nukes aren't fun!

[amadeus]

The bombs were dropped in retaliation for Japan (rightfully) bucking subordination to Washington and London. Japan should have known better and started its aggressive expansionism back in the day when it was acceptable (i.e., before the British, French, and Americans had already conquered everything and subjugated everyone.)

 

[Terxpahseyton]

It was total war between imperialist states that were arguably as bad as the third reich. Getting into what was "humane" at that time period is ridiculous. Its as hilarious as Britain condemning Italy for the invasion of Abyssinia.

You miss the part where the holocaust does not allow to not talk about what was humane. And if one has to do so, one should as well think about the humanity of other factions or debate about the holocaust becomes a farce.

 

[Communisto]

What are you talking about? That post doesnt make any sense.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Clarify and I may be able to help you.

 

[Communisto]

I dont know what you are trying to say. The first sentence isnt even grammatically correct.

 

[Tani Coyote]

I consider World War I to be a war between imperialist states, no real good/evil side, and entirely waged for the purpose of conquering colonies. Governments didn't care that the war made no real sense; why should they, due to the rewards of a victory?

World War II, it's a lot more clear cut. While there were imperialist motives(nearly every government has them), we have democracies on one side and horrific dictatorships who are butchering millions of civilians on the other. Sure, the Allies committed war crimes too, but compared to the scale of what Japan and Germany did?

 

[Communisto]

The British, French, Belgian, Russian/Soviet and Dutch Empires could go toe to toe with any of the axis powers, any day of the week. America was nothing to bawk at either.

 

[Midgard Eagle]

The bombs were dropped in retaliation for Japan (rightfully) bucking subordination to Washington and London.

I suppose all those Japanese forces that poured into China and other surrounding nations were just lost or something.

 

[Tani Coyote]

I suppose all those Japanese forces that poured into China and other surrounding nations were just lost or something.

Yeah, imperialism kind of is a gamble. In small, controlled doses, you can win big - see Hitler's successes in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

In large doses, you will provoke responses in the interest of the balance of power, and you will also reap what you have sown, with your OWN nation being the one to be colonised.

Japan invited a huge reduction of territory with all its carnage, as did Germany.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I dont know what you are trying to say. The first sentence isnt even grammatically correct.

I don't see how, but I'll restate:
The holocaust has been a perfect presentation of what humans are capable of under the right conditions in a negative way. Just everything about it cries "evil!", there is little room for justifications, none whatsoever in mainstream media.
So naturally this is something we - the world - needs to talk about. And we do, well not as open and honest as we should, but we do. And we need to. It couldn't get much more obvious how much potential for evil is there in humanity, so if we wouldn't now, we might as well never talk about it and just pretend it isn't there.

Now, if we talk about this atrocity, but ignore other atrocities committed by other factions at the same time during the same conflict, it would completely undermine the debate about the holocaust. Because it would reduce a matter of humanity to a matter of nationality and propaganda.

Or, to make long things short, if you want the holocaust to be an issue without engaging in blatant intellectual dishonesty and rightfully triggering other people's (right extremists) dismay in the process, you need to let the Dresden bombing be one, too.

 

[TopGearFanatic]

I suppose all those Japanese forces that poured into China and other surrounding nations were just lost or something.

What!? I don't know what you're talking about...

 

[Skwink]

And that's why you don't freaking bomb our boats. It's terribly sad for the civilians that their government were acting so stubbornly.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Well, this turned into a strange ahistorical crap-fight really fast.

By the time the invasion of Japan was going to happen, most American soldiers and seamen were tired, their moral was getting lower and lower the more and more years they were away from home, and they probably weren't going to be able to put up with an invasion of another whole country at the time. Not to mention if this invasion were to go through, it would costs thousands, if not, millions of American and Japanese civilian lives. Especially considering that looking back on the fact with the information we have now, the Japanese accurately predicted the American landing sites. It would have been an absolute slaughter, and a slug-fest until the end. That combined with the Japanese unwillingness to surrender, recently, they had just crushed a coup over that exact same issue, and the ministers were all pretty divided on the issue, but it does not seem like surrender was going to happens. And mind you, this is all looking in hindsight, going by the American perspective at the time, with the knowledge and intelligence they had, it seemed as though the Japanese were willing to fight until the very last man.

So, conveniently around this time, the atomic bomb had successfully completed it's first tests and was ready for use. It was seen as a way out of the situation they were in, as it, if used, would shock Japan into surrender without mass death as predicted by an actual invasion. They chose targets in Japan of industrial significance, rather than civilian (if they wanted to go with civilian deaths, why not just go for Tokyo?). And after staying up an entire night thinking, Truman ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And, well, it worked. The Japanese government folded and signed an unconditional surrender, and while thousands of civilian lives were lost, potentially millions were saved.

