my problem is that I have seen vork, who is quite knowledable on the subject dismantle people on the necessity to use the bomb, I believe that I am outclassed in this conversation with your godfry, but at the same time, I would like to see the two of yall discuss the issue.
if I posted some excerpts from vork's arguments at iidb, would you respond to them here?
my problem is that I have seen vork, who is quite knowledable on the subject dismantle people on the necessity to use the bomb, I believe that I am outclassed in this conversation with your godfry, but at the same time, I would like to see the two of yall discuss the issue.
if I posted some excerpts from vork's arguments at iidb, would you respond to them here?
Sure.
Or, invite him over. I haven't engaged with Vork in quite some time. Usually, we're on the same team.
the scary part is, the destructive power of those bombs is tiny compared to what we have today.
The bombing of Nagasaki is the frosting on the cake. If they were really interested in peace and saving lives, I think they could have waited more than 3 days before destroying another city.
Out of curiousity, does anyone know if any other "Gadgets" were developed and ready for deployment at the time, or were those the only two we had?
Initially, there were just the three. The Trinity test bomb, Fat Man, and Little Boy. But Leo Szilard, in his interview in the link I provided, noted that more bombs could have been assembled in a relatively short amount of time.
And I agree, Nagasaki was a true travesty. I'd even say it was a war crime. I don't think Japan was even issued an ultimatum after Hiroshima. Three days rolled by with no surrender and they just dropped the second one.
Not to mention the "truth" of the "million American lives saved" by the dropping of the two bombs. That figure was made up out of thin air by McGeorge Bundy, who wrote the speeches for Secretary Stimson on why they were used.
Once it became obvious what Japanese defenses were like after the end of the war, a million men was probably on target....
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What has been fairly well obscured by Allied "histories" of the end of the war in the Pacific is that Japanese sources were already looking for avenues to sue for peace before the atomic bombs were dropped. This was acknowledged by the Allied leaders at Yalta. The "necessity" of the atomic bombs was a rationalization...propaganda. It sure made us feel better, having repeatedly violated the standards of waging war we held when we entered it, the atomic bombings being the most egregious of the violations.
There was never any search for avenues (the two sides had a 24-7 pipeline in Switzerland and remained in contact for POW and similar issues throughout the war). There was never any search for peace because there was never any agreement on peace or terms. The Emperor and the military were pursuing ketsu-go, the defense of Kyushu, in the hope that massive losses would persuade the Americans to make peace and let them keep some of their gains.
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What they are against is the fact America purposefully chose a civilian target to bomb. That the number 1 consideration when picking a target was how much civilian damage we could do. If such an event happened today, to the US, during a war, we would call those who did it terrorists and animals. Yet the majority of the US finds it acceptable that we did it to someone else.
Incorrect, as Hiroshima was a city with both a large military and civilian population that made it ideal as a bomb site. Hiroshima was the second largest HQ city in Japan outside of Tokyo, responsible for the defense of Kyushu in the upcoming US invasion. It was also the major transhipment port for Kyushu. In short, once the invasion began, Hiroshima was going to be obliterated, period, and everyone in it killed, one way or another.
This brings up another point -- that in hindsight we know that they surrendered from the Bomb. But the leaders in '45 had to plan for failure. With few bombs, all had to be used for effect.
Thus Ari's comment:
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As you can see with this list of possible targets, there were better choices for military damage but they wanted a large amount of damage to the cities and thus civilian casualties.
...is patently incorrect. Militarily there were no better targets, although Hiroshima did have one problem: it was far from Tokyo, and some of the shock effect was lost. The other cities on the list -- Kyoto was struck for cultural reasons, Kokura was the original target of the second bomb, Yokohama was not only heavily defended but also: what if the missed and dropped it on the Emperor (recall that they actually missed at Nagasaki)? It is necessary to enage all the thinking behind the planning to understand it.
Silly goose writes
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We did not need to drop the bombs. Japan had already lost the war. We did it because we wanted to see what happened.
That was the problem. Japan had lost the war -- lost it certainly and clearly by late 1943. The problem was not defeating Japan, it was getting Japan's leaders to admit that they had lost the war and to stop the war. Essentially it became necessary to incinerate 200,000 people to shock the Emperor into surrendering.
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It is possible it saved lives, but the big question is, did it save more civilian lives than it killed? Does saving soldiers warrant the killing of civilian Men, Women and Children?
On other battlegrounds, in China, Indonesia, Korea....the killing went on, including civilians. I do not understand why Japanese civilians are more important than any other civilians.
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They were looking for ways to surrender weeks before our decision to use nukes.
Again, there are no records of this. One does not "look for" ways to surrender. One gets on the radio and announces it, as actually happened. The fact is that individual Japanese attempted in several cases to get talks going with US officials. All of these things had in common the fact that Tokyo killed them.
The Japanese government was essentially run by the military and the Emperor. That is why the Japanese leadership did not want to give up the Emperor's place, because the system of authoritarian rule depended on him on the Throne. Under the government system, a parliamentary system, the military supplied a serving officer to act as war minister, a position it alone controlled. Under that system, if the ministerial posts were not filled, the government collapsed. Hence all the military had to do if it didn't like the policy was to have the war minister resign, brining down the government. Thus no policy could pass without the military's approval. Since senior military leaders were all hawks, no peace policy could ever pass.
The Emperor did order a negotiation through Russia, whose goal was to get the USSR to broker a negotiated peace that would leave Japan in control of at least some of its WWII gains, plus its colonies. That was a fantasy, and Sato, the Japanese ambassador to Moscow, told the government that. He was ignored. The USSR never had any intention of going along, and the US was informed of the talks.
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If you even read the list of cities I posted you would have noticed there were better or equal military targets that weren't located in such a populated area, but were considered lower grade targets.
Name one.
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I also think that most histories give way too much credit to these bombings ending the war. IMO, the Soviet entry into the war in the Pacific, and the subsequent annihilation of the Japanese army in Manchuria had far more influence on the Japanese decision to unconditionally surrender to the US.
Also incorrect. Soviet entry appears to have been effective in persuading the officer class to go along with the surrender, although the commentary that supports that is all postwar and thus very suspect, especially in light of the 50 year campaign by the Japanese Right to convince humanitarians and leftists in the West that the Bomb was a horrible atrocity that made Japan the war's real victim. But no record shows anything like the influence you allude to. Indeed, Hirohito discussed Russian entry just once in the crucial period following the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb...and when the decision was made to surrender on the 10th, the fighting in Manchuria had gone on for about 25 hours and nobody knew a thing about it. Further, Hirohito appears to have made up his mind prior to Soviet entry, on the 7th or 8th (sources differ) in an evening meeting in which he referenced the Bomb and told Togo, the foreign minister, that Japan would have to surrender. Finally, with the soviets in the war and two bombs dropped, the Japanese government still refused to surrender (the vote had to be unanimous and none of the hawks would agree though the majority voted for surrender). In sum no case can be made for Soviet entry having a great effect on Japanese thinking.
