64 Years ago, Yesterday... (Warning some graphic material)

reply to post by silo13

Please place a warning on your pictures that they are graphic and may upset viewers.

You placed a warning at the beginning of the thread...

All the links work for me...

[edit on 8-8-2009 by Oatmeal]

reply to post by Oatmeal

Japan was given opportunities to surrender, but refused...

Truman ordered the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki despite the fact that he and his top advisors were aware that the Japanese had abandoned hope for military victory and were seeking an end to the war.

As Colonel Charles “Tick” Bonesteel III, chief of the War Department Operations Division Policy Section, recalled: “the poor damn Japanese were putting feelers out by the ton so to speak, through Russia.”[41]

OSS official Allen Dulles briefed Stimson on Japanese peace feelers at Potsdam. Dulles wrote in The Secret Surrender: “On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo--they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and the constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people.”

[42] That such indications of Japanese intentions were not lost on Truman and Byrnes is apparent not only in Truman’s July 18 diary entry referring to “the telegram from the Jap Emperor asking for peace“[43] but in the August 3 diary entry by Byrnes’s assistant Walter Brown, who recorded, “Aboard Augusta/ President, Leahy, JFB agrred [sic] Japas [sic] looking for peace.”

Truman also decided to issue the Potsdam Proclamation without Stalin’s signature, despite Stalin’s eagerness to sign and Truman’s understanding that Soviet entry into the war would deeply demoralize Japan and end Japan’s misguided hopes of securing better surrender terms through Soviet intercession. [48]

So, knowing the Japanese were looking for peace.
Knowing they would have surrender if they know the Soviets were going to join in the war.
Knowing the Soviets would sign the Potsdam Proclamation - but not allowing the signature (so not to be seen by the Japanese) Truman removed every possibility of a peaceful surrender.

Then dropped the bomb.

And dropped it again.

peace

source www.wagingpeace.org...

Source

Top U.S. military leaders recognized Japan’s growing desperation, prompting several to later insist that the use of atomic bombs was not needed to secure victory. Those who believed that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was morally repugnant and/or militarily unnecessary included:

Admiral William Leahy,

General Dwight Eisenhower,

General Douglas MacArthur,

General Curtis LeMay,

General Henry Arnold,

Brigadier General Bonner Fellers,

Admiral Ernest King,

General Carl Spaatz,

Admiral Chester Nimitz, and

Admiral William “Bull” Halsey.

Herbert Hoover wrote to a friend on August 8, 1945, “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.”

In reflecting on his opposition, Leahy, who chaired the meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and served as Truman’s personal chief of staff, emphasized the barbaric nature of the atomic bombs, not doubts about their effectiveness, chillingly proclaiming, “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....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.”

Eisenhower was equally appalled, writing in his 1963 Mandate for Change that when he learned from Stimson at Potsdam that use of the bomb was imminent,

“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.

So, those of us who condemn the actions by Truman, are in good company.

peace


[edit on 8-8-2009 by silo13]

reply to post by dooper

Thank you for responding in such a mature manner. I have an education. I have read many history books. And I know they were in serious talks.

I have Korean friends. I am not unaware of Japanese atrocities. Those civilians and their irradiated descendents did not commit those atrocities.

The emperor did not want to appear weak. And the Japanese are proud people. Never been defeated in history. Their soldater did not want to give up. They would rather die valiantly.

Let me tell you something dooper. In this I share their sentiment. Their culture is a lot like mine. I guarantee YOU I would be the first man off the transport on their beaches. I would take a valiant death to a cowardly victory any day. I am sick of so many people on this site thinking they know what I am.

reply to post by carnival_of_souls2047

They were planning for the full scale invasion of Japan. Your government has invasion plan too and Im sure if you were invaded you would fight to the death.

If you start a fight, you better finish it.

Line number two.

If the Japanese were looking for peace, why not do it earlier e.g 1943 or 1944. Why wait so long. Making the Americans Island hop all the way to Okinawa. Showing the Americans that the Japanese soldiers were prepared to die to the last person.

You only have to look at the price the Russians paid to make it all the way to Berlin. Hell the Germans weren't half as fanatical as the Japanese.

Also the Japanese military had moved most of there military production to small workshops etc into Civilian areas so making these areas targets. The Japanese did this right up to the surrender.

Between March 1945 and August 1945 (Surrender) it is estimated due to conventional bombings, more than a million civilians died.

reply to post by silo13
Yes you are right.

In my senior year of highschool I dated one of our foreign exchange students who lost both sets of grandparents that week.

His mother's parents lived in Hiroshima and his father's lived in Nagasaki.

Mankind is still a primitive and savage beast.

We have now learned the fine art of being able to mass destroy each other and wreck havoc upon our beautiful planet, Mother Earth.

There is no excuse for what happened August 6th and 9th.

Like individual karma, because I believe we are all interconnected, we possibly will all share a group karma and the thought of that really scares me.

Mankind just doesn't learn.

