"Thank God For The Atom Bomb" [ArthurK]

Bumped. Early debate thread below.

(reposting from previous years, slightly updated)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked 70 years ago. 34 years ago Paul Fussell wrote this important essay, 'Thank God for the Atom Bomb'.

21 year old 2nd Lt. Fussell commanded infantry in WWII France. Later, he had to sit around waiting to invade Japan and die. That was the general expectation of the vets of the European theater - they didn't think they'd survive Japan.

Then Aug 6th happened.

When the atom bombs were dropped and news began to circulate that "Operation Olympic" would not, after all, be necessary, when we learned to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow to adulthood after all.

The point of this post is to entice you click on the above link and read the essay. These excerpts give you a sense of the essay but don't include every example and argument. That's why you should Read The Whole Thing.

... writing on the forty-second anniversary of the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I want to consider something suggested by the long debate about the ethics, if any, of that ghastly affair. Namely, the importance of experience, sheer, vulgar experience, in influencing, if not determining, one's views about that use of the atom bomb.
The experience I'm talking about is having to come to grips, face to face, with an enemy who designs your death. The experience is common to those in the marines and the infantry and even the line navy, to those, in short, who fought the Second World War mindful always that their mission was, as they were repeatedly assured, "to close with the enemy and destroy him." Destroy, notice: not hurt, frighten, drive away, or capture.

...

Arthur T. Hadley said recently that those for whom the use of the A-bomb was "wrong" seem to be implying "that it would have been better to allow thousands on thousands of American and Japanese infantrymen to die in honest hand-to-hand combat on the beaches than to drop those two bombs." People holding such views, he notes, "do not come from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots." And there's an eloquence problem: most of those with firsthand experience of the war at its worst were not elaborately educated people. Relatively inarticulate, most have remained silent about what they know. That is, few of those destined to be blown to pieces if the main Japanese islands had been invaded went on to become our most effective men of letters or impressive ethical theorists or professors of contemporary history or of international law. The testimony of experience has tended to come from rough diamonds - James Jones is an example - who went through the war as enlisted men in the infantry or the Marine Corps.
Anticipating objections from those without such experience in his book, WWII, Jones carefully prepares for his chapter on the A-bombs by detailing the plans already in motion for the infantry assaults on the home islands of Kyushu (thirteen divisions scheduled to land in November 1945) and ultimately Honshu (sixteen divisions scheduled for March 1946). Planners of the invasion assumed that it would require a full year, to November 1946, for the Japanese to be sufficiently worn down by land-combat attrition to surrender. By that time, one million American casualties was the expected price.
Former Pfc. E. B. Sledge, author of the splendid memoir With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa, noticed at the time that the fighting grew "more vicious the closer we got to Japan," with the carnage of Iwo Jima and Okinawa worse than what had gone before. He points out that

what we had experienced [my emphasis] in fighting the Japs (pardon the expression) on Peleliu and Okinawa caused us to formulate some very definite opinions that the invasion. . . would be a ghastly bloodletting. . . . It would shock the American public and the world. [Every Japanese] soldier, civilian, woman, and child would fight to the death with whatever weapons they had, rifle, grenade, or bamboo spear.

The Japanese pre-invasion patriotic song, "One Hundred Million Souls for the Emperor," says Sledge, "meant just that." Universal national kamikaze was the point.

Ref the initial invasion of Kyushu. We now know that it would have been worse than planned. The strength of the entrenched Japanese Army was double what we expected. And the Allied invasion plans included isolating the invasion beaches using 17 atom bombs and chemical warfare against nearby Japanese cities - since the civilians were going to be participating in the defense.

Although American planners estimated that the Japanese had about 7,000 aircraft ready to defend the Home Islands against the Allied invasion scheduled for November of 1945, the actual figure was 12,700, for which there was an enormous stockpile of fuel and more than 18,000 pilots, who, while mostly indifferently trained, would be available for suicide missions.

On the other hand, John Kenneth Galbraith is persuaded that the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion. He thinks the A-bombs were unnecessary and unjustified because the war was ending any way. The A-bombs meant, he says, "a difference, at most, of two or three weeks." But at the time, with no indication that surrender was on the way, the kamikazes were sinking American vessels, the Indianapolis was sunk (880 men killed), and Allied casualties were running to over 7,000 per week. "Two or three weeks," says Galbraith. Two weeks more means 14,000 more killed and wounded, three weeks more, 21,000. Those weeks mean the world if you're one of those thousands or related to one of them. During the time between the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb on August 9 and the actual surrender on the fifteenth, the war pursued its accustomed course: on the twelfth of August eight captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off); the fifty-first United States submarine, Bonefish, was sunk (all aboard drowned); the destroyer Callaghan went down, the seventieth to be sunk, and the Destroyer Escort Underhill was lost. That's a bit 'of what happened in six days of the two or three weeks posited by Galbraith. What did he do in the war? He worked in the Office of Price Administration in Washington. I don't demand that he experience having his ass shot off. I merely note that he didn't.
Likewise, the historian Michael Sherry, author of a recent book on the rise of the American bombing mystique, The Creation of Armageddon, argues that we didn't delay long enough between the test explosion in New Mexico and the mortal explosions in Japan. More delay would have made possible deeper moral considerations and perhaps laudable second thoughts and restraint. "The risks of delaying the bomb's use," he says, "would have been small - not the thousands of casualties expected of invasion but only a few days or weeks of relatively routine operations." While the mass murders represented by these "relatively routine operations" were enacting, Michael Sherry was safe at home. Indeed, when the bombs were dropped he was going on eight months old, in danger only of falling out of his pram. In speaking thus of Galbraith and Sherry, I'm aware of the offensive implications ad hominem. But what's at stake in an infantry assault is so entirely unthinkable to those without the experience of one, or several, or many, even if they possess very wide-ranging imaginations and warm sympathies, that experience is crucial in this case.

And it wasn't just the military taking casualties as the war continued.

During the closing phase of the Pacific War, average monthly deaths, military and civilian, in Japanese held-territories in China, southeast Asia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, from disease, starvation, atrocities, or combat, was about 400,000 men, women, and children.

400,000 for August 1945, 400,000 for September 1945, 400,000 for October 1945...

A remoteness from experience like Galbraith's and Sherry's, and a similar rationalistic abstraction from actuality, seem to motivate the reaction of an anonymous reviewer of William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir if the Pacific War for The New York Review of Books. The reviewer naturally dislikes Manchester's still terming the enemy Nips or Japs, but what really shakes him (her?) is this passage of Manchester's:

After Biak the enemy withdrew to deep caverns. Rooting them out became a bloody business which reached its ultimate horrors in the last months of the war. You think of the lives which would have been lost in an invasion of Japan's home islands - a staggering number of Americans but millions more of Japanese - and you thank God for the atomic bomb.

Thank God for the atom bomb. From this, "one recoils," says the reviewer. One does, doesn't one?

...

In the summer of 1945 Field Marshal Terauchi issued a significant order: at the moment the Allies invaded the main islands, all prisoners were to be killed by the prison-camp commanders.

...

And in explanation of "the two bombs," Alsop adds: "The true, climactic, and successful effort of the Japanese peace advocates. . . did not begin in deadly earnest until after the 'second bomb had destroyed Nagasaki. The Nagasaki bomb was thus the trigger to all the developments that led to peace." At this time the army was so unready for surrender that most looked forward to the forthcoming invasion as an indispensable opportunity to show their mettle, enthusiastically agreeing with the army spokesman who reasoned early in 1945, "Since the retreat from Guadalcanal, the Army has had little opportunity to engage the enemy in land battles. But when we meet in Japan proper, our Army will demonstrate its invincible superiority."

Most people don't appreciate that, despite how badly the rest of the Japanese military had been mauled by 1945, their Army was mostly intact. Something like 3 or 4 million men were in the home islands or China. It wouldn't have been easy to transfer large numbers from China to Japan but all the ones that made it would have fought to the death.

It is easy to forget, or not to know, what Japan was like before it was first destroyed, and then humiliated, tamed, and constitutionalized by the West. "Implacable, treacherous, barbaric" - those were Admiral Halsey's characterizations of the enemy, and at the time few facing the Japanese would deny that they fit to a T. One remembers the captured American airmen - the lucky ones who escaped decapitation - locked for years in packing crates. One remembers the gleeful use of bayonets on civilians, on nurses and the wounded, in Hong Kong and Singapore. Anyone who actually fought in the Pacific recalls the Japanese routinely firing on medics, killing the wounded (torturing them first, if possible), ... The degree to which Americans register shock and extraordinary shame about the Hiroshima bomb correlates closely with lack of information about the Pacific war.

(Regarding a book by Glenn Gray that argued against the bombings.)

"The combat soldier," he says,

knew better than did Americans at home what those bombs meant in suffering and injustice. The man of conscience realized intuitively that the vast majority of Japanese in both cities were no more, if no less, guilty of the war than were his own parents, sisters, or brother

I find this canting nonsense. The purpose of the bombs was not to "punish" people but to stop the war. To intensify the shame Gray insists we feel, he seems willing to fiddle the facts. The Hiroshima bomb, he says, was dropped "without any warning." But actually, two days before, 720,000 leaflets were dropped on the city urging everyone to get out and indicating that the place was going to be (as the Potsdam Declaration has promised) obliterated. Of course few left.

...

The future scholar-critic who writes The History of Canting in the Twentieth Century will find much to study and interpret in the utterances of those who dilate on the special wickedness of the A-bomb-droppers. He will realize that such utterance can perform for the speaker a valuable double function. First, it can display the fineness of his moral weave. And second, by implication it can also inform the audience that during the war he was not socially so unfortunate as to find himself down there with the ground forces, where he might have had to compromise the purity and clarity of his moral system by the experience of weighing his own life against someone else's. Down there, which is where the other people were, is the place where coarse self-interest is the rule. When the young soldier with the wild eyes comes at you, firing, do you shoot him in the foot, hoping he'll be hurt badly enough to drop or mis-aim the gun with which he's going to kill you, or do you shoot him in the chest (or, if you're a prime shot, in the head) and make certain that you and not he will be the survivor of that mortal moment?

Keep Fussell's essay in mind when you hear people sigh in dismay about the bad thing America did on August 6th and 9th 70 years ago.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:28 PM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 I read Bret Stevens WSJ column the other day have 14 page download of 1981 original.

Posted by: Carol at August 06, 2015 04:33 PM (sj3Ax)

2

Pre Debate Post.
The Bomb.

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at August 06, 2015 04:33 PM (qCMvj)

3 1st

Posted by: mallfly at August 06, 2015 04:33 PM (qSIlh)

4 I'm going back to roses and apologize for posting and leaving.

Posted by: Carol at August 06, 2015 04:34 PM (sj3Ax)

5 The lefty sites are, of course, marking the day as the 70th anniversay of our massacre of tens of thousands of innocents.

Fuck 'em.

Posted by: Chi-Town Jerry at August 06, 2015 04:34 PM (so+oy)

6 It is easy to forget, or not to know, what Japan was like before it was first destroyed, and then humiliated, tamed, and constitutionalized by the West.

And they repay us with tentacle porn.

Posted by: wooga at August 06, 2015 04:35 PM (mPCqj)

7 Stomped flatter than me.

Posted by: Rachel Corrie at August 06, 2015 04:35 PM (WiU5D)

8 but the further in the past the event is, the more likely the progs will try to rewrite the history.

Recall c 1994 when the Smithsonian wanted to do a WW2 display that seemed to hint that the real problem before the war was American Cultural Imperialism, or something like that?