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By the time the bomb was dropped, Allied troops had advanced to within 500 miles of the Japanese homeland and secured a military staging area on Okinawa by June 1945. There was already a secured fighter base at Iwo Jima and bombers from the Marianas could fly almost with impunity over any Japanese target with fighter escorts. The Japanese fleet was tattered and in shambles. Strategic materials, primarily petroleum, metals and compounds necessary for explosives and propellants were dwindling, nationalists and communists in China had finally started working together and were driving the Japanese out of China,and it's only ally, Nazi Germany had fallen.
All true, as the ministers of agriculture, transportation, and munitions informed the government at the meeting on Aug 10. But still Anami, the War Minister, refused to surrender and urged a fight to the bitter end. The official policy, adopted in a meeting on June 6, was the Honorable Death of 100 Million -- the military was so wedded to its rule that it was willing to kill every human in Japan rather than surrender.
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Japan was suing for peace. This was confirmed as early as February 1945, at the Yalta Conference. The Allies refused to negotiate. They wanted an unconditional surrender....not a negotiated one.
Unconditional surrender was adopted two years earlier and was a highly popular policy at home. What conditions would you propose? That the Japanese retain China? Korea? Taiwan? Which of our wartime allies would you leave in Japanese hands? People who reject unconditional surrender are usually unable to name acceptable conditions.
And further, unconditional surrender was necessary because the Imperial throne had to be completely reformed or eliminated -- recall that most allied civilians wanted Hirohito tried and executed as a war criminal, which he most certainly was. The Throne was the basis of military power. Had we left the government in power, we would simply have faced another war, and another.
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There is a compelling argument that the bomb was not dropped to compel the Japanese into surrender, but to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that any plans for overreaching after the war would be frowned upon and we had the wherewithal to back up our demands.
It is quite true that the US government realized the A-Bomb would have a salutary effect on Uncle Joe. Similarly, other allied military successes brought unlooked-for political fruit. But no evidence out there suggests that this was the most important reason the bomb was dropped. Such arguments can be made only by ignoring the overwhelming evidence that the bomb was dropped to end the war -- and that its use was embodied in the development process -- it was never the case that we were going to develop it and then not use it. it would have been grossly immoral to have a war-winning weapon at hand and then not have used it.
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And, where were all the concentration camps for those Americans of German ancestry?
Godfrey, there were internment camps for enemy aliens of all types. You have confused relocation with internment, a common error. Relocation camps were not concentration camps, unless you think concentration camps were places where people were allowed to leave to work, where they were given scholarships to attend college, had swimming pools and high school bands, and other impedimentia of life. The "concentration camp" claim is another staple of postwar Japanese prograganda. The reality is more complex.
As always, you've got it 180-degrees backwards. It was genius on our part to drop the second bomb right after the first.
The second bombing only 3 days later (after first bombing the city with conventional weapons) suggests ulterior motives than peace and life.
It was policy to "shock" the Japanese with rapid application of two bombs. Nagasaki was originally slated for the 11th, but bad weather forced the Air Force to move it up. Not ulterior motives, but a typhoon between Iwo Jima and Japan.
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So... That being the case, those who decided to drop the bomb should have engaged in negotiations with the Japanese who sought a negotiated end to the hostilities back BEFORE February 1945. That could have prevented all those deaths between February and August AND made the deployment of such a horrendous weapon entirely unnecessary.
There were no negotiated peace overtures prior to the end of the war. In February the Koiso government was in power, and did not want peace, nor did anyone serving in it. Koiso did attempt to work with Miao Pin, a notorious intriguier, to get the Chinese to agreed to peace, but Pin made himself detested in Japan and was eventually executed by Chiang. No overtures were made to the West. Please supply dates and individuals involved, if you know of one.
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They were refused because it was not an unconditional surrender. They wished to attach conditions to their surrendering, like keeping the Emperor and self-rule. They knew they could not keep their empire.
Actually, in the telegram of July 21, 1945, from Togo, the foreign minister, to Sato, in Moscow, Togo explicitly rejected unconditional surrender with the Throne retained. The Japanese wanted many conditions, like keeping China and Taiwan and Korea, no war crimes trials, and so forth. And they wanted a truce.
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"Meanwhile, Germany had accepted defeat on May 8. Clearly, Japan too had lost the war. But there was no break in civilian morale. The people stoically accepted starvation conditions and the mounting war disasters. They appeared resigned to fighting on to the end. Some high civilian leaders around the emperor, however, had seen the hopelessness of Japan's position already in 1944 and had started to maneuver toward ending the war. General Tojo had been persuaded in July of that year to pass the prime ministership on to another general, and a few days after the invasion of Okinawa, the latter was replaced by Admiral Suzuki, who had almost died at the hands of army extremists in the February 26 Incident in 1936. In June the emperor, returning again to the initiative, called on the Supreme Council to find a way to end the war, and the government tried to get the Soviet Union to mediate. The United States had repeatedly spoken in terms of "unconditional surrender" for Japan as well as Germany, but she, together with Britain and China, issued on July 26 the so-called Potsdam Proclamation, in which the conditions for Japan's "unconditional surrender" were wisely elaborated."
Italics mine. This initiative to end the war had already been started in informal contacts with the US through the Soviet Union. This does show that formal and open feelers for surrender had been floated by June of 1945.
This is incorrect. The feeling to the USSR was, as stated above, an abortive attempt to have the USSR mediate a truce that would stop the fighting but leave the Japanese empire intact. Stalin informed the US of it, and never had any intention of going along with it. The Japanese government had not yet begun negotiations, and no terms or concrete suggestions were ever agreed on. Please see Bruce Lee's _Marching Orders_ for the telegrams between Sato and Togo (read by the US) in which Sato desperately asks for something concrete to give the Russians.
The paragraph telescopes too much time. Togo stepped down in July, Suzuki became PM on April 5, ignorant of the war situation. There were no peace moves prior to that time.
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There is also an excellent link regarding Leo Szilard's attempt to dissuade Presidents Roosevelt and Truman from using the atomic bomb on Japan.
Szilard held several contradictory positions, wanted the scientists to have a say in cabinet level policy over democratically elected leaders, knew nothing about Japan or the military, and nothing about strategy or politics. He also had no access to the MAGIC and ULTRA data. In short, he was both arrogant and ignorant. The myth of the heroic Szilard also ignores the petition by scientists who argued that it would be immoral not to use a possible war winning weapon, and the arguments of Vannevar Bush and Conant who thought that if the A Bomb wasn't used immediately, and its horrible effects universally known and apparent, then it would be used in a much worse way in the future.
Shit, this thread is interesting! I am going to echo liv's earlier post and say thanks for all the information that you guys have/are finding on the subject. I'm pretty ignorant about the pacific theatre WWII stuff, so yeah. Thanks.
Anyone have any recommendations as far as books on the subject?
PS - this "jap" thing sorta makes me giggle (sorry folks, but it's true). My grandfather was on the Oklahoma in Pearl Harbour. He and my grandmother were very anti-Asian until my parents adopted me from Korea - he even bawled my mother out for adopting a "jap kid" into the family . Anyway, when the movie Pearl Harbour came out, I was leaving the theatre and talking about how my grandfather was there when it happened, and some twat behind me started bitching about how I shouldn't be proud of that, blah blah blah. Duh. I kind of forget that I'm Asian, sometimes - and it wasn't until we left the theatre that Jekyll reminded me that yes, I am Asian, and that the bitch probably thought my grandfather was doing the bombing!
