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Seshmeister
01-18-2010, 08:52 AM
Man who defied both A-bombs dies aged 93 - News, People - The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/man-who-defied-both-abombs-dies-aged-93-1859874.html)

Man who defied both A-bombs dies aged 93


The only man to experience nuclear bombardment twice and live to tell the tale became an eloquent voice for peace

By David McNeill in Tokyo

Thursday, 7 January 2010



http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00290/hirosh_290335t.jpg

AFP/Getty Images

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who survived the US atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, died in hospital on Monday

Reporters never knew whether to call Tsutomu Yamaguchi the luckiest or unluckiest man alive. In 1945, the Nagasaki native was exposed to both nuclear blasts that incinerated his home city and Hiroshima. Last year the Japanese government formally recognised him as the only "nijuuhibaku" or double A-bomb survivor.

The unique horror which marked his life, and the dignified way he handled it, gave him special prominence. Lying in hospital in December, just days from dying of the cancer that finally claimed him this week, he received a distinguished visitor from overseas: Hollywood director James Cameron.

His 3D blockbuster Avatar may be searing a hole through global box office records, but Mr Cameron is already reported to be focused on his next project: an "uncompromising" movie about nuclear weapons. So when he turned up in Japan before Christmas, Mr Yamaguchi was the man he most wanted to meet.

Aged 93, the great survivor told Mr Cameron it was his "destiny" to make the movie. "Please pass on my experience to future generations," he said.

The visit partially made up for what Mr Yamaguchi had waited in vain for all his life: a meeting with a sitting US president. His sister Toshiko said that President Barack Obama's declaration in November that he wanted to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki was what had helped him cling to life. "He was elated when President Obama pledged (in a speech in Prague last year) to abolish nuclear weapons," she said. Inspired, Mr Yamaguchi painstakingly penned a letter to the President. "I was so moved by your speech in Prague," he wrote. "I devote the rest of my life to insisting that our world should abandon nuclear arms."

Mr Yamaguchi was a young engineer on a business trip to Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, when a B-29 US bomber dropped its payload – the "Little Boy", which would kill or injure 160,000 people by the end of the day. Three kilometres from Ground Zero, the blast temporarily blinded him, damaged his hearing and inflicted horrific burns over much of the top half of his body.

Three days later, he was back in his home city of Nagasaki, 190 miles away, explaining his injuries to his boss, when the same white light filled the room. "I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima," he said later. The "Fat Man" bomb killed about 70,000 people and created a city where, in the famous words of its mayor, "not even the sound of insects could be heard".

His exposure to so much radiation led to years of agony. He went bald and developed skin cancers. His son Katsutoshi died of cancer in 2005 aged 59, and his daughter Naoko never enjoyed good health. His wife died in 2008 of kidney and liver cancer. Toshiko suffered one of the many symptoms of fallout survivors: an abnormally low white blood cell count.

But once he recovered, he returned to work as a ship engineer and rarely discussed what happened to him. He quietly raised his family and declined to campaign against nuclear weapons until he felt the weight of his experiences and began to speak out. In his eighties, he wrote a book about his experiences, and took part in a documentary called Nijuuhibaku. The film shows him weeping as he describes watching bloated corpses floating in the city's rivers and encountering the walking dead of Hiroshima, whose melting flesh hung from them like "giant gloves".

Four years ago, he spoke to the UN in New York, where he pleaded with the General Assembly to fight for the abolition of nuclear weapons. When the Japanese government belatedly recognised his "double victim" status, he said that his record "can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die."

Mr Cameron read Mr Yamaguchi's history before deciding to meet him, along with author Charles Pellegrino, whose book The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back is released this month. An account of the experiences of the nuclear survivors, one scene describes how Mr Yamaguchi survived in Nagasaki by a fluke, protected by a stairwell that diverted the blast as the rest of the building disintegrated around him. "He was an ordinary man so nothing prepared him for experiences like that," recalls his sister Toshiko.

