Untold History of the United States

[FBM]

Yeah, there was at least one general who wanted the whole country to fight to the last breath. He tried to assassinate the emperor. I think he got shot.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Yeah, there was at least one general who wanted the whole country to fight to the last breath. He tried to assassinate the emperor. I think he got shot.

That would have been the exception. They were more interested in finding the phonograph record with Showa's announcement on it.

[Jason]

Wouldn't it have been possible, theoretically, to blockade Japan until they surrendered? Maintaining the air and sea superiority you had would not have been a problem. You could have engaged in a strategic bombing campaign that would cripple their industrial centres while minimizing civilian casualties, dropped propaganda pamphlets over densely populated areas with 'care packages' of food and medical supplies encouraging the Japanese people to surrender, and perhaps the empire would have collapsed from within inside of a year.

So, rather than drop 2 atomic bombs on them, we should blockade the millions of japanese civilians on the island and starve them out in a siege? What of their medical supplies and food? Would we then make embargo exceptions for humanitarian aid, and then set up a long term siege where we feed, clothe and medically treat the Japanese, but box them in indefinitely while they engage in guerrilla warfare for years on end?

Dafuq? I said airdrop them food and med supplies. Easily done, and it wouldn't have to supply the entire population. Farmers would still be working. It would subvert popular suppor of the imperialist government within a year, I'm sure. There would be minimal fighting. Sleeper agents could have been inserted to organize an uprising when the time came and to report back to the American fleet letting them know when to actually invade in full force (to coincide with the uprising). There would not have been mass starvation, pestilence, and plague. That's just BS.

Huh -- funny -- all kinds of folks keep saying the sanctions on Iraq before the 2003 invasion killed hundreds of thousands...guess we were much better at that sort of thing in 1945... Yes, yes, airdop food and medical supplies -- population of Japan in 1945 was about 71 million. Easily done. Won't have to feed and medicate them all -- maybe just 35 million.

Minimal fighting? Sleeper agents? A bunch of white guys organizing the Japanese to oppose the Emperor?

I see you're being deliberately obtuse as usual so I will ignore this nonsense.

[Seabass]

We don't know if a protracted blockade or other strategy might have worked, as it wasn't tried.

Which one would have produced more casualties, realistically?

Ooo ooo me me!!

We don't know, because we have no idea what would have happened had we tried something else. Therefore, whatever we did was wrong.

Yep, funny how that works.

We never hear the nukes-were-warcrimes crowd admonish Japan for initiating hostilities with the U.S. I mean, Japan could have not attacked Pearl Harbor. Think of all the lives not starting a war with the U.S. would have saved! We never hear them complain about Japan's warmongering all over China, the Philippines, and south-east Asia. Had imperial Japan not invaded and annexed those countries, think of all the lives that could have been saved! They never complain about the Bataan death march or the treatment of POWs, the Chinese, and other occupied nations. Had the Japanese not been so utterly brutal and ruthless toward its vanquished foes, think of all the lives that could have been saved! And never mind the fact that Allied fire bombing raids routinely killed more than the nukes did. If only the Allies had chosen not to fight back, and simply turned the other cheek, and chosen to be the "good guys", I'm sure Japan would have seen the error of its ways and gone home peacefully. Think of all the lives that would have saved!

Over sixty million had already died in that war. All this bleating over Fat Man and Little Boy seems a bit like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. Turns out, War Is Hell. Surprise!

[Coito ergo sum]

Wouldn't it have been possible, theoretically, to blockade Japan until they surrendered? Maintaining the air and sea superiority you had would not have been a problem. You could have engaged in a strategic bombing campaign that would cripple their industrial centres while minimizing civilian casualties, dropped propaganda pamphlets over densely populated areas with 'care packages' of food and medical supplies encouraging the Japanese people to surrender, and perhaps the empire would have collapsed from within inside of a year.

So, rather than drop 2 atomic bombs on them, we should blockade the millions of japanese civilians on the island and starve them out in a siege? What of their medical supplies and food? Would we then make embargo exceptions for humanitarian aid, and then set up a long term siege where we feed, clothe and medically treat the Japanese, but box them in indefinitely while they engage in guerrilla warfare for years on end?

