The Crime of Nagasaki: "The most racist, nastiest act by this country, after human slavery..."

[Karmadillo]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/09-7

Published on Tuesday, August 9, 2011 by The Nation
The Crime of Nagasaki—The 'Forgotten' A-Bomb City
by Greg Mitchell

Few journalists bother to visit Nagasaki, even though it is one of only two cities in the world to “meet the atomic bomb,” as some of the survivors of that experience, sixty-six years ago today, put it. It remains the Second City, and “Fat Man” the forgotten bomb. No one in America ever wrote a bestselling book called Nagasaki, or made a film titled Nagasaki, Mon Amour. “We are an asterisk,” Shinji Takahashi, a sociologist in Nagasaki, once told me, with a bitter smile. “The inferior A-bomb city.”

Yet in many ways, Nagasaki is the modern A-bomb city, the city with perhaps the most meaning for us today. For one thing, when the plutonium bomb exploded above Nagasaki it made the uranium-type bomb dropped on Hiroshima obsolete.

And then there’s this. “The rights and wrongs of Hiroshima are debatable,” Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, once observed, “but I have never heard a plausible justification of Nagasaki”—which he labeled a war crime. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who experienced the firebombing of Dresden at close hand, said much the same thing. “The most racist, nastiest act by this country, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki,” he once said. “Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away yellow men, women, and children. I’m glad I’m not a scientist because I’d feel so guilty now.”

A beautiful city dotted with palms largely built on terraces surrounding a deep harbor—the San Francisco of Japan—Nagasaki has a rich, bloody history, as any reader of Shogun knows. Three centuries before Commodore Perry came to Japan, Nagasaki was the country’s gateway to the west. The Portuguese and Dutch settled here in the 1500s. St. Francis Xavier established the first Catholic churches in the region in 1549, and Urakami, a suburb of Nagasaki, became the country’s Catholic center. While the rest of Japan was closed to the West, Nagasaki remained open for trade. Thomas Glover, one of the first English traders here, supplied the modern rifles that helped defeat the Tokugawa Shogunate in the nineteenth century.

more...

[EFerrari]

1. Greg was on Amy's show this morning.

Atomic Cover-Up: The Hidden Story Behind the U.S. Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

As radiation readings in Japan reach their highest levels since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdowns, we look at the beginning of the atomic age. Today is the 66th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which killed some 75,000 people and left another 75,000 seriously wounded. It came just three days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing around 80,000 people and injuring some 70,000. By official Japanese estimates, nearly 300,000 people died from the bombings, including those who lost their lives in the ensuing months and years from related injuries and illnesses. Other researchers estimate a much higher death toll. We play an account of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki by the pilots who flew the B-29 bomber that dropped that bomb, and feature an interview with the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Weller, who was the first reporter to enter Nagasaki. He later summarized his experience with military censors who ordered his story killed, saying, "They won." Our guest is Greg Mitchell, co-author of "Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial," with Robert Jay Lifton. His latest book is "Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki and The Greatest Movie Never Made."

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/9/atomic_cover_up_the_hidden_story

[leveymg]

5. Was it really morally worse that the 1000 bomber raids over Tokyo and Dresden?

Plain, old-fashioned fire bombs and high explosives also did unbelievably ghastly things to densely-populated urban areas:

Dresden (February 13, 1945) :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: Tokyo (March 10, 1945)

[EFerrari]

11. George Weller's son compared it to Dresden in the interview

he did with Amy.

[leveymg]

15. Was it really the "good war" we remember?

Did we actually have any good, moral choices? If it had not been for the chilling example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, wouldn't the odds be much higher that would have been Moscow and New York in 1951 or '52?

Ace Comic from '51

[EFerrari]

18. Our government did its level best to suppress film, reporting

any information that would illustrate that example to the public, for decades.

[leveymg]

21. Yes, but the ranking officials looked at the photos and films.

Indeed, both sides did a reasonably good job of transforming those most hideous images into unspoken policy: Do anything short of, and instead of, nuclear war or a direct military confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union.

MAD was actually almost sane.

Yes, there are alternatives to Cold War we're beginning to be comfortable with - but, it will take generations, if we continue to be lucky.

[Karmadillo]

12. Wow. Extremely interesting. Thank you very much for posting the link.

nt

[dtexdem]

2. Yeah, I tend to think of Hiroshima as reasonable as an A-bomb target, ...

though a demonstration explosion not over a city might have worked without the massive loss of civilian life.

But I can see no justification for Nagasaki. Nor, for that matter, for Dresden.

[Old and In the Way]

7. I wonder why they didn't do that either.

The whole idea was to compel a surrender....had those bombs been dropped close to population centers where the magnitude of the bombs capability could have been publicly seen by the Japanese people, I think the event would have accomplished the same end. While I know the official stated reason was to avoid a direct invasion that could have killed hundreds of thousands of US soldiers, I think there was a component of revenge extraction and maybe even racism dialed into the decision to hit civilian population centers with these bombs.

[leveymg]

23. You should read C.P. Snow's "Science and Government"

Best discussion I've seen of the decision to employ strategic bombing and the alternatives considered by the Allies in WW2.

[Romulox]

3. What were Mr. Telford Taylor's thoughts on Nanking?

No word on any prosecution at Nuremberg for that little bit of unpleasantness. :shrug:

[smirkymonkey]

4. I was just thinking the same thing, not to excuse our atrocities

in any way, shape or form. But face it, we ALL have our periods of genocidal terror and think we all need to do is learn from it and evolve from it as a way to solve our problems.

[Xithras]

6. There were war crimes trials in Japan

Nuremberg tends to get the spotlight in the history books, but there WAS an International Military Tribunal For The Far East (basically, a Japanese Nuremberg). There were also war crimes trials in China dedicated to the Nanjing Massacre, and in other countries they occupied.

In total, more than 6,000 Japanese political and military leaders were tried for their crimes. 2,000 recieved short prison terms, several hundred received much longer prison terms, more than 1,000 were flat-out executed for their roles, and the remainder were acquitted.

Nanking itself only resulted in one execution though. Not because "people got off", but because the majority of the Japanese officers involved in the Rape of Nanking were killed in other battles later in the war, or killed themselves just before (or after) capture. Only two high ranking officials who oversaw it were left standing when the war ended. One was executed, and the other walked away scot free because he was a member of the royal family, which had been given amnesty by MacArthur for their role in the war.

[Romulox]

10. Wait a minute--they prosecuted Nazi prison guards and footsoldiers who took part in civilian

atrocities, not just their commanding officers. And in fact, some of these prosecutions are ongoing, such as the case of Nazi prison guard John Demjanjuk, who was convicted in Germany only this year.

And yet, you're to have me believe that not one soldier guilty of civilian atrocities at Nanking survived the war? And no such guilty party has been located in Japan in 50 years? It defies credibility, and lends credence to the charge that the Japanese have a form of Holocaust Denial of their own.

[Xithras]

26. Perspective.

Most of the worst German atrocities occurred on German soil, and wide swaths of Germany saw only limited combat during the war allowing a lot of the German leadership to survive. Even more importantly, many of the WORST atrocious occurred during the last few years of the war, giving those involved Germans a shorter time to be killed in combat.

The Rape of Nanking happened in mainland China in 1937, a full eight years before the war ended. Many of their "seasoned" soldiers later moved on to other fronts, where they were killed in combat (remember, at the end of the war, Japan was training women, kids, and the elderly for combat because they were desperately short of troops). The overwhelming majority simply did not survive. This death rate was greatly aided by the Chinese tactics during WW2. The Chinese didn't have the firepower to drive the Japanese out, so they adopted a strategy that loosely translates to "Outlast". To harass the Japanese, they'd set up tempting targets, and when the Japanese moved in on them they'd encircle the position and advance in on it from all sides. No prisoners were taken...every Japanese soldier was simply executed on the battlefield.

I don't doubt that quite a few of the foot soldiers did survive. There were nearly a quarter million Japanese soldiers involved in the attack and occupation, and it's very unlikely that they could have all been killed. Still, it does appear that nearly all were killed in the eight years of combat that followed. Of those who survived, prosecution would be nearly impossible. Unlike the SS who ran the prison camps, these were regular soldiers. They can't be convicted merely because they followed an order to march on a city, but would need to be connected to individual crimes. There was simply no evidence to base those convictions on. It's been estimated that tens of thousands of Japanese troops took part in the rapes and other atrocities, but there were a quarter million troops there. In order to prosecute the rank and file, you'd need to determine which ones were raping civilians, and which ones were just sitting in foxholes around the city. The ferocity of the war, and the massive kill count among the soldiers, made that kind of determination impossible.

Even in Germany, we prosecuted the SS and officers wherever we found them, but didn't prosecute the Wehrmacht (common German soldiers) unless we could connect them individually to a particular war crime.

[Romulox]

42. Logic problem: if there were 250,000 Japanese troops at Nanking, and only 10,000 rapists,

then shouldn't there be almost 240,000 potential witnesses???

None of those soldiers survived the war, either? Or were none willing to bear witness to what is being characterized as this small, but monstrous minority? Too convenient!

The excuses tend to fold right into the the accusations in this way. I appreciate your p.o.v., but to my mind there has clearly been a whitewashing.

[MicaelS]

50. You do know your history, correct?

Like the fact that Japanese soldiers REFUSED to surrender. Until very late in the War when invaded those islands close to the Home Islands did they start surrendering.

Check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Japanese_War_Crimes

The Japanese had 8.4 million serve in the Imperial Army / Navy. 2.1 million were killed or missing. That is a 25% casualty rate.

Only 40,000 Japanese POWs were captured out of 8.4 million. That is 1/2 of 1%.

