OzOne wrote

Yep, the bomb's' stopped the war....I don't think they saved any
lives.


My Dad was in the Navy in '45. That alone, to me makes it all
worthwhile.

SV

Doug,

You think about it! They were educated to believe in the Emperor God,
Sintoizm, Hari Kari, Kamikazi (Devine Wind of Deliverance) They were a
rather poorly educated chaste society in the 1930 & 1940. The commoner
were educated like trained animals. They were a very nice people but at
that time highly educated they weren't. The Elite did not want them
fully educated.

Doug I knew them. I seen the masses really blossom under Democratic
Life. They were not STUPID; they were held back!

Ole Thom


http://community.webtv.net/tassail/ThomsHomePage

http://community.webtv.net/tassail/NutsysTelescopic

Thom Stewart wrote:
Doug,

You think about it!

I have.

I have also avoided being indoctrinated with a lot of propaganda about
how those inscrutable little yellow devils are all ancestor-worhipping
dunces.

... They were educated to believe in the Emperor God,
Sintoizm, Hari Kari, Kamikazi (Devine Wind of Deliverance)

Bull****.

Shintoism is quite simple and direct. It is a natural expression of the
human belief that there is more going on in the world than meets the eye.

Hari Kari is a vulgar term for suicide, which is properly termed
seppuku. The cultural belief in honorable suicide is basically the
ultimate in "death before dishonor." Think about where else you might
have heard that...

Kamikaze is two words: Kami = spirit and Kaze = wind. Often translated
as "divine wind," the word originally meant the typhoon which destroyed
Kublai Khan's invasion fleet and saved Japan. This was an actual
historical event and is well documented.

.... They were a
rather poorly educated chaste society in the 1930 & 1940.

More bull****. The Japanese were a feudal society in 1870, and by 1900
had adopted *all* the technological advances Europe and America could
teach them. You claim that two generation later, they were backwards &
ignorant? Sorry, you're still looking at comic books, not reality.


Doug I knew them. I seen the masses really blossom under Democratic
Life. They were not STUPID; they were held back!

Thom, the Japanese adopted a parliamentary democracy under a monarchy,
which they still have, in 1876. If you saw them blossom under democracy,
then you're a heck of a lot older than I thought!!

Regards
Doug King

"DSK" wrote in message

The German nuclear research projects underway in the late 1930s was hurt
by the flight of some of their best scientists, most notably of course
Einstein, and most of the scientists remaining (while probably capable of
building a bomb, or at least radiation enhanced weapons) despised the
Nazis and would never have built such weapons for Hitler.

Is this History 101 According to Doug? The Germans were on the verge of
completing a crude nuclear device when the war ground to a halt in Europe.
They had huge stocks of heavy water, they had fissionable material, somewhat
enriched, and they had the equipment to do the job. That it didn't happen
had more to do with timing than with any particular antipathy toward Hitler
and the Nazis. The Nazis had rather well-known means of *encouraging*
others to do their bidding. Those scientists may have claimed to have
stalled the process, but had the European war continued for another year,
most of them would have been killed, had they not created a nuclear weapon.

Jingoistic malarkey

How then do you explain 40 years of *cold* war? You seem to have all the
answers. Wrong ones, but answers, nonetheless. It's highly doubtful that
either the USA or the USSR would have been restrained by mutual assured
destruction had the devastating effects of atomic weapons not been
witnessed.

Possibly. But would you agree that had the Japanese developed the bomb
first (and they were closer than a lot of people think), tied one to one
of their strategic balloon bombers, and nuked the U.S. mainland, that we
"deserved it"?

Hmmm. Let's see: The Japanese had joined forces ideologically with Germany
and the Axis powers to achieve world domination under a dictator or group of
dictators. The Japanese sneak attacked us, knowing we wouldn't stand by
forever while they occupied more and more of the south Pacific and
ultimately parts of Asia. We, OTOH, retaliated, and fought against the sort
of despotic tyranny that an Axis victory would have wrought. No, I don't
think we would have deserved to be nuked. I'm glad we weren't.


There was no communication between the U.S. and Japanese gov'ts. There
were some attempts made by indirect channels to open negotiations, most
notably right after Pearl Harbor and early 1945. IIRC most of these
attempts went through Dutch colonial offices. The U.S. gov't rejected
these attempts to open negotiations, partly because there was no point in
negotiating peace when you're on the verge of victory (kind of like a
sports team down XXX to 0 in the last minute, offering a tie) and partly
because of commitments to the other Allies.

There was another aspect--the Japanese would not consider any form of
unconditional surrender. The Allies all felt that only after an
unconditional surrender, following which the Japanese would dismantle their
entire war-making machine, including disbanding the army, navy, etc. and
destroying all small arms and other ordnance, would a lasting peace be
possible. There was a substantiated fear that Japan might once again become
a formidable opponent. The Japanese rejected the Potsdam Proclaim less than
a month before the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. IF they truly had
been desirous of a surrender, they would at least have suggested talks. The
PP was met with silence from Japan.


