After 60 Years, U.S. Reporter's Censored Stories About WW2 A-Bomb Effect Discovered

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It is such a shame that we can't all just frolic in the meadows and smell flowers together.

I'll requote myself

To assume otherwise is naive and childish.

Cesard added with

Well, history will show that Russia never dared for the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) protocols worked like a charm. Once again see my above rule, especially the part about making sure that no one would go to war with you.

Cesard then followed up with

I find this kind of quaint and nostalgic. I remember being in 3rd grade and getting into my first schoolyard fight. I was pummelled by the "bully" of the schoolyard. My mother was consoling me and telling me that I was such a better person and that two wrongs don't make a right. Afterwards, my father bought me a weight set and taught me how to fight. It was about two years later when I was again the target of the same bully. This time the result was quite a bit different. Strange, how I never had another issue with him. I assume he is in jail by now.

My point is that I'm sure that history is littered with the bones of peoples that "were better", but didn't know how to fight/defend themselves.


Ragusa added,

Well he is allowed to be angry and disgusted and nobody can take that away from him. However, it is a truth. You may as well argue that that the sky is purple. Trust me nobody is cavalier while in the heat of battle. Yes, we have the luxury of being the victors and of time to look back at WW2 and declare that if it wasn't for what was done who knows how many of our citizens would have died and how long the war would have taken place. I believe I posted in a Hiroshima anniversary thread that I for one am thrilled that we dropped the bomb. Who knows what would have happened to my grandfather (survivor of the battle of the bulge) if he had been sent to invade Japan. Maybe I would never have met him? Maybe I wouldn't have any aunts, or cousins.

For now I am still outraged at the terrorists who attacked New York. To me it was an unprovocted attack on a purely civilian target. Who knows, maybe the terrorists will succeed and bury Western culture. If so, and they get to write the history books, they may claim that the "War against the Great Satan" started in 194* and that 9/11 was a strategic campaign. I await future generations to make that decision (and I hope Western culture prevails).

Will one day the peoples of the Earth unite and live together in love and harmony. I personally doubt it, but it could happen.

 

The perptrator was the one which attacked a nation at peace on Dec. 7, 1941. That the war assumed such monsterous dimensions was the direct result of the naked aggression of the Axis powers. Certainly there was enough blame to go around on all sides, which contributed to the causes of the war itself (including the Allies). But when one starts to refer to Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as "victims," then a good reality check is in order somewhere.

 

The bombings were not necessarily planned as to solely demolish military installations and munition plants, but yeah... enough that. I have had it for today.

Thanks for the short intro though, Bion.

Edit
@ Chandos
I had hoped it was clear I wasnt referring to the regimes but to the people.

[ June 27, 2005, 21:15: Message edited by: Dendri ]

 

Well -- it's always easy to play general after the war.

It's very hard for us to see and feel what those times were like. Yes, we bombed the living daylights out of Japan. Yes, we nuked them....to bring an end to the war. Were we the agressor?...Hardly. Japan attacked us. The Holocaust was something none of us can really understand or fathom NOW -- what kind of reaction do you think it had on those people living through it?? Was it an over-reaction for the US to do what it did?...Quite probably. But I won't even being to try to judge its actions in a time such as that.

 

That begs the question, though; how does one go about fighting the regimes without fighting the people?

 

If you dont put the past of your nation on trial, Spellbound, what do you do with it instead? Is it of no consequence to you? Nothing to assess and deem good or bad?

I am genuinely curious.

 

I believe times were different then. We have not seen a World War the likes of it since. My father was at Guadalcanal, Mindoro and Luzon...I've heard enough stories about the horrors to last a lifetime.

Dendri -- I think it's good to review and investigate past actions, but not be so quick to condemn. We have no clue what it was like back then....and I seriously doubt the US knew the full effects of nuclear warfare back then. I think their goal was to simply end the war, not cause generations of hardship. Ignorant?? Yes...but intentional evil? I doubt that.

 

Dendri - As AMaster points out, that is a difficult distinction. Unfortunately, it is a nation's population that often pays for the bad mistakes of its regime. We can argue if the Japanese people are culpable or not for its regime. I think they are.

Although many Americans didn't want the war in Iraq, and many of us still don't want it, it is nevertheless America's war, especially because in theory the government represents the people. It may be a little more difficult to draw parallels between representative governments and dictatorships, such as the Germany or Japan of 1941.