ELVIS
01-18-2010, 09:46 AM
I Bazerk Obaahaahaahaahaama, pledge to abolish nuclear weapons!


LMAO!


:elvis:

Dr. Love
01-18-2010, 09:53 AM
Wow, ELVIS' posts are getting more intellectual than normal these days.

Seshmeister
01-18-2010, 10:28 AM
Jesus loves nuclear weapons apparently...

WARF
01-18-2010, 10:46 AM
My nominee for the luckiest man alive, is the guy who survived 3 maritime disasters... including the titanic, the slocum and some other canadian ship that ranked in the top 5 in death tolls. Unfortunately, I cant remember his name but it was "lucky" something...

Va Beach VH Fan
01-18-2010, 10:58 AM
If you ever get a chance to watch the HBO documentary on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, WHITE LIGHT, BLACK RAIN: THE DESTRUCTION OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI, highly recommend it...

Amazing how the survivors were shunned by their government for decades....

bueno bob
01-18-2010, 11:15 AM
I Bazerk Obaahaahaahaahaama, pledge to abolish nuclear weapons!


LMAO!


:elvis:

Despair has finally taken over, hunh?

Seshmeister
01-18-2010, 11:53 AM
My nominee for the luckiest man alive, is the guy who survived 3 maritime disasters... including the titanic, the slocum and some other canadian ship that ranked in the top 5 in death tolls. Unfortunately, I cant remember his name but it was "lucky" something...

Ships sink all the time and if you were in 1st class on the Titanic you had an ok chance of getting out.

http://www.anesi.com/titanic5.gif

There have only ever been 2 nuclear bombs used in anger in the history of the planet and they were both dropped on this guy. :)

Anonymous
01-18-2010, 12:26 PM
Jesus loves nuclear weapons apparently...

well, who's the say the guy wasn't a military nut?

Cheers! :bottle:

sadaist
01-18-2010, 12:34 PM
Ships sink all the time and if you were in 1st class on the Titanic you had an ok chance of getting out.

http://www.anesi.com/titanic5.gif

There have only ever been 2 nuclear bombs used in anger in the history of the planet and they were both dropped on this guy. :)


Odd that 3rd class & crew men were saved more than the 2nd class male passengers.

chefcraig
01-18-2010, 12:56 PM
There was a park ranger named Roy Sullivan (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2683/have-people-actually-survived-being-hit-by-lightning-multiple-times) who worked for Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. He was struck by lightning 7 times during the course of his career. The one thing keeping him out of the "Luckiest/Unluckiest Man In The World" competition being that he committed suicide by shooting himself in the stomach in 1983.

This photo shows Sullivan and the hat he was wearing while struck in the head during one of the several lightning strikes.

http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/8340/deathsurvivor.jpg (http://img686.imageshack.us/i/deathsurvivor.jpg/)

ace diamond
01-18-2010, 12:57 PM
i say that given the high odds against surviving just 1 a-bomb, and this fella managed to survive 2, makes him statistically the luckiest human ever.
i take my hat off and bow to this man in salute with. great honor and respect.

his death is a sad loss.

sayanora.

LoungeMachine
01-18-2010, 01:10 PM
i say that given the high odds against surviving just 1 a-bomb, and this fella managed to survive 2, makes him statistically the luckiest human ever.
i take my hat off and bow to this man in salute with. great honor and respect.

his death is a sad loss.

sayanora.

Oh, just STFU already....

:gulp:

ace diamond
01-18-2010, 01:12 PM
Oh, just STFU already....

:gulp:

no.
:guzzle:

Nickdfresh
01-18-2010, 02:44 PM
Ships sink all the time and if you were in 1st class on the Titanic you had an ok chance of getting out.

http://www.anesi.com/titanic5.gif

There have only ever been 2 nuclear bombs used in anger in the history of the planet and they were both dropped on this guy. :)

Fortunately, if you were a shitty actor playing one of the lower class characters, you were relegated to bobbing Popsicle. :)

http://www.lovelylovesayings.com/images/Titanic-Winslet-Dicaprio.jpg

WARF
01-18-2010, 02:56 PM
I don't understand... first we bomb them... then we applaud him for living... next thing you know we will have Bin Laden putting metals around the necks of 9-11 survivors...

