DROPPING THE BOMB

[run_to_win]

A war crime is a war crime regardless of what the other side did or is doing. 

This is revisionist history.

Was anyone involved with dropping the bomb or the firebombings charged with a war crime? 

[BingeBag]

You're judging 1945 actions with 2008 morality.  It doesn't work.

Dropping the bomb off-shore as a show of force was debated.

It would have indicated that we don't have the fortitude to drop the bomb on a city ... so dropping the bomb on a city would have been necessary anyways.

Had the Japanese military not prevented the Emperor from surrendering after Hiroshima then Nagasaki would not have been necessary.

That's easy!

You're comparing 1945 with 2001.  Societies evolve ... well, some do anyways.  What we wouldn't consider in 2001 our enemies had no problem with.

Based on what? 

That's really simplifying it.

Hiroshima was the attacked country ending a war.  9/11 was the start of a war.  In this respect it would be more applicable to compare 9/11 to Pearl Harbor. 

Another difference is that one was 63 years ago and the other was 7 years ago.  What is and is not acceptable in war has changed.

You make things seriously annoying to read when you back up pages with 4 posts in a row, either consolidate the posts to begin with, or edit them in.

----
Another instance:

So the CIA named gave Al-Qaeda their name and Osama kept it?

Where'd you get this circa 1980 tidbit from?

All would have prolonged the war and increased the number of casualties on both sides.

An invasion would have destroyed more than two cities.

This is revisionist history.

Was anyone involved with dropping the bomb or the firebombings charged with a war crime? 

I'm not trying to be a prick. Sorry if this offended you.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

This is revisionist history.

Was anyone involved with dropping the bomb or the firebombings charged with a war crime? 

Nope the victors only try the defeated. 

[run_to_win]

Nope the victors only try the defeated.

Not one Allied soldier was charged with a war crime during WWII?

What about the "world court" of public opinion, etc?  Where was the outcry THEN?

You're using your 2008 perspective to revise the legality of 1945 actions.

[ethurst2]

So the CIA named gave Al-Qaeda their name and Osama kept it?

Where'd you get this circa 1980 tidbit from?

First of all, I hate to burst any bubble but Osama Bin Laden is a character whose family had dealings with the Bush family even when Papa Bush was head of the CIA. As far as we know, this all could be staged. I find it interesting that a country cannot find weapons of mass destruction or a terrorist with all the advanced intelligence stuff that they have.

Look at these so called "timed" video tapes. It's almost comical. Bin Laden is fat in one picture, slim in the other, looks like Rock Hudson in another and Charles Manson in another video and mysteriously, these videos find their way to the networks. You would think the news outlets would ask for a post office tracking number to catch him but they don't.

I'm not trying to convince you as to whether this exists or not but if you think the United States of America is justified in ALL of it's covert operations, I can tell you from experience that you need to recheck that. Even from the time of the Pilgrims landing and creating a holiday called "Thanksgiving" right after they tricked and murdered countless of Indians, this country has used covert operations against other countries in an unfavorable and sometimes shocking manner.

Some operations ARE justified but it's usually the smaller ones. And if the people of the US knew as to what level of involvement our government has in covert operations around the world, it would cause panic amongst the American People. Americans entrust the government to protect them from "foreign enemies" not to explain how you play the game of control.

Secondly, if it is from the 80's that means that it did exist and the CIA created the monster. Where did it come from? Out of the blue? All you have to do is go to the Congressional Record and read on the hearing involving the CIA.

So you really think that the CIA's job is to pass out flower baskets while there are present in other countries?

How do you figure an invasion would have meant more casualties and dropping a bomb didn't? For your information, there are two categories that the military use to define casualties...those that died during battle and those that didn't die but suffered wounds that were bad enough to cause dismemberment or change their way of life. The bomb accomplished BOTH.

Now here's the question...have you ever been in the military and have you ever worked in a government office? And if you were in the military, did you belong to a tactical command or a strategic command group. I worked at the highest level which is NORAD and we were responsible for creating what you see today as far as Space Command, and the Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, CO. We were the pioneers that set up the operational procedures as far as deterrence, intelligence and warning systems working with high level government agencies and officers from other countries.

I said that to mention that I'm not talking off the top of my head. I'm telling you what has been declassified and what I personally know. I'm also a military and world history major that had to study Constitutional Law. The CIA, because of my background, wanted me to cross over and work at various hot spots but I thought about my daughter and how if I got in, I wouldn't be able to get out.

So I got out all together and became a poster at TDMMC. It's safer (I think).

And the only way to be a fair judge of history is to look from the view of those who lived it day to day. No matter what the era is, when a man kills another man, either by club, poison or sending a woman to have sex with him knowing that he has a weak heart is a crime not only against that man but a crime against humanity because a human life is taken.

