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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 12:22:24 PM   
domiguy


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quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

Actually at least one reason we did it was to save lives.

For the history challenged out there, the US had just conquered Okinawa in an exceptionally bloody and vicious 87 day campaign. This included Japanese troops making mass suicide charges and convincing entire villages to kill themselves. The US had 72,000+ casualties out of almost 550k troops. The Japanese military suffered 66,000 deaths out of a force of 100k. 150k Okinawan civilians died or disappeared during the battle.

Now Okinawa isn't Japan proper and it's citizens are viewed as second rate citizens, at best, by the rest of Japan. So how much fiercer would the defence of the home islands have been? How many lives would have been lost over how many years taking the three Japanese home islands?

Truman certainly dropped the bombs for a lot of reasons but one was to save lives.


So what?

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 12:23:51 PM   
mnottertail


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Status: offline 		What was real helpful about Japan was that it was a country of wood structures, much like our chicago before the cow.

Firebombing was doing a pretty fuckin' good job till that day.
Whoever got fried up in the atom bomb deal must have taken the day off to go home from the war.

Yeah, shitty deal on all sides, but sobering thoughts.

Ron 

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 12:47:11 PM   
Politesub53


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Status: offline 		Meatclever.... London was bombed on August 24th and the following day Churchill ordered a raid on Berlin. Hitler retaliated by starting the blitz.

http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/WW2/bombing%20raids.htm

All wars are wrong, it doesnt matter too much if its young men, mostly conscripts, or civilians. There is no justification for any of it.
Sometimes though, people dont have a choice but to fight oppression. What would have happened if no one stood up to Germany and Japan ?

i am reading a book about a guy tortured in the construction of the Burma Railway. Later in life he finds one of the guards who watched over him. The guard begs forgiveness and the guy forgives him. It`s quite a heart wrenching book, yet a fascinating read. There was a film about it but i forget the name of it.
The book is called " The Railway Man "

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 12:59:23 PM   
NorthernGent


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Politesub53

All wars are wrong, it doesnt matter too much if its young men, mostly conscripts, or civilians. There is no justification for any of it.



The burden of proof rests with the aggressor, and it's very rarely satisfied.

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 1:02:32 PM   
kittinSol


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Status: offline 		I shall kindly point you to the original post, which was simply a call for us all to remember the VICTIMS of a landmark event in the history of humanity.

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 2:39:42 PM   
meatcleaver


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quote:

ORIGINAL: samboct
The only difference is that it took just one a-bomb, versus thousands of conventional and inciendiary devices to start the firestorms of Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo.  (Meatcleavers numbers jibe with what I recall.)  But the numbers he left out were the 200-300,000 dead in Shanghai (think it was Shanghai, might have been Nanking) when the Japanese bombers came over for a month and dropped bombs on the undefended city- prior to Pearl Harbor.



Check the figures. Hamburg 40,000 in one night, Dresden and estimated 135,000. There is no secret about these figures as they are well researched and widely published.

I never suggested the Germans or Japanese weren't brutal and cruel, my main point however, is that people in the west seem to justify their crimes against humanity by pointing to someone elses.

Just because someone might break into your house doesn't excuse you from breaking into someone elses. You are just lowering yourself to their level.

OK I never fought in WWII so maybe I'm not qualified to talk about it but my father and uncle did and they lost two brothers and it is they that taught me that a crime against humanity is a crime against humanity is a crime humanity etc. etc.

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 3:51:57 PM   
dolceservo


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Status: offline 		I agree, we should remember those deaths, we should have always in our minds what happened in those cities.
History in this case should support the leaders of the present and always remind them that a total nuclear war must be avoided at all costs.
Today in the world there is thousands of nuclear warheads and each one of them has an explosive yeald much greater than the one of little big boy ( the bomb dropped on hiroshima had an explosive yeld of 15kiloton, the most powerful device ever produced had an explosive yeld of 50 megaton..in every megaton there is 1000 kiloton..you do the math!).
The effects of these weapons have lost their initial aim (simply win a war) and they have become devices that could destroy the same ones that have first used them and potentially put an end to our entire civilization!

