Posted on Jul 30, 2015
COL Ted Mc
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From "Scoop"

Why Americans Believe that Bombing Hiroshima was Necessary

August 6, 2015, is the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a civilian city that had minimal military value, despite the claims of President Truman when he announced the event to the American people.

The whole truth of what the Nuremburg tribunal would later help define as an international war crime and a crime against humanity has been heavily censored and mythologized ever since war-weary Americans in 1945 accepted the propaganda that the bombings were necessary to shorten the war and prevent the loss of a million US soldiers during the allegedly planned November 1945 invasion.

Of course, the reason that the United States wasn’t sanctioned like Germany was for the Jewish holocaust was that America was the victor and the occupier and thus it was in charge of making and enforcing the rules in the New World Order.

The United States military ambushed the equally defenseless Nagasaki City three days later with the second atomic bomb to ever be used against a civilian population (that no longer had any military value to Japan). “Fat Man”, the plutonium bomb named after Winston Churchill, was detonated before the Japanese leadership fully understood what had happened at Hiroshima.

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My high school history teachers all seemed to be ex-jocks who weren’t athletically talented enough to make it to the majors. The main chance for them to continue playing games for pay was to join the teaching profession and coach high school athletics. American history was of secondary importance in many small town high schools but it hardly made the list of interests for coaches, who reluctantly accepted the job; and so my classmates and I “learned” our lessons from some very uninspired, very bored and/or very uninformed teachers who would rather have been on the playing field.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1507/S00170/why-americans-believe-that-bombing-hiroshima-was-necessary.htm

EDITORIAL COMMENT:- A view seldom seen.
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LTC Stephen F.
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Edited 9 y ago
Yes, COL Ted Mc dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki broke the will of the Japanese people to continue fighting and saved up to one million allied service members from becoming casualties.
The bombs could have been dropped on more populated areas such as Tokyo but Hiroshima and Nagasaki were far enough away removed from large population centers that while horrific loss of life occurred instantly, the longer term death by radiation sickness did not affect that who Japanese island.
There were horrific losses of life in the fire bombing of Dresden and the bombings of Tokyo which burnt much as well as German bombing of London and Japanese bombing of Shanghai and other Chinese population centers.
If Japan or Germany had developed the bomb before we did they would not have hesitated in using it against civilian and military targets to break our will. People in the early 21st century generally were not of age when the horror that was Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were sweeping through Europe and purging Gypsies, homosexuals, Jews, mentally disabled, and Slavs while Japan was sweeping through eastern and southern Asia and destroying and enslaving in the name of their God emperor.
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COL Ted Mc
COL Ted Mc
9 y
LTC Stephen F. - Colonel; From the actual historical record, the only "sticking point" to a Japanese surrender was the removal of the Emperor.

The US was insisting that the Emperor be removed and tried for war crimes.

The Japanese insisted that the Emperor be left in place and not tried for war crimes.

After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was a complete reversal of position by one of the parties and that resulted in the end of WWII.

That reversal, of course, was the dropping of the US demand that the Emperor be removed and tried for war crimes.

Everyone should impressed by how quickly the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities convinced the US government to abandon the only demands which were preventing the ending of WWII.

MAJ (Join to see) - Captain; Considering that the Japanese had absolutely no idea what an atomic bomb was or what it could do, it is difficult to consider ANY "warning" as being "significant".

BTW, the Japanese were NOT "bent on world domination". The Japanese were merely following through on the foreign policy course which every American President from the time of Theodore Roosevelt had encouraged them to follow and the ordering of the attack on Pearl Harbour was in response to American government actions which had totally cut off Japan from supplies which it needed for its existence. As you are no doubt aware, those actions were taken contrary to the orders of the President of the United States of America and by people who had next to no understanding of the "Oriental Psyche".