Seshmeister
01-18-2010, 03:22 PM
I think you mainly bombed them as a big experiment and to scare the Russians so why not.

LoungeMachine
01-18-2010, 03:26 PM
I think you mainly bombed them as a big experiment and to scare the Russians so why not.

I never understood why they needed to drop them on civilian populations in order to "test" or "scare the russians"

Could have dropped them NEAR Japan [but far enough away as to not cause damage] and succeeded in both objectives.

Japan would have been scared into surrendering, russia would know we could do it.

But incinerating children from 30,000 ft?

VanHalener
01-18-2010, 03:32 PM
...There have only ever been 2 nuclear bombs used in anger in the history of the planet and they were both dropped on this guy. :)

And he's got cold steel in his eyes to prove it.

I'd bet both times he went, "Whew, that was close."
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v622/Patman504/Nuke.jpg

sadaist
01-18-2010, 03:42 PM
"He was elated when President Obama pledged (in a speech in Prague last year) to abolish nuclear weapons,"

Inspired, Mr Yamaguchi painstakingly penned a letter to the President. "I was so moved by your speech in Prague," he wrote. "I devote the rest of my life to insisting that our world should abandon nuclear arms."


So 63 years of a life of "agony", seeing hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, friends, family die & be sick, and the destruction of two cities and he only decides that the world should abandon nuclear weapons after a speech read by Obama?



Four years ago, he spoke to the UN in New York, where he pleaded with the General Assembly to fight for the abolition of nuclear weapons.


Oops, apparently wasn't the speech Obama read. Ah shucks, let's give him credit for it anyways.



His exposure to so much radiation led to years of agony. His wife died in 2008 of kidney and liver cancer.

And his exposure to radiation caused her death exactly how?

Considering she would have had to have been in her late 80's or early 90's, that's not too bad.



the blast temporarily blinded him, damaged his hearing and inflicted horrific burns over much of the top half of his body.

Three days later, he was back in his home city of Nagasaki, 190 miles away, explaining his injuries to his boss


Couldn't have been all too "horrific" if he was back at work in three days. Not saying he didn't get burns, but why preface them with "horrific"? To make the case that nuclear weapons are bad? They can hurt you? Wow. Thank goodness someone let us know finally.

Va Beach VH Fan
01-18-2010, 04:05 PM
I never understood why they needed to drop them on civilian populations in order to "test" or "scare the russians"

Could have dropped them NEAR Japan [but far enough away as to not cause damage] and succeeded in both objectives.

Japan would have been scared into surrendering, russia would know we could do it.

But incinerating children from 30,000 ft?

Both cities were military ports, as well as industrial feeders for the war....

Unless I'm mistaken....

Seshmeister
01-18-2010, 04:59 PM
There are 2 big clues IMHO.

Both cities were largely untouched by conventional bombing. All the major industrial areas had been bombed to fuck which implies they were either saved for nuking, not significant militarily or both.

The Japanese were not given a chance to react to the first bomb and a different type of bomb was used/tested just a few days later at Nagasaki.

It's a grey area and disputed amongst different historians but I think it's at least very suspicious whether it was necessary especially the second bomb. It was different times though and of course 100s of thousands of civilians were killed in conventional bombing raids on Japan and Germany.

Nickdfresh
01-18-2010, 06:46 PM
I think you mainly bombed them as a big experiment and to scare the Russians so why not.

And the fact that the US (and Commonwealth) might have suffered upwards of a million casualties if they had invaded the mainland in "Operation Downfall"--not too mention that the Japanese military authorities could have given a fuck about their people and were ready to fight to the last school kid...


