Linus Van Pelt wrote:

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.

Again though, if they would have left it alone, it (by extension the US) would not be a threat. That's the mindset we were in at the time.

Sure, you could argue that because the US existed and that they wanted to conquer the US that the US was a threat because we would have (and did) defend ourselves if provoked, but I think that is stretching the idea of an imperial threat pretty thin. The only threat we posed was that we "threatened" not to be under Japanese occupation.

Rome didn't conquer the Britons because Rome viewed them as a threat, Rome conquered them because they wanted to control them and their land.

Linus Van Pelt wrote:

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.

I always thought that the Pearl Harbor attack was a pre-emptive strike against the United States, because they were Chiang Kai-Shek's main international sponsor. Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang had been fighting the Japanese in China since 1937.

Wikipedia wrote:Because of Chiang Kai-shek's anti-communist nationalist policies and hopes of defeating the CCP, Germany provided the largest proportion of Kuomintang arms imports. German military advisors modernized and trained the Kuomintang armies; Kuomintang officers (including Chiang's second son) were educated in and served in the German army prior to World War II. Nevertheless the proposed 30 new divisions equipped with all German arms did not materialize as the Germans sided with the Japanese later in World War II.

Other prominent powers, including the United States of America, Britain and France, only officially assisted in war supply contracts up to the attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941, when a major influx of trained military personnel and supplies significantly boosted the Kuomintang chance of maintaining the fight.

Unofficially, public opinion in the United States was becoming favorable to the Kuomintang. At the start of the 1930's, public opinion in the United States had tended to support the Japanese. However, reports of Japanese brutality added to Japanese actions such as the attack on the U.S.S. Panay swung public opinion sharply against Japan. By the start of 1941, the United States had begun to sponsor the American Volunteer Group otherwise known as the Flying Tigers to boost Chinese air defenses. In addition, the United States began an oil and steel embargo which made it impossible for Japan to continue operations in China without another source of oil from Southeast Asia. This set the stage for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

By putting America out of the war before it began, Japan would be free to prosecute the war in China without fear of US intervention.

Champion Rabbit wrote:CRAP.

zero

Even if one believes that the first bomb was justified (I don't believe it was), the second one wasn't.

Japan was fucked; they had no fuel were ready to surrender under the right terms. There can be no excuse for murdering tens of thousands of civilians.

I think so too. The bomb(s) would not have been dropped on a caucasian population. And that is a very disturbing realization.

LAD wrote:

Champion Rabbit wrote:CRAP.

zero

Even if one believes that the first bomb was justified (I don't believe it was), the second one wasn't.

Japan was fucked; they had no fuel were ready to surrender under the right terms. There can be no excuse for murdering tens of thousands of civilians.

I think so too. The bomb(s) would not have been dropped on a caucasian population. And that is a very disturbing realization.

Unless you mean a population from the Caucus mountains, I disagree. If we were still at war with Germany when the weapon was completed, they would have certainly gotten one. I mean, we annihilated dresden with a death toll comparable to Hiroshima (est 35k-100k depending on the source).

...

solum wrote:Check the Wikipedia page again TMH--I just edited it to say that the firebombing caused 100 000 BILLION deaths. Looks like dude was right all along...

that has me chuckling. i can't even imagine the person who, in a debate, tries to throw out that number. they are so gonna get their ass handed to them!

100 000 Billion? that's way more people than have lived, ever, right? like if you added up every human that's ever lived, every human ever, it doesn't even come close to 100,000,000,000,000,000 people, right?

I just love the politically correct individuals on here who have no concept of history.
The two atomic bombs droped on Japan killed 250,000 people but to launch an invasion of the four main Japanese islands would have cost about 2 million american lives and about 4 million Japanese lives just to establish a beach head, with both sides using chemical weapons.

This is fact. If we hadn't used the option of nuclear weapons, we would have had to invaded Japan from the mainland and it would have cost more lives in the process. Japan hadn't surrendered at this point and a collective mentality was in place. Fact. Most of the Japanese populace was willing to commit suicide if they lost. Fact. Most soliders in combat from Japan committed seppeku (harakiri) instead of being caught. Fact. Many Japanese citizens were purposefully drowning their children so they wouldn't be caught around this time. Through out ( but not all) Japanese society, a collective mentality was at work based on an ancient futitle system that was only slowly in the process of birth pangs to a new tradition based on a modern, capitalist economy. The bottom line is, more lives would have been lost, military and civilian if the option had been to invade the mainland. I respect the loss of those who died as a result but the Japanese were the instigators of agression and had aligned themselves with Nazi-Germany, their mistake. They can't be portrayed as all "villains" but they weren't "innocent vicitims" either. This poll should have a more wide reaching consensus in order to matter.

