However, one must take into account the attitudes of the people involved rather than one's own. From what I've read and from what Japanese people have told me, I have no doubt that the Japanese civilians of the time would have voluntarily given their lives to protect those sites from destruction. After all, how many Italians would queue up to give their lives to save the Colosseum? Hell, I'd probably volunteer for the Museums in New York.
Hmm, so mistreatment of POWs is justification for mass slaughter of civilians. I'll have to remember that the next time there is a terrorist attack on US soil and you are outraged about the cowardly unprovoked tactics used. I don't think it's possible to argue with a person with so much happy cognitive dissonance as you so I guess I'll just leave the argument where it is.
the explaination is simple. the first bomb was dropped. the japanese still refused to surrender. for hiroshima: Of the total civilian population of 343,000, approximately 78,150 were killed, with an additional 51,408 injured or missing.
Pardon me for the inaccuracy of claiming that an estimated 140,000 people were killed at Hiroshima. I am sure that of that estimated 51,408 people who were never accounted for or who were injured most of them were on holiday and hadn't left a note about where they had gone, so counting the missing as dead is unreasonable. Your source is no more authoritative than mine for breaking the dead into two different groups. These numbers can change slightly from source to source because the destruction was so extensive that it was difficult to make accurate counts, and the US military itself has never subscribed to an official body count because it is our policy to not count civilian deaths. If we did then people at large might begin to realize that in nearly every modern war civilian deaths have far outnumbered military deaths. In that light war might not look so glamorous and that just isn't good business for pro militant forces. Congratulations, however, on doing some reading. I presume you must have in order to attempt to come up with a figure different than the one I have been using, and if you make a habit of it you might one day become an effective arguer.
have i ever said you were wrong in the figure you quoted? if i remember correctly i said it was a japanese estimate. the figure i gave came from the US army museum website. so, it isn't common practice to test new things in india? you just whip up a concoction that cures leperosy and start injecting lepers with it. makes perfect sense in an indian kind of way.
This is ridiculous. First off, apparently you haven't heard of Burma or Singapore or the Rape of Nanking or Manchuria or Korea or very much else, which makes me sad for the state of history being taught today in high school. Regrettable; but not as regrettable as the treatment of the civilians in these events, the massacre at Nanking being most notable. Again, of course, you haven't heard of these things, so why should they concern you? Please do carry on trying to argue from the moral high ground of a pond basin; or, perhaps, you could read something. Sometime. Whenever. Or you could call up the Chinese Embassy, or the Korean Embassy, and ask them what they think of Japanese behaviour during WWII. I'm sure they'd be happy to "edumacate yer" in all the basics you seem to have no interest in, so long as they contradict your argument. The Japanese - and all the Axis, frankly - started in with non-recognition of the protection of civilians. While that doesn't mean they should be firebombed, it does obviate their recourse to fair treatment. Done and done. You're honestly accusing me of cognitive dissonance? Byee!
I do know about the atrocity's the Japanese committed in China and Korea. I find these words from your previous post most telling, however. You assert that this does not mean that Japanese civilians should be firebombed, and yet you are arguing that in fact it does mean that they aught to be firebombed. I am the one arguing that it does not mean they should be firebombed. Atrocities were committed against the civilians of other Asian country's, but the entire point I am arguing is that civilians are not valid targets. Civilians did not rape Nanking. The army they had no control over did. These events, which were not even committed against our nation in no way offers moral support for what we did to innocent Japanese civilians. I stand by my statement about your cognitive dissonance.
My my - and here I thought you were done with me. Again am I to be subjected to the fire of your rancor? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Well, you seem to have only lately discovered them, so forgive me if I remain unconvinced. LOL - tell on! I am arguing that Japan, as a nation, gave up its rights to such humanitarian consideration by its treatment of the civilians that fell into its hands. I am not eager to see such retribution, and I do not applaud it, but neither would I prevent it. I had relatives - as did some of my friends - who fell into the clutches of the Japanese; they have little pity on this score. Then again, if we wish to decry civilian casualties, why not the Germans? They inarguably suffered more. Then again, they caused more. So in short: I am arguing that they ought not to be firebombed, but that if they want not to be firebombed, their army ought better behave itself. I not here: if the evil the Japanese Army inflicted on those civilians they caught, what more scope for horror would they have had had they won the war? One wonders. First: the usage is "countries", not "country's". Second: What does it matter they weren't committed against your nation specifically? Why should that matter a damn? The fact of it is that if you deal out such horrors, then you should have a reasonable expectation that they will be dealt back to you. I agree that it is terrible that civilians on any side should suffer, but neither should nations then have the right to trample on whom they will without fear of retribution in like kind. Killing a soldier is all fine and well, but if he fears his actions may pay out his family in the end - the horror he visits on others darkening his own door - you are far more likely to get a more sympathetic standpoint when he marches to war. Hopefully, the lesson will be learned. Sometimes, it is not: and, again, Japan as a nation abandoned all right to complain about civilian treatment well prior to 1941. I regret you have no capacity to comprehend this. Stand by your statement about my cognitive dissonance. It will be a lonely, empty watch. Bring a jacket.
