[BartSimpson]

Gunnair Gunnair:

I guess the Americans nuked them to death.

We didn't. But had they not surrendered there was a third bomb that was being readied...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf

And had that not gotten their instant and complete attention the US was planning on producing up to 24 bombs per month in order to nuke them to death.

So, no, we did not nuke them to death, but we were certainly preparing to.

[Gunnair]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Gunnair Gunnair:

I guess the Americans nuked them to death.

We didn't. But had they not surrendered there was a third bomb that was being readied...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf

And had that not gotten their instant and complete attention the US was planning on producing up to 24 bombs per month in order to nuke them to death.

So, no, we did not nuke them to death, but we were certainly preparing to.

Oh, Bart, roll with the joke for Crimminey's pink toes sakes!

[bambu]

Gunnair Gunnair:

bambu bambu:

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

Not sure that the Japan of today is as hung up on honour, as the generation that lived in the first half of the 20th century.

Certain they're not.
Honour?
Has Japan ever had any?

Every year they're still sending their whaling ships to slaughter whales to death in Antarctica.

Is that like chopping someone's head off to death? The did that too.

Yes!
Except that it takes the whales a long time to die...torture.

The atrocities committed by Japan's Unit 731 and barbaric military in WW2 demanded revenge.

"Bombs away"!

People who danced in the streets as Japan was fire-bombed then nuked and our troops were released from POW camps ...can be forgiven for being happy.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sx_VKRpgNg


The Chinese haven't forgotten...hissed at Japanese athlets at the Beijing Olympics.

[stratos]

Gunnair Gunnair:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Gunnair Gunnair:

I guess the Americans nuked them to death.

We didn't. But had they not surrendered there was a third bomb that was being readied...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf

And had that not gotten their instant and complete attention the US was planning on producing up to 24 bombs per month in order to nuke them to death.

So, no, we did not nuke them to death, but we were certainly preparing to.

Oh, Bart, roll with the joke for Crimminey's pink toes sakes!

PINK TOES!!!! You and your Commie Pink toes

[bootlegga]

Lemmy Lemmy:

Captain Hyperbole. Alperovitz is controversial , sure, but he's not a kook. He's a professor of history at the University of Maryland, not some crazy, pseudo-academic institution. His work is peer reviewd. Revisionist history isn't a bad thing when new evidence dispels long-held inaccuracies. And I seriously doubt you've ever even heard of Gar Alperovitz before you Googled his name today.

People seem to forget that social science is a science too, complete with research. Research that turns up new information and changes insights into historical events.

The difference is instead of being in lab and using bunsen burners and erlenmeyer flasks, they spend it cooped up in archives, libraries and museums pouring over thousands of books, letters, memos, etc to find out new things that weren't apparent before because they were hidden/classified.

[ShepherdsDog]

The thing is, he's NOT a history professor.

[bootlegga]

Not being a history professor doesn't preclude someone from researching history - The method is the essentially same whether you're studying politics or history.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that few, if any, of the armchair historians here have ever stepped inside an archive and conducted any sort of proper research like Alperovitz has.

[andyt]

There certainly seem to be a lot of quotes from the top military people that neither an invasion or the bombs were necessary. Eisenhower expressed his deep regret. Even General Ripper Lemay, while not expressing regret, said so. This seems pretty accessible stuff, so I guess some people just want to see the world in black and white terms. It's the same with Dresden, where some people seem determined to believe it wasn't just pure revenge.

[Gunnair]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Not being a history professor doesn't preclude someone from researching history - The method is the essentially same whether you're studying politics or history.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that few, if any, of the armchair historians here have ever stepped inside an archive and conducted any sort of proper research like Alperovitz has.

Once or twice when I was hired to research for a history book. (minor though)

That being said, I wonder if the emotive kneejerkism would be as intense if the research had suggested something previously unknown that was a further negative for Japan or a new positive for the US.

[commanderkai]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Not being a history professor doesn't preclude someone from researching history - The method is the essentially same whether you're studying politics or history.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that few, if any, of the armchair historians here have ever stepped inside an archive and conducted any sort of proper research like Alperovitz has.