[Romulox]

55. OK. Then 180,000 potential witnesses. Not ONE prosecution?

=whitewash.

[MicaelS]

82. I'm confused...

Are you trying to argue The Japanese whitewashed their own War Crimes? I agree with that. The tomb where Tojo and the other high ranking Japanese who were hanged is Yasukuni Shrine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_Shrine

Or are you trying to argue the US whitewashed the Japanese War Crimes? I don't agree with that.

Or are you arguing something else?

[Xithras]

73. Oh, I suspect it's the latter.

But it's ultimately irrelevant. The majority of Japanese troops in Nanking didn't have any direct role in the war crimes, and yes, you're correct in that many of those bystanders probably WERE witness to those crimes and the people who committed them.

Still, prosecuting them is an impossible task. How do you identify the perpetrators and the witnesses? If someone says "I was there and didn't see anything", how do you differentiate between those who were merely guarding foxholes, those who were raping the Chinese women, and those who simply stood by and watched the atrocities? If you can't identify their role, you can't prosecute them. If the Allies could have figured out a way to do it, they would have. Plenty of other rank and file soldiers (from all Axis nations) were tried when they were directly connected to war crimes, but this one proved impenetrable. There were too few survivors, and no way to differentiate or identify those who actually took part in the war crimes. And yes, many would not talk. But what can you do about that, really? Unless you had a Chinese witness connecting a particular soldier to a particular crime (as many Jewish internees later testified against Nazis), there was simply nothing that could be done.

Most of the witnesses were killed in the war. That isn't "convenient", but is a simple reality. Japanese soldiers were engaged on several fronts for the better part of a decade. Most of these forces were engaged in overseas areas where retreat wasn't an option, so when they lost, they were simply killed. Remember, Japan lost 2.2 million soldiers during the war, the biggest chunk of whom were killed in China. They lost almost an entire generation of young men. Most of their front line combat troops (which included the troops involved in the Nanjing Massacre), simply didn't survive the war.

[Tartiflette]

8. Well done!

The Rape of Nanking justifies the bombing of Nagasaki. It's all so clear now....

[Romulox]

17. It's kind of like having a memorial for the firebombing victims of Dresden every year, then

neglecting to mention Auschwitz or Nazism.

It's not that the victims of Dresden don't deserve sympathy, it's that that sympathy is being presented in an ahistorical manner devoid of any context. When this distorted and selective "sympathy" becomes too extreme, it is called "Holocaust Denial".

In many cases, I observe similar strands of denial in these discussions. Quite frankly, I think many, Japanese and non-Japanese, are simply ignorant of the viciousness of the Japanese empire. This isn't "justification", it's basic historical context.

[Tartiflette]

28. I take your point

And to a certain extent I agree. There certainly has been well-documented reluctance on the part of some Japanese to come to terms with their past history and the atrocities carried out by the Imperial Army. Whether it is germane to this particular discussion or not is a matter for debate, mind, since I see the questions raised here as (i) whether the US bombing of Nagasaki was justified and (ii) whether it was a racist attack. I don't see the relevance of Nanking to either of those questions, but it seems you do.

I think it's a difference of approach rather than anything else.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to conduct a memorial event in Dresden without mentioning Auschwitz or Nazism, provided the latter are also acknowledged independently and to an appropriate degree (and I think you pretty much make this point above). To the best of my knowledge they are, at least within the German borders. In my opinion Dresden was a war crime, and that is true irrespective of any and all other circumstances. Likewise Nagasaki. That doesn't prevent me from saying that Nanking, the Holocaust, et al, were war crimes as well, and in the case of the Holocaust in particular on a magnitude unlike anything else.

[Romulox]

44. My point isn't argue the morality of this nuclear firebombing, or that genocide on the Asian mainlan

But rather to merely place the events in the context of one another.

"I think it's perfectly reasonable to conduct a memorial event in Dresden without mentioning Auschwitz or Nazism, provided the latter are also acknowledged independently and to an appropriate degree (and I think you pretty much make this point above). "

I don't think this happens in either Japan nor on DU. I truly think there is a generation of young Japanese ignorant of what their granddads did on the Asian mainlands, and perhaps most DUers don't know.

"In my opinion Dresden was a war crime, and that is true irrespective of any and all other circumstances. "

I respect your opinion, given your understanding of the broader context. What I don't respect (and this is aimed generally and not specifically at you,) is the ahistoric approach taken on most of these discussions. So that is the approach I take. If the brutality of Nanking had multiple remembrances each year, it wouldn't be necessary.

[Old and In the Way]

72. It is interesting to note the how the 3 groups of targeted victims in WW2 have been memorialized.

generally speaking, I think the Jews, Eastern Europeans, and Chinese were the significant populations that suffered genocidal-level losses in that war. But my educational understanding of the WW2 atrocities, growing up, were mainly focused on the Halocaust. I wonder if part of that was due to the political nature of world in the 50/60's? The Eastern European countries and China were firmly in the Communist camp and were, of course, our enemies in these decades. I wonder if current events (in those years) contributed to the selective/narrow focus of the WW2 victim populations?

[deaniac21]

84. Perhaps it was because of systematic way the Germans

disposed of Jews, homosexuals, russian prisoners and the mentally defective? I mean they did actually run death factories. Pertty unusual especially because the Germans were a highly educated people.

[Old and In the Way]

101. I am certain that is one big reason...the introduction of death factories in

genocidal extermination was something unique in history. But in terms of shear numbers, I think the Chinese and Eastern Europeans suffered greater losses. I'm just remarking that it wasn't until I got into HS and College (60s/70s) that I learned about WW2 civilian atrocities unrelated to the Halocaust and I wonder if it was an active and conscious filtering of world history that was being driven by our Cold War mindset at the time?

[Tartiflette]

77. We're not so far apart

Since I agree about the generation of Japanese not really acknowledging (or even knowing about) some of the terrible atrocities committed by the Imperial Army. And there is good evidence that there have been deliberate attempts within Japan to minimise, downplay or even deny them - there was a furore over some textbooks on precisely this relatively recently, wasn't there? It is to Japan's shame that this is the case. In this instance it is probably unfair to discuss Germany and Japan in the same breath, since they could scarcely be further apart.

I'd like to think that there can be some debate around e.g. Nagasaki, within historical context, yet independent of winner's justice, about precisely what constitutes "acceptable" wartime behaviour - and apply this standard to all behaviours past and present, independent of which particular side committed the act. By failing to do so, and in the case of WWII taking the position that the Allies' behaviour was always justified because of what the Axis did (this is not a suggestion that you do or imply that), then we do ourselves a disservice by failing to truly differentiate ourselves from them. We should be unafraid to acknowledge and confront those actions that went beyond the pale on our side, while in no way diminishing the very real horrors that resulted from acts of the Fascist war machines.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

63. Ever heard of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials?

I have.

[brooklynite]

9. Unrec'd

You can argue the morality and military sensibility of bombing Nagasaki. But, they weren't bombed because they were "yellow"; they were bombed because we were legitimately at war with them. There was certainly racist xenophobia worked into Government propaganda, but the same applied to what the Japanese Government was saying about us.

nb - as the article observed, Vonnegut was at the bombing of Dresden. Why would that have -not- been "racist"; is there a body count threshold?

[The Second Stone]

13. I disagree. We were at war.

Had this happened after the unconditional surrender, then I would agree. It was an act of war, without doubt, but it was not racist, it is fair to call much of our propaganda in that war racist. It was war. War that was started by the country of Japan. The Japanese government and the people in its military committed atrocities that matched those of the Nazis in Germany. Had the bomb been available 6 months earlier we would have done the same thing to white people in Germany. The fact of the matter is that absent the high tech and radiation, the many fire bombings done on Germany and Japan were of similar destructive result with similar intention.

Defending ourselves against aggressors who happen to have a different skin color than we do is not racism. It's war. And war is hell.

[EFerrari]

14. Do you think Kurt Vonnegut was unaware we were at war?

[Dreamer Tatum]

29. Fuck Kurt Vonnegut. nt

[CBGLuthier]

51. you are a silly human being

Which wars did you fight in, big bwave man?

[Dreamer Tatum]

57. I have to be a veteran to not genuflect to the mighty Vonnegut?

his opinion is no better than anyone else's. Invoking his name means diddly to me.

[EFerrari]

62. Then what were you talking about? We were discussing his comment.

I didn't randomly bring him into the discussion.

[Dreamer Tatum]

66. I said 'fuck Vonnegut.'

There is no special magic that obtains when his name is mentioned. He just wrote interesting books.

[EFerrari]

78. Well, enjoy your parallel and alternate discussion.

As both a participant in the war and an observer of the bombing of Dresden, I am interested in what he has to say about Nagasaki.

[Hello World]

130. and so it goes...

From what we read in the general media, it seems like almost everyone felt the atomic bombings of Japan were necessary. Aren't the people who disagree with those actions just trying to find fault with America?
Positions listed refer to WWII positions.


~~~DWIGHT EISENHOWER

"...in 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63


~~~ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY

(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"It is my opinion that 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 because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.


~~~HERBERT HOOVER

On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the bombs."

- quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

Hoover biographer Richard Norton Smith has written: "Use of the bomb had besmirched America's reputation, he told friends. It ought to have been described in graphic terms before being flung out into the sky over Japan."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 349-350.

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351.


~~~GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.


~~~JOSEPH GREW

(Under Sec. of State)
In a February 12, 1947 letter to Henry Stimson (Sec. of War during WWII), Grew responded to the defense of the atomic bombings Stimson had made in a February 1947 Harpers magazine article:

"...in the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision.

"If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer."

Grew quoted in Barton Bernstein, ed.,The Atomic Bomb, pg. 29-32.