Posted by: mallfly at August 06, 2015 04:35 PM (qSIlh)

9 Bring Back the Bomb

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wESpXvwHloc

Posted by: GWAR at August 06, 2015 04:36 PM (C/bZe)

10 While the mass murders represented by these "relatively routine
operations" were enacting, Michael Sherry was safe at home. Indeed, when
the bombs were dropped he was going on eight months old, in danger only
of falling out of his pram.

So his father was home to knock up his mother in 1944. My grandfather was in the Pacific; my father was born a few years after he got home. If he'd had to invade the mainland, I probably wouldn't be here (and in previous years, a lot of us have made this same observation).

Michael Sherry can eat a bag of dicks.

Posted by: HR braucht ein Bier at August 06, 2015 04:36 PM (/kI1Q)

11 10th?

Posted by: Bruce Boehner at August 06, 2015 04:36 PM (E5UB0)

12 I was at the The National Atomic Testing Museum in Vegas this weekend. There was a plaque that said the government made so many purple hearts in preparation for for the invasion of Japan that they are still being issued today.

Posted by: DCPensFan at August 06, 2015 04:36 PM (ma/2m)

13 If you don't think the atom bomb was necessary, note that in the 3 days between the bombs, Japan did not surrender.

All arguments against the bomb boil down to this:

The bomb is taboo.

Casualty numbers don't matter, the number of years added to the war don't matter. It's just taboo.

Posted by: AmishDude at August 06, 2015 04:37 PM (b65cm)

14 #TwoWeeks

Posted by: John Kenneth Galbraith at August 06, 2015 04:37 PM (W5DcG)

15
Jeremy Corbyn refuses to condemn IRA for terrorist atrocities
==========
This is the guy Labour wants to elect as their new leader. It mystifies me why after the UK eft getting their asses kicked, why they wd go even more commie?

Posted by: Bruce With a Wang! at August 06, 2015 04:38 PM (iQIUe)

16 The lefty sites are, of course, marking the day as the 70th anniversay of our massacre of tens of thousands of innocents.

If Truman wanted to kill innocents, he could have bombed real population centers, like Tokyo and Kyoto rather than shipbuilding towns.

Posted by: AmishDude at August 06, 2015 04:38 PM (b65cm)

17
To late to save my uncle from a Jap machine gun nest on Saipan, but most definitely spared my dad.

By the way, the number that were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and by radiation afterwards is a fraction in comparison to the number of Japs that would have been killed by an invasion of the home islands.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 04:38 PM (St6BJ)

18 I'll just leave this here:

http://trurly.ytmnd.com/

Posted by: The Fissionable Hat at August 06, 2015 04:38 PM (7YlUk)

19 8 Recall c 1994 when the Smithsonian wanted to do a WW2 display that seemed to hint that the real problem before the war was American Cultural Imperialism, or something like that?
Posted by: mallfly at August 06, 2015 04:35 PM (qSIlh)

If we really were cultural imperialists (whatever the fuck that is), the world would be safer and more civilized by orders of magnitude.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 04:40 PM (St6BJ)

20 By the way, the number that were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and by radiation afterwards is a fraction in comparison to the number of Japs that would have been killed by an invasion of the home islands.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 04:38 PM (St6BJ)

----

.....its even less than the firebombing missions on other cities.

Posted by: fixerupper at August 06, 2015 04:40 PM (8XRCm)

21 Soon available in Tel Aviv.

Posted by: @PeeteySDee at August 06, 2015 04:41 PM (HsGKD)

22 After Biak the enemy withdrew to deep caverns. Rooting them out became a bloody business which reached its ultimate horrors in the last months of the war. You think of the lives which would have been lost in an invasion of Japan's home islands - a staggering number of Americans but millions more of Japanese - and you thank God for the atomic bomb.

Another of my uncles was on Biak in '43. He said they kept telling us we were mopping up the Japs when in fact they were the ones doing the mopping. He miraculously got transferred to the 5th Air Force as a ground crew and it saved his life.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 04:42 PM (St6BJ)

23
Hey....... Mr President...... Mr Obama.

Next time youre bragging on how you ended two wars..... remember..... THIS is how you really end a war.

Posted by: fixerupper at August 06, 2015 04:42 PM (8XRCm)

24 21 Soon available in Tel Aviv.
Posted by: @PeeteySDee at August 06, 2015 04:41 PM (HsGKD)

Oh how the Left/Islam would cheer that.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 04:42 PM (St6BJ)

25 Wow, I thought the figure for deaths in Japanese-occupied lands was 100,000/month, which was ghastly enough. But 4x that? More than compelling.

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 04:43 PM (vsbNu)

26 Note that there is no Shinto State of Japan and China now.

Posted by: AmishDude at August 06, 2015 04:44 PM (b65cm)

27 Per Obama, atomic bombs are just one more thing America has to atone for.

Posted by: Cicero (@cicero) at August 06, 2015 04:44 PM (8ZskC)

28 If Truman wanted to kill innocents, he could have bombed real population
centers, like Tokyo and Kyoto rather than shipbuilding towns.

There was nothing left of Tokyo to bomb. About as many people died from the U.S.'s conventional bombing of Tokyo as died in each of the atomic attacks. Fussell's essay is great for calling out the nastiness of real war. We think we have made a lot of progress in our approach to war, but wait until we're in the next actual war (not voluntary, half-ass wars like Iraq) and we'll see just how fast our "enlightened" mentalities go by the wayside.

Posted by: Peter at August 06, 2015 04:44 PM (hDl8W)

29 The same people will not bitch when it's Israel.

And they will not bleed for all the Palestinians that go up in the same blast, because then they won't need them.

Posted by: Pappy O'Daniel at August 06, 2015 04:45 PM (oVJmc)

30 Remember:

If it's not love, then it's The Bomb that will bring us together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoo9Vu1a9bU

Posted by: The Smiths at August 06, 2015 04:45 PM (vsbNu)

31 The leftards don't give a fuck about dead Japs. They care only for using them to talk shit about their country. They care more for a fucking old lion than those Japanese killed in the nuclear attacks. Their moral superiority is right in there with the morals of a cockroach. Pass the baby parts, please.

Posted by: maddogg at August 06, 2015 04:45 PM (xWW96)

32
There is a conversation somewhere between Paul Fussel and Eugene B. Sledge. It is a MUST listen.

And if you want to know the hell the GI's went through and why that bomb was a gift from G-d, read "With the Old Breed on Peleliu."

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 04:45 PM (St6BJ)

33 The Japanese were working on their own bomb.

Any leftie who believes that had the Japanese produced a bomb before the Hiroshima raid *and* wouldn't have used it can be ignored in perpetuity if not punched in the throat for aggravated dishonesty.

Posted by: weft cut-loop at August 06, 2015 04:46 PM (ZCFje)

34 Thank my parents for me. If elected to District Attorney, I'll promise you, I'll be DA Baum!

Posted by: Adam Baum at August 06, 2015 04:46 PM (E5UB0)

35 An invasion would have been a bloodbath. A blockade would have been impossible to maintain. The American people were tired of war, and the men and materiel necessary would have constituted an enormous drain on the resources of the US, with no assurances of success.

The bomb was the most humane way to end the war.

Posted by: Colorado Alex at August 06, 2015 04:46 PM (OiH3z)

36 23
Hey....... Mr President...... Mr Obama.

Next time youre bragging on how you ended two wars..... remember..... THIS is how you really end a war.
Posted by: fixerupper at August 06, 2015 04:42 PM (8XRCm)

The only proper way to end a war is to WIN a war. And the only proper way to do that is to kill as many people as quickly as possible and impose your will on them at the end of a gun.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 04:47 PM (St6BJ)

37 If the Japanese had had a bomb in 1941 they would have blanketed China with them, not to mention dropping at least one on Hawaii.

Posted by: maddogg at August 06, 2015 04:48 PM (xWW96)

38 I mentioned seeing Mr Holmes earlier today. The post WW2 period piece with Ian McKellen playing an aged Sherlock Holmes that retreated to Sussex to raise bees.

SPOILERS, there is a striking scene in the film where Holmes has gone to Japan, and his host takes him to the fallout zone of Hiroshima to collect a plant (which Holmes later ingests. Wouldn't that cause radiation sickness? But I digress.) The impression you are supposed to get is the utter tragedy of Hiroshima, the utter waste of it all, and poor poor Japanese. No mention of the atrocities the Japanese actually committed during the war that I recall.

Other than that it was a lovely film and I enjoyed it. I don't mind fantastical history, but the adoration of the Japanese and the villification of the US bombing them was a bit eye rolling. And I say that as someone who had a very intense otaku phase where I was obsessed with all things Japan back in the days of my youth.

Posted by: LizLem at August 06, 2015 04:48 PM (hvf9s)

39 "With the Old Breed on Peleliu."

---

Awesome read.... I am astonished and humbled with what the frontline Marines went thru in the Pacific theatre.

Posted by: fixerupper at August 06, 2015 04:48 PM (8XRCm)

40 One of my older brothers told me : "The Japs had it coming to them."

The more I know about it, yes they sure did.

Posted by: Grampa Jimbo at August 06, 2015 04:49 PM (1ijHg)

41 WalMart is having a SuperCenter grand opening on LBJ in Dallas today.

Posted by: X at August 06, 2015 04:50 PM (xGNLA)

42

millions were saved. Thank God

Posted by: ThunderB at August 06, 2015 04:50 PM (zOTsN)

43
Rape of Nanking
Unit 731
Rape of Manila

*mic drop*

Posted by: IllTemperedCur at August 06, 2015 04:50 PM (JbaZF)

44 Hell, the Japanese dropped bombs loaded with plague infested fleas on the Chinese, but yeah, we nuked them due to racism. The stupidity should hurt.

Posted by: maddogg at August 06, 2015 04:50 PM (xWW96)

45 I remember sitting in a hotel lounge back in the mid 80s and overhearing a late 50-something Japanese meteorologist discussing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an American who was probably in his 40s. The American, simply trying to be nice, was saying something to the effect of how horrible the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been.

The Japanese gentleman cut him off and told him that he was forever grateful for the gift of life he and his family were given because of the two atomic bombs having been dropped.

Posted by: Furious George at August 06, 2015 04:50 PM (UlJ3l)

46 33 Posted by: weft cut-loop at August 06, 2015 04:46 PM (ZCFje)

The Japs had an experimental medical center in Manchuria on par with and perhaps exceeding the barbarity of Mengele at Auschwitz.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 04:50 PM (St6BJ)

47 Not that it makes a difference in the moral calculus, but I think Operation Olympic was both foolish and unnecessary and would almost certainly have been so heavily modified as to be unrecognizable. The Japanese navy was gone, their airpower vastly reduced. We could have burned and blockaded the home islands for years with many fewer casualties that the plan expected, while the toll on the Japanese people would have been unbelievable.

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 04:51 PM (evdj2)

48
And Thank God Cecil the Lion is Dead...

says everyone in Zimbabwe because, unlike us, they have to Live With the menace of man-eating wild beasts.

Posted by: Soothsayer II, twelve-time Top Commenter at August 06, 2015 04:51 PM (9Wut1)

49 Now where did I read recently that the U.S. hasn't won a war since the name of the War Department was changed to the Department of Defense?

Posted by: Grampa Jimbo at August 06, 2015 04:51 PM (1ijHg)

50 keep in mind somewhere along the way the Politicians have decreed that you , that being a citizen , should not interfere with their management decisions...

