Military Buffs I need your help.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

aside from the invasion arguement, i hadn't heard most of that...but only the arguement that less lives, and less civilian lives would be lost, is important to me. i'm not suggesting that military lives are less important than military lives, but there's no children in the military. in addition, i have to wonder if the bombs had to be dropped on a city. weren't there any isolated military bases?

Canada's history education, at least while i was in school, was horribly lacking. i suppose i should find a good history book or two and add it to my mental note to reread up on physics and astronomy one of these days. any suggestions?

[Atrocities]

Hind sight is always 20/20 Narf.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

yeah? then where did 'revisionist history' come from?

and what does your comment have to do with anything anyway?

[rextorres]

That the bomb ended the war is a myth that we Americans like to tell ourselves. The US was already killing 100,000s of civilians every night from fire bombings in the capital cities so please don't give me any altruistic crap about saving innocent civilian lives.

The Japanese were actually ready to surrender - they just wanted a guarantee that Hirohito would not be tried as a war criminal. The US would not agree to this. The US, however, agreed to this condition AFTER the bomb was dropped mainly because we didn't want the Russians to know that we were out of them.

We simply dropped the bomb out of revenge as Atrocities inadvertantly and explicitly highlights AND probably more importantly to show the Russians that we were willling to use them.

[Narratio]

Isolated military bases?
Nope.
No room for them, no need for them. Pre WWII the military dominated Japanese society. Schools ran training classes for the military skills and conscription was in force. The military was a lifestyle with the noble Samuraii as the pinnacle of archetype good guy.

It was a different world then and Japan was / is a decidedly different culture. The Emporer was worshipped (still is an an offbeat manner) as an incarnation of god. Think of a Medieval European mindset but with modern technology. Xenophobia was (and still is) part of the culture. Japanese are human, everybody else isn't. How else could the "Beheading contest" have occurred in Nanjing?

No, the nukes were the easiest, cheapest way to go in terms of both human life saved and money spent. (And don't think that that had no influence in the matter.) Also remember that, as nobody had ever used these puppies before, there was no stigma to using them. The ingrained social horror we feel at these weapons is based upon the fact that they WERE used and the effects WERE seen.

[deccan]

Wow, never seen anyone post here from Thailand before.

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
yeah? then where did 'revisionist history' come from?

and what does your comment have to do with anything anyway?

It is easy to look back into the past and say now what we should have done. Hense hindsight is always 20/20

Originally posted by rextorres:
That the bomb ended the war is a myth that we Americans like to tell ourselves. The US was already killing 100,000s of civilians every night from fire bombings in the capital cities so please don't give me any altruistic crap about saving innocent civilian lives.

The Japanese were actually ready to surrender - they just wanted a guarantee that Hirohito would not be tried as a war criminal. The US would not agree to this. The US, however, agreed to this condition AFTER the bomb was dropped mainly because we didn't want the Russians to know that we were out of them.

We simply dropped the bomb out of revenge as Atrocities inadvertantly and explicitly highlights AND probably more importantly to show the Russians that we were willling to use them.

RexTorres, that has got to be the most conspiritorial revisionistic comment that I have ever read. Seriously I am ROTFLMAO. Thanks for the humor man.

Narratio - Well spoken. Thank you.