Fr Miscamble defending atomic bomb

[GKMotley]

I thank you. Will look for it.

Good, as to DOWNFALL. If you don’t have Kort’s COLUMBIA GUIDE I mentioned above, it is highly recommended. Many appendices of original documents. And, among other favorites,
WEAPONS OF VICTORY/Maddox, HIROSHIMA IN HISTORY: THE MYTHS OF REVISIONISM/Maddox (ed.), TRUMAN AND THE HIROSHIMA CULT and THE ENOLA GAY AND THE COURTS OF HISTORY, both by Newman, a guy who is not fond of nuclear weapons.

Now 66 pages into GHOST MOUNTAIN BOYS.

 

[GKMotley]

WWI was the object lesson in negotiated surrender. As Pershing said, a year or two after the war, the failure to force an unconditional surrender meant that we’d have to do it all over again, in 25 years. He lived to see it happen.

 

[GKMotley]

A 157 degree turnaway/dive, with all engines firewalled and screaming. Tibbets worked it out.

 

[undead_rat]

undead_rat:

It is the USA’s revisionist propaganda that the use of the atomic bomb on Japan forced its surrender. President Truman knew that the USSR was mandated to declare war on Japan in August of 1945 and that this act would force Japan to surrender. He rushed to use the atomic bomb on Japan to create the impression that it was the USA’s actions that forced the Japanese surrender. That is the real tragedy of the use of the A-bomb on Japan: it was nothing more than a crass, self-serving political move by the president of the USA.

This is exactly why the priest & professor of history from Norte Dame creates the video… to discredit the view you just wrote. The good father says that it is your view that is the revisionist theory.

We could play the “revisionist view is yours” game all day. The fact is that the A-bombing of Japan coincided with the USSR’s devastating declaration of war and with Truman’s capitulation to the Japanese request to spare Hirohito. Therefore it is impossible to say for sure that the nuclear attacks were the important factor in Hirohito’s decision to order surrender. Another fact is that similar, if not greater, destruction had already been wrought on Japanese cities through mass B-29 fire-bombing raids, and these had not motivated a surrender.

My opinion remains that Truman’s use of the A-bomb was motivated by his desire to steal the credit from the USSR by creating the impression that it was the USA’s action that caused the surrender and by a desire to intimidate the Russians. In addition, it disguised the fact that Truman would not prosecute the war-criminal, Hirohito.

http://www.doug-long.com/byrnes.htm

 

[GKMotley]

Hiroshima at 1800-1900 feet, Nagasaki at 1600-1700 feet.

 

[GKMotley]

and with Truman’s capitulation to the Japanese request to spare Hirohito.

Among a lot of other silly things you keep saying, you keep saying this one. Nothing of the sort happened. I’ve told you before.

 

[undead_rat]

undead_rat:

and with Truman’s capitulation to the Japanese request to spare Hirohito.

Among a lot of other silly things you keep saying, you keep saying this one. Nothing of the sort happened. I’ve told you before.

Thank you for the correction. I completely forgot that Emperor Hirohito was arrested and put on trial for his war-crimes, found guilty, and then executed. How stupid of me.

http://www.doug-long.com/byrnes.htm

 

[GKMotley]

You make a lot of errors. But this exercise in silly satire is not really one of them.

NO one had made any decision what to do with the Emperor, either personally, or as a part of restructuring what was the kokutai, until after the surrender. That nothing would be done at all until that point was obvious. The Emperor was essential as the only authority able to ensure the surrender and capitulation of the scattered military took place. And in the restructuring of the kokutai, as it went forward, the retention of the same figure was a stabilizing and moderating force, as the national polity was basically ripped to shreds.

Point being: No one, any time, anywhere said anything to anyone in Japan about what would or would not be done with respect to the Emperor or the institution. The only comment was to paraphrase the relevant passage in the Potsdam Declaration, to the vaguely worded assumption in the response to the Potsdam Declaration arising from the 9-10 August gozen kaigan. The future of Japan would be decided by the will of the Japanese peoples, with respect to their form of governement. When we were ready to let them decide.

 

[undead_rat]

Hirohito knew very well what the will of the Japanese people was. The fact that this war criminal was not prosecuted speaks for itself, and I do not believe that his immunity from arrest was actually necessary for the US occupation. That idea, to my mind, is just a cover-up.

 

[BlueMaxx]

My father landed at Normandy on D-Day…out of his original battalion there were only three survivors…he has 2 or three Purple Hearts and a few stars…I don’t know because he rarely, if ever spoke about it. Nobody from that generation did around here where I grew up. I know they are put away in a drawer, always there…never forgotten.
We are a German community, or was so back then. The angst of having to fight their own kind must have been excruciating.
They simply tried to forget that hell and wanted nothing more than to come home and live a quiet life.

If you ever watched Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan, well that is the ground he covered as an infantryman.

But while recovering after his last wounding Germany surrendered.

He was put on a French liner converted to a troop transport ship and was on his way to the Far East to fight the Japanese…on the way they dropped the bombs and Japan surrendered.

I have been to the Far East in the Marines…Okinawa, mainland Japan…and a myriad other places over there…jungle warfare sucks…I am so glad that Japan surrendered…they were not going to quit.

As a Marine we were educated in bootcamp about the fighting that took place there…the Japanese were ruthless and relentless. So many bloody battles, wholesale slaughter.

