Is Nuclear War Wrong?

[bluemonday]

That may have been the best humane option.

 

However given the history of the war and the conduct of the japanese soldiers to POWs and civilians in many areas, I suspect the Americans probably weren't in that much of a mind to be 'humane'

 

No excuse of course but I can understand their point of view.

 

I also feel that had the Russians had one or two a bombs whilst the European conflict was still going that Germany would have been a recipient.

 

Not soley for military purposes but as well as revenge against adolf and co, as a demonstration/statement of future intent to the rest of the allies in the post war period.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

That may have been the best humane option.

 

However given the history of the war and the conduct of the japanese soldiers to POWs and civilians in many areas, I suspect the Americans probably weren't in that much of a mind to be 'humane'

 

No excuse of course but I can understand their point of view.

 

I also feel that had the Russians had one or two a bombs whilst the European conflict was still going that Germany would have been a recipient.

 

Not soley for military purposes but as well as revenge against adolf and co, as a demonstration/statement of future intent to the rest of the allies in the post war period.

 

Nothing about the decision to drop nuclear bombs has anything to do with 'humane' choices. It amounts to nothing more than national interest. Does the American government (or any other) want thousands or millions of its 'own' people dead fighting another nation, or would it prefer toasting The Enemy's population?

 

And the British would have used the nuclear weapon if it had the opportunity. The military torched Dresden, why not drop a nuke?

[manxman2]

hell yeah.

[Freggyragh]

That may have been the best humane option.

 

However given the history of the war and the conduct of the japanese soldiers to POWs and civilians in many areas, I suspect the Americans probably weren't in that much of a mind to be 'humane'

 

No excuse of course but I can understand their point of view.

 

I also feel that had the Russians had one or two a bombs whilst the European conflict was still going that Germany would have been a recipient.

 

Not soley for military purposes but as well as revenge against adolf and co, as a demonstration/statement of future intent to the rest of the allies in the post war period.

 

A different view of this history. For a long period of time Japan was almost totally closed to outside world. In 1854 the US sent warships to Japan and forced the Japanese into extremely unfavorable trade treaties. The Japanese suddenly found that they were becoming second-class citizens in their own country. Within a few years the 2nd British Opium War had resulted in the breakdown of the Chinese imperial state, destruction of one of their greatest cultural treasures - The Summer Palace, and the virtual colonization of China. In reaction to this, the Japanese set about the process of industrialization and the creation of modern armed forces.

 

The US and Europe gradually gobbled up more and more of Asia and began to control almost all the markets and shipping lanes. When Russia began to make moves on Korea and Manchuria Japan was forced into war, and defeated the Russian Navy.

 

The Japanese were on the 'right' side during WW1, and besides neutralizing the German navy in the Pacific and sending troops to Europe they captured the German held Tsingtao province of China. After the war, they thought that as victors they were entitled to some degree of influence over China, including preferential access to her markets and the right to finance industrial joint ventures. They also demanded that a racial equality clause be added to the Treaty of Versailles. The British vetoed this (at the request of the Australians).

 

Japan began to prosper in the period just after WW1, but when trade barriers sprang up in the 1930's Japan was left in a pickle - India, Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Papua New Guinea Australia, and Hong Kong were British Colonies, Indonesia was 'The Dutch East Indies', Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were under the French, The Philippines and much of the Pacific were American and The Soviet Union was consolidating its eastern territories. Japan, was by now one of the advanced industrial nations, but had to import almost all its iron, rubber and oil. Worse still, industrialization had caused a huge growth in population, but immigration to the US and Australia was more or less prohibited. No wonder the Japanese made a move on Manchuria, a province of China that had been in a state of anarchy ever since the British (and French) had decided to punish the Emperor for his embargo on class A drugs.

 

Unfortunately for Japan the Americans and Europeans did not approve of Japanese expansionism, and so began to restrict Japan's access to Asia's raw materials. This forced Japan into a corner, and lead her to make a treaty with the only major power without a colony in the area (as Japan had, ironically taken them of her during WW1) - Germany. This lead to the full trade embargo, which provoked Japan into the war for iron (in China), rubber (Malaya), Oil (Indonesia and the Philippines) and shipping lanes (Pearl Harbour).

 

The myth that Japan attacked the US 'out of the blue' is just wrong. The Japanese didn't tell the US where, or what day they would attack, but the American Government knew it was coming.

 

By August 1945 the Japanese Army, Thai Army, Burmese Independence Army and Indian Nationalist Army in Burma had all been defeated. The Japanese Army in China was all but beaten. Okinawa and Iwo Jima had fallen to the US, so the US had airbases within comfortable distance of all Japanese cities. Japan had no aircraft, no navy, almost no means of producing modern weaponry, no effective ground response to air attack, the population were dying of starvation and what is more, the whole purpose of the war had been defeated as every Japanese port was mined, and all docks and railways either destroyed, or about to be. Almost every industrial city in Japan had been flattened. The Allies had absolutely no need to launch an invasion of Japan - unless it was to stop the Russians.

