Americans Were Too Delicate to See the Truth

[A-1 (imported)]

Thank you, Bobov.

The bomb was only a weapon. We killed many more Japanese in the fire bombings of Tokyo. It wasn't the effects of the use of the bomb that were so horrifying, it was that the nuclear cat had been let out of the bag, and -- once let out -- could never be put back in again.

We could have fire bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing the same number of people and we would

n't even be talking about it on the board.

[End quote]

Well said. We have questioned

the fire bombing. In addition, it has its supporters.

Softee,

You are absolutely correct.

In fact, according to the website...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bom ... d_Nagasaki

According to some Japanese historians, Japanese civilian leaders who favored surrender saw their salvation in the atomic bombing. The Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up, so the peace faction seized on the bombing as a new argument to force surrender. Koichi Kido, one of

Emperor Hirohito's closest advisors, stated:

"We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war." Hisatsune Sakomizu,

the chief Cabinet secretary in 1945.

called the bombing "a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war." According to these historians and others, the pro-peace civilian leadership was able to use the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to convince the military that no amount of courage, skill and fearless combat could help Japan against the power of atomic weapons. Akio Morita, founder of Sony and Japanese Naval officer during the war, also concludes that it was the atomic bomb and not conventional bombings from B-29s that convinced the Japanese military to agree to peace.

Otherwise, the war would not have ended without massive losses on both sides.

Slammr,

Don't feel bad about only being 5 when it happened. I had not even been born yet. Furthermore, if the war would have continued my father could have easily been killed and I would not have been born.

So there!

BTW, I am leaving for a week. You all will have a week's peace without me.

BUT!, I'll beee BAAACK!

A-1

[Blaise (imported)]

I strongly second all that A-1 said. I reserve terms like "over the top ... ejaculations" for those who would corrupt the truth with a persistent drip of quibbles, each seemingly minor, whose cumulative effect is to undermine the confidence of the American people. Only the United States is subjected to this creeping cynicism of the left, expressed through a thousand little sneers. The truth is that, if historical judgment is to be framed in ethics, then all people and all nations are wicked, for they all act out of self-interest.

If the left wants to escape accusations of anti-American bias, let them root out the crimes and misdemeanors of other nations. Let them discuss Japanese slave labor camps across Asia, the massacres in Nanking, "comfort women," cannibalism of U.S. POWs, etc. The Japanese, ascendant across Asia, ruled with a cruelty and ferocity recalled by elderly Japanese veterans, but concealed by contemporary Japanese authorities. In fact, the Japanese campaign to whitewash its barbarous occupation of China is the source of increasingly bitter friction between China and Japan. Just this week, a front page article in the NY Times discussed the issue.

The truth is that the suffering visited on Japan was a fraction of that inflicted by Japan on others. It's this miasm of blame-America-first, coupled with willful ignorance of the context of U.S. actions that provokes such "over the top ejaculations." The left's method is to heighten any wrongs or imputed wrongs of the U.S. while exploiting ignorance of events outside the U.S. to make the rest of the world look better than it is.

There has been a conspiracy to conceal history. That history is not the pictures of children with radiation burns the left wants to put on front pages. It's the history of how the Japanese ran their Asian empire and how they fought their war. I'll be impressed if the leftists on this thread want to talk about that.

The website that I posted had to do with none of this but merely with the effects of the bomb. That is not a condemnation of its use. One of my friends once commented about her father, who had flown bombing missions during the Second World War over Europe, that his tragedy and the tragedy of his generational cohorts was that they became what they opposed in order to destroy what they (justly) opposed. That comment is neither liberal nor conservative. It is not about guilt but about deciding how to live.

I would have dropped the bomb--at least the first one. I might have waited a few more days to drop the second one.

We Americans receive a lot of criticism because we are powerful and, like all other human beings, imperfect. I am happy to be one of us.

[Patient (imported)]

Superbly stated, bobov; many thanks.

