Remembering Hiroshima

Pepper said:
If Japan had that horrendous bomb, they would have used it. If Germany...........same thing, and they in particular were real close to achieving it. War is Hell. Killing civilians is a given. Only young children are innocent. They are the ones I grieve.
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I think more than just children are innocent. My mother survived the bombings of Dresden. My bio dad was a prisoner of war of the Japanese. (I wasn't sure if I had remembered hearing that right so I Googled his name and he came up on every web page I looked at that documented such.

My mother could be a good mother but she had rages that made Mommy Dearest look calm and she terrorized and damaged all of her kids. Is this what made her what she was? I don't know. No one would ever think seeing me that I would have any connection to this city I have never been to.

War is horrible. I sometimes struggle with letting things go and sticking up for myself because I never want to be a perpetrator. Though I can be irritable. I think my nerves were shot by age 9.
 

Mitch86 said:
America was worse than Japan and Germany. We murdered 15 million Indians and enslaved 6 million black Africans. We had no mercy on their wives and children as well.
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What is your source of 15 million Indians being murdered?
 
ohioboy said:
Dropping the bomb, right or wrong?
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I think given where we were in 1945 it was pretty much inevitable. Debating this with the benefit of hindsight isn't very productive.

I sure hope it never happens again, but am not sure I have that much faith in human kind...

ohioboy said:
What is your source of 15 million Indians being murdered?
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I assume this includes Indians who died from our diseases, then the number would not seem so far fetched. Of course our ancestors did not know what was happening or understand it at the time. Still an awful thing...
 

Pepper said:
You did not learn from the original Jewish texts, but more importantly, how they were reasoned and explained. Whole bunch of idea rabbis with scribes. The original interpretations discuss this.
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I agree. I doubt that the original word used meant "kill" in the sense that any killing was wrong, because the God of the Old Testament told the Jews many times to go do battle with whatever country, for instance the Canaanites and the Malakites, and in at least one instance told them to kill everything living, not just combatants.
 
Pepper said:
If Japan had that horrendous bomb, they would have used it. If Germany...........same thing, and they in particular were real close to achieving it. War is Hell. Killing civilians is a given. Only young children are innocent. They are the ones I grieve.
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War is war. But even war has its ethics, its code of conduct. If Japan or Germany had such a terrible weapon and used it they would be as inhuman as the USA was. Killing innocent civilians indiscriminately is NOT justifiable in any situation. Otherwise the world (and especially USA) should stop complaining about 9/11 or other acts of "terrorism".
 
CAKCy said:
I would have invited the Japanese command (no matter how crazy that sounds) and give them a demonstration of the A bomb and its power as an ultimatum.
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They didn't surrender after we dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima and "gave them a demonstration" of the atomic bomb's destructive force. It took another bomb on Nagasaki for them to finally give up. Those people were frickin' nuts! It was mass psychosis!
 
Remembering Hiroshima .....

This is always a two part memory for me. I cannot think about either Hiroshima or Nagasaki without also thinking of Pearl Harbor. The sight of a Japanese flag (giant red sun on white field) is still briefly unsettling to me as is the Nazi swatziker.

Right or wrong thing to do at the time? I was 12, old enough to understand and remember discussion at the time. The Japanese culture regarded surrender to be treasonous and shameful. There was honor in losing your life in combat for your country, better to be a martyr than to surrender. Under no other circumstances would the Japanese high command have surrendered unless the Allies could show the possibility of total annihilation.

And without a doubt, if Japan or Germany had had the bomb, any world left today would be speaking either Japanese or German.

For an interesting take on the bomb and its creators watch "Red Joan" on Netflex with Judi Dench, a true story about one of the scientists involved.
 
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helenbacque said:
Remembering Hiroshima .....

This is always a two part memory for me. I cannot think about either Hiroshima or Nagasaki without also thinking of Pearl Harbor. The sight of a Japanese flag (giant red sun on white field) is still briefly unsettling to me as is the Nazi swatziker.

Right or wrong thing to do at the time? I was 12, old enough to understand and remember discussion at the time. The Japanese culture regarded surrender to be treasonous and shameful. There was honor in losing your life in combat for your country, better to be a martyr than to surrender. Under no other circumstances would the Japanese high command have surrendered unless the Allies could show the possibility of total annihilation.

And without a doubt, if Japan or Germany had had the bomb, any world left today would be speaking either Japanese or German.

