Obama To Become First US President To Visit Hiroshima Since 1945 Nuclear Attack (independent.co.uk) 391
An anonymous reader writes: The White House announced U.S. President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima, becoming the first sitting American President to do so since the city was destroyed in 1945 by a U.S. nuclear bomb. President Obama and Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit the city on May 27th "to highlight his continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement. Obama said he hoped to visit both Hiroshima and Nagasaki when he first visited Japan in November 2009. "The memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched in the minds of the world, and I would be honored to have the opportunity to visit those cities at some point during my presidency," President Obama said at the time. At least 140,000 people died from the nuclear attack on Hiroshima on August 9, 1945. Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second atomic weapon on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered to Allied forces within a week after that second attack.
Let's collect terrible puns (Score:3)
I tried to tell a joke to Obama about Hiroshima once...it bombed.
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All I have to say is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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They do, but we don't know it because they're so inscrutable.
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Re:Let's collect terrible puns (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look at what the Japanese did in China. They made the Nazis look tame. I figure that they think they got off light and they did. You don't want to think about what would have happened if the Chinese had invaded Japan at the end of that war. The bombing of Pearl Harbor that everyone demonizes the Japanese for is not really the bad thing they did. On the scale of their infamous acts that was about .01 The way they treated POWs was horrendous but even worse was the way they treated defeated civilian populations. We can debate the dropping of the two bombs on Japan. Maybe they saved even more lives than they took, both Japanese and American. There is however no debate about the uncivilized behavior of the Japanese military.
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It's hard to compare isolated atrocities to a systematic and absolute rape and pillage of a civilian population. Sure, no one's hands were without blood but just take a look at what happened in China over the 12 years of Japanese invasion. In my opinion even the holocaust pales. It makes me shudder to think human beings can act like that.
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I went and read up on the supposed death camps run by Eisenhower. That turns out to be total bullshit. It was one author who basically used smoke and mirrors to try to drum up something to sell his books. Try doing a little reading.
https://www.nytimes.com/books/... [nytimes.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Can not say. I don't know if dropping the bomb was a good thing or not. Sometimes there really aren't any good choices. We're a lot more sensitive to collateral damage nowadays than they were back then. In WWII if you lived in a town with a munitions factory there was a very good chance you'd be dodging bombs. I've read about the bombings and the human cost was horrendous. Then again, with systematic strategic bombing by conventional bombs it's very likely the human cost would have been as bad or wor
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No real numbers but the Japanese were still in other areas - not just on their isolated islands. Surely, the atrocities would have continued - if not escalated as panic set in.
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It happened in the past. The people who remember it are almost all dead.
After all, I don't hate the current generation of Japanese for all the Americans their ancestors killed.
We are no longer enemies and I am glad for that.
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The firebombings of Tokyo were MUCH worse than Hiroshima & Nagasaki combined.
And note the "s" at the end of firebombings. We didn't just firebomb the city once.....
Re:Let's collect terrible puns (Score:5, Insightful)
What amazes me is the fact that there are people who try to hold the current generation of Japanese... of any nationality actually... to blame for the misdeeds of old dead people from whom they happen to be descended. Real life is not Star Trek, and we are not Klingons. The "Sins of the Father" do not dishonor the next seven generations of real human beings.
Every decision maker involved in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is long dead. And if any members of the flight crew are still breathing, they're not long for this world. The same is true of Pearl Harbor, Dresden, the Holocaust, Stalingrad, Bataan, etc. To continue to bear a grudge, especially when you're not even the actual person who was wronged, and double especially against people who weren't involved and likely not even born at the time; is just batshit irrational.
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There might be a shard of validity for a subset that still engage in their ancestor worshiping of convicted war criminals. It's not just the old - sometimes it pops up on the news when they're laying wreaths and whatnot. There's a disturbing number of younger people - it used to be just the old folks would show up and lay them. And yeah, we're talking people that did things like lead Unit 731. Not really worship material, in my opinion.
Still, there's no need to hate a group of people without some evidence.
Japanese people turned on former gov't (Score:5, Interesting)
It constantly amazes me that the japenese don't appear to harbor extreme hatred to all americans. I know I would if they had nuked my country for whatever reason.
First, the nukes were such a small percentage of casualties. Civilians don't really distinguish between being nuked, firebombed or starved to death.