Look at Iraq. No we didn't use nuclear weapons there but we are still warring. We are still picking dishonorable people to lead us and lead us they will right into extinction if we do not grow up as a species.

It is estimated that initially 70,000 souls were extinguished over those two days in 1945 and another 70,000 from the after effects.

When you have a species that has advance technologically but not spiritually you end up with a ELE

We are like a two year old that has found daddy's blow torch in the garage and is about ready to burn the garage down.

Nothing can justify what happened on those two days.

A most excellent post.






[edit on 8-8-2009 by ofhumandescent]

reply to post by silo13

So, knowing the Japanese were looking for peace.
Knowing they would have surrender if they know the Soviets were going to join in the war.
Knowing the Soviets would sign the Potsdam Proclamation - but not allowing the signature (so not to be seen by the Japanese) Truman removed every possibility of a peaceful surrender.

Then dropped the bomb.

And dropped it again.

evil evil evil

and we are still making war against each other.

Now, read "The Gods of Eden" by William Bramley.

Mr. Bramley started out writing this book, it is his only book and took him seven years of researching into why mankind makes war against each other.

What MB came up with is incredible.

[edit on 8-8-2009 by ofhumandescent]

Originally posted by IntastellaBurst
I think the sad thing is .... Japan had already surrendered before the bombs were dropped. ... but the US wanted revenge for Pearl Harbour, ... as well as being able to test the new weapon on a population.
[edit on 7-8-2009 by IntastellaBurst]

Japan didn't attempt to surrender until August 10.

The A-bombs were on August 6 and 9.

There were projections at 1 million US troops dead if we had not dropped the bomb and instead did an invasion of Japan, and this 1 million US troops dead did not even include the invasion of Tokyo. While I do not agree with the bomb being in existence and would have liked their being an alternative to its use during the war that would not have cost so many lives, that was just not our decision.

[edit on 8-8-2009 by Baxtoriafall]

It's funny how this thread started as a form of remembering the dropping of 2 atomic bombs on the japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and quickly turned out into what should have been done instead. No amount of discussion is going to alter the events, make them worst or better.

The simple fact is the bombs where dropped and the war was effectively over.

It's so easy for any one of us to say the americans shouldn't have done that, as it's equaly easy to say that the japanese shouldn't have gone into southeast asia in the first place.

The truth is that both things happened and the "fact" that the japanese were trying to surrender wont change a single thing.

The 2nd world war was the last "just" war that the west has been involved (maybe with exception of the Balkans in the 90s). We weren't the party at fault in these particular circumstances. The allies didn't start this war, they were attacked.

It's sad that those bombs had to be used, like it's sad that Tokyo had to be fire-bombed or Dresden. But it's equally sad what happened in Stalingrad, what happened all over the territories conquered by Germany or what the people of southeast asia had to endure under the japanese imperial regime.

But at least 2 good things happened from that. Both Germany and Japan rose from the ashes to achieve by peaceful means what they didn't manage to do by force. Japan until recently was the 2nd most powerfull economy in the world after being completely destroyed in the 2nd world war and did that while abandoning every type of military pursuit.
The same with Germany, after being completely destroyed and physically separated for over 45 years, they managed to rebuild themselves in a peaceful maner, and some might say that they achieved the "control" over europe with peaceful means that they didn't achieve by force.

I think there's a lesson somewhere in that.

reply to post by Exuberant1

marching down this path of insanity

Excellent thread and excellent post.

It is so scary this road mankind has chosen to take.

Make love not war.

Peace

reply to post by silo13


Fighting battles on islands closer to japan were proving the japanese
would fight to the last man.If fighting had continued up to the japanese
mainland.The death rate,on both sides,would have been in the millions.
The japanese would have fought until every man,woman and child
had died.
Atomic weapons were being developed on all sides of the war.The
germans were working on their heavy water experiments.The japanese
were working on their experiments as well.The americans finished
their's first.
Dropping that bomb was not an easy task for any commander- in
chief to decide.You sometimes have to think about killing thousands
in order to save millions.
I have a japanese aunt who was affected by the bomb dropped on
Nagasaki.She had just turned 10,days before the bombing.

reply to post by madeioo
Your post is the kind of thinking that makes me keep coming back to ATS.

You post the facts, add some insight then a dose of hope and something to make us think.

Thank you very much for your post.

I applaud you.

peace

reply to post by silo13


If the U.S knew they were going to win (with the atomic bombs), and even forewarned Japan of supreme weapons, and they still refused to surrender (UNDER the U.S's conditions), the war was STILL active.

Wanting to surrender under their means is TOTALLY different from actually surrendering.

They knew what the U.S government wanted, and since they were at the bottom of the pole and the U.S were at the top, I highly that we would have went with "their" conditions.

Did you also forget the Japanese pride? The suicide bombers? Many of them would have gave their life so they are not in the name of defeat.

If anyone is to blame for the casualties of all these people, it is the leaders of the world combined, and getting more specific, the Japanese regime themselves.

