Obama tried to apologize to Japan for Hiroshima

[werepossum]

The japanese were VERY militant. A bonzai charge was not meant to end with the japanese soldier being alive. A japanese soldier was expected to move at night in maggot and dead body filled mud with only a knife and then drop into a fox hole to do hand to hand combat with the 2 marines inside and then move on to the next foxhole until death.

I would say that the japanese soldier was more extreme then any of these middle easterners ever.

I agree, and would add most civilians felt equally ready to give their lives for the emperor. The Japanese also had massive supplies of kamikazi, from planes to boats to humans. It would have been a horrible, horrible invasion on both sides, and the death count would have dwarfed the nuclear bombings. Our one advantage was the emperor, who desired peace even if it meant his life. The military flaunted his will, and a contingent determined to fight to the last man even attempted to intercept the emperor's tapes at the last minute. The emperor's voice calling for surrender crushed any legitimacy for those calling for further resistance because the man was considered a living god and therefore infallible. Unfortunately we have no such figure in the Islamic world; as soon as any one cleric steps forward and presses for peace, another equally valid cleric steps forward demanding murder and death for Allah. The one big advantage here is that a much smaller percentage of the Islamic population is prepared to give their lives to kill infidels; were they as radical (on average) are were the Japanese, we'd be well and truly screwed and the world would be facing nuclear fire again.

Regarding Obama's proposed apology, he and much of the left regarded America as a historically evil place before his election, especially under Bush. I think he and they felt that by apologizing for every perceived evil, America could start afresh under his enlightened leadership. It's probably not so much that he specifically thinks we need to apologize for the bombings, as that an apology costs him nothing and might help him and his foreign policy. When the Japanese indicated otherwise, he dropped it.

 

[M0RPH]

So what would you have done differently under the circumstances? It is August 5th, the day before the first bomb was dropped. Given the then current situation, what would you have done differently to end the war?

Starving them all to death was actually option #3.

I wouldn't have done anything, just waited. We know now that the Japanese were getting ready to surrender, and our government knew that too.

We dropped the bombs to flex our muscles to the Soviets and to test out our shiny new toys. Clearly, if we were just trying to force a surrender, all that was needed was one bomb in Hiroshima. But instead two were dropped. Why? Because there were two different variants (Uranium and plutuniom-based) that needed real-world testing. That's a giant giveaway right there about what our motivation was.

Like Einstein predicted at the start of the Atom bomb project, “You realize, once the military have this, they will use it, no matter what you say.” One of the main reasons we are still finding reasons for wars today, because all that military machine that we spend so much money on needs to get some use. Sad, but true.

Anyone who still maintains that dropping the bombs was necessary, please explain to me why it was necessary to drop TWO bombs rather than just one.

 

[K1052]

They would of surrendered to more firebombing eventually. We did more damage with that anyhow.

The psychological impact of nuclear weapons was far greater than any of the incendiary attacks. The general impression that we could sit back and vaporize Japanese cities at will while never giving their army the chance for the desperate battle they'd been steeling themselves for years brought their true situation into relief, at least for the emperor and civilian elements in the government.

 

[Aikouka]

The actions of the Asian countries have always reminded me of the phrase, "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." It's always seemed like some of these countries don't get along simply because of what they did to each other many years ago (e.g. Japan invading China in the 1930s, etc.).

Along those lines, it makes me wonder if Japan hated the United States because we forced them to open trade in the 1850s. While it seems silly to hold a grudge for almost a century, I wouldn't put it past them. :|

 

[K1052]

I wouldn't have done anything, just waited. We know now that the Japanese were getting ready to surrender, and our government knew that too.

We dropped the bombs to flex our muscles to the Soviets and to test out our shiny new toys. Clearly, if we were just trying to force a surrender, all that was needed was one bomb in Hiroshima. But instead two were dropped, because there were two different variants (Uranium and plutuniom-based) that needed testing.

Like Einstein predicted at the start of the Atom bomb project, “You realize, once the military have this, they will use it, no matter what you say.” One of the main reasons we are still making up reasons for wars today, because all that military machine that we spend so much money on needs to get some use. Sad, but true.

They were awkwardly groping for some more favorable end of hostilities that didn't have a chance in hell of ever being accepted, the same tune since they started loosing the war. The Japanese government and military made a lot of severe strategic and political miscalculations about the US and paid a dear price.

Also, the physicists were sure both bombs would work. The one considered more problematic was already tested at Trinity.

 

[Craig234]

No sir, you are the fucking idiot for accepting and embracing a flawed justification that has been fed to the american public (sheep like you) over the years to make people feel better about the fact that their government murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians with the most heinous weapon known to mankind.

