[TrashMan]

Humbug.

I don't buy into that stuff.
The Atom bombs was a 100% pure crime. Even invadin Japan was a beter idea. Why? Soldiers are there to fight and they are prepared to die... fair game in a matter of speaking. civies are not. Period.

Secondly, Japan was at the end of hte rope - they suffered horrible losses, theri pacific fleet has been all but destroyed, they scraped drops of oil from all over jsut ot send the last fleet. Their airplanes were being shot down faster than they could produce new ones - they ere lost.

Japan is a island country - the USA could have just blockaded the ports (they ruled in the air and sea) and wait. Anchor the whole pacific fleet so it can be seen from the capital. That's a show of force.

[Blue Haired Maniac]

Humbug.

I don't buy into that stuff.
The Atom bombs was a 100% pure crime. Even invadin Japan was a beter idea. Why? Soldiers are there to fight and they are prepared to die... fair game in a matter of speaking. civies are not. Period.

If we had invaded Japan, we wouldn't have just been fighting soldiers. Japanese civilians had basically been trained by the Japanese military to fear the Americans and to fight back should an invasion happen. In the end, there would've been more civilian casualties through that course of action than what their was in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Secondly, Japan was at the end of hte rope - they suffered horrible losses, theri pacific fleet has been all but destroyed, they scraped drops of oil from all over jsut ot send the last fleet. Their airplanes were being shot down faster than they could produce new ones - they ere lost.

Japan is a island country - the USA could have just blockaded the ports (they ruled in the air and sea) and wait. Anchor the whole pacific fleet so it can be seen from the capital. That's a show of force.

Very true, but the Japanese military was prepared to fight to the last ship, the last plane, and the last man. Surrender was not an option. The Home Islands were their Alamo. They were either going to hold us there, or die trying.

And its not like we could've waited out on the open seas either. The Soviets had their own agenda, which was to try and grab as much Japanese territory as possible so that they could have a say in everything.

[TrashMan]

That's why I said siege, blockade, not attack. You jsut need to put enough pressure.
Like I said, anchor the whole pacific fleet so the japs can see it, and deploy a nuke somewhere where they cna also see it..

---------------

Some people have a wierd definition fo defense.

If another country attacks mine, we fight back, push them completely out of our territory and break the back of their military might, then our job of defense is done.
AS soon as there no one attackign your country anymore the defense is over.

Going into the country of the enemy and bombing his cities is NOT defense by any sane definition. To put it somple it's vengance and desire to grind the enemy into the dust when he's bleeding.

[aldo_14]

That's why I said siege, blockade, not attack. You jsut need to put enough pressure.
Like I said, anchor the whole pacific fleet so the japs can see it, and deploy a nuke somewhere where they cna also see it..

---------------

Some people have a wierd definition fo defense.

If another country attacks mine, we fight back, push them completely out of our territory and break the back of their military might, then our job of defense is done.
AS soon as there no one attackign your country anymore the defense is over.

Going into the country of the enemy and bombing his cities is NOT defense by any sane definition. To put it somple it's vengance and desire to grind the enemy into the dust when he's bleeding.

I like how you define starving an entire nation into submission as being a nicer option (and bring up the already rather discredited idea of 'showing' a vital tactical - secret - weapon without knowing it's effect upon the enemy or even if it'd be a convincing display of power rather than a really flashy light; me, if I was a Japanese observer being 'shown' that, I'd be entitled to question why it was being only shown and not used as a weapon); from what I remember of previous discussions, it's been worked out that the resultant famine would have killed more Japanese civillians than the 2 bombs did.

(as an aside, the Japanese were IIRC training civillians to be, for example, anti-tank suicide bombers.  The entire population was subjected to years and years of propaganda to convince them that the gaijin were monsters who would rape and torture them)

EDIT; oh yes - let's say you demonstrate the nuke and - as with the first bombing in WW2 - Japan doesn't surrender.  you now have 1 nuke left, and a Japan fully alerted to the threat from above.  How much harder could that make the Enola Gays' job (the Japanese neglected to intercept the 3 plane flight as part of fuel conservation, and because no raid beyond recon was expected for a single bomber)?  Or what if that raid failed, as the Nagasaki bombing nearly did (Nagasaki was the secondary - the primary was cloud-obscured Kokura - and the plane nearly ran out of fuel.  If Nagasaki was also obscured, the crew had orders to dump the bomb in the ocean)?  We'd have either the same mass starvation and/or mass deaths from invasion (including Japanese civillians - and indeed those forced into service), and the knowledge of pissing away weapons that could win the war.