Also, remember when talking about this situation, hindsight is 20/20. Now that its, well, 70 years later, and we have most of the stories from both sides, of course we can come up with more pleasant alternatives to bombing Japan, because we know what's happening on either side, what they were thinking, their strength, etc. So instead, it's better to look at it from the point of view at the time, with what intelligence they had, and so forth. And looking at that, using an atomic bomb seemed like the only option they probably had, beside more prolonged and bloody campaigns.

 

[amadeus]

I suppose all those Japanese forces that poured into China and other surrounding nations were just lost or something.

First, you imply in your statement that it was the responsibility of the U.S., Britain, and France to protect China from (further) foreign invasion.

Second, what other "nations" were invaded by Japan? Indochina was a French colony, the Philippines an American colony, Burma, India and Malaya all British colonies, the Dutch East Indies under the Dutch, New Guinea under the Australians... the only other independent country in the region, Thailand, was invaded after Thailand had lobbied the British and American governments for an alliance.

Japan was simply playing by the same rules the British, French, and other Western imperial powers had established just a few decades earlier. If Japan's actions were unjustified, then so were the actions of the Western states.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

@Joecoolyo
The problem I see with your argumentation is that it assumes a Japanese unconditional surrender as an imperative and ignores other options (like a conditional surrender).
If it was about saving lives, unconditional surrender was the false choice, I think that is hard to dispute. So every decision leading from there is already morally corrupted. Carrying it out with atomic bombs is then only the nice cream on top.

 

[Tani Coyote]

Well, this turned into a strange ahistorical crap-fight really fast.

As is bound to happen when nukes are mentioned, as decades later they are still controversial.

They chose targets in Japan of industrial significance, rather than civilian (if they wanted to go with civilian deaths, why not just go for Tokyo?). And after staying up an entire night thinking, Truman ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And, well, it worked. The Japanese government folded and signed an unconditional surrender, and while thousands of civilian lives were lost, potentially millions were saved.

Never mind the conventional bombings of Tokyo killed far more than the atomic bombs did, didn't they?

Goes to show we just wanted to demonstrate that we could wipe them off the map(or rather, bluff that we could), rather than actually do it.

Also, remember when talking about this situation, hindsight is 20/20. Now that its, well, 70 years later, and we have most of the stories from both sides, of course we can come up with more pleasant alternatives to bombing Japan, because we know what's happening on either side, what they were thinking, their strength, etc. So instead, it's better to look at it from the point of view at the time, with what intelligence they had, and so forth. And looking at that, using an atomic bomb seemed like the only option they probably had, beside more prolonged and bloody campaigns.

Here here, it's easy to condemn something when it happened long ago, as we weren't in their shoes. Maybe if we had psychics, we wouldn't have had to nuke Japan, but... alas, we didn't.

The problem I see with your argumentation is that it assumes a Japanese unconditional surrender as an imperative and ignores other options (like a conditional surrender).

I see no reason to treat a government of complete bastards with the dignity of conditions.

 

[Joecoolyo]

@Joecoolyo
The problem I see with your argumentation is that it assumes a Japanese unconditional surrender as an imperative and ignores other options (like a conditional surrender).
If it was about saving lives, unconditional surrender was the false choice, I think that is hard to dispute. So every decision leading from there is already morally corrupted. Carrying it out with atomic bombs is then only the nice cream on top.

Were the Japanese even willing to conditionally surrender?

Also, what Tanicius said.

 

[Lord of Elves]

war was already won when A-bombs were used. Japan would easily forced accept a harsh peace agreement. But when it's about making american businessmen rich who cares about 140.000 japanese civilians.

Off to the sacrificial altar of the god of a-historical liberalism. Things that happened in the past, who can fathom them? Just old people being greedy and racist, amirite?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I see no reason to treat a government of complete bastards with the dignity of conditions.

Not killing people not or not directly responsible isn't too bad a reason.

Were the Japanese even willing to conditionally surrender?

From what I know it was the only reason to keep fighting the Americans. To force them to make concessions. I mean they must have known that America wouldn't just call it a war and and leave it and they also grew to know that they couldn't beat them. So it was not about defeat, it was about the conditions of the defeat. And America wanted no conditions at all, they wanted to basically "own" the Japanese people, to be bale to do as they please.
That's a pretty harsh standing, in fact you can't make any harsher demands.

 

[West 36]

I can see the rationale to it, well the first anyway. But could it have been avoided? We do know of those in the Japanese government that weren't willing to surrender, but there were more who were. The Soviet advance through Japanese holdings in mainland Asia was rapid, how long would it take till the Allies had simply cut-off Japan from any foreign holdings? Even some of it's on islands? This was, obviously, already part of the case at this point. Japan felt the need to expand at the beginning of the war, by the end of 1945 they would have no Empire, could they have been starved into submission? Certainly could be worse but who's to say they wouldn't surrender by this point? I'm sure the Soviets would be gearing up for invasion if necessary, and no one wants to deal with that.