Geez, we can't get Obama and his clowns out of office soon enough....

[AAAgent]

We can probably do the link posting all day and then i can go and pull all the text books by pearson and passed along through highschool, college, etc. that state why the US was justified in bombing. Truth is we will never know for sure if there was justification or not. History says the US is justified and the very few reports that you pulled from a blog say otherwise. I'd prefer to go with the majority and what my ancestors have told me about the war.

Here's a blog link below

http://csis.org/blog/understanding-decision-drop-bomb-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

Nevertheless, until July 1945, the atomic bomb remained untested and the leading plan of the U.S. was to invade Japan through Operation Downfall, beginning with an invasion of the southernmost island of Kyushu in October 1945. In terms of the operation, there were numerous estimates as to the potential U.S. casualties. President Truman received estimates from General MacArthur that upwards of 31,000 U.S. casualties could be expected within the first thirty days. However, other estimates, particularly by the Joint Chiefs, projected casualties to reach almost seven times higher. This is a far cry from the estimate of millions of casualties which has been bandied about in the contemporary media. Nevertheless, Operation Downfall posed a definitive risk to U.S. soldiers.

Also, not to be overlooked is that Japan's majority ruling class was comprised of warriors for hundreds of years which lasted up until almost 1880. Defeat was so shameful that people would prefer execution by having their head chopped off or essentially gutting themselves to effect of immediate death than returning home and facing the shame that awaited them. Their culture and history of the samurai was less than a decade from the beginning of world war 2 and people still would prefer to fight until the death or also in some cases would rather be killed by the enemy than killed by their superiors. Kamikaze soldiers were feared by everyone who fought in the pacific. Unlike the taliban or other insurgents that fought dirty. These guys were well trained, well equiped soldiers, and they would fight to the death head on in a charge before retreating (as retreating also meant death). They were not running at you with just bombs in one off locations, they were charging at you in large groups some with bombs and the rest with guns, bayonets, and knives all knowing they would die but refusing to die until they took an American with them.

How about this link:

http://www.pacificwar.org.au/AtomBomb_Japan.html

The Japanese government plans a fanatical defence of Japan's home islands to the last man, woman and child

In April 1945, the Japanese Suzuki government had prepared a war policy called Ketsugo which was a refinement of the Shosango victory plan for the defence of the home islands to the last man. These plans would prepare the Japanese people psychologically to die as a nation in defence of their homeland. Even children, including girls, would be trained to use makeshift lethal weapons, and exhorted to sacrifice themselves by killing an American invader. To implement this policy of training children to kill, soldiers attended Japanese schools and trained even small children in the use of weapons such as bamboo spears.

The American government was aware from intelligence intercepts of the chilling implications of these Japanese defensive plans. Intelligence reports indicated that the Japanese would probably be able to muster two million troops and eight thousand aircraft for the defence of the four home islands against a traditional amphibious invasion. The dispersal of these military resources across Japan, and their careful concealment, would provide the Americans with no opportunity to destroy them from the air. The Ketsugo policy placed heavy reliance on suicide attacks on the American troops and their covering warships. For this purpose, several thousand aircraft would be adapted for suicide attacks. Other methods of suicide attack being developed included dynamite-filled "crash boats", guided human torpedoes, guided human rocket bombs (similar to the "Baka" rocket plane used against American ships at Okinawa), and specially trained ground suicide units carrying explosives. In addition, the invading Americans would have to face a civilian population drilled in guerilla tactics.

The Americans had every reason to be deeply disturbed when they learned about Japanese plans to defend the home islands by massive suicide attacks on American amphibious forces. The Kamikaze suicide attacks on Allied ships at Okinawa had alone produced a horrifying toll:

34 Allied warships sunk ;

368 Allied ships damaged (some fit only for scrap);

4,900 Allied sailors killed; and

4,874 Allied sailors wounded.

President Truman's military advisers warn him of the very high cost of an invasion of Japan

Faced with this knowledge of Japan's extraordinary plan to defend its home islands to the death, and the fanatical character of Japanese soldiers, and extrapolating the fanatical defence of Iwo Jima and Okinawa to an amphibious assault on Japan's four home islands, American military leaders were deeply concerned. They advised President Truman that an attempt to invade and subdue the Japanese on their home islands was likely to cost at least 1,000,000 American battle casualties.

how's that overwhelming evidence for you. Japan lost the war, I never disagreed there but Japan would not have surrendered the way the west wanted them to and they were willing to face annihilation to make sure the Americans remembered it. The A-bomb made it clear that they could be annihilated without any cost to American/the Allies lives.



http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1708051/posts

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/?page=5

Here's a Japanese scholar saying that the war would not have ended if the bombs were not dropped.