I don't find it easy to find objective analysis, either of the facts about the choice, or the information available to Truman or his reasons (despite his diary).

But two things seem likely:

One, that if the war had been fought conventionally, the casualty estimates are huge for both sides. Whether two drop 1 or 2 and the place to drop them are other questions.

Two, that a sort of national insensitivity to the taking of life had set in. We began the war with a lot of ideals about it being a 'justly fought war', avoiding civilian casualties, and as the years went on this changed to choosing to firebomb cities and kill a lot more civilians as a strategy. By 1945, the lives of Japanese civilians seems not to matter much.

Despite point 2, the case for using nukes seems it has some basis. It would help for you to explain the alternative you advocate, and if Truman was informed about it.

 

[Matt1970]

They would of surrendered to more firebombing eventually. We did more damage with that anyhow.

Exactly. We also killed more than twice as many people with the carpet bombing we did previously and they hadn't surrendered.

 

[Craig234]

I wouldn't have done anything, just waited. We know now that the Japanese were getting ready to surrender, and our government knew that too.

It'd take more familiarity with the cultural and political situation for me to have an opinion on how plausible that would have been.

As a matter of history, not saying it's right, the allies seemed strongly determined to bring the war to a close quickly for whatever reasons.

The Japanese reportedly were still voting not to surrender. I wonder what our government knew about how likely it was they would surrender. I'm not sure even the Japanese know.

We dropped the bombs to flex our muscles to the Soviets and to test out our shiny new toys. Clearly, if we were just trying to force a surrender, all that was needed was one bomb in Hiroshima. But instead two were dropped. Why? Because there were two different variants (Uranium and plutuniom-based) that needed real-world testing. That's a giant giveaway right there about what our motivation was.

That seems a speculation. First, the 'benefit' of flexing our muscles may have had no effect to a strong effect on the decision. Second, the second bomb could have been for a variety of possible reasons, ranging from a belief that the Japenese were not persuaded by one but would be by two, to simply doing it because we had it and could care less about the lives lost, to your suggestion - which doesn't answer why we couldn't have gotten the same answer after the Japanese surrendered, in a test.

Like Einstein predicted at the start of the Atom bomb project, “You realize, once the military have this, they will use it, no matter what you say.” One of the main reasons we are still finding reasons for wars today, because all that military machine that we spend so much money on needs to get some use. Sad, but true.

Those pressures do exist, as does the neocon mentality 'it's good to slap around a country now and then to project power'.

Anyone who still maintains that dropping the bombs was necessary, please explain to me why it was necessary to drop TWO bombs rather than just one.

They didn't drop them at the same time; they dropped one, did not get a surrender, and then had the choices of wait an indefinite period for them to change their mind, switch the plan to the conventional invasion, or drop a second bomb (the last they had available, IIRC). I suspect it had to do with the allied war power not seeing the need to wait longer for the Japanese to change their mind, maybe, with the war machine sitting idle waiting.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

No sir, you are the fucking idiot for accepting and embracing a flawed justification that has been fed to the american public (sheep like you) over the years to make people feel better about the fact that their government murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians with the most heinous weapon known to mankind.

The issue here isn't even the bombing. The issue is that Japan has already apologized for their Imperialist government. They've gotten over it; Japan and the U.S. are allies and it's water under the bridge. This would be like present-day Germany apologizing to Israel for the holocaust. It's a different country now, and they have already made amends for it.

The U.S. should not be that guy that keeps apologizing all night for spilling his drink on someone even after they change their shirt (and don't bother telling me that atomic warfare != spilling a drink).

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

No sir, you are the fucking idiot for accepting and embracing a flawed justification that has been fed to the american public (sheep like you) over the years to make people feel better about the fact that their government murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians with the most heinous weapon known to mankind.

You do understand we were at war. Better that we kill them, than they kill us.
They are just lucky the Emperor saw the Kanji on the wall. We were going to drop one on every major city until they surrendered or where wiped out. That's War. What we do now isn't war. What we do now is P/C fighting meant not to offend the enemy. Hell The current administration is calling the family of terrorists it kills and apologizing.
War is brutal, savage and disgusting, but if you are going to have a war, those are things that have to be done.

What we are doing in the middle east isn't going to make a lick of difference. Now if we steam rolled through, killed everyone that opposed us and didn't let up, things would be much better as our enemies would see that we aren't F'ing around.
The Japanese and Germans went from a fierce, war craving, never giveup attitude in war, to being pacifists in 1 generation because they knew that the might of the US would do whatever it took to avenge a wrong.

