Racist-Atomic Holocausts: Hiroshima and Nagasaki

[yuuteya]

The Ethics of War: Hiroshima and Nagasaki After 50 Years
Published in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty - September 1995
by Gregory P. Pavlik

Mr. Pavlik is director of The Freeman Op-Ed Program at The Foundation for Economic Education. He is editor of Forgotten Lessons: Selected Essays of John T. Flynn, to be published by FEE next month.

The first use of an atomic bomb in warfare took place on August 6, 1945. The weapon was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the U.S. bomber Enola Gay, instantaneously destroying four square miles in the middle of the population center. The blast killed 66,000 men, women, and children, and injured an additional 69,000. A full 67 percent of Hiroshima's buildings, transportation systems, and urban structures were destroyed.

The next (and only other) atomic bomb to be dropped in warfare was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later. That blast killed 39,000 civilians and injured another 25,000; 40 percent of the city was destroyed or unrepairable. The Japanese government surrendered to the U.S. government on August 10, 1945.

Since the last “good war,” a debate has ensued over the moral legitimacy of the use of nuclear weapons, particularly against civilians. The critics hold that it is a crime to incinerate civilians en masse; defenders commonly claim that the bombing was necessary to bring the war to a close, thereby saving countless American lives.

Most of those who make this claim do so in earnest. The problem is that this defense is both historically false, and taken to its logical conclusion, extremely dangerous.

But a discussion of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot proceed without an overview of the imperialist motives for Japanese military aggression, which reflected the age-old drive for power through military intimidation and conquest. The Japanese desired a series of conquests, to constitute the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity sphere. This involved, most importantly, penetration into Korea, Manchuria, China, French Indochina, Malaya, and Burma.

What was clearly not their goal was a prolonged conflict with the United States or any of the other Allied Powers. After establishing their Asian imperium and a defensive perimeter, the Japanese expected to reach a negotiated peace.

It should be clear that the attack on the American military base at Pearl Harbor was not a part of the long-term planning of the Japanese government. Indeed, conservatives and isolationists have long held the view that the Roosevelt administration provoked the Japanese into their aggressive stance as a back door to war in Europe.

Consider the facts leading up to the attack: Roosevelt had made a commitment to Churchill that the United States would enter into the Asian conflict if the British were attacked; the United States was shipping munitions to both Russia and Great Britain; Roosevelt had placed an embargo on oil and metals against Japan; and in the most egregious example, had sent the “unofficial” Flying Tigers to attack the Japanese in China in 1941. All were violations of U.S. neutrality and acts of belligerency.

Vocal critics on the Old Right—such as John T. Flynn and Harry Elmer Barnes—held that the Roosevelt administration was aware of the attack in advance, both from decoded transmissions and intelligence reports. The weight of history has ironed out the appearance of radicalism from the latter contention. Whatever the truth of the Pearl Harbor affair, an extended war with the United States was not a desire of the Japanese.

Japanese Objectives

Apologists for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki need to consider the overall thrust of the Japanese objectives. These objectives do not square with the notion that Japan was intractably set into a policy of mortal combat with the Americans. Not that the Japanese were not willing to fight—they did so for four bloody and grueling years. Yet the oft-repeated claim that the Japanese were willing to sacrifice every last individual before ending the war is nonsense.

In reality, the Japanese were willing to end hostilities with the United States as quickly as they began. Startlingly neglected is the January 1945 offer of the Japanese government to surrender. As the eminent English jurist Frederick J.P. Veale pointed out in Advance to Barbarism,

Belatedly it has been discovered that seven months before it [the atomic bomb] was dropped, in January 1945, President Roosevelt received via General MacArthur's headquarters an offer by the Japanese Government to surrender on terms virtually identical to those accepted by the United States after the dropping of the bomb: In July 1945, as we know, Roosevelt's successor, President Truman, discussed with Stalin at Bebelsburg the Japanese offer to surrender.

Clearly, then, the bomb did not have to be dropped to save the lives of American soldiers. The war in the Pacific could have ended prior to the European conflict. One suspects that the conflagration's extension beyond the confines of necessity had more to do with the politics of war than military strategy. The fact that consultation with Stalin played a key role in the decision tends to implicate both what historian William L. Neumann pointed to as “the historic ambitions of Russia in Asia” and “the expansionist element in Stalinist Communism.”

The Japanese offer to surrender came at a time when surrender made sense. Consider the strange apology for the bombing offered by the historian Robert R. Smith, the logic of which may escape even the most alert reader:

Allied air, surface, and submarine operations had cut the home islands from all sources of raw materials. The effective and close blockade of the Allies established around the home islands would ultimately have made it impossible for the Japanese to supply their military and civilian components with even the bare essentials of life. An early surrender was inevitable, probably even without the impetus supplied by the atomic blasts. It was better for both the Allies and the Japanese the end came when it did.

Even if the Japanese had showed no signs of surrender and had remained obstinate in belligerency, the notion that the most human carnage possible must be inflicted on the civilians of an enemy government to force a surrender and minimize the losses of one's own troops is perverse. Consider the consequences of adopting a policy of total war. Logically, if you expect an enemy to pursue this strategy, you will do everything in your power to do the same before the enemy has the opportunity to annihilate you.

It's a step beyond the Cold War policy appropriately referred to as Mutually Assured Destruction. These doctrines place their backers alongside such military strategists as Ghengis Khan, Attila the Hun, and the Assyrian King Tigleth Pileser who delighted in the erection of pyramids of human skulls. To adopt this justification for the bombing is to ask any putative future enemy to assume we mean to destroy him and to alert him to the necessity of killing as many American civilians as is possible before we do the same to him.

Indeed, by this logic, the United States should have dropped nuclear weapons in the heart of Christendom to bring Germany to her knees as quickly as possible, a prospect that any civilized person must contemplate with horror. Yet, this was how many of the scientists working on the bomb, including Albert Einstein, hoped the American government would use it.

The Canons of Warfare

Many opponents of the use of the bomb point to the canons of civilized warfare in Europe, developed over 1,500 years. Again, Veale explains: “the fundamental principle of this code was that hostilities between civilized people must be limited to the armed forces engaged,” and in his book he lists a splendid array of examples of European leaders holding to these principles, even at the price of victory.

In fact, the professional conduct of European soldiers was such that in 1814 Marshal Davout was reproached sternly and threatened with a “war crime trial” for his ugly treatment of the residents of Hamburg before his surrender—not by the Prussians, but by his own people. He was charged with having “rendered the name of Frenchman odious.”

The crucial flaw in relying on the European military codes as an attack on the bombing of the Japanese is implicit in the explanation provided by Veale. By “civilized people,” the European codes referred only to Europeans. That is, the rules and restrictions of civilized warfare applied only to so-called “secondary” wars, or intra-European wars, and not to “primary” wars that involved the clash of European and non-European powers. In the latter case, the limitations on aggression against civilians literally had no bearing on the conduct of the belligerents.

A number of cases that have a special bearing on our subject come to mind. The Japanese city of Kagoshima was destroyed by the British Navy under Admiral Kuper in 1863 for the sole purpose of winning trade concessions. So the rules of conduct in war only extended so far. Nor was America shy about using military aggression against the Japanese. The United States had a long history of belligerent tactics against Japan, starting with the “gunboat diplomacy” of Commodore Perry in 1854. U.S. ships were also involved in the destruction of the city of Shimonoseki in 1864, an operation essentially directed in the interests of British imperialism.

In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt was not above sending the United States fleet to the very shores of Japan. This type of militaristic diplomacy formed the basis of the foreign policy of Franklin Roosevelt, who was also a committed Sinophile. Much of the administrations early Naval build-ups and movements in the Pacific, starting as early as 1934, were aimed at intimidation of the Japanese. Roosevelt's policy rested on Western and U.S. precedent.

In fact, it seems plausible at first glance to argue that by the centuries-old standards of European civilized conduct in war, the bombing of Japan was an acceptable method of battle. (Incidentally, the use of atomic weapons against Germany was not and could never be.) For obvious reasons, contemporary defenders of the bombing are loath to broach this defense, as it smacks of the twentieth-century heresy of racism. But there is also a caveat to this argument.

However much the doctrine of the sanctity of noncombatant life was limited in practice, there existed a long tradition in European ethics that held that the killing of noncombatants was morally offensive and wrong. Christianity, the faith of the West, is a religion imbued with a limited universalism in content, derived from the belief that Christ died on the cross for all men. Hence, the moral teachings of the Christian faith regarding the sanctity of human life can reasonably be understood to have been intended to apply universally.

Saint Augustine, Huguccio, and Grotius

Saint Augustine held that taking the life of a noncombatant was murder. Even before Christianity had begun its penetration into the Northern lands of Europe, fundamental teachings regarding the conduct of war were being developed. Nor did these doctrines change with the development of Catholic teaching throughout Europe and the emergence of Thomistic Scholasticism. As early as the twelfth century, Huguccio, a professor at Bologna, had revised the patristic teachings regarding natural law in his Summa of 1188. There he developed the notion that private property was a natural right, not subject to the interference of private persons or the state, under normal conditions.

This fundamentally libertarian teaching laid the groundwork for the ethical considerations of the rights of noncombatants in war. Indeed, the early twentieth-century international agreements regarding the rules of war were an outgrowth of this doctrine, based largely on the natural law analysis of the Dutch Scholastic Hugo Grotius. In fact, the work of Grotius is foundational to understanding both the Hague and Geneva Conventions.

Grotius identified four fundamental precepts of natural law, from which he developed his theory of international law. They were: (1) no person or body of persons, including the state, may legitimately initiate violence against another person or body of persons; (2) no person or body of persons may seize the property of another; (3) both persons and bodies of persons are bound by contracts or treaties that they might enter into; (4) no person or body of persons may commit a crime.

These libertarian postulates were extremely influential. Through practice and judicial development, nuances and adaptations were made in the rules of conduct. However, they were derived from Christian teachings that were meant to apply universally.

Critics of the bombing have made a strong moral case against the action. This is why the defenders of the bombing use strongly moralistic terms themselves. One of the results is possibly the most bizarre and obviously wrong.

Most veterans and defenders of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki claim that whatever the reasons for the bombing and its support, racism was not among them. This is simply not true. The U.S. War Department and related agencies that specialized in producing hate propaganda and lies developed specifically racialist attacks on the Japanese.

Propaganda films, shown to theaters across the country, whipped Americans into war hysteria with films attacking the Japanese with their “grinning yellow faces.” American movie audiences were encouraged to cheer as they watched images of the “upstart yellow dwarfs” meeting their timely ends. The government played on and encouraged prejudice and specifically racial animosity against the Japanese.To be fair, the Japanese held—and still hold—similar views of Americans, views not discouraged by their government.

The most revealing aspect of this latter point is not that racism was involved in drumming up the war spirit, but rather that the truth of the matter has been so thoroughly obscured.

Oddly enough, many apologists are conservatives, who should be the first to recognize that the essence of government is its monopoly on violence. This is a paramount consideration in their analysis of the role of the government in domestic affairs. Consistency demands that conservatives begin to apply their principles across the board—to foreign policy as well as domestic policy. The alternative is the road we now travel, and it leads to total war and the total state.


In the world of white western hegemony that we live in, who cares about a bunch of deep fried, nuked yellow monkeys eh?

[sandra]

i don't recall the name of the documentary i watched a long time ago, but i'm sure many of you have also seen it. it basically gives a detailed timeline of the events, and how the japanese government did surrender *before* the bombs were dropped. it was basically a lot of miscommunication on both sides.

[nola]

It was very racist indeed to "try out the bomb" on Asian people.

[Chu Chi]

Im about 9 or 10 atom bombs away from getting very upset.

CC

[tvbdude]

japan should nuke back US

[Banana]

There was some documented evidence about why the US dropped the two atomic bombs.

Long story short, they were dropped to test two different bombs and their effects on the landscape which is why the first bomb was on a town that's relatively flat whereas the other one was dropped on a mountainous area.

I fully believe that they were dropped, not because of the feel-good idea of saving American lives, but rather to test the new toy.

[hooligan]

I wrote a blog entry about this, the bombing was pretty much genocide. I mean, there were a lot of excuses of why it was necessary, but honestly, how can you some how justify the bombing of 2 civilian cities. Even if they were rich military targets, the people who built the bomb must have known about its collateral. Also, the amount of radiation that the bomb must have spewed caused years and years of cancer.

[asvenus]

well if you think about it, the only 'holocaust' racist or otherwise that is actually acknowledged is the jewish one..maybe its differnt when the victims kinda look like the ones in power eh!?

[hooligan]

well if you think about it, the only 'holocaust' racist or otherwise that is actually acknowledged is the jewish one..maybe its differnt when the victims kinda look like the ones in power eh!?

Get Israel out of Palestine!

[asvenus]

Get Israel out of Palestine!
are you being sarky??
i actually rather passionately believe they should get the fuck out of Palestine..

[deez nuts]

are you being sarky??
i actually rather passionately believe they should get the fuck out of Palestine..


not me. i personally support israel 100%.

