One of the last remaining questions of WWII?

reply to post by queenannie38


I understand the mindset of the Japanese, as well as the Asian mindset, considering I grew up under the tutelage of the Art of War, Government, military, and Law Enforcement.

Sepukku was the traditional form of ritual suicide, based upon the honor of their Samurai code.

Quote from : Wikipedia : Sepukku

Seppuku (切腹?, "stomach-cutting") is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai.

Part of the samurai honor code, seppuku was used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies, as a form of capital punishment for samurai who have committed serious offenses, or performed for other reasons that have brought shame to them.

The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade, traditionally a tantō, into the abdomen and moving the blade from left to right in a slicing motion.

Putting the quoted reference there for those who do not know of it, not to insult your or for that matter Jakes51's intelligence, but some people do not know the inner workings of the "Asian mindset" like we do, obviously.

I think in both the Eastern an Western mindsets, simultaneously, so believe that I fully comprehend that the Japanese were prepared for total annihilation of their people based upon a rather ignorant mindset, programmed into them, through war propaganda, something still going on until this day.

I am of course, speaking of the Japanese being taught nothing of Pearl Harbor, etc, ad naseum, that we just attacked out of nowhere, with zero instigation.

They visit the Pearl Harbor memorials in Hawaii to this day and believe it is a lie.

While what I am saying, is not that there was no instigation, it was incorrectly labeled, due to our war propaganda, the United States Government and Military doctrine of the day, due to America's desire to be isolationist.

What I am saying is it was a crafty maneuver, politically speaking, by F.D.R.

Nothing more, nothing less, it was a cold and manipulative calculation, to sleight Japan through the "mercenaries", called "volunteers", of the Flying Tigers, and trick Hirohito's into his need to "save face" to his people.

F.D.R. was always practicing his playing one Government entity, Military, F.B.I., O.S.S., O.N.I. against each other, something he specialized in through politics.

One example of this was J. Edgar Hoover and William "Wild Bill" Donovan's hatred of each other, Hoover felt anything in the "Intelligence Community" belonged to him.

Donovan was doing F.D.R.'s dirty work and handling deniability.

Do I think the Japanese would have killed, and kept killing until they exhausted our soldiers, and therefore eliminated themselves, based upon erroneously indoctrinated dogma, by their very own Government and Hirohito?

Yes.

Does that excuse us from dropping two Atom Bombs on Japan?

No.

Based on knowledge of Unit 731 and the horrors that Shirō Ishii did to our P.O.W.'s and our captured Allies, they were doing the same, if not worse atrocities that the Nazis were doing in Concentration Camps.

The Horror of UNIT 731 pt.1


The Horror of UNIT 731 pt.2


The Horror of UNIT 731 pt.3


The Horror of UNIT 731 pt.4


The Horror of UNIT 731 pt.5


Due to inconsistencies in his "death" it is believed the O.S.S. or O.N.I. faked it, and shipped him off to the then "Camp Detrick", which later became Fort Detrick.

Not that I necessarily believe this, but considering Operation Paperclip, everything is plausible.

I do realize, that there was atrocities going on, on all sides, Germany, Japan, China, Russia, the United States, and as well Britain, our closest ally.

But, if we were supposed to be monsters, according to dogma and indoctrinated propaganda, to those Japanese civilians, then is it not just as monstrous to drop two Atom Bombs, if not more so, upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, therefore fulfilling the "monstrosity"?

We're talking semantics, of course, because it was allegedly a lesser of two evils.

But if the lesser of two evils, is still evil, then how is it truly not evil itself but semantics?

Personally, I believe the Japanese would have preferred the honor of Sepukku, over the Atom Bombs.

It would have taken overwhelming convincing to show them this was the better option, than to fight to the death, I realize, so we're just going round and round in circles.

