; my stepdad was a fighter/scraper and i being remembered as MY FATHER.
He will be remembered to my kids as who he was and what he accomplished. He actually went back to Korea as part of a memorial peace commission to celebrate the 50 yr Korean truce in 2009.
NoVa
My adopted Uncle Ray was a WWII, Korea and Viet Nam pilot. He was in Military Airlift Command though I'm not sure what his role was in WWII. I don't think he was a bomber pilot (I'll ask tomorrow).
Talks with him over the years revealed that he was extremely concerned about an assault on Japan. It was 'known', throughout the ranks, that Japan would throw absolutely everything at them. It was common knowledge that the island hopping in the Pacific was to establish bases to make the attack on Japan easier. And every effort was made with the knowledge that the ultimate goal was to invade, destroy and pacify Japan. They had newsreels of the butchery of Okinawa, and after defeating the military, watched as women threw their babies off the cliffs and jumped themselves. The rank and file knew of the fanaticism of the japanese samurai and bushido culture.
I, for one, try to take care not to project modern ideals on decisions of the past. I've had a relatively easy life, due to those that served before me, and they did what they believed they had to at the time. They were actually involved, risking life and treasure, and I cannot feel justified to argue against them using pussified standards of today.
As to claims that it was ridiculous for Japan to attack the wealthiest, most prosperous, mightiest nation on earth...please. Go read some history. At the time, the US was essentially a third world nation, deep in the depression, with massive unemployment, idled factories across the land, and financially broke. Hunger/starvation was common-place (my dad was a kid, then, and he tells about how school chalk would smell like food, passing out from hunger, getting free clothing from the Los Angeles Salvation Army warehouse, etc and how there were countless military bases across southern california, with netting over the city...) and Roosevelt's socialism just didn't accomplish much to help anyone. The dustbowl send hoards of refugees into California under the belief that work was available. There was, but not enough for the masses, and wages were suppressed by the unemployment. In no fashion was the US even an inkling of a superpower.
We achieved superpower status because WWII pretty much devastated Europe, Russia, China, and Japan with effects in the pacific islands that essentially wipe their civilizations off the map. We were well protected by two oceans and it turned out that we were the only nation that had significant infrastructure left, along with a huge fucking work force ready to work at anything, idle factories that could be converted into pretty much whatever was necessary, and some amazingly smart people...some actually in Government.
Killing women and children in name of winning the war, we should be very proud.
Between 3,000 and 250,000 men, women, and children —from which around 600 every year were provided by the Kempeitai—died during the human experimentation conducted by Unit 731 at the camp based in Pingfang alone, which does not include victims from other medical experimentation sites, such as Unit 100.
Standard Disclaimer: No side in war has any claim to the moral high ground.
Agreed, Joesph Gobbels' children shoulda been given safe passage.
I hope the ghosts of the Rape of Nanking find you and terorize you for the rest of your life! You lowlife! Get out of my country right now!
how did this become your country?
You're an idiot if you believe this fantasy of only 40,000 Americans being lost in an invasion of Japan. Over 20,000 were killed on Okinawa alone. Okinawa has about 1% of Japan's population. An invasion of Japan would have cost at least 200,000 American lives, not to mention 1 million Japanese killed based on the casualty ratios of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The other option was to keep bombing Japan with conventional weapons for another year or two. How many Japanese would have been killed? Probably 500,000? Let's say there was a naval blockade. The Japanese would have stubbornly held on until millions starved to death.
Wrong. No Fuel, No Air Power. Starving. Pleading for Surrender for Months.
Hate white folks a bit too much?
Well, aren't YOU just a whiny little ass-muncher. I had one uncle who helped play pat-a-cake with Romml in north Africa and another (his brother) who participated in the occupation of Japan immediately post-war. I'll take their word over some internet troll about what the enemy was or wasn't like, and I'll use my own head to decide how "war-mongering" and dangerous the US is.
And the US IS dangerous. So was Britain in their day, Spain in theirs, the Netherlands and Portugal and Italy and Greece and Persians and Babylonians and Carthaginians and all the rest of the successful societies in history. All the kids bitch about the teacher, but they all beg the teacher to come when some other kid is beating them up. Is the teacher "war-mongering"? "Dangerous"? It depends on your point of view I guess.
But whatever the faults of America, the Japanese did some truly naughty shit and I have never felt too bad for them (or the Germans...the Italians maybe I did pity a bit). The biggest cowardly act the Americans did in WWII was to intern it's own citizens of Japanese descent. THAT was uncalled-for in a country like this. But that's not what's at issue in this thread I guess.
The A-Bomb? Are you just mad because it's the A-Bomb? What if the same number of people were killed by small arms...would that not be as bad? For every "expert" that pipes up saying the war was already won and the A-bombs were unnecessary, I hear 10 voices, including the ones I knew personally, saying that the Japanese would have fought a bitter fight without those. Hell, they did all through the Pacific right up until the bombs were dropped. What else had changed besides the bombs droppping? Pretty much nothing.
And in the end, Japan became as good a friend as the US has had (which isn't saying THAT much, but it's SOMETHING). And there's more trust between the two countries now than is typical between any two random countries in the world today...so whatever statecraft the politicians worked after the war, it was pretty damned effective from a purely practical standpoint. If all our relations with other countries were handled that adeptly, we'd be in a lot better shape.
Yeah, war is icky. Avoiding war for the sake of avoiding war can end up a lot ickier. If you're not willing to fight, you'll get steamrolled. Which is why all the really successful societies throughout history were "war-mongers".
Not a friend. A Vassal State - just like Germany.
Bread and Circus during the Cold War as they rebuilt their Economies under the USA Forces; but near the end of the Cold War, the Welcome Rug was getting worn.