~~~JOHN McCLOY

(Assistant Sec. of War)
"I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam , we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs."

McCloy quoted in James Reston, Deadline, pg. 500.


~~~RALPH BARD

(Under Sec. of the Navy)
On June 28, 1945, a memorandum written by Bard the previous day was given to Sec. of War Henry Stimson. It stated, in part:

"Following the three-power conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia's position and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for.

"I don't see that we have anything in particular to lose in following such a program." He concluded the memorandum by noting, "The only way to find out is to try it out."

Memorandum on the Use of S-1 Bomb, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 77, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 307-308).

Later Bard related, "...it definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn't get any imports and they couldn't export anything. Naturally, as time went on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would then be in a position to make peace, which would have made it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had to bring Russia in...".

quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 144-145, 324.

Bard also asserted, "I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of a warning was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted." He continued, "In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn't have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb."

War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.


~~~LEWIS STRAUSS

(Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy)
Strauss recalled a recommendation he gave to Sec. of the Navy James Forrestal before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima:

"I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. 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 Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a 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 lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were 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 at will... Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation..."

Strauss added, "It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world...".

quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 145, 325.


~~~PAUL NITZE

(Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)
In 1950 Nitze would recommend a massive military buildup, and in the 1980s he was an arms control negotiator in the Reagan administration. In July of 1945 he was assigned the task of writing a strategy for the air attack on Japan. Nitze later wrote:

"The plan I devised was essentially this: Japan was already isolated from the standpoint of ocean shipping. The only remaining means of transportation were the rail network and intercoastal shipping, though our submarines and mines were rapidly eliminating the latter as well. A concentrated air attack on the essential lines of transportation, including railroads and (through the use of the earliest accurately targetable glide bombs, then emerging from development) the Kammon tunnels which connected Honshu with Kyushu, would isolate the Japanese home islands from one another and fragment the enemy's base of operations. I believed that interdiction of the lines of transportation would be sufficiently effective so that additional bombing of urban industrial areas would not be necessary.

"While I was working on the new plan of air attack... concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945."

Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 36-37 (my emphasis)

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that was primarily written by Nitze and reflected his reasoning:

"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

quoted in Barton Bernstein, The Atomic Bomb, pg. 52-56.

In his memoir, written in 1989, Nitze repeated,

"Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands would have been necessary."

Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 44-45.


~~~ALBERT EINSTEIN

Einstein was not directly involved in the Manhattan Project (which developed the atomic bomb). In 1905, as part of his Special Theory of Relativity, he made the intriguing point that a relatively large amount of energy was contained in and could be released from a relatively small amount of matter. This became best known by the equation E=mc2. The atomic bomb was not based upon this theory but clearly illustrated it.

In 1939 Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt that was drafted by the scientist Leo Szilard. Received by FDR in October of that year, the letter from Einstein called for and sparked the beginning of U.S. government support for a program to build an atomic bomb, lest the Nazis build one first.

Einstein did not speak publicly on the atomic bombing of Japan until a year afterward. A short article on the front page of the New York Times contained his view:

"Prof. Albert Einstein... said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war before Russia could participate."

Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb, New York Times, 8/19/46, pg. 1.

Regarding the 1939 letter to Roosevelt, his biographer, Ronald Clark, has noted:

"As far as his own life was concerned, one thing seemed quite clear. 'I made one great mistake in my life,' he said to Linus Pauling, who spent an hour with him on the morning of November 11, 1954, '...when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them.'".

Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times, pg. 620.


~~~LEO SZILARD

(The first scientist to conceive of how an atomic bomb might be made - 1933)
For many scientists, one motivation for developing the atomic bomb was to make sure Germany, well known for its scientific capabilities, did not get it first. This was true for Szilard, a Manhattan Project scientist.

"In the spring of '45 it was clear that the war against Germany would soon end, and so I began to ask myself, 'What is the purpose of continuing the development of the bomb, and how would the bomb be used if the war with Japan has not ended by the time we have the first bombs?".

Szilard quoted in Spencer Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, pg. 181.

After Germany surrendered, Szilard attempted to meet with President Truman. Instead, he was given an appointment with Truman's Sec. of State to be, James Byrnes. In that meeting of May 28, 1945, Szilard told Byrnes that the atomic bomb should not be used on Japan. Szilard recommended, instead, coming to an international agreement on the control of atomic weapons before shocking other nations by their use:

"I thought that it would be a mistake to disclose the existence of the bomb to the world before the government had made up its mind about how to handle the situation after the war. Using the bomb certainly would disclose that the bomb existed." According to Szilard, Byrnes was not interested in international control: "Byrnes... was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Rumania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from these countries, that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia." Szilard could see that he wasn't getting though to Byrnes; "I was concerned at this point that by demonstrating the bomb and using it in the war against Japan, we might start an atomic arms race between America and Russia which might end with the destruction of both countries.".

Szilard quoted in Spencer Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, pg. 184.

Two days later, Szilard met with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head scientist in the Manhattan Project. "I told Oppenheimer that I thought it would be a very serious mistake to use the bomb against the cities of Japan. Oppenheimer didn't share my view." "'Well, said Oppenheimer, 'don't you think that if we tell the Russians what we intend to do and then use the bomb in Japan, the Russians will understand it?'. 'They'll understand it only too well,' Szilard replied, no doubt with Byrnes's intentions in mind."

Szilard quoted in Spencer Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, pg. 185; also William Lanouette, Genius In the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, pg. 266-267.


~~~THE FRANCK REPORT: POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The race for the atomic bomb ended with the May 1945 surrender of Germany, the only other power capable of creating an atomic bomb in the near future. This led some Manhattan Project scientists in Chicago to become among the first to consider the long-term consequences of using the atomic bomb against Japan in World War II. Their report came to be known as the Franck Report, and included major contributions from Leo Szilard (referred to above). Although an attempt was made to give the report to Sec. of War Henry Stimson, it is unclear as to whether he ever received it.

International control of nuclear weapons for the prevention of a larger nuclear war was the report's primary concern:

"If we consider international agreement on total prevention of nuclear warfare as the paramount objective, and believe that it can be achieved, this kind of introduction of atomic weapons to the world may easily destroy all our chances of success. Russia... will be deeply shocked. It will be very difficult to persuade the world that a nation which was capable of secretly preparing and suddenly releasing a weapon, as indiscriminate as the rocket bomb and a thousand times more destructive, is to be trusted in its proclaimed desire of having such weapons abolished by international agreement.".

The Franck Committee, which could not know that the Japanese government would approach Russia in July to try to end the war, compared the short-term possible saving of lives by using the bomb on Japan with the long-term possible massive loss of lives in a nuclear war:

"...looking forward to an international agreement on prevention of nuclear warfare - the military advantages and the saving of American lives, achieved by the sudden use of atomic bombs against Japan, may be outweighed by the ensuing loss of confidence and wave of horror and repulsion, sweeping over the rest of the world...".

The report questioned the ability of destroying Japanese cities with atomic bombs to bring surrender when destroying Japanese cities with conventional bombs had not done so. It recommended a demonstration of the atomic bomb for Japan in an unpopulated area. Facing the long-term consequences with Russia, the report stated prophetically:

"If no international agreement is concluded immediately after the first demonstration, this will mean a flying start of an unlimited armaments race.".

The report pointed out that the United States, with its highly concentrated urban areas, would become a prime target for nuclear weapons and concluded:

"We believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for an early, unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable. If the United States would be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race of armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.".

Political and Social Problems, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 76, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 323-333).



~~~ELLIS ZACHARIAS

(Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence)
Based on a series of intelligence reports received in late 1944, Zacharias, long a student of Japan's people and culture, believed the Japan would soon be ripe for surrender if the proper approach were taken. For him, that approach was not as simple as bludgeoning Japanese cities:

"...while Allied leaders were immediately inclined to support all innovations however bold and novel in the strictly military sphere, they frowned upon similar innovations in the sphere of diplomatic and psychological warfare."

Ellis Zacharias, The A-Bomb Was Not Needed, United Nations World, Aug. 1949, pg. 29.

Zacharias saw that there were diplomatic and religious (the status of the Emperor) elements that blocked the doves in Japan's government from making their move:

"What prevented them from suing for peace or from bringing their plot into the open was their uncertainty on two scores. First, they wanted to know the meaning of unconditional surrender and the fate we planned for Japan after defeat. Second, they tried to obtain from us assurances that the Emperor could remain on the throne after surrender."

Ellis Zacharias, Eighteen Words That Bagged Japan, Saturday Evening Post, 11/17/45, pg. 17.

To resolve these issues, Zacharias developed several plans for secret negotiations with Japanese representatives; all were rejected by the U.S. government. Instead, a series of psychological warfare radio broadcasts by Zacharias was later approved. In the July 21, 1945 broadcast, Zacharias made an offer to Japan that stirred controversy in the U.S.: a surrender based on the Atlantic Charter. On July 25th, the U.S. intercepted a secret transmission from Japan's Foreign Minister (Togo) to their Ambassador to Moscow (Sato), who was trying to set up a meeting with the Soviets to negotiate an end to the war. The message referred to the Zacharias broadcast and stated:

"...special attention should be paid to the fact that at this time the United States referred to the Atlantic Charter. As for Japan, it is impossible to accept unconditional surrender under any circumstances, but we should like to communicate to the other party through appropriate channels that we have no objection to a peace based on the Atlantic Charter."

U.S. Dept. of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Conference of Berlin (Potsdam) 1945, vol. 2, pg. 1260-1261.

But on July 26th, the U.S., Great Britain, and China publicly issued the Potsdam Proclamation demanding "unconditional surrender" from Japan. Zacharias later commented on the favorable Japanese response to his broadcast:

"But though we gained a victory, it was soon to be canceled out by the Potsdam Declaration and the way it was handled.

"Instead of being a diplomatic instrument, transmitted through regular diplomatic channels and giving the Japanese a chance to answer, it was put on the radio as a propaganda instrument pure and simple. The whole maneuver, in fact, completely disregarded all essential psychological factors dealing with Japan."

Zacharias continued, "The Potsdam Declaration, in short, wrecked everything we had been working for to prevent further bloodshed...

"Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia.

"Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.

"I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds."

Ellis Zacharias, How We Bungled the Japanese Surrender, Look, 6/6/50, pg. 19-21.


