• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

To: The Monday Morning Quarterbacks of the 21st Century

Brtblutwo

Banned
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
64
Reaction score
30
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Other
.
President Obama is in Japan this week and will visit Hiroshima, the city destroyed by the United States’ first wartime use of an atomic bomb. The President will offer no apologies for the attack since the U.S owes none. But he will use the site as an example of the devastation and death resulting from war. Unfortunately, it is a message that will be ignored by many Americans and tens-of-millions of other citizens of our planet.

In the 70 years since the end of WWII there has been a growing number of Americans who are of the belief that President Truman had no justification in permitting the air attacks that dropped “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” on unsuspecting civilians. They either forget, ignore, or are unaware of the hundreds-of-thousands of Japanese civilians killed in other cities in the preceding months by U.S. aircraft dropping incendiary bombs.

Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay directed a low-level firebombing campaign from March 1945 until the August surrender of Japan. It is estimated these attacks killed 220,000 and left 5 million homeless in the 66 cities destroyed.

Two days after the August 6 Hiroshima atom bomb drop, Lemay dropped incendiaries on Yawata and Fukuyama, destroying 21% of the first target and over 70% of the second. The next day Nagasaki was destroyed by another atomic bomb. Suspecting the two atomic bomb attacks would not convince Japan’s leaders, LeMay was prepared to continue dropping 115,000 tons of liquid fire beginning in September and every month that followed until Japan surrendered.

These same folks also forget or ignore or are unaware of the many atrocities committed by the Japanese military. From 1931 through 1945 Japanese occupying forces caused the deaths of between 19 million and 20 million Chinese civilians alone. “The Nanking Massacre with 300,000 dead. They said you could smell the city from many miles away from all the dead. Tens of millions more throughout China. The infamous Bataan Death March on which 7,000–10,000 died or were murdered. The Americans felt that these people were far worse than animals since animals kill for food or self-defense. This was done out of brutal savagery unknown since the Mongols swept across Asia 600 years before. They had tortured and killed many of the men that they had captured. There were POW’s scattered throughout Asia that were brutalized, tortured and killed daily.”

The Monday morning quarterbacks of the 21st century must be under the impression that Japan was nothing more than an innocent country whose name was drawn from a hat by the U.S. leaders, to be used as a target for testing a couple of atomic bombs to see the actual effects on humans. This is not true.

Those who fought in the war on both sides know it is not true. In fact, “Mitsuo Fuchida, the pilot who had led the first wave of Japanese planes in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, met Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, who had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. He told Paul, ‘You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude of that time, how fanatic they were. They’d die for the Emperor. Every man woman and child would resist the invasion with sticks and stones if necessary.'”

The invasion mentioned by Fuchida would have sent 3 million U.S. military personnel to attack Japan’s home islands. “The Japanese have a saying that sometimes the greatest mercy is to show no mercy. We showed no mercy and saved millions of lives! We saved the lives of our soldiers and airmen and also the lives of all the prisoners of war-American, British, Dutch, who were imprisoned throughout the Japanese Empire. We also, incidentally saved the lives of millions of Japanese, too, who would have died in an invasion.”

“‘Few people now reflect that samurai swords killed more people in WWII than atomic bombs.’ WWII veteran Paul Fussell wrote, 'The degree to which Americans register shock and extraordinary shame about the Hiroshima bomb correlates closely with the lack of information about the Pacific War'”

Perhaps, if the Monday morning quarterbacks of the 21st century took the time educate themselves or speak to some of those who fought on both sides, and learn about and understand the mindset and total fanaticism of the Japanese people of that era, they might just realize how desperate a war weary world was to end the fighting. Odds are, a large number of those demanding the U.S. apologize for using the atomic bombs would not be here today had the Enola Gay and Bockscar failed their missions, or been ordered to remain on the ground.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hiroshima-trip-underscore-very-real-conflict-risks-obama-100525203.html

https://www.quora.com/The-destructi...e-US-still-opt-to-bomb-Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki

Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - World War II - HISTORY.com


.
 
I don't usually weigh in until Tuesday. Monday is for recovery. I soak in ice water after watching the Sunday news shows.
 
This thread is not covering anything new, but does illustrate well the dangers of evaluating historical events in today's context without consideration of all the information available.