[edit on 1-6-2010 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

A great thread and subsequent posts, Jake. How do we differentiate between the effects of atomic warfare vs. all the fire bombings that went on in Germany and Japan before H and N? Both Germany and Japan were working on fision bombs and we just finished first. Do you have any doubt that either country would have used their's first if they could have beaten us to the punch? I have absolutely no doubts they would have used them on us as fast as they could. Yes, Versaille was a total cluster eff, but it didn't keep Hitler from developing a military strong enough to capture almost all of Europe. Had we not engaged with the British, etc. it would have been a very different outcome. Fortunately for us, Hitler's drug addicted delusions became so bad that he butchered the last 2 years of the war. It's common knowledge that Hitler was quite deluded even before he came to power...but the morphine, amphetamine, and coc aine resulted in the extreme paranoia that forced him to take away all the strategy and tactics in every major battle.

Back to Japan...I understand all the political machinations with England and Japan. Was it Yamamoto that warned his military fellows that he could guarantee six months of victory, then nothing? These folks brought it all on themselves. This is a great subject, and I will keep up with it and maybe add more later! Thanks, Rick

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas


thank you for your reply!

you not only clarified your own thinking to me, personally, but provided a lot of necessary background for those who maybe haven't had as avid an interest in WWII as you and i have, at least insofar as we were spurred on to further research OUTSIDE of the so-called historical *facts* that we are spoon-fed as youngsters in school and then socially implored to go along with as adults, generally speaking.

i see more of where you are coming from, with your last post, and ultimately, now, i have to say i DO agree with you. the lesser of two evils is still evil, and that's where the circle jerk begins...

when i was in the 5th grade, we learned about the bombings through a story that our teacher read to the class, told from the perspective of a kid our same age, who had witnessed and survived the bombing of Nagasaki. i think it was a true story rather than a fictionalized account, because many of the things that stayed with me have proven to be straight up non-embellished facts.

i was horrified for over thirty years.

but i have, in recent years, been governed by a dedicated goal of not seeing anything from any one side and subsequently not judging any of those involved either as right or wrong or good or bad.

i do think FDR could have been more loyal to the American people but then again, i don't know how it felt to sit in the same chair as he.
same goes for Truman - i admire him simply because he stood well in a place that could have never been anything but the proverbial "hot seat."
i admire the Japanese for their undying (or dying) devotion to a national ideal and their fortitude in the face of death.
i admire everyone who had a part in our history of that era, for one thing or another.

and i admire your calm and dispassionate ability to share your ideas with others in a way that inspires conversation rather than ignites it!

we need more at ATS like you and the others participating in this thread!

Given that Japan would have been destroyed, maybe the whole island and many many hundreds of thousands killed in thier refusal to surrender we did them a big favor by dropping the bombs and limiting the death and destruction.

Had this not been we probably would have had to kill the royal family just to get the Japanese to stop fighting....if in fact it would have worked.

The guilt here belongs to the japanese militarists.

The moralists that are appalled by the A bomb kill me.
So the firebombing, the high explosives, the homelessness and starvation
is the moraly superior tack?
The callous indifference the Japanese government showed to both it's military and civilian populations, ( not even mentioning the monstorous cruelty showed to those conquered ), by enlisting the entire nation as an instrument of suicide. The difference between Jim Jones and Imperial Japan is..........?
To put it down to "cultural" differences is...as insane as Japan itself was. If it were an individual, we would call it psychotic, but the revisionists here
blame America and the Allies! FOR ENDING THAT GOD AWFUL HORROR THAT WAS WW2!
Amazing. Ignorance.

Wait a minute. I heard about that. There was a fight.

They didn't make it...

Originally posted by SpartanKingLeonidas
reply to post by queenannie38

 

Do I think the Japanese would have killed, and kept killing until they exhausted our soldiers, and therefore eliminated themselves, based upon erroneously indoctrinated dogma, by their very own Government and Hirohito?

Yes.

Does that excuse us from dropping two Atom Bombs on Japan?

No.