~~~GENERAL CARL "TOOEY" SPAATZ

(In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific)
General Spaatz was the person who received the order for the Air Force to "deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945..."(Leslie Groves, Now It Can Be Told, pg. 308). In a 1964 interview, Spaatz explained:

"The dropping of the atomic bomb was done by a military man under military orders. We're supposed to carry out orders and not question them."

In the same interview, Spaatz referred to the Japanese military's plan to get better peace terms, and he gave an alternative to the atomic bombings:

"If we were to go ahead with the plans for a conventional invasion with ground and naval forces, I believe the Japanese thought that they could inflict very heavy casualties on us and possibly as a result get better surrender terms. On the other hand if they knew or were told that no invasion would take place that bombing would continue until the surrender, why I think the surrender would have taken place just about the same time." (Herbert Feis Papers, Box 103, N.B.C. Interviews, Carl Spaatz interview by Len Giovannitti, Library of Congress).


~~~BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE

(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)
"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.

[CBGLuthier]

100. Yes, his opinion is better. He was a decent human being

You are really impressing everyone with your flippant attitude about Vonnegutt. I imagine all across the country people are calling their loved ones to the computer to see that YOU have said FUCK YOU Vonnegut and laughing and pointing.

[Dreamer Tatum]

111. I didn't realize what a deity Vonnegut is.

Wow.

His books aren't even that good.

[leveymg]

58. That's being generous, in a couple ways.

[Dreamer Tatum]

59. Sorry I missed a bootclick. nt

[leveymg]

64. I don't own a pair, and goosestepping is not my favorite dance.

My apologies.

[sudopod]

56. Implying Kurt Vonnegut would have wanted a piece of you. nt

[deaniac21]

68. Kurt would have said, "Why don't you take a flying fuck at a

rolling donut"?

[Name removed]

105. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[The Second Stone]

34. I think that he was not considering the entirety of the facts

just as all the people who oppose, retroactively I might add, both the bombings. The fact is that in WWII nations were bombing cities as acts of war. It would have happened in a Cold War. It would have happened regardless of skin color. It did happen regardless of skin color. I think Vonnegut was outright wrong in concluding that it was racist. You would think that someone who observed Dresden being similarly firebombed would understand that skin color had nothing to do with it. But just because Vonnegut was a talented writer doesn't mean that all of his conclusions about politics were correct. Had the bomb been ready for Dresden, it would have been dropped on Dresden.

I'm not arguing that war isn't terrible. It is. It's worse than just about anything else. It's worse than ionizing radiation, it's worse than racism. Both radiation and racism can play a part in a war, but when war comes, truth is the first casualty, decency the second and then the innocents die and suffer. And the munitions makers get really rich.

[leveymg]

39. Vonnegut, aside. I can tell you that Oppenheimer wanted to drop The Bomb on Berlin,

and was sorely disappointed when the Germans surrendered before it was ready.

That emotion, too, is understandable, even if we now see the immorality in it.

[MicaelS]

41. Those scientists who worked on the bomb

(many of the Jewish refugees from Hitler) did not seem to develop scruples until it was clear that Germany would no longer be the target. They knew for a fact that Berlin, and its civilians would certainly be the main target. They certainly didn’t have any concerns about German civilians being killed by their "gadget", did they? So why the tears for the Japanese?

[leveymg]

45. The fear was that if we dropped it on Japan, Russia was next. Didn't work out that way,

thank g-d. Even the most hardened Cold Warrior realized after viewing the A-bomb photos and films, and after seeing first-hand what even conventional weapons did to Germany and Japan, that nobody was going to get out of WW3 alive.

So, they and their Russian opposite numbers, didn't.

[Supersedeas]

93. Most of the books I have read do not support that--see Brotherhood of the Bomb

It was the scientists position that the bomb would be dropped off-shore as a demonstration of power.

The decision to targets cities was purely a political decision made by Truman in conjunction with Secretary of War Stinson.

[leveymg]

114. Oppie was on the targeting commitee - he agreed that the bomb should be dropped on Japanese cities,

rather than a demonstration. In August, 1945, he remarked that his only regret was the bomb wasn't ready to be used against Nazi Germany. He later said he felt he had "blood on his hands."

[Supersedeas]

125. Oppenheimer was not on the seven-man committee created by Stimson

to consider the question of the bombs use.

Oppenheimer, Lawrence, Fermi, and Arthur Compton were appointed to a Scientific Panel whose role was limited to advising the so-called Interim Committee on techical issues.

The Scientific Panel did not join the discussions regarding the use of the bomb until the committee's fourth meeting on the morning of May 31. See p. 131 - 132 of Greg Herken's excellent and heavily footnoted book, Brotherhood of the Bomb.

Lawrence speaking for the Scientific Panel proposed that the weapon be demonstrated "in some innocuous but striking manner." The idea of a so-called demonstration of the bomb had been discussed at Los Almos and in Washington prior to the committee meeting with some vigor and seriousness. Lawrence's suggestion was the first time that it had been discussed at such a high level--or with such seriousness with the Secretary of War.

Oppenhemeir did raise some objections to the bomb's effectiveness as a demonstration. But it was Stimson, "who was suffering increasing anguish, his personal diaries showed, from the daily destruction of Japan's cities, doubted that casualties from the bomb would be any worse than the masses of people killed by conventional bombing."

The committee would assemble afterwards, without the Scientific Panel, in Stimson's office. Stimson made it clear at this meeting that the issue was settled. The Japanese could receive no warning. The target had to be a civilian area to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible. According to members of the Committee and those one the Scientific Advisory Panel, it was Stimson that pushed and pushed for the targeting of a civilian area.

[leveymg]

127. "Oppenhemeir did raise some objections to the bomb's effectiveness as a demonstration." As you cited

He was an influential part of the decision-making process, even if he wasn't seated on the committee itself. Here are two sources that have him either as technical advisor to the committee of sitting in on the key meetings:

#
Atomic Bomb: Decision -- Target Committee, May 10-11, 1945
http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html - CachedSimilar
The second meeting of the Target Committee convened at 9:00 AM 10 May in Dr. Oppenheimer's office at Site Y with the following present: ...
#
J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bombings of Japan
http://www.doug-long.com/oppie.htm - CachedSimilar
Oppenheimer was also an advisor to the Target Committee, which recommended Japanese targets for the atomic bombs. Oppenheimer headed the Scientific Panel ...
#


I think it's pretty clear that Oppenheimer was in favor of actual use, not demonstration, and that his opinion carried tremendous weight. But, I never said it was primarily Oppenheimer's decision - you are right, the responsibility for that lies with Truman and Stimson.

[Supersedeas]

136. Thanks for the links levey

[EFerrari]

46. Vonnegut was very specifically talking, not about the bomb,

but about dropping the second one.

[leveymg]

53. Blame scientific uncertainty for Nagasaki.

They knew the big, heavy "gun-type" enriched uranium Hiroshima device would work, so they didn't even bother testing it first. The Trinity weapon was a plutonium bomb, a far more compact, complex and uncertain design, and the argument was it should be tested under more realistic conditions to make sure it functioned as designed.

Well, it did.

Sometimes, these decisions come down to such technical arguments and desire not to be seen getting in the way of "the smartest men in the room." Human insecurity and hierarchy at work, again. The original sin, if you discount the annihilation of the Neanderthal.

[CJvR]

80. Actually...

...this was the bomb type tested in the US so they did know it would work.

[leveymg]

87. under "realistic conditions in the field."

A silly argument, I agree, but it worked. The decision-makers actually didn't need much prodding by the scientific types. But, that was the argument I recall reading was made by some of the development team, including Gen. Groves and Teller.

[EFerrari]

92. The racism charge isn't all that interesting. More interesting

to my mind is the story of the NYTs reporter on the government payroll and his part in covering up the consequences of these weapons. And the ongoing censorship and filtering, even by YouTube who pulled the promo for Mitchell's book because it "promoted violence". That was pretty wild.

[MicaelS]

16. My opinion has always been that

If the bomb has been available 6-12 months sooner, or the war lasted 6-12 months longer, then Berlin would have been the first target. Those who now condemn the use of the bombs on Japan would not have said a thing about their use on Germany. Their attitude would have been that the dirty Fascists got what they deserved.

The Nazis were executing more people toward the end of the war in the concentration camps because they had perfected the mechanical means of the Holocaust. How many Jews, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and others might have been saved if the war in Europe had ended 6-12 months sooner?

Those scientists who worked on the bomb (many of the Jewish refugees from Hitler) did not seem to develop scruples until it was clear that Germany would no longer be the target. They knew for a fact that Berlin, and its civilians would certainly be the main target. They certainly didn’t have any concerns about German civilians being killed by their "gadget", did they?

For those who cry moral outrage I see no difference between the fire-bombing of Dresden or Tokyo and other Japanese cities, and the atomic bombings. What is the difference between vaporized in a millisecond, or being burned alive by napalm or incendiaries, or being blown apart by conventional explosives? Dead is dead.

The Japanese were just as bad as the Nazis. But too many people weep tears for the “victims" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as if the Japanese did nothing to start the war in Asia. The Chinese suffered between 20-35 million casualties during the Japanese invasion of China (1937-1945). The Japanese forced Korean women into sexual slavery as “comfort women” in field brothels where the women were forced to sexually service, as many as 70 Japanese soldiers a day. In other words these women were raped 70 times a day for years on end. Everywhere the Japanese conquered, they acted like barbarians toward Allied POWs and civilians. The Japanese beat, starved, tortured and executed men and women. They used living human beings as living test subjects in their infamous biological warfare Unit 731.

People these days find it easy to take some moral high-ground when they are not involved in a war to the knife for the future of civilization. Hindsight is easy.

I personally think if Truman had not used the bomb out of moral scruples, and Operation Downfall had gone ahead, then America would have suffered terrible casualties. The truth about the bomb would have come out. And I think Truman would have been deservedly impeached and removed from office, if not hung for outright treason.

[EFerrari]

19. You are arguing for collective punishment. n/t

[MicaelS]

22. Yes, I most assuredly am doing just that.

The Pacific War was a Race War. Both we and the Japanese viewed each others as barbarians. And you expect rational thought to govern a race war?

Answer this hypothetical question..

Knowing what Hitler did.. if you had had the bomb in September 1939 and could have stopped Hitler then, but you had to destroy Berlin and kill every human being there, would you have refrained from using it?

[Tartiflette]

37. Pointless hypothetical

Since there is no way of knowing the consequences of what would happen other than Hitler and the rest of Berlin would have been melted glass. But then what would have happened? Beer and skittles and cries of jolly good show all around? The ONLY answer is that nobody knows, and for all you know, something even worse may have arisen as a result (the legitimate grievances that in part led to the rise of National Socialism would still have been in place, coupled with a new and terrible tragedy without explanation given that the Germans would not have known what would have happened had you not dropped the bomb. But now we're in SF territory...) .

[fxw]

20. Why?

No one with a lick of sense would take a pro nuclear bomb stance in 2011, and certainly based on what we know today could never justify it.