Posted by: Great ceasars Ghost at August 06, 2015 04:51 PM (/WmRg)

51 Given that I've just found out I have South Chinese ancestry (maternal)...

... I'll need to look up how to say "suck my nuts" in Hakka or Xiang. Because that's the proper Chinese response to Japanese whining about how nukes are 'absolute evil', during a war when Nanjing happened.

That's pretty much it.

Posted by: boulder terlit hobo at August 06, 2015 04:51 PM (lHtw0)

52 The bomb was the most humane way to end the war.

Posted by: Colorado Alex

This has nothing to do with historical facts. This is about striking the right poses and having the right thoughts so as to impress their lefty friends.

Posted by: pep at August 06, 2015 04:52 PM (LAe3v)

53

by the way, Alabama Governor just defunded Planned Infanticide and Baby Parts R Us

Posted by: ThunderB at August 06, 2015 04:52 PM (zOTsN)

54 don't start none and there won't be none.

Posted by: X at August 06, 2015 04:52 PM (xGNLA)

55

Wow, Fox is blocking anyone who does not have cable from watching the debate.

asses

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at August 06, 2015 04:52 PM (qCMvj)

56 Rape of Nanking
Unit 731
Rape of Manila

*mic drop*
Posted by: IllTemperedCur at August 06, 2015 04:50 PM (JbaZF)

--Bataan Death March

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 04:52 PM (vsbNu)

57 Whatever else you think of President Truman I hope we can all recognize what a courageous act it was to drop these bombs. Thank you President Truman for saving so many lives, even Japanese lives.

Posted by: MTF at August 06, 2015 04:53 PM (LISuA)

58 I read the Mark Steyn article about Cecil today, was fantastic. Apparently he was the most famous lion in Zimbabwe...that no one living in Zimbabwe had actually heard or cared about.

White people, amiright?

Posted by: LizLem at August 06, 2015 04:53 PM (hvf9s)

59 I am most likely alive today because of the bomb and Japan finally surrendering. My dad was in that part of the world fighting the Japanese and would have been part of the invasion as he spoke the language.
Most leftist indoctrinated morons of today don't understand the fanaticism of the Japanese (not unlike Isis) and their arrogance and belief of invincibility vs. the west and white race.
The fact that 100,000 people perishing the the firebombing of Tokyo would not budge the Japanese was proof enough. Thank God for Truman, if Wallace had been our President wil would all be speaking Russian and been Young Pioneers.

Posted by: standfast24 at August 06, 2015 04:53 PM (bDG+8)

60 Rape of Nanking
Unit 731
Rape of Manila

*mic drop*
Posted by: IllTemperedCur at August 06, 2015 04:50 PM (JbaZF)

--Bataan Death March
Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 04:52 PM (vsbNu)

----

Wake Island

Posted by: fixerupper at August 06, 2015 04:53 PM (8XRCm)

61 Iwo Jima

Posted by: ThunderB at August 06, 2015 04:54 PM (zOTsN)

62 "Thank God For The Atom Bomb"
------------------------------
Ooh. I alwAys loved John Denver's music!

*artisinal 'ette beat me to the "this post is Dad Bomb" joke, so that's the best I could come up with on short notice.

Posted by: Chi at August 06, 2015 04:54 PM (yB0WD)

63
This has nothing to do with historical facts.
This is about striking the right poses and having the right thoughts so
as to impress their lefty friends.

Posted by: pep at August 06, 2015 04:52 PM (LAe3v)

Yup.I'd also point out that the same calculations apply to Iraq. We could either remove Saddam, keep the sanctions, or let him go free. The latter was being pushed by the Germans and French and would have basically let Saddam restart his WMD programs. Keeping the sanctions would have required another 10-20 years, with 50,000 - 100,000 Iraqis dying each year.

Posted by: Colorado Alex at August 06, 2015 04:54 PM (OiH3z)

64 Rape of Nanking
Unit 731
Rape of Manila

*mic drop*
Posted by: IllTemperedCur at August 06, 2015 04:50 PM (JbaZF)

You said rape twice.

Posted by: AmishDude at August 06, 2015 04:54 PM (b65cm)

65 Let me make my position clear, none of the crying leftards calling the Dentist a coward has the guts of a paramecium. If you think it doesn't take guts to take on a full grown lion with a bow and arrow, you are an idiot, an idiot like Chi-town Jerry.

Posted by: maddogg at August 06, 2015 04:55 PM (xWW96)

66 Now where did I read recently that the U.S. hasn't
won a war since the name of the War Department was changed to the
Department of Defense?

Posted by: Grampa Jimbo at August 06, 2015 04:51 PM (1ijHg)

I think that our victory in WWII terrified leftists. They, and their communist allies, saw that the US was frankly unstoppable by any opponent in the world, so they spent the next 50 years hamstringing us any way that they could.

Posted by: Colorado Alex at August 06, 2015 04:56 PM (OiH3z)

67

http://www.hulkusc.com/watch-fox-news-live-streaming/

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at August 06, 2015 04:56 PM (qCMvj)

68 I once met a lefty baby boomer professor who talked about the "shame" of dropping the Bombs. This was in the mid-80's. The young man he was addressing said something I really wish I could take credit for: he said to the prof "The only bad thing about dropping the Bomb is that it ensured that a lot of stupid hippie Baby Boomers would be born and they would go on to shit on America."

Shut the prof right up, that did.

Posted by: Donna V. (sans ampersands) at August 06, 2015 04:57 PM (u0lmX)

69 We could have burned and blockaded the home islands
for years with many fewer casualties that the plan expected, while the
toll on the Japanese people would have been unbelievable.

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 04:51 PM (evdj2)

Unlikely. A blockade would have required massive numbers of ships and aircraft and would have been a major drain on the country.

Posted by: Colorado Alex at August 06, 2015 04:57 PM (OiH3z)

70 @39...my Daddy was in the 1st Marines on Peleliu and spent 30 months in the South Pacific. My hero...great father, great husband and humble and generous man. The bomb kept him and many others alive as he said they would have all died without it.

There is a really good story today in the Naples (FL) paper about a 92 yr old Marine who still works as a barber. He was injured on Guadacanal, took shrapnel to his chest, yet would not take Purple Heart later. He simply said his generation were "hard workers" and I have to agree. He spent 32 months in the South Pacific and considers anyone who survived it, including himself, "lucky." We are the lucky ones to have known them. He looks twenty years younger than his age. His name is Charles Farmer in the event pixy will not link:

http://tinyurl.com/ogvjrhb

Posted by: ChristyBlinky,aging Redneck Queen supermodel, Walker/whoever 2016 at August 06, 2015 04:58 PM (2qF5m)

71 two sites

http://www.hulkusc.com/watch-fox-news-live-streaming/

http://www.livenewschat.eu/the-republican-debates-live-stream/

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at August 06, 2015 04:59 PM (qCMvj)

72 my Dad was on Saipan

Posted by: ThunderB at August 06, 2015 04:59 PM (zOTsN)

73 Wake Island
Posted by: fixerupper at August 06, 2015 04:53 PM (8XRCm)

Damn straight.

Ornithocide.

Posted by: Wake Island Rail at August 06, 2015 05:00 PM (vsbNu)

74 Thinking of the last thoughts of a John Kenneth Galbraith or a Michael Sherry as an Iranian atomic blast erases the area around them from existence warms my heart.

Would be the only silver lining to such an event.

Posted by: Hawkins1701 at August 06, 2015 05:00 PM (G03UX)

75 I knew my grandfather. thank you Harry Truman.

Posted by: X at August 06, 2015 05:00 PM (xGNLA)

76 "It is easy to forget, or not to know, what Japan was like before it was first destroyed, and then humiliated, tamed, and constitutionalized by the West."

I think the greatest example is Mukai and Noda's contest to see who could kill 100 people with their swords first.

Noda later said the whole thing was "no big deal".

Meanwhile in our times soldiers are disciplined for urinating on the Koran.

Yeah, the modern mind cannot visualize the depths of the horrors the Japanese were capable of in WW2. To his dying day my grandfather had pretty hard feelings toward them from what he'd seen of how the Filipino civilian population was treated as an ambulance drive in the Pacific Theater.

Posted by: Emile Antoon Khadaji at August 06, 2015 05:01 PM (Nj2wY)

77 So his father was home to knock up his mother in
1944. My grandfather was in the Pacific; my father was born a few years
after he got home. If he'd had to invade the mainland, I probably
wouldn't be here (and in previous years, a lot of us have made this same
observation).

Posted by: HR braucht ein Bier

Ditto. My father was in the Phillipines (in the Army) training for the invasion of Japan. Would I be here if not for the A-bombs? Who knows?
Some additional food for thought. The US submarine campaign against shipping was incredibly successful against Japan, even against inter-island shipping.
The food supplies in Japan were almost gone, and the country would have begun starving in a few months. Some of the post-bomb radiation symptoms of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though real, were exaggerated because of the declining level of nutrition and health of the average Japanese, because food supplies were running out.

War is a terrible thing. There is precious little glory or wonder in modern war, it is too terrible and ugly close up. The second bomb at Nagasaki ended the war. "Bock's Car" dropped that bomb, and it is presently on display (and has been for many years) at the Air Force Museum outside of Dayton, Ohio.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative...a rube in America at August 06, 2015 05:01 PM (RFeQD)

78 Unlikely. A blockade would have required massive numbers of ships and aircraft and would have been a major drain on the country.

As opposed to a million casualties? I think the country would have considered it a bargain, as would the military. It's also true that we had a massive number of ships and planes at that point in the war. We had close to a hundred aircraft carriers of various sizes.

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:01 PM (evdj2)

79 You said rape twice.

Posted by: AmishDude at August 06, 2015 04:54 PM (b65cm)

That's how we say "hello" to our fellow members of the East-Asian Co-Prosperity Shere...

Posted by: Tojo at August 06, 2015 05:01 PM (7YlUk)

80 The best argument against the use of the Atomic bomb in WWII that I know of comes from British philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe. This also deserves to be read in full. http://www.ifac.univ-nantes.fr/IMG/pdf/Anscombe-truman.pdf

Posted by: darii at August 06, 2015 05:02 PM (RdrW8)

81 A lot of progressives alive today because daddy or grand daddy didn't die in 1945 storming the beaches of Japan. I wonder if they realize that?

Posted by: Diogenes at August 06, 2015 05:02 PM (Z9g7j)

82 Apparently, John Kenneth Galbraith's moral compass was of comparable quality to his knowledge of economics.

Posted by: Furious George at August 06, 2015 05:02 PM (UlJ3l)

83 John Kenneth Galbraith? That Harvard cocksucker wouldn't have been anywhere near Japan.
The old man was in the 1st Marine Division. He'd been through Okinawa and couldn't believe he lived through that. He figured no way he would live through Japan.
So fuck John Kenneth Galbraith...

Posted by: tu3031 at August 06, 2015 05:02 PM (YFFpo)

84 75 I knew my grandfather. thank you Harry Truman.
Posted by: X at August 06, 2015 05:00 PM (xGNLA)

--My granddad served in the Pacific as well. Had he died, my mom and I would not have been born.

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 05:03 PM (vsbNu)

85 64 You said rape twice.
Posted by: AmishDude at August 06, 2015 04:54 PM (b65cm)

So it was rape-rape (lape-lape in Japanese)

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 05:04 PM (St6BJ)

86
It didn't really fit into the post but the Nagasaki bomb was important.

The Japanese quickly figured out that the Hiroshima bomb was Uranium based. It was widely known that a uranium bomb was possible. But it was assumed by most that a uranium bomb was impractical as it would be too expensive, consume too much of a nations industrial output. The Japanese scientists told the military leaders that Hiroshima was a stunt, a one-off. (correct, by the way)

Then Nagasaki was bombed. Plutonium. That was unexpected! That told the Japanese that the US was capable of REGULAR production of nuclear weapons. In fact, at that time, the US was making about 1 plutonium bomb a week.