I never study American history from an American point of view. I never study African-American history from an African point of view because historians are trained to be pro (insert whatever culture or country they are writing about) nationalists in most cases.

I just don't see your argument that a ground assault would have led to more lives being sacrificed. I'm trying to see it but I just can't at this moment. I love the military and I was an Air Force veteran who fully believed in our program of deterrence from war for the right reasons.

[run_to_win]

Good information but I didn't see any answers the questions I posed.

I just don't see your argument that a ground assault would have led to more lives being sacrificed. I'm trying to see it but I just can't at this moment.

That's fair enough.  You could be right.  We'll never know.


http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/giangrec.htm

The sudden and unanticipated conclusion of the Pacific War with the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was greeted with joy by all Americans, and especially by the more than three and a half million soldiers, sailors and Marines slated to invade Japan.   These forces were not only to come from the Pacific;  First Army, which had pummeled its way from Normandy to the heart of Germany, and Eighth Air Force, based in England, were on the way as well.  But morale was not good among veterans of the Ardennes, Guadalcanal, and other campaigns.  As James Jones later wrote: "What it must have been like to some old-timer buck sergeant . . . [knowing] that he very likely had survived this far only to fall dead in the dirt of Japan's Home Islands, hardly bears thinking about."

MacArthur's staff had twice come up with figures exceeding 100,000 casualties for the opening months of combat on the southern island of Kyushu, a figure which some historians largely succeeded in contrasting favorably- and quite mistakenly- with President Harry Truman's much-derided post-war statement that Marshall had advised him at Potsdam that casualties from both the Kyushu and Honshu invasion operations could range from 250,000 to one million men.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

Operation Downfall was the overall Allied plan for the invasion of Japan near the end of World War II. The operation was cancelled when Japan surrendered following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Soviet Union's declaration of war against Japan.

Operation Downfall consisted of two parts — Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet. Set to begin in October 1945, Operation Olympic was intended to capture the southern third of the southernmost main Japanese island of Kyūshū, with the recently captured island of Okinawa to be used as a staging area. Later, in the spring of 1946, Operation Coronet was the planned invasion of the Kantō plain near Tokyo on the Japanese island of Honshū. Airbases on Kyūshū captured in Operation Olympic would allow land-based air support for Operation Coronet.

Japan's geography made this invasion plan obvious to the Japanese as well; they were able to accurately deduce the Allied invasion plans and adjust their defensive plans accordingly. The Japanese planned an all-out defense of Kyūshū, with little left in reserve for any subsequent defense operations. Casualty predictions varied widely but were extremely high for both sides: depending on the degree to which Japanese civilians resisted the invasion, estimates ran into the millions for Allied casualties, and tens of millions for Japanese casualties.

[Dave Gray]

Hey Run,

Don't quote me on the 9/11 to Hiroshima/Nagasaki comparisons.  I wasn't the one who made them.

I didn't even say we shouldn't have dropped the bomb.  I just said that I have an uncomfortable feeling about it.

[run_to_win]

Don't quote me on the 9/11 to Hiroshima/Nagasaki comparisons.  I wasn't the one who made them.

Sorry, I thought I was directly responding to your questions/comments regarding the topic. 

[run_to_win]

A war crime is a war crime regardless of what the other side did or is doing.

That's true, but events that were not war crimes when they happened should not be redefined 60+ years later.

Some would make the claim that not doing everything you can to stop the war immediately and prolonging the suffering is itself a crime against humanity.

[ethurst2]

Good information but I didn't see any answers the questions I posed.
That's fair enough.  You could be right.  We'll never know.


http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/giangrec.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

You see, this is what I was talking about. Historians making guestimations. Some of this stuff is common sense.

Japan would have been in a two front battle in Manchuria and in the Pacific.  The U.S. Forces already had Japan surrounded. Even if it was an assault, it would have favored the US more heavily than Japan. Japan would have probably wilted at the thought of being attacked on all fronts.

What history doesn't tell you is that the US had battle stations in Mongolia because of a Soviet Pact with Stalin at that time, troops sitting in Guam (which is a US territory), communications stations at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and contact points at the Marshall Island atoll.

Now, Run, it sounds to me like Japan was surrounded even before the infamous Pearl Harbor bombing. Japan KNEW that they were surrounded.

The US already had them trapped without dropping the bomb.

If history was written about the Iraq War today, it would talk about "insurgents". I haven't seen any "insurgents" on television. Nothing but citizens getting killed.