 

Now, I can accept that the US dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, it was one of the last industrial cities left standing, and the Americans wanted to test the bomb, frighten the Russians, and I accept that they did not understand the horrific implications of radiation poisoning. However, I cannot accept that there was justification for the bomb on Nagasaki. Nagasaki is and was an unusual city in Japan, because of its very large ethnic Chinese population and its long history as a centre for Catholicism - Ground Zero was, at that time, one of the the largest Catholic cathedrals in Asia. Nagasaki's Christian pacifists had been brutally treated by the Japanese military government throughout the war. There were 10,000 Koreans in Nagasaki at the time the bomb was dropped, almost all there as forced labour. Their country had been colonized in 1910 (as a consequence of Japan's victory over Russia) and as a result their culture and native language had been severely suppressed. In addition to this, an estimated 100 allied POWs were killed by the bomb. I know that there were people there who might have fought to the bitter end, but almost all of them were starving civilians without a navy, without merchant shipping, without an airforce, without supplies. They did not have the capability of attacking any other country, they did not have the capability of rebuilding.

 

When I read "Thank God they were dropped" it makes me wonder what kind of God you believe in.

[P.K.]

Didn't you know? God is on the side of "the big battalions"...

[Chinahand]

Freggyragh - I think you are wrong about US sanctions against Japan - the trade treaty was only abrogatted in 1939 - well after Japan's initial agression in Manchuria and the full scale invasion of China in 1937. Oil and scrap iron was affected in 1940 and July 1941 all trade.

 

Your post would enrage many many Chinese and is in my mind close to the type of revisionism which is all to prevelent in Japan today. Japan hasn't faced up to the barbarity of its colonizing actions in Korea and China. Poor little Japan wasn't forced to enslave its mainland neighbours due to immigration restrictions or a non-existant US embargo - it did it agressivelly and brutally to futher its own interests. That is also how it viewed Pearl Harbour, and the invasion of Burma, Malaya etc.

[Freggyragh]

Freggyragh - I think you are wrong about US sanctions against Japan - the trade treaty was only abrogatted in 1939 - well after Japan's initial agression in Manchuria and the full scale invasion of China in 1937. Oil and scrap iron was affected in 1940 and July 1941 all trade.

 

Your post would enrage many many Chinese and is in my mind close to the type of revisionism which is all to prevelent in Japan today. Japan hasn't faced up to the barbarity of its colonizing actions in Korea and China. Poor little Japan wasn't forced to enslave its mainland neighbours due to immigration restrictions or a non-existant US embargo - it did it agressivelly and brutally to futher its own interests. That is also how it viewed Pearl Harbour, and the invasion of Burma, Malaya etc.

 

Anyone who questions the Communist Party Government official view of history is 'revisionist'. Rare is the country that faces up the barbarity of its history by taking collective responsibility. The English don't make an explicit unreserved apology for the 900 hundred years of oppression every time they meet an Irish person do they? They hardly touch on the subject in school either. They have not taken collective responsibilty for any sustained colonial atrocity, neither have they blamed the monarchy, the aristocracy or constitutional democracy. What they have done is dismantle imperialism, raised charity funds for Africa and bought into 'Fairtrade'.

 

It is difficult sometimes to see things one way, when you are so used to making assumptions. A good example is the old chestnut of the Japanese soldier finally 'surrendering' after thirty years 'in the jungle' waiting for further orders. The reality of course being a soldier who deserted and spent the last thirty years running a pub in the Philippines - and now he wants to go back to Japan and claim a war pension. The West can be a bit quick to believe in the myth of the Japanese emperor worshiping fanatic, the sort of inhuman fanatic who could be capable of anything. The Japanese obviously see themselves as rather more human, and so instead of admitting to some unique flaw in their humanity, or in their culture, that they must apologize to the world for, they have identified what it was in pre-war Japan that caused them to go to war.

 

I suppose the Japanese don't feel the need to apologise to the Chinese, or anyone else on a daily basis, although until recently no state visit to Britain was without a long and formal apology, which never seemed to be strong enough for some tabloids. What the Japanese did was heap the blame onto militarism and imperialism, and do their best to make sure it never happens again. As a consequence, Japan is prohibited from its own constitution from entering into military conflict abroad.

 

The commitment to pacifism is not an apology. An apology from anyone, except the soldiers who committed the atrocities, would not be considered sincere by the Japanese. The Communist Party has problems with this, because they obviously think that all kids in Japan should be taught their view of history, in which it is not militarism per se, but Capitalism and the Japanese national character that was at fault,