On Nov 4, 11:49?am, wrote:
On Nov 4, 2:35 pm, wrote:





On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 10:00:20 -0800, Chuck Gould

wrote:
So Douglas MacArthur cannot be counted among those who were *morally*
opposed to the use of nuclear weapons, only among those who claim to
have felt, back in 1945, that using nuclear weapons on Japan was not
*strategically* necessary to force a Japanese surrender.
In fact, he claims to have thought that Japan would have surrendered
weeks before the bomb was dropped (and of course that event would have
saved American lives as well) if we had been flexible enough to allow
them to keep the Emperor in place.

One of the many shoulda, coulda, wouldas, and what-ifs of discussing
history. :-)

We still had the problem of convincing the Japanese army they were
beat.
They had been raised with the "no surrender" ethic and without the
horrible spectre of the A bombs I am not sure we would have been
successful in getting them to stop fighting.

Some people just won't beleive that, no matter how it came out. We are
the bad guys here, always making the wrong decisions after being
attacked and treated like animals... stupid us...


There are few decisons ever made that are all good or all bad. On any
level. Most of the decisions we ever make will have certain
consequences we could not have foreseen when making them. Examining
the consequnces of past decisions can help us make better choices,
(sometimes), in the future.

The problem with adopting a view that "Everything we do is always
wrong" or the reverse, "Everything we do is always right" is that it
precludes learning from past results. We live in a very competitive
world, and if we rest on our moral laurels unwilling to examine the
process by which we make decisions, our motivations behind some of
those decisions, and the positive/negative/unintended consequences of
those decisions we can expect to be overtaken (maybe even physically)
by a society willing to be more objective in its self analysis.

Love for your country should be like love for your kids, not love of
your God. If you're religious, you never question God and simply
follow what you believe is divine will. Because you love your kids,
you will be concerned for their welfare, willing to sacrifice and
rearrange priorities to provide for them, and concerned at all times
for their welfare. If you truly love your kids you don't normally say,
"Go ahead and do whatever you want. Because you're my kids you can't
possibly do anything wrong and whatever choice you make you can count
on me to support 100%." When you love your kids, you help them learn
to make the best possible choices, and part of that process is
examining the results of choices made in the past.

There is no question that nuking those two cities in Japan
precipitated an end to the war. From that perspective, the tactic was
successful.
It's not wrong or unpatriotic to examine whether there were options
available at the time, and if there were, whether we chose the best
one.




Now, just like then, the best way to support the troops is to let em'
win...

Another way to support the troops is to avoid sending them into combat
without a clearly defined mission (makes it much harder to "win") and
when the security of the United States or an ally is not at stake. I'd
like to see us learn from some of our difficulties in the last 60
years and become more adept at fighting guerilla warriors. We've got
the "beat an organized army" aspect down pretty well, we need to
improve our ability to handle quasi-civilian enemies who strike from
ambush and then disappear into a crowd of innocent bystanders.

On Nov 4, 10:51 am, Chuck Gould wrote:
On Nov 3, 10:39?pm, Hiroshima Facts wrote:

On Nov 4, 1:12 am, Chuck Gould wrote:

Actually, the emperor *did* retain his throne as one of the terms of
surrender. The last paragraph of the surrender document reads, "The
authority of the Emperor and the Imperial Government to rule the state
shall be subject to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces...."

That line is saying that the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces
can depose the Emperor if he feels like it.

Which is fundamentally different than a treaty declaring that the
insitution of Emperor shall be definitely abolished. It's compromise
language in its purest form. :-)

The US was not trying to abolish the institution of the Emperor.

Japan was trying to get a guarantee that the Emperor could continue to
rule. They did not get any guarantee.

On Nov 4, 11:00 am, Chuck Gould wrote:

Why would MacArthur change his view after the war was over?
He may have waited to express his opinion, but what could have
possibly happened to change his view entirely?

One possibility is that after the war he had greater knowledge of
Japan's plans.

During the war, Japan's intention to surrender was a lot less clear
that it was after the war.


Another possibility is that during the war he wanted the fighting to
continue until he had a chance to personally lead an invasion of Japan
(like Ike led an invasion of Europe), and after the war he saw some
sort of political advantage to voicing an opinion that Japan would
have surrendered anyway.

On Nov 5, 12:18 am, Tim wrote:
On Nov 4, 11:14 pm, Tim wrote:





On Nov 4, 10:45 pm, wrote:

On Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:53:35 -0000, thunder
wrote:

On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:15:43 -0500, gfretwell wrote:

I'm not sure I buy European culture had a "gentlemanly war ethic". Look
at the "ethnic cleansing" of the Balkans, the uncivil Spanish Civil War,
the Holocaust, or even the Russian- German battles of WWII, none were
very gentlemanly.

You are talking about people who were not part of the European "royal
families". Even with your examples there is still little comparison to
the things that happened to the people who the Japanese conquered.
European wars have little to compare to the rape of Nanking, the forced
prostitution of Korean women, sword practice on allied prisoners and the
bayonetting of babies by the jap troops. Europe also never really saw
anything like the Kamakazi.

I'm not disputing the barbarity of Asian wars. The Japanese were incredibly brutal, as was Pol
Pot, the Chinese Nationalists (Yellow River Flood), etc. I was disputing the "gentlemanly"
character of the European. Because of our predominately European heritage, many of the
European atrocities have been glossed over, including our own.