[yoMAMA]

No offense to anyone, but I don't think Japan would have surrendered had the atomic bomb not dropped.

The emperor was ready to fight till the death, and the defenses of Okinawa and Iwo Jima [where almost every Japanese solider fought till the death] provided illustrations of the difficulties in conquering the Japan mainland.

It was estimated that to conquer the Japanese mainland, the U.S casualty alone would exceed one million.

So while the two dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tragic, World War II would have ended without them.

[Yeahman]

Wouldn't it have been possible to drop them on less populated areas with the same end result of unconditional surrender?

What I don't like is how many Japanese use the A-bomb as an excuse to make Imperial Japan look like the victim of the whole war. I had a high school teacher once who went to Japan for sabbatical. He went to a memorial dedicated to the victims of the A-bomb and a Japanese guy saw him (a white American) and said "Aren't you ashamed of your country?" My teacher replied "No and if we had more we should have dropped them too."

[nola]

There seems to be a misunderstanding between what everyone outside of Japan thinks happened and what Japanese think happened. My sister-in-law was born and raised in Tokyo, 34, and of course I never talk about this but young people seem to think it's a different era that doesn't concern them which is true. But I think the sticking point is denial like people and the jurors found Scott Peterson's denial infuriating.

[Arex]

Wouldn't it have been possible to drop them on less populated areas with the same end result of unconditional surrender?As Banana alluded to, I heard they wanted to drop them in the center of a city large enough to fully contain the blast so they could see how far and wide the damage would be. I think getting a surrender was only part of their motivation in dropping the bombs.

I had a high school teacher once who went to Japan for sabbatical. He went to a memorial dedicated to the victims of the A-bomb and a Japanese guy saw him (a white American) and said "Aren't you ashamed of your country?" My teacher replied "No and if we had more we should have dropped them too."With that kind of attitude, what the hell was that asshole doing in Japan and, more specifically, what was he doing at that memorial? That's even more distasteful than a Japanese tourist going to the Arizona and mouthing off about how it's too bad they weren't able to sink more ships and kill more servicemen. At least those were military targets.

Maybe I'm biased, seeing the world through yellow-tinted lenses, but I think our country should be ashamed for dropping the bombs on two populated civilian cities. We whine about the extensive loss of life due to 9/11, but 9/11 wasn't shit compared to the atomic bombs. We paint ourselves as victims even though, arguably, we are the ones that ultimately brought it upon ourselves. Granted, we were at "war" when we dropped those bombs. But what's to say the al Qaeda's perceived war against the U.S. today is less legitimate in their eyes than WWII was in ours? Either way, specifically targeting civilians with the goal of maximizing loss of life is simply unacceptable.

[Yeahman]

I would be pissed off too if some self-righteous prick asked me if I was ashamed of my country. I would never ask a Japanese person visting Pearl Harbor if he was ashamed of his country.

[nola]

I heard they wanted to drop them in the center of a city large enough to fully contain the blast so they could see how far and wide the damage would be. I think getting a surrender was only part of their motivation in dropping the bombs.God, that's racist. And the American hawkish attitude hasn't changed.

[golden_buns]

What makes you think that a self rightgeous govt. that supposedly stands for freedom, equality, democracy, and human rights is going to acknowledge that they committed a genocide just to test the effects of a bomb?

I think the US govt. is the biggest hyprocrit of all.

They're just full of shit

[deez nuts]

No offense to anyone, but I don't think Japan would have surrendered had the atomic bomb not dropped.

The emperor was ready to fight till the death, and the defenses of Okinawa and Iwo Jima [where almost every Japanese solider fought till the death] provided illustrations of the difficulties in conquering the Japan mainland.

It was estimated that to conquer the Japanese mainland, the U.S casualty alone would exceed one million.

So while the two dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tragic, World War II would have ended without them.


i agree. there was also the kamikaze pilots.

i believe dropping one bomb for retribution (i.e. pearl harbor and a matter of fucking up the other guy more than he fucked you up), an itchy trigger finger for a test run of their new weapon of mass destruction and basically to end the war with an unequivocal surrender by the enemy. dropping two, in my opinion, was just overkill and not necessary.

[Banana]

When my cousin visited other countries ini Europe and the Middle East to find out why there was such a huge hatred of the US, they all basically responded with the same answer.

"Extreme arrogance and disrespect." & "Do as we say, not do as we do." aka hypocrisy.

[Martino]

Atomic weapons, napalm, the flame thrower, mustard gas ... each generation developed weapons thought too awful to use, and then we went ahead and used them anyway. It's the military mind: you give them a weapon, and they'll use it.

It's a miracle that we scraped through the Cold War without incident. Here we had a period when two diametrically opposed (one might call 'white') civilisations promised each other Mutually Assured Destruction. Maybe it was the legacy of the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima that stopped what seems to be the inexorable march of 'progress' when using these "unthinkable" weapons.

I wish the three atomic bombs detonated in 1945 didn't exist. Who to blame for their use, for whatever reason? The American administration? The Japanese hawks for starting the Pacific War with America? The scientists who built the bomb just to see if they could do it? The Nazis for starting the race for the bomb?

Of course, now you have a War President who wants to develop a new generation of weapons that he can use "on the battlefield". Now that's deeply worrying. Battlefield nukes aren't going to be used in Europe, or the Mid East. Nor Africa. The only country I can think of where such a weapon might be optioned is in Asia ...

[hooligan]

I agree with you Martino, especially in grade school when everyone was taught not to use violence to settle our disagreements, we have these governments ready, willing and able to use WMDs against each other. I think it's strange that we're so willing to go to war when we've been taught not to use violence in the US.

[Arex]

^--- Yeah, whatever happened to the "golden rule?"

RX

[Craig]

I thought people in the USA were taught to be the biggest hypocrites possible ?

Whoops : Posting without seeing the other comments about American hypocrisy.

[nola]

Ward Churchill is very critical of US hypocrisy and arrogance. On the last page of the essay below which recently got him in hot water he said that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militaristically pointless which I think a couple members here have claimed. Anyways I think alot of us here can relate to his criticisms:

http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/mn/sept112001/somepeoplepushback.html

[Martino]

I thought people in the USA were taught to be the biggest hypocrites possible ?

Whoops : Posting without seeing the other comments about American hypocrisy.

Strike American. Call it Western hypocracy. We Europeans have been doing it before there was a USA.

[yoMAMA]

Strike American. Call it Western hypocracy. We Europeans have been doing it before there was a USA.

amen!

the curse of evil whiteman.

[hooligan]

Strike American. Call it Western hypocracy. We Europeans have been doing it before there was a USA.

You better stop now before you're branded as unpatriotic by Fox News. I was being sarcastic. : )

[yoMAMA]

You better stop now before you're branded as unpatriotic by Fox News. I was being sarcastic. : )

we all know that Martino hates freedom.

:wink:

I heard that the original target for the atomic bomb was actually Kyoto, but someone in the U.S army apparently knows the value of ancient artifacts and Kyoto therefore was not touched by U.S firepower during WW2.

[nola]

Churchill says it's been Christian West (emblematized now by the US) vs. Islamic East for 1,000 years:



Meet the "Terrorists"

Of the men who came, there are a few things demanding to be said in the face of the unending torrent of disinformational drivel unleashed by George Junior and the corporate "news" media immediately following their successful operation on September 11.

They did not, for starters, "initiate" a war with the United States, much less commit "the first acts of war of the new millennium."

A good case could be made that the war in which they were combatants has been waged more-or-less continuously by the "Christian West" -- now proudly emblematized by the United States -- against the "Islamic East" since the time of the First Crusade, about 1,000 years ago. More recently, one could argue that the war began when Lyndon Johnson first lent significant support to Israel's dispossession/displacement of Palestinians during the 1960s, or when George the Elder ordered "Desert Shield" in 1990, or at any of several points in between. Any way you slice it, however, if what the combat teams did to the WTC and the Pentagon can be understood as acts of war -- and they can -- then the same is true of every U.S. "overflight' of Iraqi territory since day one.




The essay was called "Some People Push Back":


"You've got to learn, " the line went, "that when you push people around, some people push back."

As they should.

As they must.

And as they undoubtedly will.

There is justice in such symmetry.


ADDENDUM

The preceding was a "first take" reading, more a stream-of-consciousness interpretive reaction to the September 11 counter-attack than a finished piece on the topic. Hence, I'll readily admit that I've been far less than thorough, and quite likely wrong about a number of things.

For instance, it may not have been (only) the ghosts of Iraqi children who made their appearance that day. It could as easily have been some or all of their butchered Palestinian cousins.

Or maybe it was some or all of the at least 3.2 million Indochinese who perished as a result of America's sustained and genocidal assault on Southeast Asia (1959-1975), not to mention the millions more who've died because of the sanctions imposed thereafter.

Perhaps there were a few of the Korean civilians massacred by U.S. troops at places like No Gun Ri during the early ‘50s, or the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians ruthlessly incinerated in the ghastly fire raids of World War II (only at Dresden did America bomb Germany in a similar manner).

And, of course, it could have been those vaporized in the militarily pointless nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There are others, as well, a vast and silent queue of faceless victims, stretching from the million- odd Filipinos slaughtered during America's "Indian War" in their islands at the beginning of the twentieth century, through the real Indians, America's own, massacred wholesale at places like Horseshoe Bend and the Bad Axe, Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, the Washita, Bear River, and the Marias.

Was it those who expired along the Cherokee Trial of Tears of the Long Walk of the Navajo?

Those murdered by smallpox at Fort Clark in 1836?

Starved to death in the concentration camp at Bosque Redondo during the 1860s?

Maybe those native people claimed for scalp bounty in all 48 of the continental U.S. states? Or the Raritans whose severed heads were kicked for sport along the streets of what was then called New Amsterdam, at the very site where the WTC once stood?

One hears, too, the whispers of those lost on the Middle Passage, and of those whose very flesh was sold in the slave market outside the human kennel from whence Wall Street takes its name. And of coolie laborers, imported by the gross-dozen to lay the tracks of empire across scorching desert sands, none of them allotted "a Chinaman's chance" of surviving.

The list is too long, too awful to go on.

No matter what its eventual fate, America will have gotten off very, very cheap.

The full measure of its guilt can never be fully balanced or atoned for.

[Martino]

amen!

the curse of evil whiteman.

And women. Don't forget the evil whitewomen.

[yoMAMA]

And women. Don't forget the evil whitewomen.

haha.

[nola]

God I hope yuuteya didn't leave. Don't leave yuuteya!

haha.Evile!

[hooligan]

God I hope yuuteya didn't leave. Don't leave yuuteya!

Evile!

I think that essay by Churchill (barring any criticism of the man personally) is a good way to illustrate how the acts of an empire are really connected. How particular wars that the US does fight come at the expense of people of color. I'm wondering why haven't we 'invaded' Europe? How during the Cold War, it was a fight between two relatively "white" super powers, yet the proxy wars that happened happened in countries where the majority of the people there were not-white. If anything, this pattern is disturbing.

[nola]

We're just collateral damage.

Easterners are just so different to them.

[yoMAMA]

I'm wondering why haven't we 'invaded' Europe?

because during the cold war, the russian have enough nukes to wipe out the whole planet earth for many times. not to mention the massive tank divisions stationed in eastern europe to make an invasion impossible.

We're just collateral damage.

Easterners are just so different to them.

the correct term is, orientals.

;)

[BeTheReds]

I think the atomic bomb was totally unnecessary, to extract a surrender.

I think the reasons for the bomb are:
To test it in a populated area for research purposes.
To show off our atomic muscles to the Soviets.
To get revenge for the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor.

While I'll agree that there were many racists in the military, I can't agree that the motivations behind the decision to drop the atomic bombs were racist. They would have been used on Germany had the Germans lasted that long, and they would have been used on the Soviets in the 1960's. Simply because the enemy they were used on wasn't white does not make America racist for using them.

[hooligan]

While I'll agree that there were many racists in the military, I can't agree that the motivations behind the decision to drop the atomic bombs were racist. They would have been used on Germany had the Germans lasted that long, and they would have been used on the Soviets in the 1960's. Simply because the enemy they were used on wasn't white does not make America racist for using them.

Historically, Asians were the only ones to be bombed, I'd consider that alone enough to surmise that the US military is more willing to bomb people of color than ... well ... not people of color?

[draconisz]

Is it true that the bomb was available before Germany's surrender?

"snip"

We now have two great plants and many lesser works devoted to the production of atomic power. Employment during peak construction numbered 125,000 and over 65,000 individuals are even now engaged in operating the plants. Many have worked there for two and a half years. Few know what they have been producing. They see great quantities of material going in and they see nothing coming out of these plants, for the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. We have spent $2 billion on the greatest scientific gamble in history--and won

But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has been the capacity of industry to design, and of labor to operate, the machines and methods to do things never done before so that the brainchild of many minds came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do. Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under high pressure and without failure

We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.

