Quote: (12-01-2017 03:28 AM)Lime Wrote:
Quote: (11-30-2017 10:16 PM)911 Wrote:
Quote: (11-30-2017 07:54 PM)infowarrior1 Wrote:
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How many of those killings are unnecessary or necessary? At least Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified in a way:
The bombing of Dresden is not.
I am sorry it is still evil and still ought to be punished.
I totally agree about Dresden, but the atomic bombings weren't justified either, Father Miscamble is clearly wrong here, based on the testimonies of many leading US and Japanese figures. Examples:
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Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet stated in a public address given at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945:
"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 329, Chapter 26) . . . [Nimitz also stated: "The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . ."]
In a private 1946 letter to Walter Michels of the Association of Philadelphia Scientists, Nimitz observed that "the decision to employ the atomic bomb on Japanese cities was made on a level higher than that of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." (See pp. 330-331, Chapter 26)
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In his memoirs Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff--and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff--minced few words:
"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. . . ."
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Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946:
The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [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. (See p. 331, Chapter 26)
Halsey is right, for one thing, the Nagasaki bombing was about the live testing of a type of nuclear bomb design than was different from the Hiroshima "Little Boy" uranium. Nagasaki was a plutonium-based "Fat Man" design. You can debate whether Hiroshima was necessary, but not Nagasaki, it was the most egregious case of overkill, figuratively and literally.
Keywords: 'purely military'
Do you know that the Japanese kept concentration camps full of Europeans whom they might have executed with an invasion?
Japan was warned several times to surrender, but because of their Ketsu-Go didn't. The atomic bomb saved the lives of civilian prisoners that Japan kept.
The top three US admirals I've quoted above have clearly stated that Japan was ready to surrender. I'd take their word and qualified opinion over those of think tankers and mainstream historians, who have shaped public opinion and perpetrating the canard that we had to nuke Japan in order to save lives.
Once again, even if you believe that canard, there is no excuse for Nagasaki. But even Hiroshima should have been avoided. If the intent was to crush any leftover will that Japan had left in the final month of the war (and there wasn't much left of it, according to the top military leaders), this demonstration of force could have easily been achieved with much more limited civilian casualties, as rear admiral Lewis Strauss (chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission) pointed out:
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Rear Admiral L. Lewis Strauss, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy from 1944 to 1945 (and later chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission), replaced Bard on the Interim Committee after he left government on July 1. Subsequently, Strauss repeatedly stated his belief that the use of the atomic bomb "was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion. . . ." (See p. 332, Chapter 26) Strauss recalled:
I proposed to Secretary Forrestal at that time that the weapon should be demonstrated. . . . Primarily, it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate. . . . My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to the Japanese observers, and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a good place--satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood. . . . I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest . . . would [have] laid the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they had been matchsticks, and of course set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities, their fortifications at will. . . . (See p. 333, Chapter 26)
As well, the theory that all of Japan was an Okinawa-like giant bunker archipelago requiring the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers to be liberated is bunk. Their whole fleet and air force were destroyed, and the country was bombed at will with complete impunity by thousands of B-29s and B17s decommissioned from the European front, every bridge, every road, every plant, every military installation, with the undivided attention of the US military after the defeat of Germany. Japan could have been blockaded and would be left without energy sources or enough food to ward off mass starvation.
It wouldn't have come to that anyway, because as the admirals have stated above, Japan was already ready to surrender by August '45, but the point here is that you didn't to invade the main archipelago to bring them to their knees.
All of Japan could have been turned into a giant concentration camp and half their population killed without any boots on the ground. That's actually what the Morgenthau Plan called for in Germany, the deindustrialization, blockade and starvation of a quarter to a half of Germany's population, a German Holodomor. In the end, a somewhat smaller plan was implemented,
resulting in the unnecessary death of 6 to 10 million Germans between 1946 and 1950.
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In the end, the German and European problem is now being dealt with through the ( ( ( Coudenhove-Kalergi plan of ethnic replacement.
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In his "third person" autobiography (co-authored with Walter Muir Whitehill) the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated:
The President in giving his approval for these [atomic] attacks appeared to believe that many thousands of American troops would be killed in invading Japan, and in this he was entirely correct; but King felt, as he had pointed out many times, that the dilemma was an unnecessary one, for had we been willing to wait, the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials. (See p. 327, Chapter 26)
As to any collateral European prisoners/hostages Japan may have had in late summer '45, Japanese military leaders could have been put on notice for impending war crimes trials similar to those that were being set up in Nurnberg. In fact, Japanese war criminals got off too easy, in good part because there were no ( ( (grudges) ) ) against them.
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