Nagasaki (plus the Red Army) convinced the Japanese that fighting on was pointless. They wouldn't even have the chance to HURT the US - we would kill them at long distance.

Posted by: Comrade Arthur at August 06, 2015 05:04 PM (h53OH)

87 39 "With the Old Breed on Peleliu." ---

Awesome read.... I am astonished and humbled with what the frontline Marines went thru in the Pacific theatre.
Posted by: fixerupper at August 06, 2015 04:48 PM (8XRCm)

The part that still haunts me after reading it several years ago was when Sledge described shivering in some hole on Okinawa as it rained for 2 weeks straight and being so exhausted and miserable that he started to hallucinate. He saw the dead bodies of his fallen Marine buddies get up and walk around.

Posted by: Donna V. (sans ampersands) at August 06, 2015 05:04 PM (u0lmX)

88 The intelligence officer of the U.S. Fifth Air Force declared on July 21,1945, that "the entire population of Japan is a proper military target," and he added emphatically, "There are no civilians in Japan." Why delay and allow one more American high school kid to see his own intestines blown out of his body and spread before him in the dirt while he screams and screams when with the new bomb we can end the whole thing just like that?

Americans used to think and speak like this.

How far we have fallen.

Posted by: some random meathead at August 06, 2015 05:05 PM (Yrjee)

89
The A-Bombs and Israel '48.

In honor of President Truman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC6z0nz03JI

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 05:06 PM (St6BJ)

90 78 Unlikely. A blockade would have required massive numbers of ships and aircraft and would have been a major drain on the country.

As opposed to a million casualties? I think the country would have considered it a bargain, as would the military. It's also true that we had a massive number of ships and planes at that point in the war. We had close to a hundred aircraft carriers of various sizes.
Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:01 PM (evdj2)

--It's important to consider the Cold War implications as well. A long, protracted war against Japan would have allowed Stalin to conquer and consolidate more territory sooner than he did. China and Indochina would have turned communist earlier, and Indonesia, Malaysia, Hokkaido, and even Taiwan could have fallen under the Hammer and Sickle while the USA was occupied with Olympic.

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 05:06 PM (vsbNu)

91
If Israel drops a few on Iran, I might have exactly the same feelings as elucidated in this post.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 05:07 PM (St6BJ)

92
As opposed to a million casualties? I think the
country would have considered it a bargain, as would the military.
It's also true that we had a massive number of ships and planes at that
point in the war. We had close to a hundred aircraft carriers of
various sizes.

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:01 PM (evdj2)

Invasion wasn't the only other option. A negotiated settlement was also a possibility.
The American people would have looked at another year, two years, three years, of rationing, of their sons and husbands away from home, of taxes and war bonds and everything else and pushed for peace. And leaving the Emperor and the Japanese military in charge would have been seen in Japan as American weakness. It would have been proof that their martial spirit and national unity won the day. It would have guaranteed another war.

Posted by: Colorado Alex at August 06, 2015 05:09 PM (OiH3z)

93 I think that our victory in WWII terrified leftists.
They, and their communist allies, saw that the US was frankly
unstoppable by any opponent in the world, so they spent the next 50
years hamstringing us any way that they could.

Posted by: Colorado Alex

That is exactly correct.

When we fought against Vietnamese Marxism in the 1960's, the ideological left howled about it.

"Better Red than Dead", if you happen to remember that old chestnut from the 50's Cold War days.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative...a rube in America at August 06, 2015 05:09 PM (RFeQD)

94 Yeah, the modern mind cannot visualize the depths of the horrors the Japanese were capable of in WW2. To his dying day my grandfather had pretty hard feelings toward them from what he'd seen of how the Filipino civilian population was treated as an ambulance drive in the Pacific Theater.
Posted by: Emile Antoon Khadaji at August 06, 2015 05:01 PM (Nj2wY)

Well, you can visualize it if you keep up on the latest slaughter committed by ISIS. But the left isn't paying attention to that because they're too busy fretting about real threats to civilization: bakers who don't bake cakes for gay weddings, the Confederate flag, etc.

Posted by: Donna V. (sans ampersands) at August 06, 2015 05:09 PM (u0lmX)

95 --My granddad served in the Pacific as well. Had he died, my mom and I would not have been born.

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 05:03 PM (vsbNu)

My father was in the 4th Marine Division. He'd survived Saipan, Tinian, Roi Namur, and Iwo Jima (where the company of which he was first sergeant had suffered 85% casualties), but didn't expect he'd survive the invasion of the Japanese home islands, in which the 4th Mar Div was to play a key role.

So fuck the liberals who bleat retrospectively about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tell them there were concentrations of Republicans there. That'll bring 'em around.

Posted by: Jay Guevara at August 06, 2015 05:09 PM (oKE6c)

96 90 Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 05:06 PM (vsbNu)

The Russkies would have come up against the same thing in Hokkaido that we were facing in Kyushu.

And my mother felt we should have let the Russkies roll over all of Europe. The attitude of the French post commie occupation might be very different had that happened.

But that's another story for another post.

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 05:09 PM (St6BJ)

97 To his dying day my grandfather had pretty hard feelings toward them from what he'd seen

Same thing with my father. To his dying day he'd never buy anything from Japan, and had nary a kind word for them.

Posted by: Jay Guevara at August 06, 2015 05:11 PM (oKE6c)

98 In military training, accidents happen. So, if there was ever a good time for Dutch Army soldiers to get shot during training exercises .. that time is now. In the short-term, there is safety in the long-term danger of the current Dutch Army ammunition crisis.

Here is the story plain and simple about the NATO member:

"Het Nederlandse leger heeft geen munitie."

That's how the folks in the Netherlands would say in their native tongue, "The Dutch Army doesn't have any ammo."

Posted by: President Barack "Hoarding Ammo" Obama at August 06, 2015 05:11 PM (e8kgV)

99 A negotiated settlement was also a possibility.

In the multi-verse sense yes. In this world, I don't think so. At least not a negotiated settlement much different from what we got anyway. The Emperor wasn't hung after all.

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:11 PM (evdj2)

100 I'm sure that my uncle, who was a turret captain on the Battleship New Jersey, was happy not to invade the mainland of Japan.

Posted by: Islamic Rage Boy at August 06, 2015 05:13 PM (e8kgV)

101 96 90 Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 05:06 PM (vsbNu)

The Russkies would have come up against the same thing in Hokkaido that we were facing in Kyushu.

And my mother felt we should have let the Russkies roll over all of Europe. The attitude of the French post commie occupation might be very different had that happened.

But that's another story for another post.
Posted by: J.J. Sefton at August 06, 2015 05:09 PM (St6BJ)

--Hokkaido would have offered the same kind of resistance, but not as strong. It was more sparsely populated, and had only in the previous century been incorporated and assimilated into the Japanese Empire. It was actually considered to be offered up to the commies while Olympic was executed.

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 05:13 PM (vsbNu)

102 81 A lot of progressives alive today because daddy or grand daddy didn't die in 1945 storming the beaches of Japan. I wonder if they realize that?
Posted by: Diogenes at August 06, 2015 05:02 PM (Z9g7j)

The Mocha Messiah is too stupid to figure out that if his position on abortion had obtained in 1961, he'd have been medical waste.

Posted by: Jay Guevara at August 06, 2015 05:13 PM (oKE6c)

103 To his dying day my grandfather had pretty hard feelings toward them from what he'd seen

My father was the same way. My brother bought a Toyota one year and had to listen to a tirade about how there was "blood on that car". None of the rest of us made that mistake until he was gone.

Posted by: tu3031 at August 06, 2015 05:14 PM (YFFpo)

104 If Barack Obama had been President during World War II, we'd all be speaking German

Posted by: Islamic Rage Boy at August 06, 2015 05:14 PM (e8kgV)

105 For all those against the bomb? Be glad it was Truman and not me.

I'd have smoked Tokyo because of Pearl Harbor.

Posted by: rickb223 at August 06, 2015 05:15 PM (5weRM)

106 We did smoke Tokyo.

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:15 PM (evdj2)

107 In the multi-verse sense yes. In this world, I
don't think so. At least not a negotiated settlement much different
from what we got anyway. The Emperor wasn't hung after all.

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:11 PM (evdj2)

No, but he was made to reject his supposed divinity. The power of the Japanese Army and Navy was broken, and the country was reorganized to prevent it from attempted anything like that again.
None of that would have occurred under a negotiated settlement. War is fundamentally a contest of wills, and if the Japanese military and Emperor were allowed to continue on after the war with no occupation, no reconstruction by US forces, then the message would have been, "We were too tough for them to destroy. Next time, we'll win."

Posted by: Colorado Alex at August 06, 2015 05:16 PM (OiH3z)

108 New debate thread up, but the Head Ewok wants no OT.

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 05:17 PM (vsbNu)

109 Same thing with my father. To his dying day he'd never buy anything from Japan, and had nary a kind word for them.

Posted by: Jay Guevara at August 06, 2015 05:11 PM (oKE6c)

The Chinese hated the Japanese. Many still do.
The Koreans hated the Japanese. Many still do.
The Filipinos hated the Japanese. Many still do.

Sounds like the Japanese were the assholes of the far East.

Posted by: OregonMuse at August 06, 2015 05:17 PM (j1VIK)

110 Posted by: darii at August 06, 2015 05:02 PM (RdrW

----

No .... it doesnt.

He uses Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a step stool to espouse his pacifist philosophy.

Blathering on about how self defense is still murder and everything would be all right if we would all just get along disqualifies from most rational discussions about.... anything.

He concedes the point about saving lives and ending the war sooner and avoiding an invasion... but still argues about the immorality of it all.

He lives in the world as he wants it to be, not the world as it is.

His work is rubbish.

Posted by: fixerupper at August 06, 2015 05:17 PM (8XRCm)

111 We did smoke Tokyo.

Not with a nuke.

Posted by: rickb223 at August 06, 2015 05:17 PM (5weRM)

112 The fire raids on Tokyo probably caused more destruction than the A-bombs.

Posted by: tu3031 at August 06, 2015 05:17 PM (YFFpo)

113 The bomb was the most humane way to end the war.

The only consideration is how to minimize American casualties.

I don't give a rat's ass about the enemy; war is war, and if you don't start no shit, there won't be no shit. And conversely.

Posted by: Jay Guevara at August 06, 2015 05:18 PM (oKE6c)

114 I heard a, no doubt apocryphal tale, of Curtis LeMay being asked by a reporter when the war would end. He went to his office and returned after a few minutes with a specific date in 1948. The reporter asked how he knew that and he replied that on that date the last city of more than a thousand people in Japan was scheduled for burning.

Even as a joke, those guys weren't playing.

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:19 PM (evdj2)

115 The Chinese hated the Japanese. Many still do.
The Koreans hated the Japanese. Many still do.
The Filipinos hated the Japanese. Many still do.
Sounds like the Japanese were the assholes of the far East.
Posted by: OregonMuse at August 06, 2015 05:17 PM (j1VIK)

Absolutely. I've never heard any Asians say a kind word about the Japanese. Never. They were pretty much the Aztecs of the Far East.