"snip"

http://www.classbrain.com/artteenst/publish/article_99.shtml

[Arex]

While I'll agree that there were many racists in the military, I can't agree that the motivations behind the decision to drop the atomic bombs were racist. They would have been used on Germany had the Germans lasted that long, and they would have been used on the Soviets in the 1960's. Simply because the enemy they were used on wasn't white does not make America racist for using them.Let's not forget that this is the same government that thought it necessary to relocate and confiscate the property of more than 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans for no other reason than the fact that they were Japanese. No racism in the fact Germans and Italians were allowed to roam the country freely absent any individualized suspicion.

I imagine if Germany were still in the war when the bomb was finally ready for deployment, the first bombs would still have been dropped on Japan to give the Germans an opportunity to surrender before they were nuked.

RX

[BeTheReds]

Historically, Asians were the only ones to be bombed, I'd consider that alone enough to surmise that the US military is more willing to bomb people of color than ... well ... not people of color?


You basically ignored everything I said. Yes, the Japanese were the only ones to be nuked in history. But that's because when the bomb was ready the Germans and Italians had already surrendered.

Thankfully since WW2 we have not been in any other wars where nuclear weapons have been used.

That fact alone is not enough to suggest that the USA was racist for using the atomic bomb.

If you're talking about bombs in general, then I'd have to remind you that we've bombed plenty of White people. In WW2 far more American bombs fell on Europe than on Japan. We bombed the Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo etc etc region during the '90s, an area full of white people too.

During the cold war we never engaged a white enemy, but if we had, they'd have been bombed too. Why we didn't engage a white enemy... it's not because of racism, but because of the two strong alliences in Europe, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. There were no such alliances in Asia preventing war at the time of the Korean war, nor during the Vietnam war. Simply because the color of the people we have bombed is non-white does not mean America is racist for bombing them.

Let's not forget that this is the same government that thought it necessary to relocate and confiscate the property of more than 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans for no other reason than the fact that they were Japanese. No racism in the fact Germans and Italians were allowed to roam the country freely absent any individualized suspicion.

It makes sense that Japanese citizens be detained. Whenever two countries are at war it's standard practice to detain the enemy's citizens within your borders. German and Italian citizens were also detained.

Detaining American Citizens with no just cause however is terrible and I will never support what our government did. I admit that the government was racist to detain Japanese-Americans but not detain German or Italian Americans.

That's a totally different issue from dropping the atomic bomb however.

I imagine if Germany were still in the war when the bomb was finally ready for deployment, the first bombs would still have been dropped on Japan to give the Germans an opportunity to surrender before they were nuked.


Well we'll never know one way or the other, but we certainly would have threatened to use them on Germany if they did not surrender. We were racing against the Germans to finish the bomb, and whichever side finished first would have won the war. A simple detonation to prove we had it would probably have been enough to scare Germany into surrender.

Japan glorified death in battle and was hastily training women old people and children in anticipation of the coming invasion. While I disagree with its use, I can certainly understand the mentality of people who justify that the atomic bombing was necessary to draw surrender from Japan...

[hooligan]

You basically ignored everything I said. Yes, the Japanese were the only ones to be nuked in history. But that's because when the bomb was ready the Germans and Italians had already surrendered.

Thankfully since WW2 we have not been in any other wars where nuclear weapons have been used.

That fact alone is not enough to suggest that the USA was racist for using the atomic bomb.

If you're talking about bombs in general, then I'd have to remind you that we've bombed plenty of White people. In WW2 far more American bombs fell on Europe than on Japan. We bombed the Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo etc etc region during the '90s, an area full of white people too.

During the cold war we never engaged a white enemy, but if we had, they'd have been bombed too. Why we didn't engage a white enemy... it's not because of racism, but because of the two strong alliences in Europe, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. There were no such alliances in Asia preventing war at the time of the Korean war, nor during the Vietnam war. Simply because the color of the people we have bombed is non-white does not mean America is racist for bombing them.

I buy the WW2 argument, but during the Cold War the US did engage plenty of non-white enemies. For example, plenty of South American countries had CIA which infiltrated and fucked with their governments, how about Vietnam where the US used defoilants which contributed to cancers and deaths of civilians, and the Middle East where US interests helped with the establishment of the Iranian government as well as set the world stage with our current situation with Iraq and its occupation. While the US did not fight its "white" counterpart, it did in fact, wage proxy wars all over the world in the impoverished and "colored" third world.

I think you forgot that citizns of Japan were detained, but the US detained their own citizens as well. Japanese Americans, unless, they're not the same kinds of citizens as Italian Americans and German Americans. Oh wait, they weren't, that's why Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps.

Japan glorified death in battle and was hastily training women old people and children in anticipation of the coming invasion. While I disagree with its use, I can certainly understand the mentality of people who justify that the atomic bombing was necessary to draw surrender from Japan...

probably the same fevor that's got people voting for bush, perhaps?

[Arex]

Detaining American Citizens with no just cause however is terrible and I will never support what our government did. I admit that the government was racist to detain Japanese-Americans but not detain German or Italian Americans.

That's a totally different issue from dropping the atomic bomb however.So you acknowledge that the government was racist for interning Japanese American citizens but not German and Italian American citizens, but don't think that racist attitude may have crept into the decision to use the bomb against Japanese civilian centers, twice?

I'll admit the mere dropping of the bombs on Japan alone is not enough to show the government acted out of racism, but I'm not going to be so naive to think that an administration that demonstrated its capacity for racism against its own citizens could not have been motivated, in some small way, by racism.

Well we'll never know one way or the other, but we certainly would have threatened to use them on Germany if they did not surrender. We were racing against the Germans to finish the bomb, and whichever side finished first would have won the war. A simple detonation to prove we had it would probably have been enough to scare Germany into surrender.A simple detonation in a less heavily populated area would probably have done the trick with Japan as well. Unfortunately, we'll never know.

[BeTheReds]

I buy the WW2 argument, but during the Cold War the US did engage plenty of non-white enemies.
That's what I said! You again didn't read my post. We didn't engage European enemies during the cold war because doing so would have started World War III because of the Alliances. That fact that during the cold war all of the enemies we did engage weren't white isn't enough to suggest America is racist for engaging them. Next time read what I write before you try to disagree with me.


For example, plenty of South American countries had CIA which infiltrated and fucked with their governments, how about Vietnam where the US used defoilants which contributed to cancers and deaths of civilians, and the Middle East where US interests helped with the establishment of the Iranian government as well as set the world stage with our current situation with Iraq and its occupation. While the US did not fight its "white" counterpart, it did in fact, wage proxy wars all over the world in the impoverished and "colored" third world.

Bombing the Soviet Union (or China) would have resulted in WWIII. The fact that the areas we did have skirmishes and conflicts were full of non-whites doesn't prove america is racist. It proves that the politcal climate protected small countries in Europe but left most small countries in the rest of the world vulnerable.


I think you forgot that citizns of Japan were detained, but the US detained their own citizens as well. Japanese Americans, unless, they're not the same kinds of citizens as Italian Americans and German Americans. Oh wait, they weren't, that's why Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps.
No, I didn't forget anything. You simply didn't read my post again.



probably the same fevor that's got people voting for bush, perhaps?

HUH?

[hooligan]

That's what I said! You again didn't read my post. We didn't engage European enemies during the cold war because doing so would have started World War III because of the Alliances. That fact that during the cold war all of the enemies we did engage weren't white isn't enough to suggest America is racist for engaging them. Next time read what I write before you try to disagree with me.

Bombing the Soviet Union (or China) would have resulted in WWIII. The fact that the areas we did have skirmishes and conflicts were full of non-whites doesn't prove america is racist. It proves that the politcal climate protected small countries in Europe but left most small countries in the rest of the world vulnerable.


No, I didn't forget anything. You simply didn't read my post again.




HUH?

Ah, yeah. I must have posted before I refreshed your post. You're right, but I'm drawing connections between the acts of the military in the US and also within those facts. Unfortunately, if you choose not to draw those connections I guess that's your opinion and I have mine.

[BeTheReds]

So you acknowledge that the government was racist for interning Japanese American citizens but not German and Italian American citizens, but don't think that racist attitude may have crept into the decision to use the bomb against Japanese civilian centers, twice?

It certainly may have. I'm not denying that. However simply stating that the US is racist for using the Bomb against a nonwhite enemy, and that alone is wrong.

I think more of the decision to use it twice on civilian centers was to flex our muscles to the soviet union and to observe the destructive power of the bomb. Others rationalize that it was necessary to draw a surrender (which I disagree with, but understand), and still others say it was justified because of the atrocities that Japan committed all over Asia (which I heavily disagree with, but somewhat understand).



I'll admit the mere dropping of the bombs on Japan alone is not enough to show the government acted out of racism,
so you agree with me


but I'm not going to be so naive to think that an administration that demonstrated its capacity for racism against its own citizens could not have been motivated, in some small way, by racism.

I agree with you. Some in the government possibly could have been motivated by that. But I think the fact that we were at war with Japan had more to do with the decision to drop the bombs on them, rather than the fact that they weren't white.

[hooligan]

It's simply kind of generalized to say that there wasn't a racial factor in the decisions that led to the atomic bombing of Japan. Based on war time propaganda and the internment, I'd err on the side of race being a factor in the bombing and subsequently the Cold War that ensued. You can't divorce the actions of the military at home and abroad.

[BeTheReds]

Ah, yeah. I must have posted before I refreshed your post. You're right, but I'm drawing connections between the acts of the military in the US and also within those facts.
HUH? What facts? Connections to what? What did the Military do in the US.... it seems to me you're angry about what they did outside the US.

IS the connection you're drawing that the USA is racist for taking care of its non-allied enemies but fearing its allied ones for risk of WW3?


Unfortunately, if you choose not to draw those connections I guess that's your opinion and I have mine.

I still don't understand what you're talking about. Connections between what and what?

If you're talking about connections between engaged enemy skin color and racism, I'll have to point out that we didn't invade China when they were considered the enemy. Why? Obviously it's not because they were white. It's because they were strong, allied with the soviets, and to attack them directly would have started WW3.

Thus the connection you're trying to make, that the US only picks on non-white enemies leaving the white ones in peace is false.

We've bombed some white enemies, and we've left some nonwhite enemies alone.

It has more to do with the relative power of the enemy and what we'd have to lose or gain by bombing them.

It's simply kind of generalized to say that there wasn't a racial factor in the decisions that led to the atomic bombing of Japan. Based on war time propaganda and the internment
I've never said that. I said that it is possible that race was a factor but there were other more important reasons as to why the bomb was used.

I'd err on the side of race being a factor in the bombing and subsequently the Cold War that ensued. The Soviets were mostly White!


You can't divorce the actions of the military at home and abroad.

Huh?

[hooligan]

HUH? What facts? Connections to what? What did the Military do in the US.... it seems to me you're angry about what they did outside the US.

IS the connection you're drawing that the USA is racist for taking care of its non-allied enemies but fearing its allied ones for risk of WW3?




I still don't understand what you're talking about. Connections between what and what?

If you're talking about connections between engaged enemy skin color and racism, I'll have to point out that we didn't invade China when they were considered the enemy. Why? Obviously it's not because they were white. It's because they were strong, allied with the soviets, and to attack them directly would have started WW3.

Thus the connection you're trying to make, that the US only picks on non-white enemies leaving the white ones in peace is false.

We've bombed white people, and we've left nonwhites alone.

Well, for starters, I was pointing out that during the Cold War the US did engage a non-white enemy across the globe. A point that you don't really acknowledge, basically, not engaging or attacking those nations that were stronger was pretty much saying that the lives and countries of people in the third world at the time weren't worth the lives of others who were, as you put it better armed and protected. It was much easier for the dominant superpowers of the world, white ones, to be fighting in the third world at the time because people, resources and wars were cheaper there. I'm pointing out that throughout the Cold War and even into this era, people of color have been at the receiving end of many military engagements. While we had surgical bombings in places like Kosovo and Serbia, there was a full on land war in Iraq.

By the way, I agree with your assessment politically, but I'm talking about what's happening realistically. I guess we're arguing on two different planes.

[BeTheReds]

Well, for starters, I was pointing out that during the Cold War the US did engage a non-white enemy across the globe. A point that you don't really acknowledge,

ACTUALLY I DID FUCKING ACKNOWLEDGE THAT!!! READ MY POST AND THE LAST POST WHERE I TOLD YOU TO READ MY POST! SHIT I'LL EVEN FUCKING QUOTE MYSELF FOR YOU SO YOU CAN KNOW THAT I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT ALL OF THE ENEMIES WE ENGAGED DURING THE COLD WAR WERE NOT WHITE!

During the cold war we never engaged a white enemy, but if we had, they'd have been bombed too. Why we didn't engage a white enemy... it's not because of racism, but because of the two strong alliences in Europe, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. There were no such alliances in Asia preventing war at the time of the Korean war, nor during the Vietnam war. Simply because the color of the people we have bombed is non-white does not mean America is racist for bombing them.


basically, not engaging or attacking those nations that were stronger was pretty much saying that the lives and countries of people in the third world at the time weren't worth the lives of others who were, as you put it better armed and protected.
No, it's simply saying that it would have been more difficult to be victorious were we to engage a superpower or its direct allies, and could possibly start WW3. The USA, would have had a lot more to lose by invading East Germany in the '60s as opposed to invading North Vietnam. The Soviets in turn would have had a lot more to lose by trying to take West Germany than they would by invading Afganistan. It isn't a matter of what color the skin of the enemy is, it's more about the relative power of the nation you're invading and its allies.