First, I'd like to welcome Vorkosigan (aka Vork) to FF myself.
Thanks for all your input. I'll need some time to digest it all and respond to it. From what I can see, I'm going to have to recant some points, but I still see room to manuever.
To start it off, I've lifted the following from the Fallon and Hopwood piece on interment camps:
Does anybody else see anything wrong with this?
It seems to me that they have relegated 100% of all persons of Japanese decent living in the US at the time of Pearl Harbor to two categories: Foreign nationals and native born Americans who were also citizens of Japan by choice. It provides no room for those of Japanese decent who were naturalized (were there none?), and those of American birth who did not choose to be citizens of Japan. Believe me, there were a great deal of both interred. Recruiting for military service from camp internees, many members who served with distinction during the war belies this statement. Another thing which seems to be ignored, is that despite all the wonderful propaganda about student scholarships to attend university (can you imagine attending university as a Japanese-American during that war?), the internees were placed in camps with barbed wire on top of the fences surrounding them, guard towers with guns stationed along the fence, and the guns pointed inwards. When these people, whatever their nation of birth or citizenship, were interned, they were told to gather up what they could carry and report to cattle calls at local detention sites within days. As such, all the property they owned became fair game for the unscrupulous; homes, farms, orchards, businesses, all to often fell prey to racist predators. These people, American citizens most of them, were robbed of their material lives.
Thanks for the links on the German and Italian national detainees. I have yet to run into information on the internment of Americans of German descent, second or third generation German-Americans. Perhaps if I read further?
All true, as the ministers of agriculture, transportation, and munitions informed the government at the meeting on Aug 10. But still Anami, the War Minister, refused to surrender and urged a fight to the bitter end. The official policy, adopted in a meeting on June 6, was the Honorable Death of 100 Million -- the military was so wedded to its rule that it was willing to kill every human in Japan rather than surrender.
Vorkosigan
And if this official policy were in fact realistic, the dropping of the two bombs would have had absolutely no effect whatsoever.
The Honorable Death policy was held by a very small handful of men in the military heirarchy, and their objections were evidently overturned following the deaths of 200 000 - far from the 100 000 000 you mention above. The fact that a surrender followed the bombings within two weeks indicates that this death-before-surrender story was, in fact, effectively moonshine. If it were otherwise, no surrender would or could have come about as a result of the bombings.
Your synopsis of the official reasons for the use of the bombs is excellent, but you still don't address the practically certain option of a naval blockade of Japan effecting its surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were undefended targets, and the civilian population was being targeted by the bombings, despite the presence of garrisons and facilities with a potential military utility (at a certain level, any infrastructure has a potential military utility).
I still do not see how the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives can be justified. Certainly not by considering the chimeric casualties to the united nations military forces by an unnecessary invasion, which was the argument that sold the use of A-bombs to the US and other publics.
The Japanese forces were in defeat everywhere except Japan itself, where only the army remained intact (the navy and air forces having been destroyed) and its isolation on island Japan rendered it wholly ineffective for anything other than the defence of the islands against a seaborne invasion force. This invasion was not a necessity. Neither was the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Not to mention the "truth" of the "million American lives saved" by the dropping of the two bombs. That figure was made up out of thin air by McGeorge Bundy, who wrote the speeches for Secretary Stimson on why they were used.
Once it became obvious what Japanese defenses were like after the end of the war, a million men was probably on target....
What good are defenses when you have inadequate fuel to provide air cover, inadequate ammunition to use in the weapons you have and your cities are all on fire?
As already noted, any invasion by allied forces of the main islands of the Japanese nation anytime soon after the fall of Okinawa was foolhardy to the extreme. Japan is a nation very dependant upon imported materials to fuel a military war machine, denying it vital resources would have relatively quickly brought the nation to it's knees. The reason it had attempted to erect the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was that it needed resources not available in Japan to emulate the western powers in their imperial aims. Siege, not invasion, was the least cost (in terms of lives on both sides) alternative.
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What has been fairly well obscured by Allied "histories" of the end of the war in the Pacific is that Japanese sources were already looking for avenues to sue for peace before the atomic bombs were dropped. This was acknowledged by the Allied leaders at Yalta. The "necessity" of the atomic bombs was a rationalization...propaganda. It sure made us feel better, having repeatedly violated the standards of waging war we held when we entered it, the atomic bombings being the most egregious of the violations.
There was never any search for avenues (the two sides had a 24-7 pipeline in Switzerland and remained in contact for POW and similar issues throughout the war). There was never any search for peace because there was never any agreement on peace or terms. The Emperor and the military were pursuing ketsu-go, the defense of Kyushu, in the hope that massive losses would persuade the Americans to make peace and let them keep some of their gains.
Uh....That there was disagreement on peace or terms means that somebody was talking about it. Also, you lump "the emperor" and "the military" together, as though they were some kind of monolithic extremist block. This was far from the truth. There were indeed extremist nationalist interests high in the military, but as Reischauer noted, they're credibility had been critically besmirched and their honor sullied. Citizen leaders were beginning to take power back from the nationalist extremists in the military.
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Silly goose writes
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We did not need to drop the bombs. Japan had already lost the war. We did it because we wanted to see what happened.
That was the problem. Japan had lost the war -- lost it certainly and clearly by late 1943. The problem was not defeating Japan, it was getting Japan's leaders to admit that they had lost the war and to stop the war. Essentially it became necessary to incinerate 200,000 people to shock the Emperor into surrendering.
I say this is wrong. As noted, events were already leading in that direction. A siege, cutting off all supplies to Japan, would have accomplished the purpose.
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It is possible it saved lives, but the big question is, did it save more civilian lives than it killed? Does saving soldiers warrant the killing of civilian Men, Women and Children?
On other battlegrounds, in China, Indonesia, Korea....the killing went on, including civilians. I do not understand why Japanese civilians are more important than any other civilians.
They are not. But the US entered the war foursquare against the indiscriminate butchery of civilian populations. We climbed down into the pit with Germany and Japan when we engaged in fire-bombing Dresden and other German cities, and fire-bombed Japanese cities, and then unleashed not one, but two humungous killing machines that made it impossible to distinguish civilian from military installations.
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They were looking for ways to surrender weeks before our decision to use nukes.
Again, there are no records of this. One does not "look for" ways to surrender. One gets on the radio and announces it, as actually happened. The fact is that individual Japanese attempted in several cases to get talks going with US officials. All of these things had in common the fact that Tokyo killed them.
The Japanese government was essentially run by the military and the Emperor. That is why the Japanese leadership did not want to give up the Emperor's place, because the system of authoritarian rule depended on him on the Throne. Under the government system, a parliamentary system, the military supplied a serving officer to act as war minister, a position it alone controlled. Under that system, if the ministerial posts were not filled, the government collapsed. Hence all the military had to do if it didn't like the policy was to have the war minister resign, brining down the government. Thus no policy could pass without the military's approval. Since senior military leaders were all hawks, no peace policy could ever pass.
