T.J. wrote: In reply to Curmudgeon: Who is trying to paint the US and the Allies as the 'bad guys'? I've not seen it in this thread. I seriously doubt many modern-day Japanese or Germans would even argue that.
I've seen it often … many people think that we (the US) forced the Japanese into attacking us …
and many others are SURE that they would have surrendered long before we got to the home islands
In reply to wbjones:
They're usually the same crowd that thinks we should give the southwest back to the Mexicans, and the rest of the country back to the "Natives"
Strangely enough, they seem to not want to give Puerto Rico back to Spain....what gives? 
alfadriver wrote:yamaha wrote: In reply to Dr. Hess: Its the whole "American Exceptionalism" train of thinking that's finally trickling down. My personal opinion is that we need to go back to fighting wars the same way we did back then.....this "limited engagement" crap is really screwing us over and over again. In reply to aircooled: Actually, by the time they capitulated, the soviets had already been making gains down the northern islands and Manchuria...they didn't care if they weren't ready, they just sent their soldiers in and machine gunned them if they retreated.....So you want people to die on a really large scale? Yea, I don't. It's pointless. It's dumb enough that people are willing to kill and die over stupid things, now. No need to put that on an industrial scale where nearly 100M loose their lives over 6 years. Although, with current technology, that can be done in a afternoon.
We fought to win, nothing more nothing less. Everything since 1945 has been a berkeleying mess to say the least.
And yes, while those death tolls were staggering, most were due to indiscriminate "precision" or "british precision"(<<<lol) bombing of cities in 1939-1945.
Point of clarification, technically we did not drop a bomb on either island...both were set to explode a set distance above the surface (1,870 ft at Hiroshima). The blast wave goes out in a sphere, so if it hits the ground a large portion of the energy goes straight up. By detonating above the surface, a huge impact goes down and then out. At Hiroshima it was also aimed to reflect off the mountains and come back into the center of town. These are the things that you learn in nuclear engineering 101.
Every time I see pictures of the aftermath in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I remind myself of the god-like stature of the Emperor to the Japanese people, the pictures of the Japanese citizens weeping in the streets at the announcement that Japan had capitulated, the Bushido creed, the staggering projections of the loss of American lives expected in the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland, the barbarity of the Japanese soldiers and the treatment that our POWs received.....
...the ONLY thing that I feel is, that boys and girls, is a public that should have been VERY mad at their government.
In reply to RFloyd:
Thankfully they just felt defeated and accepted our explanation that "Dolphin & Whale" piloted Enola Gay & Bockscar.....sorry, a bit humor from South Park. 
LOLOL watched that one just the other night!
RFloyd wrote: ...the ONLY thing that I feel is, that boys and girls, is a public that should have been VERY mad at their government.
You seem to have a very fundamental misunderstanding of how the Japanese culture used to think (still do to certain extent I imagine).
The more popular feeling was likely more in the line of being ashamed that they were defeated and that they failed their emperor.
In reply to aircooled:
They did, and kind of makes you wonder if the economic boom after the war was their way of "redeeming" themselves.
yamaha wrote: ...And yes, while those death tolls were staggering, most were due to indiscriminate "precision" or "british precision"(<<<lol) bombing of cities in 1939-1945.
Uhm, I am going to go with a pretty confident no on that one.
By FAR, the most civilian deaths were in Russia (and it's close neighbors), and Nazi Germany did not even have a strategic air force. Very few of those death are likely from aerial bombardment. Russia had around 8 MILLION civilian deaths in WWII. Germany, by contrast, had around 2, and Germany was heavily bombed. Also of note, many of the German casualties were what you might call "self inflicted".
For contrast, Japan (heavily bombed) had around 600,000. Great Britain, around 67,000, and the US (not bombed much of course) around 12,000.
RossD wrote: It's an odd thing that the fire bombings of Japan killed way more people and destroyed more square miles of cities than the two nuclear weapons combined.Fire Bombing vs Nuclear Bombing said:No doubt it changed the world, however.This map depicts the percentage of the city's area that was destroyed by strategic firebombing prior to the nuclear bombs. Much of the attacks were carried out by low flying incendiary attacks under the direction of Curtis LeMay. (Ditext)
The worst city suffered less than 1%? I doubt that.