Secondly, you don't understand the perspective of the Japanese people at the time. After the war they quickly came to understand the truth about the magnitude of the lies their militarist government had told them, manipulated them into war. The Japanese public had a incredible turn of opinion against their former leaders. Many genuinely grew to like General MacArthur during the occupation. Having spent so much time in Asia earlier in his career he was one of the few generals who understood their culture and perspective on the world and was well equipped to co-opt that perspective.
Little things he did had a vast impact. When he first landed in Japan and went into Tokyo for the first time he allowed Japanese troops to line the streets on his route and provide security. He had minimal US security on that drive. The public noted that, was surprised at such "civilized" behavior by the American military. It didn't make sense, it didn't match what they had been told. Plus as people came home and told their stories of interactions with Americans even on the battlefield, the anger at the former government grew. In one documentary I recall a Japanese Army Nurse describing how Japanese soldiers on Okinawa gave them hand grenades to commit suicide with. Hers was a dud and failed to detonate when she tried to use it at a later date. She was wounded by mortars and when an American solder approached her, drew his knife, she expected to be raped and tortured and killed as all the American barbarian soldiers would do such things. She was absolutely shocked when he used the knife to cut open her pants near her wound and began to sanitize and bandage her wound before he moved on to another injured person. As she watched the Americans she began to realize she had been lied to, that they weren't barbarians. She had literally been told that some American soldiers were cannibals. Seeing victorious Americans act in humane and civilized ways was a complete shock to many Japanese given what they had been told for so many years. This had a huge impact on the post-war occupation. Probably the wisest, although most likely a quite unjust thing, that MacArthur did was to allow the emperor to live and continue on in a ceremonial role.
approval (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you all think it's accidental that as soon as we know who the candidates for president are going to be that Obama's approval ratings go up? It's as if people are saying, "Holy shit. Obama wasn't really so bad after all."
He's currently got a higher approval rating than Ronald Reagan at the same point in their terms.
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I think it's because people have stopped paying attention to him. He makes the news for being funny at the correspondents' dinner rather than for fighting with congress.
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Congress is about to start investigations into whether Facebook is allowed to be liberal or not.
I'm pretty sure Obama won't fight with Congress any more because it would be seen as him picking on someone who can't defend themselves.
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first SITTING president (Score:4, Informative)
President Carter visited the site after his presidential term was complete.
Too late. (Score:2)
...a world without nuclear weapons...
You'd think these two heads of state, in particular, would already know that the things which come out of Pandora's Box can't just be wished away.
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The goal should be a world where nuclear weapons are under the control of responsible organizations with clear rules and safeguards preventing inappropriate use of them, while still threatening use against bad actors in appropriately extreme circumstances of wide consensus. That would be far safer than a world without nuclear weapons.
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Yes, some 200,000 died, BUT (Score:3)
Japan had no intention of surrendering and it was going to be a bloody battle all the way through Japan to make it happen.
By dropping the bombs, it solved everything with a lot fewer loss of lives, esp. of Allied lives who were attacked by Germany and Japan.
August 6th and 9th (Score:4, Informative)
If he visits, fine. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If he visits, fine. (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama wants a world without nuclear weapons? (Score:2)
Does he not realize how many wars have been prevented due to nuclear weapons?
pander to republicans?!?!?!?? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is all a celebration of Obama. He is in "First President to do X" mode, in a vain attempt to make his terms in office, not look so horrible, when history ultimately judges it to be so.
The only question is if He will apologize for Pearl Harbor or not. You, mean America putting that island in the way of all of those Japanese planes and bombs.
This is ZERO republican, and 100% Obama.
I wonder if he'll get in any golf while he's over there?
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This is all a celebration of Obama. He is in "First President to do X" mode, in a vain attempt to make his terms in office, not look so horrible, when history ultimately judges it to be so.
The only question is if He will apologize for Pearl Harbor or not. You, mean America putting that island in the way of all of those Japanese planes and bombs.
This is ZERO republican, and 100% Obama.
I wonder if he'll get in any golf while he's over there?
Obama's time is office may be disappointing, but were you fucking asleep when Bush was in office?
Re:pander to republicans?!?!?!?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush's time in office has no intrinsic bearing on judgments of Obama's time in office.
"Obama has been the worst President ever."
"What about Bush?" - fair question
"Obama has been a terrible President."