It was much easier for the dominant superpowers of the world, white ones,
Like China?

to be fighting in the third world at the time because people, resources and wars were cheaper there. I'm pointing out that throughout the Cold War and even into this era, people of color have been at the receiving end of many military engagements.
You're right, they have, but is that because the USA is racist? Or is it because it was simply easier to exercize American foreign policy there without bumping heads with the Russians or Chinese (who by the way, still aren't white)?


While we had surgical bombings in places like Kosovo and Serbia, there was a full on land war in Iraq.

Kosovo and Iraq were two different situations. Milosevic agreed to NATO's terms after the bombing, thus there was no need for a ground war.

In Desert Storm, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and wouldn't leave after the threat of war. After being bombed, they still didn't pull out (may Iraqis surrendered becasue even they didn't agree with the war...)

In Iraqi Freedom (A war that I totally disagree with), the US laid down an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that he didn't agree to. Since he didn't agree, a "full on land war" was necessary.

[hooligan]

HAHAH, i'm sorry i missed it. I just felt like reiterating the point some more. China wasn't even considered a world player back then.

Also, South America and the US policies concerning those countries as well as the Middle East.

[yoMAMA]

the U.S government was without a doubt racist when it interned her own citizens during ww2 [Japanese American internment camps], and that was widely acknowleged now as one of the darkest chapters of American history.

however I don't think race is the sole consideration when the U.S engaged the cold war with another "white superpower", the soviet union. The U.S, like all bullies, has a tendency to pick on the weak and make peace with the strong, and most of the thirld world non white nations were weak back then [and still now, it can be argued], but then after WW2 most of the third world was still trying to pull itself out of the western [mostly european] colonial legacy and realign the "whiteman's world" with the capitalist/communist camp, so to speak.

And of course, the U.S did a lot of very dispicable acts during the cold war, such as helping the Belgians killing Congo and African independence hero Lumba, overthrow democratically elected president SalvadorAllende in Chile and installing the junta general Pinochet, and financing/trainning the right wing paramilitary known as Contra in Nicaraga and all over south america.

[BeTheReds]

China wasn't even considered a world player back then.

If that were true than what was stopping us from an all out invasion of the PRC? Why did we instead feebly support Taiwan, rather than being hawkish and fighting to restore ROC to its rightful place as the ruler of all China? It's cuz we feared the PRC.


Also, South America and the US policies concerning those countries as well as the Middle East.

Which superpower were those countries allied with?

Example:
We didn't support a long term invasion of Cuba (though we did support a small invasion, I admit). and have only been able to muster up a feeble blocade. It's because Cuba was a soviet ally. It would have been easy to simply invade and overthrow Castro had he not been a soviet ally.

Contrast this with Panama...
Manuel Noriega wasn't allied with the Soviets or any other Country we feared, and he wasn't playing ball with the US.

Again, I've shown that it's about alliances, not about skin color.

[nola]

The US may not be choosing to drop bombs on non-whites but there is still only the example of Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo. We bombed Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo in the 90s? If we did I've forgotten.

[yoMAMA]

The US may not be choosing to drop bombs on non-whites but there is still only the example of Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo. We bombed Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo in the 90s? If we did I've forgotten.

yep, we aligned with the Muslims in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia [who are also white, as well].

we bombed the shit out of Serbia and pissed off Russia [who considered Serbia to be her slavic kin].

we also bombed the Chinese embassy, a non white power.

[YuheiCarreau]

I think that it can be said definitively that racism played a role in the US dropping atomic bombs on Japan, because at that time literally all interactions between Americans and Japanese were affected by racism (on both sides). Each group made ridiculous generalizations about the other, and used arbitrary ideas of their own racial superiority to justify mistreating the other - for example, interning ALL Japanese Americans because a few might be spies (I guess they had to lock 'em all up because they wouldn't be able to tell a disloyal Jap apart from a regular dirty Jap?).

To what extent that racism dominated the decision to drop the bomb is probably only known to a handful of generals and Harry Truman, because unlike the decision to enter the war with Germany, the decision to drop the bomb was not voted on by congress or any other body representing all the people in the US. Really the responsibility rests in their hands, and their hands alone.

[yoMAMA]

for example, interning ALL Japanese Americans because a few might be spies (I guess they had to lock 'em all up because they wouldn't be able to tell a disloyal Jap apart from a regular dirty Jap?).



actually from what i read in history books, there was not a single japanese american interned that turned out to be japanese spies.

there was a couple german americans that turned out to be nazi spies, however.

I think that it can be said definitively that racism played a role in the US dropping atomic bombs on Japan, because at that time literally all interactions between Americans and Japanese were affected by racism (on both sides). Each group made ridiculous generalizations about the other, and used arbitrary ideas of their own racial superiority to justify mistreating the other - for example, interning ALL Japanese Americans because a few might be spies (I guess they had to lock 'em all up because they wouldn't be able to tell a disloyal Jap apart from a regular dirty Jap?).

To what extent that racism dominated the decision to drop the bomb is probably only known to a handful of generals and Harry Truman, because unlike the decision to enter the war with Germany, the decision to drop the bomb was not voted on by congress or any other body representing all the people in the US. Really the responsibility rests in their hands, and their hands alone.

the japanese were racially caracturized as the "fanatic japs", where as the germans were only demonized for following hitler, the madman.

a race vs one madman.

[nola]

yep, we aligned with the Muslims in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia [who are also white, as well].

we bombed the shit out of Serbia and pissed off Russia [who considered Serbia to be her slavic kin].Whoops i only remember Bosnians and Serbians killing each other.

[Martino]

Whoops i only remember Bosnians and Serbians killing each other.

Maybe your local news network didn't cover the war in former Jugoslavia?


:wink:

[hooligan]

Maybe your local news network didn't cover the war in former Jugoslavia?


:wink:

Actually, I remember the Bosnians and Serbians, but I thought that happened in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia?

[Chu Chi]

There is a book called "War Without Mercy" by John Dower which reveals the racial aspects of WW2 policy against the Japanese. Not only does he have the racist quotes by the leading White men of the day (Stimson, Dulles, Macarthur...) but he goes into great detail regarding Japanese attempts to promote "Japanese supremacy" under cover of "Yellow supremacy".

Its interesting to read what White people would say out loud back then.

An excellent book.

CC

[hooligan]

Here's a fact that people may or may not know, but during the Sino-Japanese war that preceded WWII. There were known atrocities committed by the Japanese military on Chinese civilians. While, there were plent of immigrants who fled to America from Europe, Anti-Asian Immigration laws were still in place during this era. Chinese who wanted to flee to America couldn't due to these laws. Ironically, their counterparts from Europe were welcomed here by the same laws that kept the Chinese out.

During WWII when China became an "ally" of the US, the US decides to change these laws and guess what, they let a whopping number of 500 Chinese come into America per year. All the while many Chinese civilians died under the Japanese military. If this is any indication of the racist attitude that the US embodied, the immigration record makes it perfectly clear.

[Craig]

Here's a fact that people may or may not know, but during the Sino-Japanese war that preceded WWII. There were known atrocities committed by the Japanese military on Chinese civilians. While, there were plent of immigrants who fled to America from Europe, Anti-Asian Immigration laws were still in place during this era. Chinese who wanted to flee to America couldn't due to these laws. Ironically, their counterparts from Europe were welcomed here by the same laws that kept the Chinese out.

During WWII when China became an "ally" of the US, the US decides to change these laws and guess what, they let a whopping number of 500 Chinese come into America per year. All the while many Chinese civilians died under the Japanese military. If this is any indication of the racist attitude that the US embodied, the immigration record makes it perfectly clear.I think your information is overly generous to the USA. For some reason I thought the quota was at 150, not 500.

[hooligan]

I think your information is overly generous to the USA. For some reason I thought the quota was at 150, not 500.

Ah, I knew there was a 5 and a 0, but I didn't know which order. I thoguht there might have been a 1. Thanks for correcting me.

[kuilong]

Was the firebombing of Dresden also racist?

[yoMAMA]

Was the firebombing of Dresden also racist?

no because the germans are white.

[kuilong]

no because the germans are white.

Ah, I see. So the Holocaust wasn't racist, either.

Honestly, while well-meaning people can justify the bombing of Japan, I don't see how the bombing of Dresden is justifiable at all. And it ought to cast doubt on the idea that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was conducted out of racist motives, seeing as they did worse to Germany.

[hooligan]

Was the firebombing of Dresden also racist?

No, but there are acts of war that certainly were. There are government policies that favor one group of people over another, even though things aren't outrightly racist doesn't exclude that decisions or acts were made with racist intent.

Ah, I see. So the Holocaust wasn't racist, either.

Honestly, while well-meaning people can justify the bombing of Japan, I don't see how the bombing of Dresden is justifiable at all. And it ought to cast doubt on the idea that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was conducted out of racist motives, seeing as they did worse to Germany.

Again, it isn't about comparing one act of war to another, but seeing the pattern that happens when war affects people of color.

[yoMAMA]

Ah, I see. So the Holocaust wasn't racist, either.

Honestly, while well-meaning people can justify the bombing of Japan, I don't see how the bombing of Dresden is justifiable at all. And it ought to cast doubt on the idea that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was conducted out of racist motives, seeing as they did worse to Germany.

I think it would be hard to argue that they did "worse" to Germany.

Both Germany and Japan were bombed to pieces, also don't forget that Tokyo was firebombed as well.

In regards to the Holocaust, it was racist because the Nazis believed the Jews to be a seperate race.

Also, the victims of holocaust also included the gypsys, gays, disabled and other eastern europeans.

[hooligan]

I think it would be hard to argue that they did "worse" to Germany.

Both Germany and Japan were bombed to pieces, also don't forget that Tokyo was firebombed as well.

In regards to the Holocaust, it was racist because the Nazis believed the Jews to be a seperate race.

Also, the victims of holocaust also included the gypsys, gays, disabled and other eastern europeans.

I guess what Kuilong's getting at is that both Jews and Germans would qualify as under the "white" umbrella in the US society. I guess putting you're putting it into a more historic context, it would be considered racist as well.

[yoMAMA]

Here's a fact that people may or may not know, but during the Sino-Japanese war that preceded WWII. There were known atrocities committed by the Japanese military on Chinese civilians. While, there were plent of immigrants who fled to America from Europe, Anti-Asian Immigration laws were still in place during this era. Chinese who wanted to flee to America couldn't due to these laws. Ironically, their counterparts from Europe were welcomed here by the same laws that kept the Chinese out.

During WWII when China became an "ally" of the US, the US decides to change these laws and guess what, they let a whopping number of 500 Chinese come into America per year. All the while many Chinese civilians died under the Japanese military. If this is any indication of the racist attitude that the US embodied, the immigration record makes it perfectly clear.

The U.S society has always been deeply suspicious and uncomfortable with asian immigrations, even today.

[Chu Chi]

I guess what Kuilong's getting at is that both Jews and Germans would qualify as under the "white" umbrella in the US society.

True,

until you and I leave the room.

CC

[BeTheReds]

The more racist approach would have been to nuke Kyoto, as was originally planned. Seeing the cultural significance of Kyoto however, they decided to nuke a different city. If you're a racist, why would you give a fuck about cultural significance of the target city?

[Jung Rhee]

The more racist approach would have been to nuke Kyoto, as was originally planned. Seeing the cultural significance of Kyoto however, they decided to nuke a different city. If you're a racist, why would you give a fuck about cultural significance of the target city?


Good point be the reds. While I don't think the nukes were racist, I think the general US military attitudes towards Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese are racist. The "yellow menace", part of it was based on fear, part of it was due to the Western view of the non-Christianity in our traditions. I was a Tom Clancy fan until his novel became too racist against the Japanese and Chinese. It was a big turnoff.

[asvenus]

No, but there are acts of war that certainly were. There are government policies that favor one group of people over another, even though things aren't outrightly racist doesn't exclude that decisions or acts were made with racist intent.



Again, it isn't about comparing one act of war to another, but seeing the pattern that happens when war affects people of color.
exactly...why does it always have to turn into a 'comparison' of atrocities??

yomama..black people were also victims of the Nazi holocaust..an often forgotten fact..

[yoMAMA]

exactly...why does it always have to turn into a 'comparison' of atrocities??

yomama..black people were also victims of the Nazi holocaust..an often forgotten fact..

can you elaborate more on this?

because i thought most nazi atrocities were commited in europe, against "white people", and there weren't alot of "black people" in europe.

It's well known that hitler refused to shake hands with black american Jesse Owens when he shattered the "Aryan supremacy" at the berlin olympics.