Operation Downfall was the overall Allied plan for the invasion of Japan near the end of World War II. The operation was cancelled when Japan surrendered after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war against Japan...

Japan's geography made this invasion plan obvious to the Japanese as well; they were able to predict accurately the Allied invasion plans and accordingly adjust their defensive plan, Operation Ketsugō. The Japanese planned an all-out defense of Kyūshū, with little left in reserve for any subsequent defense operations.

Casualty predictions varied widely but were extremely high for both sides: depending on the degree to which Japanese civilians resisted the invasion, estimates ran into the millions for Allied casualties[1] and tens of millions for Japanese casualties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Estimated_casualties

Seshmeister
01-18-2010, 07:35 PM
Well that's always been the standard line but I don't see why they wouldn't have surrendered without killing 250 000 civilians especially since they got to keep their emperor which had been the sticking point in negotiations anyway.

sadaist
01-18-2010, 09:19 PM
Well that's always been the standard line but I don't see why they wouldn't have surrendered without killing 250 000 civilians especially since they got to keep their emperor which had been the sticking point in negotiations anyway.


You are assuming that they were reasonable, which they were not. These are the people that had Kamikaze pilots. Nick is right. As gruesome & horrible as the bombings were, they actually saved lives. I'm sure we all wish there was a different way, and unfortunately hindsight is always 20/20, but it happened the way it did and ended the war.

Another result of those bombings were that they were so devastating, and everyone saw what happened, that to date it has not been done again. Not bad for nearly 3/4 of a century with multiple countries having the technology, and many other wars breaking out along with all the leadership changes we've seen.

Blackflag
01-18-2010, 09:49 PM
encountering the walking dead of Hiroshima, whose melting flesh hung from them like "giant gloves".


Holy shit.

GAR
01-19-2010, 03:57 AM
I hope them Japs nuke Russia for the example we had to show of them. Those two bombs cost millions and millions of dollars.

Nickdfresh
01-19-2010, 11:18 AM
Well that's always been the standard line but I don't see why they wouldn't have surrendered without killing 250 000 civilians especially since they got to keep their emperor which had been the sticking point in negotiations anyway.

Unfortunately though, there was almost no contact between the Allies and the Imperial Japanese at any level. And the Soviets, who had negotiated a sort of pact of nonbelligerence with the Japanese in 1941 ignored Japanese efforts to approach them as an intermediary to claim War and roar into Manchuria during "August Storm." (Something the US had previously wanted the Soviets to do, but then began to regret as they were now in a position to aid Mao, and to start rolling up Japanese territory they really didn't deserve).

Factions of the officer corp of the Imperial Japanese Army attempted a coup in which they would essentially control the Emperor and continue the War even after the bombs had been dropped and their garrison in China was rolled up. They weren't really all that concerned with the Emperor as much as the Emperor was, and I do think MacArthur was often a short sighted prick (his planning would have led to large casualties initially, even if the Japanese began to buckle). But attributing the bombs to "scaring the beJesus out of the Soviets" is a bit hard to really support beyond speculation. Certainly, there were fears that the Soviets might start to carve up parts of Japan and ultimately demand an occupation space in a War they barely really took part in. But I'm not sure they could have done much besides occupy a few islands as the Soviets didn't have the amphibious capability, and even know the Soviet armor ran roughshod over the Japanese Army in Manchuria, they also began to suffer embarrassing setbacks on some Pacific islands...

Seshmeister
01-19-2010, 11:38 AM
Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years:


In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.

Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.


"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan."
Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.


"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.

Seshmeister
01-19-2010, 11:45 AM
If you accept that the mass indiscriminate killing of men women and children is justified in order to shorten a war then you are accepting that it is always justified.

Anyone fighting a war for whatever reason is trying to win it and therefore by definition is trying to shorten it.

Logically then you can't argue morally against the attacks of 9-11.