Posted by: Jay Guevara at August 06, 2015 05:19 PM (oKE6c)

116 My grandfather was a B-25 Mitchell pilot. He didn't talk about the war much, but my mom recorded his experiences not long before he died, and I am very grateful for that.

Posted by: Turd Ferguson at August 06, 2015 05:20 PM (VAsIq)

117 What you've got to realize about the anti bomb crowd is that they don't care about the American lives that would have been lost. THEY. DON'T. CARE. In fact, they very likely would have liked to have seen more American deaths. In their minds we are and always have been damn dirty Imperialists. They celebrate in the name of Gaia when male WASPs die.

Posted by: PBJ5959 at August 06, 2015 05:20 PM (r1du+)

118 Sounds like the Japanese were the assholes of the far East.

Please keep in mind, each of those groups hates each of the others. Japan-China-Korea flamewars on wikipedia are a sight to behold.

Racism ain't just black and white, no matter what the progtards claim.

Posted by: Brother Cavil, down with Eph 6:12-13 at August 06, 2015 05:21 PM (2l5vw)

119 None of that would have occurred under a negotiated settlement.

You can assert that, but that doesn't make it so. These were our demands. If they didn't accept them, the war would have continued. What concessions do you imagine we would have been satisfied with at that point?

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:21 PM (evdj2)

120
Without the A-bombs I may never have gotten to know my grandfather aPearl Harbor survivor(USS San Francisco) or my Cousin Roy (Omaha beach ).
The left hates America. They are embarrassed that we aren't backwards socialists. They cannot stand our prosperity. This is why they work so hard to undo everything that makes us great.

Posted by: Tilikum Killer Assault Whale at August 06, 2015 05:21 PM (8marX)

121
"My father was the same way. My brother bought a Toyota one year and had to listen to a tirade about how there was "blood on that car". None of the rest of us made that mistake until he was gone."

My dad was a WW2 Vet (Europe) and we got a similar speech when my sister bought a Honda in the early 80's. "They used to capture American soldiers and cut their balls off." He also had a framed picutre of his first cousin that was a Catholic chaplain who was murdered by the Japanese in captivity.

Posted by: Benji Carver at August 06, 2015 05:22 PM (OD2ni)

122 The thing I've noticed about Asians is that they seem to ALL hate each other.

Posted by: tu3031 at August 06, 2015 05:23 PM (YFFpo)

123 We did smoke Tokyo.

Posted by: Grump928(c)

Sweet.

Posted by: College Kid, Thinking He's Discovered a New Flavor of Weed at August 06, 2015 05:24 PM (VAsIq)

124 And for a piece of especially infuriating liberal-think, I give you this: a news report that one of the last "victims" of the Hiroshima bomb had recently died at age 92.

The bomb is slow to work, but deadly. Drop it, sit back and wait: the enemy only has 70 years to live.

Posted by: Jay Guevara at August 06, 2015 05:26 PM (oKE6c)

125 The bomb is slow to work, but deadly. Drop it, sit back and wait: the enemy only has 70 years to live.

Posted by: Jay Guevara at August 06, 2015 05:26 PM (oKE6c)

??? I don't know what this is supposed to even mean.

Posted by: OregonMuse at August 06, 2015 05:28 PM (j1VIK)

126 119 None of that would have occurred under a negotiated settlement.

They (the Militarists) attempted to assassinate Hirohito on his way to announce the surrender. You really think that would have been possible?

Okie dokie....

Posted by: 98ZJUSMC Staring at the Lake in the rain at August 06, 2015 05:28 PM (WIIRD)

127 They celebrate in the name of Gaia when male WASPs die.
Posted by: PBJ5959 at August 06, 2015 05:20 PM (r1du+)

WASPs were not the only ones fighting. And, like the prof I mentioned earlier, many of them don't seem to realize that if the bombs hadn't been dropped they wouldn't be alive to spit at America.

Posted by: Donna V. (sans ampersands) at August 06, 2015 05:29 PM (u0lmX)

128
My Grandfather was like that too. He never bought a Japanese car. Cousin Roy refused to buy German cars.
Can't say I blame them.

Posted by: Tilikum Killer Assault Whale at August 06, 2015 05:29 PM (8marX)

129 > 114 I heard a, no doubt apocryphal tale, of Curtis LeMay being asked by a reporter when the war would end. He went to his office and returned after a few minutes with a specific date in 1948. The reporter asked how he knew that and he replied that on that date the last city of more than a thousand people in Japan was scheduled for burning.

Posted by: Grump928(c)

Plausible.
I read le May's book on the B-29. In it, he describes how he planned the strategic bombing of Germany. It was almost that detailed. (the plans were done in the 1930s and were used to figure out how many aircraft the US would need to build.)

Posted by: Comrade Arthur at August 06, 2015 05:32 PM (h53OH)

130 None of that would have occurred under a negotiated settlement. War is fundamentally a contest of wills, and if the Japanese military and Emperor were allowed to continue on after the war with no occupation, no reconstruction by US forces, then the message would have been, "We were too tough for them to destroy. Next time, we'll win."
Posted by: Colorado Alex at August 06, 2015 05:16 PM (OiH3z)

Yes. ^^^^^^!

Posted by: 98ZJUSMC Staring at the Lake in the rain at August 06, 2015 05:33 PM (WIIRD)

131 You can assert that, but that doesn't make it so.
These were our demands. If they didn't accept them, the war would have
continued. What concessions do you imagine we would have been satisfied
with at that point?

What concessions would we have been satisfied with in October 1946? How about 1948? What concessions do you think US Senate and presidential candidates would be willing to accept?

You're asserting that the US would have been willing to maintain a massive blockade, at huge expense, for years, in order to gain the unconditional surrender of Japan rather than accept a lesser settlement that ends the war. This flies in the face of human history and certainly in the face of US politics.

Posted by: Colorado Alex at August 06, 2015 05:34 PM (OiH3z)

132 Permit me to go a bit ranty here, but I definitely support the atomic bombings after having visited Okinawa. The Battle of Okinawa was a terrifying preview of what would have happened had we tried to invade the Home Islands. Ie Island is a small island off of Okinawa, and the peasant women attacked the Marines with spears. The Japanese army forced local men to detonate grenades near the American military under threat of annihilation of their families. Shuri Castle, the local palace that was mainly used for bureaucracy, was shelled for three days by the USS Missouri before it finally burned down (you can still see the bullet holes from the poor Americans who had to climb a steep slope to assault it). Even my great uncle Roy, who did over 60 missions as a B-24 pilot, counted his lucky stars that he was "up here and not down there with those poor bastards."

So yeah, we saved American AND Japanese lives by dropping the bomb.

Posted by: pookysgirl can almost run at August 06, 2015 05:37 PM (IJeUX)

133 ??? I don't know what this is supposed to even mean.
Posted by: OregonMuse at August 06, 2015 05:28 PM (j1VIK)

It means that it's ridiculous to impute a 92 year old's death to a bomb dropped 70 years earlier. Possibly he died of something other than the bomb.

Posted by: Jay Guevara at August 06, 2015 05:39 PM (oKE6c)

134 You're asserting that the US would have been willing to maintain a massive blockade, at huge expense, for years, in order to gain the unconditional surrender of Japan rather than accept a lesser settlement that ends the war. This flies in the face of human history and certainly in the face of US politics.

Actually, I said we would be willing to blockade and bomb Japan for a couple of years to avoid an Olympic sized debacle of casualties. Therefore Operation Olympic would not have gone off as envisioned.

That's what I said.

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:40 PM (evdj2)

135 Always amusing to get through Fussell's essay on the yearly reread, only to meet a potshot at Ronald Reagan.

Fair? Perhaps. It always makes me think harder about the responsibility of noncombatants to appreciate, respect, and as far as possible understand what our soldiers, Marines, and pilots did and are doing.

I am ever thankful for men like Fussell and E.B. Sledge, who take the time to try and impress on us what war is.

Posted by: Yoshi, Aggrieved Victim of the White Man at August 06, 2015 05:40 PM (YGb0p)

136 A few years ago I read Ghost Soldiers, about rescuing POWs (including the survivors of the Bataan Death March). Hellish. Unfathomable.

Posted by: Turd Ferguson at August 06, 2015 05:41 PM (VAsIq)

137 >>>Actually, I said we would be willing to blockade and bomb Japan for a couple of years to avoid an Olympic sized debacle of casualties. Therefore Operation Olympic would not have gone off as envisioned.
That's what I said.
Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:40 PM (evdj2)

That is a pure fantasy, and you should be ashamed of yourself for holding it.

Posted by: Yoshi, Aggrieved Victim of the White Man at August 06, 2015 05:42 PM (YGb0p)

138 Tonight I shall dine on steak, under a small cloud of mushrooms.

Posted by: Blanco Basura at August 06, 2015 05:43 PM (4WhSY)

139 Always amusing to get through Fussell's essay on the yearly reread, only to meet a potshot at Ronald Reagan.

----

No, that was John Hinckley, Jr., who took a potshot at the President.

Posted by: Turd Ferguson at August 06, 2015 05:44 PM (VAsIq)

140 The only useful purpose of the "Should we have dropped the bomb on Japan" question is as a filter.

Anyone who doesn't answer
"America - Fuck Yea"
just isn't worth spending another second on.

Posted by: DaveA at August 06, 2015 05:52 PM (DL2i+)

141 One of my uncles served with the army in New Guinea in WW2. He never talked about it and when I asked once said he'd forgotten most of it, maybe because he didn't want to remember. In 1995 when there was a controversy over the smithsonian Enola Gay exhibit, he said he wished we had dropped a few more atomic bombs on Japan

Posted by: Jim in Virginia at August 06, 2015 05:57 PM (6S9LG)

142 Comment reposted from a previous thread:

430 The U.S. had to do something to shock the Japanese leadership. The three parties--Emperor, Cabinet, and Army--all had to have consensus if the war was to end.The fire bomb raids of Tokyo and other cities seemed not to have made a dent. An atomic "demo" in Tokyo Bay would have been similarly ineffective.

The bomb was that shock. Not only did it bring the Emperor around (the Cabinet was split on suing for peace), but the twin shocks of the USSR declaring war and the second bomb (proving that the first was not a fluke) finally convinced the Army leaders that the war was lost. Even then there were diehard coup attempts that had to be put down.

I toured Okinawa with the JSDF and we were shown a pit where schoolgirls were taken, and the faculty blew them and themselves up with grenades rather than be "captured" by the Americans. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were catastrophes unseen in human history, but an invasion would have been an even bigger catastrophe. Hard to imagine but true.

Bottom line: 180,000 civilians were sacrificed so that many more millions of civilians and GIs on both sides would live.

Posted by: Hurricane LaFawnduh at August 06, 2015 05:57 PM (laMCB)

143 I saw somewhere that there were plans to use herbicide to destroy the rice crop. Genocidal level of starvation was likely. Well deserved too.

Posted by: Vlad the Impaler, whittling away like mad at August 06, 2015 06:00 PM (ioXP7)

144 I had always just considered my dad lucky in getting stationed in southern California as part of coastal defense there, but today I had the thought that had the bomb not ended the war, the guys guarding the coasts would have been unneeded there and needed in Japan instead. So f you lefties.

Posted by: traye at August 06, 2015 06:04 PM (U12k+)

145 I read Fussell's essay when it first came out. He had a useful metric in it. The further away from Japan you were when the bomb(s) were dropped the more you later opposed their use. Galbraith was sitting on his ass in New York City or Washington DC in a nice safe cushy office job--so of course he opposed the bomb. Some of the other post war pundits were a bit closer to the action--and the closer they were, the more they supported using the bomb.