[NGTM-1R]

It's worthwhile to note that the Japanese knew the second bomb was coming but made no attempt to intercept it either; those missions used a special frequency, and the Japanese Navy's communications intelligence people, the Tokumu Han, had it listed. They could not decipher the target but they knew the second bomb was coming. If they had wanted to they could have scrambled fighters to intercept any small number of bombers that were inbound. The fighters were held on the ground for later use against the still-expected invasion.

There's a rather poignant comment on it in David Kahn's The Codebreakers. "As the traffic analysts...mechanically plotted the signal, they were, in the Japanese phrase, swallowing their tears."

[TrashMan]

I like how you define starving an entire nation into submission as being a nicer option (and bring up the already rather discredited idea of 'showing' a vital tactical - secret - weapon without knowing it's effect upon the enemy or even if it'd be a convincing display of power rather than a really flashy light; me, if I was a Japanese observer being 'shown' that, I'd be entitled to question why it was being only shown and not used as a weapon); from what I remember of previous discussions, it's been worked out that the resultant famine would have killed more Japanese civillians than the 2 bombs did.

(as an aside, the Japanese were IIRC training civillians to be, for example, anti-tank suicide bombers.  The entire population was subjected to years and years of propaganda to convince them that the gaijin were monsters who would rape and torture them)

EDIT; oh yes - let's say you demonstrate the nuke and - as with the first bombing in WW2 - Japan doesn't surrender.  you now have 1 nuke left, and a Japan fully alerted to the threat from above.  How much harder could that make the Enola Gays' job (the Japanese neglected to intercept the 3 plane flight as part of fuel conservation, and because no raid beyond recon was expected for a single bomber)?  Or what if that raid failed, as the Nagasaki bombing nearly did (Nagasaki was the secondary - the primary was cloud-obscured Kokura - and the plane nearly ran out of fuel.  If Nagasaki was also obscured, the crew had orders to dump the bomb in the ocean)?  We'd have either the same mass starvation and/or mass deaths from invasion (including Japanese civillians - and indeed those forced into service), and the knowledge of pissing away weapons that could win the war.

1. People don't die from famine in one day. A blockade wouldn't ruin the country immidately as tehy would have some stockpiled food that woukd be rationed.  It's the pressure ascpet. No fuel, no reinforcement, no means to effectivly fight back, the whole enemy fleet parked infront of your window and the jsut creamed that mountain over there with theri secreat weapon.

Give them a few days to think it over/for the people to revolt.
Yeah, it is possible it would not have worked.. but then again, nobody tried this approach first.

And if it was me, I would try EVERY way to end the war without nuking civies.

When you think about it, did the US REALLY needed to blast Japan?

So what if it didn't want to surrender - it's military power is over, it's no threat to you. Given time they would come to theri senses even without you bombing them.

[Blue Haired Maniac]

I like how you define starving an entire nation into submission as being a nicer option (and bring up the already rather discredited idea of 'showing' a vital tactical - secret - weapon without knowing it's effect upon the enemy or even if it'd be a convincing display of power rather than a really flashy light; me, if I was a Japanese observer being 'shown' that, I'd be entitled to question why it was being only shown and not used as a weapon); from what I remember of previous discussions, it's been worked out that the resultant famine would have killed more Japanese civillians than the 2 bombs did.