LoungeMachine
01-19-2010, 12:10 PM
If you accept that the mass indiscriminate killing of men women and children is justified in order to shorten a war then you are accepting that it is always justified.

Anyone fighting a war for whatever reason is trying to win it and therefore by definition is trying to shorten it.

Logically then you can't argue morally against the attacks of 9-11.

Agreed.

We gave up the high moral ground by doing this.

I never understood the meme that we needed to INVADE Japan to end the war. They were done, and fighting to the last school kid could only happen if we invaded.

I think it was more of "we can, so we will, and we'll be the first" mentality.

thome
01-19-2010, 04:17 PM
Agreed.

We gave up the high moral ground by doing this.

I never understood the meme that we needed to INVADE Japan to end the war. They were done, and fighting to the last school kid could only happen if we invaded.

I think it was more of "we can, so we will, and we'll be the first" mentality.


Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight..cha! whattever....

8 years after the war the imperious troops were still locked and loaded living in the hills of pacific islands, but there was no reason to persue the surrender of Japan with the greatest possible "all eyes front" of thier whole country.

Keep second guessing history.. you'll get far with all of whatever that, the fukk is.

LoungeMachine
01-19-2010, 04:24 PM
They were already READY to surrender. dipshit

:gulp:

thome
01-19-2010, 04:36 PM
They were already READY to surrender. dipshit

:gulp:

..and they were all going to die Dec 8, 1941

... and only with the compassion of the executive branch of the united states that there isn't a pic of a japanese family on the extinct list of past lifeforms.

sh!tdip

thome
01-19-2010, 04:55 PM
Here, just for you loungie since you live by attrition resignation statistcs.

We could kill another 50 million Japanese and they would still win, by your points for what is and isn't , was and wasn't, could have been, would have been, should have been, cause you be so much more smerter than the ones who were there.

And could someone explain to loungie what the fukk a civilian is in a imperialistic society...?


Mass killings
R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."[22] According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 millions in the course of the war.[23] The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937-38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war, although the accepted figure is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.[24] A similar crime was the Changjiao massacre. In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre, resulted in the deaths of 100,000 civilians in the Philippines and in the Sook Ching massacre, between 25,000 and 50,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore were taken to beaches and massacred. There were numerous other massacres of civilians e.g. the Kalagong massacre.

Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."

Additionally, captured allied service personnel were massacred in various incidents, including:

Laha massacre
Banka Island massacre
Parit Sulong
Palawan massacre
SS Tjisalak massacre perpetrated by Japanese submarine I-8
Wake Island massacre-see Battle of Wake Island



I never understood why they needed to drop them on civilian populations in order to "test" or "scare the russians"

The above quote is so, wolf blitzer tune in tonight we have the, "top secret" Bush papers... lo fukking L


And could someone explain to loungie what the fukk a civilian is in a imperialistic society...?

LoungeMachine
01-19-2010, 05:04 PM
whew.

The mere fact our resident gas huffer is on the other side of this, makes me feel even better about stance.

:gulp:

Thanks little buddy.

I had no idea all of those incinerated children were about to wipe us out.

Seshmeister
01-19-2010, 05:09 PM
Couple of things Thome.

1) The 'Hey we're bad but they're even worse' is no way to run a country/life/morality.

2) If everyone in a country is guilty when a regime commits a crime then at the moment you should be a black liberal?

LoungeMachine
01-19-2010, 05:13 PM
Couple of things Thome.

1) The 'Hey we're bad but they're even worse' is no way to run a country/life/morality.

2) If everyone in a country is guilty when a regime commits a crime then at the moment you should be a black liberal?

Exactly.

and

Exactly.


But thermos want to kill as many "yellow people" as he can, but can't find it in him to leave the couch.

:gulp:

thome
01-19-2010, 05:13 PM
whew.

The mere fact our resident gas huffer is on the other side of this, makes me feel even better about stance.

:gulp:

Thanks little buddy.

I had no idea all of those incinerated children were about to wipe us out.