"What about Bush?" - poor attempt at deflection
Re:pander to republicans?!?!?!?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except Obama is actually a pretty good president.
Exhibit A: Visiting a nation to reflect on the deaths of the 150,000 people we killed there.
And Bush was a pretty fucking horrible one.
Exhibit A: Invading Iraq under false pretenses.
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Obviously President Obama did a terrible job because he couldn't clean up the mess left behind by Dubya and the big dick Cheney.
The ability to blame OTHER people for their mistakes and incompetence is one of the trademarks of today's so-called Republican Party. NOT to be confused with Abe Lincoln's party that accepted "government of the people, by the people, for the people" as a good thing. Later on the GOP shifted to "government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%", but at least Tedd
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- Why is this on /.?
Because Obama uses a computer, or so I've heard.
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It's not dumb, it's making up and proclaiming the "truth" you want to believe. "Those rocks prove God brought Adam and Eve here 6,000 years ago".
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And Like Truman, his rating will almost certainly go up as ppl realize that you GOP/neo-cons/tea-bagger types were more destructive to America than AQ, ISIS, Putin, and China COMBINED.
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Someone modded the parent "Insightful"? Really???
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Why would history judge his presidency to be horrible?
Why wouldn't it? The primary arguments for Obama are checking off the appropriate ethnicity boxes, kludging pre-existing medical conditions, and being the lesser of two evils in two presidential races.
The arguments against include pathological and often criminal behavior in his administration on par with the worst in US history, remarkably bad legislative and regulatory efforts, terrible economic policy, terrible foreign policy, and a larger than normal number of unanimous Supreme Court defeats for blat
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Yes, he is great at international matters (Score:4, Insightful)
Destroying the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, what government working in Iraq, Afghanistan, screwing over our relationships with Russia, China, Saudi Arabia letting Turkey fail to religious fascism, getting walked over by Iran and Cuba. The man should stay home locked away till the end of year if he wants to stop the pain.
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The arguments against include pathological and often criminal behavior in his administration on par with the worst in US history, remarkably bad legislative and regulatory efforts, terrible economic policy, terrible foreign policy, and a larger than normal number of unanimous Supreme Court defeats for blatantly unconstitutional practices.
I thought we weren't talking about Bush's time in office.
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terrible economic policy,
Sorry, but you lost there.
I might not agree with the rest of what you said, but at least one ca subjectively argue about it. economics on the other hand has numbers behind it and the USA has objectively don great, be it in terms of economic GDP growth, employment expansion, deficit reduction and as compared to most other developed nations.
That is, if you care about the facts.
Re:pander to republicans?!?!?!?? (Score:5, Insightful)
He solved the GOP's Great Recession, Cut CO2 emission from America by HUGE amounts (though to be fair, W's push on fracking/drilling producing low costs nat gas was equally, if not more, to credit for bringing it down), open trade with cuba again, provided a solution for medicine costs (still remains to be seen if any good, but is better than previous), cut the deficit in half, and only 1 supreme court loss (with all the rest being total wins even thought the GOP has pushed more fights than has EVER BEEN DONE). The list goes on and on. There is a REAL reason why Historians judge him quite a bit higher than you do
For example, you claim that SCOTUS did a number of unanimous rulings against O. Other than his appointing a person during what should have been a congressional recession (but GOP was pulling a stupid action), what other unanimous SCOTUS rulings were there?
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For example, you claim that SCOTUS did a number of unanimous rulings against O. Other than his appointing a person during what should have been a congressional recession (but GOP was pulling a stupid action), what other unanimous SCOTUS rulings were there?
Well, here's an answer [cato.org] to that.
While we're still in the part of the Court's term before the decisions start flying fast and furiously, I thought I'd present the latest update on where we stand with respect to those unanimous losses, where President Obama doesn't even get the votes of the two justices he appointed. Here are the stats:
Another indication of the aggressiveness of the Obama administration is the high portion [fivethirtyeight.com] of losses at the Supreme Court. Obama's administration loses ten percent more of their cases than the next least successful modern (since Truman) president, Kennedy.
Some of these cases were so callous and disregarded existing law so badly that one wonders why, upon reading of the case in the morning newspaper, Obama didn't start firing people. For example, Sackett v. EPA [wikipedia.org] is breathtaking
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I notice you don't mention changing the conversation from the best way to torture people to how to make sure everyone receives medical care.
Man, those facts, they sure are pesky.