With all the NSA Spying, there's no rug left. In JPN, the Peaceniks want to be liked by the USA so much (successful Cultural Brainwashing), many aspects of their worldview are derived through the USA's State Department and DOD.
People and Politicians are waking up. USA treats JPN like shit when it comes to many a Trade/Defense related Agreement.
Time for JPN to grow a Pair.
Trading Troll must be the strongest supporter of the Sneak Attack style of warfare. Of course, he fails to recognize which country employed the method.
How many Korean or Chinese slaves would the Japanese have had to kill before Trading Troll would consider the Japanese as the warmongers? Evidently Trading Troll knows little of the facts but is capable of spouting the propaganda.
The article is a worthless collection of manipulated statements that have been developed by the revisionists over the last 30 years or so. What would have been crazy would have been for the US leadership to decide to have 100,000 US soldiers die instead of 300,000 Japanese killed by the two bombs. Further, the complete surrender order from the Japanese Emperor God saved the lives of several hundred thousand Chinese and Koreans who were slaves of the occupying Japanese in their countries.
For a better perspective on the matter and the various claims of the revisionists see:
Thoughts on an awful anniversaryand then spend a few minutes to watch this video which offers information refuting many of the claims in the article.
http://www.pjtv.com/series/afterburner-with-bill-whittle-56/from-the-archives-jon-stewarts-stupid-nuclear-commentary-1808/
Well, yeah it's easy to play armchair quarterback 70 years later. I'm afraid Japan had to be the one to suffer the effects of nuclear war. The world has seen the devastation and understands the implications. If not on Japan they would have been used on someone later - bet on it.
Well, yeah it's easy to play armchair quarterback 70 years later. I'm afraid Japan had to be the one to suffer the effects of nuclear war. The world has seen the devastation and understands the implications. If not on Japan they would have been used on someone later - bet on it.
It was done to make Japan America's Bitch forever. Seems to have worked out.
More great stuff from ZH. Just a few weeks ago, I learned (well, not really) what everyone knows - Japan bombed Pearl Harbor b/c of a steel and oil embargo by the US in response to Japan's invasion of Manchuria..... Earth-shattering. Who would have thought? Then, there was an attempt to put the US's Philippine occupation on the same grounds as Japan's invasion of Manchuria .... Let's see.... Hmmm... 10mm deaths at the hands of the Japanese in Manchuria.... Hmmmm. Exactly the same! Given our atrocities in the Philippines, one would think that when we were kicked out in 1942 by the ever friendly Japanese, there would have been dancing in the streets. Or, when MacArthur returned, their were lots of long faces on the part of the Filipinos.... After all, our occupation was exactly the same as the Japanese, right? US "atrocities" in WWII and before = those of Japan .... Absolutely absurd. And, this article is yet more of the same. A US President owes an oath to the UNITED STATES, not Japan. If we saved the lives of 1,000 soldiers, it was worth it. Japan started the war, not the US. Japan slaughtered millions of people. And, Truman had a duty, which he fulfilled. The fact that the Japanese did not immediately surrender after Hiroshima tells a lot. It was not going to be a cake-walk like the clown who wrote this article claims. It was going to be bloody, on both sides. And, yes, this is another cynical, provocative article to drive traffic, just like the "Kyle Bass Was Right!" after gold moves 1% in a day (never mind the preceding 50% correction). And, while ZH pushes out this drivel, ZH is schilling for Blackrock and other mainstream financial product providers .... Brilliant business model (on which I bit by responding to this ridiculous post!)
It is clear from the recitation of some of the evidence that the dropping of the atomic bombs was not necessary to end the war
Of course it was not. But 56% of Americans believe it was
56% of Americans still believe Hiroshima bombing was justified – pollhttps://www.rt.com/usa/311711-americans-hiroshima-bombing-justified/
FDR had a plan to push Japan into a war
"Day of Deceit" provides compelling evidence that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt deliberately provoked Japan to attack the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor so that America could enter the war on the allied side. Stinnett, a distinguished World War II navy veteran who researched his subject for over sixteen years, provides the following evidence:
1. A naval intelligence officer named Arthur McCollum developed an eight-point plan to provoke Japanese hostilities. This plan reached Roosevelt who implemented all eight points.
2. Contrary to popular belief, the Japanese navy broke radio silence on multiple occasions prior to December 7, 1941.
3. More than 94% of all secret Japanese naval messages (including some with direct reference to the impending attack on Pearl Harbor) were successfully decoded by American intelligence units prior to December 7, 1941
4. Roosevelt implemented a change of naval command that placed proponents of the eight-point-provocation plan in key positions of power. However, the newly promoted commander of Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Kimmel was consistently denied access to vital decoded translations of Japanese naval communications.
5. Naval Intelligence and the FBI successfully monitored the communication of Japanese intelligence agents in Hawaii for months. These communications, which included a bombing grid map of Pearl Harbor, revealed Japan's intent.
8. Most of the critical U.S. Pacific Fleet components such as heavy cruisers and aircraft carriers were not in Pearl Harbor during the bombing. In fact the only ships that were sunk were WW I relics.
more at
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Of-Deceit-Truth-Harbor/dp/0743201299
Do this 56% think for themselves or via TV sets?
Maybe if you had been there.
Maybe if your brother or son or FATHER was there, you might not be so intent on your perception of truth.
Explain to us what is your goal here. Truth? To what end? To prove the evil that is and always has been America?
Please fucking leave.
Just answer one question:
Do you believe it was dumb luck that no US aircraft carrier was in Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack?
I don't know. Was it dumb luck that so many ships were there and sunk or destroyed? Was it dumb luck that we invented the Bomb?
There are no innocents in this. Why are you so intent to find blame with America? What does it do for you? What does it prove? What is the point of this shit?
We already know it was the JOOs, right?