23 million dead non- military Chinese at the hands of the Japanese... 56 Chinese (military) pow's were released after Japans surrender. They were the only ones left.

Are you concerened about the 56 Chinese or Just the dead and burning..?

Where is your fukking head at ?

thome
01-19-2010, 05:15 PM
.....
23 million dead non- military Chinese at the hands of the Japanese... 56 Chinese pow's (military) were released after Japans surrender. They were the only ones left.

Are you concerened about the 56 Chinese or -Just- the dead and burning..?

Where is your fukking head at ?

LoungeMachine
01-19-2010, 05:17 PM
23 million dead non- military Chinese at the hands of the Japanese... 56 Chinese pow's were released after Japans surrender. They were the only ones left.

Are you concerened about the 56 Chinese or Just the dead and burning..?

Where is your fukking head at ?

Ah, I see now....

It's WHOEVER KILLS MORE WINS.

How's that working out in the Middle East? Viet Nam? Korea?

Answer Sesh's question. If a population should be held accountable for their leaders, shouldnt we all round up and shot?

War Crimes arent avenged with more War Crimes, bucko.

It means you just join The League of Ordinary Nations

Thought we were better than that?

thome
01-19-2010, 05:38 PM
Originally Posted by LoungeMachine
whew.

The mere fact our resident gas huffer is on the other side of this, makes me feel even better about stance.


You will always be on the side of (stance) least resistance and increased wrong.

It's your "Hook" to be against anything that gets you attention.

You state your case with so much conviction, at the same time the statements are simply against what already is, and you are still defeating yourself with every post.

Then you call people "gas huffers" in order to strenghten your, self- assumed correct position .

You attempt to prove your percieved opponent as somewhat retarded or inbred or a simplton all the while professing your falsly created love and concerns for dead babies everywhere.

You stand for nothing.

You make statements against something and that is not a stance.

You live in a dream world that you stand for something.

The Japanese have no animosity against the USA and have proved themselves to be once an enemy now favored nation status .

Who the fukk are you to attempt retribution against the living, and to use the dead to feed your own point.

Your stance is your own need for attention.

thome
01-19-2010, 06:02 PM
Ah, I see now....

It's WHOEVER KILLS MORE WINS.

How's that working out in the Middle East? Viet Nam? Korea?

Answer Sesh's question. If a population should be held accountable for their leaders, shouldnt we all round up and shot?

War Crimes arent avenged with more War Crimes, bucko.

It means you just join The League of Ordinary Nations

Thought we were better than that?


Why should I answer Sesh ..???, you and he are the most famous internet personalities for creating reality towards a situation by relating it to inconsequential unrealistically created falshoods from, way out in left field.

You use irrelevant points hacked from a disjointed historical timeline that has confused you to the point of a bias, as real as the emperor's new clothes..... and what it implies to the emperor of Japans edicts that we will fight..."This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."

You stay on your point strategy without any ability to admit you may have it all wrong.

I argue my points to continue the truth and stop you from once again blaming America for the woe's of the worlds war dead.

Right or Wrong they stood and stand for something.

kwame k
01-19-2010, 06:13 PM
Why should I answer Sesh ..???, you and he are the most famous internet personalities for creating reality towards a situation by relating it to inconsequential unrealistically created falshoods from, way out in left field.

You use irrelevant points hacked from a disjointed historical timeline that has confused you to the point of a bias, as real as the emperor's new clothes..... and what it implies to the emperor of Japans edicts that we will fight..."This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."

You stay on your point strategy without any ability to admit you may have it all wrong.

I argue my points to continue the truth and stop you from once again blaming America for the woe's of the worlds war dead.

Right or Wrong they stood and stand for something.