(as an aside, the Japanese were IIRC training civillians to be, for example, anti-tank suicide bombers.  The entire population was subjected to years and years of propaganda to convince them that the gaijin were monsters who would rape and torture them)

EDIT; oh yes - let's say you demonstrate the nuke and - as with the first bombing in WW2 - Japan doesn't surrender.  you now have 1 nuke left, and a Japan fully alerted to the threat from above.  How much harder could that make the Enola Gays' job (the Japanese neglected to intercept the 3 plane flight as part of fuel conservation, and because no raid beyond recon was expected for a single bomber)?  Or what if that raid failed, as the Nagasaki bombing nearly did (Nagasaki was the secondary - the primary was cloud-obscured Kokura - and the plane nearly ran out of fuel.  If Nagasaki was also obscured, the crew had orders to dump the bomb in the ocean)?  We'd have either the same mass starvation and/or mass deaths from invasion (including Japanese civillians - and indeed those forced into service), and the knowledge of pissing away weapons that could win the war.

1. People don't die from famine in one day. A blockade wouldn't ruin the country immidately as tehy would have some stockpiled food that woukd be rationed.  It's the pressure ascpet. No fuel, no reinforcement, no means to effectivly fight back, the whole enemy fleet parked infront of your window and the jsut creamed that mountain over there with theri secreat weapon.

Give them a few days to think it over/for the people to revolt.
Yeah, it is possible it would not have worked.. but then again, nobody tried this approach first.

And if it was me, I would try EVERY way to end the war without nuking civies.

When you think about it, did the US REALLY needed to blast Japan?

So what if it didn't want to surrender - it's military power is over, it's no threat to you. Given time they would come to theri senses even without you bombing them.

You do realize that our Navy was already doing that? The German U-boats always get the press about how they disrupted Allied shipping in both wars, but our own submarines did a damn good job of strangling the Japanese economy. They sunk most of Japan's merchant marine fleet, intercepted many troop transports and cut off nearly all the oil imports that were essential to warfare. By early 1945 the oil tanks were dry. The Pacific fleet had an effective blockade of Japan already going.

Despite all this, the Japanese were not going to surrender. They proved that in the battles of Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. They proved that with their kamikaze attacks, which the US Navy reported that over a third of the Pacific Fleet was affected by. The US Navy didn't want to invade Japan because of those kamikaze attacks. They wanted to continue the blockade and increase the strategic bombing campaign already going on in Japan, which was tasked with...
1) Destroying industrial infrastructure (factories, roads, and railways)
2) Destroying the Japanese rice fields.

So which is worse....
Millions of people dying from starvation
200,000 people dying in two nuclear attacks

[aldo_14]

I like how you define starving an entire nation into submission as being a nicer option (and bring up the already rather discredited idea of 'showing' a vital tactical - secret - weapon without knowing it's effect upon the enemy or even if it'd be a convincing display of power rather than a really flashy light; me, if I was a Japanese observer being 'shown' that, I'd be entitled to question why it was being only shown and not used as a weapon); from what I remember of previous discussions, it's been worked out that the resultant famine would have killed more Japanese civillians than the 2 bombs did.

(as an aside, the Japanese were IIRC training civillians to be, for example, anti-tank suicide bombers.  The entire population was subjected to years and years of propaganda to convince them that the gaijin were monsters who would rape and torture them)

EDIT; oh yes - let's say you demonstrate the nuke and - as with the first bombing in WW2 - Japan doesn't surrender.  you now have 1 nuke left, and a Japan fully alerted to the threat from above.  How much harder could that make the Enola Gays' job (the Japanese neglected to intercept the 3 plane flight as part of fuel conservation, and because no raid beyond recon was expected for a single bomber)?  Or what if that raid failed, as the Nagasaki bombing nearly did (Nagasaki was the secondary - the primary was cloud-obscured Kokura - and the plane nearly ran out of fuel.  If Nagasaki was also obscured, the crew had orders to dump the bomb in the ocean)?  We'd have either the same mass starvation and/or mass deaths from invasion (including Japanese civillians - and indeed those forced into service), and the knowledge of pissing away weapons that could win the war.

1. People don't die from famine in one day. A blockade wouldn't ruin the country immidately as tehy would have some stockpiled food that woukd be rationed.  It's the pressure ascpet. No fuel, no reinforcement, no means to effectivly fight back, the whole enemy fleet parked infront of your window and the jsut creamed that mountain over there with theri secreat weapon.

Give them a few days to think it over/for the people to revolt.
Yeah, it is possible it would not have worked.. but then again, nobody tried this approach first.