Having said that, Truman could never risk these extreme consequences, the japanese could not retaliate and the risk of an escaliation to a total nuclear war (to be avoided at all costs) was inesistent. The atomic bomb thus goes back to its original use and aim, it has therefore no more or less moral implications as the german carpet bombings on coventry or haague, the british ones on hamburg or worse dresden, or the same firebombings of the americans on tokyo some of witch caused tens of thousands casualties.  

Have a nice day you all!

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 4:16:02 PM   
Arpig


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Status: offline 		HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR.
 
There is nothing moving
as the August wind blows cold
across the fetid corpses
of dreams to soon grown old.
It dances with the ashes
around the shattered stones,
and sings a mournful dirge
amongst the blackened bones...
Hiroshima, mon amour.
 
There's flowers round the ruin
but it wasn't always so...
where now there is a city
the dust lay thick as snow.
Somewhere across the river
a lonely bell still tolls,
lest we forget the lesson taught
by the countless lost souls...
Hiroshima, mon amour.
 
But there's no trace
to be found there today.
Where once the children died,
now the children play.
And again in the fall
the cherry trees are in bloom
and softly lay their pink carpet
atop the universal tomb...
Hiroshima, mon amour.
 
 
07/08/85
R. P. G.

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 4:38:51 PM   
kittinSol


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Status: offline 		Arpig... you saw the film?!!! Oh my god, maybe there is one.



< Message edited by kittinSol -- 8/10/2007 4:52:25 PM >

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 4:41:33 PM   
feastie


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Status: offline 		I can never forget this anniversary.  It's my birthday and my real name is eerily close to the name of the plane which dropped the bomb.  I always remember this day and its events.

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 4:46:19 PM   
Arpig


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quote:

Arpig... you saw the film?!!! Oh my god, maybe there is one.

Thank you for quoting Duras.

Yes I saw the movie of the same name long ago. As for quoting Duras..I have no idea who he  (or she) might be, I wrote that poem.

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 4:51:04 PM   
kittinSol


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Status: offline 		Happy belated birthday, since it was yesterday. Happily I wasn't born on any particular momentous day... well, they did sign the Declaration of Human Rights in Paris on my birthday, but it was in 1789! (An august date too.)

My first name also means 'defender of mankind'. Maybe these factors contributed to my beliefs.

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 4:56:42 PM   
kittinSol


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Status: offline 		I'm surprised you don't know of Marguerite Duras. She wrote the novel and script that originated the film, Hiroshima mon amour.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/duras.htm

http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=196

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 5:47:56 PM   
samboct


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Status: offline 		Meatcleaver-

I'm not trying to justify the actions of attempting to create a firestorm in German cities with the actions of the Japanese prior to 1941- just a comment that massacres of civilians seem to have started earlier.

I read the numbers of dead in Shanghai from a book by Martin Caidin, some years back- think it was the Ragged Rugged Warriors.  Doing a little digging came up with this interesting reference-

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/unko/tamezou/nankin/whatreally/chapter0814.html

which claims that the figures for the number of dead in Nanking was wildly inflated by the Chinese.  I suspect that Caidin mixed up the effects of the ground troops along with the aerial bombardment- the number of dead seems to be overstated.

While some revisionist historian may view aerial bombardments of cities as "crimes against humanity", I find this idea seems to dismiss artillery shelling of a city as somehow more civilized.  Having just come back from a trip to Berlin and Vienna, there are plenty of scars in Berlin from both aerial bombardment and the shelling the city sustained when the Russians entered.  These fine distinctions of the technology used to kill people in war I find puzzling- I guess I just don't get them.

However, the German death camps were considered a crime against humanity during the Nuremberg trials- and that seems rather more straightforward.

Sam

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/10/2007 11:43:28 PM   
NorthernGent


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quote:

ORIGINAL: samboct

However, the German death camps were considered a crime against humanity during the Nuremberg trials- and that seems rather more straightforward.