Dafuq? I said airdrop them food and med supplies. Easily done, and it wouldn't have to supply the entire population. Farmers would still be working. It would subvert popular suppor of the imperialist government within a year, I'm sure. There would be minimal fighting. Sleeper agents could have been inserted to organize an uprising when the time came and to report back to the American fleet letting them know when to actually invade in full force (to coincide with the uprising). There would not have been mass starvation, pestilence, and plague. That's just BS.

Huh -- funny -- all kinds of folks keep saying the sanctions on Iraq before the 2003 invasion killed hundreds of thousands...guess we were much better at that sort of thing in 1945... Yes, yes, airdop food and medical supplies -- population of Japan in 1945 was about 71 million. Easily done. Won't have to feed and medicate them all -- maybe just 35 million.

Minimal fighting? Sleeper agents? A bunch of white guys organizing the Japanese to oppose the Emperor?

I see you're being deliberately obtuse as usual so I will ignore this nonsense.

That's o.k. - I was just being sarcastically dismissive of your stupid idea.

[sandinista]

I mean, I know how entertaining and enlightening the zilla/ces backslapping is, but maybe time for some real analysis. So, take a breath, put down your flag, stop praying at the alter of the great united states, just for a moment, and wipe the cobwebs of american mythology from your puny mind.

The lies of Hiroshima are the lies of today

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short", after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead." Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.

In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. It was the first big lie. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world," reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate "good war", whose "ethical bath", as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. "Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength". He later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb". His foreign policy colleagues were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".

Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus "war on terror", the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make "pre-emptive" nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current "threat". But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK - just as the lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.

The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America's Defence Intelligence Estimate says "with high confidence" that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media "fact" that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.

This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.

In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country's political and military establishment, threatened "an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland". This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.

The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that "we did not know"? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called "a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence"? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.

With thanks to William Blum

http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-lies ... s-of-today

[Jason]

That's o.k. - I was just being sarcastically dismissive of your stupid idea.

Now you're just being snide.

[Coito ergo sum]

Followup points -

1. "allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast" - is there substantiation or corroboration taht the allied occupation authority "banned all mention?"

2. "Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion." -- yes, but you know HOW that air supremacy would have exerted pressure? By kill hundreds of thousands of people in cities all across Japan. That's how "air supremacy" "exerts pressure" -- by bombing and firebombing the fuck out of them. I don't think anyone is taking the position that we weren't fairly surely going to pound Japan into submission, but just because you don't drop atomic bombs doesn't mean you aren't going to be killing hundreds of thousands of people. And, of course, that says nothing about what Zilla pointed out - the hundreds of thousands of people, including civilians, the Japanese were lining up for the slaughter just as the atomic bombs dropped and who surely would have gone into the mass graves had the bombs not hastened the end of the war. That report that is cited did not say that the bombs did not shorten the war (in fact, the report estimated that by December the Japanese may have surrendered anyway, although that was based in part on what the Japanese told interrogators after the fact - they'd have good reason to claim they were nearing surrender...). But, the report does not state that fewer people would have died had the bombs not been dropped. http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm

3. "In waging their bogus "war on terror",..." Yep, that's a give-away. "Bogus" war on terror. Yes, yes, the entire war is "bogus." LOL. There is no such thing as Al Qaeta, they never attacked the US, and there is no reason to be concerned about global terrorism, nuclear/bio/chem proliferation, and international terrorist organizations and rogue totalitarian states. All bogus.

4. I read through the article, and it really doesn't add anything to the discussion. We all know the atomic bomb drops sucked, and were horrific and we all wish they never had to be dropped at all. However, nothing in the article above indicates that the alternative would have been less bloody, or was even LIKELY to be less bloody.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The USSBS way ordered by LeMay and said what he wanted it to say

[Ian]

Jeez Sandi, are you still rambling on about this? You've not only completely lost this debate (by providing nothing more than speculation for your case), you've humiliated yourself in the process, IHR-Boy.

But people are still criticizing you for it, and throwing all sorts of facts (y'know, those things which are PROVEN) at you... therefore they must be blinded flag-waivers who are just as biased as you, right? Nevermind that people like me are perfectly happy to criticize the US over, say, Vietnam, or Iraq, or the detainment of Japanese civilians during WWII. Nope, we're pointing out historical facts regarding the a-bombs, therefore we're unthinking flag-waivers. And this includes non-Americans like klr, of course.