In reply to aircooled:
Are they including the Holocaust in those figures?
In reply to yamaha: out of 80 million, those 6 million aren't a huge piece of the puzzle...
yamaha wrote: In reply to aircooled: Are they including the Holocaust in those figures?
Yes they do. Consider though that they did do a lot of "work" in other countries.
Another significant one I missed was China, approx. 3 million military and 8 million civilian! I am not sure how much of that was Japan.
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/add_post/70-years-ago-today-aug-6/104375/1863294/
alfadriver wrote: Here's a thought experiment for you. What did your immediate family do? Parents, grandparents, etc? Were their lives impacted by the atomic bomb and the subsequent cold war?
My Great Grandmother was a school teacher in Japan. When the war broke out she took her only surviving daughter, my Grandmother, to live in the Japanese colony of Korea. Korea was short in two areas: Teachers and Engineers (by engineers I mean people who drive trains).
When the atomic bomb was dropped and Japan surrendered many of the Japanese living in Korea were killed or they fled. The parents of the students of my Great Grandmother would stand guard at their house and watch over them through out the day. Ironic then that eventually those same people also ended up holding my Great Grandmother and my Grandmother prisoner in Korea (not allowing them to leave).
The Engineers (having the ability to travel) gathered a collection and paid for passage aboard a Japanese fishing boat back to Japan. They they hijacked an entire train and smuggled my Great Grandmother and my Grandmother aboard (one of the engineers had a child in my great grandmother's class). They made it to the boat and took off. In the morning my Grandmother said she couldn't see land, but she could see they were stopped. When everyone was awake and gathered the captain of the boat demanded twice the original amount of money or everyone was going overboard. They took a collection, and made it to Japan from there.
My Grandfather's parents were German by birth, but he was born in the US (Pennsylvania). He lied about his age and enlisted in the Navy just before the end of the war. His first boat was sunk on its way to Japan (we thought it was the USS Wantuck that sunk, but that's not right). I'm not sure why they weren't captured, but he was eventually rescued and stationed aboard a different boat. He never made it to Japan (yet)
Fast forward to the Korean war and my Grandfather was still in the Navy. He eventually made it Japan where he met my Grandmother. She said she liked him right away because he didn't have any tattoos. At 6'5 and 5'nothin they made an odd couple 
It wasn't until the Vietnam war that my Grandfather (again in Japan, still in the Navy) and my Grandmother gave birth to my father and then my Aunt and Uncle. My grandfather was stationed at Pearl Harbor after that and eventually retired and moved the family to the PNW.
TLDR: It seems I owe at least half my existence to the Atomic bomb and the subsequent cold warring (I owe the other half to a certain 1957 Ford Fairlane. Red and white with hollywood mufflers ).
T.J. wrote: In reply to Curmudgeon: Who is trying to paint the US and the Allies as the 'bad guys'? I've not seen it in this thread. I seriously doubt many modern-day Japanese or Germans would even argue that.
Van Doom linked a story which mentions the recent dustup about the Enola Gay display at the Smithsonian. Interesting story; look into it. And yes, proving once again that we humans have short memories, there are those who say we should apologize to Japan for dropping those weapons. I am dead set against that, for the reasons I mentioned.
And yes I drive a Japanese car and worship at the altar of the tumbling Dorito, which only a Japanese company has been able to get right.
alfadriver wrote:Dr. Hess wrote: T.J., the modern liberal controlled school system is pushing ideas like that. Our country was founded by a bunch of racist slave owners, we nuked Japan just because we could, etc.Right, because the modern liberal system existed back in 1945 when scientists who worked on the project didn't want to drop the bomb, and also included the people who regretted dropping the bomb shorty after Aug 6, 1945. Please. It's just as important to recognize the people who regretted dropping the bomb AT THE TIME as it is to correctly point out the many, many reasons that it was the right thing to do. Just because we didn't start the war, and the other side committed horrible atrocities- we don't get a 100% out of jail card for doing horrible things, too. Needed and good are not the same thing. We had horrible option A, and even more horrible option B. Horrible choice A did end up ending the war. Great.
