The only regret i have about hiroshima and nagasaki...

[beyelzu]

was that we couldnt come up with cooler names for the two bombs.

well and on a large timeline i regret nuclear proliferation.


alright adora this is the spot for discussion of the bombs.

ill get to it this afternoon for sure

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by my favorite bitch

You, Bey, like many individuals I get into such conversations with, make the grave mistake that just because one finds the eventual historical actions committed by one side in a war abhorrent, one is laying all blame at their feet

This is a common stance taken by those trying way too hard to defend their shaky position. And I'm not even going to start on your historical inaccuracies.

Point is, I'm not laying all blame for the ending of Japan's part in the war at the feet of the US Army, though their decision was ultimately the one that resulted in the means of the end, which, for your righteous record, I find an evil on-par with the atrocities committed by the Japanese in the war, not because of the death toll but because of the true reasoning behind it. So don't try and pull the pathetic, cheap, and inhumane "They were killing more people than we were" bullshit with me, boyo.

yeah but our killing people with the bombs stopped them from killing people.

us killing germans stopped hitler from rounding up people and putting them in gas chambers.

all actions arent equal. there are real moral consequences for actions including wars

as fucked up as it is, in the real world sometimes nuking two fucking cities is the best strategic and moral option.

and if you think it doesnt matter tell that to the koreans who loved us till recently whole heartedly cuz we saved them twice.

take your the japanese are morally equivalent to the us well the us are probably worse to the chinese where japan was testing plague on real live chinamen.


these things do indeed matter.

stopping the deaths of 100k people a week, over a million a month and avoiding a prolonged invasion with the resulting loss of life is also a very fucking good thing

[beyelzu]

what do you think the true reasoning behind the dropping of the bomb was?

tactical advantage for the us and hopefully force a surrender???

[beyelzu]

oh and what historical inaccuracies are you referring to???

by all means lets start.

when a country attacks another county the first country certainly has a right to defend themselves. when the initial aggessor country is violating human rights and the attackee fucks up the aggressor up and ends those human rights violations, i think you definitely get to charge the stopping of the civil rights violatins in the net good column on your whether or not this was moral scorecard.

[beyelzu]

while i made this thread for adora and/or liv anyone else wno wants to talk to me is of course welcome to stop by and tell me to fuck off

[But]

fuck off

[But]

Seriously, I would say that it wasn't necessary, but inevitable, given the mentality of the people at the wheel in politics and the military-scientific complex. They had their big fat throbbing cock out and there wasn't any way they were going to put it away before giving someone a good fuck.

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by But

Seriously, I would say that it wasn't necessary, but inevitable, given the mentality of the people at the wheel in politics and the military-scientific complex. They had their big fat throbbing cock out and there wasn't any way they were going to put it away before giving someone a good fuck.

not necessary? really?

if the bombs werent dropped how do you see the war ending?

[But]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

not necessary? really?

if the bombs werent dropped how do you see the war ending?

Ended by the Russians, who didn't have the bomb and didn't give a shit about their own casualties. This would have helped saving American soldiers, but of course that wasn't the point. The priorities list was something like:

1. Power
2. Intimidating the Russkies
3. American soldiers' lives

...

74. The price of tea in China
75. The lives of Japanese civilians

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by But

Ended by the Russians, who didn't have the bomb and didn't give a shit about their own casualties. This would have helped saving American soldiers, but of course that wasn't the point. The priorities list was something like:

1. Power
2. Intimidating the Russkies
3. American soldiers' lives

...

74. The price of tea in China
75. The lives of Japanese civilians

so you see multiple invasions by the us and the ruskies????

what kind of death toll and collateral damage do you think that would have entailed?

[erimir]

I was under the impression that part of the reasoning was that they didn't want Russia being part of the invasion of Japan, which would mean that Russia's sphere of influence would have been larger and possibly would have resulted in Japan being divided up like Germany.

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by erimir

I was under the impression that part of the reasoning was that they didn't want Russia being part of the invasion of Japan, which would mean that Russia's sphere of influence would have been larger and possibly would have resulted in Japan being divided up like Germany.

i have often seen this argument made only it normally goes like this "the us didnt need to drop the bomb japan was going to surrender anyway and we only dropped the bomb to make a point with russia."


did it play a role in the decision, possibly, but there were real tactical reasons for bombing the two cities and russia wasnt part of the primary reasons for dropping the bomb.

that said it certainly made a hell of a statement.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

did it play a role in the decision, possibly, but there were real tactical reasons for bombing the two cities and russia wasnt part of the primary reasons for dropping the bomb.

How do you determine the primary reasons? I'm no WWII historian, but I did a bit of brief reading when the subject came up yesterday, and was interested to learn that the Soviets had not only agreed to declare war on Japan at Yalta, but invaded Japan-controlled Manchuria on August 8 - that's after Hiroshima but before Nagasaki. Seems to me the US had a strong interest in a quick capitulation of Japan that had more to do with Russia than with saving lives.

Apparently, one historian has even argued the Soviet invasion was a more important factor in forcing Japan's surrender than the A-bombs were. I'm not capable of judging that claim, but if so even your basic premise that the A-bombs ended the war is questionable.

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by fragment

How do you determine the primary reasons? I'm no WWII historian, but I did a bit of brief reading when the subject came up yesterday, and was interested to learn that the Soviets had not only agreed to declare war on Japan at Yalta, but invaded Japan-controlled Manchuria on August 8 - that's after Hiroshima but before Nagasaki. Seems to me the US had a strong interest in a quick capitulation of Japan that had more to do with Russia than with saving lives.