Now somebody up above mentioned the planned "use" of 17 atomic bombs in the fall of 1945 if we had to invade. I doubt that we had enough fissile material to make 17 bombs after Nagasaki. Oh we eventually would have had it, but in December '45? I dunno.

I was trained as an enlisted infantryman. I had occasion, 30 years ago, to visit Kochi on the island of Shikoku. Relatively speaking think of Kochi's geographic relationship to Tokyo as like Miami to Chicago--if Japan's Inland Sea was the states of Kentucky and Indiana.

We were supposed to go ashore on Kyushu first. But Shikoku would have been second. The irrigated fields above the beachs on Shikoku all had stone irrigation canals--that would have made perfect infantry fighting trenches. And there were hundreds of miles of them all over the island.

Fussell was right to believe he could have kissed his ass--and his adulthood--goodbye, if he'd had to lead a platoon ashore. And since the miliarists in Japan were training every schoolboy and schoolgirl to fight the round eyed invaders to their death, he would have been a "baby killer" many times over before he inevitably died.

Posted by: Comanche Voter at August 06, 2015 06:09 PM (Sda6L)

146 145 "training every schoolboy":

i know one of those who was raised in japan during the war and he confirms they were trained to make suicide attacks if we invaded. he believes the bomb saved untold thousands of lives.

Posted by: steinmetz at August 06, 2015 06:14 PM (CrYC8)

147 ... in fact, the only problem with the bomb was we didn't have it two years earlier. we could have ended wwII and saved 10's of millions.

when i tell that to anti-nuke revisionists they pretty much shut up.

Posted by: steinmetz at August 06, 2015 06:17 PM (CrYC8)

148 You guys yammering about "none of this would have happened under a negotiated settlement" should consider three things.

1. If your granma had wheels, she'd be a trolley--but she doesn't.

2. Numbers of Japanese militarists wanted to prevent Hirohito from surrendering. His broadcast speech announcing surrender was recorded on a disc to be played to the nation--against the possibility that Hirohito would be kidnapped or killed to prevent the speech from being delivered.

3. And on "negotiated settlements" in general--see President Obozo's Iran Deal. Such a deal, such a settlement, such a pile of mush.

Posted by: Comanche Voter at August 06, 2015 06:24 PM (Sda6L)

149 I realize WASPs weren't the only ones who gave their lives. Just FYI

Posted by: PBJ5959 at August 06, 2015 06:30 PM (r1du+)

150 Rape of Singapore. The japs went into a military hospital and started raping and murdering nurses on top of patients who were immobilized. Then they killed the patients.

Then there were all these aussie nurses they drove into the sea and machine gunned. Then there were the 90 SeaBees who they captured and beheaded.

Posted by: Bruce With a Wang! at August 06, 2015 06:33 PM (iQIUe)

151 One funny story I heard was this ahole who was working as a spy for the Japs in Singapore. I think he was a brit. He was arrested and in jail. He couldnt keep his mouth shut. He kept telling everyone that the invasion was about to happen and they wd all be in jail and he would be their jailers. Well, as soon as the japs invaded, the brits took him to a pier, shot him in the head, and threw his body in the sea.

Seriously, what did the ahole think was going to happen to him?

Posted by: Bruce With a Wang! at August 06, 2015 06:36 PM (iQIUe)

152 I was born in March of '45. My father had been in the Infantry in the ETO, would have been in Olympic. Three blood uncles had been in combat and would have been in Olympic, as would one who had not, to that point, seen combat.
I suggest it is the lesson of WW I. The Germans attacked everybody they could find on a map for no reason anybody could see as legit. And, nonsense about the Versailled Treaty aside, we learned the lesson of letting them up easy. The effers did it again, with embellishments. The Japanese looked the same. Thus, unconditional surrender.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at August 06, 2015 06:37 PM (Q/3mX)

153 My father was an enlisted soldier in Europe. While they were guarding POWs who were running a bakery after V-E Day, his platoon leader, Lt. Armour (of the meat packing family) got orders to go home for 30 days leave and then to the Pacific. He said Lt. Armour sat there and cried inconsolably. My father said he really felt bad for Lt. Armour, but he was really glad it wasn't him.

Posted by: Caesar North of the Rubicon at August 06, 2015 06:37 PM (5f5bM)

154 The Bomb was a success.

That's what the Left hates and fears.

Posted by: Feh at August 06, 2015 06:40 PM (Uk9e2)

155
The japanese rulers didnt give a shit about their own people. They were dying by the thousands every day due to starvation and lack of medicines. Everything had been diverted to the military.

Posted by: Bruce With a Wang! at August 06, 2015 06:43 PM (iQIUe)

156 Negotiated settlement?
For the love of Pete, they didn't even surrender (or negotiate) after Hiroshima was incinerated.

Posted by: Thor's feather duster at August 06, 2015 06:46 PM (JgC5a)

157 103 cars--- I've shared this before, but--
Uncle flew supplies over theHump to China--nearly 200 flights, by his count.

Later in life, I pulled up in my Subaru to my Dad's house where Uncle was visiting-- "why the hell you drivin' the goddamn Jap car"

On the bomb-- it should be OK to say the bombs were horrible and an invasion would have been horrible . . .the moral calculus clearly shows that it saved lives, led to a Japanese reformation and one of our closest allies.

Posted by: Far Post at August 06, 2015 06:47 PM (xoRnE)

158 George Macdonald Frazier , he of Flashman , wrote a memoir of his time as an infantryman in the Malaya fights , ' Quartered Safe Out Here " . The last chapter is an account of his argument with a guy on a plane who thought the bomb some sort of atrocity . Frazier at war's end was to return to combat as a platoon leader and knew, as most of his mates did , that all the war that was left was Japan . His argument is passionate but well reasoned . As I recall his last point was , that had he invaded Japan , it was likely his grandchildren would not have been born . The book in total is v good read . The last chapter , IMHO , pretty much ends the debate on ending the war as was done with the Bomb .

Posted by: jay hoenemeyer at August 06, 2015 06:51 PM (uvj0z)

159 Typhoon Louise would have prevented a November 1st landing on Kyushu, but the fleet would have repaired itself enough to make a landing in the early Spring.

Leslie Groves promised Marshall that they would have nine Mark III "Fat Man" bombs ready for OLYMPIC by December 31st. Marshall looked at the game film of the July 16th test an instantly understood the bomb's utility in a tactical environment.

Marshall, Leahy, King and Stimson all understood that the casualty estimates for Kyushu that they were getting from MacArthur in Manila were unrealistically low. General Hata's command at Hiroshima Castle, the Second General Army, was undergoing prodigious reinforcement, to the point where by late July, it outnumbered Walt Krueger's Sixth Army.

The Japanese defense plan, Ketsu-Go, was working better than OLYMPIC before the first shot had been fired.

Marshall ordered a revision of OLYMPIC, based on the use of Atomic Bombs as tactical weapons to "bookend" the invasion beaches on Southern Kyushu. The plan was to nuke the beaches, then 48 hours later, send in Sixth Army.

Given our knowledge of radioactive fallout and how limited it was in those days, it appears that we dodged a bullet.

Posted by: Section9 at August 06, 2015 06:59 PM (ZpQcw)

160 Daddy Eromero had already been in intensive care for 14 months by August 1945. Glad they didn't write him off cause they would have been writing me off as well. Even though there was no way he would ever go into combat again after St. Lo, I'm glad they dropped the bombs. His friends who survived the Normandy invasion and marched to the end in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe) were, however, slated for the Pacific. Thank GOD they didn't have to go.

Posted by: Eromero at August 06, 2015 07:19 PM (go5uR)

161 Actually, I said we would be willing to blockade and bomb Japan for a
couple of years to avoid an Olympic sized debacle of casualties.
Therefore Operation Olympic would not have gone off as envisioned.

That's what I said.

Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:40 PM (evdj2)

Changes...

With maybe nine or more fat men to soften up inland Japan and enough chemical weapons to kill everything w/i thirty miles of the shore for a toehold and good base of operations for MacArthur's (critism notwithstanding) low and slow* method of eradicating entrenched Japanes defenders the invasion would have meant the eradication of the Japanese race (if they so chose).

Maybe this is why many Japanese seem less critical than some Americans.

*Low and Slow - despite the horrors of the island hopping campaigns, retaking the Philippines saw 336,000 axis KIA vs. 14,000 ally KIA while avoiding friendlies.

Posted by: Burnt Toast at August 06, 2015 07:29 PM (NaeCR)

162 what is old is new again

Posted by: mynewhandle at August 06, 2015 07:29 PM (AkOaV)

163 1. Ended the war
2 complete defeat of imperial Japan and ending their militarism
3 saved lives on both sides or at least on ours.
4 the destruction of two cities has kept anyone else from using them. Would a demonstration in a desert have stayed hands in the Cold War?
5. is moral preening about events 70 years ago less or more offensive than willful ignorance of the evil of imperial Japan? Glad Harry S dropped it
6. Kept my dad from invading the home islands

Posted by: Ubik at August 06, 2015 07:31 PM (PgvAB)

164 they're trying to act amazed that the opinion about the bomb has changed.

Not like the media's hasn't been drumming that tune for 50 years about how we duped the Japs into bombing Pearl Harbor and they had no choice. And how the bomb was just the Military Industrial Complex laying down a marker for Poor Uncle Joe to have to meet.

You know it's all our fault the Soviets went broke trying to win the Missile race. It was totes a scam.

The communists never had a chance againsy the slimeball capitalist pigs.

Posted by: Bitter Clinger and All That at August 06, 2015 07:36 PM (x3GpS)

165 One of the small factoids that I have always taken away from reading about the end of the war against Imperial Japan ... is that civilian internees - American, British, Dutch and whatever - were at the thin edge of starving to death, calculatedly. One of the medical experts interned in the PI estimated that they would have lasted another two weeks or so, on the Japanese-issued rations.
That is, if they weren't taken out and machinegunned, or driven into trenches and burned to death before that point.
YMMV.

Posted by: Sgt. Mom at August 06, 2015 07:37 PM (95iDF)

166 On May 8, the last plane in the flyover of the National Mall was the only remaining B-29 in air. At their memorial, WWII vets applauded.

Posted by: Vendette at August 06, 2015 07:38 PM (TEpA2)

167 Thank God for the atom bombs which ended WWII. They saved many, many American and Japanese lives.

Anyone who takes a contrary position is willfully ignorant, taking that position to assume a bogus moral superiority, like all progressives.

Thanks again to the men who designed, built and dropped the bombs. They saved the lives of those of my parent's generation who fought the Japanese.

Posted by: Steve in Greensboro at August 06, 2015 07:38 PM (3L7fF)

168 Your virgin debate interlude before the next cuckolding.

youtube.com/watch?v=cGUXkPhQ6YM

Posted by: Fritz at August 06, 2015 07:40 PM (o/UmK)

169 In peace: goodwill
In victory: magnanimity
In War: Fury

Posted by: Winston Churchill at August 06, 2015 07:40 PM (Q95Bf)

170 Did Barry issue an apology today to mark the anniversary?

Posted by: TheQuietMan at August 06, 2015 07:41 PM (DiZBp)

171 The lady next door to me is Nagasaki survive. She was 9 at the time. In the 30 years she has lived next door I never knew that until I had asked if she had any family affect by the earthquake and nuke plant meltdown. Her attitude about the meltdown was a typical old folks response. "In my day they used to drop atomic bombs on our heads..." Surprisingly, she told me that Japan had it coming and thinks it was the right thing for the US to do.

