punch_the_lion wrote:( and by the way Hawaii is American soil, I don't see how anyone could rationalize otherwise. It was already a STATE)

Dec. 7, 1941 - Bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Aug., 1945 - Nuclear bombs dropped on Japan; Japan surrenders; war ends.
Aug. 21, 1959 - Hawai'i admitted as 50th state of the United States.

I'm not sure how much impact this really makes on the argument, but it's worth pointing out.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor
The Bataan Death March
The Rape of Nan King

Has anyone besides myself here read the extent of the systematic and entirely horrifying form of torture that the Japanese Army instigated against the Allied POW's? Sorry, your not going to find many veterans shedding tears or regret dropping atomic weapons.

Are you trying to justify the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan as some sort of revenge for Japan's atrocities? Morally and ethically, it doesn't hold water - especially considering that, by choosing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we probably incinerated very few of the people actually responsible for those atrocities. Two wrongs do not make a right - cliche but true. The only possible justification for the bombings is that that - and only that - prevented massive casualties in an otherwise necessary American invasion of Japan.

I don't buy the idea that every single Japanese citizen was going to fight to the death

Linus,

At least until after WWII and the transformation to a capitalist economy , Japan was a collective society still holding onto the reigns of an ancient, imperialist, feudal system. It was something that had been ingrained in their consciousness for a LONG time, and change wasn't going to come easy.

I know about Japan. I still don't buy it. Change can come easy (or at least fast) in Japan. Look at Japanese society - at all levels: cultural, governmental, technological, etc. - between 1865 and 1920 and observe an incredible rate of change. Likewise between 1920 and 1940. Likewise between 1945 and, say, 1960. Also: Japanese are human beings, and despite the suicidal death-obsessed Samurai tradition and the centuries of collectivism and feudalism, I think they would know when they were beaten.

I can sympathize with both sides, but to use the old adage "war is hell".

Something I hope we can all agree on.

Tom: I guess if the Soviets didn't know - and they shouldn't have known - that the Nagasaki bomb was our last one, then it wasn't that bad of a move, strategically. Still Crap, though, clearly.

Danmohr: Hiroshima was (and still is) a city. The area directly under the detonation of the bomb (now the Peace Park) was a typical crowded Japanese neighborhood full of homes, shops, temples, shrines, babies, puppies, flowers, etc. Pearl Harbor was a military installation America had constructed outside of its borders and was rightly seen as a potential threat to the Japanese empire. I'm not trying to justify the bombing of Pearl Harbor at all. It was wrong, and bad, and Crap. Wrong, bad, Crap. But it was an act of war, a strategic military decision - a bad one, as it turned out, but not entirely without strategic merit - and not comparable with the mass murder that was Hiroshima.

Linus Van Pelt wrote: Pearl Harbor was a military installation America had constructed outside of its borders and was rightly seen as a potential threat to the Japanese empire. I'm not trying to justify the bombing of Pearl Harbor at all. It was wrong, and bad, and Crap. Wrong, bad, Crap. But it was an act of war, a strategic military decision - a bad one, as it turned out, but not entirely without strategic merit - and not comparable with the mass murder that was Hiroshima.

That the Japanese could rightly see pearl harbor as a threat to the Japanese empire is silly. It only became a threat when the japanese empire expanded into it. The US had a presence there since the late 1880s and there was never any move in the slightest toward an attack on japan (post japanese modernization). The US didn't even start sanctioning Japan until they started wreaking havoc all over the pacific.
And your right, it was an act of war, a strategic military decision and a bad one*. So was the bombing of Hiroshima, except strategically it was much more sound. I think one could legitmately argue that more civilians died because of the Japanese attack on a mostly military target than the US attack on a mostly civilian target.


*This has been put to the definitive test in recent games of Axis and Allies (new edition). The natural tendency to go after the relatively weak fleet at Hawaii appears to be flawed. Your much better off using your resources to go after the asian mainland and ignore the US completely, unless of course they start coming after you- which they won't.

I think the bomb served several purposes. Most importantly it showed the Japanese high-command that the US could wipe it's industrial cities off the map. We can see that they had little regard for lives of their own people, so it was necessary for America to demonstrate that it could destroy their centres of war-production and massacre their work-force. Civilians were conspicuously targeted because they represented the means by which Japan expedited the war.

On visiting the ruins of Hiroshima, the weak-minded Emperor Hirohito remarked : “There seems to have been considerable damage.â€

Marsupialized wrote:is one missed letter THAT funny?

YUP

I had always been under the impression that one of the main motivations for dropping the bombs was the fact that the Soviets were about to dig-in, and the US didn't fancy the idea of the Soviets keeping a significant slice of the Japan Pie.

Non?

Tom wrote:That the Japanese could rightly see pearl harbor as a threat to the Japanese empire is silly. It only became a threat when the japanese empire expanded into it. The US had a presence there since the late 1880s and there was never any move in the slightest toward an attack on japan (post japanese modernization). The US didn't even start sanctioning Japan until they started wreaking havoc all over the pacific.