. . . Japan did start WWII.All that is needed to make that statement absolutely true is to add the phrase "in the Pacific". A-1, I apologize for having fired off my previous post without thinking of that.

Slammr, there is more than plenty room for speculation here, and yours is at least as plausible as mine. My greater age does not imply a better understanding of the situation, just more extensive memories of home front activities: scrap metal drives, war bond drives, rationing and propaganda.

[Slammr (imported)]

Superbly stated, bobov; many thanks.

All that is needed to make that statement absolutely true is to add the phrase "in the Pacific". A-1, I apologize for having fired off my previous post without thinking of that.

Slammr, there is more than plenty room for speculation here, and yours is at least as plausible as mine. My greater age does not imply a better understanding of the situation, just more extensive memories of home front activities: scrap metal drives, war bond drives, rationing and propaganda.

Even though I was only five when the war ended, I remember quite a few things about it:

Ration tokens we had to use to buy certain things.

Having an ice box rather than a refrigerator

Having to sell our car because we couldn't buy tires for it

Hearing on the radio that President Roosevelt had died. I ran to tell my mother who was outside. She cried.

Playing War and having to be a Jap.

My uncle coming home with a Japanese sword. He said he'd some day give it to his son -- he didn't have one yet.

My dad, because of bad eyesight, wasn't drafted until the end of the war. It ended before he had to go. If the bomb hadn't been dropped, he might have been one of those killed invading Japan

[Blaise (imported)]

Even though I was only five when the war ended, I remember quite a few things about it:

Ration tokens we had to use to buy certain things.

Having an ice box rather than a refrigerator

Having to sell our car because we couldn't buy tires for it

Hearing on the radio that President Roosevelt had died. I ran to tell my mother who was outside. She cried.

Playing War and having to be a Jap.

My uncle coming home with a Japanese sword. He said he'd some day give it to his son -- he didn't have one yet.

My dad, because of bad eyesight, wasn't drafted until the end of the war. It ended before he had to go. If the bomb hadn't been dropped, he might have been one of those killed invading Japan

I was a tad over two. I recall neon lights suddenly appearing. One uncle had died during the war. My father was an instructor at the navel air station. He was home for the war. He was stayed back to his hometown. He wanted to be a Navy pilot--he had learned how to fly before the war, but the Navy needed his speciality at home. When he got permission to fly, he was too old. He had an automobile and drove back and forth to work. For an extra job, he earned a extra dollar an hour for 20 hours each week at Railway Express to support us.

After the war, suddenly, other uncles appeared. After the war people talked about it and movie news featured it. I experienced people getting on with their lives.

My grand parents had an ice box. I recall ice waiting on the doorstep in the mornings. I have no idea how often it came.

If the bomb saved one Allied life, its use was justified. Some Americans were at Hiroshima. I knew one who had traveled with his father to Japan before the war and was stuck there. He had keloid scars from the blast.

[Slammr (imported)]

I was a tad over two. I recall neon lights suddenly appearing. One uncle had died during the war. My father was an instructor at the navel air station. He was home for

war and he had an automobile. He earned an extra dollar and

hour for 20 hours each week at Railway Express.

Suddenly, other uncles appeared. After the war people talked about it and movie

s news featured it.

My grandmother

had an ice box. I recall ice waiting on the doorstep in the mornings.

I lived in a place called "Liberator Village." It was a huge complex of one story appartments. My father and his first cousin worked at a defense plant in Ft. Worth. I think just about every one in "Liberator Village" worked at the defense plant.

Liberator Village (http://www.slammr.com/pages/liberator.htm)

Heres a picture of the Uncle I mentioned.

Uncle (http://www.slammr.com/pages/porter.htm)

The iceman came two or three days a week. We had little signs we put in our windows. Each side of the square had a different number, 10 lbs, 25 lbs, etc. If we wanted 25 lbs of ice that day, we turned the sign so that number was pointing up. I should say icemen. A whole squad of them delivered the ice, carrying blocks ice with metal tongs. I dont' think anyone had a refrigerator.