It seems straightforward because we, the Allied victors, have written the script i.e. death camps = criminal, killing people in places like Iraq = fine. We call it "spreading democracy/superior Western Liberal values", the Germans called it "preserving superior Germanic/Western blood"; if there is a contrast, it is outweighed by the comparison.

If there is no public pressure for the current lot to be tried for war crimes, then what does it say about Westerners? and what does it mean for this thread and the "remember the dead" line?

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/11/2007 4:33:14 AM   
samboct


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Status: offline 		Perhaps the only significant difference between the Gestapo prisons at Prinz Albrechtstrasse and the abuses of Abu Ghraib is that what's left of our "free press" has allowed some of us to voice our disapproval of the actions of our government without being disappeared.  While I agree that to the Iraqis killed, the distinction between a war of conquest and genocide may seem pettyfogging, to many your comparison is a bit hyperbolic.  We are not trying to wipe the Iraqis off the face of the planet- but that's exactly what Hitler was trying to do to the Jews (and gypsies, and homosexuals and Communists.....)  But since the methodology is quite similar between Abu Ghraib and the Gestapo, it certainly leaves little room for "moral superiority".

Sam

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/11/2007 5:06:38 AM   
Rumtiger


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Status: offline 		In response to the original topic, or original debate rather.

After knowing first hand the native Japanese main public view on the whole situation and on the war itself (of which shitloads of people are upset about and you would be too) I have this to say:

Fuck em..

Have a super day.

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/11/2007 5:44:32 AM   
RacerJim


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Status: offline 		Anyone who believes that the only significant difference between what the Gestapo did as a matter of government policy at numerous concentration camps/prisons and what a handful of crazed US troops did on their own accord at one prison, Abu Ghraib, is that our right to freedom of speech allows us to voice disapproval of what that handful of US troops did without our government rounding us up and making us disappear is a liberal hack -- nothing less, nothing more.  The quite dissimilar methodologies of the US troops at Abu Ghraib (humiliation, mental torture, relatively minor pain) and the Gestapo (extreme mental and physical torture, disfigurement, mind alterating drug and genetic research injections, slow excruciating pain/death, freelance executions, genocide) do indeed leave room for our government's/military's moral superiority.

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/11/2007 6:45:37 AM   
samboct


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I suggest that you get your facts straight- or better yet, go to the exhibit at the Topologie of Terror and read for yourself the Gestapo's accomplishments and methodologies.  Then you might be in a better position to judge the differences between the actions of that organization and the actions at Abu Ghraib.

1)  The SS (death camps) and the Gestapo were separate organizations- the death camps were run by Himmler (the SS) and the Gestapo was the state police organization headed by Goering.  They didn't like each other, and Hitler was happiest with his henchman quarreling.  The Gestapo did have the power to send people to the camps however, with the blessings of the courts.

2)  The powers of the Gestapo did not spring out like a jack in the box- these powers evolved over time.  What was quite clear from the exhibit was that early on (say, 1935-1936) being arrested by the Gestapo meant that you had about an 80% chance of surviving, and there was some attempt made to distinguish between active resistance and merely being an accessory.  Nor was "heightened interrogation" (the euphemism for torture used consistently-often the threat of being in the prison itself was sufficient.  Nor did the Gestapo carry out some of the bizarre experiments in the death/concentration camps.  Most of the people in the Gestapo were the police force, and after the war, most of them merely melted back into society.  As time passed (41 onward), the chances of survival diminished, as did the seriousness of the charges necessary for execution.

3)  I think it was Santayana who said- those who do not learn the lessons of history are given a second chance.  Your smugness at condoning torture for the sake of "security" sounds awfully similar to the justification that the Gestapo used for its actions.  And since when did suggesting that we hew more closely to the freedoms and laws propounded in our constitution become grounds for being dismissed as a liberal hack?

Sam

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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 8/11/2007 6:48:29 AM   
Sinergy


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Level

Do those that remember the dead of Pearl Harbor, not also feel empathy for the civilians of Japan?
 


My sentiments exactly.  Thank you, Level.

Sinergy

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