 

[bfdd]

You do understand we were at war. Better that we kill them, than they kill us.
They are just lucky the Emperor saw the Kanji on the wall. We were going to drop one on every major city until they surrendered or where wiped out. That's War. What we do now isn't war. What we do now is P/C fighting meant not to offend the enemy. Hell The current administration is calling the family of terrorists it kills and apologizing.
War is brutal, savage and disgusting, but if you are going to have a war, those are things that have to be done.

What we are doing in the middle east isn't going to make a lick of difference. Now if we steam rolled through, killed everyone that opposed us and didn't let up, things would be much better as our enemies would see that we aren't F'ing around.
The Japanese and Germans went from a fierce, war craving, never giveup attitude in war, to being pacifists in 1 generation because they knew that the might of the US would do whatever it took to avenge a wrong.

pro post is pro. War needs to be war again, until then people will be "ok" with it. War is brutal and disgusting and it should always be that way. You don't go to war thinking you're going to win over the other people, you go to war thinking you're going to kill as many of them as it takes to get them to see it your way.

 

[JSt0rm]

They were awkwardly groping for some more favorable end of hostilities that didn't have a chance in hell of ever being accepted, the same tune since they started loosing the war. The Japanese government and military made a lot of severe strategic and political miscalculations about the US and paid a dear price.

Also, the physicists were sure both bombs would work. The one considered more problematic was already tested at Trinity.

i agree. But if we didnt have nukes I don't think we would of landed on japan until we had bombed the entire place to charred mud. The top officers were VERY concerned about landing on japan mainland. battles like okinawa showed what they would be in for and the losses were not really acceptable. 150% casualty rates (including reinforcements) for us marine divisions isnt really acceptable unless you are defending your home.

 

[werepossum]

They were awkwardly groping for some more favorable end of hostilities that didn't have a chance in hell of ever being accepted, the same tune since they started loosing the war. The Japanese government and military made a lot of severe strategic and political miscalculations about the US and paid a dear price.

Also, the physicists were sure both bombs would work. The one considered more problematic was already tested at Trinity.

Exactly. We reissued our demand for unconditional surrender after the first bomb; the Japanese did not respond at all. There was still a vigorous debate as to whether the Japanese could fight us to a standstill and force favorable terms. Failure to respond was a major miscalculation, as we took that to mean no change in the Japanese position and therefore dropped a second bomb. Only then did the emperor step in and demand that the government accept unconditional surrender, even with no guarantee of his own position or even his own life. (There was a powerful movement in the States to have him hung as a war criminal.)

We are damned lucky that Hirohito was willing to put his subjects ahead of himself. With their fanatical devotion and eagerness to die for the emperor, had he been like Hitler - my people have failed me so they deserve to die with me - Halsey would probably have gotten his wish that the Japanese language would be spoken only in Hell (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.) Also, without a direct command from the emperor, Japanese all across the Pacific who had been bypassed or driven up into the mountains would have had to be rooted out, making the war last years longer and cost tens of thousands more lives. I won't say Hirohito was a good man - he was happy enough with the war and the atrocities when Japan was winning - but at least he finally put his people ahead of his own safety at the last.

 

[Darwin333]

No sir, you are the fucking idiot for accepting and embracing a flawed justification that has been fed to the american public (sheep like you) over the years to make people feel better about the fact that their government murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians with the most heinous weapon known to mankind.

I am with ya! We should have just kept fire bombing them so we could have at least spread the death and destruction out over the entire country. Not really fair that just two cities catch the brunt of it.

 

[Kadarin]

The United States does not owe Japan an apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was just and proper response to WWII as initiated by Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and was necessary to end the war.

 

[JSt0rm]

The fact is this thing didnt happen and was probably one of thousands of diplomatic ideas that never come to light. I would never fault anyone for exploring options and we only know about this via the wikileaks stuff so meh. Nonstarter indeed.

 

[BoomerD]

You do understand we were at war. Better that we kill them, than they kill us.
They are just lucky the Emperor saw the Kanji on the wall. We were going to drop one on every major city until they surrendered or where wiped out. That's War. What we do now isn't war. What we do now is P/C fighting meant not to offend the enemy. Hell The current administration is calling the family of terrorists it kills and apologizing.
War is brutal, savage and disgusting, but if you are going to have a war, those are things that have to be done.

What we are doing in the middle east isn't going to make a lick of difference. Now if we steam rolled through, killed everyone that opposed us and didn't let up, things would be much better as our enemies would see that we aren't F'ing around.
The Japanese and Germans went from a fierce, war craving, never giveup attitude in war, to being pacifists in 1 generation because they knew that the might of the US would do whatever it took to avenge a wrong.

