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oldcelt
Guest
Perhaps he meant it was a non-starter for the US? Oh wait, that couldn’t be because that wouldn’t reflect badly on the president.
John
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John
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Tenofovir
Guest
Anyone know what the Japanese actually think? It would be interesting to see what 2ch members have said about this.
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agnes_therese
Guest
You can read what you want into just about anything. That doesn’t make it true. There’s no proof that Obama was going to apologize.
Just more nonsense to waste your time on instead of working on real issues like abortion and the economy.
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SamH
Guest
Other than the Japanese response.
The Tea Party must have a Japanese wing that sent this cable knowing it would be picked up and leaked by Wikileaks.
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SamH
Guest
That’s a new one on me and the rest of the world, the US blockaded Japan before WW2 started? That never happened and is completely made up. The US didn’t have the means to impose a blockade on Japan prior to 1944 - 3 years after Pearl Harbor. That requires a huge naval presence - one that didn’t exist for the most part and only partially existed at Pearl Harbor and San Diego - thousands of miles from Japan.
The US imposed a trade embargo and refused to ship US sourced oil and iron/metal to Japan (I don’t even think food products were included).
Ever hear of a little incident called the Panay sinking? Japan had already committed acts of war against the US long before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Darryl1958
Guest
I spend lots of time discussing the economy and abortion already.
How do you make sense of what the Japanese were saying then?
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Wolseley
Guest
The Roosevelt White House imposed a set of sanctions on the Japanese, cutting off all trade with the United States in oil, steel, and numerous other commodities, because of the horrific reports coming out of China, where the Japanese were basically just running amok: bayoneting women for sport, shooting children, ripping open pregnant women’s bellies, throwing infants into ditches full of muddy water and letting them die. We told them to cease their occupation and start acting like civilized human beings, or we were going to impose sanctions on them until they did. Instead of straightening up, their answer was to bomb our naval base at Pearl. Thus: war. We didn’t start it, they did.
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agnes_therese
Guest
It’s really pretty clear. If you don’t want to understand it, I certainly can’t make you. Go ahead and complain about fake issues if that makes you happy.
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Rich_Olszewski
Guest
In light of that, I would hope that there are very few Catholics among those who consider nuclear weapons just another military option. Whom would those who favor such use consider targets for it in this day and age?
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Rich_Olszewski
Guest
They started it with conventional weapons and we ended it with a nuclear weapon. How nice. Did Pius XII give any opinion on that? I’d have to believe that he did not endorse its use.
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Wolseley
Guest
To be fair, nobody really had any idea what the atomic bomb would do when dropped on an actual combat target; nobody had ever done it before. Even after World War II ended, a good many of the senior military men of the time—such as Douglas MacArthur, who suggested dropping “anywhere from 25 to 30” Hiroshima-size bombs along the Yalu River to prevent the Chinese from entering North Korea—simply viewed an atomic bomb as a really, really big conventional bomb.
If Truman and the Joint Chiefs could have had any inkling about what nucelar weaponry would grow inot, might it have changed their minds? Perhaps; but that’s something that none of us can ever know. But it is nonsensical and disingenuous to judge that decision by the standards of 2011; they did not have 54-megaton ICBMs with multiple MIRV’ed warheads in 1945.
On the other hand, if the Japanese had developed the bomb instead of us, and had the ability to drop it on New York or Washington DC, would they have had any qualms about using it?
Anyone who says “No” is fooling themselves.
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GKC
Guest
As I’ve corrected you elsewhere, I will merely observe that your assertion in the first para is historical nonsense.
GKC
GKC
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GKC
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Ridgerunner
Guest
The Japanese could not fail to have mixed feelings about everything in that war. This is barely topical, but I had the extreme good fortune once to talk about the war with a aged Japanese who had, himself, been a member of the Kwantung Army…you know, the one that supposedly “ran amok”, defying the Japanese government and grabbing off more and more pieces of China before the war?
