Was the invasion of Okinawa necessary

Slaughter with a single bomb? An obvious truth.

 

Was FDR alive when the bomb dropped?

250,000 odd people died from the bombs. Just to put it in perspective, Japan are estimated to have killed around 6 million. More than 250,000 people died at Stalingrad alone.

 

No. So?

 

What the hell does that have to do with incinerating hundreds of thousands of civilians in an atomic horror?

 

The US froze Japanese assets and refused sell the oil to punish them for their brutal occupation and war in China and for occupying Indochina when the French were defeated by the Germans.

Yes, the US had an imperialistic regime in the Philippines but had scheduled the country for independence.

The Japanese showed no restraint in brutality and had no intention other than taking everything of value that other East Asian countries possessed.

The Japanese opened the door at Pearl Harbor to their defeat, whatever means that took.

To use present-ism as an excuse for condemning America's actions against the Japanese Empire nearly eighty years later startles the mind.

 

Uhhh, what?

 

I have largely given up on Poopy there, he is essentially the Japanese apologist here now. I guess he is a member of the Yellow wing of Storm Front.

He can never back anything up, just screams that he is smarter than anybody else and knows more, so anything that does not agree with his claims are wrong.

I see him as nothing but a giant troll. And if anybody thinks I am kidding, just goggle his name.

Then tell us why we should take anybody who has literally named themselves "Poop" should be taken seriously.

 

Scary part is he's a HS history teacher.

 

I am going to address this directly, although I am sure many have already done so.

First of all, at the time of that invasion, the Atomic Bombs were still a tightly held secret. Not even Vice President Truman knew about it before he became President. Of the roughly 100,000 that worked on the project, less than 1,000 had any concept of what the goal of it was. Even the SCAP General MacArthur did not learn of the existence of the bomb until days before it was used.

And there was no way to know if they would work. The Little Boy bomb was given a high probability because it was simple physics. But the Gadget-Fat Man style plutonium bomb was not as sure to work. If Trinity had failed, that would have cut the production by 2/3, and they likely would not have been used until October-November (unless 2 bombs were dropped in quick secession the Japanese could believe it was somehow a fluke).

Therefore, all other preparations for Operation Downfall had to proceed as planned. First the occupation of Okinawa, turning into a staging area for the invasion of the home islands themselves.

And as an interesting aside, I lived for quite a while on Okinawa. And talked with a lot of survivors of the battle. The majority I talked with did not blame the US for the invasion and death toll, but the Japanese. When you talked to people of that generation, you were careful to call them "Okinawans", because many still objected (even 40 years after WWII) to being called "Japanese".

But as that generation has died off, and Okinawa has largely become the Japanese version of Hawaii. The stigma and looking down upon the Okinawans as "backwards" has largely vanished.

 

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I concur with you except for the bombing of Dresden.

Dresden was an "open city" and the bombing of Dresden was a war crime.

Paris was also declared an open city and was why the allies never bombed Paris while under German occupation. But the rest of France was one big free fire zone.

It's the losing side who gets prosecuted for war crimes not the winning side.

 

Dresden was a railway hub, and this is what was supposed to be bombed, but considering the limitation of WW2 bomb targetting system and the anxiety of bomber crews, everything but the hub was hit.

 

The importance of bombing the city and showing what we could do played a huge part in destroying the spirit of the German people. I think this is something that is usually overlooked when seeking to destroy an ideology or movement like the Nazis.

I know what you mean but Paris is a poor example as it was full of French civilians who opposed the Nazis. Dresden was full of Nazis, although I am sure a lot of people who weren’t supportive of Hitler also perished.

 

So was Paris but Dresden was undefended and had real no military importance.

An entire thread could be created if the bombing of Dresden was a war crime.

If America were have been defeated in the Pacific during WW ll you could bet your ass Gen. Curtis LeMay would have been tried as a war criminal for firebombing Tokyo that was military defended.