This decision was very pragmatic in so many ways. It was really the only decision. I fear the day that it is not so and many american lives will be offered up for other meaningless considerations rather than making the kind of decision that was made here.

reply to post by Jakes51


Jakes, the USA and Russia were never allies.
The only reason Russia invaded Germany was so they could share in a quarter of Berlin.

reply to post by slugger9787


HUH? I think you need to brush up on your history...just a little bit!
Clever of Russia to lure Germany all the way to Moscow, just so they could "invade" .
Don't they teach anything in school anymore!

the vedio on the flying tigers
my mom was one of those workers that cache a hot rivet in a cup or somthing. she worked at a flying tigers plain factory in ww2

reply to post by deadred


Yes, I am aware of what you are getting at, and some have said Japan was bombed into oblivion before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was just conventional bombings, and from what I have learned it was savage. The bombings of Japanese cities and operations in the European theater, most notably, Dresdan and Allied siege of La Rochelle was the first time in warfare, when the sinister incendiary device known a Napalm was used to great lengths.

Napalm

When used as a part of an incendiary weapon, napalm can cause severe burns (ranging from superficial to subdermal) to the skin and body, asphyxiation, unconsciousness, and death. In this implementation, explosions can create an atmosphere of greater than 20% carbon monoxide, and firestorms with self-perpetuating windstorms of up to 70 mph.

One of the main features of napalm is that it sticks well to the naked skin, and hence it leaves no real chance for removing the burning napalm from the skin of the victim.

Napalm is suitable for use against dug-in enemy personnel. The burning incendiary composition flows into foxholes, trenches and bunkers, and drainage and irrigation ditches and other improvised troop shelters. People even in undamaged shelters can be killed by hyperthermia/heat stroke, radiant heat, dehydration, suffocation, smoke exposure, or carbon monoxide poisoning. The firebombing raids on German cities, e.g. Dresden and Hamburg, frequently caused death by this mechanism; the resulting deformation to the baked corpses was referred to as Bombenbrandschrumpfleichen (incendiary-bomb-shrunken bodies).

One firebomb released from a low-flying plane can damage an area of 2500 sq.yards.

Possible recreation of what the firebombings may have been like from the Japanese animated film Grave of the Fireflies?



Here is the extent of the carnage brought by the incendiary bombs dropped on Japanese cities in world war from the documentary "Fog of War," and described by former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, under JFK and LBJ and a former staffer of General Curtis Lemay in WWII.



According former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, you essentially cannot differentiate the two. They were actually, one of the same. However, the only difference with the nuclear weapons, was the after affects, such as contamination of the environment, birth defects, and cancers long after the bombs had dropped.

The bombing raids of Japan was on par with atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, especially with casualty levels and devastation. That can be agreed. Yes, it is widely confirmed that both Germany and Japan were developing atomic weapons.

Japan's Atomic Bomb and a clip about U-234 a U-Boat with materials from Nazi Germany to make an Atomic Bomb for Japan before the war ended.




Germany's Atomic Bomb from the documentary The Good German about Werner Heisenberg




I truly believe if either the Empire of Japan or Nazi Germany developed bomb they would have used it. It would have been for pure military necessity and their nation's survival. They were both getting battered and bruised pretty heavily by the Allies long before the bombs were dropped on Japan.

Yes, we can be thankful that Hitler was not sober and doped up most of the years of the war. It is has been documented about his extreme drug addiction. He was certainly a nutcase, and I am fairly sure the drug addiction contributed to his folly in the realm of battlefield strategy. As for Admiral Yamamoto, he was concerned about the very prospect of going to war with the US in a prolonged campaign.

Isoroku Yamamoto

. . . "I shall run wild considerably for the first six months or a year but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years." His prediction would be vindicated as Japan easily conquered territories and islands for the first 6 months of the war until it suffered a shattering defeat at the Battle of Midway on June 4–7, 1942, which tilted the balance of power in the Pacific towards the U.S.

reply to post by Jakes51


It's not that I could not have given the order to drop those Atom Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is that I would not have done it, two totally different things.

I could and would order such a thing, if I felt it was warranted, because I am a pragmatic man, but the pragmatism of dropping those bombs is not so clear cut, as I have read many books on this topic.

One suggested Truman was not even fully aware of what he was ordering, that he was essentially tricked into it, not that I can confirm that.