Having spent two years in the PC war of Vietnam, I agree with most of this post...HOWEVER, the Soviets weren't so PC in their handling of Afghanistan 20-odd years ago...and they still went home with their tails between their legs...even though they didn't have nearly the logistical supply headaches that we now have.
I'm not sure there is an "acceptable" way to win the wars in the middle east without turning the entire region into "nuclear glass," and leaving nothing alive...and nothing above ground except American-owned oil wells.

The middle east has been at war for as long as history has been written about the area. There's no fucking way we're going to "make it better" there...we're damned if we do, damned if we don't.

 

[Craig234]

We were going to drop one on every major city until they surrendered or where wiped out.

No, we weren't. We used all we had and would have for a while. They didn't know that.

Some Japanese who resemble today's GOP still voted for more war, though.

 

[M0RPH]

Come up with all the explanations you want and ignore the obvious. We had two bombs (which just happened to be two different types of nukes we wanted to try on real people) and were dead set on using them both unless something inconvenient stopped us, like a surrender. We gave them a whole 3 days after the first one. Now if all we really wanted was a surrender, wouldn't we have taken more time to communicate with them and say 'hey, if you don't surrender we're gonna drop another' ?

 

[werepossum]

Come up with all the explanations you want and ignore the obvious. We had two bombs (which just happened to be two different types of nukes we wanted to try on real people) and were dead set on using them both unless something inconvenient stopped us, like a surrender.

We had two different types of bombs because initially we weren't sure how (or if) each would perform and because producing either bomb grade fissionable material was very, very difficult.

Feel free to cast the United States as an evil force bent on murder 'cause it's fun, just don't expect to ever be taken seriously.

 

[Craig234]

Come up with all the explanations you want and ignore the obvious. We had two bombs (which just happened to be two different types of nukes we wanted to try on real people) and were dead set on using them both unless something inconvenient stopped us, like a surrender. We gave them a whole 3 days after the first one. Now if all we really wanted was a surrender, wouldn't we have taken more time to communicate with them and say 'hey, if you don't surrender we're gonna drop another' ?

I don't think there's much question we were in a rush to end the war and used the second bomb with little effort to avoid doing so. That was the mentality at the time.

 

[werepossum]

pro post is pro. War needs to be war again, until then people will be "ok" with it. War is brutal and disgusting and it should always be that way. You don't go to war thinking you're going to win over the other people, you go to war thinking you're going to kill as many of them as it takes to get them to see it your way.

But sometimes it can be more civilized than at other times. Rommel's African war against the British was an oddity in modern (probably all) warfare in that the soldiers treated each other well, understanding that war is merely politics by other means, so they don't necessarily have to hate each other. A soldier whose side was surrounded could honorably surrender and be treated well, even repatriated later in prisoner exchanges.

I can see the danger in trying to make war too civilized when the other side refuses to play. But I also see the danger in assuming that brutality is a force in and of itself. I think far too often we credit the success of things like Sherman's march on Atlanta to their brutality without factoring other factors. Sherman for instance was a brilliant general, probably the best of the war, and developed an operational plan that both threatened multiple possible targets that the Confederates had to defend, thereby preventing them from concentrating their forces against him, but that also left him in position to repeat the same classic maneuver. A similarly brutal campaign by a Burnside or a McClellan or a Butler would have probably strengthened Confederate resolve, and definitely would have led to far greater Union losses and thus a longer war. While brutality meeting brutality helped us against the Moros and probably against the Japanese, and were necessary in either case, brutality isn't always a useful tool. The Soviets were as brutal in Afghanistan as they could be short of killing everyone, and merely hardened opposition.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Japan said - not accepted, bad idea. In recent wikileaks it's shown Japan called Obama visiting to apologize a "non-starter". What's most embarrassing of this failed president is he doesn't even understand why it would be a bad idea.

No link.....rofl@spidey

 

[JSt0rm]

We should be aiming for no war. It really does no good. But it takes 2 to tango as they say and it takes 2 to understand war is never the best answer but the final one.

I think the biggest blunder of our country is losing sight of this after the 9/11 attacks.

 

[K1052]

Come up with all the explanations you want and ignore the obvious. We had two bombs (which just happened to be two different types of nukes we wanted to try on real people) and were dead set on using them both unless something inconvenient stopped us, like a surrender. We gave them a whole 3 days after the first one. Now if all we really wanted was a surrender, wouldn't we have taken more time to communicate with them and say 'hey, if you don't surrender we're gonna drop another' ?

You make it sound like a Japanese surrender (specifically on terms acceptable to the Allies) was a sure thing. All US experience fighting in the Pacific pointed to the contrary, that they would fight to the last man and inflict huge casualties on Allied forces. Given the fanaticism at large in Japan this was most certainly the plan.