[asvenus]

most people think europe was devoid of blacks until like th 60's because we only associate movement when it comes to people of the african diaspora as dictated by slavery etc...in fact there was a sizeable population of blacks in the UK alone since the early 1800s...in fact there is evidence to suggest even earlier...
i'll try to dig up the title of this book i read about the rarely mentioned victims of the nazi holocaust if youre interested though...

[nonamerasian]

can you elaborate more on this?

because i thought most nazi atrocities were commited in europe, against "white people", and there weren't alot of "black people" in europe.

It's well known that hitler refused to shake hands with black american Jesse Owens when he shattered the "Aryan supremacy" at the berlin olympics.

There were Blacks in the camps.

There is one famous one who I don't remember the name of, but she was a popular and multi-talented African-American musician.

After she was released from the camps and told people in the US of what the Nazis did to her, but she wasn't believed. She broke into a depression and was always sickly.

Her career was dead and she died not too long afterwards. Probably the reason why I've never heard of her, although she was supposedly one of the greatest of her time.

(Google is being of no help. Does anyone know of her? I know there is a short documentary on her somewhere.)

For years many American Blacks were going to Europe because Blacks were treated as humans or less subhuman in places like France. Mostly because Black entertainment was gaining popularity. The music was a little popular in parts of Germany, as well. Pre-war.

It wasn't unheard of for Blacks to move their careers to Europe.

Although I think something like six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, either six or three million other "nondesirables" were killed, too.

[yoMAMA]

ok, i don't know about the truth of this, but i heard there were even some chinese living in germany during the Nazi era, and none of them were ill treated by the nazis for some reason.

[asvenus]

chinese were present in europe around those times for sure...i doubt they would have been spared by the nazis though...
chinese people were treated quite badly treated in europe pre and post WW2

[nonamerasian]

I doubt they were sparred, too. Because of the racial laws implemented.

The laws is what got the Blacks, other immigrant communities, and non-Aryans settled in Germany into trouble during the Holocaust.

I still can't find the name of that African-American entertainer, but here's (http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,677053,00.html) a link briefly mentioning what happened to Blacks in Germany.

[Martino]

ok, i don't know about the truth of this, but i heard there were even some chinese living in germany during the Nazi era, and none of them were ill treated by the nazis for some reason.

I'd be surprised if there wasn't Chinese living in Germany, even excluding diplomatic staff. We're talking Europe of the 1930s and 1940s, not the Middle Ages.

[sandra]

back on topic, please.

[Martino]

Actually, I remember the Bosnians and Serbians, but I thought that happened in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia?

I don't understand your question.

[hooligan]

I don't understand your question.

My knowledge about the Kosovo bombings are a little hazy. The Bosnians and Serbs were fighting each other? This all occurred in the former Yugoslavia?

[yoMAMA]

My knowledge about the Kosovo bombings are a little hazy. The Bosnians and Serbs were fighting each other? This all occurred in the former Yugoslavia?

Basically, it was like this:

There were three big ethnic groups, the Serbs [who are slavic and orthodox christians], the Croats [catholics], and Muslims [who are slavic too but converted to Islam when the area was part of the Ottoman Empire].

When Yugoslavia was ruled by the strongman Tito [who's a Croat], all three groups got along fine. However after the collapse of communism, the other two groups [croats and muslims] wanted their own country, and declared independence from Yugoslavia [dominated by Serbs].

The president of Yugoslavia, Milosovic, didn't like it, and send troops to Bosnia [which declared independence] to crack it down. And there were many war crime allegations of what's going on in Bosnia, including concentration camps, shooting childrens, mass graves....etc.

sorry if this is OT.

[Martino]

My knowledge about the Kosovo bombings are a little hazy. The Bosnians and Serbs were fighting each other? This all occurred in the former Yugoslavia?

Oh. Here's a potted history: Serbia and Montenegro profile (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1039269.stm) and Bosnia profile (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1066886.stm)

250,000 died during ethnic white-on-white violence. A racist war. I think it was during this conflict that the term ethnic cleansing was coined.

[yoMAMA]

poll: most younger americans disaprove the use of atomic bombs on Japan (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=11&u=/ap/20050330/ap_on_re_us/nuclear_fears)

[haplesshobo]

Our use of atomic bombs against Japan was a terrible tragedy, and i wish nobody died at Hiroshima and Nagaskai. Just, like what i wish nobody had died at Nangking, Pearl Harbor, etc.. and that those were terrible tragedies as well.

But, this essay dishonors those tragediess with its base lies and historical revisionism in order to smear the US. The basic facts and assumptions it uses to reach its conclusion are compromised and simply wrong.

They're arguing that we would have never used the atomic bomb against Germany is true only in the sense that Germany had already been defeated at that point.
The Manhattan Project was launched with the Germans in mind, in part because refugee German scientists told US officials that the Nazis were working on the same thing. We focused and dedicated so many resources to the project that we were able to accelerate the progress. Even then, it ended up taking less than 4 years from inception to the first successful test. But, that test did not take place until July 16, 1945 -- more than two months after the Nazi surrender. There was no Nazi regime left to bomb. We would have used it on the Germans first if we had the chance.

The essay's claim that we were willing to drop it on the Japanese, but not the Germans due to a understanding among whites with regard to a common canon of warfare to not target civilians is ridiculous. Go back to the Civil War, and look at the devasation Sherman unleashed on civilians in the South in order to cripple it and to end the war sooner. And, there were the terror bombing campaigns against civilans in Rotterdam, London, and Warsaw which were all commited by white people against each other. So, if it was okay to bomb civilians with air raids, then why was it racist to use an atomic bomb? After all, more Japanese people died from the conventional bombs unleashed on Tokyo than from the two nuclear bombs. And, frankly, the Japanese never showed much concern for civilians anyways when it raped Nangking.

And, this assertion that the Japanese was willing to surrender is also inaccurate. It is true that certain elements in the Japanese government had put out peace feelers in the months preceding the dropping of the Atomic bomb. Specifically, the Japanese Foreign Minister instructed the Japanese ambassador to the Soviet Union to sound out the Soviets on their willingness to mediate an end to the war in return for various concessions in Manchuria and elsewhere. In other words, some elements in the Japanese government attempted to buy the Soviets off in return for a negotiated settlement of the war. Note the word "negotiated." Togo didn't have the support of the military for these overtures. Unconditional surrender wasn't something that the Emperor or the people in the Japanese government who mattered were willing to consider before the use of the atomic bomb. Why else would there be plans made by the Japanese government to turn the entire civilian population of Kyushu into an irregular army to resist the American invasion?

Basically, it boiled down to the two choices: the US could kill lots of japanese and lose lots of american lives or kill lots of japanese and lose only a few american lives. Geez, I wonder which one they would choose. Given the American experience on Iwo Jima, Saipan, and Okinawa, I don't think that it's reasonable to believe that an attempted invasion of Kyushu or any of the other home islands wouldn't have been exceptionally bloody for both sides.

To have gone into Japan by a conventional amphibious assault would have resulted in the deaths of Japanese civilians as well. There was impending famine by that point, even though the Japanese refused to unconditionally surrender. And, as a Chinese person, I also need to consider what effect the prolongation of the war in the Pacific would have had on the civilian population of occupied China and elsewhere? Why precisely are the lives of Japanese noncombatants more valuable than the lives of Chinese noncombatants?

[relus]

I honestly dont think the bomb was necessary, thats my opinion :p

[hooligan]

I don't know if this was mentioned, but I know that the US firebombed many flammable Japanese cities with napalm. I also recall that in one such bombing the death toll was comparable to an atomic bomb.

[mizhi]

I don't know if this was mentioned, but I know that the US firebombed many flammable Japanese cities with napalm. I also recall that in one such bombing the death toll was comparable to an atomic bomb.

This is true. However, not to play the "they did it so it's okay that we did it" game, the Japanese military was just as guilty of bombing civilian cities as the American military. What's ironic, and disturbing, is that the propaganda machines on both sides charged the other side as engaging in inhuman genocide and war crimes when they themselves were doing the exact same things.

There is a book called "War Without Mercy" by John Dower which reveals the racial aspects of WW2 policy against the Japanese. ...
Its interesting to read what White people would say out loud back then.

An excellent book.

Currently reading it. So far, pretty even-handed on the racial aspects of the war; e.g. both sides attempted to dehumanize the enemy through their propaganda and how they indoctrinated troops. I think it's been pretty unfairly criticized in reviews, mostly because I think people misunderstood his central thesis. They seemed to regard it as "the war with Japan was caused by racism" vs. "the war with Japan brought to the surface and amplified prevailing racist attitudes which contributed to the savagery of the battles."

[DragonKnight]

One of the duties not only as scholars but as human beings is to reassess history and to get behind the real truth behind the history we are taught. Especially when documents become declassified and revealed to the public eye. It would be a dishonor to the dead to not see both sides and weigh their merit.

This is a very long essay so I'll just provide the link to it:
Source (http://www.ncesa.org/html/hiroshima.html)

Its another essay criticizing the use of the atomic bomb. Some parts of it I wan to point out:


Consider the following assessment:

"Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it." (Emphasis added.)


One can, of course, find many historians who still believe that the atomic bomb was needed to avoid an invasion. Among the inner circle of serious experts, however, conclusions that are at odds with the official rationale have long been commonplace. Indeed, as early as 1946 the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, in its report Japan's Struggle to End the War, concluded that "certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."


It goes on and on. A ton of info to digest...if you're willing not to turn a blind eye to it. :rolleyes:

But this part I like, something even the critics can appreciate...the conclusion:
Finally, we Americans clearly do not like to see our nation as vulnerable to the same moral failings as others. To raise questions about Hiroshima is to raise doubts, it seems to some, about the moral integrity of the country and its leaders. It is also to raise the most profound questions about the legitimacy of nuclear weapons in general. America's continued unwillingness to confront the fundamental questions about Hiroshima may well be at the root of the quiet acceptance that has characterized so many other dangerous developments in the nuclear era that began in 1945.

So many of us Americans have been raised on the notion that we, as a nation, are infalliable. That reality usually comes comes crashing down during college education. :wink:
But if anything, one of the foundations of this nation was based on scrutiny of authority. In this thread, we are scrutinizing not only the decision of the use of the atomic bomb, but also the possible racism behind its use. I see nothing wrong in covering all the bases behind the real truth of the bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[haplesshobo]

I don't know if this was mentioned, but I know that the US firebombed many flammable Japanese cities with napalm. I also recall that in one such bombing the death toll was comparable to an atomic bomb.

yes, just like we attacked Dresden and how both sides attacked civilians. here's an obviously slanted article on dresden, but it shows we were just as unmerciless towards the germans: http://www.rense.com/general19/flame.htm

you could argue that firebombing civilians is bad, but i don't buy the argument that doing so was racist when we were just as willing to attack european civilians.

why is it more racist to kill people with a nuclear bomb than conventional guns and firebombs? more people died in Tokyo over the course of the war from conventional bombing than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

[yoMAMA]

http://www.herseyhiroshima.com/hiroshima.jpg

[hooligan]

Can you pm me that entire article?

[yoMAMA]

Can you pm me that entire article?

I got it from this website:

http://www.herseyhiroshima.com

they only put up the first page.

however there's a paper about the article on PDF:

http://www.herseyhiroshima.com/hiro.pdf

[grimfan]

I'd consider that alone enough to surmise that the US military is more willing to bomb people of color than ... well ... not people of color?

Probably, but the USAAF did take part in firebombing Dresden, which was a civilian target.

[hooligan]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7706



Hiroshima bomb may have carried hidden agenda


The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.
Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.

"He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species," says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, US. "It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity."

According to the official US version of history, an A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later, to force Japan to surrender. The destruction was necessary to bring a rapid end to the war without the need for a costly US invasion.

But this is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US. They are presenting their evidence at a meeting in London on Thursday organised by Greenpeace and others to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the bombings.

Looking for peace

New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman's main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was "looking for peace". Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

"Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan," says Selden. Truman was also worried that he would be accused of wasting money on the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bombs, if the bomb was not used, he adds.

Kuznick and Selden's arguments, however, were dismissed as "discredited" by Lawrence Freedman, a war expert from King's College London, UK. He says that Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima was "understandable in the circumstances".

Truman's main aim had been to end the war with Japan, Freedman says, but adds that, with the wisdom of hindsight, the bombing may not have been militarily justified. Some people assumed that the US always had "a malicious and nasty motive", he says, "but it ain't necessarily so."

[mizhi]

Probably, but the USAAF did take part in firebombing Dresden, which was a civilian target.

Not Dresden, but my father worked for several years in Linz, Austria. He said that the entire city had been leveled during WWII and that they still uncovered unexploded bombs when they put in new plants/buildings. The US was pretty indiscriminate in its aerial bombing.

[Martino]

Amazingly, one or two unexploded German bombs turn up every year here in the UK. Any bomb that failed to detonate on impact tended to bury itself. Most cities were in such a bombed out state at that time, there was no way to know where these bombs had fallen.