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Eh? Now, I really didn't like Bush but are you actually trying to blame your inability to make money on him? 'Cause, I gotta tell you, I did just fine - thanks.
Re: Sad to see him pander.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is mathematically impossible for Obama to beat Reagan's record for vacation time while in office, no matter how are he tries...
Presidents get paid to make decisions, not to dig ditches by the hour. If a vacation helps clear his mind, so he makes better decisions, then that is a good thing. Eisenhower once cut short a meeting on a proposal to send troops into Vietnam because he had an appointment to play golf. If Lyndon Johnson devoted as much time to golf, then 58,000 American casualties could have been avoided.
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Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Informative)
There were a lot American GIs, a lot of Chinese, a lot of Koreans, a lot Filipinos, a lot of Burmese, and so forth, who shed no tears for the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan was an aggressor state, an expansionist militaristic empire that caused the peoples of Asia significant grief and death. The atrocities the Japanese committed in Asia have never got the attention they deserved.
At any rate, even after the first bomb, the Japanese government dithered on whether to surrender unconditionally. Even after the second bomb, some officers briefly attempted to kidnap the Emperor to prevent him ordering the unconditional surrender. So all this rubbish that so frequently gets claimed about Japan being ready to surrender before the atomic bombs really is revisionist crapola. Japan wanted a conditional surrender that would have largely left the aristocracy and the military leadership intact, and there was no way the US was going to allow the regime to remain intact. Japan needed to brought low. The Japanese people needed to be brought low, just as the German people needed to be. Yes, the Emperor was ultimately preserved, but largely for continuity. Everything else about Japan was transformed.
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Insightful)
At any rate, even after the first bomb, the Japanese government dithered on whether to surrender unconditionally.
There are official communications within the government that indicated the military leaders insisted Hiroshima wasn't a nuclear bomb. It was a large-scale conventional bombing (like Dresden) with a dirty bomb at the end, to make it look nuclear. The radiation levels were lower than expected, and the destruction less (see the modern day conspiracy theorists that insist there are no atom bombs), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] was still standing and was near ground-zero. The destruciton wasn't dissimilar to a conventional bombing, with scattered buildings left standing.
Japan surrendered both before and after Hiroshima. Though every surrender before Nagasaki included the conditions that the Japanese government be left as-was (including domination by the military in civilian affairs), and nobody be tried for war crimes. Both of those were unacceptable conditions at the time.
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm always a bit baffled by how the world keeps looking at Germany and Japan's WWII histories. Germany's is 'What we did was horrible, never forget when we did' and Japan's is always 'What was done to us was horrible, never forget what happened to us.'
Anytime I see any sort of WWII memorial sort of thing here and there, it's almost always about either the Holocaust or the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombings. Well, those are two very different things. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, the so-called 'comfort women' (or to call that what it actually was, sexual slavery)...I mean, without even considering Pearl Harbor, let's not pretend that there wasn't one hell of a lead up to the bombings.
It just seems wrong that we spend so much more time talking about the thing that ended the war than the actions, and victims, that made those means necessary.
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe the reason for the different awareness of WW2 atrocities committed by Germany and Japan amount mainly to cultural differences, but also the generally higher focus and interest in Europe as opposed to the far east, coupled with a well organized Jewish community that naturally has a high interest in clearing up and highlighting the events that took place.
If you had to describe German culture in one word, it would have to be "pragmatic".In the face of overwhelming evidence on the atrocities committed by the Nazis (which many Germans where blissfully unaware of), the only way forward was to accept the facts for what they were, soak in all the guilt and make the best possible thing of it by keeping the memory alive and doing the very best that something similar never happens again. Now it has relaxed somewhat, but throughout the 80's and 90's there were critical documentaries about WW2 and the atrocities on the Nazis in German TV practically every week, and this was also a big topic for all students in German schools.
Japan on the other hand, as most other far-east cultures, has this very important cultural theme of upholding hohor and not losing face. Even when it is irrefutably clear that mistakes are made or something is not right, the Japanese way is to ignore it as much as possible and do business as usual, so that nobody has to lose face (least of all the Japanese culture itself). This is essential, as losing honor, in traditional Japanese interpretation, would basically mean that you should kill yourself. While Japan has westernized and modernized over the last decades, there are still many nationalist elements in Japanese society that do their best trying to silence any voices about Japanese WW2 atrocities while at the same time promoting the theme of the "honorable" and "brave" soldiers who sacrificed themselves for the Japanese Empire.
