Pope condemns possession of nuclear weapons

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Throughout the Pacific Theater, over 1945, casualty estimates range from 125K to 300K per month.

Giangreco/HELL TO PAY is recommended.
 
otjm said:
No, it resulted in the deaths of thousands of combatants.
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While this is of course true, one also cannot deny that around 85-95 percent of those killed were civilians, including up to 10,000 Koreans. While it can be argued that the bombings did indeed save many lives on both sides, it is also impossible to deny the fact that they did directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.

@repentant2 @GKMotley Germany does not have its own nuclear weapons, but it does participate in the NATO nuclear weapons sharing programme.
 
Londoner said:
While this is of course true, one also cannot deny that around 85-95 percent of those killed were civilians, including up to 10,000 Koreans. While it can be argued that the bombings did indeed save many lives on both sides, it is also impossible to deny the fact that they did directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.
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Why pretend this was special?
Over 300k had already been killed in prior US firebombing of major Japanese cities.
Hitting civilian targets was a practice used by both sides to devastating consequences.
 
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Now that’s how you raise some eyebrows at your next confession.
 
Exactly my position on the subject. Which has been a serious hobby of mine for over 18 years.
 
I wasn’t pretending that it was special. @AlNg said, “[Dropping the atomic bomb] was immoral and it resulted in the murder of thousands of innocent people.” @otjm replied, “No, it resulted in the deaths of thousands of combatants.” I was merely pointing out that the bombings did kill thousands of combatants but that they also killed thousands of innocent people.
 
otjm said:
Your knowledge of World War 2 in the Pacific is not even minimal
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It is foolish to think that personal attacks on me would justify the use of the atomic bomb on Japan.


and of course we have the pope condemning their possession:
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017-12/news/pope-condemns-having-nuclear-weapons
Pope Francis said the possession of nuclear weapons and the threat of using them are to be “firmly condemned .”
and
Following his August 9 Sunday Angelus address, Pope Francis strongly condemned the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

 
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Londoner said:
While this is of course true, one also cannot deny that around 85-95 percent of those killed were civilians, including up to 10,000 Koreans. While it can be argued that the bombings did indeed save many lives on both sides, it is also impossible to deny the fact that they did directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.
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The Koreans were not targeted as such, However, I reject your comment as to “deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.” You need to read GKMotley’s posts, in particular the posts concerning the preparations the Japanese were making for the soon oncoming invasion by the US military.

And as a side note, both my dad and my stepdad were part of that invasion force - both “cannon cockers” in separate 105 batteries.

The myths which have been repeated day after week after month after year after decade is that all these people were “innocent civilians”; it relies on either a misapprehension of the very different mindset, values, overall philosophy, and radically different religious/philosophical background as to the value and worth of a human being.

In the battle of Iwo Jima; of an estimated 18,000 to 21,000 Japanese soldiers, only 216 were captured, as the battle ended and of those some only because they were injured or disabled; after the Marines left, later action by the Army faced off with somewhere between 2400 and 3,000 remaining Japanese. Of those, some 1,600 were killed by grenades, flamethrowers and satchel charges to the multiplex of tunnels the Japanese had prepared in advance.

The point being that rather than surrender, which was a matter of terrible shame, they willingly held out, to die by literally being burned out of the complexes.

Military officers in North america and Europe might be upset at the loss of a battle, but unless they were releaved of command, they prepared for the next round.

An officer in the Japanese military, upon losing a battle, would often resort to seppuku in order to regain the honor he had lost.

One did nothing to dishonor one’s family or self; and the approximately 3,500 kamikaze pilots showed the intensity of the sense of honor and of following orders to bring glory to the country and to the Emperor, often considered to be a god.

Civilians? No, combatants; maybe only using a pitchfork or a club, but willing to die for the Emperor. it is a concept so foreign to us that many, if not most simply will not accept it. That, however, does not make it any less true.
 
I did not attack you; I attacked your knowledge, or lack thereof. You have a tremendous amount of company; but the number of people who deny reality does not alter reality. One of the hardest things for Westerners to accept is how radically different our world view is from the Japanese. 2,000 years of Christianity has developed a far different view of the value of life. Even as secularized as the US has become, some might be willing to give their life for a family member of a friend.

For honor and for an emperor? Exceedingly few. And even fewer, if faced with the understanding that the cause was lost.

Your comments about the Pope are e=irrelevant to my comment about understanding of WW2. for whatever Pope Francis has to say for today, what the US faced after Okinawa was a completely different issue.
 
otjm said:
I attacked your knowledge, or lack thereof. You have a tremendous amount of company; but the number of people who deny reality does not alter reality.
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Tremendous amount of company of " people who deny reality"???

