Did the Japanese deserve the Atomic Bomb?

...Also, if the US invaded I think they would have taken out their revenge on all of Japan just as the Soviets did when they captured Berlin. Women would be raped (if they weren't already shot from combat) and maybe used as sex slaves...

Hmmm, are you thinking of the same Americans I'm thinking? The Americans who did the Rape of Nanking for instance?

 

Also, if the US invaded I think they would have taken out their revenge on all of Japan just as the Soviets did when they captured Berlin. Women would be raped (if they weren't already shot from combat) and maybe used as sex slaves. T

Stupidest thing I've seen written on this forum since I've been a member

Dave

 

Hmmm, are you thinking of the same Americans I'm thinking? The Americans who did the Rape of Nanking for instance?

 

Stupidest thing I've seen written on this forum since I've been a member

Dave
One consolation :you haven't seen nothing yet .

 

Wow! Those Perfidious Albionese, sorry, Russians! Quite the opposite to the advance warning Adm. Kimmel got from the Japanese Consul in Honolulu

 

Stupidest thing I've seen written on this forum since I've been a member

Dave

We'll consider that sentence as written under temporary insanity (I've seen this work as a defense on court!), the rest of the post seems sustainable so let's give it some slack. Besides, I liked the avatar

 

We'll consider that sentence as written under temporary insanity (I've seen this work as a defense on court!), the rest of the post seems sustainable so let's give it some slack. Besides, I liked the avatar


Well .... ok.

I like your avatar better. though

Dave

 

I like mine more better....

But you are right Dave, when I read that post I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that ww2f did not have the corner of the lame posting market.

 

Lots of ways to interpret the OP's question but ill take it in terms of "did Japan deserve their double nuke given the actions taken under their flag".

IMO, its a resounding yes, they earned it and then some with their behaviour in the Philippines alone. Yes, all countries have committed atrocities but few, in modern times, can compete with the Japanese during WWII.

The harmless Philippinos lost 50k of their so-called army (i.e. all of it) and an appalling MILLION civilians, men, women and children alike. Many of these civilians being purposely slaughtered to no military advantage whatsoever in horrors such as The Manila Massacre which to my mind was worse than their more infamous "death marches".

Its a long time ago but some things should neither be forgiven nor forgotten...

 

Yes, all countries have committed atrocities but few, in modern times, can compete with the Japanese during WWII.



Oh, I think Mao, Stalin and Hitler were pretty competitive, especially if Mao's and Stalin's own people are included.

But welcome to the forum, in any case.

Dave

 

I hope I will be forgiven for bumping my own earlier comment.

Back in October 2007 an almost identically headed thread started on the another ww2 forum.

I looked back to what I had said to say on the subject at that time and I doubt if my opinion has changed at all since then.

"Unfortunately, when one is in the process of literally fighting a war for survival one does not have the gift of hindsight.

Consider then the situation with which we were faced in May 1945.

After six terrible years of deprivation and much loss of life the war in Europe had come to an end but we were still faced with the major problem of dealing with Japan.

Many families, including my own, had lost kith and kin.

Along came the Bomb with its promises of speeding the conclusion of the war and coping with a people who would never have considered surrender as it went against their very code of honour.

Was I personally glad that the bomb was dropped ?

You're damn right I was !

Do I think that everyone else thought as I did?

The same answer, in spades !

Ron "

 

Casualties on both sides would have been horrific. Basic principle of warfare, clobber your foe as hard as you can today so you don't have to fight him again tomorrow. We will never know how many lives it saved - on both sides.

 

Casualties on both sides would have been horrific. Basic principle of warfare, clobber your foe as hard as you can today so you don't have to fight him again tomorrow. We will never know how many lives it saved - on both sides.

My life for sure, I was training in the UK for the invasion of Japan.

 

Oh, I think Mao, Stalin and Hitler were pretty competitive, especially if Mao's and Stalin's own people are included.

I think you're being a bit nitpicky there, Dave - particularly with bonker being a first time poster.

He did say "few" could compete with the Japanese (not "none"), so in the context of his post it was certainly a valid remark.

Richard

 

As we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the fall of Singapore (and the nightmare captivity which followed it), this seems a good time to remember the even worse fate that had been prepared for those men and civilians internees which was averted by the dropping of the atomic bombs alone. If the bombs had been dropped two weeks later, they would probably have been too late.