The remedy to wars of aggression was supposed to be a representative government - an end to the Napoleons and Hitlers. But you see, other situations demonstrate that it is not the remedy that it is hoped to be. Look at the situation here: A majority of Americans voted for the current regime, and they knew what they were getting when they did - a warlike regime. Despite the fact that 48 percent of us voted against the current regime that still does not reflect that it is not our war also. If a nation's energies and endeavers are turned towards a war, as they were in Japan, Germany or anywhere else, then it is the entire nation's liability as well. It's a sorry state of affairs, but the hard reality nevertheless.

 

... or this question: How comes people think war is a legitimate way to do politics?

PS:Spelly,

Well, if Japan was indeed about to surrender, and the U.S. dropped the bomb anyway, wouldn't it be somewhat unjust to sacrifice some 200.000 Japanese, maybe only to impress Stalin?

At the time of Japan's surrender the cold war in Europe had already started. Just a point.

But then the killings would have been for a greater good, right? To deter the commies, to keep the cold war cold - clearly a justified and good investment ... or not?
What I want to say is, you'll always find a good rationlisation for the inexcusable if you only try.

 

Well, in the opinion of many of us, war is not. But for those who do believe it is, the price is often higher than they are willing to pay, at least it seems so...

 

In Vietnam the U.S. politicians got some 1.5 million Vietnamese killed, compared to some 58,226 American soldiers. Virtually every Vietnamese, especially South Vietnamese, was affected by the war, having endured relentless bombardments and targeted killings. Many Vietnamese lost relatives as a result of the war.

For what? Because American politicians blelieved in a domino theory and were afraid of China, whose hand they saw in Vietnam (sure thing, in 1979 already they were at war) - oblivious to that what the Vietnamese wanted was first of all decolonisation and that they just did their own thing. But hey, blame the commies!

The human cost for U.S. wars is paid for by the hosts of their conflicts.

As the Iraqis just learn, if the U.S. come to save you, better take cover. They well might save you to death, most certainly for a high minded and noble goal.

 

Ragusa:

I don't believe the Japanese were anywhere near to the point of surrendering. And, as you see from this interesting article, the emperor was quite willing to sacrifice his people to the bombs -- it wasn't until AFTER the first bomb and the invasion of the Soviets, was a surrender even considered.:

http://www.instadv.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1297

The emperor sacrificed his OWN people -- he was nowhere near "about to surrender".

 

Ragusa - You and I both know that Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to draw more troops (and American will) into Vietnam. It was a fraud.

But:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution

Again in Iraq the same thing. WMD were used to sell Americans on the notion that we had to act now - before there were "mushrooms clouds over our cities." And again it was a fraud. The real problem is that when Americans voted these guys back into office they knew that they were buying back into the same fraudulent regime, but seemed willing to pay the price. Now, after less than a year, most Americans thought the war was a bad idea.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/20/poll/

They must be finding the price a bit too steep...such is political life in America these days.

[ June 28, 2005, 02:02: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

I am glad to hear that you got your own back on the bully and I completely agree with that, but did you start picking on innocent (the so-called 'weak') people after that so that no-one would bother you again? Hopefully the answer is 'no'. As far as I am concerned the US should have went only for Japanese military targets, not trying to make a huge dent in the Japanese population, and thats what I mean by being the better person.

Belfast was bombed by the Germans during WW2, but I did not think that killing German farmers was revenge at all.

Destroy the aggressors, but *never* the innocent.

 

Yep. As one pretty crass and obvious example underlines:

U.S. or british fighters strafing farmers working on the field, as happened frequently here in western Germany during late WW-II (my family iirc lost some second degree aunts and uncles that way - not soldiers but just humble farmers doing their work), sure can be rationalised as 'weakening the German war effort by damaging it's agricultural base'.

It's still an intended targeting of civilians and constitutes a war crime.

When one extends the range of legitimate targets to enemy civillians he is assuming collective guilt of the enemy.

But when speaking of enemy atrocities toward your country with outrage, but commenting the own butchery with 'well, people die in war', people refuse to apply the same standard for themselves.

Just a few bad apples, you know ...

 

Very true. Their history books paint a different picture of WWII. Unfortunately, I also agree that most nations seem to have amnesia when their own wrongdoings are put under light.

Also, I've never met American survivors of the Bataan Death March but I've heard enough stories from my elders to be sick to my stomach. I've visited a number of war memorials. It filled me with a sense of the past and a profound sadness. If ever any of you from the U.S. should make a trip to the Philippines, try to visit Corregidor or Bataan.

There are many things the Filipino people are grateful to the U.S. for, especially the liberation. It is a pity though that it spent for the rebuilding of Japan's cities but left their little brown brothers to rebuild on their own.