Hasegawa’s own relationship to the events of August of 1945 testifies to the degree to which, all these years later, they resist clear appraisal. As a child, Hasegawa watched the Tokyo firebombing from his roof, and he can still recall the eerie orange glow on the horizon. Growing up, he felt anger at the Japanese government for bringing the conflict onto its people. Later, working as a scholar in America, he accepted the position that the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war. Today he views America’s bombings of Japan’s cities - Hiroshima and Tokyo included - as war crimes. Yet, he adds, they are crimes America should not apologize for until Japan comes to terms with war crimes of its own. These are the evolving views of a man who has mustered the courage to look at an ugly period of history without flinching - something that most people, Americans and Japanese alike, have found themselves unable to do.

You want to repost those links of yours again? Don't bother wasting your time.

 

[AAAgent]

AAA, read the Raico article I posted. It deals with this succinctly. You are assuming what you are trying to prove. I never said that the US had to invade Japan. The argument in favor of the atomic bomb relies heavily on the idea that Japan had to be invaded and occupied. You are assuming that Japan had to be invaded for some reason even after it had been neutralized as a threat and sued for peace. Obviously if the choices were between invasion and nuclear bombing then bombing would be more justified. The choices were in actuality:

1. Naval blockade as was in place, leading to a possible unconditional surrender(top generals believed it was possible)
2. Conditional surrender(undoubtedly could have been had)
3. Nuclear Bomb.
4. Land Invasion(for what reason?)

I see you have been tricked too by the sheer size and amounts of his posting. Yes he did mention those few tidbits, but you also ignored that these tidbits stemmed from him saying the Japan was defeated and no longer a threat to the allies. How is Japan not a threat when you are essentially forced to invade them on their home turf when every human being in their country is hostile. Sounds like a huge imminent threat.

The Allies refused to accept anything but an unconditional surrender. The Japanese refused to accept anything but a conditional surrender that allowed them to save face. Both sides could not come to an agreement which forced the Allies to continue forward to force a unconditional surrender (the japanese were not going to march forward and defeat themselves).

Naval blockade would require more time in foreign territory, foreign waters, stretched supply lines, and decreased moral over a lengthy period of time. When you have the other side willing to die at their emperors command, imagine having the incentive of dying of hunger or dying by blowing up a ship. The allies did not want the war to drag on any longer and the 2 most probable options were to invade or drop the bomb.

So i think you are misinterpreting my argument here. I'm trying to clear up whether Japan was an imminent threat or not, and I believe if you read all the links i posted above, they were still a threat if the committed every single citizen to fight to the death.

 

[AAAgent]

But none of that counters my point that they were broken, beaten and that the US did not have to drop nukes on them to "save the US from imminent harm".

Whoops.....where did this come from.... oh right, straight out of the energizer bunny's mouth.

change your argument all you want bugs bunny, but you can continue running around in your own circle chasing your tail. I'm not going to waste my time after having proven you wrong to have you change your argument to whatever it is you'll decide to do next. I'll have none of that, thank you.

 

[AAAgent]

AA, READ THE ARTICLES. All your criticisms are addressed therein. We simply disagree that the island needed to be invaded and occupied. The Raico article addresses the possibility of a surrender materially indistinguishable to what was won and its inevitability according to the top military brass at the time.

Danger, you are arguing with nationalism not logic. Truman himself justified and re-justified the bombs using different tortured logic as the years went by. The bombs were dropped to send a message to the USSR not only that we had the bomb but that civilian cities would be bombed on a whim. It was to show the USSR that we were as savage as were they were so dont fvck with us. That is why the bombs were dropped the way they were, on civilians. That is the only rational justification. To a nationalist, however, rather than admit and justify on those grounds they must deny deny because the State-God is not yo be criticized. Why not adopt the real reasons and defend those? Why instead argue like 8th grade Civics flag-wavers?

I have READ the articles. I'm not denying that dropping the bomb was to show Russia and Japan who's boss, but I don't believe that was the driving force. The driving force is stated in MY ARTICLES. If you would READ MY ARTICLES, you would see that. READ MY ARTICLEs god damn1t!

 

[Desdinova]

Well that was a good time! Thread closed.