If I felt it was pragmatic and would save lives I would order almost anything.

Up to and including a Nuclear Strike.

Considering I think in contigency planning scenarios, tactics, and warfare, I have always plotted out the plans of military engagements, based upon available information, and sometimes information which I plotted out.

When I read books, I do not read as just one character, I read as all the characters, both the proverbial "good guy" and "bad guy", and all in between, so as to figure out how I might do something in each person's shoes.

The same goes for war strategizing and tactical analysis.

Then again, I've re-plotted Thermopylae, after Leonidas, my namesake.

And I know how I would have held the Hot Gates for a far longer time.

I have zero hesitation when it comes to obliterating an enemy.

But if there is an alternative, which could not only save lives, but potentially gain a new ally, I would take it, still planning the annihilation as a last resort.

Planned for if there is not only dishonor of the potential ally but as a back-up plan.

Give the enemy the option to act honorable, and if the enemy dishonors themselves, wipe them off the map completely, but only as self-defense.

As queenannie38 noticed, I know far more about WWII, that I haven't even touched on.

About the Allies, the Axis, and about the battlefields and civilians who were at home.

reply to post by queenannie38


No, thank you for opening the dialogue in the direction I was building to, it is appreciated.

I agree, people are spoon-fed pablum as far as "history" is concerned.

The reason is so we as a society only have the bare-bones knowledge.

And as we go to places of higher education, gain more degrees, and expand our minds, we find those "alternate" bits of history, usually at some point (depends on connections) we have to gain entry to some Secret Society to fully gain all of it.

I chose to side-step all of the bureaucracy of the needless sheepskins.

As time allowed, throughout my lifetime, I was buried under hoardes of library books.

I was reading college level history books at age 13 and warfare is second nature to me.

I chose to turn the Art of War into the Art of Peace and spot "pre-violent" situations.

Yes, history itself, is a huge circle-jerk, unless you know how to decipher history, mixed with Intelligence Agencies, Military Branches, and Government entities.

I have never read a survivors story of Hiroshima or Nagasaki but I can imagine it.

See, I would be very interested to see what the British/U.K. history books teach about the American Revolutionary War, because knowing how history is written by the victors, not the vanquished, I know we wrote our own version.

I would be extremely interested to see what the United Kingdom teaches their society about that time in our history, because I am sure it's not a pretty picture.

Then again, I am a world traveler, while I have only been to Australia three times, I have ventured outside of my own country, read and mentally explored many other cultures than America, and history, and look at everything with the eyes of a man who wants not to see just one side.

There are two sides to a coin, technically a third side too, and third side is the one which is sharp and can cut your throat, through proverbial ignorance.

As to your compliment, I thank you, there is no reason we cannot have a courteous and sensible discourse through "non-verbal" discussion online.

I see you and I have about the same tenure and I find it odd we haven't run into each other sooner, please feel free to check out my threads.

F.D.R., Stalin, Churchill, Hirohito, Hitler, all bastards of history.

The victor writes history, not the vanquished, but their story is just as important.

I was taught it was not only important what was written but what was not written.

In other words, read between the lines, and decipher the real history for yourself.

Pablum is something I choose not to swallow as it's as useless as a politician.

reply to post by Logarock


Pragmatism is one thing, mass murder is another, with that logic it would dictate that Hitler's choice of eliminating the Jews, was a pragmatic reaction.

Hitler was a monster, so was F.D.R., and Stalin, the difference is who wrote the history.

And who profited off of what dirty hand washed the other.

reply to post by kbeet


In which country did she work and what nationality are you?

Not being rude, just checking, because this leads to more questions.

I find it interesting to find family members of WWII veterans and or workers.

[edit on 1-6-2010 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

Olddragger

When Germany invaded Poland, Russia were their allies.
Before Germany invaded Poland, both France and Britian were Allies of Russia.
When Germany turned on Russia and began invading her, Russia turned tail, and for no other reason than they had absolutely no choice, they became allies with USA, Britian and France. We the USA also brought to the table Canada and Australia.