So obviously, we have two very different ways of dealing with the past here. Then, as I said earlier, there was also the Jewish community actively working to promote awareness for the atrocities committed by the Nazis, something which was lacking in Asia for the Japanese atrocities. The Chinese and Koreans, the main candidates for this endeavor, where too busy with their own problems after WW2.
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except that the American government wanted an empire.
America at the end of WWII could have almost trivially conquered the world. It had an intact industrial base, unmolested population and was producing an atom bomb a month. What other power could have stood up to that? It could have done so for many years after the end of the war.
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There were a lot American GIs, a lot of Chinese, a lot of Koreans, a lot Filipinos, a lot of Burmese, and so forth...
There was also my Father, fighting the Nazis from early 1940 until VE Day in 1945, who was told that he would be sent, with his regiment to fight in Japan. I don't know if they would have mutinied, (they probably wouldn't have) but I can tell you he was very angry at the thought of another 2 (or 3 or more) years of war. My father was extremely happy about the atom bombs, they saved millions of lives, possibly including his.
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Interesting)
On a personal level, Japanese soldiers forced my grandmother to watch as they raped then killed her sister and niece. All as a ploy to coerce my grandfather (the village doctor) into treating their commanding officer. That's the sort of stuff the people against the atomic bombings are advocating the Allies should have let continue for who knows how many more months.
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You can't justify killing one innocent person to prevent crimes being committed against another innocent person.
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"To the victor goes the spoil."
And that spoil includes living long enough to write the history books.
It's as true with the Cheyenne as it is with the Japanese... or anyone else. This fact has not changed in all of human history, nor will it.
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Sure if they had had nukes at the time that probably would have ended very differently.
But this is history and hopefully it stays that way.
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Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Insightful)
The lifetimes of those involved.
Time to get over it.
It's time to stop cursing Alexander the Great. But some cultures pass down this hatred as part of their oral tradition to keep the hate alive.
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I don't know, I think most of the Japanese are appropriately sorry for what they did. Why'd you ask? 'Cause there's not many, only a few, that still worship their war criminals. So, I'd say the Statute of Limitations has passed and the average Japanese citizen needn't worry any more. Funny that you mention it though.
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Here in the US, we build monuments to our war criminals, and call them, "presidential libraries".
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You're implying Americans read? Ha!
No, we don't worship libraries - nice try but no. Still, does Bush have one yet? I really haven't kept track. Note: I don't even *like* Bush - so I don't worship him. If anyone does worship him, I'll call them dangerous and idiots. Probably dangerous because they are idiots.
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Informative)
In total war, there are no innocents. That's why modern war should be avoided.
It was American lives or Japanese lives, and the US rightly decided to save American lives. In the end, an invasion of the Japanese main island would likely have cost a lot more Japanese lives than the two atom bombs.
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Which Germans offered to surrender?
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Informative)
Which Germans offered to surrender?
In 1943, Wilhelm Canaris [wikipedia.org], the head of the Abwehr (German Intelligence) offered to assassinate Hitler and end the war. Churchill's reply was that the Allies would accept no terms but unconditional surrender. Later in the war, the Nazis executed Canaris for treason.
In July 1944, a coup was launched and an attempt was made to assassinate Hitler. The plan was to kill Hitler, and then immediately negotiate a surrender. The assassination failed, but the coup did not collapse until it was clear that the Allies had refused to negotiate and were unwilling to accept any terms that included soldiers returning home, rather than going to labor camps (where, at least in Russia, most inmates died). From 1944 on, the Allies were fighting for the right to have death camps, and nothing more.
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:4, Insightful)
At the end of WWI, the Germans signed the Armistice while there were no invading boots on German soil. The German Army then launched on a very impressive campaign to deny their responsibility and claim they were doing just fine until they were stabbed in the back by civilian authorities, in one of the more impressive cases of military failure of moral courage I've seen.
Hitler and other conservatives argued hard that the Germans had not been beaten in the field, and used that lie to push for rearmament and a new war. The Allies were particularly anxious to make sure WWII didn't end in another twenty-year armistice (a French comment on the Treaty of Versailles), and wanted to make sure the Germans knew that they had been defeated militarily.