I think the reason I feel this way was my father was a POW in WWII.
The Germans picked him up on the battlefield, severely wounded and
unable to walk, They put him in a hospital and saved his life. Again
wounded (his second purple heart) while running from our allies, the
russians, to get back to the American lines they again spared his life
when he could not move on his own,

The japs would have killed him the first day

That is if he was licky. they may have tortured him for about a week
first.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

*Lucky*

sorry- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

What's on YOUR mind?!

"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Nov 3, 8:05?pm, JR North wrote:
?
Remember Pearl Harbor. And Nanking. And Battan.
JR
So, yes, RIP Paul Tibbets. He was a brave and
Chuck Gould wrote:


Of course.

There was no excuse for many of the Japanese actions during WWII.

Once hostilities end, each side has to deal with the aftermath of its
own decisions.

It's not my place to judge whether the atomic bombs dropped on Japan
were "right" or "wrong". I'm simply pointing out that my research into
the subject indicates we had more options than some revisionist
militarists would prefer to have us believe. Whether any of the other
options would have been "better" or "worse" is useless conjecture.

About a year after the war ended, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey
report 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." Yes, the conclusion in that report could have been
wrong, but I would have to give the Strategic Bombing Survey report at
least equal credibility with the opinions of talk show hosts and
historians 60 years after the fact.

I can't think of any major national issue or decision in which there
hasn't been a difference of opinion. In the interest of establishing
the best possible insight into the past, it is useful to know that
many people
at that time- including some very responsible, patriotic, loyal
Americans in positions of military authority, disagreed with Truman's
decision to nuke the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once it's done,
it's done- so questions about good, bad, better, or worse are simply
academic. What we can profit from the experience is a lesson in
evaluating options and dealing with the aftermath of choices.

I can't say that if I were in Truman's shoes at the time I would have
decided any differently- nor can anybody else who wasn't there (or
even born) at the time.


My uncle spent the war as a shooter in the South Pacific. He left SF on a
troop ship to Guadalcanal during the first blackout of WWII. He woke up in
a hospital in the Philippines the day the Japanese surrendered. He figured
the bomb saved his life! He would have gone to Japan invasion after
recovering from the handgrenade damage. The worst fear was to be a prisoner
of the Japanese. So most battles were fought to the extreme. When he
arrived in Guadalcanal, there were still marines hung on stakes that the
Japanese used for bayonet practice. When he woke up in the hospital, there
was a Philippine nurse in the room who he mistook for Japanese and he shook
so bad they said he moved the bed across the room. And still shook for 3
days afterwards when the doctor finally convinced him he was in an American
hospital. Yes the bomb was horrific, but the whole war was horrific, and
the Pacific / Asian theater was just a lot worse than the European action.
**** happens in war, and the payback for the Japanese extracted a terrible
penalty. But we were still correct in the bombings. They dropped the first
bomb and the Japanese thought it was a fluke. Nagasaki, happened to be
secondary target as the primary was cloud covered. The 2nd got the
attention the first should have gotten by those in control.

"HK" wrote in message
news
thunder wrote:
On Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:51:40 -0700, Chuck Gould wrote:


I can't say that if I were in Truman's shoes at the time I would have
decided any differently- nor can anybody else who wasn't there (or even
born) at the time.

Obviously, nor can we say, with any certainty, that the Japanese would
have surrendered without the use of A-bombs. However, forty years after
the war, their plans to defend against the invasion were declassified.
If they were implemented, they definitely would have cost a major number
of American lives.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro.../downfall.html


I always thought the Germans were far more deserving of having a couple of
nukes dropped on their cities, but the European war ended before that
could happen.

Why? The European theater was a lot less nasty than the South Pacific.
Something like 5% of the German prisoners died in captivity, and that
includes those wounded when captured. Japan killed about 39% of the
prisoners.

On Nov 5, 12:31 pm, wrote:
On Nov 5, 12:18 am, Tim wrote:





On Nov 4, 11:14 pm, Tim wrote:

On Nov 4, 10:45 pm, wrote:

On Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:53:35 -0000, thunder
wrote:

On Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:15:43 -0500, gfretwell wrote:

I'm not sure I buy European culture had a "gentlemanly war ethic". Look
at the "ethnic cleansing" of the Balkans, the uncivil Spanish Civil War,
the Holocaust, or even the Russian- German battles of WWII, none were
very gentlemanly.

You are talking about people who were not part of the European "royal
families". Even with your examples there is still little comparison to
the things that happened to the people who the Japanese conquered.
European wars have little to compare to the rape of Nanking, the forced
prostitution of Korean women, sword practice on allied prisoners and the
bayonetting of babies by the jap troops. Europe also never really saw
anything like the Kamakazi.

I'm not disputing the barbarity of Asian wars. The Japanese were incredibly brutal, as was Pol
Pot, the Chinese Nationalists (Yellow River Flood), etc. I was disputing the "gentlemanly"
character of the European. Because of our predominately European heritage, many of the
European atrocities have been glossed over, including our own.

I think the reason I feel this way was my father was a POW in WWII.
The Germans picked him up on the battlefield, severely wounded and
unable to walk, They put him in a hospital and saved his life. Again
wounded (his second purple heart) while running from our allies, the
russians, to get back to the American lines they again spared his life
when he could not move on his own,

The japs would have killed him the first day

That is if he was licky. they may have tortured him for about a week
first.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

*Lucky*

sorry- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

What's on YOUR mind?!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

just trying to correct spelling after the fact.