The Emperor did order a negotiation through Russia, whose goal was to get the USSR to broker a negotiated peace that would leave Japan in control of at least some of its WWII gains, plus its colonies. That was a fantasy, and Sato, the Japanese ambassador to Moscow, told the government that. He was ignored. The USSR never had any intention of going along, and the US was informed of the talks.
Of course they wanted to keep whatever they could. That's the whole point of negotiations. One floats one's "conditions" and the other side considers and can offer up other "conditions" they feel need be met. But the Allied powers, so far as I know, never even engaged in responding to what must have been ridiculous initiatives on Japan's part. It was only after Potsdam that the Allied powers clearly delineated their concept of "unconditional surrender", which interestingly enough, included keeping the emperor on the throne...a key request of the Japanese.
Also, your typification of all Japanese military officers as being members of the nationalist extremist bent is disingenuous. Suzuki was a naval officer and had been a target of the extremists nine years earlier. Yamamoto himself advised that Japan not attack the US, because he was of the opinion that it could not be defeated. Lastly, high level civilian advisors were having more and more influence over the emperor and the military.
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I also think that most histories give way too much credit to these bombings ending the war. IMO, the Soviet entry into the war in the Pacific, and the subsequent annihilation of the Japanese army in Manchuria had far more influence on the Japanese decision to unconditionally surrender to the US.
Also incorrect. Soviet entry appears to have been effective in persuading the officer class to go along with the surrender, although the commentary that supports that is all postwar and thus very suspect, especially in light of the 50 year campaign by the Japanese Right to convince humanitarians and leftists in the West that the Bomb was a horrible atrocity that made Japan the war's real victim. But no record shows anything like the influence you allude to. Indeed, Hirohito discussed Russian entry just once in the crucial period following the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb...and when the decision was made to surrender on the 10th, the fighting in Manchuria had gone on for about 25 hours and nobody knew a thing about it. Further, Hirohito appears to have made up his mind prior to Soviet entry, on the 7th or 8th (sources differ) in an evening meeting in which he referenced the Bomb and told Togo, the foreign minister, that Japan would have to surrender. Finally, with the soviets in the war and two bombs dropped, the Japanese government still refused to surrender (the vote had to be unanimous and none of the hawks would agree though the majority voted for surrender). In sum no case can be made for Soviet entry having a great effect on Japanese thinking.
Yet, the Soviet Union had notified Japanese government that it was abrogating their mutual non-aggression pact and declared war on Japan. Do you think that the Japan thought that nothing would come of that? They must have had a fairly decent idea of what would happen in Manchuria, as it was very poorly defended and the Soviets had had three months to move troops, equipment and supplies into place.
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By the time the bomb was dropped, Allied troops had advanced to within 500 miles of the Japanese homeland and secured a military staging area on Okinawa by June 1945. There was already a secured fighter base at Iwo Jima and bombers from the Marianas could fly almost with impunity over any Japanese target with fighter escorts. The Japanese fleet was tattered and in shambles. Strategic materials, primarily petroleum, metals and compounds necessary for explosives and propellants were dwindling, nationalists and communists in China had finally started working together and were driving the Japanese out of China,and it's only ally, Nazi Germany had fallen.
All true, as the ministers of agriculture, transportation, and munitions informed the government at the meeting on Aug 10. But still Anami, the War Minister, refused to surrender and urged a fight to the bitter end. The official policy, adopted in a meeting on June 6, was the Honorable Death of 100 Million -- the military was so wedded to its rule that it was willing to kill every human in Japan rather than surrender.
Posturing for a better bargaining position. It's been shown that the "official position" as posited by the military extremists was, by early June, on it's way out. Those in the Japanese government who felt it necessary to end the war had to do so very carefully, for fear that the military extremists would take measures to assassinate moderates.
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Japan was suing for peace. This was confirmed as early as February 1945, at the Yalta Conference. The Allies refused to negotiate. They wanted an unconditional surrender....not a negotiated one.
Unconditional surrender was adopted two years earlier and was a highly popular policy at home. What conditions would you propose? That the Japanese retain China? Korea? Taiwan? Which of our wartime allies would you leave in Japanese hands? People who reject unconditional surrender are usually unable to name acceptable conditions.
And further, unconditional surrender was necessary because the Imperial throne had to be completely reformed or eliminated -- recall that most allied civilians wanted Hirohito tried and executed as a war criminal, which he most certainly was. The Throne was the basis of military power. Had we left the government in power, we would simply have faced another war, and another.
Yet... The "unconditional surrender" enunciated from Potsdam was anything but a demand for unconditional surrender, even though it was referred to as such. It left the emperor in place. We DID leave the throne in place. Evidently, amongst the conditions requested by Japan, the Allies acquiesed to at least one condition, if not more.
Note, I have not been able to find adequate support for my February claim, so I'll have to recant and revise to the early June date.
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There is a compelling argument that the bomb was not dropped to compel the Japanese into surrender, but to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that any plans for overreaching after the war would be frowned upon and we had the wherewithal to back up our demands.
It is quite true that the US government realized the A-Bomb would have a salutary effect on Uncle Joe. Similarly, other allied military successes brought unlooked-for political fruit. But no evidence out there suggests that this was the most important reason the bomb was dropped. Such arguments can be made only by ignoring the overwhelming evidence that the bomb was dropped to end the war -- and that its use was embodied in the development process -- it was never the case that we were going to develop it and then not use it. it would have been grossly immoral to have a war-winning weapon at hand and then not have used it.
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So... That being the case, those who decided to drop the bomb should have engaged in negotiations with the Japanese who sought a negotiated end to the hostilities back BEFORE February 1945. That could have prevented all those deaths between February and August AND made the deployment of such a horrendous weapon entirely unnecessary.
There were no negotiated peace overtures prior to the end of the war. In February the Koiso government was in power, and did not want peace, nor did anyone serving in it. Koiso did attempt to work with Miao Pin, a notorious intriguier, to get the Chinese to agreed to peace, but Pin made himself detested in Japan and was eventually executed by Chiang. No overtures were made to the West. Please supply dates and individuals involved, if you know of one.
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They were refused because it was not an unconditional surrender. They wished to attach conditions to their surrendering, like keeping the Emperor and self-rule. They knew they could not keep their empire.
Actually, in the telegram of July 21, 1945, from Togo, the foreign minister, to Sato, in Moscow, Togo explicitly rejected unconditional surrender with the Throne retained. The Japanese wanted many conditions, like keeping China and Taiwan and Korea, no war crimes trials, and so forth. And they wanted a truce.
So, instead of responding with suggestions, they just refused to negotiate at all? No wonder there was no negotiations. The Allies refused to...easy to do when you're sitting in the catbird seat. You are right that there were no negotiated peace overtures, because the Allies did not respond to the overtures the Japan had floated in an attempt to end the hostilities. The onus for the lack of negotiations fall directly upon the Allies, not Japan.
