Text 36849, 99 rader
Skriven 2006-08-16 05:28:52 av Bob Ackley (1:2905/3)
  Kommentar till text 36778 av LEE LOFASO (1:123/140)
Ärende: (1/2) CELEBRATION!
==========================
Replying to a message of LEE LOFASO to BOB ACKLEY:

 LL> Yo Bob!

 >>> HN>Sure it might have saved many allied troops when they had
 >>> HN>to invade Japan, but that cannot be an argument for
 >>> HN>celebrating the nukes in WWII.

 >>> BK>While there is no reason to celebrate the deaths of so many, it
 >>> BK>probably saved a lot of Japanese troops and civilians also.

 >>> LL>Face it, Bob.  Harry S Truman was a mass murderer.  The Japanese
 >>> high LL>command had offered to surrender a full month *before* the
 >>> atomic LL>bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 BA>> Actually, the Japanese government had asked Stalin to intercede with
 BA>> the all to open negotiations to end the war.  Stalin did *not* pass
 BA>> the information along to the US and Britain.  Since our codebreakers
 BA>> did not get around to decrypt and translating the relevant
 BA>> diplomatic message traffic until about nine months *after* Japan had
 BA>> surrendered, Truman didn't know about the offer when he ordered the
 BA>> bombs used.

 LL> I do not buy the argument that Truman did not know about the Japanese
 LL> offer of a conditional surrender.  Sounds like a whitewash, more than
 LL> anything else.

Then please explain how Truman was able to find out about something that
the intelligence people didn't know until almost nine months after the war
had ended.

 LL>  Especially since the information about the
 LL> conditional surrender having been declassified long after the war
 LL> ended.

I first read about it in David Kahn's "The Codebreakers."  That came out
in 1967.

 LL> Furthermore, the Japanese and the Russians have never been the
 LL> very best of friends, especially since Russia continues to occupy the
 LL> Kirile Islands.

 >>> LL>Now please explain your logic (if
 >>> LL>there is any) as to how those atomic bombings "probably saved a lot
 >>> LL>of Japanese troops and civilians also." After all, hundreds of
 >>> LL>thousands of innocent men, women and children died as a result. 
 >>> And LL>many more died later, in great pain, from radiation poisoning.

 BA>> LeMay's firebombing campaign against Japanese cities killed more
 BA>> Japanese than both of the nukes combined - burned, baked or boiled
 BA>> them (his terms).

 LL> All the more reason NOT to atomize Japanese population centers.

 BA>> Insofar as the saving of Japanese lives is concerned, it was believed
 BA>> at the time that the Japanese people would resist invasion to the
 BA>> death (on Saipan hundr of Japanese civilians jumped off cliffs to
 BA>> their deaths rather than surrender t the American troops; on Attu,
 BA>> when the Japanese troops ran out of ammunition the made a banzai
 BA>> charge against the American forces armed only with rocks and
 BA>> bayonets, the same thing happened on Guadalcanal).  The Japanese use
 BA>> of suic charges was not limited to the Army, the naval SHO-1 plan
 BA>> for the Philippine and the sending of the battleship Yamato and a
 BA>> few escorts on a one way trip to Okinawa (she didn't even get close)
 BA>> being two examples and the concept of using minimally trained pilots
 BA>> to fly aircraft into enemy ships (kamikazes) being another.  In
 BA>> point of fact civilians in Japan were at least minimally trained in
 BA>> the use of pikes and lances against invaders. Given the observed
 BA>> behavior our forces assumed - correctly IMO - that a ground invasion
 BA>> of the Japanese home islands would ha resulted in a bloodbath
 BA>> unprecedented in scale, and consisting mostly, of course, of
 BA>> Japanese, although the planners assumed there would also be hundreds
 BA>> of thousands of American casualties.

 LL> There would have been no bloodbath had Japan been allowed to surrender
 LL> before the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That's true.

 LL> American propaganda had many Americans *believing* that the Japanese
 LL> would fight to the last man, woman and child, as well as continue to
 LL> fight anywhere and everywhere throughout the Pacific.  But the
 LL> reality was much different.

It was?  Events on Guadalcanal, Saipan and Attu are documented facts.  Up into
the 1970s there would be occasional news stories about Japanese troops being
found
on some godforsaken island, still fighting a war that had been over for thirty
years.

 LL>  Even though some fighting did continue
 LL> after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was very
 LL> limited and sporadic.  The occupation of Japan lasted only five years
 LL> following the war, in contrast to the ten years of occupation that
 LL> Germany had to endure.  And to this day, Japan remains a free and
 LL> democratic state.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:2905/3)