For an interesting take on the bomb and its creators watch "Red Joan" on Netflex with Judi Dench, a true story about one of the scientists involved.
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I agree here.
 
I'm not sure how the atomic bombs helped end WWII. By August 1945, the US had total air superiority over Japan. At that time, bombing raids with 500 bombers were happening. I don't believe it mattered to the Japanese whether 500 bombers dropped thousands of bombs and killed 40-60,000, ( 100,000 died in a firebombing of Tokyo) or if one plane dropped one bomb, and killed 40-60,000. The difference to the Japanese being? The use of the atomic bomb may have allowed the Japanese to accept surrender. They were loosing the war. The US had successfully blockaded Japan, with its submarines. Japanese were starving in the streets, amid bombed out cities. Japan was on the ropes. The USSR declared war on Japan, the Russians were not going to play nice with their old enemy. The Japanese Code of Bushido taught that death was preferable to surrender, but no nation had faced terrible, deadly atomic weapons, so was the dropping of the atomic bombs, an "out" for the Japanese to accept surrender? The weapons were so horrible that they negated the concept of. Bushido?
 
No, No, No-read more
The Japanese were desperately attempting to obtain Russian assistance to brokerage a peace whereby they could avoid Unconditional Surrender.

The sticking point was: One of the terms in the Allies demand for Unconditional Surrender was-you have to get rid of your emperor.

Russia strung them alone, with no intention of trying to be of assistance-Russia had her troops massed on the Korea Border
which they had been lusting for. As you remember, Japan had conquered Korea and thought of it as their territory.

The bombings had convinced Japan there was no hope, but the militarist in Japan thought death preferable.
The Peace Party operated in secret.
When we started dropping A-bombs, the Russian's invaded Korea.

The Unconditional Release include the Emperor being removed. This was the sticking point!

Now, the Allies told the world that Japan had accepted the terms of Unconditional Surrender accepted and
peace was obtained.


The allies, In Secret, had told Japan: You can keep your Emperor.

Take yourself back to the 1940's, The U.S.A. is losing a war. That conquering nation peace terms included-You Must Give Up Worshiping Your God!
 
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ohioboy said:
Aug. 6, 1945, was another day that will live in infamy, (and Aug. 9, Nagasaki). Tens of thousands of totally innocent people were disinigrated, literally and for all practical purposes of human existence. Dropping the bomb, right or wrong?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima
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Right and justified in every sense and definition of that circumstance. It was "WAR" and the object of war is to destroy the enemy. The Japanese slaughtered Chinese and other populations of countries they conquered gassing, raping them, executing them, burning and bombing their cities with all citizens in them. So I am so sick and tired of no-nothings condemning America when they no nothing about history and the millions of civilians that died in WWII. Why not look up the number of German civilians were burned to death by U.S. & British bombings? Or do you ignore that because they were Caucasians?
 
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Any discussion of Hiroshima seems to bring out the arm-chair generals, apologists, revisionists, ideologues and virtue signalers, none of whom had to witness the horrors being ravaged on the peoples of India, China, Burma, Malasia, Singapore, Korea, New Guinea, etc. Nobody here had to walk in the shoes of our servicemen as they faced the brutality of the Japanese army. Nobody here had to try to figure out which actions would result in the lowest loss of life. Nobody here ever interviewed the people of Japan as to their intent or saw the weapons that were stored away for an invasion of their home islands. I doubt if anyone here has read and studied the intercepted communications of the period. Nobody here witnessed what happened on Okinawa. Nobody here had face what might have happened if Manshu Detachment 731 had been given just a little more time.

And yet, people talk, some with a degree of arrogance, as if they know what they're talking about. Such is the nature of forums.
 
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We read:
knowing that what we read has the author's spin
the writer's truth has to contend with the publishers' need to sale books
two decades, at least, are required to define events and motives
motives will probably never be known

we know, our adversaries books read entirely different
, but we do not have access or the time to read them

now we offer the truth, as we think it to be
our evaluation is not accepted by others
-they already have their opinion
 
JonDouglas said:
Any discussion of Hiroshima seems to bring out the arm-chair generals, apologists, revisionists, ideologues and virtue signalers, none of whom had to witness the horrors being ravaged on the peoples of India, China, Burma, Malasia, Singapore, Korea, New Guinea, etc. Nobody here had to walk in the shoes of our servicemen as they faced the brutality of the Japanese army. Nobody here had to try to figure out which actions would result in the lowest loss of life. Nobody here ever interviewed the people of Japan as to their intent or saw the weapons that were stored away for an invasion of their home islands. I doubt if anyone here has read and studied the intercepted communications of the period. Nobody here witnessed what happened on Okinawa. Nobody here had face what might have happened if Manshu Detachment 731 had been given just a little more time.