Their alliedness with USA was chicanery, as proven at the end of the war they pulled the Berlin wall crap.

Americans can delude themselves into believing that it was a Mano y Mano alliance but in reality it was a farce.

We should have invaded Russia right where Hitler left off.

[edit on 1-6-2010 by slugger9787]

reply to post by slugger9787


Another idealouge.
Alliances are frequently, if not usually by neccesity.
So you discovered that countries are not driven by altruism and justice when it comes to war! Great.
But the fact remains that without the relentless Russian push back of Hitler, the war would have drug on much longer, and that it's likely that England would have fallen. Was Stalin a nice guy? Irrelevant. He hammered Hitler into ruin. I doubt that the US was up to fighting Russia after Germany. Or would the use of nuclear weapons on the USSR been OK with you?

Originally posted by SpartanKingLeonidas
reply to post by Jakes51

 

reply to post by Logarock

 

Pragmatism is one thing, mass murder is another, with that logic it would dictate that Hitler's choice of eliminating the Jews, was a pragmatic reaction.

Hitler was a monster, so was F.D.R., and Stalin, the difference is who wrote the history.

And who profited off of what dirty hand washed the other.

[edit on 1-6-2010 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

Your reasoning is very fouled up. Your ...whatever...has jumped the tracks somewhere back in your time. Millions would have been killed in Japan fullfilling your ideas of a proper dispatching of that war yet you claim to be some strategic go to...the a-bomb drops strategicaly were the perfect move, not mass murder. Mass murder would have been to carry on a traditional war insdie of Japan.

Hitlers dealing with the Jews...really friend....sort of like what america did with saving many millions of lives by droping the bombs? FDR and Stalin?...and you talk about padlum????? You may be the most over educated..blank.. person on ATS.

reply to post by OldDragger


I think the long supply lines, two fronted war, and the Russian winter did more to defeat Hitler.

Originally posted by Logarock
Your reasoning is very fouled up. Your ...whatever...has jumped the tracks somewhere back in your time. Millions would have been killed in Japan fullfilling your ideas of a proper dispatching of that war yet you claim to be some strategic go to...the a-bomb drops strategicaly were the perfect move, not mass murder. Mass murder would have been to carry on a traditional war insdie of Japan.

There is little to nothing "strategic" about Nuclear Warfare.

It is nothing more than eradicating people in the blink of an eye, both soldiers and civilians.

War is nothing more than tantamount to murder, no matter how you slice it, and at the expense of people, who usually have zero reason to fight, except corrupt politicians telling them to do so, because of ignorance within the world.

Did you actually read anything else I have posted or are you reacting to just two posts?

Quite simply because I disagree with you?

Originally posted by Logarock
Hitlers dealing with the Jews...really friend....sort of like what america did with saving many millions of lives by droping the bombs? FDR and Stalin?...and you talk about padlum????? You may be the most over educated..blank.. person on ATS.

I am stating Hitler eradicating the Jews was the same as F.D.R. dropping the Atom Bombs.

The energy spent, the evil done, and the idiocy of those in power was equal.

Saving lives is negated by taking them, so nothing was gained, other than an exchange.

An exchange of who died and who lived, which is imbecilic at best.

Saving those lives is meaningless, if others were killed, for no good reason.

Before you go calling someone "blank", you had better speak to the information, not attack the messenger, because it calls into question your aberrant behavior.

I never attacked you nor would I.

And dropping Atom Bombs is equal to just kicking someone in the nuts because someone is lazy.

There is zero honor in the actions of Truman in dropping those bombs.

If anything it was an act of cowardice.