The Vietnam War was the only fair account of history being revealed on television real time which helped people understand the horrors of war. For the first time, cameras were at the battlefield, the Pentagon, The White House and Congress and what Americans got was a different story on all accounts because no one really had time to filter things from the American people.

That will never happen again even in this day of CNN, Fox and all these networks.

So I guess it would have been right to drop the bomb on the North Vietnamese too?

[run_to_win]

You see, this is what I was talking about. Historians making guestimations. Some of this stuff is common sense.

Japan would have been in a two front battle in Manchuria and in the Pacific.  The U.S. Forces already had Japan surrounded. Even if it was an assault, it would have favored the US more heavily than Japan. Japan would have probably wilted at the thought of being attacked on all fronts.

I think you're underestimating the will of the Japanese military and the importance of honor in their culture.

The Vietnam War was the only fair account of history being revealed on television real time which helped people understand the horrors of war. For the first time, cameras were at the battlefield, the Pentagon, The White House and Congress and what Americans got was a different story on all accounts because no one really had time to filter things from the American people.

That will never happen again even in this day of CNN, Fox and all these networks.

More reporters on the battlefield with satellite technology reduce the chances of a fair account of history? 

[bsfins]

Excuse me for being stupid on the subject,and late to the Party to boot....

I agree with RTW,that we're trying to apply 2008 logic to what was going on in 1945..Very few,if any of us here were alive,so we don't really know the fears,news of the day,day to day living...

I know the few things I remember seeing was that A large portion of America didn't want to have anything to do with the war in Europe,till we were attacked. (Pearl harbor)

Germany was bombing London,France was being occupied,Poland was occupied..The South Pacific we were fighting in the Philippines,to every little no name island in the Pacific ocean....(and we talk about being spread too thin now)

I remember seeing a special on how we treated our own Asian citizens,people that had never been to Japan...So I think the Average American,didn't really oppose the decision like they would now....like it or not,a lot of our parents/grandparents were bigots

Ok,ok..I'll answer the question....
I think it did save lives ultimately based on the information that Truman had at the time....I remember seeing in Truman's Biography,and he agonized over the decision,and really didn't want to do it....Another special I saw it talked about how some of the Japanese army were starving,turning to cannibalism,but continued to fight on...I know the technology wasn't good enough to know exactly what was happening, alot of stuff took many years after the war to come out....

[Guru-In-Vegas]

Although I do see what positives came as a result, I think its awful.  I just picture school children, mothers and the old and defenseless getting massacred in an instant.  And those were the "lucky" ones.  "Survivors" can be hardly labeled as such as they had to live a lifetime with life-long physical effects as well as emotional ones.  Horrible.

[Phishfan]

We specifically targeted cities and civilians to try and break the will of both the Nazi's and the Jap's. Germany got it worst because it was hit by more countries and we had large airbases close enough to saturate bomb the crap out of it. What the Allies did at Dresden was a small scale attempted genocide and a massive warcrime. The city was specifically trageted not for its military value, but its "shock" value. Once the city was fully in flames Allied command kept sending in bombers loaded with incinderary bombs to keep the firestorm going. The column of flame could be see by the crews not long after they took off from England it was that big.
We did the same thing to Tokyo. We repeatedly firebombed a city to try and inflict as much pain on the people as possible. Lucky for them we did not have closer bases where we could send in larger bomber raids as the B-17's, 24's, and 25's could not make the trip which left it to a much smalled B-29 fleet.
That is the problem with history, the victors write it. There is no way a country can enngage in warfare with another country and not commit war crimes. It is the nature of the beast.
RTW you cannot compare the two, not because society has changed, but the type of warfare is different. Which is why those of us who have been over have more in common with the Vietnam vets than the WWII and Korea ones. They do not understand this type of warfare. It would be great if we could have had clearly indentifiable lines, battlegrounds, and enemy troops like they did, but alas it is not to be.
Dave is right. Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, etc, were all chosen and armaments were selected to inflict the most amount of damage upon the civilian populace as opposed to just trying to destroy of cripple military infrastructure, in the hopes of breaking the will of the people. The masterminds of 9-11 did the same thing when planning their attack.

So the fact that Dresden had over 100 factories (and during WWII German factories were war machines), Hiroshima was a base for the military, and Nagasaki was manufacturing the Japanese Navy had nothing to do with the decision?

[Phishfan]

And not to derail the thread, think about this. How could the Seventh Fleet, who patrolled the Pacific Ocean miss the Japanese on their way to Pearl Harbor? A fleet consists of various ships and submarines and that's not even considering the communication outposts at certain atolls that the US OWNED in the South Pacific that had communications security personnel stationed there. I don't even want to get into that.

Maybe because it did not exist at that time. It was formed March 15th, 1945. Peral harbor happened December 7, 1941.