And if it was me, I would try EVERY way to end the war without nuking civies.

When you think about it, did the US REALLY needed to blast Japan?

So what if it didn't want to surrender - it's military power is over, it's no threat to you. Given time they would come to theri senses even without you bombing them.

so would you have just stopped the Allies in Europe at the border of Germany, then?  would you ban all bombings full stop during WW2?  Because the firebombings of Tokyo, of Dresden, etc were just as devastating (more so in certain cases, considering the prolonged campaigns).

Oh, and as BHF noted, Operation starvation had been ongoing for 5-6 months when the war ended.  Few days my arse...

It's easy to go 'oh, x and y would work' with blase hindsight.  you put yourself there; what if it didn't work?  How many civillians would you sacrifice in starvation, how many POWs to the time delay of 'displays', how many soldiers in ground invasions, to avoid using a weapon that could end the war with less deaths than either 3 options?  How would history judge you, the leader who pussy footed around ending the war, who gambled the lives of the servicemen 'under' his command, because he was scared of using his most effective weapon?

[TrashMan]

Kill X to save Y, especilyl when there IS NO MORE THREAT you your country is just not a option.

No, I wouldn't invade, no I wouldn't firebomb and no I wouldn't drop a bomb on the city.

Who gives a f*** wether Japan will sign a piece of paper today or a year from now when it's beat.

What I would do is negotiate for the release of POW's and make a convincing display of force.

[aldo_14]

So what you're saying is that you'd be happy to stop the US, British, Russian, etc on the borders of Germany and leave be, then?

[Blue Haired Maniac]

Kill X to save Y, especilyl when there IS NO MORE THREAT you your country is just not a option.

No, I wouldn't invade, no I wouldn't firebomb and no I wouldn't drop a bomb on the city.

Who gives a f*** wether Japan will sign a piece of paper today or a year from now when it's beat.

What I would do is negotiate for the release of POW's and make a convincing display of force.

There is a problem with your logic. You make it sound like the entire war would've stopped just because you park your fleet off the coast. If you really believe that, then you really need to read some history books.

Was the Japanese military broken? Yes. Did they really care though? No. Surrender was not in their vocabulary. An honorable Japanese soldier would rather die than surrender. By not invading, or not strategically bombing their infastructure, and by not using the bomb, you would be inviting the Japanese to prolong the war because they would use the time to lick their wounds. When you have your enemy defeated, you don't let up. You keep applying pressure until they give in. The Japanese finally gave in once we dropped not one, but two nuclear bombs.

As for negotiating for the release of Allied POW's, the Japanese would've likely killed them all before they ever would hand them over. After a US State Department communique involving Japanese treatment of Allied POW's was seen in Japan, the Japanese War Ministry invoked a Kill-All policy to annihilate principal witnesses to their atrocities--the surviving POWs. Considering the Bataan Death March, the execution of 150 POWs at a POW camp in Palawan, the standing order to execute all POWs in Japan should the Allies invade, I think its safe to say that they would kill them all before ever handing them over.

[Mongoose]

Here's the bottom line that I think a lot of people are missing (and yes, I realize it's cliche, but it's so damn true):  War is hell.  It's utter, absolute hell.  If you're waging total, absolute war, a world war, you're going to do things that seem brutal, uncivilized, and perhaps even utterly reprehensible to people looking into the past from more peaceful times.  But that's why it's called "total" war.  You do what you have to do to win, and that's the end of the story.  We've seen time and again, over the latter half of the twentieth century and up to the present day, how the concept of "limited" war, while utterly necessary at times, can lead to a whole slew of troubles.  If you're fighting a powerful enemy with a massive army who wants nothing more than to utterly defeat you, you're going to use whatever's at your disposal to defeat them.  We had the bomb, we used the bomb, and we stopped the war.  That was it.

At the same time, though, I can't help but be reminded of Oppenheimer's quote of Hindu scripture as he watched the Trinity site: "I have become Death, destroyer of worlds."  Even at that moment, the people who created the bomb knew what they had just managed to do.  All things considered, it would have been better for all of us if no one had ever had the idea to turn nuclear energy into a force of destruction.