Pope Francis: Pope Francis strongly condemned the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
President Eisenhower: “I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.’”
Brig. Gen. Carter Clarke: “We didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.”
Henry H. Arnold, commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Pacific Fleet.:“The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.”
Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz: "-“The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part from a purely military point of view in the defeat of Japan. The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”
Adm. William D. Leahy,-“Certainly, prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability, prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if atomic bombs had not been dropped.”
- Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay.:-“The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
 
For your recommendation, I thank you. The posts go back to around 2004, running back into the old board. Each year, I wonder if I am going to have to relate the history of the end game in the Pacific theater (not what the RCC think of the bombs, or WMD in general). Each year the answer seems to be yes.
 
I think what you’re saying is that every Japanese citizen could justifiably be considered to be a combatant and therefore a legitimate military target.
 
Sigh). Most of these I’ve spoken to the poster on before. And other folk, over the years. I’ll start here, but may have to stop and continue later. I got a house guest.

EIsenhower:

Eisenhower made the assertion in three places, in 1948 (CRUSADE IN EUROPE) and 1963 (MANDATE FOR CHANGE) and a NEWSWEEK article (1963, I think) This quote is from MANDATE FOR CHANGE. The 1948 account was less detailed. A couple of points:

Stimson kept detailed diaries that include a complete record of all discussions, of any nature, which he had on the bombs. This exchange is not mentioned. and it is not independent evidence of an opinion as stated prior to the use of the weapons, but after the war. And, in the 1948, but not the 1963 account, Eisenhower added “My views were merely personal and immediate reactions, they were not based on any analysis of the subject”.

Eisenhower had no particular insight into the Pacific theater, as he said in 1948, nor should he have. As far as is known, he had no access to Pacific Theater Magic or Ultra, either traffic or summary. Nor should he have. In a 12 July 1945 letter he wrote that he had not the slightest idea what would happen in the Pacific, nor was there any reason he should. He was the ETO commander. MacArthur or Nimitz had similarly no insight into the European Theater.

For a more detailed consideration of Eisenhower’s words, and the improbability of the circumstances being accurately recalled see HIROSHIMA IN HISTORY:THE MYTHS OF THE REVISIONISTS, ed. by Robert James Maddox, pp.16-19, as well as Frank/DOWNFALL, pp. 332-334. Newman/WEAPONS OF VICTORY, esp.pp. 121-124, though the entire book is recommended. Whether Eisenhower was opposed to the use of the bomb, personally, is certainly probable. His accounts of how and when he expressed his opinions are dubious. And an opinion not stated prior to the use of the bombs is irrelevant.

Clarke:

I’ve read this statement before, no citation in my files. The last sentence is untrue. The first is true, but irrelevant. We didn’t need to do it, unless we desired to end the war in the quickest fashion, with the least number of deaths, throughout the theater. There were a number of ways to end the war. All taking time and time was blood.

Arnold:

True, but irrelevant. The Japanese case was hopeless, and not merely from the point of view that Arnold was most interested in: air power. They were defeated. What they were not was prepared to surrender.

Continued.
 
Nimitz:

A speech in Oct 1945. The Japanese were indeed defeated. And the bombs were of no particular military advantage over what we could do through continued conventional bombing, blockade and bombardment. Save only for the element of time. And time, at 200K+ victims a month, was blood. The Japanese had not sued for peace prior to the bombs, until after Nagasaki, and the 2nd gozen kaigen. They had been attempting (some of the power structure) to achieve a soft landing, negotiated end, rather than the essential step of merely surrendering to the Potsdam Declaration.

Leahy:

Those aren’t Leahy’s words. They are the words of Paul Nitze in the foreword to the report of the USSBS. And are both erroneous and duplicitous. The report itself doesn’t support it. Newman/ ENOLA GAY AND THE COURT OF HISTORY, passim, and, in much detail, Gentile/HOW EFFECTIVE IS STRATEGIC BOMBING, analyzes Nitze’s words.

Leahy’s statement was in his I WAS THERE, again, post war.

LeMay:

This was posturing, for the growth in the AF, and the struggle for roles and missions, in the post war period, after the unification of the military into the Dept. of Defense and the creation of the AF as a separate branch. Again, Gentile and also Barlow/REVOLT OF THE ADMIRALS.

A hasty comment, this, Iots other things to do. I’ll be back, most likely. Or, inevitably. Keep in mind: defeated but not ready to surrender, time is blood, two planes, two bombs, no more war (with exceptions). Good.
 
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From my view point, not exactly. The goal and intent in dropping the bombs was not to kill or destroy anything: military, industrial, civilian. It was to so shock the small body of Japanese decision makers with the economy of scale (1 plane, 1 bomb) to accomplish what a 500 plane B-san raid might do in 24 hours, that the move from defeated, but not prepared to surrender, to acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, could be accomplished. In this sense, the deaths of anyone - military, civilian, young, old, combatant under the ketsugo plan of national defense or not, was irrelevant. It was the brains of roughly 8-10 Japanese in the only position of power able to surrender, that the bombs were aimed at.
 
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AlNg said:
“We didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it,
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Yup, we could have continued the firebombing of their cities with equal levels of devastation, until they surrendered.
 
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