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Little Boy makes a lot of noise and changes our society

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by boots, Aug 6, 2007.

  1. This is not my fault.
    Please do not blame me for this.
     
  2. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Damn you, Fenian!
     
  3. boots

    boots New Member

    No one is blaming you. There are ass holes and wanna be assholes along here looking to stir shit up. They're like fucking animals waiting for wounded prey.
    It doesn't take long and you can read the posts and figure out who they are, especially the ones who are quick to tell someone to STFU.
    The debate about the use of the bomb has been good. Hopefully, the juvenile name-calling and telling people to STFU will end.
     
  4. Platyrhynchos

    Platyrhynchos Active Member

    My Dad was in the United States Marine Corps during WWII, and spent the final couple years hopping from island to island in the Pacific. He was on the U.S.S. Idaho, where he was a gunner on a 40mm quad (those country boys knew how to shoot a shotgun [at ducks], and how to hold a proper lead, so I think that is why he was given assignment on this battleship in that capacity). I think the Idaho was a New Mexico-class battleship, and was called "The Big spud" (Hi, Idaho). His ship was in Tokyo Bay for the surrender, and he was damned glad the bombs were dropped.

    I am too. A prolonged war might not have ensured his survival, and hence my birth.
     
  5. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    Boots, there's a hell of a lot of difference between doing something for revenge and doing something solely out of racial hatred and baiting. You know there's a difference, yet you persist in going down that road. I'm just puzzled by that.

    Was there perhaps military or strategic justification for dropping it that was stretched a bit thin? Sure, but that doesn't indicate racism as the factor. Do I deny there was racism in place at the time? Of course not. But you're trying to connect two disparate points.
     
  6. boots

    boots New Member

    I believe that in 1945, there was revenge and racial hatred toward Japan.
    As for baiting, especially on this board, that was not my intent. It's evident that there are not enough mature individuals who can handle a subject like this without resorting to name-calling and telling people to STFU.
     
  7. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Haven't learned yet with him, have you?

    If does no good to second-guess 62 years later. What was done at the time had to be done at the time. It avoided a prolonged war in the Pacific against hardliners.

    Yes boots, in 1945, there was racial hatred and revenge toward Japan because of Pearl Harbor. Point is?
     
  8. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    Boots, I'm not talking about racial baiting on this board, or any of that extraneous crap, nor do I care if you get embroiled in it in every thread you start, although you might ask yourself why you're always the target.

    But from a strategic and military standpoint, I understand the premise for dropping the bomb a helluva lot more than I buy your stance that it was because of racial motivation. Correct it to motivation through hatred of the enemy and I'll buy it.

    We'd seen nothing to the contrary that would have led us to believe the Japanese would just roll over and surrender. Look at how they fought on a miserable sandspit like Betio. To think they'd have just given up their homeland that easy wasn't something that had a whole lot of historical backing at the time.

    Now, yes, but that's revisionism at its best.
     
  9. IU90

    IU90 Member

    Boots, its pathetic that you can't seem to distinguish the difference between your post and Fenian's. There's nothing factually wrong and historically ignorant to be corrected in Fenian's post. Simply reporting his father's first hand opinion is informative and incontestable (and, btw, I tend to agree the 2d bomb was probably unnecessary).

    But your post that we did not drop the A-Bomb on Germany b/c of racism was utter bullshit screaming out for correction given the fact that Germany had surrendered before the bomb had even been tested. You really can't see the difference?
     
  10. JackyJackBN

    JackyJackBN Guest

    Once again, I am more interested in from whence bootsian logic originates than from the resulting arguments. You did foster a discussion, boots, but I don't know why you have to strew broken glass on every driveway you pave.

    One point, perhaps just an aside, but not from the Japanese perspective. If not for those bombs, or at least the first one, the Russians would now be in possession of Hokkaido. I read the entries about Russia earlier in the thread, that they were going to invade, that they weren't prepared for a marine invasion, etc. In my opinion, the Russians would have taken Hokkaido--which guards the northern end of the Sea of Japan, is rich in natural resources and is just a bridge away from Honshu--relatively easily. The consequences to world history would have been large.
     
  11. statrat

    statrat Member

    Christ people. Since everyone seems to be using the button that shall not be named on me instead of a few more deserving candidates, I'll just go ahead and say it all again. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan had nothing to do with racism, it had everything to do with the geo-political implications of not ending the war quickly and the hundreds of thousands of lives a full fledged U.S invasion of the islands would have cost. As I said before, the U.S believed the japanese to be inferior to the Germans, but that had nothing to do with our decision to dropping the bomb on Japan. We had troops deep inside Germany in the spring of 1945, nuking a major German city (which either the Western forces or the Soviets would soon occupy) made no sense. There was no reason to rush an untested, top secret weapon to use in a theatre that was being mopped up. The Japanese were prepared to rabidly defend the home islands, and the Russians had their sights set on Japan after occupying Eastern Europe. Whether the second bomb was necessary will remain debatable, but what is certain is that the Japanese did not surrender immediately after the first one. Was the second bomb punishment for Pearl Harbor? Perhaps, perhaps not, considering that Tokyo was already in ruins, Japan's empire was gone, their navy was wiped out and they were slowly starving to death. Yes, we could have waited and hoped that the blockade starved them out, but that would have run the risk of the Soviets intervening. The global-political spectrum at the time demanded a quick end to the war, which the atomic bombs provided, justifiably or not.
     
  12. alleyallen

    alleyallen Guest

    To take it a step further, let's look at when specifically the Russians officially declared war on Japan. Had we had a protracted land battle, it most definitely would have done two things:
    1) It would have diverted U.S. occupation forces from Europe and as a result, the Big Red Machine would have had an easier time taking more of what they wanted.
    2) Had the Russians actually started fighting Japan on a full scale, they indeed would have taken key points of the Japanese islands.
     
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