[An Onymus (imported)]

One thing which should be remembered about the events of August, 1945, is, that the United States had more than two fission bombs at the time. That is to say, one or more of them could have been used as demonstration devices. Had I been Mr. Truman, I think I would have authorized dropping one bomb on Japan, using an isolated military base as a target, and warning the Japanese beforehand to evacuate the base. If the destruction of the base didn't frighten the Japanese enough to induce them to surrender, I would have chosen an industrial area with few people, again told the Japanese government to evacuate the area, and dropped the second bomb there. In other words, I would have given the Japanese an opportunity to surrender with as little loss of life as possible. Only if the Japanese leadership had still refused to give in, would I have started bombing population centers. An option similar to this was, incidentally, considered, but was rejected, for reasons I don't fully understand.

It's interesting to consider whether, if terrorists of one type or another eventually get a supply of nuclear devices, it will take more than two explosions in population centers to cause the U.S. government to capitulate to terrorist demands. For reasons I won't get into (Bobov is right about there being easier ways than centrifuging gas, to separate uranium isotopes, and the one he describes is apparently not the most efficient of these), a number of experts on terrorism now think that el Qaeda and other organizations are concentrating on obtaining nuclear explosives and the materials used to build them. Remember, if terrorists set off a nuclear explosive device in a city in the United States, there is no target against which the U.S. government could retaliate. El Qaeda or whoever, could simply keep setting off nuclear explosions, one after the other, until the public in this country caved in and demanded that the government give the terrorists whatever they wanted. As to the idea that nuclear devices could be discovered by folks with radiation detectors--well, terrorists can buy lead, and can probably get detectors as sensitive as the U.S. government can. You just keep putting lead foil around the device until the radiation is no longer detectable. You can build a nuclear device which is about the size of a two-suiter suitcase, and many of them could easily be smuggled into the country. Incidentally, one reason why the Hiroshima device wasn't tested first, was that it was simple enough that the builders of it had no doubt that it would explode as planned. And it sure did.

[Blaise (imported)]

One thing which should be remembered about the events of August, 1945, is, that the United States had more than two fission bombs at the time. That is to say, one or more of them could have been used as demonstration devices. Had I been Mr. Truman, I think I would have authorized dropping one bomb on Japan, using an isolated military base as a target, and warning the Japanese beforehand to evacuate the base. If the destruction of the base didn't frighten the Japanese enough to induce them to surrender, I would have chosen an industrial area with few people, again told the Japanese government to evacuate the area, and dropped the second bomb there. In other words, I would have given the Japanese an opportunity to surrender with as little loss of life as possible. Only if the Japanese leadership had still refused to give in, would I have started bombing population centers. An option similar to this was, incidentally, considered, but was rejected, for reasons I don't fully understand.

It's interesting to consider whether, if terrorists of one type or another eventually get a supply of nuclear devices, it will take more than two explosions in population centers to cause the U.S. government to capitulate to terrorist demands. For reasons I won't get into (Bobov is right about there being easier ways than centrifuging gas, to separate uranium isotopes, and the one he describes is apparently not the most efficient of these), a number of experts on terrorism now think that el Qaeda and other organizations are concentrating on obtaining nuclear explosives and the materials used to build them. Remember, if terrorists set off a nuclear explosive device in a city in the United States, there is no target against which the U.S. government could retaliate. El Qaeda or whoever, could simply keep setting off nuclear explosions, one after the other, until the public in this country caved in and demanded that the government give the terrorists whatever they wanted. As to the idea that nuclear devices could be discovered by folks with radiation detectors--well, terrorists can buy lead, and can probably get detectors as sensitive as the U.S. government can. You just keep putting lead foil around the device until the radiation is no longer detectable. You can build a nuclear device which is about the size of a two-suiter suitcase, and many of them could easily be smuggled into the country. Incidentally, one reason why the Hiroshima device wasn't tested first, was that it was simple enough that the builders of it had no doubt that it would explode as planned. And it sure did.