But all of this is really completely off-topic.  So...how 'bout that NTF?

[TrashMan]

Kill X to save Y, especilyl when there IS NO MORE THREAT you your country is just not a option.

No, I wouldn't invade, no I wouldn't firebomb and no I wouldn't drop a bomb on the city.

Who gives a f*** wether Japan will sign a piece of paper today or a year from now when it's beat.

What I would do is negotiate for the release of POW's and make a convincing display of force.

There is a problem with your logic. You make it sound like the entire war would've stopped just because you park your fleet off the coast. If you really believe that, then you really need to read some history books.

Was the Japanese military broken? Yes. Did they really care though? No. Surrender was not in their vocabulary. An honorable Japanese soldier would rather die than surrender. By not invading, or not strategically bombing their infastructure, and by not using the bomb, you would be inviting the Japanese to prolong the war because they would use the time to lick their wounds. When you have your enemy defeated, you don't let up. You keep applying pressure until they give in. The Japanese finally gave in once we dropped not one, but two nuclear bombs.

As for negotiating for the release of Allied POW's, the Japanese would've likely killed them all before they ever would hand them over. After a US State Department communique involving Japanese treatment of Allied POW's was seen in Japan, the Japanese War Ministry invoked a Kill-All policy to annihilate principal witnesses to their atrocities--the surviving POWs. Considering the Bataan Death March, the execution of 150 POWs at a POW camp in Palawan, the standing order to execute all POWs in Japan should the Allies invade, I think its safe to say that they would kill them all before ever handing them over.

Wether Japan cares or not is irrelevant when they can't do nothing to stop you.

What could they have possibly done? Build ships? It takes a lot of time and it would be sunk even before it left the dock. Besides, they didn't have any fuel left.

Build airplanes? Their aircraft industry was in shambles and the US had air superiority. the pacific fleet (especially the newer ships) have had their AAF armament increased and the few fighters the Japs would launch would be shredded.
The onyl thing japs had left was manpower. But you can't fight the navy or airforce from the ground.

As for hte POW's, you really can't tell that the japs wouldn't have released them given the right incentive.
Offer the removal of the blockade for essential supplies in exchange for their release...no questions asked. Or looseer surrender conditions.. tehre are many other options.

At the end of the day - if there's gonna be killing of civilians, then I will not be the one to do it. Let the japs bloody their hands, I won't bloody mine.

[aldo_14]

Wether Japan cares or not is irrelevant when they can't do nothing to stop you.

What could they have possibly done? Build ships? It takes a lot of time and it would be sunk even before it left the dock. Besides, they didn't have any fuel left.

Build airplanes? Their aircraft industry was in shambles and the US had air superiority. the pacific fleet (especially the newer ships) have had their AAF armament increased and the few fighters the Japs would launch would be shredded.
The onyl thing japs had left was manpower. But you can't fight the navy or airforce from the ground.

As for hte POW's, you really can't tell that the japs wouldn't have released them given the right incentive.
Offer the removal of the blockade for essential supplies in exchange for their release...no questions asked. Or looseer surrender conditions.. tehre are many other options.

At the end of the day - if there's gonna be killing of civilians, then I will not be the one to do it. Let the japs bloody their hands, I won't bloody mine.

How would you stop Japan building planes if you're not going to bomb the citiies where the aircraft factories are?  It's easy to say 'let the Japs bloody their hands' when you're not the one whose troops are going to be tortured and killed.  Why not just say that after Pearl Harbour and avoid the whole war?

[TrashMan]

How would you stop Japan building planes if you're not going to bomb the citiies where the aircraft factories are?

Bombing factories, not cities. Besides, bombing the airfields would be enough... not that it would help the japs even if they could build a large number of airplanes under diege conditions, since they still lacked fuel and the USA still had air superiority.

It's easy to say 'let the Japs bloody their hands' when you're not the one whose troops are going to be tortured and killed.  Why not just say that after Pearl Harbour and avoid the whole war?

It's never easy. I would do everything I can to free my tropops EXCEPT killing civilians. I would try every trick in the book before resorting to something as extreeme as that.