Even assuming that we would have never entered the war without the attack on Pearl Harbor (or something similar), given our close ties with Japan's enemies, and given our sanctions against them, and given where the Japanese Empire was supposed to be, and given where Pearl Harbor was, I don't think it was silly at all for the Japanese to see Pearl Harbor as a threat to their empire. Even assuming that Pearl Harbor was not a threat to the Empire, for them to think it was was not at all silly - completely understandable, I think.

I think one could legitmately argue that more civilians died because of the Japanese attack on a mostly military target than the US attack on a mostly civilian target.

Well, what do you mean by "because of"? I think the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have happened without Pearl Harbor. But I don't think that it was an inevitable result of Pearl Harbor. I could argue that we bombed Hiroshima "because of" the 1900 Open Door policy in China. I'm not sure it's meaningful.

*This has been put to the definitive test in recent games of Axis and Allies (new edition). The natural tendency to go after the relatively weak fleet at Hawaii appears to be flawed. Your much better off using your resources to go after the asian mainland and ignore the US completely, unless of course they start coming after you- which they won't.

If I'm the US, they will. Otherwise you are completely correct.

[quote="Cranius"]On visiting the ruins of Hiroshima, the weak-minded Emperor Hirohito remarked : “There seems to have been considerable damage.â€

[quote="Linus Van Pelt]Even assuming that we would have never entered the war without the attack on Pearl Harbor (or something similar), given our close ties with Japan's enemies, and given our sanctions against them, and given where the Japanese Empire was supposed to be, and given where Pearl Harbor was, I don't think it was silly at all for the Japanese to see Pearl Harbor as a threat to their empire. Even assuming that Pearl Harbor was not a threat to the Empire, for them to think it was was not at all silly - completely understandable, I think.[/quote]

But the US at that time had more or less a policy of isolationism. We we preparing for an attack on the US, but not to launch an attack on Japan. Japans agression in the pacific rim was more than a cause for an outside party to get involved. And if we hadn't gotten involved by then, why would they think anything woudl change?

I think one could legitmately argue that more civilians died because of the Japanese attack on a mostly military target than the US attack on a mostly civilian target.

Well, what do you mean by "because of"? I think the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not have happened without Pearl Harbor. But I don't think that it was an inevitable result of Pearl Harbor. I could argue that we bombed Hiroshima "because of" the 1900 Open Door policy in China. I'm not sure it's meaningful.

*This has been put to the definitive test in recent games of Axis and Allies (new edition). The natural tendency to go after the relatively weak fleet at Hawaii appears to be flawed. Your much better off using your resources to go after the asian mainland and ignore the US completely, unless of course they start coming after you- which they won't.

If I'm the US, they will. Otherwise you are completely correct.[/quote]

toomanyhelicopters wrote:really? i recall hearing that hiroshima and nagasaki were chosen because they were *NOT* military targets, and thus had not been scarred by the firebombing of which you speak. they chose pristine targets that would allow them to assess precisely what damage had been done by the one bomb itself, without having to factor in existing damage done by firebombing. hence civillian targets.

that's pure atrocity right there, if it's true, annhilating civillians so you can evaluate your technology. then again, at that time, "Japs" were probably not really considered fully human to begin with, so...

How much time do you have to waste?

http://www.dannen.com/decision/

My understanding was that they were cities that had lots of factories producing military goods and/or military outposts. I don't doubt that killing a lot of people made them attractive as well - at this stage of the war the US was trying to drive home the point that Japan faced utter destruction if it did not surrender.

The Japanese government had plans for a defense against invasion involving not only arming civilians but sending them out in boats loaded with explosives to attack the incoming ships. That's noble.

As far as the idea of Pearl Harbor as a threat to their empire - that's pure shit. They were trying to extend their empire, not defend what they had. This is the same Japan that started basically unprovoked wars against China and the Soviet Union earlier in the century. They had a bizarre sense of their own divine entitlement to control the world that was entirely disconnected from their actual existence as a tiny island nation. I think England may have suffered from this affliction as well. The US definitely has symptoms, but our territory grabs have been fairly non-existent of late, though we do enjoy trying to armchair quarterback the rest of the world's political struggles. And, hey, at least we're a fairly large nation with some actual land borders.

Dan

danmohr wrote:As far as the idea of Pearl Harbor as a threat to their empire - that's pure shit. They were trying to extend their empire, not defend what they had.

That's exactly what I mean. When I say that they saw Pearl Harbor as a threat to their empire, I mean their past, present, and future empire, and what they felt it should legitimately be. In other words, I'm not saying they attacked Pearl Harbor to "defend what they had", I'm saying they did it because they felt (wrongly) that it would make it easier for them to extend their empire. And I'm not defending that at all.