Also, in January 1945 the West was still reeling from the large German offensive in the Ardennes, popularly known as the Battle of the Bulge. The offensive had been contained by the end of the year, but still looked dangerous. (The Germans launched their last large-scale attack in the West at the very end of 1944.) The Western Allies really did want the Soviets to continue fighting.
You say that the Soviets were going to fight until they reached Berlin, but that wasn't at all obvious to the Western Allies at the time. The Red Army had expelled the invaders from the prewar Soviet Union in 1944, and had continued West from there, so there was no clear reason they wouldn't effectively stop pushing and let the Germans mass against the Western Allies. In 1944, the Soviets were still facing and killing many more Germans than the West did, and Western leaders were seriously worried about Soviet commitment. One big reason why the West wouldn't entertain a separate peace was that they feared Stalin would learn of it and do the same.
Also, your timing is wrong. In January 1945, Hitler was very much in charge, and the Germans were fighting hard in the West. Their morale started to waver in March and pretty much collapsed in April. I don't remember the details, but I believe the "surrender" offers you refer to came in April, when Goering and Himmler thought (incorrectly) that they could negotiate independently of Hitler. Their attempts were why Doenitz wound up as Fuhrer after Hitler's death; he was the high commander outside Berlin that Hitler thought he could rely on.
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The Japanese had already agreed to cease hostilities and surrender.
No, they hadn't.
The Germans also offered to surrender in 1943
That didn't happen either. And I can't help but notice you defended that latter point with the following:
In 1943, Wilhelm Canaris [wikipedia.org], the head of the Abwehr (German Intelligence) offered to assassinate Hitler and end the war. Churchill's reply was that the Allies would accept no terms but unconditional surrender. Later in the war, the Nazis executed Canaris for treason.
So two observations here. First Canaris is not Germany. He was at best a representative of a faction which may have been attempting to negotiate in good faith or not with the British. And since he got executed, that indicates his faction probably couldn't have delivered on their promises even if they wanted to.
In July 1944, a coup was launched and an attempt was made to assassinate Hitler. The plan was to kill Hitler, and then immediately negotiate a surrender. The assassination failed, but the coup did not collapse until it was clear that the Allies had refused to negotiate and were unwilling to accept any terms that included soldiers returning home,
Again, a relatively weak faction is not Germany. And the squashing of the coup
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And again, any offers to cease hostilities in both Germany and Japan were based on the leadership and senior military being protected and preserving their positions. The Allies were not going to allow the Axis powers to get away with preserving their political structures just to end the war early. They rightly brought those countries low, occupied them and imposed new governing models on them.
And the results speak for themselves. West Germany and Japan became firm allies and among the strongest economies on
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:4, Informative)
So they still got that emperor?
Hirohito's son, Akihito [wikipedia.org] is the current emperor of Japan. Their family dynasty dates back to Emperor Jimmu in 660BC, making it, by far, the longest reigning dynasty in history. The main reason for the dynasty's longevity, is that for nearly all of that time, the emperor was just a figurehead with very little actual authority, while the real power was exercised by the Shogun.
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If you bring your children lets say aged 3 and 4 with you to rob a bank who is responsible when they get hurt?
Here the parents would be in deep shit for reckless child endangerment.
I feel this falls under the same lines. They went to war and they brought their whole country into the conflict with them.
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I've never heard much about the opinions of elderly Japanese on the necessity of the Americans dropping the bombs. Any sources for this? I'm genuinely curious.
It wouldn't surprise me, but it would strike me as odd to hear an elderly Japanese say the equivalent of "well, I *guess* they had to do it, but still..."
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I don't recall any opinions they had on it (they were very young at the time) other than it's the long past and time to move on. Which the city has done.
It's a large prosperous city with a war museum and a
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a few documentaries on the subject - one named Hiroshima (strangely enough) where such sentiments are expressed. One lady seemed only to regret that we studied her like a bug afterwards and made her stand naked, barely pubescent, in front of a bunch of doctors and non-doctors - and did so a number of times as we studied the progress of the folks who were in the area.
However, there are other such sentiments being expressed in a number of the recap documentaries. You can probably pick any two and find one of them with someone in there mentioning it. I'd suggest also Hirohito's War. I don't know if it will give you any insight in that direction but it will actually give some information as to why the war ended when it did and how it did.