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"Meanwhile, Germany had accepted defeat on May 8. Clearly, Japan too had lost the war. But there was no break in civilian morale. The people stoically accepted starvation conditions and the mounting war disasters. They appeared resigned to fighting on to the end. Some high civilian leaders around the emperor, however, had seen the hopelessness of Japan's position already in 1944 and had started to maneuver toward ending the war. General Tojo had been persuaded in July of that year to pass the prime ministership on to another general, and a few days after the invasion of Okinawa, the latter was replaced by Admiral Suzuki, who had almost died at the hands of army extremists in the February 26 Incident in 1936. In June the emperor, returning again to the initiative, called on the Supreme Council to find a way to end the war, and the government tried to get the Soviet Union to mediate. The United States had repeatedly spoken in terms of "unconditional surrender" for Japan as well as Germany, but she, together with Britain and China, issued on July 26 the so-called Potsdam Proclamation, in which the conditions for Japan's "unconditional surrender" were wisely elaborated."
Italics mine. This initiative to end the war had already been started in informal contacts with the US through the Soviet Union. This does show that formal and open feelers for surrender had been floated by June of 1945.
This is incorrect. The feeling to the USSR was, as stated above, an abortive attempt to have the USSR mediate a truce that would stop the fighting but leave the Japanese empire intact. Stalin informed the US of it, and never had any intention of going along with it. The Japanese government had not yet begun negotiations, and no terms or concrete suggestions were ever agreed on. Please see Bruce Lee's _Marching Orders_ for the telegrams between Sato and Togo (read by the US) in which Sato desperately asks for something concrete to give the Russians.
The paragraph telescopes too much time. Togo stepped down in July, Suzuki became PM on April 5, ignorant of the war situation. There were no peace moves prior to that time.
Excuse me, Vork, but the source I quoted was Edwin O. Reischauer, founder of the Japan Institute at Harvard University and the U.S. Army Intelligence Service's Japan expert at the end of the war. He had access to all the intelligence sources on Japan and was probably more informed than almost all others involved in intelligence and planning at the time. In my estimation, his authority outweighs yours.
By the way, Reischauer thought the Hiroshima bomb has arguments in favor of its use, but believed the Nagasaki bomb was a travesty.
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There is also an excellent link regarding Leo Szilard's attempt to dissuade Presidents Roosevelt and Truman from using the atomic bomb on Japan.
Szilard held several contradictory positions, wanted the scientists to have a say in cabinet level policy over democratically elected leaders, knew nothing about Japan or the military, and nothing about strategy or politics. He also had no access to the MAGIC and ULTRA data. In short, he was both arrogant and ignorant. The myth of the heroic Szilard also ignores the petition by scientists who argued that it would be immoral not to use a possible war winning weapon, and the arguments of Vannevar Bush and Conant who thought that if the A Bomb wasn't used immediately, and its horrible effects universally known and apparent, then it would be used in a much worse way in the future.
Vorkosigan
Yet, as noted, the likes of Reischauer DID have access to the intelligence and still had doubts as to their necessity.
Szilard was not alone, either. There were petitions on both sides of the question of using the bomb on Japan amongst the scientists who worked on it. There were other recommended means of demonstrating the bomb which were disposed of as being ineffectual. Nobody really knows how effectual they might have been, because they were used, seemingly without considering other, less destructive, alternatives.
We might have used atomic bombs in a much worse way than dropping it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Like what? Bombing Birmingham, Alabama? Or Ottawa? Sure, it was convenient having a nation with which we were at war so we could assuage our guilt at using means we considered immoral at the beginning of the war, because we could do all sorts of hand-waving and rationalizing as to its "necessity".
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Last edited by godfry n. glad; 08-15-2005 at 10:45 PM.
To start it off, I've lifted the following from the Fallon and Hopwood piece on interment camps:
Does anybody else see anything wrong with this?
It seems to me that they have relegated 100% of all persons of Japanese decent living in the US at the time of Pearl Harbor to two categories: Foreign nationals and native born Americans who were also citizens of Japan by choice. It provides no room for those of Japanese decent who were naturalized (were there none?), and those of American birth who did not choose to be citizens of Japan. Believe me, there were a great deal of both interred. Recruiting for military service from camp internees, many members who served with distinction during the war belies this statement. Another thing which seems to be ignored, is that despite all the wonderful propaganda about student scholarships to attend university (can you imagine attending university as a Japanese-American during that war?), the internees were placed in camps with barbed wire on top of the fences surrounding them, guard towers with guns stationed along the fence, and the guns pointed inwards. When these people, whatever their nation of birth or citizenship, were interned, they were told to gather up what they could carry and report to cattle calls at local detention sites within days. As such, all the property they owned became fair game for the unscrupulous; homes, farms, orchards, businesses, all to often fell prey to racist predators. These people, American citizens most of them, were robbed of their material lives.
Thanks for the links on the German and Italian national detainees. I have yet to run into information on the internment of Americans of German descent, second or third generation German-Americans. Perhaps if I read further?
Then, as per your statement about German-Americans being interred, we have a problem with definition between and betwixt the two major groups interned. For the purposes of the Japanese internment, anybody of Japanese ancestry, whether they remained as resident aliens, or were naturalized, or even born in the US, both adults and children, were considered as "Japanese" and interred.
Yet, as indicated in this missive from Major Jacobs, a major researcher of the "German-American detainees", at this site states:
"It may not be clear to you, thus I will try to make it clear. Permanent resident aliens residing in the United States, and who are here under a United States Passport, are, in fact, Americans; and in the instance of German permanent resident aliens they are German Americans. To be sure they are not U.S. citizens, but they are Americans, and those interned in the U.S. during World War II, were, in fact, German Americans. And for the record even adult American citizens of German heritage were arrested and interned in the United States.
Sincerely,
Arthur D. Jacobs
Major, USAF Retired"
Thus, in the case of the Japanese, if they were unnaturalized resident aliens, they were, prima facie, enemy aliens. Yet, Major Jacobs would make unnaturalized German resident aliens "German-Americans," (as was his father).
And if this official policy were in fact realistic, the dropping of the two bombs would have had absolutely no effect whatsoever.
The Honorable Death policy was held by a very small handful of men in the military heirarchy,
Incorrect. It was adopted as governing policy on June 6, 1945, with the approval of the Big Six and the Emperor. It is true that only a handful of men supported it, but those handful were running the country.
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and their objections were evidently overturned following the deaths of 200 000 - far from the 100 000 000 you mention above. The fact that a surrender followed the bombings within two weeks indicates that this death-before-surrender story was, in fact, effectively moonshine. If it were otherwise, no surrender would or could have come about as a result of the bombings.
True, but not the way you think. The Honorable Death of 100 Million was tied to a second policy, that of Ketsu-go, defending Kyushu to cause maximum casualties. The atomic bomb proved that the US could destroy Japan from the air without loss, thus adumbrating the policy of national suicide to cause maximum loss and make the US quit the war. Both the Emperor in his postwar rescript and the Suzuki in debriefings in December make that clear.
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Your synopsis of the official reasons for the use of the bombs is excellent, but you still don't address the practically certain option of a naval blockade of Japan effecting its surrender. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were undefended targets, and the civilian population was being targeted by the bombings, despite the presence of garrisons and facilities with a potential military utility (at a certain level, any infrastructure has a potential military utility).