And yet, people talk, some with a degree of arrogance, as if they know what they're talking about. Such is the nature of forums.
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Add to the above Japan still had a large standing army ready to fight. The citizens were training to combat all invaders. Children were being trained as well. Recall the people of Japan were told U.S. Marines at them after killing them and all women would be raped. Japan like Germany was not demoralized by the horrific bombings the received.
 
Mitch86 said:
Sorry, it was only 12 million Indians murdered by white folks in the USA per this link:

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/7302
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I watched documentary addressing the fact that more were killed by disease than weapons. One tribe was given blankets saturated with small pox or cholera disease if I recall correctly. Sadly, this country still treats the Native Americans like third class citizens.

"About all this there is no essential disagreement. The most hideous enemy of native Americans was not the white man and his weaponry, concludes Alfred Crosby,"but the invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath." It is thought that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from these killers."
 
When the U.S. invaded the Japanese island of Okinawa, 12,550 U.S military died. AND aprox 100,000 Japanese. Can you imagine how many would have died IF we had been forced to invade the main Japanese islands and NOT used the bomb to finally end the war ? Personally, I think 10 million dead Japanese is a conservative estimate .
PS: just in the fire bombing of Tokyo, it is estimated that 100,000 Japanese were killed. What if we were forced to do the same to ALL Japanese cities ?
 
ohioboy said:
Was the act of FDR's internment of Japanese on American soil justified? What did they do to be kidnapped under the rules of engagement/war? Nothing.
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That Japanese internment just enrages me. J Edgar Hoover said he advised FDR that the FBI knew which Japanese posed a threat and there was no need for a general internment, but FDR did it anyway. When I was a kid an Oakland librarian got several of us together and told us a story. His parents gardener was Japanese and required to report to an internment camp. He had a Bonsai tree that had been in the family for 100 years, but he couldn't take it with him to the camp. He gave the tree to the librarian's father to care for until he was released. The father did his best, but it died. I had a teacher who worked in the dreaded Manzanar internment camp, located in a California desert that can get up to 110 degrees in the summer. A Japanese woman gave birth on a murderously hot day, and the baby died. They buried it in a shoe box. Telling that story brought tears to his eyes. There is more, much more -- enough to make my blood boil.
 
War is hell as General Sherman not only said, but demonstrated. It is the most deranged form of solving differences ever devised, yet has been around since the beginning of humans. There are no words adequate enough to describe just how terrible it really is. As those who actually lived it. One of the ladies on here, Maywalk could tell you all about the London Blitz. Imagine every day and night, thousands of planes flying over the cities of your country, dropping bombs ad infinitum? This went on from Sept. 1940 through May, 1941. Hitler just shook his head in amazement and asked his minions, "what is wrong with those people" as they would not capitulate. Churchill kept their morale up beyond the pale. He implored Roosevelt to help out, but FDR demurred as Joseph Kennedy who was ambassador to the Court of St. James advised him to stay out of it. Why Kennedy was ever appointed to that post is beyond me. He was a true Irishman who despised the English, and the feeling was reciprocated for neither hid his feelings for the other.

The treatment in the POW camps was different for officers than for enlisted men. Officers were thought to be gentlemen and possessed of information no lowly enlisted man would ever have. Wrong! Dresden was the payoff for what happened to London, right or wrong.

It has been mentioned in here how inhuman the Japanese were at that time, and indeed a good part of Asia suffered their inhumane treatment before they came after us. But, do not think the Germans or Russians were any better. It turns my stomach when I read all that I do read about what the Germans did during not only WWII but WWI as well. Read about Lidice or Orrador sur-Glane, and a host of others. To say nothing od the death camps in Poland. Pure evil abounds on that European continent to this day.

I read a lot of the foreign press everyday and you'd be amazed at the hatred of Americans, Jews, Poles, etc. that still exists among those people. And, they are unafraid to express their views. Shameful.
 
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