It's a myth to say that the bombing made it happen. It's a myth to say that it didn't hasten the choice. It's a myth to discount the Russians stomping down across Manchuria and taking some islands (angry Russians are angry). It's a myth to say that Japan was trying to surrender.
Really, it's rather complicated - as it usually is. People like simple so they remain stupid and polarized and you get threads like this where people who have only chosen one source are adamant about what they believe. The reason I suggest the latter is because much of it is from the Emperor himself. I don't know but I think we can count that as authoritative, don't you?
I believe that the Emperor expressed sorrow at having forced the American's hands. There are those who say we should have staved them out but that's probably the most retarded thing I've ever heard - on the subject. It discounts the continued atrocities and soldiers elsewhere and the blind devotion to war that they had going on. I'm sure (I've not made it far into the thread) that someone will suggest that. It's almost always present in every one of these threads.
I am not, technically, a historian or anything but I'm going to wager that I'm fairly well versed in the history and have opted to get my history from myriad sources and not just the US versions. There are inherent biases so it's important to get as much information as one can and go from there.
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After everything that had happened, and two nukes, the Japanese surrender was done with an arguably unconstitutional intervention from the Emperor. Nobody at the time knew if the Minister of War would go along with it, or if he'd order the Japanese Army to fight on. There were several raids in Tokyo by those who wanted to continue the war, including one in the Imperial Palace with the intent of stopping the surrender.
My conclusion is that I don't know what else would have caused the Japanese to surrend
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Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Insightful)
No tears shed even for the innocent killed?
Yes, it's a shame that the Japanese government was so willing to see so many of their own innocent people die. That is entirely, 100%, on them. Luckily the US was able to use the strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to greatly reduce the number of people that the Japanese government would otherwise have sacrificed in horrible, bloody, flaming "conventional" fighting before it was over. But yes, go ahead and shed tears for those victims of the government that the Japanese people allowed to run them into the ruin they experienced. It's a shame. Good thing the US was able to end it abruptly and save so many lives.
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You know... I once gave Truman the benefit of doubt; knowing that it was a different kind of war than any in my lifetime, and I wasn't there and making the decisions. I thought there was no way I could crawl into his mind when he was making the decisions. As it turns out, though, Truman kept diaries. And excerpts are published on the internet. I stopped reading when I saw the dehumanizing racism... the references to the Japanese people as "japs" and an individual as "the jap". That showed me what I nee
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, no respect for Jefferson or any of the other founding fathers that were slave owners or benefitted from it?
Attempting to judge a man by modern mores isn't the brightest idea and you need to learn & understand his historical context before judging him.
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You're still using hindsight to use modern values to judge when you're picking out minority opinions as correct when they were not at all guaranteed to become so at the time these men were alive. You yourself, while certainly believing yourself to be morally superior to men in history do not hold the values that will predominate in the future. Using your yardstick, lacking in context as I have been saying would be judged poorly in a few decades.
Mahatma Gandi's are vanishingly rare that can escape from being
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Is it a stronghold or a city? Pretty much anything big enough to be considered a nuke would be too big for the job.
Nukes aren't exactly precise so your going to have so much collateral damage, fallout and the resulting political shitstorm that they wouldn't be worth using even if you had them.
There shouldn't ever be a use for them again unless we decide to go ahead with a WWIII.
So no it would be the wrong tool for the job.
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... what could easily be considered the two most devastating war actions resulting in the highest number of civilian deaths during any war
No chance. Even in Japan in WW2, a particular conventional bombing raid on Tokyo caused more deaths. When you start to look at other wars, even in ancient times, there have been far more civilian deaths. The horrific thing about the A-bomb raids however is the sheer efficiency of the killing.
Atomic bombs probably saved lives ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Cue the millennials' halfwitted observation that the bombs were "unjust" ...
I wonder how many such millennials are here today because their great-grandfather did not have to be part of an invasion of the Japanese home islands.
... a few diplomats were interested in surrender. Diplomats who lived in fear of their beliefs coming to t
And I wonder how many of their "Japanese friends" are only here because the war ended without such an invasion, without a famine inducing blockade that was one alternative to invasion, etc.
And before you start the "they were about to surrender" meme
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Cue the millennials' halfwitted observation that the bombs were "unjust" and my grandparents should've gone into another brutal, horrifying ground war in Japan.
