dropping the bomb on japan? yes or no?

[bl4ckh4wk64]

Thinking about it, Japan was really the only country that has ever been able to wage total war. I mean, 100% of their daily activities were bent on either defending their homeland or strengthening their soldiers to fight the Americans. This has got to say something about their resolve. They wouldn't just surrender...

 

[MBurner 93]

Uh... he was Japanese. AND we were talking about Japan's willingness to stop fighting.

Guam has nothing to do with it. Again you're having to reach.

Considering he was on Guam when he surrended, yeah, it has allot to do with it. As you asserted that Japan's a big place. Guam isn't in Japan, or part of Japan.

No it doesn't.

I informed you of Japan's size as a way of illustrating that one guy's behaviour really doesn't reflect on the whole of the country.

We were talking about Japan's willingness to cease fighting, yeah? He may have been residing on Guam, but that doesn't bring Guam or its people into the discussion.

You really aren't reading his argument, are you? He's saying a JAPANESE soldier STATIONED on Guam refused to surrender for 27 years until he was ordered to. Considering many people were trained the same way as him in Japan, those defending the homeland would have fought just as long as he did if they could.

 

[Staskala]

then I'll repeat wat was said before. When you wage an attack, on a navel base, when the country has no wish of war, you lose your right, to have conditions. Yes, we placed sanctions down and thank god we did. Did you want a second germany rising up? We may have baited a war, but its better then having TWO psychopaths with a country full of bred and taught loyalists running around in the world. This was a war of revenge. And I'll stand by my decision every day. They had no right to attack. If they wanted peace, they hsould have bent to sanctions.

By that logic, the debt we placed on Germany for WW1 should never have been placed and we wouldnt have Hitler doing what he did and WW2 would never have been.

Running out of decent arguments?
We are talking about the necessity to drop the atomic bombs, nothing else.
The justifications are an entirely different matter.
I do not care about your childish and biased view on politics, history and wars. Learn to differentiate or don't talk.

Of course WWII would have never happened without Versailles, that is a obvious.
Was Versailles justified? Yes (well, most of it), but that is beside the point when talking about pure facts.
Your personal feelings do not matter when discussing history.

 

[YesConsiderably]

Uh... he was Japanese. AND we were talking about Japan's willingness to stop fighting.

Guam has nothing to do with it. Again you're having to reach.

Considering he was on Guam when he surrended, yeah, it has allot to do with it. As you asserted that Japan's a big place. Guam isn't in Japan, or part of Japan.

No it doesn't.

I informed you of Japan's size as a way of illustrating that one guy's behaviour really doesn't reflect on the whole of the country.

We were talking about Japan's willingness to cease fighting, yeah? He may have been residing on Guam, but that doesn't bring Guam or its people into the discussion.

You really aren't reading his argument, are you? He's saying a JAPANESE soldier STATIONED on Guam refused to surrender for 27 years until he was ordered to. Considering many people were trained the same way as him in Japan, those defending the homeland would have fought just as long as he did if they could.

He doesn't have an argument. One man continued fighting after the Japanese surrendered. I'm sure more did, but hardly a significant amount.

What we can take from this is that a significant amount of Japanese were willing to stop fighting. Because, you know, they actually did.

It's hardly rocket science, kids.

 

[emeraldrafael]

then I'll repeat wat was said before. When you wage an attack, on a navel base, when the country has no wish of war, you lose your right, to have conditions. Yes, we placed sanctions down and thank god we did. Did you want a second germany rising up? We may have baited a war, but its better then having TWO psychopaths with a country full of bred and taught loyalists running around in the world. This was a war of revenge. And I'll stand by my decision every day. They had no right to attack. If they wanted peace, they hsould have bent to sanctions.

By that logic, the debt we placed on Germany for WW1 should never have been placed and we wouldnt have Hitler doing what he did and WW2 would never have been.

Running out of decent arguments?
We are talking about the necessity to drop the atomic bombs, nothing else.
The justifications are an entirely different matter.
I do not care about your childish and biased view on politics, history and wars. Learn to differentiate or don't talk.

Of course WWII would have never happened without Versailles, that is a obvious.
Was Versailles justified? Yes (well, most of it), but that is beside the point when talking about pure facts.
Your personal feelings do not matter when discussing history.