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jhale667
01-19-2010, 06:17 PM
Quoting your own post seconds after you post it is pretty ghey, Thermos. Just sayin'. :rolleyes:

And you calling anyone else an attention whore? :lmao:

thome
01-19-2010, 06:26 PM
Quoting your own post seconds after you post it is pretty ghey, Thermos. Just sayin'. :rolleyes:

And you calling anyone else an attention whore? :lmao:

I tried to correct "it"( i was goint to correct the first post a spelling error.. and innadvertantly clicked quote of myself instead of EDIT) with what is written in my following post, but by the time I finished the "following post" as a EDIT.. I was timed out by the administartors 20 min response time or edit time so it lays within the hands of the admin..



...my bad...shees can't get a even break around here...but like most fights I get in I always have to take on two or three mf'ers at one time.

C'MON!!!!

lol

Seshmeister
01-19-2010, 06:36 PM
Why should I answer Sesh ..???, you and he are the most famous internet personalities

Woohoo! WIN! :)

Nickdfresh
01-20-2010, 04:17 PM
Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years:



Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.

It's true the opinion on dropping A-bomb was far from consensus. Ike was in a different theatre, and MacArthur was a vainglorious fuckwit that would fight to the last man in order to secure a good newspaper headline. The atom bomb would steal his thunder, but then, he was much of the problem. Other plans existed to seize the main island and Tokyo, but MacArthur seemed to want the Army Air Forces to have bases and deprive, his greatest enemy, the US Navy and that bastard tyrant, Admiral Nimitz from getting any credit. So he wanted the "Operation Olympic" to go forward, which was blindingly obvious to the Japanese and would have led to use of chemical weapons (most likely, the plans are still classified I think) by the US, and Kamikaze strikes on US/RN troop ships. They were just exchanging one weapon of mass destruction for another...

Nimitz, and the Navy, believed that Japan could be blockaded and bombed into submission, which pretty much meant more people dead than the bombs did. It was perhaps the one case where MacArthur was more correct than Nimitz...

Nickdfresh
01-20-2010, 04:57 PM
If you accept that the mass indiscriminate killing of men women and children is justified in order to shorten a war then you are accepting that it is always justified.

Anyone fighting a war for whatever reason is trying to win it and therefore by definition is trying to shorten it.

Logically then you can't argue morally against the attacks of 9-11.

Nice sentiments, but tell that to the Jews in Auschwitz whose numbers were shrinking by the hour. Prolonging the War meant deaths on the scale of millions. And as far as mass indiscriminate killing, you're acting as if there was a magic on-off button choice. I'm arguing from a weird perspective here, because I was NEVER really a fan of "area bombing" of cities, which the RAF (mainly) engaged in over Germany, and the USAAF did over Japan. The main problem is that people believed the Norden Bombsight "pickle-barrel" myth, but bombing in WWII was like throwing darts blindfolded at best, so pretty much everything around the target, including civilian homes were going to be obliterated. The problem over Japan was that the Jetstream effectively prevent precision bombing from altitude, so the USAAF (in a policy I personally disagree with) began low level incendiary attacks which meant they had to haul ass at low level and couldn't aim at anything but the city at large...

As far as 9/11, there are many at the CIA that might agree with you, I think the guy that wrote Imperial Hubris, Michael Scheuer, actually framed 9/11 as a terrorist-guerrilla coup de main operation that successfully goaded Bush and the idiot Neocons to invade Iraq and inflict their own atrocities that would galvanize the Islamic world against the US and West at large. Only, most people in Iraq tend to think that al Qaida types are far bigger cunts than the American-cunts who blundered into their country. In any case, you can frame it in black and white terms all you want, but at the end of the day, hundreds of thousands (at the very least) Japanese military and civilians--and Allied soldiers--never were killed than otherwise inevitably would have been. And yes, the Soviets were somewhat contained in Asia from rushing in and grabbing the spoils of victory they largely had not earned after negotiating with the Japanese after the German invasion...