Ultimately we are talking about a decision point in the Pacific Theater during WWII. Losses for both sides were mounting and once it became a matter of Japan's mainland the decision point was between the assumed impacts of Atomic Warfare against Operation Downfall. What we should be talking about is mindset at the point of that decision. The estimates in manpower needed to make Operation Downfall (a land/air based campaign of the Japan mainland similar to the European Theater of WWII) would have been 3 or 4 times the involvement of the D-Day Normandy landings. The assumptions for losses on our side of the fence only just to make Operation Downfall take major cities was in the 6 figure range. We implied in planning as much as a half million lives lost, and it would have ended up in the record books in general warfare losses between nations.

Moral issues aside, it made sense to consider the implied impact of Atomic Warfare. It would force Japan to realize that city after city would be leveled until they surrendered, and all things considered that threat worked post Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In terms of the history of war between nations and cultures, no one experienced this before. The systematic destruction of cities in seconds. We can debate all day long the moral problems with this sort of warfare and also talk about what that did in terms of mindset headed into the Cold War... and by extension War of Containment that proceeded this for several decades. But, what we cannot do is go back and change anything nor should we apologize for the path other world leaders on many sides of the fence put us on. The US has their reasoning for and how we engaged in WWII against various enemies, so did Japan and everyone else in all theaters of warfare for all of WWII.

It is foolish to assume an apology changes anything, or changes anyone's decision for how things concluded. Win or loss in historical context especially. And it forces us to ask impacting questions. For example, how far back does one go and apologize? More importantly, why?
 
If a hot and heavy presidential season wasn't upon us, BO would be profusely apologizing to the Japanese. BO may think his EO to create trans-bathrooms is his legacy since it changes domestic policy but apologizing to Japan isn't.
 
Last edited:
.
President Obama is in Japan this week and will visit Hiroshima, the city destroyed by the United States’ first wartime use of an atomic bomb. The President will offer no apologies for the attack since the U.S owes none. But he will use the site as an example of the devastation and death resulting from war. Unfortunately, it is a message that will be ignored by many Americans and tens-of-millions of other citizens of our planet.

~snipped the blather~
.

Since any talk from Obama about the devastation and death resulting from was is nothing more than hypocritical posturing, it's no wonder his message will be ignored. I mean, that's something that children learn to do at a very young age...why should the American people be expected to be more gullible than them?

Furthermore, most people know that all this traveling around by Obama lately is nothing more than his attempt to appear relevant during his lame-duck months. He is so narcissistic that he cannot stand to be sitting on the sidelines while the People decide his successor...even if it makes him look like even more of a useless fool.
 
If a hot and heavy presidential season wasn't upon us, BO would be profusely apologizing to the Japanese. BO may think his EO to create trans-bathrooms is his legacy since it changes domestic policy but apologizing to Japan isn't.

Listen, you should stop believing you understand how liberals think.
 
Listen, you should stop believing you understand how liberals think.

This from the guy who does little more than lament that folks on the right exist at all.
 
When I read the title of this thread I thought it was about football, not just another boring Obama thread.

:inandout:
 
I wonder how people would feel if we had simply stuck with the norm at the time and simply expanded the firebombing across all of Japan. That's where the fight to stop Japan would have ended up at. We would have carpet bombed that nation with incendiaries. We saw how effective it was in Germany and saw the impact it was already having on Japan. Had we expanded those attacks across the whole of Japan for another few months without ever setting foot on Japan, we would have killed vastly more people and left Japan in a state that would have forced them to surrender or to cease to exist as a people. We're talking near genocide. They would have suffered massive casualties, completely lost every bit of manufacturing capacity they had, lost food production, they would have lost everything because it would have been the most effective way to stop them. All those soldiers that were island hopping across the Pacific would have been loading incendiaries on planes, all that manufacturing capacity that suddenly became available with the surrender of Germany would have gone to building more planes and bombs for Japan. People talk about invading Japan, but I don't think that we would have ever done that. We would have stood off and simply lit that entire nation on fire and then most likely waited them out as they died from starvation, exposure and injuries. That's the reality of how the invasion of Japan would have gone without The Bomb - massively greater numbers of dead people, massive suffering and most likely the near loss of an entire People.
 
The object of war is to break things and kill people while losing as few of your things and people as possible.

The bombs were the right decision.
 
This from the guy who does little more than lament that folks on the right exist at all.

...I have never lamented the fact that right wingers exist.
 
Back
Top Bottom