Okinawa was a hell unto itself…the population committing suicide at the sight of the Marines and Army.

Letters from Iwo Jima is a good show to watch to somehow get a grasp on not only how the Japanese soldiers were treated but how the civilians back home were treated.

It is heartbreaking that we had to resort to such measures, but at that time in the world it was an answer to some peoples prayers.

The family would often speak about seeing the government car with the chaplain going to someones house…every time they saw that car and had a loved one over in the war they trembled with fear.

When they passed their house they were overcome with relief but then struck with a sadness knowing someone who they probably knew had just lost a son.

 

[Anrakyr]

I was going to call this really condescending and that’s coming from an autistic condescending master but then I re-examined the conversation.

You are correct good sir @GKMotley
Carry on.

 

[GKMotley]

Letters from Iwo Jima is a good show to watch to somehow get a grasp on not only how the Japanese soldiers were treated but how the civilians back home were treated.

Yes. It is. And as a companion read to watching it, SO SAD TO FALL IN BATTLE, the actual author of letters from Iwo Jima, the island commander, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the most interesting Japanese flag officer I know, of, not excepting Yamamoto. A humanizing experience of the enemy.

 

[GKMotley]

My thanks. I’ve spoken with the originator of that post many times. My tone is usually suitable to the occasion. Mostly.

 

[vz71]

Truman’s capitulation to the Japanese request to spare Hirohito.

Now that is just silly.

The emperor was left alive because without him telling the people to stand down, they wouldn’t.
They would fight to the death. All of them.

 

[phil19034]

phil19034:

undead_rat:

It is the USA’s revisionist propaganda that the use of the atomic bomb on Japan forced its surrender. President Truman knew that the USSR was mandated to declare war on Japan in August of 1945 and that this act would force Japan to surrender. He rushed to use the atomic bomb on Japan to create the impression that it was the USA’s actions that forced the Japanese surrender. That is the real tragedy of the use of the A-bomb on Japan: it was nothing more than a crass, self-serving political move by the president of the USA.

This is exactly why the priest & professor of history from Norte Dame creates the video… to discredit the view you just wrote. The good father says that it is your view that is the revisionist theory.

We could play the “revisionist view is yours” game all day. The fact is that the A-bombing of Japan coincided with the USSR’s devastating declaration of war and with Truman’s capitulation to the Japanese request to spare Hirohito. Therefore it is impossible to say for sure that the nuclear attacks were the important factor in Hirohito’s decision to order surrender. Another fact is that similar, if not greater, destruction had already been wrought on Japanese cities through mass B-29 fire-bombing raids, and these had not motivated a surrender.

My opinion remains that Truman’s use of the A-bomb was motivated by his desire to steal the credit from the USSR by creating the impression that it was the USA’s action that caused the surrender and by a desire to intimidate the Russians. In addition, it disguised the fact that Truman would not prosecute the war-criminal, Hirohito.

James Byrnes and the Atomic Bombing of Japan

Perhaps or perhaps not.

However, my main motivation in this thread was the defend the priest and not Truman.

I’m will not debate this any further with you.

Good day

 

[GKMotley]

Another fact is that similar, if not greater, destruction had already been wrought on Japanese cities through mass B-29 fire-bombing raids, and these had not motivated a surrender.

Not sure where this appears upstream, but the difference was in the economy of effort. One plane. One bomb. One city. This was what got the attention. And, we might have a hundred of them, as was suggested within the Saiko Senso Shido Kaigi. Which resulted in the odd and rigged gozen kaigan, 9-10 Aug. Which arrangements preceded both the Nagasaki bomb, the Russian attack, and the exchanges of messages referenced above.

 

[Canvas]

There is absolutely nothing Pope Pius XII said there that I would argue with.

Each branch of science governed by scientists worthy of the name and you in particular tends towards the realisation of love for your fellow-men’.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Hey, my dad was floating around the Pacific somewhere as a medic while all this was going on. He might have survived a land war with Japan only because his older brother, a member of The Lost Squadron who were filmed by John Ford before all of them but one died, had already been killed at Midway, so my dad was a sole surviving son. But who knows? I’m personally very glad we never got to that point where we needed to find out or I might not be sitting here typing this. Harry Truman is also my all-time favorite President, not because of the bomb drop but because he was a good, admirable, honest and straight talking guy who persevered his whole life despite many failures and handled a difficult situation. And he also loved and remained faithful to one woman his whole life.

 

[Cruciferi]

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[Canvas]

My father landed at Normandy on D-Day…out of his original battalion there were only three survivors…he was 2 or three Purple Hearts and a few stars…I don’t know because he rarely, if ever spoke about it. Nobody from that generation did around here where I grew up. I know they are put away in a drawer, always there…never forgotten.

Were they killed or wounded on D-day itself, or is the number of survivors through the end of the war or even just the Normandy campaign? Some units were virtually destroyed on Omaha Beach, like the troops of A Company 116th Inf. Regt., 29th Division, that landed in the first waves (they landed in the Dog Green sector that is the setting in Saving Private Ryan). Some troops, like those in the 4th Division that landed on Utah Beach did not face heavy resistance on the beach itself, but were undoubtedly ground down in the heavy fighting in the Normandy countryside in the weeks after they landed.