The "practical certainty" of a naval blockade had existed since the fall of 1943, with no effect on Japanese leaders. Japan's ports had been mined in the spring, little was getting in from the outside, its tankers had been sunk, and its merchant marine and fishing fleet obliterated. Thus blockade was a reality, yet no surrender was in sight.
Again, speaking of civilians, as the war drags on, 100,000 Chinese civilians die on average every month, not to mention untold numbers of soldiers as fighting goes on all over Asia. Additionally, starvation sets in in Japan itself (by Nov 1 1945, even without the war, there was a four day rice supply in Japan) and in Korea as well, where the Army had seized the rice crop. In other words, your policy would vastly increase the devastation and death toll all over Asi. Further, it argues that Japanese civilian lives are more important than other Asian civilian lives, a posture that reflects your views' origin in the politics of the Japanese Right. By comparison with your suggestion of blockade with no certainty of an early conclusion, the Bomb ends the war in August with no loss of life from continued warfare.
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I still do not see how the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives can be justified. Certainly not by considering the chimeric casualties to the united nations military forces by an unnecessary invasion, which was the argument that sold the use of A-bombs to the US and other publics.
The invasion was likely inevitable, as no Japanese surrender was in the offing and the idea that a blockade would cause one is laughable. Recall that sitting in Tokyo, anyone could unroll the map and see Japanese troops still sitting in islands all over the Pacific, and vast reaches of Asia still in Japanese hands. The government, including the Emperor, was not aware of the progress of the war -- for example, not until 1944 did many in the government become aware of the fact that Japan had lost four carriers at Midway -- and no one understood that those numerous garrisons on far-flung islands were so many ripe fruits for the US to pick any time it wanted. Thus no one in Tokyo was going to surrender short of invasion.
That an invasion would have resulted in millions, probably tens of millions, of Japanese deaths, and a million US deaths is by no means unreasonable. At Iwo Jima the number of US casualties exceeded the number of Japanese troops -- and 900,000 troops defended Kyushu. The Japanese at last had the resources, and a handle, on defense in depth, and for the first time the kamikazes were not ordered to expend themselves uselessly on battleships and other high- profile targets, but had been specifically targeted for the transports. Add to this the very high degree of urbanization in Japan, the dense populations.....not until Feb did the US expect to be established in southern Kyushu -- never mind the whole island -- and the death toll would have been stupendous (avg rate was 97% of Japanese troops in islands and Philippines). 200,000 dead at Nagasaki saved 900,000 young men on Kyushu.
Here's another way to think about the invasion: so many purple hearts were minted that the US is still using that stock...if you got a purple heart in Vietnam or Gulf War I, it was among the huge number minted for the invasion of Japan. Yet another thing to think about is that 4 million troops and civilians died in Stalingrad, and the city was completely destroyed. Now consider dumping 5 million or so pissed off, genocidally-angry GIs with late-war technology in the most densely populated urban nation on earth. In Russia, where pop densities were low, upwards of 40 million died as recent data from postwar records indicates, and the Pacific War fighting was every bit as vicious, probably even more so. One-third of civilians in Okinawa and Saipan died....now multiply by 75 million Japanese....
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The Japanese forces were in defeat everywhere except Japan itself, where only the army remained intact (the navy and air forces having been destroyed) and its isolation on island Japan rendered it wholly ineffective for anything other than the defence of the islands against a seaborne invasion force. This invasion was not a necessity. Neither was the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Unfortunately while people often make these claims, they do not reflect any reality. Please give a concrete scenario that results in a Japanese surrender. Bear in mind that two years of defeat and blockade had not resulted in any surrender. Feel free to explain why they would have surrendered given that the war was the Emperor's baby and supported by the military, which could stop any surrender plan simply by resigning, or staging a coup (which actually happened).
What good are defenses when you have inadequate fuel to provide air cover, inadequate ammunition to use in the weapons you have and your cities are all on fire?
The problem was not that these things aren't true. It is that they were not relevant to Japanese leaders.
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As already noted, any invasion by allied forces of the main islands of the Japanese nation anytime soon after the fall of Okinawa was foolhardy to the extreme. Japan is a nation very dependant upon imported materials to fuel a military war machine, denying it vital resources would have relatively quickly brought the nation to it's knees. The reason it had attempted to erect the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was that it needed resources not available in Japan to emulate the western powers in their imperial aims. Siege, not invasion, was the least cost (in terms of lives on both sides) alternative.
Meanwhile, the war goes on elsewhere -- in China, Indonesia, SE Asia -- and at home, starvation sets in. Orders went out on Aug 11 changing US bombing to targeting the rice crop and transportation system. Mass starvation would have been the result. Again you are simply trading Japanese civilian lives for Chinese and other Allied civilian lives. I do not understand this ethic that says that enemy civilians are worth more than our own.
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Uh....That there was disagreement on peace or terms means that somebody was talking about it. Also, you lump "the emperor" and "the military" together, as though they were some kind of monolithic extremist block. This was far from the truth. There were indeed extremist nationalist interests high in the military, but as Reischauer noted, they're credibility had been critically besmirched and their honor sullied. Citizen leaders were beginning to take power back from the nationalist extremists in the military.
This is a fantasy. Of the Big Six only Togo wanted to end the war and even he would not accept unconditional surrender + the Throne. The military remained firmly independent right to the end. When Hirohito attempted to end the war, the military staged a coup and then many officers refused to surrender -- up to the 18th there were calls for renewed warfare, and members of the imperial family had to be flown all over Asia to ensure surrender. All nationalists were extremist nationalists, as the moderates had been shot in the '30s, and there never any democrats.
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I say this is wrong. As noted, events were already leading in that direction. A siege, cutting off all supplies to Japan, would have accomplished the purpose.
It would not have stopped the killing elsewhere.
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They are not. But the US entered the war foursquare against the indiscriminate butchery of civilian populations. We climbed down into the pit with Germany and Japan when we engaged in fire-bombing Dresden and other German cities, and fire-bombed Japanese cities, and then unleashed not one, but two humungous killing machines that made it impossible to distinguish civilian from military installations.
This does not reply to my point, which I must insist on: why is it that you think it is OK to spend Chinese lives but not Japanese? We didn't have a choice that enabled us to choose no civilian deaths. We only got to choose which civilians, and how they would die.
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Of course they wanted to keep whatever they could. That's the whole point of negotiations. One floats one's "conditions" and the other side considers and can offer up other "conditions" they feel need be met. But the Allied powers, so far as I know, never even engaged in responding to what must have been ridiculous initiatives on Japan's part. It was only after Potsdam that the Allied powers clearly delineated their concept of "unconditional surrender", which interestingly enough, included keeping the emperor on the throne...a key request of the Japanese.
This entirely incorrect, Godfrey. There were no initiatives on Japan's part toward the allies. You cannot respond to what doesn't exist. Individuals attempted to establish contact...and when they did, the Allies responded with alacrity. But in each case Tokyo killed the initiative. For example, the Japanese naval attache in Switzerland contacted the US, and the US immediately offered to send an airplane for the Japanese to meet them anywhere in the world. But Adm. Yonai in Tokyo killed the initiative.