And one other thing - soldiers are expected to die or sacrifice their lives for civilians. Not the other way around.

[Blue Haired Maniac]

Bombing factories, not cities. Besides, bombing the airfields would be enough... not that it would help the japs even if they could build a large number of airplanes under diege conditions, since they still lacked fuel and the USA still had air superiority.

Factories were mostly in densly populated areas and you don't have the smart bombs of today. We initially tried precision bombing, but the weather of Japan made it virtually impossible as bombs dropped from high altitude were destabilized by high winds.

[aldo_14]

How would you stop Japan building planes if you're not going to bomb the citiies where the aircraft factories are?

Bombing factories, not cities. Besides, bombing the airfields would be enough... not that it would help the japs even if they could build a large number of airplanes under diege conditions, since they still lacked fuel and the USA still had air superiority.

[/quote]


Factories were in cities, and there was insufficient bomb accuracy to discriminate.  Also, take that tactic and - guess what - the Japenese would make sure all their factories were in densely populated urban areas - :O !

Also, airfields can be very small - fields, in fact - for that eras' aircraft.  And what if the Japanese decide to put lots of civillians on their airfield once they suss out your tactic?

It's easy to say 'let the Japs bloody their hands' when you're not the one whose troops are going to be tortured and killed.  Why not just say that after Pearl Harbour and avoid the whole war?

It's never easy. I would do everything I can to free my tropops EXCEPT killing civilians. I would try every trick in the book before resorting to something as extreeme as that.

And one other thing - soldiers are expected to die or sacrifice their lives for civilians. Not the other way around.

There were civillians in Japanese POW camps, y'know.

Anyways, are you saying that a soldiers life is worthless compared to a civillian?  what about conscripts?  Are soldiers just meat to be thrown against the grinder, is that your military tactic - soldiers are bullet-shields?

Ah, yes, and you've not answered my previous question - So what you're saying is that you'd be happy to stop the US, British, Russian, etc on the borders of Germany and leave be, then?[/n]

[TrashMan]

Frankly, Japan couln't threaten US assets anymore, even if they left it completely alone.

The USA became a real superpower in that war, and no production effort from Japan could have changed that.

They might build planes but what can they do with them? They had no carriers left to use them against US territory due to their limited range.

If they made ships they would be sunk. If they had planes with sufficient range they would be shot down..and they still had the problem with fuel..

And to make it clear - I cannot and never will justify or even try to rationalize murder. As soon as you jump on that train of though you're heading in the wrong direction.  Kill X innocents to save Y is not an option.

You allways have options. Hell, why not a massive paratropper assault on the POW camps and chopper extraction? If anything else, the US had resources for something like this.
Besides, Japan would surrender in a few days anyway, simply becuse he was loosing badly on the other front too. If the Us stopped, do you think Russia would too?

[brandx0]

Perhaps if we could get back on topic...?

[aldo_14]

Frankly, Japan couln't threaten US assets anymore, even if they left it completely alone.

The USA became a real superpower in that war, and no production effort from Japan could have changed that.

They might build planes but what can they do with them? They had no carriers left to use them against US territory due to their limited range.

If they made ships they would be sunk. If they had planes with sufficient range they would be shot down..and they still had the problem with fuel..

And to make it clear - I cannot and never will justify or even try to rationalize murder. As soon as you jump on that train of though you're heading in the wrong direction.  Kill X innocents to save Y is not an option.

You allways have options. Hell, why not a massive paratropper assault on the POW camps and chopper extraction? If anything else, the US had resources for something like this.
Besides, Japan would surrender in a few days anyway, simply becuse he was loosing badly on the other front too. If the Us stopped, do you think Russia would too?

So what you're saying is that you'd be happy to stop the US, British, Russian, etc on the borders of Germany and leave be, then?

EDIT; wait, chopper extraction?  You do know what war this is, don't you? (hint; the Sikorsky R-4 isn't exactly built for chopper extraction; you'd need more than the few hundred built just to extract one camps' worth.  Oh, and a side note; there were over 200,000 civillians dying in Asia for each month the war lasted at the end - that wouldn't stop during your blockade)