Posted by: Beer Ninja at August 06, 2015 07:46 PM (afmfq)

172 @161

MacArthur had nothing but scorn for the way the ETO commanders accepted casualties. It was a point of pride to him that his units had some of the lowest casualty rates in the entire war.

He didn't have time for Nimitz's storm invasions, either, although it was my understanding he did request Peilelieu.

Posted by: Section9 at August 06, 2015 07:46 PM (ZpQcw)

173
Like I said, sometimes the world is better off without certain people/things in it.

If this sounds harsh to you, you're either a child, or an idiot, or a progressive-liberal.

Posted by: Soothsayer rose above the noise and confusion just to get a glimpse beyond the illusion at August 06, 2015 07:46 PM (9Wut1)

174 to mark the anniversary...i'm wearing these.....

https://twitter.com/phxazgrl/status/629438912595779584

Posted by: phoenixgirl, i was born a rebel at August 06, 2015 07:47 PM (0O7c5)

175 So, I have a slightly different take on this.

We absolutely should have used both bombs. That we killed many thousands of Japanese is secondary to saving the lives of American and Allied soldiers and innocent civilians all over the remaining Japanese-controlled areas. Oh....dropping the bomb probably saved Japanese lives too.

But....I do not think we would have lost as many men as some predicted. We were getting very good at dealing with the kamikaze attacks and other Japanese tactics, we had battle-hardened troops, we had an overwhelming advantage in materiel, and we had demonstrated great success with Island-Hopping.

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at August 06, 2015 07:47 PM (Zu3d9)

176
Let's funk this thread up!!

Posted by: Soothsayer rose above the noise and confusion just to get a glimpse beyond the illusion at August 06, 2015 07:48 PM (9Wut1)

177 163

Well said. Glad your Dad made it home.

Posted by: fluffy at August 06, 2015 07:49 PM (2iV3X)

178
You lit the fuse

I stand accused

You were the first for me

But you turned me out, baby..

Posted by: Soothsayer rose above the noise and confusion just to get a glimpse beyond the illusion at August 06, 2015 07:50 PM (9Wut1)

179 Crazy news. Teenage boy with his mom was spinning a toy gun in his hand. Someone called it in, police followed car and pulled them over, handcuffed mom and teen.

For a toy gun!! What the crap???

http://tinyurl.com/pass8we

Posted by: LizLem at August 06, 2015 07:54 PM (hvf9s)

180 I look at people who tell me we should not have used atomic weapons the same way i look at someone who tells me the moon is made of cheese - as someone so completely bereft of knowledge of history that i should pity them but for their stupidity.

Posted by: Penfold at August 06, 2015 07:55 PM (nYHFg)

181 Soothie blew up the thread.

Posted by: fluffy at August 06, 2015 07:55 PM (2iV3X)

182 6. Kept my dad from invading the home islands
Posted by: Ubik at August 06, 2015 07:31 PM (PgvAB)

Mine too. He survived Omaha Beach. He once said he would never have come home from the Pacific. Since I wouldn't be here if that had happened, I'm personally grateful to Harry S. for having some balls.

Posted by: Moki at August 06, 2015 07:56 PM (x303I)

183 Okay pick an element. I am writing an exam question here.

Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 07:57 PM (2XMpf)

184

So terribly sobering. It is not a simple "right or wrong" issue. We took the least bad option. A Russian invasion of northern Japan would have shown none of the niceties that the US eventually imposed. The USSR would simply massacre every last human being down to the infants, as far as they could get, until there were none left.

Posted by: imp at August 06, 2015 07:57 PM (XIXZz)

185 Cecil's dead. Long live old lions!

#Deadliondicksmatter

Posted by: Nip Sip at August 06, 2015 07:57 PM (0FSuD)

186 But....I do not think we would have lost as many men
as some predicted. We were getting very good at dealing with the
kamikaze attacks and other Japanese tactics, we had battle-hardened
troops, we had an overwhelming advantage in materiel, and we had
demonstrated great success with Island-Hopping.

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at August 06, 2015 07:47 PM

Whatever you think, CBD, the risk of heavy losses was there, and taking it when there was an alternative would have been insanity.

I am one of those old-time American fans of George Patton who believes sacrificing our people in war should be a last resort, and if war has to happen is never preferable to sacrificing enemy lives.

I give Truman major props for making the choice. Our subsequent "leaders" seem to have lost the ability to see each American soldier as a human being. Choom Boy, like Clinton, Johnson and Nixon, gets so wound up in his C-in-C role that the deaths of his own people are meaningless.

Posted by: MrScribbler at August 06, 2015 07:58 PM (0atQl)

187 I suggest it is the lesson of WW I. The Germans attacked everybody they could find on a map for no reason anybody could see as legit. And, nonsense about the Versailled Treaty aside, we learned the lesson of letting them up easy.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey at August 06, 2015 06:37 PM (Q/3mX)

--No, The USA entering WWI was a mistake. The world would be better today had it not happened.

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 07:58 PM (vsbNu)

188 Since NDH mentioned in stomped thread Gen. Leslie Groves. Will post this snippet here also.

Groves thought that Sachs' suggestion that Hitler and the Japanese
militarists could be swayed by a memo about an explosion in some distant
place naive in the extreme. Further, the financier's proposal totally
removed the surprise element that Groves believed essential. The project
chief had always maintained that, forewarned, the enemy would mount an
effective counterattack, destroying the plane carrying the atomic bomb
either in aerial combat or by ground fire.

pg 72. Enola Gay. Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts. Pocket Books New York. June 1978.

Posted by: Anna Puma at August 06, 2015 07:59 PM (63D73)

189 183
Okay pick an element. I am writing an exam question here.

Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 07:57 PM (2XMpf)

boron...

Posted by: phoenixgirl, i was born a rebel at August 06, 2015 07:59 PM (0O7c5)

190 183 Okay pick an element. I am writing an exam question here.
Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 07:57 PM (2XMpf)

--Ytturium.

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 07:59 PM (vsbNu)

191
I pick Au!

Posted by: Soothsayer rose above the noise and confusion just to get a glimpse beyond the illusion at August 06, 2015 07:59 PM (9Wut1)

192 >> Okay pick an element.

Cesium.

Always go with cesium.

Posted by: Garrett at August 06, 2015 07:59 PM (C/bZe)

193 Au or AU???

That is the question.

Posted by: Anna Puma at August 06, 2015 08:00 PM (63D73)

194 Also, Rape of Nanking should be required reading, at least on the college level. That would nip any of this "we shouldn't have done that" crap in the bud.

Full disclosure: I tried to read it, and got sick to my stomach. But I think every stinking prog who utters the words "we shouldn't have done that" should be forced to read it. Like the scene in Clockwork Orange.

Posted by: Moki at August 06, 2015 08:00 PM (x303I)

195 183 Okay pick an element. I am writing an exam question here.

Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 07:57 PM (2XMpf)

Bk

Posted by: Cicero Kaboom! Kid at August 06, 2015 08:00 PM (HZ31b)

196 Okay, boron it is

thanks phoenixgirl!

Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 08:01 PM (2XMpf)

197 Unless, of course, you are English.
The you have to go with Aluminum.

Posted by: Garrett at August 06, 2015 08:01 PM (C/bZe)

198 My dad was on General Staff at the Pentagon. After VE day they started sending everyone home.

They knew they would have to send 100,000's to Japan. My dad told me the only decision he made in the entire war worth a damn?

Every transport ship that has gone through the Panama Canal goes to Japan invasion. The rest go home.

Did that screw the West Coast guy? Well, yes.

Posted by: Nip Sip at August 06, 2015 08:01 PM (0FSuD)

199 159 My dad was on Okinawa during Typhoon Louise and he told me the aerometer (windspeed indicator) blew off the shack at 140 knots

Posted by: MAx at August 06, 2015 08:02 PM (LAliD)

200 196 Okay, boron it is

thanks phoenixgirl!
Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 08:01 PM (2XMpf)

--You're soft on 'em.

Ytturium is a good extra credit question though.

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 08:02 PM (vsbNu)

201 157
Later in life, I pulled up in my Subaru to my Dad's house where Uncle was visiting-- "why the hell you drivin' the goddamn Jap car"

Posted by: Far Post at August 06, 2015 06:47 PM (xoRnE)

Yeah, my dad was like that too. He would never consider buying a German or Japanese car. Of course, back then, American cars were generally superior anyway.

Towards the end of his life, I bought a Toyota. While he probably wasn't pleased, he didn't give me any shit about it. When I carried him as a passenger, he seemed impressed with its performance.

Ironically, my present car, a 2014 Mazda 5, was built in Hiroshima. Mazda's corporate headquarters has always been in Hiroshima and it survived the bombing. I haven't been able to find out where in the city it was relative to the devastated area.

Posted by: rickl at August 06, 2015 08:02 PM (sdi6R)

202

Fussell's essay is phenomenal. Unbelievable atrocities on both sides. Unremitting killing is what was in store. And the Japanese would have lost a lot more than 300,000. The islands would have been depopulated.

Posted by: imp at August 06, 2015 08:02 PM (XIXZz)

203 For the reaction B2O3(s) + 6HCl(g) --> 2BCl3(s) + 3H2O(l), if 0.500 mol B2O3 reacts with 0.800 mol HCl, what is the theoretical yield of BCl3?

Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 08:02 PM (2XMpf)

204 Manganese...

Posted by: Carl Spackler at August 06, 2015 08:03 PM (HZ31b)

205 Moki, you do know that the author of The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang, later committed suicide. Some think the Rape claimed a final victim.

Posted by: Anna Puma at August 06, 2015 08:04 PM (63D73)

206 Chlorine

Posted by: Burnt Toast at August 06, 2015 08:04 PM (NaeCR)

207 --You're soft on 'em.

Ytturium is a good extra credit question though.

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 08:02 PM (vsbNu)
I do like the rare earth metals. But I'll use boron for this one

Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 08:04 PM (2XMpf)

208 203 For the reaction B2O3(s) + 6HCl(g) --> 2BCl3(s) + 3H2O(l), if 0.500 mol B2O3 reacts with 0.800 mol HCl, what is the theoretical yield of BCl3?
Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 08:02 PM (2XMpf)

Blue

Posted by: Heisenberg at August 06, 2015 08:04 PM (vsbNu)

209 O'R is getting worse everyday. Just amazing. Blow hard.

Posted by: Nip Sip at August 06, 2015 08:04 PM (0FSuD)

210 For the reaction B2O3(s) + 6HCl(g) --> 2BCl3(s) +
3H2O(l), if 0.500 mol B2O3 reacts with 0.800 mol HCl, what is the
theoretical yield of BCl3?

Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 08:02 PM (2XMpf)

Something.
(P.S. Of all the sciences, I liked chemistry the most.)

Posted by: Vendette at August 06, 2015 08:04 PM (TEpA2)

211 Yeah!!!! i picked it because it rhymes with moron :p

Posted by: phoenixgirl, i was born a rebel at August 06, 2015 08:06 PM (0O7c5)

212 I do like the rare earth metals. But I'll use boron for this one
Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 08:04 PM (2XMpf)

--Rare earths rock.

And wasn't there some '60s band called rare Earth?

Posted by: logprof at August 06, 2015 08:06 PM (vsbNu)

213 For the reaction B2O3(s) + 6HCl(g) --> 2BCl3(s) +

3H2O(l), if 0.500 mol B2O3 reacts with 0.800 mol HCl, what is the

theoretical yield of BCl3?
>>>

Blindness or death?