[hooligan]

What's interesting about the New Scientist article is that it directly discusses how the US intentionally wanted to war Russia. In order to do so, Japan, was the one to pay the price for Truman's actions. I'm sure when they dropped those bombs, they knew the impact of their actions. No, I don't think military commanders do not know the impacts of their decisions. I believe they're very aware.

[Chinasaur]

...but young people seem to think it's a different era that doesn't concern them which is true.

Reminds me of this story one of my Profs told the class in second year. He was telling us how he had to make a presentation about WWII to an audience of WWII vets (pretty daunting, when you think about it), and one member of the audience asked him a question: "Why do you think the war was fought?"

My Prof, supposedly responding before he chose to think about his answer, replied, "The war was fought so that the next generation could be ignorant."

According to him, there was dead silence in the building. And then the vets stood up and gave him a standing ovation. He might've sensationalized the re-telling a bit, but I doubt it.

[yoMAMA]

What's interesting about the New Scientist article is that it directly discusses how the US intentionally wanted to war Russia. In order to do so, Japan, was the one to pay the price for Truman's actions. I'm sure when they dropped those bombs, they knew the impact of their actions. No, I don't think military commanders do not know the impacts of their decisions. I believe they're very aware.

It's well known that general patton did not like the russians.

he even called them "mongols"....

[hooligan]

The Myths of Hiroshima

By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
August 5, 2005

This piece was originally published as an op-ed in the L.A. Times.

SIXTY YEARS ago tomorrow, an atomic bomb was dropped without warning on the center of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. One hundred and forty thousand people were killed, more than 95% of them women and children and other noncombatants. At least half of the victims died of radiation poisoning over the next few months. Three days after Hiroshima was obliterated, the city of Nagasaki suffered a similar fate.

The magnitude of death was enormous, but on Aug. 14, 1945 - just five days after the Nagasaki bombing - Radio Tokyo announced that the Japanese emperor had accepted the U.S. terms for surrender. To many Americans at the time, and still for many today, it seemed clear that the bomb had ended the war, even "saving" a million lives that might have been lost if the U.S. had been required to invade mainland Japan.

This powerful narrative took root quickly and is now deeply embedded in our historical sense of who we are as a nation. A decade ago, on the 50th anniversary, this narrative was reinforced in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first bomb. The exhibit, which had been the subject of a bruising political battle, presented nearly 4 million Americans with an officially sanctioned view of the atomic bombings that again portrayed them as a necessary act in a just war. But although patriotically correct, the exhibit and the narrative on which it was based were historically inaccurate. For one thing, the Smithsonian downplayed the casualties, saying only that the bombs "caused many tens of thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima was "a definite military target."

Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands." But it's not that straightforward. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, "Racing the Enemy" - and many other historians have long argued - it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation.
The Enola Gay exhibit also repeated such outright lies as the assertion that "special leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities" warning civilians to evacuate. The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed.

The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy." President Truman and his closest advisor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, quite plainly used it primarily to prevent the Soviets from sharing in the occupation of Japan. And they used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace.

These unpleasant historical facts were censored from the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit, an action that should trouble every American. When a government substitutes an officially sanctioned view for publicly debated history, democracy is diminished.

Today, in the post-9/11 era, it is critically important that the U.S. face the truth about the atomic bomb. For one thing, the myths surrounding Hiroshima have made it possible for our defense establishment to argue that atomic bombs are legitimate weapons that belong in a democracy's arsenal. But if, as Oppenheimer said, "they are weapons of aggression, of surprise and of terror," how can a democracy rely on such weapons?
Oppenheimer understood very soon after Hiroshima that these weapons would ultimately threaten our very survival.

Presciently, he even warned us against what is now our worst national nightmare - and Osama bin Laden's frequently voiced dream - an atomic suitcase bomb smuggled into an American city: "Of course it could be done," Oppenheimer told a Senate committee, "and people could destroy New York."

Ironically, Hiroshima's myths are now motivating our enemies to attack us with the very weapon we invented. Bin Laden repeatedly refers to Hiroshima in his rambling speeches. It was, he believes, the atomic bombings that shocked the Japanese imperial government into an early surrender - and, he says, he is planning an atomic attack on the U.S. that will similarly shock us into retreating from the Mideast.
Finally, Hiroshima's myths have gradually given rise to an American unilateralism born of atomic arrogance.

Oppenheimer warned against this "sleazy sense of omnipotence." He observed that "if you approach the problem and say, 'We know what is right and we would like to use the atomic bomb to persuade you to agree with us,' then you are in a very weak position and you will not succeed. You will find yourselves attempting by force of arms to prevent a disaster."


http://aamovement.net/history/hiroshimamyths2.htm

Good piece, a must read for all you who still think it was necessary to use atomic weapons on civilians.

[Martino]

Amazingly, one or two unexploded German bombs turn up every year here in the UK. Any bomb that failed to detonate on impact tended to bury itself. Most cities were in such a bombed out state at that time, there was no way to know where these bombs had fallen.

Those pesky Germans strike again ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/4311398.stm

[mr. x]

Those pesky Germans strike again ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/4311398.stm

phew! for a second I thought the Bundeswehr sent the new improved luftwaffe over Britain while no one was looking. Then again it is the kinder gentler German military so nothing to fear

[Just_Dont_Give]

It was very racist indeed to "try out the bomb" on Asian people.


Hey remember the bomb was tested on Mexican land first! ANYWAY, the past is past, let it die.

[oralloy]

The Ethics of War: Hiroshima and Nagasaki After 50 Years
Published in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty - September 1995
by Gregory P. Pavlik

. . . .

Belatedly it has been discovered that seven months before it [the atomic bomb] was dropped, in January 1945, President Roosevelt received via General MacArthur's headquarters an offer by the Japanese Government to surrender on terms virtually identical to those accepted by the United States after the dropping of the bomb: In July 1945, as we know, Roosevelt's successor, President Truman, discussed with Stalin at Bebelsburg the Japanese offer to surrender.

Nonsense!

Belatedly there has been a bogus claim to that effect, but the historical records make it quite clear that the government of Japan was not contemplating surrender until July of 1945, and that the government of Japan did not try to make any offer to surrender to us until the day after Nagasaki was bombed.




the notion that the most human carnage possible must be inflicted on the civilians of an enemy government to force a surrender and minimize the losses of one's own troops is perverse.

What is perverse is the lie that civilians were the target of the bombs.

The cities targeted by the A-bombs were rich in military or war-production targets.

i don't recall the name of the documentary i watched a long time ago, but i'm sure many of you have also seen it. it basically gives a detailed timeline of the events, and how the japanese government did surrender *before* the bombs were dropped. it was basically a lot of miscommunication on both sides.

Must have involved a time warp too, seeing as how Japan only sent a surrender offer to us on August 10th, and the A-bombs were dropped on August 6th and 9th.

There was some documented evidence about why the US dropped the two atomic bombs.

Long story short, they were dropped to test two different bombs and their effects on the landscape which is why the first bomb was on a town that's relatively flat whereas the other one was dropped on a mountainous area.

Nope. It is true that the reason is well-documented, but the reason they were dropped was "because Japan hadn't surrendered yet".



I fully believe that they were dropped, not because of the feel-good idea of saving American lives, but rather to test the new toy.

You are wrong. There was a war going on at the time. The primary motive for using weapons against the enemy is to win the war.

I wrote a blog entry about this, the bombing was pretty much genocide.

Not really. There was no intent to exterminate a race.



I mean, there were a lot of excuses of why it was necessary, but honestly, how can you some how justify the bombing of 2 civilian cities.

By the fact that the supposedly "civilian" cities were full of military or war-industry targets.



Even if they were rich military targets,

They were.



the people who built the bomb must have known about its collateral.

That much is true.

Wouldn't it have been possible to drop them on less populated areas with the same end result of unconditional surrender?

Not necessarily. You would need a target that would demonstrate to the Japanese government the vast power of the bomb, and it would have to be something that couldn't be covered up by the Japanese military.

As Banana alluded to, I heard they wanted to drop them in the center of a city large enough to fully contain the blast so they could see how far and wide the damage would be.

We already knew how far and wide the damage would be. The key was in showing the Japanese government how far and wide the damage was.



Maybe I'm biased, seeing the world through yellow-tinted lenses, but I think our country should be ashamed for dropping the bombs on two populated civilian cities. We whine about the extensive loss of life due to 9/11, but 9/11 wasn't shit compared to the atomic bombs. We paint ourselves as victims even though, arguably, we are the ones that ultimately brought it upon ourselves. Granted, we were at "war" when we dropped those bombs. But what's to say the al Qaeda's perceived war against the U.S. today is less legitimate in their eyes than WWII was in ours? Either way, specifically targeting civilians with the goal of maximizing loss of life is simply unacceptable.

They were hardly "civilian cities", and we did not target civilians.

Al-Qa'ida, on the other hand, does target civilians.

Ward Churchill is very critical of US hypocrisy and arrogance. On the last page of the essay below which recently got him in hot water he said that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militaristically pointless

This Ward Churchill character might not get into hot water if he would tell the truth once in a while.

Hiroshima contained tens of thousands of combat troops, and it held the headquarters of the Japanese Second General Army, which was tasked with repelling any invasion in the southern half of the Japanese home islands (which is exactly were we were planning to launch our invasion).

The second bomb was meant for Kokura Arsenal, a massive (4100' x 2000') arms production complex. The secondary target was the Mitsubishi Shipyards, an equally massive warship production complex. Due to technical and weather difficulties, they couldn't get either target, but they managed to drop the bomb directly between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and the Mitsubishi Ordnance Works, destroying both.

The Mitsubishi Ordnance Works is noteworthy because normal torpedoes wouldn't work in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese had to design and build special torpedoes just to attack us. The Mitsubishi Ordnance Works is the place that designed and built those torpedoes.

I think the atomic bomb was totally unnecessary, to extract a surrender.

There were other options they were considering, but they all would have killed a lot more people than the A-bombs.



I think the reasons for the bomb are:
To test it in a populated area for research purposes.
To show off our atomic muscles to the Soviets.
To get revenge for the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor.

Nope. The focus was all on getting Japan to surrender.



Is it true that the bomb was available before Germany's surrender?

No.

The Myths of Hiroshima


By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
August 5, 2005


The Enola Gay exhibit also repeated such outright lies as the assertion that "special leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities" warning civilians to evacuate. The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed.


Sherwin is a good historian, but anything with Kai Bird in it is bound to have lies.

Leaflets were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 1st, warning that the cities were about to be destroyed by bombing raids.

August 1st came *before* August 6th and 9th.



The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

During the war, the Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated the costs of the planned invasion to be 1.2 million American casualties, including 267,000 dead.



President Truman and his closest advisor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, quite plainly used it primarily to prevent the Soviets from sharing in the occupation of Japan. And they used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace.

Truman was pushing the Soviets to attack the Japanese all the way up to the day they did so, at which point he was openly delighted.

On August 2nd, we first got word that Japan was interested in surrendering, but that they did not find our Potsdam terms acceptable and wanted to negotiate.

That was worthy of comment, certainly, but the only way Japan could avoid the nukes was by accepting Potsdam.

The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.

Except they didn't have any evidence. All they did was make a press release full of lies, and then disappear.



And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.

"He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species," says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, US. "It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity."

Funny, I think the species is still here.

And to be a crime against humanity, we'd have to have targeted civilians, which we didn't do.



But this is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US. They are presenting their evidence at a meeting in London on Thursday organised by Greenpeace and others to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the bombings.

When they made their bogus claims, I waited to hear their supposed evidence publicized.

I'm still waiting.



"Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan," says Selden.

A goofy notion. In the summer of 1945, nothing was more important than making Japan accept our surrender terms as soon as possible.



Kuznick and Selden's arguments, however, were dismissed as "discredited" by Lawrence Freedman, a war expert from King's College London, UK.

An understatement.

One of the duties not only as scholars but as human beings is to reassess history and to get behind the real truth behind the history we are taught. Especially when documents become declassified and revealed to the public eye. It would be a dishonor to the dead to not see both sides and weigh their merit.

However, propagandists who deny history should not be given any credence.



This is a very long essay so I'll just provide the link to it:

Gar Alperovitz is among the most discredited of those who lie about the A-bombings in the name of history.



Its another essay criticizing the use of the atomic bomb. Some parts of it I want to point out:

It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it."

It is also clear that those options would have been worse than the A-bombs.



Indeed, as early as 1946 the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, in its report Japan's Struggle to End the War, concluded that "certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

Mr. Alperovitz conveniently forgot to mention that the bombing survey was a propaganda piece by the Air Force to try to get as much funding as possible out of the rapidly-shrinking post war defense budget. It argued that the only type of military power that needed real funding from Congress was conventional air power.



It goes on and on. A ton of info to digest...if you're willing not to turn a blind eye to it. :rolleyes:

When it comes to the lies of Gar Alperovitz, turning a blind eye is good advice.



the USAAF did take part in firebombing Dresden, which was a civilian target.