But..1945 was 66 years ago after 4 years of bloody global war, in which Japan killed millions of civilians in China, Phillipines, Burma, Malasia, etc not to mention US soldiers. Millions on all sides died and the prospect of many more to follow loomed. It was a different world.

What is the point of rehashing this every August. Most of those involved a long dead. It is tiresome, changes nothing and frankly marginalizes those who push this agenda. Don't give me the we must learn from history argument. You can learn from history without trying to vilify everything the USA has ever done.

Unrec.

[EFerrari]

24. The responses to this OP leave me speechless

so I better go do something else before that changes.

lol

[Supersedeas]

97. prudent advice...i'm off to clean the closet or something

[hunter]

25. We had a hundred plus plutonium bombs in the pipeline.

The plutonium production plant at Hanford was built big in case we ended up fighting a full scale atomic war against a nuclear Germany, and big enough to threaten the USSR afterwards.

But Germany surrendered before we could test the bombs against them.

The mass production of enriched uranium bombs of the type dropped on Hiroshima turned out to be expensive, slow, and impractical.

The USA wanted to know what mass produced plutonium A-bombs, our weapon of the future, would do to a living city. Our research into the aftermath of the Nagasaki bombing was intense, more so than Hiroshima. The bombing of Nagasaki was in many ways a test, an evil experiment, and a demonstration of U.S. power.

Once the plutonium bomb was proven all plans for a massive invasion of the Japanese mainland were shelved. Instead, if Japan had not surrendered, we would have backed off and kept dropping atomic bombs on them until they did surrender... or until nothing was left of them.

[leveymg]

33. At the heart of the H-bomb is a plutonium "trigger." Hanford is still in operation.

It's not over.

[hobbit709]

104. After Nagasaki we had no more bombs.

It would have taken several months to amass the fissionable material to make more.

[hunter]

115. The uranium was mined, the reactors and refineries were built and running.

Of the three war-built Hanford production reactors the original "B" reactor was shut down in 1968, The "D" reactor in 1967 and the "F" reactor in 1965.

The USA didn't stop making bombs just because the war was over. By April 1949 we had 120 of these "fat men."



It's disingenuous to say we had "no more bombs" after Nagasaki, as if that was the end of it. The next U.S. nuclear tests were July 1 and July 25, 1946, at which point we'd built the dozen or so bombs that had been promised for an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

Operation Crossroads -- wikipedia

We now knew what atomic bombs did to cities, so the next test was to see what they did to naval ships.

[hobbit709]

126. Did you read beyond my subject line?

On Aug 10, we were bluffing. Several months later we could back it up.

[Dreamer Tatum]

27. These stupid-assed articles have become pointless.

Anyone who had anything to do with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is dead. No bombs have been dropped since. Crying racism is fucking stupid, considering that Japan started it in the first place, and we nailed the ever living crap out of Dresden, which was chock full of white people.

These annual articles are pointless navel-gazing exercises in assigning blame and guilt. And see you all again next year.

[EFerrari]

65. Yes, it's pointless now that we are safe from nuclear accidents

and radiation poisoning.

[Dreamer Tatum]

76. Apples and oranges, but from you, understandable.

:eyes:

[EFerrari]

79. Nope. It's not apples and oranges but the driving motivation

behind these yearly remembrances and behind Greg Mitchell's work on the topic, which is the subject of the OP.

[provis99]

30. one thing is for sure:

The arguments about nuclear weapons being too terrible to use is baloney; America used them at the earliest opportunity, and at a time when the bombs essentially did nothing to further defeat the Japanese empire.


We may debate whether Israel would use the bomb if they had it, or if Iran would, but you can be sure that America will use the bomb again, on civilian targets, for the flimsiest of reasons. But hey, the mass killings of civilians is apparently acceptable in war, and not a war crime, at least as established by the Nuremburg Trials.

[fxw]

35. What a load of crap n/t.

[Name removed]

40. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[gratuitous]

36. Yep, because America is exceptional

Isn't it interesting how bent out of shape we still are 10 years later by a relatively minor attack, but anyone objecting to the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of thousands gets "Fuck you!" thrown in his face. The difference, besides that of scale? Undiscernible to the human eye and certainly none to the victims.

[Dreamer Tatum]

54. Refresh my memory: when since 1945 have we used them, again?

If we'd use them for the "flimsiest of reasons," then why didn't we use them in...

Cuban Missile Crisis
Vietnam
Korea
The Detroit Riots
The LA Riots
ANY riots
The 1968 Democratic Convention
Iraq
Afghanistan
Nicaragua
a false flag operation


or any other reason you can conjure?

(A: Because you're full of shit.)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

31. "...killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." Albert Einstein

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." Albert Einstein

[Desertrose]

32. +1.

I agree.

[The Second Stone]

38. Big Al signed the letter proposing the bomb project

that Roosevelt signed off on. His was the only signature on it. So as much of a pacifist as Einstein was, his was the effective proposal that set off the portion of the nuclear arms race that succeeded in nuking two cities and creating thousands of nuclear weapons. He regretted it later as the biggest mistake in his life. Be very careful what you propose to sign in the form of a petition.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

43. As you say, he regretted it.

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/peace/manhattan.php

Einstein's answer was always that his only act had been to write to President Roosevelt suggesting that the United States research atomic weapons before the Germans harnessed this deadly technology. He came to regret taking even this step. In an interview with Newsweek magazine, he said that "had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing.

[The Second Stone]

96. But he couldn't know in advance, and he didn't

and yet he wrote the letter. The decisions even the most pacifist of us make in the face of something like Naziism to protect ourselves should be considered in the context of the time they were made. Einstein did the right thing when he did it. You don't get to second guess time itself.

[Dreamer Tatum]

60. Then why didn't he flee to, oh, Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, or some other

place not so engaged with aggressors?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

67. What has that to do with what he said?

Are you disputing his credentials as refugee, scientist, pacifist, or human being with an opinion?

[Dreamer Tatum]

74. I'm saying that for someone so disenchanted with war

he just happened to go to the one place capable of annihilating the people who would imprison and kill him.

I'd think he'd have a slightly different impression of war.

Not to mention his integral role in designing the bombs that destroyed hundreds of thousands in Japan...but hey, he didn't like war,
so he's scot-free...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

85. He came to America before the war.

And, he wasn't consulted about dropping the bomb.

Should these guys have packed up and left for Mexico, Brazil, or Sweden?



Here is how General Dwight D. Eisenhower reports he reacted when he was told by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that the atomic bomb would be used: “During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.”

In another public statement the man who later became President of the United States was blunt: “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force “hawk,” was also dismayed. Shortly after the bombings he stated publically: “The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, went public with this statement: “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. . . . The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.”

I noted above the report General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, made to Prime Minister Churchill that “when Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.” On hearing that the atomic test was successful, Ismay’s private reaction was one of “revulsion.”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/06-3

[Rex]

47. So I guess that puts the abuse of the Native American where exactly?

I don't agree that the A-bombing was on par with the worst America has done, after slavery. I can think of many things we've done (America) that are as bad if not worse.

[leveymg]

75. Still at the top of the list of historical genocides, in numbers and mortality rates, anyway.

95% mortality within 350 years, estimated 50-60 million original inhabitants in 1500, after first contact with the Europeans. See, A. F. Ramenofsky, Vectors of Death: The Archaeology of European Contact (1987).

[CJvR]

86. Pointless.

The extermination of the native americans would have happened anyway as soon as there was extensive contact between them and the rest of the world. A less malevolent Spanish empire might have shaved a few % of that figure but ultimately nothing except continued isolation could have saved the native populations of America. It continues to this day with isolated tribes in the Amazon being whiped out by a casual contact with outsiders.

[leveymg]

90. Smallpox was the primary killer. Syphilis was their revenge. But, many millions were worked to

death or simply hunted down and shot or hacked to death.

Don't discount the insane cruelty of many of the conquerors, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and English speaking.

In the History of the New World (mostly written by the English), the Spanish were the most notorious. But, this was recorded by an extraordinary Spanish priest:

http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com/thumbs/db/f9/christopher,columbus,history,medieval,new,world-dbf99dc62bd97cacb429c288224e2823_m.jpg

[lunatica]

48. And as usual the Native Americans are forgotten too

That was also a crime against humanity.

[Rex]

49. We must be sharing brain waves!

My exact thought after reading the article! The Native American always seems to get the short end of the stick.

[Proles]

52. I've always sort of believed that

bombing Hiroshima may have been appropriate, depending on your perspective (we can never be sure of alternate histories) -- but that Nagasaki was perhaps a bit extreme.

I think after bombing Hiroshima, Japan was on its way to surrendering anyways.

Well, in any case. I think it's one of those things which happened, but hopefully won't happen again. It was the worst war in mankind, so moral lines get pretty blurred during those sorts of things.

I wouldn't really blame anyone. In a way, I feel that the internment of Japanese American citizens was worse -- in a certain sort of way.

[Freddie Stubbs]

61. Racist? Horse shit! Look at what the Allies did to Dresden:

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

If the US had finished creating nuclear weapons earlier, they would have dropped them on German cities too.

[MicaelS]

70. You bet we would have...

If the bomb has been available 6-12 months sooner, or the war lasted 6-12 months longer, then Berlin would have been the very first target. Those on the Left who now condemn the use of the bombs on Japan would not have said a thing about their use on Germany. Their attitude would have been that the dirty Fascists got what they deserved. The only ones who would have complained would have been Germans.

[EFerrari]

71. Freddie, Vonnegut was IN Dresden when that happened. n/t

[Karmadillo]

83. Link to NPR interview with Vonnegut where he discusses Dresden

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1426772

[malaise]

69. K & R

Man to man is so unjust!

[Cool Logic]

81. Well, what else would you expect? It was, after all, a World War...

And it occurred during an era when winning was clearly defined as vanquishing the enemy to a degree that rendered them incapable of continuing and resulted in their unconditional surrender.

Unlike the stalemates that have resulted in a perpetual state of war in our era, when wars of that era were over, they were over.

War is uncivilized condition; previous generations did not try to pretend that it is not.

[rdking647]

88. it ended the war

a war that japan started with an unprovoked attack on the US. a war where the Japanese military raped,looted and pillaged to their hearts content.

if Nagasaki shortened the war by even 1 day it was worth it.

[era veteran]

89. Tough Shit

The next time they want to bomb someone on a Sunday morning maybe they will remember the Goddamn result. We did not start the war and they committed atrocity after atrocity. I think during the Baatan Death March, say it again, THE BAATAN DEATH MARCH, they tortured the gingers and most of them never made it to a concentration/POW camp. I am/was a red headed fellow and this was a specific form of racism practiced by the Imperial Army. Total war is what they waged and we visited some back on them. If, the Fascist had won what kind of world do you think we would be in now? Some of you and your bleeding fucking hearts make me sick. My God what happened to the balls in this country.