PS - The Japanese were well aware of the fact that they could not actually win a war against the United States of America but were hoping to have established a strong enough position that they could negotiate an end to the war before America shook off its "non-interventionist" stance. This, of course, shows that the Japanese were just as ignorant of the "American Psyche" as the US government was of the "Japanese Psyche".
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MAJ Contracting Officer
MAJ (Join to see)
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COL Ted Mc
COL: There were no official negotiations between the two countries the only attempts by the US were basically summarized in the Potsdam Declaration which made no reference to the Emperor nor his future status. In fact there was a significant push among the nuclear committee on the wording of a democratic monarchy The secretary of War Henry Stimson in fact stated in giving such a warning "we should add that we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her [Japan] present dynasty, it would substantially add to the chances of acceptance."

There was no demand for the emperors removal aside from the demands of the general populace.

The Japanese empire did attempt to negotiate with the US through Russia as an intermediary but as Russia was preparing to invade Manchuria no avail came of that route. The Japanese after realizing they were incapable of defending themselves began attempts to defend to their deaths and commit mass suicide as they had done before on home islands. Their official response to the Potsdam Declaration was silence. The decision to not specify any further information in the Potsdam was due to the secretary's belief that if notice were given Japan would relocate American POW's to that location.

As far as the Japanese not having any idea LTG Yasuda in October of 1940 reported that the availability to Japan of uranium deposits, in Korea and Burma concluded that Japan had access to sufficient uranium. A bomb was therefore possible. Yoshio Nishina was appointed as the country's leading physicist studied with Niels Bohr in the late 30's and built a cyclotron at his tokyo lab. More than one hundred Japanese scientists, worked under Nishina. The Imperial Army Air Force authorized research toward the development of an atomic bomb. Japan was sufficiently advanced in nuclear research that Tokutaro Hagiwara of the faculty of science of the University of Kyoto was the first scientist to conceive of a thermonuclear reaction (hydrogen bomb) in 1941 the Imperial navy identified U235 separation by gaseous thermal diffusion and electromagnetic centrifuge processes. in 41 the Imperial Navy noted that the US was probably working on a nuclear bomb, but were uncertain on how long it would take for Japan to produce one of their own. Finally in March 1943 Japan determined that the atomic bomb was certainly a possibility it would require a tenth of the annual Japanese electrical capacity and half their copper output, Japan would also need 10 years to build one. They further decided to cancel the work on it and devote to more immediately valuable research, particularly radar. (information available on Richard Rhodes "the making of the atomic bomb)

In terms of world domination find me one example when a totalitarian regeim stated their limit of advance and kept with it. We cut off their fuel supply because they invaded our ally China. Contrary to the presidents will or not it was a treaty obligation.

Certainly agree neither side understood each other just as we and ISIS don't understand each other.
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LTC Stephen F.
LTC Stephen F.
9 y
MAJ (Join to see) - Thank you for weighing in and providing significant background information which is critical to understand what was going on at the time as opposed to what is put out by historical revisionists. Sgt Richard Buckner, CPT Jack Durish,
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PO3 Donald Murphy
PO3 Donald Murphy
8 y
COL Ted Mc - The Japanese were working on an atomic device and were closer than the Germans. Had they started the war a year later, they'd have had a dirty nuke ready in time for Saipan.
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CAPT Kevin B.
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It's easy to collect sound bites from somewhere to tell the story you already decided the conclusion to. Necessary? Most likely. It was probably a 70/30 decision. Absolutely needed? No. Saved US lives? Yes, if invasion was the COA selected. Reasonable decision at the time? Probably in the fat part of the bell curve. I dislike people who look at history out of context and without the values and culture of the time. This limited thinking is what causes history to repeat itself because they can't have an intelligent conversation. There's this Disney song, oh yes, "Let it Go".
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SN Greg Wright
SN Greg Wright
8 y
Careful with that logic on the interwebs, Captain. It'll get you ridiculed!
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MAJ Ken Landgren
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I am glad they were used, so the whole world could see the destructive power of the bombs.
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MAJ Contracting Officer
MAJ (Join to see)
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Hopefully so they will never be used again.
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