Your moral paradox is an interesting one though. I believe, a very similar one was explored prior to D-Day. Eisenhower's deputy, RAF Air Marshal Tedder (one of the better airmen who hated area bombing and thought that Arthur Harris of RAF Bomber Command and USAAF Gen. Spaatz were both psychotic fuckwits). He advocated using strategic air power "in support of armies" rather than just to attack factories and cities. Mainly, to destroy the German ability to resupply Normandy by destroying rail stations and supply depots. The problem was that Churchill and various others objected because it meant that inevitably French civilians would die (our allies), and he believed it was some absurdly inflated number. Probably not more than a few thousand did. Harris and Spaatz both thought it was silly to question their tactics even though they had little evidence that bombing really was effecting German production enough to justify the resources invested (German production, under Albert Speer actually INCREASED in 1944 under the heaviest bombardment as he moved factories to remote areas).

Tedder won out, and Ike agreed and a huge bombing campaign targeting German military and French rail centers took place and it was far more successful than dreamed of. It hastened the Wehrmacht collapse and actually prevent the wanton destruction of German civilians.

There's a thread here on "area bombing" and Sir Arthur "reap the whirlwind" Harris: http://ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2006

Igosplut
01-20-2010, 07:26 PM
Good read Nick.

On a different note quite a few years ago I was working at a local shop. I was doing wiring on a car and had to get into the trunk. On opening it up, I see a bunch of wooden boxes approximately 5"X15" or so. I had to empty the trunk so that I could crawl into it, and started unloading them (if I didn't have to, the trunk would sure as shit be empty) and the top came off of one (they were hinged) spilling the contents. Examining the stuff I see that they are these funky old glass negatives. So of course I look at them to discover that they are all (in that box, I didn't open more of them) of the aftermath of the atomic bombs in Japan. Wild looking stuff, the dead and destruction, really graphic shots. Never knew why the guy possessed them, or better yet WHY the were bouncing around in his trunk (there were about ten boxes and they looked to have been there a while) and I didn't know him well enough to ask. I probably should have, because clearly they belonged in a museum.....

Seshmeister
01-20-2010, 11:46 PM
I think saving the Jews as any sort of a reason or motivation for any allied actions in WWII is a wishful fantasy. Its a reinvention of history by Spielberg.

It's interesting that even the Nazis even in absolute desperation never used weapons of mass destruction even though they easily have launched chemical weapons attacks.

Seshmeister
01-20-2010, 11:51 PM
I agree Harris was a psychotic fuckwit and he is a controversial character here to this day. You could argue though that Britain was fighting for it's life and the future of Europe especially early on and to a degree.

It's surprising the huge effort that Britain put into bombing though(as I remember Britain had as many strategic bombers in the West as the US) and an both sides the demoralization of civilians didn't seem to happen.

sadaist
01-21-2010, 07:24 AM
Good read Nick.



LOL. Have to agree. Hate to agree. I'll argue with Nick over anything and usually do....except WWII stuff.

hideyoursheep
01-21-2010, 11:28 PM
It's interesting that even the Nazis even in absolute desperation never used weapons of mass destruction even though they easily have launched chemical weapons attacks.

Meh....I'd consider Auschwitz or Dachau WMD's, wouldn't you?

Seshmeister
01-21-2010, 11:46 PM
You have a point, I'm not saying they were nice people or that the US was worse for using nuclear weapons.

It is surprising though do you not think? Especially in the Eastern front where they were just killing everyone. The unusual thing about the Nazis for a tyrannical regime is that they generally kept excellent records so I should go and look it up and there will no doubt be a clear explanation of why they didn't.

My guess would be that many of the people in charge including Hitler had lived through WWI so didn't want to go down that path again. To them I suppose gassing a subhuman Jew didn't count.

hideyoursheep
01-21-2010, 11:56 PM
The eastern front was a shitty place, especially during winter as you know...weather plays a factor in using biological / chemical weapons...probably wouldn't have been effective there, and I'm not sure they developed an effective method of delivery that would produce the results the Nutzi's wanted, as in it could blow back on them.

But locking Jews in a closed room.....that's a little different.