I do think the target of bomb # one should have been the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. That said, have a great day thanks to the United States Army Air Corps. All that said, mankind should do everything possible to make sure it does not happen again.

[EFerrari]

94. How many balls does it take to bomb housewives making lunch?

That must have been a real challenge for real men!

I can't believe the thoughtless bs I read here.

[era veteran]

103. Well, I think your full of BS

We did not go out to kill housewives we went out to end a fucking war waged ON US by a people that considered us Barbarians. I will never have sympathy for those people that worked as a unit to fight us. Who started that war? You may not care for me or my politics as we have seen for a couple of years but I am here now and I sure as shit might not have been if my father who was in the Army Horse Cavalry on that December day & fought from North Africa to the River Elbe already had his death orders to transfer to the Pacific theater of war. He told me that the dropping of that bomb was what probably saved his life. So I have no pity on a nation that starts shit and has to pay the price. What do you think the Japanese Imperial Army would have done to an occupied America. Thankfully we bombed them totally.

What would you know about real men, what makes you an expert? ... Bullshit!

[EFerrari]

110. I don't know real men because I disagree with bombing a civilian population?

What a crock.

[era veteran]

116. So that is all you can say? I say copout

You insulted American Airmen doing what we wanted and paid them to do. Yes in a B 29 flying across the Pacific to bomb the sons of bitches that bombed us on a Sunday morning.

This is what would of happened:


Planning Alternatives for Coronet -- Spring of 1946
Coronet was the attack across the Kanto plain to capture Tokyo. The broad plan was still going through refinement and only outline drafts had been completed by August 1..
The initial plan called for three landings using 25 divisions:
a blocking force landing at Mito on the coast north of Toyko and move west to establish a position north of Tokyo.
the main force landing in Kashima Beach south of Choshi with a goal to clear Chiba province including the east side of Tokyo Bay and build airfields and land tank divisions before moving across the Kanto plain to attack Tokyo from the east.
a southern landing at Sagami Bay 30 days later would take Yokosuka naval base and move rapidly north to be west of Tokyo.
the three armies would then move on Tokyo.

A second plan, subject to further change, dispensed with the northern force and was reduced by 2 divisions. This acknowledged that redeployment from Europe was not going well -- two million experienced veterens were being released and units were in disarray.
a landing was to be made on Kashima Beach east of Tokyo with 5 divisions to clear Chiba province, cross the Boso peninsula to Tokyo Bay, built land-based air bases under the cover of carrier aircraft, and built up 9 infantry and 2 tank divisions including some redeployed from the European theater.
The major landing was to be made ten days later at Sagami Bay, the outer part of Tokyo Bay, southwest of Tokyo with the goal to take the naval base at Yokosuka and open Toyko Bay and build up to 8 infantry and 3 tank divisions.

Then both armies were to move on Tokyo at D+30.
The southern, Sagami force, was to move quickly north behind the cities on Tokyo Bay with elements tasked for the ports of Yokohama and Kawasaki, while the main force continued north to be northwest of Tokyo.
Meanwhile the Navy would move into Tokyo Bay to provide support from the south.
One corp is unaccounted for in the surviving drafts of the plan at the time of the surrender, which shows that the planning was still in progress.
A third plan retained the three landings of 25 divisions with 1 paratroop division in reserve. This was MacArthur's plan and assumed that more troops were available than the Joint Chiefs thought possible.

http://www.ww2pacific.com/downfall.html

Lots of dead Americans that were at peace until the Fascists bombed us on a Sunday morning.

[Tartiflette]

98. An eye for an eye?

Perhaps if the war had reached a stalemate and (not or) such atrocities were continuing, then an argument could be constructed to justify such a bombing. However, this was clearly not the case, as Japan was already a defeated nation. There is more than enough evidence and analysis to demonstrate this, not least of all the opinions of various US military leaders at the time.

If we are prepared to do "whatever it takes" and in doing so act in a way which cannot distinguish us from those we are opposing in what way are we better than them? In what ways was the deliberate and indiscriminate obliteration of men, women and children in a heavily populated city any different from the indiscriminate killing practiced by the Japanese? You either accept all being fair in love and war, which justifies the Japanese behaviour equally as much as it does yours, or you set standards of conduct that you will not abandon under any circumstances. And if you do set those standards, and the bombing of Nagasaki is justified within them, then those standards are very low indeed.

The Japanese conduct during the war was heinous and is still less well-documented than it should be, and I have no sympathy for the bastards who committed their atrocities, yet that conduct in and of itself provides no justification for the bombing of Nagasaki. I'd even go further and say there was no justification for Hiroshima or Tokyo (although the counter arguments are probably stronger in those instances). Oh, my bleeding heart.

[era veteran]

107. How many American soldiers, sailors, and airmen would

have died in an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands? They were defeated only from going on the offensive and their Island was a fortress of brainwashed people. I am not happy with women and children getting killed but the Japanese killed American women and children first. 68 civilians died on December 7th, 29 were ethnic Japanese. We were at war, total war, which we did not start.

[closeupready]

108. Yes, it's important to remember that the Japanese started it. As to

'bombing housewives preparing lunch', the Japanese of the time knew what that was like, I'd imagine from what they did in China.

[Dawson Leery]

112. To this day the right wing in Japan denies what they did to women in China.

[Dawson Leery]

113. They should have skipped Hiroshima and Nagasaki and gone for

the Imperial Palace. That would have devastated the masses.

[Recursion]

91. The existence of the bomb has prevented direct world-war-scale conflict for 70 years

And so has saved billions of lives.

:hide:

[Tartiflette]

99. Impossible to make that argument

(and I realise there was an element of wind-up in your post) since we simply cannot know. Even taking your argument at face value I doubt we'd be talking billions, but that's a minor quibble.

I'd argue that there are several equally compelling factors that have prevented direct world-wide conflict, including improved telecommunications, increased interdependence across countries and even continents, arguably the existence of one and previously two military superpowers (the bomb is not necessary in this argument, since these powers have an overwhelming military and technological advantage), the rise of genuine antiwar movements, etc, etc..

[tritsofme]

95. Complete utter bullshit. nt

[coalition_unwilling]

102. I actually think Nagasaki is further down on the list, below what this country did to its indigenous

peoples over the space of 4 centuries and continuing to this day.

Not to diminish the horror of Hiroshima\Nagasaki or modern war in general.

[closeupready]

106. It's relatively easy, in hindsight, to make correct decisions about war.

But when you consider the abominable behavior of the Germans and Japanese of the time, it shouldn't be strange to realize that sides had been drawn and no sympathy was particularly forthcoming for 'the enemy'.

Yes, it's sad, and I wish the nuke had never been invented, and I hope it's never used again.

[era veteran]

117. Yes it is hard not to hate the nuke but to example your

statement there is unfortunately a plethora of these atrocities carried out for Imperial Japan, so there was a lot of reasons to wage total war on them.

FUKUOKA, JAPAN -- "I could never again wear a white smock," says Dr. Toshio Tono, dressed in a white running jacket at his hospital and recalling events of 50 years ago. "It's because the prisoners thought that we were doctors, since they could see the white smocks, that they didn't struggle. They never dreamed they would be dissected."

The prisoners were eight American airmen, knocked out of the sky over southern Japan during the waning months of World War II, and then torn apart organ by organ while they were still alive.

What occurred here 50 years ago this month, at the anatomy department of Kyushu University, has been largely forgotten in Japan and is virtually unknown in the United States. American prisoners of war were subjected to horrific medical experiments. All of the prisoners died. Most of the physicians and assistants then did their best to hide the evidence of what they had done.
http://home.comcast.net/~winjerd/Page05.htm#Vivisections

[Name removed]

109. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ZombieHorde]

118. Some people think a kill-civilain mentallity is mostly beneficial,

some people think a kill-civilian mentality is mostly harmful, and some probably don't care either way.

I think a kill-civilian mentality is mostly harmful.

[Bonobo]

119. I don't even bother to read these threads anymore because

anyone that will reach out to justify the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, mostly elderly, women and children, will do so at all costs and will not listen to anything that interferes with their justification.

If you want to support such actions, go ahead. But I will not count you among what I consider to be a decent person if you do.

[closeupready]

122. And the tens of millions of Asians killed and enslaved by Japanese forces does not negate

the horror of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

At the same time, it would be childish and naive to suggest that it happened in a vacuum. Which, I know, you didn't say, but just pointing that out in terms of the fact that war is, if nothing else, EMOTIONAL.

[Blue-Jay]

120. I don't know if I'd agree that the bombing was "racist".

The camps, however, THOSE were racist.

[totodeinhere]

121. It's easy for us to second guess what happened 66 years ago. Very few of us lived through that time

and we lack the perceptive that participants in the war had. Most historians rate Harry Truman as a good if not great president. And he was a bona fide liberal. He might have made a mistake when he signed off on the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, but I am not going to sit here now and pass judgment on him.

[MadMaddie]

123. I have many Phillipino friends in the Seattle area

and the stories that their granparents told them of how the Japanese during that time murdered, raped and destroyed the citizens is horrendous.

Many lives were lost during the war, many innocent islands were invaded by Japan, this is no excuse for the atomic bomb.....but the Japanese as they say killed many yellow skinned islanders.

War is Hell.....and always the innocent die.

[dorkulon]

124. Japan had 3 days to surrender, and they hadn't.

Nagasaki was turning out ships for their Navy, as the article in the OP mentions. I can see decrying both bombings as crimes against humanity, but I don't really see why Nagasaki was worse.

[Xicano]

128. Unrecommended due to historical inaccuracy.

The most racist, nastiest act by this country was the genocide, robbery, terrorism against millions of native americans and the kidnapping of their children in an attempt to erase their religion, language and culture.

Nagasaki might have been bad, but, it doesn't even begin to approach what happen to native people.

[MellowDem]

133. "Racist" is a poor way to classify it...

Most of the death was by far from disease, which would have happened anyways. The conquering of natives was happening before "race" had been invented. Racism helped further justify what was happening after several centuries and going to continue to happen anyways. Namely, an outside group coming in and taking over for land and goods. Which the native Americans practiced on each other, as well as all humans on everyone since forever, it's just that the Europeans had gotten really good at it.

Unless the Mongolians were racists. Or maybe the Romans?

I find trying to rank things like this to be very tasteless, especially when certain groups try to push their victimization as somehow "worse" than others. It's like it's a contest for being the biggest dick. Which is what make's Vonnegut's quote make him sound like a complete dumbass.

[Hello World]

129. Hiroshima is the 2nd most HORRID word in the American lexicon

succeed only by NAGASAKI" - Kurt Vonnegut


some quotes from our leaders who were there...