Hour_of_the_Wolf wrote:I just love the politically correct individuals on here who have no concept of history.
The two atomic bombs droped on Japan killed 250,000 people but to launch an invasion of the four main Japanese islands would have cost about 2 million american lives and about 4 million Japanese lives just to establish a beach head, with both sides using chemical weapons.

This is fact. If we hadn't used the option of nuclear weapons, we would have had to invaded Japan from the mainland and it would have cost more lives in the process. Japan hadn't surrendered at this point and a collective mentality was in place. Fact. Most of the Japanese populace was willing to commit suicide if they lost. Fact. Most soliders in combat from Japan committed seppeku (harakiri) instead of being caught. Fact. Many Japanese citizens were purposefully drowning their children so they wouldn't be caught around this time. Through out ( but not all) Japanese society, a collective mentality was at work based on an ancient futitle system that was only slowly in the process of birth pangs to a new tradition based on a modern, capitalist economy. The bottom line is, more lives would have been lost, military and civilian if the option had been to invade the mainland. I respect the loss of those who died as a result but the Japanese were the instigators of agression and had aligned themselves with Nazi-Germany, their mistake. They can't be portrayed as all "villains" but they weren't "innocent vicitims" either. This poll should have a more wide reaching consensus in order to matter.

You're a douche. Fact.

Eh. He had a point until the last couple sentences. If you were a japanese soldier at the time and got knocked unconcious in battle and woke up in captivity, you were expected to kill yourself or never return to Japan. The Japanese government had been pushing a pro-war/death for your country mentality before the war started, which had more or less got ingrained people's conciousness.
I'm not saying every, or even most citizens would have fought or committed seppuku, but the government had a plan in which to use vast amounts of its citizens to essentially charge at oncoming U.S forces. They intended to strap explosives to people who would then throw themselves under tank tracks, a procedure they called a 'Sherman Carpet'. I've read accounts of when it looked like all was up for the Japanese on various small Japanese-controlled islands, they would send all the peasants running off a cliff, and anyone who hesitated would be shot.
This doesn't necessarily justify the atomic bombing, but there would have been some enourmous deaths if they U.S had invaded.
Sorry if this all has been covered, I didn't read the thread.

Andrea Doria wrote:Eh. He had a point until the last couple sentences.

Eh, he had a point until about halfway through the first sentence.

Hour_of_the_Wolf wrote:I just love the politically correct individuals on here who have no concept of history.

Some people who argue against the bombing of Japan might be "politically correct individuals ... who have no concept of history," but I don't think anyone on this thread matches that description. I think the idea that anyone who takes this seriously has to agree with you is ridiculous, and a little offensive.

The two atomic bombs droped on Japan killed 250,000 people but to launch an invasion of the four main Japanese islands would have cost about 2 million american lives and about 4 million Japanese lives just to establish a beach head, with both sides using chemical weapons.

This is fact. If we hadn't used the option of nuclear weapons, we would have had to invaded[sic] Japan from the mainland and it would have cost more lives in the process.

Even if you are right about this, it is a mistake to take a guess at what would have happened and state it as "fact." Here's an actual fact: We don't know what the Showa emperor was thinking, and we don't even really know how much pull he had compared to the prime minister, and we don't know what the prime minister was thinking.

Fact. Most of the Japanese populace was willing to commit suicide if they lost.

Well, then it's a good thing Japan won. Or, wait, what?! Japan did lose, and most of the Japanese populace did not commit suicide, thus definitively disproving your guess.

Fact. Most soliders[sic] in combat from Japan committed seppeku[sic] (harakiri) instead of being caught. Fact. Many Japanese citizens were purposefully drowning their children so they wouldn't be caught around this time.

I'm not sure how this supports your point. If the invaded population is killing themselves and each other, doesn't that make an invasion easier? In any event, these are all "Fact."s about what the Japanese would do if they lost, not how hard they would fight to win, which is what we're talking about.

Through out[sic] ( but not all) Japanese society, a collective mentality was at work based on an ancient futitle[sic] system that was only slowly in the process of birth pangs to a new tradition based on a modern, capitalist economy. The bottom line is, more lives would have been lost, military and civilian if the option had been to invade the mainland.

This may be a correct guess, but "the bottom line is," this is a guess.

I respect the loss of those who died as a result but the Japanese were the instigators of agression and had aligned themselves with Nazi-Germany[sic], their mistake.

I doubt that any instigators of aggression died in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Tojo did not. Yamamoto did not. The Showa emperor did not. Do you know of any who did?

This poll should have a more wide reaching consensus in order to matter.

I'm not at all sure what this means, but I will say that this poll is on the Electrical Audio Discussion Forums, and I'm not sure that anything that happened to this poll could make it matter.