I have. The wonderful thing about having a minor in history. Just because he went through declassified documents and came to a few conclusions, does not actually mean his conclusions are correct. But, of course, that's not really a bad thing, a healthy discourse on historical subjects is always important.

No, what Lemmy stated is that Alperovitz is a history professor that somehow debunked the long held statement that the use of the atomic bomb was preferable to a conventional invasion of Japan because Japan's civilian government was willing to surrender in June. As such, as Lemmy argues, it was the Americans (and British) who continued the war after the Japanese cried "uncle", as he so put it.

The problem is, with the declassified document I linked, (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/31.pdf) is that the Japanese civilian government wanted a conditional surrender, and when Foreign Minister Molotov basically stated the British and Americans would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender, the Japanese replied they will fight on. Thus, the war continued, and the need of some sort of way to contain or neutralize the Japanese main islands were necessary, be it blockade, invasion, or the use of the atomic bomb.

Admittedly, I did not read Alperovitz's conclusions, but Lemmy's conclusions are, to put it lightly, faulty.

[martin14]

7 pages. glad to see the revisionist horseshit has been put down the toilet
where it belongs.

2 things missing though.


1. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria, started Aug 9. It was then that the Japs
realized the Russians were not going to help negotiate a peace with the US.
It was on the 9th they accepted the Potsdam declaration, not before.

2. The attempted coup August 13-14. It goes to show not everyone was ready to give up, thus forcing Hirohito to make his radio address.

[bambu]

andyt andyt:

There certainly seem to be a lot of quotes from the top military people that neither an invasion or the bombs were necessary. Eisenhower expressed his deep regret. Even General Ripper Lemay, while not expressing regret, said so. This seems pretty accessible stuff, so I guess some people just want to see the world in black and white terms. It's the same with Dresden, where some people seem determined to believe it wasn't just pure revenge.

Revenge?

'Dresden' ...the risk one runs when one starts wars, massacres millions and bombs the cities of other countries.

Ditto for the firebombing of Tokyo.

Hitler was outraged that Churchill started bombing Germany at night.
Eisenhower of course wouldn't have had to risk his life storming Japan to make it surrender.
One more Allied life lost would've been one too many.
'Bombs away'!


Aussie POWs who were being tortured to death in camps in Japan were happy the nuke bombs ended the war and they were then brought home alive on US warships.

After what Japan and Germany did[Italy was no saint either]with the support of most of their People, they can hardly complain about how it all ended for them.

[stratos]

$1:

I'd bet dollars to donuts that few, if any, of the armchair historians here have ever stepped inside an archive and conducted any sort of proper research like Alperovitz has.

That is a bet you would lose my friend.

[Lemmy]

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

The thing is, he's NOT a history professor.

So what? I'm not a history professor either. But I've published historical papers. My MA thesis was on labour force participation in the 19th century (using the 1871 census, as I discussed elsewhere). My dissertation is on the economic history of Singapore. How do you draw the line between history, economics and political economy? You can't because they're all intertwined. I've peer reviewed plenty of papers by people who work in departments of economics, politics, political economy, history, mathematics, agricultural economics, etc, etc. It was an ill-informed point when Regina made it earlier. I let it go then, but enough's enough.

[Thanos]

One of the primary duties of any commander-in-chief in war is to get the bloodshed over with, with the minimal amount of casualties possible being sustained, especially among his own service personnel. If Harry Truman had declined to use the atomic bombs because of some flimsy moral qualm (like worrying about what some future generation who never had to live through the carnage of World War Two yet somehow has given themselves the right to define how "moral" or "clean" the final victory should have been feels about it) and another couple of hundred thousand Allied soldiers had been killed because of his decision, he would have deserved to have been lynched from the nearest street lamp.

In March 1945, US bombing over Tokyo killed 100,00 people in one night, a death toll that rivalled what a single atomic blast could do. The Americans had the capability and intent of doing it repeatedly, until practically every single Japanese city and large town would have been virtually annihilated. The atomic bombings, and subsequent Japanese surrender, put an end to large-scale conventional saturation bombing and (once again) ended up saving probably hundreds of thousands of more lives.