That's the basis of PTSD; having to do horrible things to survive, then feeling guilty over doing those things. The very definition of a sociopath is someone who can commit atrocities and not feel guilty; I don't think I'd want sociopaths running the government and military so hell yeah if someone says they regret having had to do that I'm gonna say yeah, so do I.
I'd much rather we hadn't had to drop the damn things either, but what would be the alternative? Nobody has a crystal ball, no one can see the future. But one thing we DID know about was all the people throwing themselves off a cliff on Okinawa, which appears to have been ordered by the Japanese military. http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/06/us-japan-history-okinawa-idUST29175620070406 All indications were that the same thing would happen over and over.
It's oh so easy to look back after 70 years and say 'oh that was a bad thing' then slather on the guilt. It's a damn sight harder to have been there in the catbird seat and have to make such a terrible decision, knowing that thousands of lives hang in the balance.
wbjones wrote:T.J. wrote: In reply to Curmudgeon: Who is trying to paint the US and the Allies as the 'bad guys'? I've not seen it in this thread. I seriously doubt many modern-day Japanese or Germans would even argue that.I've seen it often … many people think that we (the US) forced the Japanese into attacking us … and many others are SURE that they would have surrendered long before we got to the home islands
There's a faction out there which not only says that we provoked Japan into attacking, but that FDR knew of the coming attack on Pearl Harbor and intentionally covered it up to make sure we had a good reason to go to war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_advance-knowledge_conspiracy_theory
Just because somebody believes a conspiracy theory doesn't mean the Liberal Propaganda Machine is warping our children's minds into thinking America is teh Devil.
Which is probably a more insane conspiracy to believe, come to think of it. Maybe it has something to do with Jade Helm.
To put it in perspective, there are a good number of people who believe the government is doing high altitude spraying... chemtrails... uhm, yeah.
How is thread continuing? I typically am up for a good/raucous debate but this is an echo chamber considering the number of top level military/executive level people whom have said it was a posturing position.
Isn't there a fair amount of evidence that Japan wanted to surrender before the bombs?
No wonder Adrian took a few days off, and I didn't feel anyworse not announcing I wasn't here for almost a week. This is really getting bad guys.
I'm going to flag my own post.
So, are you saying that any thread that goes on for any time is automatically wrong in some way? Are you assuming that any discussion must result in everyone falling into lockstep? WWII is a wildly large and complex topic (why it's very interesting to discuss), it's pretty unreasonable to think everyone would fully agree on all topics surrounding it.
Yes, there is evidence that Japan wanted to surrender, but I don't think it is certain that the US was fully aware of that, or believed it, or wanted to believe it. Also, most people will not even know about that.
To link my chemtrailing note more, contrails were very common in WWII... that's makes a long conspiracy:
I guess on the top group is part of the conspiracy
In reply to z31maniac:
Where did that come from?
I thought I was busy learning something but, sure enough, someone has to come along with the "I don't like this but instead of just leaving, I'll express my discontent without actually contributing to the discussion" post.
I find all this interesting because Canada was more involved with the war in Europe than the war in the Pacifc so we got less of that in history class.
I will add that I have been interested in WWII history for many years. Mostly aviation related, but I have a good general exposure at least to most of it. It is crazy HOW many stories and places there were and that I seem to be finding thing I never knew about before.
One big issue is that the topic is SO big, it's almost impossible to teach or present a good gereral presentation on it. For me, I still do not know that much about the Japanese activities in China. I am aware of the general activities, but I am sure there are many specifics I am not aware of.
History programs etc. tend to only cover the more major areas and those more related to the US or the allies ( e.g. D-day, Midway etc)
In reply to z31maniac:
I could not disagree more with your opinion. I believe this is an excellent thread. A lot of people here have a good understanding of what the situation was 70 years ago. Since most of us weren't old enough or even born yet to experience and comprehend what was going on at that time in history, it means we're pretty well-read about it. But hey, in this kinder, gentler forum of ours, everyone is entitled to their opinion and should not be criticized for it. (And you may also be entitled to a trophy for participating).
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