In modern warfare during the 20th Century for every soldier or sailor who was killed in combat, 20 civilians were killed.

 

The bombing of civilians in Europe didn't destroy the spirits of the British or Germans during WW ll just as bombing Hanoi didn't damage the spirits of the North Vietnamese.

But the bombing of Hanoi and the mining of Haiphong harbor did result in the North Vietnam government suing for peace in 1973.

 

terror bombing was not effective

 

Dresden was a railway hub, and this is what was supposed to be bombed, but considering the limitation of WW2 bomb targetting system and the anxiety of bomber crews, everything but the hub was hit.

Bombing paris wouldn't have help the eastern front which was the reason why they bombed dresden.

 

Terror bombing did not hasten the end of the war.

The Emperor of Japan was convinced his military no longer could resist such atomic weapons

 

Yes.

Before our victory on Okinawa, Japan was resolutely trying to win the war.

After our victory on Okinawa, Japan was trying to cut their losses and get out of the war.

Holding back on attacking the enemy is a great way to lose a war.

Hiroshima was a military target.

 

No. The reason why we drop bombs on nations that we are at war with is because we want to force them to surrender.

Nonsense. The terms of the Potsdam Proclamation were more than generous.

We are not responsible for Japan's decisions to wage a war of aggression, to commit horrific atrocities, and to refuse to surrender until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

Our terms of surrender were perfectly reasonable.

If Japan did not want to be forced to surrender, they shouldn't have been waging a war of aggression and committing atrocities.

There is the small matter of the fact that Japan was not willing to surrender on such terms until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

We wanted/needed Japan to surrender.

We stopped bombing them when they finally surrendered.

 

What they wanted was to force Japan to surrender.

The A-bombs were dropped on military targets.

The alternative plan that you refer to involves bombing.

The A-bombs were part of that bombing.

What FDR and Truman wanted was for Japan to surrender.

Wrong. Hiroshima was a huge military center filled with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers, and was the military headquarters in charge of repelling our coming invasion of Kyushu.

Nagasaki was an industrial center with massive weapon factories.

The civilians were superfluous. The cities were targeted for their military value.

You've posted many untrue things about America's actions in WWII.

The trouble is, there was no such overture.

Japan refused to talk to us about surrender until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

There is no such guilt.

It is usually brought up when someone suggests that we should have prolonged the war for no reason.

The use of nuclear weapons was justified by the mere fact that Japan was refusing to surrender.

It isn't much different from harping on the fact that civilians were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Japan made no such overture.

Japan did not drop their single-minded focus on trying to win the war until after we had overrun Okinawa.

Japan did not start talking to us about surrender until after both A-bombs had been dropped.

This article is untrue. It misrepresents citations as saying that we were not trying to force Japan to surrender when the citations say nothing of the sort.

It falsely characterizes the targets as not being military in nature when they were both important military targets.

Japan only started talking to us about surrender after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

Japan did not start talking to us about surrender until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

Read your own citation:
"These peace feelers were generally the product of local initiative and had at most only a tacit approval from official Tokyo,"

Although the US understood that these peace feelers were not actual contacts with the Japanese government, it pursued them anyway, in the hope that one of them could lead to a real contact with the Japanese government.

When the Japanese government found out about these independent endeavors, it put a stop to them.

I think in one case the Japanese government even ordered the guy who was behind a peace feeler to kill himself when they found out about it, and he did so.

An imaginary memo.

He didn't misrepresent you. You are posting all sorts of outright falsehoods about America's actions in the war.

How many of the untrue things that you post here do you misrepresent as facts to your students?

 

Had the third A-bomb, this time on Tokyo, failed to induce surrender, the US was planning to start saving up A-bombs and then use them tactically to clear the way ahead of our invasion of Kyushu.

 

And they would not have worked well in that role.

 

About 250000 civilians.

 

I have posted nothing untrue.