[edit on 2-6-2010 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

I'm glad to see this very good thread is continuing. Spartan, you are erudite, well-spoken, and precise in your posts, but I don't agree with a couple of things. Comparing Truman to Hitler holds nowater for me. Hitler hated the Jews, and wanted to eliminate them from square one, even to the point of taking troops, supplies, and support away from the Eastern Front to accomplish his dasterly deeds of wiping out an entire race. All Truman wanted to do was end the War as soon as possible. With an invasion of Japan if you add up all the deaths on both sides, including the Japanese civilians could have been 4 or 5 million. As it were, the death toll for the two atomic bombs on H and N is somewhere around the 500K mark, maybe 100K more. Based on the difference between the two scenarios, somewhere around four and a half-millon lives weren' destroyed. You could almost make the case that dropping the two bombs were used in a Humanitarian way. Why should all those people have died just for the sake of "honor"? I guess the only other thing would have been to firebomb the entire country and burn it to the ground. In this case, using the bombs produces the conundrum that the worst evil could have also been the least evil when you look at the big picture...

[edit on 2-6-2010 by deadred]

Originally posted by SpartanKingLeonidas

Originally posted by Logarock
Your reasoning is very fouled up. Your ...whatever...has jumped the tracks somewhere back in your time. Millions would have been killed in Japan fullfilling your ideas of a proper dispatching of that war yet you claim to be some strategic go to...the a-bomb drops strategicaly were the perfect move, not mass murder. Mass murder would have been to carry on a traditional war insdie of Japan.

There is little to nothing "strategic" about Nuclear Warfare.

It is nothing more than eradicating people in the blink of an eye, both soldiers and civilians.

War is nothing more than tantamount to murder, no matter how you slice it, and at the expense of people, who usually have zero reason to fight, except corrupt politicians telling them to do so, because of ignorance within the world.

Well here is where I scrach my head at your claim to understand strategy and the like. The A Bombs were very strategic. The fact that they can kill large numbers in a blink really doesnt negate on some moral grounds, the stratigic gains that were made buy thier use here. In fact they saved so many more than they killed when the weight of thier strategic application was understood by Japan.

Japan, sort of a cult state then, recognized that it would not have the luxury of some dramatic national suicide to bring honor to its defeat, or amoung other things the luxury sending maybe half a million american GIs to the next world for the same reasons.

In fact the whole of Japans efforts from start to finish were, as some of their own top advisors warned, a total stratigic blunder. They remained on this blind course, which at first sought to extend themselves on the world stage, in the end to preserve thier precious xenophobia and would have sacrifced thier own country to ashes to keep this. The A bombs allowed for a capsulated snap shot that helped them view the reality of the maddness of thier planed future endevor.

reply to post by deadred


Well, we will have to come to terms, to agree to disagree.

While I certainly understand the intent behind what Hitler did and Truman did, were two completely different actual things, the actions however were synonymous.

WWII was already at a point where it was winding down, coming to a conclusion.

Prior to dropping the Atom Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

While certainly, those two bombs were an exclamation point, on the war, saying enough is enough, it did nothing other than escalate warfare, to the next highest level.

I have never stated an invasion was the end-all action to have taken, to invade an enemy fortification and or city, country, etc, is wholesale suicide if they are prepared to die.

I believe people here in the online world think when someone says something, they disregard actually asking for a better alternative, because they automatically assume because someone disagrees with them, they are taking a complete opposite stance, which is wholly untrue in this instance.

Divide and Conquer : Political Ideology of the Power Elite, Selling The Peace, War Is The Motive

Seppuku is the ritual form of suicide the Japanese warrior class and caste believed in.

Not the average citizens, they were brainwashed to believe defeat and or surrender were something to be ashamed of meaning they were indoctrinated into this false belief.

At the turn of the century, just prior to WWI and WWII, is when Japan dropped the need for Samurai, and entered into modern warfare, soldiers, tanks, battleships.

This means by the time WWII they were still new to the concept of modern warfare, relatively speaking, according to the rest of the world, which means more subtle, blunt, or forceful options could have been used to defeat the Japanese.

I fully understand some of their leadership came to America to study our warfare, we even sent some of our leaders there to teach them, if you remember the movie The Last Samurai, which was based upon a true story, we assisted in ushering them into modern warfare, but there were far better options.

Invasion, was a stupid means, and completely idiotic towards taking on Japan.