Just stop embarrassing yourself already. There must be some other subjects covered in Stone's mini-series which provide your with better excuses to hate Americans.

[sandinista]

3. "In waging their bogus "war on terror",..." Yep, that's a give-away. "Bogus" war on terror. Yes, yes, the entire war is "bogus." LOL. There is no such thing as Al Qaeta, they never attacked the US, and there is no reason to be concerned about global terrorism, nuclear/bio/chem proliferation, and international terrorist organizations and rogue totalitarian states. All bogus.

Give away? Give away for what? The "war on terror" is bogus, as is the "war on drugs" both bogus. If the US had a real concern about terrorism they would stop participating in it. That would go further in stopping problems than any bogus "war".

I read through the article, and it really doesn't add anything to the discussion

haha, as opposed to what you have added I suppose?

[sandinista]

Jeez Sandi, are you still rambling on about this?

I'm the only one? Seems to me a few people are still "rambling" on about this.

? You've not only completely lost this debate

you really are delusional aren't you. Lost the debate? fucking laughable, ridiculous. Lost the debate haha you wish.

you've humiliated yourself in the process

holy shit ian, you are ludicrous. humiliated AND lost! wow, nothing gets into that bubble of yours does it. You lost this debate pages ago. Stop embarrassing yourself in front of your little buddies.

[klr]

I mean, I know how entertaining and enlightening the zilla/ces backslapping is, but maybe time for some real analysis. So, take a breath, put down your flag, stop praying at the alter of the great united states, just for a moment, and wipe the cobwebs of american mythology from your puny mind.

The lies of Hiroshima are the lies of today
...

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength". He later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb". His foreign policy colleagues were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".

...

http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-lies ... s-of-today

It's sad that someone with a great track record like Pilger sometimes descends to publishing outright nonsense such as this. There were no - repeat no - Japanese "peace overtures" in 1943, or 1944, or 1945 for that matter. One should try and pass off occasional tentative contacts made by individuals as reflecting of official Japanese policy or thinking. They weren't, and such contacts were made by people who were safely removed from Japan itself, and thus did not face the prospect of being hunted down and killed for breaking ranks.

The rest is just egregious quote-mining and other twisting of facts.

Jeez Sandi, are you still rambling on about this?

I'm the only one? Seems to me a few people are still "rambling" on about this.

? You've not only completely lost this debate

you really are delusional aren't you. Lost the debate? fucking laughable, ridiculous. Lost the debate haha you wish.

you've humiliated yourself in the process

holy shit ian, you are ludicrous. humiliated AND lost! wow, nothing gets into that bubble of yours does it. You lost this debate pages ago. Stop embarrassing yourself in front of your little buddies.

I'm sorry, but let me put this in the politest way possible: You've posted (and argued) nothing but nonsense in this thread. If you tried to argue your case in front of competent and honest historians, they'd laugh you out of town.

[Ian]

holy shit ian, you are ludicrous. humiliated AND lost! wow, nothing gets into that bubble of yours does it. You lost this debate pages ago. Stop embarrassing yourself in front of your little buddies.

Sorry Hate-boy... you haven't presented a shred of evidence to prove your weird claim that Japan was attempting to surrender prior to the bombs. You tried... by posting a fucking IHR article amongst other things - and even that article admitted the evidence was inconclusive. And you haven't even tried to refute any of the facts I brought up earlier.

You lost. You stated a theory (presented as conclusive fact, of course: that the bombs were only used to scare the USSR, despite Japan trying to surrender beforehand) and then could not prove your case in the slightest bit. You're just here to hate, because that's what you do. You hate, and you hate that people challenge you for being such a hateful, unreasonable person. I know I won't change you, but you could at least try hating people over another subject. You lost this one by a mile.

[sandinista]

I'm sorry, but let me put this in the politest way possible: You've posted (and argued) nothing but nonsense in this thread. If you tried to argue your case in front of competent and honest historians, they'd laugh you out of town.

Oh..well...if you say so, it must be true. Geez if only you would have enlightened me earlier oh great historical pubba. What a load of self congratulatory BS.