I’ve been trying to figure out what pieces were in the box for like the last 150 posts. So far, all I’ve found is we’re not supposed to invade, we’re not supposed to bomb, and winning is optional. I think it would be interesting to debate if it weren’t so damned vague.

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“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” - Lord Palmerston

I agree with your assessments of Japan's strength at the beginning of the war.

I never said anything about pulling back to defensive positions in 1945.

What I don't like is carpet bombing cities, especially fire bombing cities and the use of the atom bomb on a city.

Look how we wage war now. Yes, I know technology has vastly improved, but we still had the capability to bomb specific targets, of course it was WAY tougher back in 1945.

I know Germany carpet bombed London, as well as other cities. I know Japan did horrible things during the war, especially to the Chinese and Phillipinos.

They also did horrible things to POWs.

Still, the Japanese people were brainwashed by their leaders.

They actually believed the lies they were told about the USA.

They actually believed that we would torture captives and rape women if captured.

Since Japan was an island nation with almost NO natural resources, a simple blockade would have prevented them from re-arming. We could have plinked away at the remnants of their navy and clogged their shipping lanes, cutting off their forces that were in theater and preventing them from rearming.

It is estimated that the firebombing of Tokyo killed 100,000 and injured another 100,000. It made 1,000,000 people homeless. This was just in Tokyo.

In the space of ten days, the Americans had dropped nearly 9,500 tons of incendiaries on Japanese cities and destroyed 29 square miles of what was considered to be important industrial land.

How many people died during all of these raids?

Could these massive deaths had been prevented?

Some questions can't be answered.

No one knows what would have happened if we had taken another approach to Japan back in 1945. We do know that they wanted terms for their surrender, terms to keep their emperor and to avoid occupation.

Yes, Japan did horrible things during the war, but these things were not done by women and children living in Japanese cities. In my opinion, stooping to their level was not the right thing to do.

Just my opinion.

FDR was a scumbag who intentionally provoked the Japanese attack and he sacrificed over 2,400 men at Pearl Harbor for two reasons. One, was to get the American people pissed off enough to make huge sacrifices during the war, (over 10% of the American people served in the war, with over 400,000 losing their lives), two was to make sure that Japan would not suspect that we had broken their codes.

Truman, was basically told that an allied invasion of Japan could result in 1,000,000 allied casualties and this was unacceptable. I agree. Still, was dropping the atom bomb the ONLY SOLUTION?

What if we didn't have the atomic bomb, what would we have done then?

A simple blockade would have slowly ground Japan into submission. Once we took Iwo Jima and could use fighters to destroy Japan's fighters, they had little defenses left.

They were at our mercy and we gave them none.

Some will say they didn't deserve mercy and they have a strong argument, but like I already said, the women and children in Japan were not involved in the many atrocities committed by the JAPANESE MILITARY.

the total number of dead in all that vicious island fighting right up to Jima and Okinawa, and the sailors and airmen thrown in was far more than the number killed by the A bombs. and now Public opinion back home is starting to run anti war. that's right. enough !!!! they wanted and demanded this war end. we were sick of it. we had the weapons to end it and we did. you will certainly not find any veterans who complained about it ending.

Are you talking just American killed? Because that just isn't true.

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I am a liberal, a classical liberal. Classical liberalism is liberalism, but the current collectivists have captured that designation in the United States. In Europe they are glad enough to call themselves socialists. But no one in America wants to be called socialist and admit what they are.

Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance, Perseverance

Im not sure someone parading a Tonkin Gulf yacht club sign is that interested in the truth. Given the history.

no !!!! they lost more. a lot more.

how would you know ???? and whats a sign got to do with the price of tomatoes???? I said bomb em. and thats what happend. what is the Tonkin gulf yacht club????

Yeah, that is what I am asking you. Who is 'they'? Are you referring to the US?

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I am a liberal, a classical liberal. Classical liberalism is liberalism, but the current collectivists have captured that designation in the United States. In Europe they are glad enough to call themselves socialists. But no one in America wants to be called socialist and admit what they are.

Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance, Perseverance

I just answered this. "they" meaning the Japs. are we clear now?????

Oh, CYD, i am waiting for an answer to this one!

The only terms acceptable to the United States would be a complete allied occupation of Japan, in order to make sure that Japan entered into the club of capitalist nations that do not seek to plunder through war. That is why those hundreds of thousands were vaporized: Western economic interests and the related issue of communist (mainly soviet) containment. The soviets were getting close, and we wanted to get there first. That sums up WW2: the soviets and the americans racing to the capital cities of the two principal aggressors in order to impose their own future there.
You are exactly right from my view. And to add further to this, all armies do terrible things in war because war is terrible. People just choose to pretend to ignore the terrible things their own country does to other, and they invent narratives of justification that drift away from competent use of facts. War and armies are some of the most mythologized entities in nationhood. it sickens me.

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over your head buddy. just give it up.

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Thor, you are an intellectual. don't you know better than trying to discuss reality with someone who never got the memo?

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I didn’t say you had, I was merely going off the terribly vague scenario presented by another poster.

Nobody likes carpet bombing. If there had been another bombing tactic that was at least as effective I’m confident we’d have employed it. Why would we have risked more pilots and planes than we had to? The Norden Bomb Sight was, perhaps, the most advanced device of its kind fielded during the war, but it wasn’t accurate enough to allow targeting and destruction of specific structures without allowing for a significant number of misses. If it hadn’t been for the tight control of the media by the Office of Censorship, the Norden would likely have had a reputation far worse than the Patriot got after Desert Storm; and deservedly so.

Norden bombsight - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The necessity of the fire-bombings is much harder to verify. Undoubtedly the incendiary attacks caused much more damage than would have been inflicted by more conventional high-explosives.



I don’t believe a blockade would have been particularly simple. In order to be effective, our ships would have been well within range of the remaining Japanese fleet and the kamikazes. Subs would always be a problem. My question is, why would we consider this? It certainly isn’t to spare US servicemen’s lives. Is it to spare Japanese lives? You won’t do that without suspending or drastically reducing the bombing campaign, and if you slow or stop the bombs, they have a chance to regain morale and start rebuilding their shattered industries. Eventually, we would have come to terms that everyone would agree on, but do you really think anyone would have come out ahead?

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“Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” - Lord Palmerston

In my opinion, the dropping of the Atom bomb is a somewhat pointless debate.

I believe there are far more important and pressing topics facing us and I am just not willing to spend a lot of time on this one. I just threw in my 2 cents and that is that.

If I had been an American soldier during WWII, especially in the Pacific Theater, I probably would have supported the use of the atom bomb, although I believe I may have regretted it latter on in life.

If you look at how we use weapons today, we would never, ever, fire bomb a major city this day in age. Of course we have weapons which are able to hit precise targets now, so firebombing is not necessary.

You are correct about the difficulty of bombing precise targets during WWII. It was very difficult to do so in the best of conditions and in tough conditions, like flying at 30,000 feet, it was almost impossible to hit targets more than a tiny percentage of the time.

I still believe a blockade could have worked, but the American people were tired of war and they wanted their husbands, brothers and sons to come home.

Anyways, thanks for the discussion.