Our bombers were focused only on hitting the railyards outside Dresden. The US did not participate in the burning of any German city aside from the administrative district of Berlin.

But since we did carpetbomb the administrative district of Berlin, we probably would have been willing to drop an A-bomb there had one been available at the time.

[Martino]

Originally Posted by Arex
Maybe I'm biased, seeing the world through yellow-tinted lenses, but I think our country should be ashamed for dropping the bombs on two populated civilian cities

They were hardly "civilian cities", and we did not target civilians.

The above neatly encapsulates the fact that you are a twit.

[mizhi]

What is perverse is the lie that civilians were the target of the bombs.

The cities targeted by the A-bombs were rich in military or war-production targets.

By the fact that the supposedly "civilian" cities were full of military or war-industry targets.

And to be a crime against humanity, we'd have to have targeted civilians, which we didn't do.

While I have my doubts about the claims made on either side of this thread and thus commented little, you're patently wrong on this point. In World War II, bombing of civilian targets was considered an acceptable military strategy. The reasoning was that by targeting civilians, the support for the war effort at home would crumble. It was a strategy almost universally applied by the countries involved in the war; Japan and United States included.

This is documented in numerous places. While there might have been legitimate military targets that were destroyed by the bombs, do not delude yourself into thinking that we weren't also factoring into the planning the massive number of civilian casualties the bomb would produce.

Getting this simple point wrong just makes the rest of your argument suspect.

[oralloy]

While I have my doubts about the claims made on either side of this thread and thus commented little, you're patently wrong on this point. In World War II, bombing of civilian targets was considered an acceptable military strategy. The reasoning was that by targeting civilians, the support for the war effort at home would crumble. It was a strategy almost universally applied by the countries involved in the war; Japan and United States included.

This is documented in numerous places. While there might have been legitimate military targets that were destroyed by the bombs, do not delude yourself into thinking that we weren't also factoring into the planning the massive number of civilian casualties the bomb would produce.

Where is some of this documentation showing us targeting civilians?

If we were trying to kill civilians, why was the second bomb dropped on the outskirts of Nagasaki instead of the center of the city where it would kill more civilians.

If we wanted to kill civilians, why didn't we drop an A-bomb on one of the remaining areas of Tokyo?



Getting this simple point wrong just makes the rest of your argument suspect.

Let's see if you can establish that I've gotten the point wrong.

The above neatly encapsulates the fact that you are a twit.

LOL!

Feel free to deny reality if you must, but there was plenty of military in those cities.

[Martino]

Feel free to deny reality if you must, but there was plenty of military in those cities.

It's your stupid stupid stupid statement that Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not civillian cities which blows your credibility right out of the water. You are just insane to assert that these two cities were not civillian. The presence of 'plenty of military' doesn't alter the fact that these were civillian population centres. What, you think these cities sprung up in 1941?

100,000 civillians were vapourised in Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bomb killed another 40,000. The 'survivors' were anything but. Another 100,000 were were condemned to painful and lingering deaths due to radiation poisoning over years and decades, often over generations.

[oralloy]

It's your stupid stupid stupid statement that Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not civillian cities which blows your credibility right out of the water. You are just insane to assert that these two cities were not civillian. The presence of 'plenty of military' doesn't alter the fact that these were civillian population centres. What, you think these cities sprung up in 1941?

The fact that there were civilians in the cities does not make them a civilian target.

I don't think it is stupid or insane to accept reality. And if you don't think the truth is credible, that is your loss.



100,000 civillians were vapourised in Hiroshima.

That's a bit much for "vaporized". However, it is true that between 70,000 - 120,000 civilians were killed at Hiroshima.



Another 100,000 were were condemned to painful and lingering deaths due to radiation poisoning over years and decades, often over generations.

Actually, a couple months after the A-bombs, the death rate had returned to normal.

Fewer than 2,000 deaths have been attributed to the bombs from 1950 to today.

[Martino]

The fact that there were civilians in the cities does not make them a civilian target.

Um, no, you said they were not civillian cities. Which remains an incredibly stupid statement.

That's a bit much for "vaporized".

Hmm, I wonder what effect you'd experience if an atomic bomb was detonated over you? Mild singeing, perhaps?


Actually, a couple months after the A-bombs, the death rate had returned to normal.

Fewer than 2,000 deaths have been attributed to the bombs from 1950 to today.

Source?

[oralloy]

Source?

Re: death rate trailing off after 2 months:

"Deaths from radiation began about a week after exposure and reached a peak in 3 to 4 weeks. They practically ceased to occur after 7 to 8 weeks."

www_yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp22.htm



Re: deaths after 1950:

"We estimate that about 440 (5%) of the solid cancer deaths and 250 (0.8%) of the noncancer deaths were associated with the radiation exposure."

www_rerf.or.jp/eigo/lssrepor/rr24-02.htm


"The population studied by RERF probably includes about 50% of the proximally exposed survivors" (question8)

www_rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm

(440 + 250) x 2 = 1380


This site says I can't post links until I've made more posts, so you'll have to change the "_" to a "." after each "www".

Maybe I'll repost this with active links after I've made more posts.

[Martino]

Well, that was grim reading. Shame these stats don't exactly reinforce your point.

http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm#faq4

Question 4. Are radiation-induced cancers still occurring among atomic-bomb survivors?

Yes. The excess risk of leukemia, seen especially among those exposed as children, was highest during the first 10 years after exposure and has continued to decrease throughout the study period. However, the excess risk for cancers other than leukemia continues today, and it seems likely that this excess risk will persist throughout the lifetime of the survivors. About 16% of all cancer deaths and about 25% of the excess--or radiation related--cancer deaths for the period from 1950 through 1990 occurred from 1986 to 1990.

Pointing links to individual studies is not helpful, the researchers themselves freely admits that these studies are tightly focused and compartmentalised, with one of your links reporting on the risks of cancer other than leukemia in specific sample groups, some large, some small, none all inclusive.

Here's what another RERF study of luekimia says:

http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/radefx/late/leukemia.htm

An excess risk of leukemia was one of the earliest delayed effects of radiation exposure seen in the victims of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Now, more than 50 years after the bombs, this excess is widely seen as the most apparent long-term effect of radiation. Indeed, death from leukemia is, for many people, a primary symbol of the suffering of the survivors of the bombings.

An increase in the number of leukemia cases was first noted by a Japanese physician, Takuso Yamawaki, in his clinical practice in the late 1940s. These observations led to the establishment of a registry of cases of leukemia and related disorders. The initial reports on elevated leukemia risks in the survivors were published in the early 1950s. Leukemia risks have been discussed in more than 50 ABCC-RERF reports published over the past 45 years.

Looking elsewhere on the same website or among RERF's published findings do confirm increased incidence of suffering and death in the years subsequent to the bombing.

For example, look at its paper, Studies of cancer and radiation dose among atomic bomb survivors, which says there is an increased incidence of breast cancer among bomb survivors ...

Or the paper Thyroid diseases among atomic bomb survivors in Nagasaki, which notes "A significant dose-response relationship was observed for cancer ... The present study confirmed the results of previous studies by showing a significant increase in solid nodules with dose to the thyroid and demonstrated for the first time a significant increase in autoimmune disease among atomic bomb survivors."

RERF's own summary for a paper it submitted to The Journal of the American Medical Association reads:

This article summarizes the risk of cancer among the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We focus primarily on the risk of death from cancer among individuals in the Life Span Study sample of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation from 1950 through 1985 based on recently revised dosimetry procedures ... [I]We note that the number of excess deaths of radiation-induced malignant tumors other than leukemia increases with age.

... meaning the older the population gets, the greater the risk. It goes on:

Survivors who were exposed in the first or second decade of life have just entered the cancer-prone age and have so far exhibited a high relative risk in association with radiation dose.

In the end, it's as I said: the suffering continued years and decades after the bombs were dropped. And yes, people continue to die.

[oralloy]

Well, that was grim reading. Shame these stats don't exactly reinforce your point.

My point is that claims about huge numbers (many tens of thousands) of Japanese dying from radiation after 1945 are false. Those stats reinforce that claim.

I agree that there is a large increase in the number of radiation deaths now that people are getting older, but the numbers are still below 2,000.



Pointing links to individual studies is not helpful, the researchers themselves freely admits that these studies are tightly focused and compartmentalised, with one of your links reporting on the risks of cancer other than leukemia in specific sample groups, some large, some small, none all inclusive.

RERF covers 50% of everyone who was exposed to a significant dose of A-bomb radiation. I don't think there will be a study broader than that.

If we add 180 for the leukemia deaths caused by radiation, it still only takes us to 1560, far short of the astronomical numbers that are often claimed.



In the end, it's as I said: the suffering continued years and decades after the bombs were dropped. And yes, people continue to die.

I don't disagree with that. I just say that so far the post-1950 radiation deaths are still below 2,000.

Um, no, you said they were not civillian cities. Which remains an incredibly stupid statement.

Here is a good quote on the "civilian" nature of the city:

"Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. To quote a Japanese report, 'Probably more than a thousand times since the beginning of the war did the Hiroshima citizens see off with cries of 'Banzai' the troops leaving from the harbor.'"

www_yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp06.htm

[ThatMixedGuy]

Umm...I think we would have dropped the bomb on Germany too, the Americans showed no less remorse when bombing German cities then they did on Japanese cities. Look at the statistics, how many german civilians died vs. Japanese ones. Jesus, use some analytical thinking, instead of relying all your information on liberal media.

The truth is, we will never know, because Germany pulled out of the war before the atom bomb was invented.

At least there is not a thread on Nanking.....wait......

[LaiSteve66]

^^I'm skeptical that the bomb would of been used on the Germans. The Germans were thoroughly getting their asses kicked on the ground on two fronts as well as in the air and even if they were able to hold out until August, they were finished. An atomic bomb would of accomplished little if used on the Germans.

The U.S. had barely engaged 10% of the Japanese army and had large defense forces on the home islands and were able to match any Allied invading force man for man. Those are not good odds for an attacking force, thus there was more incentive to use the bombs on Japan.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Since the Soviets had entered the war, any invasion of the Japanese home islands would have to be a joint operation with the Red Army. Now, would you rather have atomic bombs dropped on two cities, or would you rather have the Russians raping every woman and girl in every city in Japan like they did on their way to Berlin? (I'm sure some people here would love the latter option, except for the fact that the Russians are white.)

[Martino]

My point is that claims about huge numbers (many tens of thousands) of Japanese dying from radiation after 1945 are false. Those stats reinforce that claim.

Yeah, stats. Studies of sample groups, of a percentage of survivors.
Still can't quite see where you got your figure of under 2000 from, as different studies of different diseases have different results. The 'grand total' for one statistical breakdown is 10,127 deaths due to cancer out of a sample group of 86,611 survivors. Statistics, eh?

I agree that there is a large increase in the number of radiation deaths now that people are getting older, but the numbers are still below 2,000.

See above.

RERF covers 50% of everyone who was exposed to a significant dose of A-bomb radiation. I don't think there will be a study broader than that.

I don't disagree with that. I just say that so far the post-1950 radiation deaths are still below 2,000.

RERF stats can be interpreted differently. And it remains only a sample group looking at actual deaths compared to statistical predictions.

Bottom line remains, the atomic bombs caused a lot of suffering and deaths beyond the point of their actual detonation, and incidence of cancers is getting higher, not lower.

Here is a good quote on the "civilian" nature of the city:

"Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. To quote a Japanese report, 'Probably more than a thousand times since the beginning of the war did the Hiroshima citizens see off with cries of 'Banzai' the troops leaving from the harbor.'"

Just about every urban population centre could be concidered of military importance. London, for example. They don't stop being civillian cities.


Since the Soviets had entered the war, any invasion of the Japanese home islands would have to be a joint operation with the Red Army. Now, would you rather have atomic bombs dropped on two cities, or would you rather have the Russians raping every woman and girl in every city in Japan like they did on their way to Berlin? (I'm sure some people here would love the latter option, except for the fact that the Russians are white.)


I'm just irked by this guys rationale that it was OK to drop a-bombs on people because Nagasaki and Hiroshima were "not civillian cities".

It's a glib and stupid thing to say, and a piss-poor rationale for the selection of these two 'targets'. It's demonising language designed to mask the horror of the act. 'Non civillian cities', 'insurgent cities', 'collateral damage'.

[SunWuKong]

Since the Soviets had entered the war, any invasion of the Japanese home islands would have to be a joint operation with the Red Army. Now, would you rather have atomic bombs dropped on two cities, or would you rather have the Russians raping every woman and girl in every city in Japan like they did on their way to Berlin? (I'm sure some people here would love the latter option, except for the fact that the Russians are white.)

actually, the US had planned on a land invasion of Japan and the Soviets were aware of it. that was what the division of Korea was all about. i don't remember the exact details, but i think basically the US and the USSR had an agreement that if the Soviets support the Americans' invasion of Japan, then the Americans would let the Soviets have the Korean peninsula without interference. when the Americans defeated Japan, the Soviets marched into Korea, thinking that they would have control of the entire peninsula. but the Americans advanced onto the Korean peninsula anyway on the technicality that they didn't have a land invasion of Japan. so that's why the Korean peninsula was divided.