Now, however, siege-craft would have been a better option, a complete and total surrounding of the Japanese, on land via China, and on water via our Corvette's, Battleship, and Aircraft Carriers, cutting them off and isolating Japan.

Cut them off from the outside world, cut all forms of communication, supply lines, and allies to them, which would have been a massive undertaking, not necessarily would it have been possible, but it would have been the more honorable option.

Stand all forces off from engagement just outside of actual firing range and or fast troop movement and wait them out, giving them the order to surrender, with an offer of amnesty and peaceable terms for their surrender, clear-cut and concise in a treaty agreement, letting them decide their own fate.

Surrounding them, without engagement, would give them little to no room to maneuver.

If they engaged, smash any engagement, quickly and without mercy.

Then wait again.

Keep making them waste their resources until surrender.

Tell them they are surrounded, show them they are surrounded, and make them understand they are surrounded, and that they have no option, but do not engage.

Unless they ignorantly try skirmishing.

Tell them the Allies demand their leadership, including Hirohito, to either surrender, or commit seppuku, the leadership only, the citizens, if they surrender will be treated not as enemy combatants, but as a new alliance after the leadership surrenders.

Cause enough worry, dissension, and animosity within their ranks that they either unify and starve wholly, which they might have done, or tear themselves apart.

But, give them the choice, because there is no choice of action, except to flee.

When it comes to the Atom Bombs, being at the time, an unknown quantified position.

Those two Atom Bombs were what is called overkill.

While it may have certainly ended the Japanese opposition, all it did was change the dynamic of warfare, and usher in the Cold War, an ignorant escalation.

Then the world went in the Nuclear Arms Race and we as a society, worldwide, lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, under a veil of blackmail.

Atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (real footage)


reply to post by Logarock


There is a total difference between strategic and wholesale slaughter of innocents.

While yes, the Atom Bombs, may in fact have been an act of precision, they were an act of overkill, plain and simple, an act of escalation to the rest of the world.

Please read the post above to deadred.

The stopping of the Japanese was something minimal compared to worldwide escalation.

The fact that the Japanese were lead into a wolf-trap by F.D.R. shows they were ignorant to some extent, to modern warfare, and fell hook, line, and sinker into it.

Very similar, if not the same style of Churchill's use of the sinking of the Lusitania.

Churchill knew the Lusitania was going into U-Boat infested waters.

He used this as an opportunity to lure the idiotic Nazis into attacking it.

The same can be said of F.D.R. and Hirohito and our assistance to Chiang Kai-shek.

Overkill, like the dropping of the Atom Bombs, is not strategic, is merely dishonor.

F.D.R.'s dishonorable action of forcing the Japanese to attack us, so the U.S. could get into WWII, made those people who died at Pearl Harbor not martyrs but expendable assets.

He used those men and women's deaths as a means to manipulate America.

If those people in power would have stopped Hitler instead of allowing him to gain the power he did, WWII would have never happened, but they wanted it to happen.

War is the number one way to drag a sagging economy out of a depression.

So is a nuclear arms race.

The usage of those Atom Bombs was nothing more than a means to show who had the biggest war-penis, who had the most force, and ultimately, to give American citizens a reason to release more funds, to keep the war-chest open.

It was merely a means to keep funds flowing so the Military Industrial Complex would not fall flat on its face, once WWII was over, guaranteeing more death and destruction as a means of population control, and to manipulate more monetary gain for those who have their funding cut during peace time.

The Military Industrial Complex will do anything to keep their funding from being cut.

Even changing the dynamic of a war into a different type of war which is what Truman did.

Eisenhower - Military/Industrial Complex - Part 1 of 2


Eisenhower - Military/Industrial Complex - Part 2 of 2


Even Eisenhower knew that WWII never really ended but morphed into a greater monster.

If the constant threat of death, destruction, and disaster is imminent funding flows.

At the cost of the depressive air of mass destruction mankind will pay any price for survival.

Even all it has to those they trust in, assume are benevolent, and ignorantly follow.

[edit on 4-6-2010 by SpartanKingLeonidas]