"But they started it" is the shrill whine of someone who knows he's guilty. I really am done with you Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
you just don't get it spymoose. IF america invaded japan every man, woman, and child over the age of 11 would be attacking us. don't get me wrong. i'm not making excuses. but ask yourself what if the entire japanese population was transported to US western shore. do you seriously believe that they would not rape, rob, torture, burn, slash, and gouge their way across our continent? yes, they were civilians, but only because they couldn't get here.
That is a good point Geoff. Someone should remind SpyMoose that if it were not for Germany and Japan WW2 would have NEVER happened.
this is what i don't understand. the japanese comes over here, kills approx. 3000 of our guys in a sneak attack then they cry foul when we beat the dogshit out of them for it.
I guess some people think they did us a favor by starting a world war, like they were giving us a gift. In the end it was a total waste of life and resources and if it turned out differently we would all be posting under a blanket, one step ahead of the Gestapo.
According to wikipedia: "During World War II both the Allies and Axis powers had previously pursued policies of strategic bombing and the targeting of civilian infrastructure. In numerous cases these had caused huge numbers of civilian casualties and were (or came to be) controversial. In Germany, the Allied firebombing of Dresden resulted in roughly 30,000 deaths. The March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo may have killed as many as 100,000 people. By August, about 60 Japanese cities had been destroyed through a massive aerial campaign, including massive firebombing raids on the cities of Tokyo and Kobe." If conventional bombing destroyed 60 cities and didn't end the war, and nuclear bombing destroyed 2 and did end the war, I think that of the two, nuclear bombing was not only more effective but more moral. Whether the conventional bombing was moral in the first place is another question, but it seems we'll have to wait for the anniversary of one of those bombings to create a thread discussing them.
You were done the moment your argument began. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Tell the Koreans there should be no such thing as retribution, or the Japanese, or the Western civilians captured by the Japanese: or the Russians, or anyone else victimized by an aggressor.
I also heard the US was working out a napalm death delivery system to Japanese paper houses using bats. Bats with bombs attached to them. Unfortunately, the bats escaped and incinerated a US airbase. Or something.
The bombing of civilian infrastructure is supposed to be strategic. Bridges, harbors, railways, factories, roads. All of these can be and routinely are used to support the military so their destruction has a calculable impact on the enemy's ability to wage war. Yet according to all sources I've seen, Dresden's civilian infrastructure had minimal strategic value. No factories producing war materiel, no key transport hubs, just the buildings and streets found in any large city. Its only war support could be construed as its food supply, potential manpower among the citizenry, etc. To destroy Dresden hardly made a "calculable impact" on Germany's war effort. To select it at random for destruction would be a desperate act by an enemy who was reduced to such options by a defeated people who would simply not surrender--and indeed this was the rationale behind the virtually random selection of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the Germans were not the Japanese. They would surely have surrendered soon enough, especially with the vengeful, bloodthirsty Soviet army at their eastern border. Moreover, Dresden was not just one of dozens of interchangeable cities. It was a key repository of German culture--not quite Kyoto but greater than Philadelphia. To destroy Dresden was on a par with the destruction of the library at Alexandria by the lunatic horde of Abrahamic religionists. When you have your enemy pinned down and on the verge of defeat, to make him watch as you destroy the records and artifacts of his history is not just barbaric cruelty, it is a loss to all of human civilization. To casually include Dresden in a list of "strategic bombing of civilian infrastructure" is to whitewash history. It was evidence that war reduces even the most "noble" combatants (i.e. "our side") to dishonor making it difficult to distinguish from its "evil" enemy. It was evidence that war is always wrong no matter how well-intentioned because the winners lose the nobility that is their rationale for believing that they deserve victory. The article needs to be edited.
By my recollection, he's correct. The Americans trained bats and used bombers. The bat project never got off the ground, much like the Japanese incendiary balloons were used only once.