~~~JOSEPH GREW
(Under Sec. of State)

In a February 12, 1947 letter to Henry Stimson (Sec. of War during WWII), Grew responded to the defense of the atomic bombings Stimson had made in a February 1947 Harpers magazine article:

"...in the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision.

"If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer."

Grew quoted in Barton Bernstein, ed.,The Atomic Bomb, pg. 29-32.

more...
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

this site provides excellent up-to-date scholarly research on the decesion...
http://www.doug-long.com

and so it goes...

[MellowDem]

131. Vonnegut's logic...

doesn't hold up. In fact, it just comes across as mindless rambling and hyperbole.

[Hello World]

132. and so it goes...

From what we read in the general media, it seems like almost everyone felt the atomic bombings of Japan were necessary. Aren't the people who disagree with those actions just trying to find fault with America?
Positions listed refer to WWII positions.


~~~DWIGHT EISENHOWER

"...in 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63


~~~ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY

(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"It is my opinion that 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 because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.


~~~HERBERT HOOVER

On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the bombs."

- quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

Hoover biographer Richard Norton Smith has written: "Use of the bomb had besmirched America's reputation, he told friends. It ought to have been described in graphic terms before being flung out into the sky over Japan."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 349-350.

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351.


~~~GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.


~~~JOSEPH GREW

(Under Sec. of State)
In a February 12, 1947 letter to Henry Stimson (Sec. of War during WWII), Grew responded to the defense of the atomic bombings Stimson had made in a February 1947 Harpers magazine article:

"...in the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision.

"If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer."

Grew quoted in Barton Bernstein, ed.,The Atomic Bomb, pg. 29-32.


~~~JOHN McCLOY

(Assistant Sec. of War)
"I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam , we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs."

McCloy quoted in James Reston, Deadline, pg. 500.


~~~RALPH BARD

(Under Sec. of the Navy)
On June 28, 1945, a memorandum written by Bard the previous day was given to Sec. of War Henry Stimson. It stated, in part:

"Following the three-power conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia's position and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for.

"I don't see that we have anything in particular to lose in following such a program." He concluded the memorandum by noting, "The only way to find out is to try it out."

Memorandum on the Use of S-1 Bomb, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 77, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 307-308).

Later Bard related, "...it definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn't get any imports and they couldn't export anything. Naturally, as time went on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would then be in a position to make peace, which would have made it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had to bring Russia in...".

quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 144-145, 324.

Bard also asserted, "I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of a warning was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted." He continued, "In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn't have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb."

War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.


~~~LEWIS STRAUSS

(Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy)
Strauss recalled a recommendation he gave to Sec. of the Navy James Forrestal before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima:

"I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. 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 Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a 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 lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were 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 at will... Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation..."

Strauss added, "It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world...".

quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 145, 325.


~~~PAUL NITZE

(Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)
In 1950 Nitze would recommend a massive military buildup, and in the 1980s he was an arms control negotiator in the Reagan administration. In July of 1945 he was assigned the task of writing a strategy for the air attack on Japan. Nitze later wrote:

"The plan I devised was essentially this: Japan was already isolated from the standpoint of ocean shipping. The only remaining means of transportation were the rail network and intercoastal shipping, though our submarines and mines were rapidly eliminating the latter as well. A concentrated air attack on the essential lines of transportation, including railroads and (through the use of the earliest accurately targetable glide bombs, then emerging from development) the Kammon tunnels which connected Honshu with Kyushu, would isolate the Japanese home islands from one another and fragment the enemy's base of operations. I believed that interdiction of the lines of transportation would be sufficiently effective so that additional bombing of urban industrial areas would not be necessary.

"While I was working on the new plan of air attack... concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945."

Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 36-37 (my emphasis)

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that was primarily written by Nitze and reflected his reasoning:

"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

quoted in Barton Bernstein, The Atomic Bomb, pg. 52-56.

In his memoir, written in 1989, Nitze repeated,

"Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands would have been necessary."

Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 44-45.


~~~ALBERT EINSTEIN

Einstein was not directly involved in the Manhattan Project (which developed the atomic bomb). In 1905, as part of his Special Theory of Relativity, he made the intriguing point that a relatively large amount of energy was contained in and could be released from a relatively small amount of matter. This became best known by the equation E=mc2. The atomic bomb was not based upon this theory but clearly illustrated it.

In 1939 Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt that was drafted by the scientist Leo Szilard. Received by FDR in October of that year, the letter from Einstein called for and sparked the beginning of U.S. government support for a program to build an atomic bomb, lest the Nazis build one first.

Einstein did not speak publicly on the atomic bombing of Japan until a year afterward. A short article on the front page of the New York Times contained his view:

"Prof. Albert Einstein... said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war before Russia could participate."

Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb, New York Times, 8/19/46, pg. 1.

Regarding the 1939 letter to Roosevelt, his biographer, Ronald Clark, has noted:

"As far as his own life was concerned, one thing seemed quite clear. 'I made one great mistake in my life,' he said to Linus Pauling, who spent an hour with him on the morning of November 11, 1954, '...when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them.'".

Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times, pg. 620.


~~~LEO SZILARD

(The first scientist to conceive of how an atomic bomb might be made - 1933)
For many scientists, one motivation for developing the atomic bomb was to make sure Germany, well known for its scientific capabilities, did not get it first. This was true for Szilard, a Manhattan Project scientist.

"In the spring of '45 it was clear that the war against Germany would soon end, and so I began to ask myself, 'What is the purpose of continuing the development of the bomb, and how would the bomb be used if the war with Japan has not ended by the time we have the first bombs?".

Szilard quoted in Spencer Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, pg. 181.

After Germany surrendered, Szilard attempted to meet with President Truman. Instead, he was given an appointment with Truman's Sec. of State to be, James Byrnes. In that meeting of May 28, 1945, Szilard told Byrnes that the atomic bomb should not be used on Japan. Szilard recommended, instead, coming to an international agreement on the control of atomic weapons before shocking other nations by their use:

"I thought that it would be a mistake to disclose the existence of the bomb to the world before the government had made up its mind about how to handle the situation after the war. Using the bomb certainly would disclose that the bomb existed." According to Szilard, Byrnes was not interested in international control: "Byrnes... was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Rumania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from these countries, that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia." Szilard could see that he wasn't getting though to Byrnes; "I was concerned at this point that by demonstrating the bomb and using it in the war against Japan, we might start an atomic arms race between America and Russia which might end with the destruction of both countries.".

Szilard quoted in Spencer Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, pg. 184.

Two days later, Szilard met with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head scientist in the Manhattan Project. "I told Oppenheimer that I thought it would be a very serious mistake to use the bomb against the cities of Japan. Oppenheimer didn't share my view." "'Well, said Oppenheimer, 'don't you think that if we tell the Russians what we intend to do and then use the bomb in Japan, the Russians will understand it?'. 'They'll understand it only too well,' Szilard replied, no doubt with Byrnes's intentions in mind."

Szilard quoted in Spencer Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, pg. 185; also William Lanouette, Genius In the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, pg. 266-267.


~~~THE FRANCK REPORT: POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The race for the atomic bomb ended with the May 1945 surrender of Germany, the only other power capable of creating an atomic bomb in the near future. This led some Manhattan Project scientists in Chicago to become among the first to consider the long-term consequences of using the atomic bomb against Japan in World War II. Their report came to be known as the Franck Report, and included major contributions from Leo Szilard (referred to above). Although an attempt was made to give the report to Sec. of War Henry Stimson, it is unclear as to whether he ever received it.

International control of nuclear weapons for the prevention of a larger nuclear war was the report's primary concern:

"If we consider international agreement on total prevention of nuclear warfare as the paramount objective, and believe that it can be achieved, this kind of introduction of atomic weapons to the world may easily destroy all our chances of success. Russia... will be deeply shocked. It will be very difficult to persuade the world that a nation which was capable of secretly preparing and suddenly releasing a weapon, as indiscriminate as the rocket bomb and a thousand times more destructive, is to be trusted in its proclaimed desire of having such weapons abolished by international agreement.".

The Franck Committee, which could not know that the Japanese government would approach Russia in July to try to end the war, compared the short-term possible saving of lives by using the bomb on Japan with the long-term possible massive loss of lives in a nuclear war:

"...looking forward to an international agreement on prevention of nuclear warfare - the military advantages and the saving of American lives, achieved by the sudden use of atomic bombs against Japan, may be outweighed by the ensuing loss of confidence and wave of horror and repulsion, sweeping over the rest of the world...".

The report questioned the ability of destroying Japanese cities with atomic bombs to bring surrender when destroying Japanese cities with conventional bombs had not done so. It recommended a demonstration of the atomic bomb for Japan in an unpopulated area. Facing the long-term consequences with Russia, the report stated prophetically:

"If no international agreement is concluded immediately after the first demonstration, this will mean a flying start of an unlimited armaments race.".

The report pointed out that the United States, with its highly concentrated urban areas, would become a prime target for nuclear weapons and concluded:

"We believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for an early, unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable. If the United States would be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race of armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.".

Political and Social Problems, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 76, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 323-333).



~~~ELLIS ZACHARIAS

(Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence)
Based on a series of intelligence reports received in late 1944, Zacharias, long a student of Japan's people and culture, believed the Japan would soon be ripe for surrender if the proper approach were taken. For him, that approach was not as simple as bludgeoning Japanese cities:

"...while Allied leaders were immediately inclined to support all innovations however bold and novel in the strictly military sphere, they frowned upon similar innovations in the sphere of diplomatic and psychological warfare."

Ellis Zacharias, The A-Bomb Was Not Needed, United Nations World, Aug. 1949, pg. 29.

Zacharias saw that there were diplomatic and religious (the status of the Emperor) elements that blocked the doves in Japan's government from making their move:

"What prevented them from suing for peace or from bringing their plot into the open was their uncertainty on two scores. First, they wanted to know the meaning of unconditional surrender and the fate we planned for Japan after defeat. Second, they tried to obtain from us assurances that the Emperor could remain on the throne after surrender."

Ellis Zacharias, Eighteen Words That Bagged Japan, Saturday Evening Post, 11/17/45, pg. 17.

To resolve these issues, Zacharias developed several plans for secret negotiations with Japanese representatives; all were rejected by the U.S. government. Instead, a series of psychological warfare radio broadcasts by Zacharias was later approved. In the July 21, 1945 broadcast, Zacharias made an offer to Japan that stirred controversy in the U.S.: a surrender based on the Atlantic Charter. On July 25th, the U.S. intercepted a secret transmission from Japan's Foreign Minister (Togo) to their Ambassador to Moscow (Sato), who was trying to set up a meeting with the Soviets to negotiate an end to the war. The message referred to the Zacharias broadcast and stated:

"...special attention should be paid to the fact that at this time the United States referred to the Atlantic Charter. As for Japan, it is impossible to accept unconditional surrender under any circumstances, but we should like to communicate to the other party through appropriate channels that we have no objection to a peace based on the Atlantic Charter."

U.S. Dept. of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Conference of Berlin (Potsdam) 1945, vol. 2, pg. 1260-1261.

But on July 26th, the U.S., Great Britain, and China publicly issued the Potsdam Proclamation demanding "unconditional surrender" from Japan. Zacharias later commented on the favorable Japanese response to his broadcast:

"But though we gained a victory, it was soon to be canceled out by the Potsdam Declaration and the way it was handled.

"Instead of being a diplomatic instrument, transmitted through regular diplomatic channels and giving the Japanese a chance to answer, it was put on the radio as a propaganda instrument pure and simple. The whole maneuver, in fact, completely disregarded all essential psychological factors dealing with Japan."

Zacharias continued, "The Potsdam Declaration, in short, wrecked everything we had been working for to prevent further bloodshed...

"Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia.

"Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.

"I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds."

Ellis Zacharias, How We Bungled the Japanese Surrender, Look, 6/6/50, pg. 19-21.


~~~GENERAL CARL "TOOEY" SPAATZ

(In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific)
General Spaatz was the person who received the order for the Air Force to "deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945..."(Leslie Groves, Now It Can Be Told, pg. 308). In a 1964 interview, Spaatz explained:

"The dropping of the atomic bomb was done by a military man under military orders. We're supposed to carry out orders and not question them."

In the same interview, Spaatz referred to the Japanese military's plan to get better peace terms, and he gave an alternative to the atomic bombings:

"If we were to go ahead with the plans for a conventional invasion with ground and naval forces, I believe the Japanese thought that they could inflict very heavy casualties on us and possibly as a result get better surrender terms. On the other hand if they knew or were told that no invasion would take place that bombing would continue until the surrender, why I think the surrender would have taken place just about the same time." (Herbert Feis Papers, Box 103, N.B.C. Interviews, Carl Spaatz interview by Len Giovannitti, Library of Congress).


~~~BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE

(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)
"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.

[MellowDem]

134. And?

Was the firebombing of Dresden absolutely necessary to win in Germany? Does that even matter from the humanitarian point of view espoused by many on here? Does this do anything to make clearer Vonnegut's logic? After all, Nagasaki was about racism, killing as many yellows as we could. Course, wouldn't we have joined Germany if that was our plan, not killed them? And what about protecting Filipinos? And why didn't we just kill all the Japanese during occupation? Hmm. And remember, this was the worst act in America's history (except slavery of course), right? I think ranking things like the ebbs and flows of history, with all the human suffering and destruction that goes through it, makes perfect sense!

[Hello World]

135. it is obvious to most

that it wasn't necessary to nuke a defeated nation, twice.

even those who were there felt that way, even our warrior leaders.

AND just because you may RANK another atrocity America committed, as worse, doesn't diminish or invalidate another's opinion.

[MellowDem]

137. So Vonnegut's logic...

makes no sense? Or you don't want to address that?

At the time, I don't think it was obvious to "most" that Japan would surrender any time soon. I think hindsight is a lot of it.

I also think it's rather funny which parts of WW2 get remembered by certain countries, and which are completely forgotten and never talked about. Perhaps I could take discussions of Nagasaki more seriously if there was some semblance of balance, rather than a puzzling focus on one small part of the war, not to mention the logical disconnect surrounding it.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

138. Horse Shit.

That is about as intelligent an argument as saying that because I disagree with Obama on any topic from what color the sky is to what to have for dinner tonight I'm racist. It's just fucking moronic and stupid.
The Japanese were especially cruel. It had nothing to do with them being YELLOW. It was because there were Millions of them ready to die to save the ego and pride of Japan. It had to be stopped and it never would have until we conceded or dropped a bomb on them the likes of which no one had ever seen before.
And while my argument may be just be oversimplifying things, I agree, but come on. your argument was pretty ridiculous.
Duckie