For this reason, I hope people will forgive me for repeating something that I said on this site 18 months ago:

There is now conclusive documentary evidence that all Japanese POW camp commandants were under strict orders to annihilate all their prisoners in the event of an Allied invasion of the Japanese-occupied territories. A (poorly) translated copy of the preliminary such order issued to a camp in Taiwan can be found at Doc 2701-Exhibit "O" Text. If I could just quote from this order:

"Whether they are destroyed individually or in groups, or however it is done, with mass bombing, poisonous smoke, poisons, drowning, decapitation or whatever, dispose of them as the situation dictates. In any case it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces."

In the Philippines, such a massacre had already happened, and the details of how these helpless men were butchered (kindly provided by Canuck) are truly horrifying: Massacre at Palawan.

A similar order (in the event of an Allied invasion) had been issued in Japan, and the equally chilling annihilation plans at Batu Lintang camp in Borneo extended not only to POWs but to civilian women and children internees too: Batu Lintang camp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (Thank you, Sol, for providing that one.)

My own father was at this time a POW in Thailand, where the prisoners had been forced some months before the end of the war to dig vast trenches (10 feet deep and 10 feet wide) all around their camps; huge machine guns were then placed at the outside corners of each such camp, pointing inwards at the prisoners. It emerged after the war (as the prisoners had suspected, but largely closed their eyes to for the sake of their own sanity) that they were to be exterminated in the event of an Allied invasion of that area.

The Japanese were (correctly) expecting an Allied invasion of Thailand on or around 21 August 1945, and were set to annihilate the prisoners on that date. Had the war rumbled on for just another couple of weeks, there is no doubt that my father would have met the same terrible fate that had been meted out earlier to the prisoners at Palawan (see the second link above). It was only the atomic bombings - which forced the Japanese surrender on 15 August and rendered an Allied invasion of Thailand unnecessary - which prevented this (saving more than 100,000 POW lives alone).

 

I think you're being a bit nitpicky there, Dave - particularly with bonker being a first time poster.

He did say "few" could compete with the Japanese (not "none"), so in the context of his post it was certainly a valid remark.

Richard

OK, you're right. I'm sorry if I came off a bit harsh.

Dave

 

OK, you're right. I'm sorry if I came off a bit harsh.

Dave

No, it's fine Dave - and you did welcome him to the forum!

Richard

 

(I'm not sure if this belongs here... this is more of the Pacific War than WW2... )

First of all, I am a pure Japanese citizen. I've lived abroad for more than half my life though, but I still speak Japanese at home.

Anyway, what I want to talk about it the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was dropped by the US at the end of WW2. My grandmother was from Hiroshima and she was a survivor of the bomb - although she died quite early from leukemia - and it had a big impact on me.

I think you know what my opinion is about them considering I am Japanese, but what are your views on it? Do you think we deserved it? Or do you think otherwise?

(I won't be angry, I promise )



Dear,

I think this would be such a difficult, enormously difficult and hard question for whatever great historian.
According to me, I may say that when I was a child I received an old copy of "The Burning Mountain", a novel by Alfred Coppel - I don't know if you ever read it. It was based on the real plans for the ground invasion of Japan, and it showed a touching comprehension for the Japanese way of living, also showing the great clash between the Western and Japanese cultures. The things I read in these pages... Well, undoubtely in 2012 we must see with horror the idea to drop a nuclear bomb, but we faced the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions, the long Cold War nuclear threat, the "mutual assured destruction".
In the '40s, even if this seems cruel, such a bomb was a way to avoid a long, devastating and expensive ground campaign. The Allied didn't understand the deep reasons for the Japanese suicide attacks, the mass charges, the civilian mass suicides. They had this option (I mean, the nuclear power), they already needed to build some kind of wall against the increasing Russian influence, and they decided to drop.
To answer to your kind question, no, surely the Japanese people didn't deserve such a massacre - no population would deserve. My brother spent some time in Japan and he was simply fascinated, when he came back he didn't stop speaking of your Country and people for months.

 

Whether or not they 'deserved' it is irrelevant. The fact is that the bombs saved many lives, most of all Japanese ones.

 

Whether or not they 'deserved' it is irrelevant. The fact is that the bombs saved many lives, most of all Japanese ones.

Sorry, I don't think is irrelevant. The user who created this topic directly asked if, according to us, the Japanese "deserved" it or not - in my mind, no, even if I may understand the strategic and historical reasons of this bombing. So I wrote to answer him.