Posted by: Willy J at August 06, 2015 08:07 PM (C9vjV)

214 210 For the reaction B2O3(s) + 6HCl(g) --> 2BCl3(s) +
3H2O(l), if 0.500 mol B2O3 reacts with 0.800 mol HCl, what is the
theoretical yield of BCl3?

3 Megatons?

Posted by: Cicero Boom chicka boom Kaboom! Kid at August 06, 2015 08:07 PM (HZ31b)

215 Read about Unit 731 and their vivisections of live prisoners (American pilots included) and their planned plague attack on San diego that never happened due to the surrender.

Posted by: Timon at August 06, 2015 08:07 PM (ZDJwC)

216 Rare earths are neither rare nor earth.

Discuss amongst youwselwves!

Posted by: Cawfee Tawk at August 06, 2015 08:07 PM (vsbNu)

217 Okay pick an element. I am writing an exam question here.

The fifth one.

Posted by: Mila Jovavich at August 06, 2015 08:07 PM (LAe3v)

218 Moki, you do know that the author of The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang, later committed suicide. Some think the Rape claimed a final victim.

-
It was reported as post partum psychosis.

Posted by: The Great White Snark at August 06, 2015 08:08 PM (LImiJ)

219 Achtung! Herr President ClutterBuck manages to get 60 Syrians killed for no reason at all.

Neu thread. Schnell Corgis!

Posted by: Anna Puma at August 06, 2015 08:08 PM (63D73)

220 Dad fought in the CBI theater. Said the Japanese were implacable. They'd be dangling off your bayonet, screaming and still trying to kill you. They would wipe out entire villages and destroy the beautiful temples and statues (even of Buddha), because Lesser Beings and all. All on one bowl of rice a day.

If the war dragged on, I wonder if I'd be here.

Posted by: All Hail Eris, Literate Savage at August 06, 2015 08:09 PM (jR7Wy)

221 211
Yeah!!!! i picked it because it rhymes with moron :p

Posted by: phoenixgirl, i was born a rebel at August 06, 2015 08:06 PM (0O7c5)
It's also the "fifth element"
True story: when the "Fifth Element" movie came out, I was in grad school, and I wondered aloud in front of my roommate (who was also a chemistry grad student) "Hmm, I wonder what the fifth element is" and he answered "it's BORON you MORON!" lol

Posted by: chemjeff at August 06, 2015 08:09 PM (2XMpf)

222 >>>For the reaction B2O3(s) + 6HCl(g) --> 2BCl3(s) +
3H2O(l), if 0.500 mol B2O3 reacts with 0.800 mol HCl, what is the
theoretical yield of BCl3?<<<

About a buck three eighty. And change.

Posted by: Fritz at August 06, 2015 08:11 PM (o/UmK)

223 And wasn't there some '60s band called rare Earth?

Posted by: logprof

Earth, Wind and Fire, fronted by Aristotle.

Posted by: pep at August 06, 2015 08:11 PM (LAe3v)

224 Boron: The official element of AoSHQ.

Posted by: Vendette at August 06, 2015 08:11 PM (TEpA2)

225 All Hail Eris, so many worlds were saved by two gobs of thermonuclear sunshine that its hard to say.

One of the things that gets glossed over by some is how many natives were worked to death by the Japanese to build their railway. No real records exist, it is merely assumed the body count is in the hundreds of thousands.

Posted by: Anna Puma at August 06, 2015 08:11 PM (63D73)

226 225
All Hail Eris, so many worlds were saved by two gobs of thermonuclear sunshine that its hard to say.

One
of the things that gets glossed over by some is how many natives were
worked to death by the Japanese to build their railway. No real records
exist, it is merely assumed the body count is in the hundreds of
thousands.

Posted by: Anna Puma

But what about the British in Malaya?

Posted by: pep at August 06, 2015 08:12 PM (LAe3v)

227
I think we should have just blockaded Japan and gave them a better chance to complete their own atomic bomb or any of a plethora of chemical and biological weapons.
We owed them that.
Also it would have given them the opportunity to completely eradicate all their pow's. One of my dad's friends was in Osuna and he lost 45 lbs. in a month.
You know what they say about omelets...
So easy to speculate with other people's lives.

Posted by: MAx at August 06, 2015 08:13 PM (LAliD)

228
Iris Chang was very very ill. Her final suicide note indicated she thought the CIA was both trying to recruit and persecute her.

Posted by: Bruce With a Wang! at August 06, 2015 08:14 PM (iQIUe)

229 If you want to know how ordinary Americans received the news of the atomic bombs, listen to this 1945 recording by Karl Harty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdV5DT25pgE

Posted by: Robert Fitzgibbon at August 06, 2015 08:16 PM (jFA/s)

230 203: hey chemjeff

Daughter says x = o.267 mol BCl(subscript)3

How'd she do??

Posted by: Moki at August 06, 2015 08:19 PM (x303I)

231 205-sorry Anna, we were busy doing chemistry. Okay, my daughter was doing chemistry and I was watching proudly from the side.

I did not know Iris Chang committed suicide. Bless her.
When I taught in Hong Kong in '87-88, a number of my students had grandparents who had gone through the war under Japanese rule and would tell me stories their family had told them, that jibed with the book. It was heart-rending.

So yeah, I tend to hate the people who say we were evil for bombing Japan.

Posted by: Moki at August 06, 2015 08:24 PM (x303I)

232 if it wasn't for the bombs, i doubt i'd be living the life i am now: my FiL was a signalman on a battleship, way up on the signal bridge, with nothing between him and the kamikazes but his semaphore flags...

had the invasion gone on as scheduled, he was a likely candidate for being KIA, and then my better 2/3rds wouldn't be here.

F the Japs: they got what was coming to them

Posted by: redc1c4 at August 06, 2015 08:26 PM (044Yr)

233 Greetings:

My father who opted for one of those non-Japanese-American internments from 1942-1946 with the not to be missed all-expense-paid tour of the western Pacifc with the free stops at Saipan and Peleliu used to like to say, "The only thing wrong with the a-bombings was we only had two."

Posted by: 11B40 at August 06, 2015 08:30 PM (evgyj)

234 Ever go into the shoe store and stick your feet into the xray machine? Talk about gimmicks!

Posted by: Bruce With a Wang! at August 06, 2015 08:34 PM (iQIUe)

235 This is extracted from pgs 331-332 of the book Enola Gay.

August 9th, Nagasaki suffers second nuclear weapon. USSR declares war on Japan.

August
9th, the Japanese Inner Council meets to debate what to do. They talk
all day and into the night. The hardliners say there are still millions
of untested soldiers.

August 10th at 2am, Emperor Hirohito makes
an appearance and supports his foreign minister who wants to accept the
Potsdam Proclamation with a caveat in regards to Hirohito still being
Emperor.

This information is transmitted to the Americans who
were at first divided on this counter-proposal. But they offer a
modification, the Emperor can stay but would be subject to the authority
of the occupying forces. After the occupation ends, then the Japanese
can decide their own course.

This proposal was received by the
Japanese. And they kept talking and debating. Through August 12th, then
13th, and finally on the 14th the Emperor intervenes again and orders
his ministers to accept the unbearable and surrender.

Posted by: Anna Puma at August 06, 2015 08:42 PM (63D73)

236 Well that is a formatting ka-boom...

Posted by: Anna Puma at August 06, 2015 08:43 PM (63D73)

237 Posted by: darii at August 06, 2015 05:02 PM (RdrW

I've read Anscombe's argument and it is implicit pacifism.

Posted by: WOPR at August 06, 2015 08:59 PM (nRvEn)

238 I did not read all the comments, but I am sure that what I am posting will be familair to many here.

Both of my grandfathers served in the Pacific, one as a Coast Guardsman, the other in the Army (on a Navy destroyer- he was exempt from the draft and had to repeatedly request permission to enlist. He worked in the shipyards as a stevedore foreman, and did the same for the Army). Neither saw any Japanese soldiers up close, but both experience the horrors of Kamikaze attacks at Okinawa.

Both expressed to me and my brothers that, if not for the atomic bombs, they would have died during the invasion of Japan. I had several neighbors and relatives say the same thing.

Posted by: elliot at August 06, 2015 09:00 PM (TcuD4)

239 Posted by: Grump928(c) at August 06, 2015 05:40 PM (evdj2)

A blockade would not have worked. Let's say it went on 3-5 years. During that time how many prisoners would have died? Also, how many Japanese would have starved? How many American's killed and ships sunk by kamikazes (10K+ planes)? Plus you can bet the Soviets, once they conquered northeast Asia would suddenly be finding ways to keep the Japanese in the war.

The US had around 30 large carriers at the end of the war. While a sizable force, enforcing a blockade isn't easy. Also, look at Okinawa, the Navy was begging the Army/Marines to finish the job because they were taking a pounding by the kamikazes.

Posted by: WOPR at August 06, 2015 09:06 PM (nRvEn)

240 As an Australian born a few years after the war I'm deeply moved and grateful for the spirit I read about here, of the Americans who were taking it right back to Japan's mainland in Pacific War's final stages. I'm also glad that a greater horror was avoided, for everyone's sake.

Posted by: bruce at August 06, 2015 10:13 PM (vRHFY)

241 They started it, we ended it. They killed millions of Chinese (and others) so don't pity them. Fuck 'em. My father fought all across Europe and was awaiting orders for the invasion. He thought Harry Truman, next to Jesus, was his savior.

Posted by: oldgeezer at August 06, 2015 10:13 PM (Y6I8M)

242 I know a woman who grew up in the Indian community in Burma. As a schoolchild in the War, she remembers when the Japanese arrived, they impaled several local women vertically on bamboo poles and left them hanging like that, still alive, in the middle of town. She says she saw it, had to pass them on her way home from school. I hate to write it, but it should be remembered.

Posted by: bruce at August 06, 2015 10:22 PM (vRHFY)

243
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to help ourselves. Any one interested in the card should contact the
programmer via his email address: atmmachinehackes @ gmail . com

Posted by: mccart at August 07, 2015 06:02 AM (NIOqT)

244 THANK YOU for reposted this. It really cuts through the pretentious BS.

Posted by: WannabeAnglican at August 07, 2015 08:22 AM (vFmT2)

245 J J Sefton and anyone else who is interested.

I've been to Biak a few times. In 87, there were still heaps of Japanese bones. The cave was stained green. Water seepage was leaching copper from Japanese ammunition . his Australian

What struck me was how far, how damn far this was from any normal, everyday American life.

My uncle was on one of the vessels in the invasion, and as a radioman, found that his Australian cousin was also in the invasion, and they met for the first time ashore.

In another Biak story, an Indonesian of my acquaintance, a soldier in the Dutch forces, was a prisoner and worked on the airfield, abused and starving. In the 80s, he flew in to Biak from Los Angeles.

Biak, BTW, is gorgeous, and in the 80s and 90s, the very friendly people had fond memories of US forces.

Posted by: stonefree2rant at August 07, 2015 10:01 AM (a3Gjz)

246 OK, I know of an Aussie who was sick, put off a convoy, to be looked after by the Americans on Biak and had very happy memories of them. Mid 1945. When he got better he was flown by the Dutch to Morotai. He ended up our Railway Station Master and died a few years back. He was very grateful to the Americans. His unit went to Balikpapan.

Posted by: bruce at August 07, 2015 06:13 PM (vRHFY)

247 Bruce, I've been to Morotai as well. The Australians were there until 47 I think. We were all fondly remembered, and it appeared there were some genetic souvenirs as well.

Posted by: stonefree2rant at August 08, 2015 11:29 AM (/TTKd)

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