Originally posted by Exuberant1
When the bomb finally Dropped, 'the Japs' had been thoroughly demonized for years (Dooper will remember them from his childhood):

Warning: The following photos may upset you Warning

Originally posted by visible_villain

Anyways, with all the evidence nowadays that Japan was strongly provoked into attacking Pearl Harbor, it just makes America's eventual use of atomic weapons on two of their major production centers all that much worse ...

And to think - I used to be proud of my country ...

Revisionist CRAP.

Even if that were true Japan was already on a roll in China way before any of that transpired. I highly doubt they were provoked into the atrocities they committed against millions of Chinese and Korean men, women, and children.


Some would demonized them while others just look at the facts.

Dont think for a second he didnt finish the job!

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/42eefe365167.jpg[/atsimg]





[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/44b3dff5daa8.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/64dfc6af2ccc.jpg[/atsimg]


[edit on 8-8-2009 by SLAYER69]

We put too much emphasis on “nuclear bomb” when it really doesn’t matter what killed those people and destroyed those cities. As it was already stated more people were killed and more cities were destroyed with fire bombing and conventional bombing than the two nukes did, so destroying a city with a nuke is not a greater evil than any other method.

We can look and say 10 times the number killed by the nukes were killed in China with nothing more than swords, bullets and clubs, or 30 times that number was killed in Germany by gas and forced starvation, and 100 times that number were killed in Russia by forced starvation and bullets, and later in China 500 times that number were killed by forced starvation.

What these tragedies have in common that nukes don't is it took a nation with an army of people over a period of time to accomplish them and with nukes you can get the same results with just a handful of people and a nuke. So nations that have nukes really means little since they have the power also in conventional means for the same results, but when nukes become available to small groups you now put the destructive power of a nation into the hands of a few people and that is what nuclear control is all about.

So killing is killing and in this case 200k lives lost to end the war was much better than millions if those bombs were not dropped. War is hell and humans can be downright evil, what more can you say…

The problem today is nukes are much more powerful or easier to transport and setup in a much smaller package than Fat Man and Little Boy.

MOAB 11 tons of TnT.
Largest conventional explosion 4,000 Tons of TnT
Fat Man 15,000 tons of TnT

Cold War nukes
USA 25,000,000 tons of TnT per nuke
Russia 50 to 100,000,000 tons of TnT per nuke

Tactical nukes (shot out of a standard artillery cannon) from 70 tons to 20,000 tons of TnT


So in all these cases we can see the destructive powers and compare them to what Fat Man did to a city that took a nation to accomplished, and we can all understand why uncontrolled production around the world of nukes with the ability for anyone with the right political backing or the right amount of cash could get one is a very bad situation since you are putting the destructive powers of a nation with a conventional army into the hands of an extremely small group of people.





[edit on 8-8-2009 by Xtrozero]

I think it bears mentioning that by august 1945 Japan
was a beaten nation. They had no ships or aircraft left,
just a few submarines. The Japanese people were led
into war by Tojo and the war department, not by the
Emperor. The emperor never truly believed in the war
but was more or less forced into cheerleading for it as
perhaps many americans were led to do with regards
to Iraq. (Didn't you once have a support the troops
ribbon on your car?) .
The emperor was really about the only thing left
for the Japanese at the end of the war. His power with the
people was critical to making the transition into the post-war era.
MacArthur was wise to this and knew that the Emperor
would be useful in establishing American rule over Japan. The
results speak for themselves. Despite the dropping of the
atomic bombs, despite the fire bombing of many of their
cities the Japanese accepted defeat and began rebuilding
immediately. The Japanese people like Americans for the
most part (even though we are gaijin or crude). Japan has
been a peaceful and productive nation since, quite an
achievement for a nation that had known near-constant war for 12 centuries.

Originally posted by Ridhya
I would take a valiant death to a cowardly victory any day. I am sick of so many people on this site thinking they know what I am.

I'm not sure what you mean by this? Are you saying the nukes were a coward’s way to achieve victory?

Originally posted by tamusan
reply to post by Jezus

 

Japan was TRYING to surrender AND keep some dignity...

I keep reading that in this thread. Where is the credible proof? I never heard that they were trying to surrender before the bombs. Russia was trying to get them to surrender. Japan was not begging to surrender, nir did they have any intention so far as I can tell. I've studied history from an American and Japanese point of view, and never heard of it. I also just asked my Japanese wife, and 2 Japanese exchange students who currently live with me. They never heard that the Japanese were trying to surrender before the bombs either.
It went like this:
US: Surrender
Japan: No thanks
BOMB 1
US: Surrender
Japan: No thanks
BOMB 2
Japan: YOU WIN!!!

This is more accurate.

Japan: Okay, this is over lets talk about it...
US: Surrender Unconditionally!
Japan: wait wait...Unconditionally?
BOMB 1
Japan: WTF?! We surrender lets talk! Hello? Hello?
BOMB 2
Japan: We Surrender Unconditionally...