This man had been just an ordinary foot soldier, and he told how, prior to every “running amok” official planes from Tokyo, usually carrying royalty of some kind, came in to confer with the brass. Immediately thereafter, they were given orders to march, and so they were appalled every time a plane with the royal insignia on it flew in. It was an unbelievably cruel thing, and not least on the Japanese soldiers themselves if they were ordinary foot sloggers. Underarmed, ill-fed, often outnumbered, poorly doctored, thrust into the endless, disease-ridden plains of China to kill or be killed. Ordered to do things they could not countenance but could not avoid because the upper echelons of that evil government would torture and kill them just as readily as it would Chinese soldiers and civilians. He hated the war, and, contrary to expectations, expressed nothing but contempt for the Emperor (whom we spared). He said there was no doubt among his peers where the orders were coming from, but many have chosen to keep silent about it.
It was very well known, well before the war, that Japan was going to go to aggressive war, and that it would have to deal with the Americans as a consequence of that. Nobody, including Yamamoto himself, relished that thought. He, himself, opposed it, but was given no alternative but to attack Pearl Harbor.
At the end of the war, the soldier I met was stuck in China. There were two substantial units of Japanese in his area. By agreement, the other unit was given to the Russians. None of them ever returned. His was given to the Americans who, though highly suspicious of them, nevertheless fed them, doctored them, clothed and housed them, and ultimately returned them to Japan, just like that. Landed them and turned them loose. Unarmed, of course.
I don’t know how many Japanese know, anymore, how incredibly evil their government was at the time, and how relieved people like that ex-soldier were when it all ended, even though the end was accompanied by horrors enough, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.The fire bombing of Tokyo alone killed more.
Regardless, this man held Americans in high esteem as a people and, in no way condemned American treatment of him and his countrymen in that war. In his mind, there was no question at all who started the war, and it wasn’t America. Remember, he was fighting an aggressive war in China long before Pearl Harbor was anything more than a gleam in Hirohito’s eye.
Did America start or cause the war? I’ll never believe it. Did Roosevelt draw a line in the sand and dare Japan to cross it? Sure. And they crossed it at Pearl Harbor.
Did the Japanese nix the potential Obama apology to avoid negative repercussions to their own nuclear industry, or did they do it because they knew the truth of the whole thing?
Personally, I think it was the latter.
This man had been just an ordinary foot soldier, and he told how, prior to every “running amok” official planes from Tokyo, usually carrying royalty of some kind, came in to confer with the brass. Immediately thereafter, they were given orders to march, and so they were appalled every time a plane with the royal insignia on it flew in. It was an unbelievably cruel thing, and not least on the Japanese soldiers themselves if they were ordinary foot sloggers. Underarmed, ill-fed, often outnumbered, poorly doctored, thrust into the endless, disease-ridden plains of China to kill or be killed. Ordered to do things they could not countenance but could not avoid because the upper echelons of that evil government would torture and kill them just as readily as it would Chinese soldiers and civilians. He hated the war, and, contrary to expectations, expressed nothing but contempt for the Emperor (whom we spared). He said there was no doubt among his peers where the orders were coming from, but many have chosen to keep silent about it.
It was very well known, well before the war, that Japan was going to go to aggressive war, and that it would have to deal with the Americans as a consequence of that. Nobody, including Yamamoto himself, relished that thought. He, himself, opposed it, but was given no alternative but to attack Pearl Harbor.
At the end of the war, the soldier I met was stuck in China. There were two substantial units of Japanese in his area. By agreement, the other unit was given to the Russians. None of them ever returned. His was given to the Americans who, though highly suspicious of them, nevertheless fed them, doctored them, clothed and housed them, and ultimately returned them to Japan, just like that. Landed them and turned them loose. Unarmed, of course.
I don’t know how many Japanese know, anymore, how incredibly evil their government was at the time, and how relieved people like that ex-soldier were when it all ended, even though the end was accompanied by horrors enough, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.The fire bombing of Tokyo alone killed more.
Regardless, this man held Americans in high esteem as a people and, in no way condemned American treatment of him and his countrymen in that war. In his mind, there was no question at all who started the war, and it wasn’t America. Remember, he was fighting an aggressive war in China long before Pearl Harbor was anything more than a gleam in Hirohito’s eye.
Did America start or cause the war? I’ll never believe it. Did Roosevelt draw a line in the sand and dare Japan to cross it? Sure. And they crossed it at Pearl Harbor.
Did the Japanese nix the potential Obama apology to avoid negative repercussions to their own nuclear industry, or did they do it because they knew the truth of the whole thing?
Personally, I think it was the latter.