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Also, your typification of all Japanese military officers as being members of the nationalist extremist bent is disingenuous. Suzuki was a naval officer and had been a target of the extremists nine years earlier. Yamamoto himself advised that Japan not attack the US, because he was of the opinion that it could not be defeated. Lastly, high level civilian advisors were having more and more influence over the emperor and the military.
The last, as I said, is a fantasy, as the final votes on Aug 10 proved. Suzuki was an expansionist and nationalist, who simply was not extremist enough. Also Bergamini has argued that the "military" murders were political theatre staged by the Emperor to remove moderates and conservatives who might stop a war. I did not typify "all" officers as extremists nationalist, but the "moderates" in Japan's military were all nationalists, divided into two major factions, the control faction, and the imperial way, who differed only on direction and impetus for expansion, not on nationalist expansion itself.
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Yet, the Soviet Union had notified Japanese government that it was abrogating their mutual non-aggression pact and declared war on Japan.
After the war began....
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Do you think that the Japan thought that nothing would come of that? They must have had a fairly decent idea of what would happen in Manchuria, as it was very poorly defended and the Soviets had had three months to move troops, equipment and supplies into place.
What makes you think anyone in power was aware of this, or cared? The Japanese had essentially conceded Manchuria when they moved their best troops into Kyushu, the army there was a shell. Soviet invasion was already on the ignore-list, except, of course, for the soon-to-be honored dead.....
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Posturing for a better bargaining position. It's been shown that the "official position" as posited by the military extremists was, by early June, on it's way out. Those in the Japanese government who felt it necessary to end the war had to do so very carefully, for fear that the military extremists would take measures to assassinate moderates.
That is the third time you have made this claim. Support please.
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Yet... The "unconditional surrender" enunciated from Potsdam was anything but a demand for unconditional surrender, even though it was referred to as such. It left the emperor in place. We DID leave the throne in place. Evidently, amongst the conditions requested by Japan, the Allies acquiesed to at least one condition, if not more.
We left the Emperor in place so that we could control the military during the transition.
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Note, I have not been able to find adequate support for my February claim, so I'll have to recant and revise to the early June date.
You won't find one in June either. No official peace offer was ever made, no terms were ever agreed on, and no plan for peace was ever developed in Japan.
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So... That being the case, those who decided to drop the bomb should have engaged in negotiations with the Japanese who sought a negotiated end to the hostilities back BEFORE February 1945. That could have prevented all those deaths between February and August AND made the deployment of such a horrendous weapon entirely unnecessary.
There were no official Japanese negotiations ever, and the unofficial ones were all (1) welcomed by the Allies and (2) killed by Tokyo. Please list specifics of any peace offer ignored by Washington. This is a canard invented by the postwar Japanese Right to smear the US.
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So, instead of responding with suggestions, they just refused to negotiate at all? No wonder there was no negotiations. The Allies refused to...easy to do when you're sitting in the catbird seat. You are right that there were no negotiated peace overtures, because the Allies did not respond to the overtures the Japan had floated in an attempt to end the hostilities. The onus for the lack of negotiations fall directly upon the Allies, not Japan.
Exactly backwards. Japan made no offers -- our problem was getting them to surrender. Please supply specifics of ANY official offer ignored by US.
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Excuse me, Vork, but the source I quoted was Edwin O. Reischauer, founder of the Japan Institute at Harvard University and the U.S. Army Intelligence Service's Japan expert at the end of the war. He had access to all the intelligence sources on Japan and was probably more informed than almost all others involved in intelligence and planning at the time. In my estimation, his authority outweighs yours.
The source you cited did not have access to all the intelligence sources, as MAGIC and ULTRA data were limited to a pool of just a handful.
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By the way, Reischauer thought the Hiroshima bomb has arguments in favor of its use, but believed the Nagasaki bomb was a travesty.
That's fine. Can you explain then how he handles the fact that after two bombs the government could still not be brought to surrender?
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Yet, as noted, the likes of Reischauer DID have access to the intelligence and still had doubts as to their necessity.
What was his position DURING the war? Many people hastily revised their positions after the war. When you study this topic everything that happens after 1945 has to be evaluated against the fact that both sides immediately put out blizzards of propaganda....
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We might have used atomic bombs in a much worse way than dropping it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Like what? Bombing Birmingham, Alabama? Or Ottawa? Sure, it was convenient having a nation with which we were at war so we could assuage our guilt at using means we considered immoral at the beginning of the war, because we could do all sorts of hand-waving and rationalizing as to its "necessity".
The only one handwaving is you, making unsubstantiated claims about mysterious peace offers and civilian control of the Japanese government. Which events after April of 1945 would lead you to think that the civilians were regaining control?
Then, as per your statement about German-Americans being interred, we have a problem with definition between and betwixt the two major groups interned. For the purposes of the Japanese internment, anybody of Japanese ancestry, whether they remained as resident aliens, or were naturalized, or even born in the US, both adults and children, were considered as "Japanese" and interred.
You are still confused. What is the difference between "internment" and "relocation?" One was a time-honored way of dealing with enemy aliens. The other was a specific program of removing Japanese and European Axis individuals away from strategic areas on the coast. One involved small numbers of avowed enemies, the other large numbers of civilians, all of whom had dual citizenship -- all ethnic Japanese were Japanese citizens, a practice Asian governments continue to this day. It was not the US that considered them "Japanese" but the Japanese gov't that did (and just try to become a Japanese citizen as a non-Japanese even today). The Japanese had programs of using local Japanese citizens as propaganda points and as spies, a practice the US was well aware of. There was even a term for the program during the interwar period, but I have forgotten it.
I am not so much justifying the program as explaining that your view of it is wrong (colored by the 50 year Japanese propaganda program) and that there were sound reasons for it.
But I think if we are going to discuss relocation we should move to another thread. Too many controversial topics for one thread!
Again, speaking of civilians, as the war drags on, 100,000 Chinese civilians die on average every month, not to mention untold numbers of soldiers as fighting goes on all over Asia. Vorkosigan
Is this figure averaged out over the whole period of Japan's war with China? If so is it actually applicable to 1945?
Additionally, starvation sets in in Japan itself (by Nov 1 1945, even without the war, there was a four day rice supply in Japan) and in Korea as well, where the Army had seized the rice crop.
Feel free to explain why they would have surrendered given that the war was the Emperor's baby and supported by the military, which could stop any surrender plan simply by resigning, or staging a coup (which actually happened).
Vorkosigan
Don't you answer your own question here? By your own admission, a handful of leaders, detached from reality, continued to labour under the illusion that victory was possible.
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Originally Posted by Vorkosigan
Recall that sitting in Tokyo, anyone could unroll the map and see Japanese troops still sitting in islands all over the Pacific, and vast reaches of Asia still in Japanese hands. The government, including the Emperor, was not aware of the progress of the war -- for example, not until 1944 did many in the government become aware of the fact that Japan had lost four carriers at Midway -- and no one understood that those numerous garrisons on far-flung islands were so many ripe fruits for the US to pick any time it wanted.