 

This is always a great topic -- "should they have dropped it?" My father was in the war (he flew 28 missions over Germany) and I for one am glad that the A-Bomb was dropped before he went to the Pacific theatre -- he was all ready to go and keep fighting. He likely would have died had he gone. That would mean No LKD, and I'm rather fond of my existence.

Warfare is nasty business, and should be avoided if diplomacy is a viable option, but once you're in a war, you're in it to win. Anything less and you might as well save time and just surrender.

I read a bit of an article that talked about Bears and Snakes. Warfare over the past several hundred years has been between nation-states or similar large scale political entities. Documents like the Geneva Conventions reflect this format of war. This was Bear fighting (the author was using the USSR as his symbol) and we set up a system wherein we could wage an effective war against a Bear.

Now, though, we have Snakes. They are not nation - state entities, but rather small groups of people who hide in the underbrush. The world's military is not set up to deal with Snakes (though the author of this article said they were trying to adapt). The line between combatant and non-combatant has been seriously eroded by these groups, and it's not easy to adjust.

That said, the Geneva convention and other rules of war are more often broken than followed. The Allies determined that punishing the German population was the route to go and would eventually cause the German will to fight to collapse. Not pretty, not convention, but it was what seemed to them the best option.

I agree that the A-Bomb is a devastating weapon, but that's all it was and is: a horribly devastating weapon. There always seems to be a feeling that using 10 tons of TNT is OK, but using a nuke isn't. In the end, people die. That's something all military people and the politicians who direct them always need to bear in mind. As someone mentioned before, more people were killed in the firebombing of Tokyo than in both nuke droppings combined. The sheer power and one-time effect stuns us, but the people aren't any more or less dead. If the politicians are confident that they saved the lives of their own personnel and citizenry, then I say the bomb was justified, the negative reviews of observers notwithstanding.

 

This is a remark made by Hitler in the midst of WWII:

This statement, to my mind, is pure evil; it is the face of evil; it is the tyranny of the Nation, and as Hilter himself comments, the "death of the individual." This is of course what all tyrants desire - that the individual crush himself for the good of the state. Nothing expresses this, or is the grander fulifillment of this expression, than war. There is no distinction between the soldier and the civilian. There is only the Nation and the Individual. The individual is meaningless (he/she dies anyway) but the Nation is eternal.

How does one fight this kind of enemy? One which sees that surrender is so cowardly, and that it is the ultimate betrayal of the Nation? In our desire to resist tyrants do we become the very thing which we resist? The answer can be found in the results of what these nations are today. Germany is the exact opposite of what Hitler had hoped it would be: A country which values its democratic institutions and embraces peace. This is an expression for the fulfillment of the individual, rather than the state. And should make us more optimistic.

When we see people as numbers rather than individuals, then we become the thing which we resist. Yet, war cannot be sanitized because of its very nature: The soldier who fights in the trench is every bit of an individual as the civilian sitting in the comfort of his home. The nature of war does not lend itself very neatly to our tidy labeling of "soldier" and "civilian" or the old and the sick; the mother and her child, or the innocent and guiltless. War is not that clean, and if it should become so, then God help us. War is always to be loathed and hated. As Ben Franklin once remarked: "There was never any such thing as a good war, or a bad peace."

Since others have a personal story of WWII, I have one also. The man of which Hitler was speaking at the beginnig of my post was a family member of mine, General Paulus. This is how he appeared at the trials at Nuremberg:

 

Would Japan have surrendered without the bombs is simply an exercise in guessing (ok, maybe roleplaying as well ) today. However, there have been mentions of Japanese attempts to negotiate surrender before Hiroshima, but they wouldn't make it unconditional - the one thing they stated would not be agreeable was abolishing the monarchy. Well, this didn't happen anyway.

And yes, the Soviet factor is important here. Japan, as well as I believe Germany, wanted to escape Soviet occupation much more than American one. I wonder, really, if the bombs did and would have done nothing to sway the Japanese government. After all, the destruction of the bombs disrupted the already weakened communication, and the full effects of the radiation did not become apparent - or verified, as they were likely disbelieved at first - overnight. Japan had already endured several firebombing raids, which had caused much more distruction to the predominantly wooden housing than the initial blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That is, imo, the biggest menace of nuclear weapons - not the instant destructive power, but the lasting effects of the initial radiation and the fallout. Japan - and the US, for that matter - did not know about these around August 10, 1945. All it knew was that its enemy had added yet another very destructive weapon. However, knowing that a military superpower "next door" declares war is, compared to a powerful (but yet unidentified) bomb, a much bigger threat.

 

EDIT: Now Daie, there are TWO pages. Read both before commenting, you wicked boy.