[oralloy]

Yeah, stats. Studies of sample groups, of a percentage of survivors.
Still can't quite see where you got your figure of under 2000 from,

440 solid cancer deaths between 1950 and 1997.

250 non-cancer deaths between 1950 and 1997.

90 leukemia deaths between 1950 and 1990.



And it remains only a sample group looking at actual deaths compared to statistical predictions.

A sample of 50% of everyone who received a significant radiation dose.

That is why I double the above numbers after adding them together.



The 'grand total' for one statistical breakdown is 10,127 deaths due to cancer out of a sample group of 86,611 survivors.

That figure would include a large number of deaths from sources other then the A-bombs.



I'm just irked by this guys rationale that it was OK to drop a-bombs on people because Nagasaki and Hiroshima were "not civillian cities".

I don't recall saying the military nature of the targets made the A-bombs OK.

I am just pointing out that this was not "just a bunch of civilians" that got bombed.



It's a glib and stupid thing to say, and a piss-poor rationale for the selection of these two 'targets'.

What criteria should we have used to select our targets then?

Umm...I think we would have dropped the bomb on Germany too, the Americans showed no less remorse when bombing German cities then they did on Japanese cities.

Actually, the US was far more restrained with Germany. All the carpetbombing of German cities was, with one exception, done by the UK.

That one exception was when US bombers carpetbombed the administrative district of Berlin.

Because of this, I speculate that we wouldn't have been averse to dropping an A-bomb on central Berlin, but wouldn't have nuked other German cities.

We probably would have freely used nukes to clear the beaches of Normandy though.



I am not sure that the difference in bombing was racism though. Germany had not attacked the US, and was treating our POWs reasonably well.

Japan did Pearl Harbor, and was brutally murdering our POWs. That sort of thing led to some hard feelings.

[Martino]

440 solid cancer deaths between 1950 and 1997.

250 non-cancer deaths between 1950 and 1997.

90 leukemia deaths between 1950 and 1990.


A sample of 50% of everyone who received a significant radiation dose.

That is why I double the above numbers after adding them together.

And is this your total for all the studies into all the medical conditions under observation in this sample study? No. Each of these studies look at individual medical conditions. You are looking at only a few of the studies, into specific conditions.

If you look at one of your own links, RERF FAQ (http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm), "the number of cancer deaths among the 36,500 Life Span Study survivors who were exposed beyond 2.5 km is 3,177, including 73 leukemia deaths and 3,104 deaths from cancers other than leukemia."

That particular sample study alone exceeds your 'grand total'.

The RERF has published a lot of papers, but the caveat remains that it is not possible to determine whether leukaemia or cancer is induced by radiation or by other environmental factors. The low numbers you are latching on to are cancer deaths "statistically" beyond what a set number of people might be "expected" to occur anyway.

I don't recall saying the military nature of the targets made the A-bombs OK.

Excuse me, but you're defending their use against these two cities, no?

I am not sure that the difference in bombing was racism though. Germany had not attacked the US, and was treating our POWs reasonably well.

Japan did Pearl Harbor, and was brutally murdering our POWs. That sort of thing led to some hard feelings.

Oh wait, I think you're confusing Nazi Germany's Holocaust with Japanese prisoner abuse.

[BeTheReds]

This discussion AGAIN?

[oralloy]

And is this your total for all the studies into all the medical conditions under observation in this sample study?

Yes.



Each of these studies look at individual medical conditions. You are looking at only a few of the studies, into specific conditions.

If you can show a condition I missed, I'll be happy to include it in the total.



If you look at one of your own links, www_rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm, "the number of cancer deaths among the 36,500 Life Span Study survivors who were exposed beyond 2.5 km is 3,177, including 73 leukemia deaths and 3,104 deaths from cancers other than leukemia."

That particular sample study alone exceeds your 'grand total'.

That number is for cancer deaths from sources other than the bombs.



The RERF has published a lot of papers, but the caveat remains that it is not possible to determine whether leukaemia or cancer is induced by radiation or by other environmental factors. The low numbers you are latching on to are cancer deaths "statistically" beyond what a set number of people might be "expected" to occur anyway.

Right. Those are the deaths that are caused by the exposure to A-bomb radiation.



Excuse me, but you're defending their use against these two cities, no?

I'm only defending their use against unfair charges.

I do support their use, but I also acknowledge that their use violated the laws of war.



Oh wait, I think you're confusing Nazi Germany's Holocaust with Japanese prisoner abuse.

Nope. I was thinking of Japanese POW abuse.



This discussion AGAIN?

There was a lot of anti-American propaganda posted that had not been adequately defended against.

[Martino]

Yes.

This phenomenon is what's known as 'spin'.

If you can show a condition I missed, I'll be happy to include it in the total.

Try reading your own links.

That number is for cancer deaths from sources other than the bombs.

Nope. There is no way to determine whether the bombs caused a particular cancer. The stats you are looking at are deaths above and beyond the expected total for a sample that size, for statistical purposes. The figure for actual disease and deaths are far higher, with incidence increasing as the population ages.

And, incidently, what figure would you consider acceptable anyway? Considering the fact that each and every one of these 'stats' is a person.

Right. Those are the deaths that are caused by the exposure to A-bomb radiation.

RERF doesn't offer a test to differentiate between causes of the diseases - they're comparing the deaths to a statistical model. For example, of 100 subjects, 4% might be expected to die of colon cancer. Which of course doesn't mean if you look at a random sample of 100 people, 4% of them will die of colon cancer.

The actual deaths in these studies are are higher than the statistical model, but you choose to look at the statistical averages instead. Where I come from, that's called massaging the figures.

I'm only defending their use against unfair charges.

I do support their use, but I also acknowledge that their use violated the laws of war.

In other words, you are defending their use against these two cities.

Nope. I was thinking of Japanese POW abuse.

Oh, I think I detect a certain bias there. Your rationale as to why German might not experience an atomic attack on the scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that the Japanese killed an estimated 40,000 prisoners. Or, as you say, murdered. Whereas, in your view, the Germans "was treating our POWs reasonably well."

Mmm.

Massaging statistics again? The Germans murdered six million Jews and millions of others. Aside from the Jews, they tried to exterminate Homosexuals; Serbs; Russians; Polish Catholics; Gypsies; The disabled; the mentally ill. Yet in your mind at least, the Japanese seem the more heinous. How interesting.

There was a lot of anti-American propaganda posted that had not been adequately defended against.

You are doing a wonderful job.

[oralloy]

This phenomenon is what's known as 'spin'.

Nope. It is what is known as "pointing out facts".



Try reading your own links.

I guess that response means I haven't missed any other categories.



Nope. There is no way to determine whether the bombs caused a particular cancer.

I don't need to know whether they caused any one cancer.

I know that only 1560 of those deaths were caused by A-bomb radiation.



In other words, you are defending their use against these two cities.

Against some charges, yes.



Oh, I think I detect a certain bias there. Your rationale as to why German might not experience an atomic attack on the scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that the Japanese killed an estimated 40,000 prisoners. Or, as you say, murdered. Whereas, in your view, the Germans "was treating our POWs reasonably well."

Mmm.

Massaging statistics again?

I'll leave the massaging of statistics to you.

The fact is that Pearl Harbor and the Japanese treatment of our POWs created certain hard feelings in the minds of the US public that did not exist towards Germany, who didn't do Pearl Harbor, and who were treating our POWs reasonably well.



The Germans murdered six million Jews and millions of others. Aside from the Jews, they tried to exterminate Homosexuals; Serbs; Russians; Polish Catholics; Gypsies; The disabled; the mentally ill. Yet in your mind at least, the Japanese seem the more heinous. How interesting.

I never said the Japanese were more heinous. Sheesh!



You are doing a wonderful job.

I know. Anti-American propaganda never survives a confrontation with the facts.

[snailpoo]

In other words, you are defending their use against these two cities.

What would have been the number civilian and military casulties had America invaded the home islands?

What other defense do you need?


And how was this racist? The Manhattan Project readied its first prototype for testing on July 16, 1945. Germany already surrendered in May. To argue that the use of the bomb on one and not the other was racist is an anachronism.

[oralloy]

What would have been the number civilian and military casulties had America invaded the home islands?

Even before the invasion, the ever-tightening blockade, combined with the destruction of the Japanese rail system, would have caused 10 million Japanese civilians to starve to death.

During this time, the Japanese military would have continued to kill millions of civilians on the mainland.


The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that the invasion would have cost 1.2 million casualties among US troops, including 267,000 deaths. However, this estimate was made before they knew of the huge Japanese buildup on Kyushu, and before they knew of the proposal to use A-bombs to clear the beaches before the invasion.

It is safe to say though, that we probably would have experienced something similar to Normandy, which wasn't pretty, and the Japanese forces would have been annihilated.

[BeTheReds]

Since the Soviets had entered the war, any invasion of the Japanese home islands would have to be a joint operation with the Red Army. Now, would you rather have atomic bombs dropped on two cities, or would you rather have the Russians raping every woman and girl in every city in Japan like they did on their way to Berlin? (I'm sure some people here would love the latter option, except for the fact that the Russians are white.)


Good point.

Were there no bomb, we'd have the Democratic People's Republic of Japan in Kanto and the Republic of Japan in Kansai.

To say nothing about Korea, which would have been all under communist control.

[LaiSteve66]

Does anyone consider the fire bombing of Tokyo (a deliberate attack on civilians) to be "racist"?

[oralloy]

Does anyone consider the fire bombing of Tokyo (a deliberate attack on civilians) to be "racist"?

Well, I don't consider it a deliberate attack on civilians.

There were lots of little weapons factories spread all through the city.

[LaiSteve66]

Well, I don't consider it a deliberate attack on civilians.

There were lots of little weapons factories spread all through the city.

How convenient.

[snailpoo]

Does anyone consider the fire bombing of Tokyo (a deliberate attack on civilians) to be "racist"?
No. Five reasons: Hamburg, Dresden, Kassel, Dramstadt, and Stuttgart, all firebombed in the years prior.




...there's enough racism out there without having to look for it in the oddest of places.

[Martino]

Nope. It is what is known as "pointing out facts".

Then why not quote actual deaths by cancer?

I guess that response means I haven't missed any other categories.

I guess that means you are a lazy researcher.

I don't need to know whether they caused any one cancer.

I know that only 1560 of those deaths were caused by A-bomb radiation.

Then you know what RERF itself doesn't know. RERF evaluates cancer risk and dose response for the survivors of the a-bomb. At no point does it, or any science institute which uses RERF data, claim that it can differentiate between cancer victims who are suffering from exposure to radiation, and those who aren't.

You are quoting the figues for deaths statistically above the average norm, not actual deaths.

The fact is that Pearl Harbor and the Japanese treatment of our POWs created certain hard feelings in the minds of the US public that did not exist towards Germany, who didn't do Pearl Harbor, and who were treating our POWs reasonably well.

I don't buy this 'hard feelings' towards Japan only idea. Americans watched what happened in Germany in the 1930's and was quite aware of what Nazism was all about. First news of the existence of Nazi death camps reached Britain in 1942. Existence of the camps was published in the American press in September 1944. But hey, the Germans treated the POW's reasonably well . . .

I never said the Japanese were more heinous. Sheesh!

You rate POW casualties in Japan as more important than the German extermination programme. Nuff said.

[oralloy]

Then you know what RERF itself doesn't know.

No, RERF knows it too.


"We estimate that about 440 (5%) of the solid cancer deaths and 250 (0.8%) of the noncancer deaths were associated with the radiation exposure."

http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/lssrepor/rr24-02.htm


"It is estimated that about 90 of these deaths are associated with radiation exposure."

http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/radefx/late/leukemia.htm




You rate POW casualties in Japan as more important than the German extermination programme. Nuff said.

I suppose you think lying about me will obfuscate the reality that the A-bombs have caused fewer than 2000 long-term deaths.



No. Five reasons: Hamburg, Dresden, Kassel, Dramstadt, and Stuttgart, all firebombed in the years prior.

However, the actual burning of those cities was done by UK bombers. US bombers focused on trying to hit legitimate targets in Germany.

[Martino]

No, RERF knows it too.

"We estimate that about 440 (5%) of the solid cancer deaths and 250 (0.8%) of the noncancer deaths were associated with the radiation exposure."

RERF isn't saying it can tell the difference between the illnesses and deaths caused by the bombs and those caused by other factors. It can only do a statistical comparison with a control group and extrapolate what the excess figure 'could' be. An estimate. It doesn't mean that those people in the larger figure didn't die because of exposure to atomic radiation.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a division of the CDC, is currently looking into occupational health hazards for workers in the Energy sector. There have been numerous lawsuits of victims of accidental exposure to radiation in the US, accidents such as the infamous 'Down Winders':

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0211/feature1/online_extra.html.

If it were possible to directly prove latent illness or death was caused by exposure to radioactivity, these cases would be settled an awful lot quicker.