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3 minutes ago, viRdjil said:

Genuinely first time I’ve ever read anywhere, that the 200,000+ civilans killed by the two nuclear bombs were apparently Nazis. 

He’s a complete fucking imbecile, in my opinion, and the reason he said something so utterly moronic is because he hasn’t heard anything better on a podcast or read about it on Twitter. 

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On ‎04‎/‎08‎/‎2011 at 19:35, Lee909 said:

I work with a bloke who`s dad was with the Navy in the pacific. He said that his old man always said that bomb saved his life and stopped a long war in the Pacific.

 

So it saved his life, and that of millions like him, but did the selfish bastard ever consider the impact it would have on internet arguments three-quarters of a century later?

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A while back I was watching one of the myriad talking head programmes about the war out of the corner of my eye and was immensely surprised when a lad I didn't recognise - the only one I did was Max Hastings, currently making strenuous efforts to absolve himself of responsibility for a crime far greater than nuclear Armageddon: the rise of Boris Johnson - made a point that actually made me look at a feature of the Second World War in a new light. He was talking about the bombing of Dresden, but it could easily be applied to Tokyo, Hiroshima or Nagasaki. His point was that everyone involved in the war effort had lost all sense of perspective. The slaughter was just so ghastly that the incineration of another multiple of ten thousand civilians didn't register with anyone. And no, this wasn't the line misattributed to Stalin about one death being a tragedy etc. His point was that if someone had said "jeez lads, tens of thousands of civilians are going to die here", he (it would have been a man) would have been greeted with hollow laughter and mock expressions of horror. I don't buy the idea that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was primarily about ending the war quickly. They never would have considered using it in Europe for that purpose, as demonstrated by William Lyon Mackenzie King telling his diary how "It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe." It's only fair though to view the decision to drop the bomb in the context of everyone that had gone before it. What's one more egg when the coop is already a smouldering ruin?

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This is lovely.  I’m a fascist because I vote conservative but the Japanese, wartime allies of the Nazis certainly shouldn’t be referred to negatively.  No siree.  

 

Ask the Chinese if they see a distinction.  Concentration camps, medical experimentation, sex slaves.  

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30 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

This is lovely.  I’m a fascist because I vote conservative but the Japanese, wartime allies of the Nazis certainly shouldn’t be referred to negatively.  No siree.  

 

Ask the Chinese if they see a distinction.  Concentration camps, medical experimentation, sex slaves.  

I’m not trying to stop you here Rico, but I personally have never been comfortable in making a direct comparison between victims of other atrocities (like some people do with the Palestinians in Gaza) and the holocaust. 

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21 minutes ago, deiseach said:

A while back I was watching one of the myriad talking head programmes about the war out of the corner of my eye and was immensely surprised when a lad I didn't recognise - the only one I did was Max Hastings, currently making strenuous efforts to absolve himself of responsibility for a crime far greater than nuclear Armageddon: the rise of Boris Johnson - made a point that actually made me look at a feature of the Second World War in a new light. He was talking about the bombing of Dresden, but it could easily be applied to Tokyo, Hiroshima or Nagasaki. His point was that everyone involved in the war effort had lost all sense of perspective. The slaughter was just so ghastly that the incineration of another multiple of ten thousand civilians didn't register with anyone. And no, this wasn't the line misattributed to Stalin about one death being a tragedy etc. His point was that if someone had said "jeez lads, tens of thousands of civilians are going to die here", he (it would have been a man) would have been greeted with hollow laughter and mock expressions of horror. I don't buy the idea that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was primarily about ending the war quickly. They never would have considered using it in Europe for that purpose, as demonstrated by William Lyon Mackenzie King telling his diary how "It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe." It's only fair though to view the decision to drop the bomb in the context of everyone that had gone before it. What's one more egg when the coop is already a smouldering ruin?

He's a great history writer, well worth reading his books. 

 

 

You can't put a modern conscious on that war. There was legit reason for and against the bomb. Sadly as ever in major wars its the innocent that suffer. 

 

Less people died dropping the bombs than would have died without them but I still don't think that's really why they were dropped. Imo they were dropped to keep the Soviets out of Japan and its surrender. A naval blockade would have just led to mass starvation deaths in Japan. The Soviets where weeks from being able to invade the Japanese home islands and the Japanese weeks from starting biological warfare on the US. People forget that the Japanese had a plan in place to use Biological warfare on the US mainland in Sep 1945. 

Operation Cherry blossom at night, under the command of Shirō Ishii was to send submarines to take planes across the Pacific to drop plague fleas at the Southern California. 

 

 

Five of the new I-400-class long-range submarines were to be sent across the Pacific Ocean, each carrying three Aichi M6A Seiran aircraft loaded with plague-infected fleas. The submarines were to surface and launch the aircraft towards the target, either to drop the plague via balloon bombs, or to crash in enemy territory. Either way, the plague would then infect and kill thousands of people in the area. 

 

Arata Mizoguchi, who was a Unit 731 commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy, said that only three I-400 had been built by August 15, but estimated that, by September 2, two or three more would have been built ahead of schedule had the war gone on.

 

 

 

It's worth reading up on how militarised Japan was, and just how far they had gone in China. Even after the Emperor Hirohkto surrendered there was an attempted coup by the highest members of the IJA and War department to stop the surrender and fight on. 

 

Have a watch of this

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does that mean it was a barbaric act, no. Did the kids deserve it, no

 

But if you are the US at that point in the war are you going to risk 500,000 to 1 million men attempting to storm the Japanese mainland, after knowing at first hand how hard the Island hoping campaign had been. I really don't think so. As others had said if they would have fire boned the islands like they did Tokyo or Dresden little would be said. 

 

A horrific war that just shows how far we can fall and what we will do to win when things are that bad. I doubt you'd find more than a handful or US, British, Soviets that cared one bit by that point. Especially after seeing what the Germans had done in the death camps and what the Japanese left behind through out Asia. 

 

 

 

The major disgrace Post war is that just like the Nazi scientist the Japanese scientists and members of Unit 731got away with what they did by giving their files to the US and most went on to major success in pharmaceutical industry post war. 

 

 

If any man has ever deserved his death it was Shirō Ishii. Who avoided the rope and died 15 years later of cancer

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