I don't think the entire proclamation was broadcast, but that's a quibble.
More to the point, how good a translation do you think it was? Possibly a
bit like those garbled instruction manuals, hmm?

One of Hirohito's own secretaries reported, after the war, that the Potsdam
Proclaim was understood clearly by the Japanese government at the time it
was broadcast. They discussed it for days, but the military leaders were
intractable. They wanted to fight to the bitter end.

... The Japanese rejected it, complaining that no provision had been
made to insure the protection of Emperor Hirohito, whom they believed to
be a god.


Hmmph. You really swallow the whole package, don't you Max?

No more than you swallow what you choose to believe. Which, incidentally,
is generally liberal revisionist history. Neither you nor I were alive
then, so we must depend upon others for the information. Who is correct?
We may never know.

The Japanese revered the Emperor, in the same way that many in the U.S.
revere President Bush. However nobody seriously thought he was a god.

My statement was probably not quite correct. They believed Hirohito to be
"like a god." They believed he had to be protected at ANY cost.

Bear in mind also that the military junta in charge of Japan used
reverence for the Emperor as a political tool, and juiced it all they
could.

In short, lots of error and wishful thinking on both sides. No decision,
next inning please.

Jesus, Doug, no war is perfect in its planning and execution. Errors are
made on both sides constantly. And the variables are infinite. The side
that makes the fewer errors generally wins. I personally believe the US and
the Allied forces were on the right side, and Japan was on the wrong side.
But I don't care to get into a philosophical argument over this point. My
contention stands: Japan deserved what it got. Most recently the prime
minister of Japan apologized for his country's aggression toward the US at
Pearl Harbor. I accept his apology, but make no apology for dropping two
nukes on his homeland.

Max

"DSK" wrote in message

Thom Stewart wrote:
Doug,

An awful lot I don't agree it but I certainly disagree about not
believing the emperor a God. They believed it. He was a God on a White
Horse. He had to issue a written statement to his people that he wasn't
a God. Sorry Buddy, You're way off on that one


Why are you so eager to believe that other people are stupid?

Would *you* believe the Emperor is a god?

This clearly demonstrates your arrogance and inability to be open-minded.
There were myriad cultural differences between the Japanese and Americans.
There still are today. Just because they believed their leader to be a god
doesn't make them stupid--just different, and with a different set of
beliefs. I suppose you believe Native Americans and Australian Aborigines
to be stupid because they believe that gods control much of their lives and
destinies?


The Japanese nation is (and was at the time) one of the best educated
people on the planet. They didn't build some of the most advanced weapons
of the time (and build all sorts of high tech gizmos since) by believing
in a lot of superstitious clap-trap.

Sorry buddy, I'm not off at all on this one. Think about it.

You're way off, but your ego and your arrogance prevents you from realizing
it.

Max

wrote in message

Doug,

You are confusing logic with emotion. There are plenty of examples of
highly
educated and intelligent people who believe in god, or playing the
lottery, or
all sorts of other superstitious nonsense. Albert Einstein believed
fervently in
god, despite his highly developed intellectual abilities. There are people
in
this newsgroup who believe everything in the bible literally happened. The
US is
a very technically advanced country, yet look at who is in the White
House,
spouting creationism. The Japanese culture is incredibly different from
ours. I
do not find it at all incongruous for them to be technically advanced, and
at
the same time very backwards or even foolishly dogmatic in another area.
They
believe in living manifestations of god. You don't.

Well said.

Max

... The Japanese culture is incredibly different from
ours. I
do not find it at all incongruous for them to be technically advanced, and
at
the same time very backwards or even foolishly dogmatic in another area.
They
believe in living manifestations of god. You don't.

Maxprop wrote:
Well said.


In other words, you and BittyBill-Bob want to think those clever little
Nips are still quite doofusses, so you can keep your sense of racial
superiority intact.

The universe is what it is, not what you wish it to be.

DSK

"DSK" wrote in message

Not at all. I can be wrong, but I'm not this time.

Yeah Yeah Yaeh... that's what you say all the time... but you have never
admitted to being wrong ... even when _I_ proved you wrong!! Which I have
done countless times.

I on the other hand am never wrong..... I may have been given erroneous
info.. but I'm never wrong.

CM

wrote in message
...
Please explain precisely what the logic is for WASP England to maintain a
Queen
and Royal family. Why doesn't every democracy have the same?

If you think England is WASP then you have not visited lately. Parts of some
cities have become no-go areas for WASP's.
And you certainly haven't been watching any BBC news bulletins.