No, its just hard to reason with people that dont like to see facts. Numbers are numbers, thats what it comes down to. Money is money, thats another thing it comes down to. It was the least costly, least expensive option. And that means its a go. FOR ANY COUNTRY IN A TIME A WAR. Wars are costly, so the lest you spend, the better you are off in the end.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Uh... he was Japanese. AND we were talking about Japan's willingness to stop fighting.

Guam has nothing to do with it. Again you're having to reach.

Considering he was on Guam when he surrended, yeah, it has allot to do with it. As you asserted that Japan's a big place. Guam isn't in Japan, or part of Japan.

No it doesn't.

I informed you of Japan's size as a way of illustrating that one guy's behaviour really doesn't reflect on the whole of the country.

We were talking about Japan's willingness to cease fighting, yeah? He may have been residing on Guam, but that doesn't bring Guam or its people into the discussion.

You really aren't reading his argument, are you? He's saying a JAPANESE soldier STATIONED on Guam refused to surrender for 27 years until he was ordered to. Considering many people were trained the same way as him in Japan, those defending the homeland would have fought just as long as he did if they could.

He doesn't have an argument. One man continued fighting after the Japanese surrendered. I'm sure more did, but hardly a significant amount.

What we can take from this is that a significant amount of Japanese were willing to stop fighting. Because, you know, they actually did.

It's hardly rocket science, kids.

What he's trying to say is, the army surrendered cause they were there. there was no escape, or scattering. But if enough men had been scattered, (as this man was) a new assualt could have jumped up and started again, becuase that was the philosophy. Hell, we were still finding guys in fox holes ready to die long after islands were taken and a war was over.

 

[YesConsiderably]

No it doesn't.

I informed you of Japan's size as a way of illustrating that one guy's behaviour really doesn't reflect on the whole of the country.

We were talking about Japan's willingness to cease fighting, yeah? He may have been residing on Guam, but that doesn't bring Guam or its people into the discussion.

He was on Guam for 27 years, stop playing stupid. You said Japan was a big place, but failed to actually look into where this man surrendered. You talk about average American intelligence like you're anything special. Clearly, you are not.

You cannot possibly be this dense.

Step 1. We were talking about Japan's willingness to surrender.
Step 2. You cited one man's actions as though they were representative of the way the rest of Japan would react.
Step 3. I said they were not representative of the way the rest of Japan would react.
Step 4. You started crying about Guam, as though it had any relevance to the discussion.

 

[manaman]

I don't believe the killing of innocent people is ever justifiable.

You are trying to apply a modern notion of innocent to a different time then judge the actions of that time. Hindsight isn't always 20/20 no matter what people say.

What happened happened. The best thing we can do now is prevent anything like that from ever happening again.

It's not like a bunch of teens posting on an internet forum that can't even be bothered to look up the facts about surrounding the issue they are debating when it only takes thirty seconds to do so are ever going to come up with a resounding revelation on this subject anyway.

The reference to the common courtesy and/or ethical standards at a given time are never an excuse for any immorale thing done as per definition ethical standard are universally valid.

Since when is morality not relative? There has never been a universal morality or ethic. I suggest you review that definition. Ethics are a set of moral standards with which an individual or society evaluate actions by either themselves or others.

Ethics are a complex philosophical topic that has been discussed for as long as people have had free time to ponder grand ideas. Any kind of crash course I could give on the subject would do no justice to the subject as a whole, you could spend years studying the field.

You are using your morals to judge peoples actions and finding them immoral, when you might be better off considering how the actions where viewed during there time. That the actions wouldn't be an option today does not make them wrong at the time.

 

[emeraldrafael]

No it doesn't.

I informed you of Japan's size as a way of illustrating that one guy's behaviour really doesn't reflect on the whole of the country.

We were talking about Japan's willingness to cease fighting, yeah? He may have been residing on Guam, but that doesn't bring Guam or its people into the discussion.

He was on Guam for 27 years, stop playing stupid. You said Japan was a big place, but failed to actually look into where this man surrendered. You talk about average American intelligence like you're anything special. Clearly, you are not.

You cannot possibly be this dense.

Step 1. We were talking about Japan's willingness to surrender.
Step 2. You cited one man's actions as though they were representative of the way the rest of Japan would react.
Step 3. I said they were not representative of the way the rest of Japan would react.
Step 4. You started crying about Guam, as though it had any relevance to the discussion.

its becuase you told me that I was wrong when i said culture dictated that citizens would have to fight and die to every man woman and child, and that zitizens make japan, not the military or people who decided its actions.