Those in contact with reality were aware that they were already defeated. Japan was effectively defeated, except for the admission of a few. How long could those few have held out against reality?
And if this official policy were in fact realistic, the dropping of the two bombs would have had absolutely no effect whatsoever.
The Honorable Death policy was held by a very small handful of men in the military heirarchy,
Incorrect. It was adopted as governing policy on June 6, 1945, with the approval of the Big Six and the Emperor. It is true that only a handful of men supported it, but those handful were running the country.
Excuse me, Vork, but the source I quoted was Edwin O. Reischauer, founder of the Japan Institute at Harvard University and the U.S. Army Intelligence Service's Japan expert at the end of the war. He had access to all the intelligence sources on Japan and was probably more informed than almost all others involved in intelligence and planning at the time. In my estimation, his authority outweighs yours.
The source you cited did not have access to all the intelligence sources, as MAGIC and ULTRA data were limited to a pool of just a handful.
Yet you know that the U.S. Army Intelligence Service's Japan expert had no access to all the intelligence sources? Please enlighten me as to how you know the Japan expert for the U.S. Army Intelligence Service did not have access to this information?
Those in contact with reality were aware that they were already defeated. Japan was effectively defeated, except for the admission of a few. How long could those few have held out against reality?
I don't know much about the Japanese case, but in general the answer seems to be: Right to the bitter end.
Look at the German case. Lots of people knew that Germany was already defeated months before the surrender. Only a very few people in power were that out of touch with reality. But the ones out of touch were in charge, and the ones with no illusions were, strangely but undeniably, ready to fight and die anyhow.
I'm not saying this had to happen in the Japanese case as well -- just that there's very little a priori grounds for imposing rational decision theory on a militarized and propagandized people facing apocalyptic circumstances.
Then, as per your statement about German-Americans being interred, we have a problem with definition between and betwixt the two major groups interned. For the purposes of the Japanese internment, anybody of Japanese ancestry, whether they remained as resident aliens, or were naturalized, or even born in the US, both adults and children, were considered as "Japanese" and interred.
You are still confused. What is the difference between "internment" and "relocation?" One was a time-honored way of dealing with enemy aliens. The other was a specific program of removing Japanese and European Axis individuals away from strategic areas on the coast. One involved small numbers of avowed enemies, the other large numbers of civilians, all of whom had dual citizenship -- all ethnic Japanese were Japanese citizens, a practice Asian governments continue to this day. It was not the US that considered them "Japanese" but the Japanese gov't that did (and just try to become a Japanese citizen as a non-Japanese even today). The Japanese had programs of using local Japanese citizens as propaganda points and as spies, a practice the US was well aware of. There was even a term for the program during the interwar period, but I have forgotten it.
I am not so much justifying the program as explaining that your view of it is wrong (colored by the 50 year Japanese propaganda program) and that there were sound reasons for it.
But I think if we are going to discuss relocation we should move to another thread. Too many controversial topics for one thread!
Vorkosigan
I don't think I'm confused at all. I think that Fallon, Hopwood and Jacobs are all being purposefully misleading. Internment...relocation....concentration... Permanent resident aliens from Germany (or Italy), living in the US are German-Americans, while permanent resident aliens from Japan, living in the US are foreign agents. That's bullshit.
Foreign nationals are interned for the duration. That's understood. That German nationals, living in the US at the time of the declaration (actually before) of war with Germany, were interned. So were Japanese nationals living in the US at the time of Pearl Harbor. Some of both of these groups were permanent residents.
American citizens of Japanese heritage were relocated to "relocation camps" far inland and basically imprisoned behind fences with barbed wire and gun towers. Please delineate the difference between these "relocation camps" and the "internment camps" and show me where American citizens of German ancestry were either interned or relocated. (And yes, I'm aware of the "voluntary internees" (what a whitewash) of spouses and children who went into internment (or relocation) with their family members.)
As for some of those of Japanese descent being agents of a foreign power, or just being sympathetic to the land of their ancestry, I have no doubt. But to state that Japanese-Americans, born in this country and raised as citizens, should be incarcerated because of their heritage, while similar US citizens of German heritage were not, is disingenuous to the extreme.
The ones they should have interned were the likes of Charles Lindbergh, Joseph Kennedy and all the Bund members....dangerous Fifth Columnists.
As for your claims of my falling under the sway of the propaganda of the Japanese Rightists...all I have to say is that I think you are ignoring the 50 years of propaganda eminating from the US military-industrial complex, which is far more likely to have affected me, and you, than anything the Japanese Right could, and had a far better motive, as well as opportunity, to seek to absolve themselves of something they knew they needn't have done.
Those in contact with reality were aware that they were already defeated. Japan was effectively defeated, except for the admission of a few. How long could those few have held out against reality?
I don't know much about the Japanese case, but in general the answer seems to be: Right to the bitter end.
Look at the German case. Lots of people knew that Germany was already defeated months before the surrender. Only a very few people in power were that out of touch with reality. But the ones out of touch were in charge, and the ones with no illusions were, strangely but undeniably, ready to fight and die anyhow.
I'm not saying this had to happen in the Japanese case as well -- just that there's very little a priori grounds for imposing rational decision theory on a militarized and propagandized people facing apocalyptic circumstances.
OK. I have to concede here. But the Japanese reation to the A-bombs does indicate that they preferred surrender rather than destruction in the end, a rational decision.
The "practical certainty" of a naval blockade had existed since the fall of 1943, with no effect on Japanese leaders. Japan's ports had been mined in the spring, little was getting in from the outside, its tankers had been sunk, and its merchant marine and fishing fleet obliterated. Thus blockade was a reality, yet no surrender was in sight.
Vorkosigan
I don't think that we mean the same thing by blockade here. I am talking about a total blockade, i.e. nothing gets in or out without the approval of the blockading force, nothing. The united nations had this capacity in 1945, but not in 1944 and certainly not in 1943.
Just for the record, I consider civilians to be wholly unjustified as military targets, no matter what their nationality (or whatever other equally arbitrary criteria might be employed).
I also believe that it should be considered a criminal act for any military force to externalise the human costs of their operations upon any civilians.
Just for the record, I consider civilians to be wholly unjustified as military targets, no matter what their nationality (or whatever other equally arbitrary criteria might be employed).
I also believe that it should be considered a criminal act for any military force to externalise the human costs of their operations upon any civilians.
I do not consider civilians wholly unjustified, and neither would you if an enemy occupied your country and civilian administration followed in the wake of the troops (to name only one example out of many possible).
As for the A-bomb, I will get back to that tomorrow.
Re: 60th anniversary of a-bomb attack
to the FF.
. Anyway, when the movie Pearl Harbour came out, I was leaving the theatre and talking about how my grandfather was there when it happened, and some twat behind me started bitching about how I shouldn't be proud of that, blah blah blah. Duh. I kind of forget that I'm Asian, sometimes - and it wasn't until we left the theatre that Jekyll reminded me that yes, I am Asian, and that the bitch probably thought my grandfather was doing the bombing!
Re: 60th anniversary of a-bomb attack
Linear Mode