Why would a ground war have been necessary? By the time the bombs were dropped Japan was no longer a serious threat. Any ship that ventured out of harbour was being sunk, and Jap ground troops around the Pacific had run out of food and ammo (most of those never surrendered anyway). The British had defeated them in Burma (partly because the Jap supply system had collapsed), and it could have been left to Russia to drive them out of China.
Japan has few natural resources, in particular no reliable sourc
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I thought you weren't retarded?
To those who read my above post. See? I told you there'd be one. *sighs*
Yes, you're RIGHT because there were no atrocity committing Japanese anywhere else on the globe but on that island! Sure thing, you brave warrior cum historian you! Sure thing.
*sighs* I should know better than to go to these threads.
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Interesting)
The parent is obvious flamebait, but I like history, so I'll share some here...
There was an interesting article in Foreign Policy a couple years ago (possibly paywalled link here [foreignpolicy.com]) which argued that the Soviet declaration of war was what really prompted the surrender. The author bases this on several arguments, among them:
* The atomic bombing of Hiroshima did not particularly stand out in the context of a huge and destructive conventional bombing campaign.
* The Japanese Supreme Council did not discuss the Hiroshima bombing at all, and indeed, did not seem to care much about the destruction of cities.
* Soviet mediation was seen as the last hope for avoiding an unconditional surrender.
* Japanese forces were deployed to defend against a U.S. invasion, not a Soviet invasion from the opposite direction.
* Giving the atomic bomb credit for provoking the surrender was politically convenient for the emperor as well as the United States.
It's worth a read if you can actually get to the article. There's a comment [reddit.com] on the AskHistorians Reddit about the article by Restricted Data (Alex Wellerstein), which gives the original source of this argument (Tsuyoshi Hasegawa), and offers some historiographical context:
The same comment also points out an important aspect of the "moral" debate:
He also has a related article here [nuclearsecrecy.com].
I don't have much of an opinion on whether the atomic bombing was "justified" or not. Large-scale attacks on civilians were common through the war in both theaters, so focusing solely on the atomic bomb seems rather limited to me.
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There was an interesting article in Foreign Policy a couple years ago (possibly paywalled link here [foreignpolicy.com]) which argued that the Soviet declaration of war was what really prompted the surrender. The author bases this on several arguments, among them:
The problem I have with this argument is that you don't hear a lot of serious historians making it. The guy who wrote that article (Ward Wilson) is a full-time anti-nuclear activist, not a historian. In other words, he spends all his time trying to convince people that Nuclear weapons are inherently bad, and should all be gotten rid of.
Now that's a legit opinion, and he's welcome to it. I can certainly think of less noble ways to make a living too. However, its indisputable that 1) He's not an expert on t
Soviet attack of little consequence ... (Score:3)
We can argue about what diplomats might have thought and might have wante
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"Flamebait" doesn't mean "made up", it means "intended to produce Inflammatory comments". Which both of your posts clearly are (and anonymously posted too!).
Sorry to hear about your grandpa, though.
Re:Cue the millenials... (Score:5, Insightful)
My father was in the 10th Mountain Division in Northern Italy fighting the Nazi's 1945 earning a Silver Star and Purple Heart. His company, being battled tested, was told next stop is the south Pacific... Then the Bomb was dropped and the course of history changed. Nevertheless I am not angry about Obama visiting Hiroshima. It is about time politicians paid attention to the past and understand the terrible power we wield and the horrendous consequence of war. Now maybe a Japanese leader will visit Nanking or a Turkish leader will visit an Armenian site. Bout time I say.
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Fuck you. My wife would never have been born if Hitler hadn't been stopped.
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A world without nuclear weapons? I wonder how many wars would have been fought if there were no nukes to make the superpowers realize they couldn't afford WWIII. That even if they won they'd still lose.
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And that's the fact of the matter. The only way the great powers will ever shed their nuclear weapons is when they've found replacements. Besides, what would eliminating them even mean? The expertise to produce them would still exist. It's generally understood, for instance, that both South Korea and Japan could rapidly develop nuclear capabilities, and the only reason they don't is because the US has extended its nuclear shield over them.
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The difference between nuking someone and blasting it out of existence using kinetic or other weapons means you can then takeover the territory.
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Meh... Biological agents do that already.
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You lie as much or more than Trump does, and then you wonder why Trump is a such a Piece of SHIT that you folks brought in.
Hell, Trump and trash like you, have more in common with Hitler and the Nazis than the Republicans that made the GOP.