 

[Staskala]

Yet China was liberated from Japanese rule by Russia. Funny, huh, almost seems like the allies didn't care that much after all.
I'm saying it again, Russia would have solved the thing alone, the allies didn't have to do anything.
I really don't like this "but an invasion would have cost America so many soldiers" argument when there never was any need for an American invasion.

I shudder to think of a world where the soviets gained control of Japan, but that is really beside the point, not only would many of the invadind goldiers die, the casualties on the Japanese home islands would dwarf even those suffered by the Germans in East Prussia. Consider Hitler's Gotterdammurang (very poor spelling there on my part) the twilight of the gods, he planned that all of germany would go down in flames with him. This fell apart due to rationality prevailing and most germans chooding simply to surrender instead. The Japanese would not have followed this, every man and most women and children would have attacked. I don't really blame them, they had just been conditioned that way by the state, but the fact is unaviodable; In a conventional land invasion, it would be nessecary to kill a very signifigant proportion of the population to subjigate the Japanese home islands.

And russia was heavily supplied throught the lend lease program, to the point that the primary method of supply transportation on the eastern front was an american truck.
Add to that the very underwhelming streagnth of the red navy and the soviets would have both suffered heavy casualties and harboured resentment (or , you know, more resentment) at the west for letting them shoulder the burden of the pacific so soon after VE day and the fact that the nuclear deterant has not surfaced in this scenario, and we could se operation unthinkable play out in early '46.

Like I said somewhere else in this thread, the bombs were the best thing for all parties involved, including Japan (excluding Nagasaki and Hiroshima, of course). Looking at East Germany surrendering to the USA was the best option for Japan.
Talking about Goetterdaemmerung, such actions mostly fail because once the enemy troops actually arrive civilians tend to lose their will to fight despite previous claims.
It one thing to talk about your commitment but a whole different story to give up everything you own and engage forces that greatly overwhelm you in guerillia warfare.
Germans actually weren't all that reasonable before the big guns came.

 

[YesConsiderably]

He doesn't have an argument. One man continued fighting after the Japanese surrendered. I'm sure more did, but hardly a significant amount.

What we can take from this is that a significant amount of Japanese were willing to stop fighting. Because, you know, they actually did.

It's hardly rocket science, kids.

Wrong again, Hiroo Onada surrendered on one of the Phillipines Islands, in 1974. Boy, you just walk straight into this stuff don't ya.

Okay... so that's two people.

You might want to name more than one person that carried on fighting per post, otherwise this thread will probably exceed the posting limit before you manage to list a significant amount.

 

[CouchCommando]

Considering Americas firebombing campaign had already accounted for far more casualties on the civilian population than both bombs did, and logically assuming that any landing would have been supported by an even heavier concentration of carpet bombing and strafing, not to mention naval bombardment.
As a demonstration of over whelming superiority ,that may in no small part, have led to japans capitulation. The use of the "super weapon" was effective. I view the bombing as a low point in history but pondering a war of a global scale as actually existed ,I view it as the lesser of 2 evils. And I'm sure that the decision to deploy it was not taken lightly.

 

[MikailCaboose]

Completely necessary. America had all but lost the will to keep on fighting after heavy losses in both theaters and incurring massive debt. It is my understanding that if the war was to go on any longer they would have called for a truce and offered Japan basically anything they wanted. The Japanese were not the nice, albeit fucked-up people they are today. If you think they were, google the Rape of Nanking. They were massive dicks to all the countries they occupied.

The Japanese weren't nice at all during WWII. After Tokyo was fire-bombed in response to Pearl Harbor, after our bombers landed in China Japanese troops basically went on a berserk-mode killing spree through China that made the Holocaust look tame...

Plus, Japanese torture was horrible. The would tie your hands behind your back and then hang you from a ceiling from your wrists. The pain of your shoulder blades basically being pulled right off made most who were forced to endure that faint fairly quickly.

 

[Staskala]

No, its just hard to reason with people that dont like to see facts. Numbers are numbers, thats what it comes down to. Money is money, thats another thing it comes down to. It was the least costly, least expensive option. And that means its a go. FOR ANY COUNTRY IN A TIME A WAR. Wars are costly, so the lest you spend, the better you are off in the end.

Worthless point, since America would have spent the least money if they would have simply accepted Japan's conditional surrender.