Fr Miscamble defending atomic bomb

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Allegiances change over time due to various circumstances. In the international arena, countries often ally themselves with others who don’t share all of the same values, but with whom a common goal can be pursued.

When Reagan decided to back the “freedom fighters,” had any of them attacked America or its interests?
 
Not sure what rice paddies you heard about. Unless they were terraced on hillsides up a mountain and they bombed the top hillside creating a domino type effect, it never would happen. And even then, there simply was not that much water in a paddy - wide, but not deep.

In the Delta where I was, the mean level above the ocean was about 12 feet - meaning the vast majority of the paddies simply were not going to flow very far at all.

Further, there were multiple weapons available which would be able to take out any anti aircraft emplacement - Spooky (C-47) and Puff (AC-130) were more than amply capable of taking out anything sitting out ion the open. I suspect whomever told you such was stringing a long tale.
 
AlNg said:
This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms pretty close to the ones ultimately accepted.
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Nope.
Look it up.
Post the terms.
If the article you found is all you have, you have been misled. Not only does it not fit actual fact, it does not even make logical sense.
 
Just War Doctrine is riddled with problems in it’s conception and application.
The first that pops out to me is application.
When wars break out, the position of just , vel non, is not decided.
Later, after the history books are written, the analysis rarely if ever coincides with the initial position taken. By then millions of Catholics fully participated in an unjust war.
 
vz71 said:
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undead_rat:
Truman’s capitulation to the Japanese request to spare Hirohito.
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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.
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That is pretty much what I have been saying: without Truman’s indication of immunity from prosecution, Hirohito would not have ordered his people to surrender.

The idea that he was necessary after the surrender is just propaganda designed to explain why he was not put on trial without having to admit that amnesty was offered surreptitously.
 
Thanks for the links.
Correction: the great increase in accuracy of ICBMs has allowed their nuclear warheads to be reduced in size to generally about 400 kilotons. That is about 20 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb.

When asked if Israel possessed nuclear weapons, its statesmen used to attempt to deflect that question by saying that Israel would not be the first to introduce (meaning to use) an atomic bomb in the middle east. Now we don’t hear that propaganda anymore.
 
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Truman said nothing, at any time, about Hirohito, nor did anyone else. Amnesty was not offered, surreptitiously, or over loudspeakers. THe Potsdam Delcaration was offered and then repeated.

Finished reading those pages from Bix’s book yet?
 
I thought not.

I am not the expert you appear to be, but every year around this time we have this thread…and I am getting pretty good at recognizing the facts from the fantasy.
 
vz71 said:
I don’t.
It has much in common with other websites I have found that are trying mislead us.
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My experiences in SE Asia and subsequent readings in that regard have led me to believe that our own government is the entity that is most likely misleading us.
 
Correct, they only had enough material to build the trinity test device little boy and fat man. With projections of 750,000 us casualties during the landings and land battle on mainland japan. It’s part of the reason no service member has had to wait for a Purple Heart. The war department made a million of them thinking the bombs would fail.
 
I’ll bet you do.

What Forrestal ,p. 83, says is that Byrnes felt that the original Japanese response, and their “assumption” as to the prerogatives of the Emperor, might taken as receding from the “totality and severity of the Potsdam Declaration”. Forrestal’s comment was that he felt this could be “met by an affirmative statement on our part in which we could see to it that the language of surrender accorded fully with our intent and view”, in the Declaration.

And that is the structure of the reply. No one, in the Declaration or the response to the Japanese, which said that the Emperor would be subject to the occupation authority, made a mention of what would or would not happen to Hirohito, or the Throne, or, for that matter, the totality of the kokutai, save that it would be determined by the will of the Japanese people.

When we decided to allow that, of course.

You can read Stimson’s diary entry on that meeting, Kort/COLUMBIA GUIDE TO HIROSHIMA AND THE BOMB, p.p 235-236.

Now get back to reading Bix.

It helps understanding, to have the books.
 
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In addition to these, a third bomb was to be available by roughly the last week in August. The casing was on Tinian, the guts were still back on the west coast. And the production rate was expected to yield 2-3 additional bombs a month, for which Marshall had a particular plan in mind.
 
GKMotley said:
But the idea of being able, with any bomb mission, to avoid a mass targeting, as opposed to some sort of precision bombing, in Japan, had long been discarded.
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There is no doubt you are correct there.

I was arguing that Truman actually might have misunderstood what the USAAF was going to do until after the bombing.

I was looking at Truman’s own thoughts on the matter based on what he wrote in his diary and said (including how he changed how he talked about the bombing between August 6 and 10). He knew the bomb was capable of massive destruction, a blunt force instrument*, but I think he may have incorrectly believed that Hiroshima was mainly a military facility and not a civilian target*

Instead of saying “I think” I should have said “I think it was possible” that Truman believed Hiroshima was the name of a major military facility, and not a city with major military installations. For example, his original draft notes for his August 9 speech said Hiroshima was a “purely military target.” He took out “purely” before he gave the speech. He called Hiroshima an IJA Army base on August 6. He may have actually believed that when he said it.

His own diary indicates his reluctance to use the bomb against civilian targets
 
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