I believe that strategists did consider—slightly--a demonstration. We did not, I believe, have direct communications with the Japanese government. The Japanese even had problems communicating within their own government. No one in our government could be certain that a demonstration would work. The president himself knew little about the weapon. I simply do not recall the details.

The problem of terrorist use of nuclear bombs is the nightmare of our time. Your observations indicate just how ambiguous and potentially unstable the situation is.

Are bombs hard or easy to build? An interesting popular look at the issue is John McPhee’s book The Curve of Binding Energy. Mr. McPhee's friend Ted Taylor argued that they are easy to build. Mr. Taylor designed them and knew how easy it might be. A reaction with counter arguments comes from Freeman Dyson’s essays. Professor Dyson thinks that these weapons are hard to build. He also knows about as much about these things as any authority. I suspect that some who post here could build one if they had the right materials.

The Hiroshima bomb was simplicity itself. As we know, it worked. I think that Heisenberg probably grasped that something like it would have worked. Of course, Germany probably lacked the resources to build an atomic bomb, even though its people had scientists who could have figured out how to do it--so did Japan.

A nuclear terrorist attack on the United States or Great Britain would expose any place with an unstable of unfriendly government to our wrath. God pity them. Time is real and it is no on our side. We can utterly destroy Syria or other place as easily as we can do anything else we set our mind to do. We simply cannot act first.

[Slammr (imported)]

A nuclear terrorist attack on the United States or Great Britain would expose any place with an unstable of unfriendly government to our wrath. God pity them. Time is real and it is no on our side. We can utterly destroy Syria or other place as easily as we can do anything else we set our mind to do. We simply cannot act first.

We've demonstrated we can destroy the government of any Arab country who might be linked to a terrorist attack upon us. We did it to Afghanistan and Iraq, but if anything, we've only created more terrorists. If a nuclear terrorist bomb was exploded that could be tracked back to Iran, I have no doubt we would attack Iran. The same for North Korea. But what if the components for the bomb were traced back to Russia (there's a lot of questions about the security of Russia's nuclear stockpiles), who would we attack then.

AlQuida doesn't represent any particular country. Are we going to wipe out Saudi Arabia because many people of that country are in AlQuida? Most of those who hijacked the planes on 9/11 were from there.

No easy solution is available. Most of the terrorists have no allegiance to any state, so wouldn't care who we attacked. I would guess that AlQuida is thrilled we attacked Iraq. It probably provided quite a boost for their recruitment efforts.

Actually, I'm surprised we haven't had any attacks like England just suffered since 9/11. It encourages me to think that we might be able to prevent a nuclear attack. I'm certain they're not holding off attacking us because they feel sorry for us.

[Blaise (imported)]

We've demonstrated we can destroy the government of any Arab country who might be linked to a terrorist attack upon us. We did it to Afghanistan and Iraq, but if anything, we've only created more terrorists. If a nuclear terrorist bomb was exploded that could be tracked back to Iran, I have no doubt we would attack Iran. The same for North Korea. But what if the components for the bomb were traced back to Russia (there's a lot of questions about the security of Russia's nuclear stockpiles), who would we attack then.

AlQuida doesn't represent any particular country. Are we going to wipe out Saudi Arabia because many people of that country are in AlQuida? Most of those who hijacked the planes on 9/11 were from there.

No easy solution is available. Most of the terrorists have no allegiance to any state, so wouldn't care who we attacked. I would guess that AlQuida is thrilled we attacked Iraq. It probably provided quite a boost for their recruitment efforts.

Actually, I'm surprised we haven't had any attacks like England just suffered since 9/11. It encourages me to think that we might be able to prevent a nuclear attack. I'm certain they're not holding off attacking us because they feel sorry for us.

Saudi Arabia is our worst enemy in the world. The people who run that nation have no morality but greed. They bent to the demands of internal critics to allow endless intellectual attacks on the West.

By the way, Sam Harris has written a fine book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason [Norton, 2004] about how the terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11, 2002 were men of faith.