Apparently, one historian has even argued the Soviet invasion was a more important factor in forcing Japan's surrender than the A-bombs were. I'm not capable of judging that claim, but if so even your basic premise that the A-bombs ended the war is questionable.

well there is certainly the timeline to consider.

i dont think that it is accepted or true that the japanese surrendered because of russia. it was the obliteration of two cities that caused the surrender. i think that is accepted history.

im not familiar with the historian that you are referring to, do you have a link by any chance?

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

i dont think that it is accepted or true that the japanese surrendered because of russia. it was the obliteration of two cities that caused the surrender. i think that is accepted history.

im not familiar with the historian that you are referring to, do you have a link by any chance?

I have heard it argued that the Russian invasion (and the amazing speed of their advances) was the deciding factor on the Discovery Channel if that counts

[godfry n. glad]

Any initiative, in peacetime, or wartime, has the potential of addressing more than a single concern.

The use of atomic weapons served a couple of purposes. Japan was exceedingly nationalistic and its power structure was riven with accomodationist/militarist divisions. The Japanese militarists were using the potential entrance of the Soviet Union as a rationale to hold out even against a home island invasion....The US military did not wish to utilize such a bold tactic, because it was viewed to be too costly in terms of US personnel needed to undertake such a venture. However, the Russians had promised at Yalta to formally enter the war six months from the date of the Yalta Agreement, which they honored and immediately invaded Manchuria. It took that time from the cessation of hostilities in Germany to ship sufficient troops and provisions across the Asian land mass.

With the completion of the Trinity test, the US had a new weapon. It did not know the actually efficacy of such a weapon in real usage, but it promised to be a real impressive product. They thought they might end the war, without an invasion and without having to wait out a blockade of materials into Japan. As it happens, it was determined that Japan had just three days of food supply prior to their surrender. The only real option to invasion would have produced nationwide starvation, potentially killing far more noncombatants than both atomic bombs. So, acquiescence to the dual bombing as a clear sign that Japan would not endure and should surrender, saved thousands, probably millions of Japanese lives and millions more from enduring starvation and depravation...and probabaly widespread disease.

That said...I still think that the Nagasaki bomb was more of a statement to the Russians. It said "we have more of these". Of course, it made that same statement to the Japanese and pushed an already tettering governmental structure into final, and unconditional, surrender.

Curiously, the Soviets were promised a hand in the victory over and post-war occupation of Japan. They had to be satisfied with the (Chinese) lands they grabbed from the Japanese colony in Manchuria. The US would have no part of the Soviets administering postwar Japan. The US renegged on its part of the Yalta Agreement, as I understand it.

[-FX-]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

while i made this thread for adora and/or liv anyone else wno wants to talk to me is of course welcome to stop by and tell me to fuck off

Originally Posted by But

fuck off

Originally Posted by beyelzu

i dont think that it is accepted or true that the japanese surrendered because of russia. it was the obliteration of two cities that caused the surrender. i think that is accepted history.

I just watched this video, this morning.

The Real Reason why a Third Atomic Bomb was Never...

And then I came across this topic.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by fragment

How do you determine the primary reasons? I'm no WWII historian, but I did a bit of brief reading when the subject came up yesterday, and was interested to learn that the Soviets had not only agreed to declare war on Japan at Yalta, but invaded Japan-controlled Manchuria on August 8 - that's after Hiroshima but before Nagasaki. Seems to me the US had a strong interest in a quick capitulation of Japan that had more to do with Russia than with saving lives.

Apparently, one historian has even argued the Soviet invasion was a more important factor in forcing Japan's surrender than the A-bombs were. I'm not capable of judging that claim, but if so even your basic premise that the A-bombs ended the war is questionable.

I won't claim that I am a WWII historian either but I have heard the case made about the second bomb especially.

[beyelzu]

as to the necessity of the second bomb in particular, at that point japan had not surrendered and iirc was planning to defend their islands in order to hopefully inflict enough casualties on the us that the us would lose their stomach for the war.

they werent planning on surrendering before the bombs.

we had to show that we could destroy their cities at will*



*they had no way of knowing that we couldnt drop a third bomb

[beyelzu]

[beyelzu]

for the record what i know about hiroshima and nagasaki i learned at ii, both the arguments made there and assorted links, and i owe a thanks to vork for making so many posts about the subject.

you might want to check out his blog on the subject

http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/20...ime-again.html

[beyelzu]

help i have no idea why my post shows the whole page it was just supposed to be a link

[fragment]

The historian was a mention on a wiki page. I'm not reading too much into it - could be some inaccurate piece of revisionism that some random threw in during an edit war. That said, given that some factions of the Japanese Government were aiming for a negotiated surrender whereby Japan held onto some territory outside of Japan, I think we can at least agree that the invasion of Manchuria was a factor in making that position less tenable.

Also, I've run into enough people who seem to think the US was the major factor in the defeat of Nazi Germany to make me a little suspicious of "accepted history" in the English-speaking world. I'm throwing this stuff up not because I think it's right, but because I want better sources before I consider the opposing position to be right.

[Watser?]

There is also the top of that blog page at the top of this page

Very weird

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by Watser?

There is also the top of that blog page at the top of this page

Very weird

maybe that was cuz im part of the html group, dunno but it seems fixed to me now