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irishpatrick
Guest
It is impossible for us to know how we would have reacted or what we would have chosen to do with the bomb from a distance of 66 years! It is easy to be armchair Truman’s in 2011 and decide what he did was wrong, yet we were NOT there.
We hear much talk about end times nowadays. I am farily sure a good number of Christians living during WWII had to think they had entered Biblical Armageddon. Over 60,000,000 killed, with no real end in sight in the war against Japan–it sure is easy to tell the QB what he should have done sitting in our comfy chairs over six decades later!
As for an apology–
We hear much talk about end times nowadays. I am farily sure a good number of Christians living during WWII had to think they had entered Biblical Armageddon. Over 60,000,000 killed, with no real end in sight in the war against Japan–it sure is easy to tell the QB what he should have done sitting in our comfy chairs over six decades later!
As for an apology–
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GKC
Guest
As posted on MediaMatters
WikiLeaks Cable Shows Yabunaka Was Addressing Speculation From “Anti-Nuclear Groups” Following The President’s “April 5 Prague Speech On Non-Proliferation.” From the September 9, 2009, cable that was published on WikiLeaks website:
He underscored, however, that both governments must temper the public’s expectations on such issues, as the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a “non-starter.” While a simple visit to Hiroshima without fanfare is sufficiently symbolic to convey the right message, it is premature to include such program in the November visit. Yabunaka recommended that the visit in November center mostly in Tokyo, with calls on the Emperor and Prime Minister, as well as some form of public program, such as speeches, an engagement at a university, or a town hall-like meeting with local residents. [WikiLeaks, accessed 10/13/11, emphasis added]
That is, assuming this is accurate, the Japanese official was saying that certain anti-nuclear groups might anticipate Obama apologizing, particularly in light of his speech in 2009 on a world without nuclear weapons. Not that there was any concrete proposal from anyone that this would take place, or that the Japanese were declining such a thing.
GKC
WikiLeaks Cable Shows Yabunaka Was Addressing Speculation From “Anti-Nuclear Groups” Following The President’s “April 5 Prague Speech On Non-Proliferation.” From the September 9, 2009, cable that was published on WikiLeaks website:
Code:
[Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji] Yabunaka pointed out that **the Japanese public will have high expectations** toward President Obama's visit to Japan in November, as the President enjoys an historic level of popularity among the Japanese people. **Anti-nuclear groups, in particular, will speculate whether the President would visit Hiroshima in light of his April 5 Prague speech on non-proliferation. **That is, assuming this is accurate, the Japanese official was saying that certain anti-nuclear groups might anticipate Obama apologizing, particularly in light of his speech in 2009 on a world without nuclear weapons. Not that there was any concrete proposal from anyone that this would take place, or that the Japanese were declining such a thing.
GKC
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Pirate_Talker
Guest
As posted at Mediaite:
Fox and Friends Falsely Reports On Hiroshima WikiLeaks Cable; Claims Apology Was White House Idea
mediaite.com/tv/fox-and-friends-falsely-reports-on-hiroshima-wikileaks-cable-claims-apology-was-white-house-idea/
Fox and Friends Falsely Reports On Hiroshima WikiLeaks Cable; Claims Apology Was White House Idea
mediaite.com/tv/fox-and-friends-falsely-reports-on-hiroshima-wikileaks-cable-claims-apology-was-white-house-idea/
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Monte_RCMS
Guest
The truth is that Hiroshima is the location of one of the largest car manufacturing factories in the world … if not THE largest.
So, basically, the Japanese have gotten even for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by economically nuking Detroit.
So, either the Japanese didn’t want Obama to see their secret economic weapon of mass destruction or … **
So, basically, the Japanese have gotten even for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by economically nuking Detroit.
So, either the Japanese didn’t want Obama to see their secret economic weapon of mass destruction or … **
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George_Stegmeir
Guest
Where in H*** did you learn your history? It is quite obvious that you do not know what you are talking about, and any debate with you is pointless!
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Darryl1958
Guest
From what I have heard, the Japanese army made a cult out of cruelty. Even as they were setting up rape camps in China, and abusing the POWS to death, they would often beat their own soldiers too mercilessly for no particular reason other than too watch them suffer…
Japanese are basically decent people. We can all recall the total absence of looting in the wake of that devastating tsunami. To remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki is to remember why such drastic measures were taken in the first place.
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