>>But it's not something that was clearly, undisputably wrong.
>>Yeah, perhaps negotiations would've yielded something,
>>particularly if the Emperor had been allowed to remain in
>>power.
>
>Hirohito retained a figurhead
>position within the government,
>instead of being tried for war
>crimes. Moreover, most of the
>20,000 Japanese tried for war
>crimes were never punished.
>
>This proves that the U.S., Britain,
>and the Soviet Union could've cared
>less about Chinese and Korean victims
>of Japanese fascism.
It's never really about the victims. And Japan could've negotiated better terms before the A-Bomb, giving them more autonomy, the right to maintain a standing army, etc. The emperor retained merely as a figurehead is different from that. The use of the A-Bombs showed that the only choices they had were surrender or annihilation.
>
>>But that might've just led to Japan rebuilding their
>>military might, not unlike Germany between the two World
>>Wars.
>
>Speculation about the future
>does not warrant the use of
>nucleur conflagration.
Well in this case, yes it does. You needed something to convince Japan to surrender unconditionally, which you claim could've been achieved solely through negotiation with minor concessions. I think that's facile and revisionist history. And a quote from Eisenhower or Newsweek doesn't really change that, since it was the people in command in the Pacific theater, and the Japanese military command, who really knew what was up at the time, they were the only players who really mattered. If you had some internal documents from the Japanese high command, your argument would have some potency.
>
>>The war needed to be ended, and Japan, though
>>desperate, would not have given up until the very bitter
>>end, imo.
>
>Your opinion is inconsistent
>with the facts. By highlight-
>ing articles and editorials
>from 1945, researchers Mohan
>and Tree showed that Japan
>was close to surrendering.
Articles and editorials= facts now?
>Papers such as the Times,
>Christian Century and News-
>week reported that the Jap-
>anese were in a bleak situ-
>ation and clarification of
>the surrender terms was all
>that was needed to ensure a
>Japanese surrender (149).
Well if the Christian Science Monitor says it, that's good enough for me.
>Even Truman's advisors such
>as Joseph Grew and Henry St-
>imson argued that the surre-
>nder terms should be modifi-
>ed in order to bring a quick
>end to the war.
Yeah, and I'm sure he had plenty of advisors arguing the other way too. The President has so many advisors, there's always going to be disagreement over which course of action to take.
>
>>And a conventional invasion and bombing campaign
>>would've ultimately yielded more loss of life on both sides,
>>this I believe even more strongly.
>
>Growing evidence indicates that
>an invasion may have been unec-
>cesary considering there were
>other option that could've been
>explored.
>
>Japan's deteriorating military
>capacity capacity convinced Act-
>ing Secretary of State Joseph
>Grew that the Japanese would be
>open to a negotiated peace which
>included the allow retention of
>the Japanese Emperor. Grew sought
>to persuade Truman of his views
>on May 28, three weeks after V-E
>Day.
>
>The Grew strategy, which had env-
>isioned a successful American dip-
>lomatic effort to end the war by
>an offer and acceptance of a "con-
>ditional surrender" (the same con-
>dition that became the accepted ba-
>sis for surrender in August) by the
>end of July, was subsequently consi-
>dered by several people to have had
>more than an outside possibility of
>success.
Wow, that sounds very definitive.
Among those who thought so
>in retrospect, in addition to Grew
>himself, were Hanson Baldwin, milit-
>ary analyst for The New York Times,
>and Robert J.C. Butow, author of Ja-
>pan's Decision to Surrender. Especi-
>ally significant was the view expre-
>ssed by Secretary of War Stimson, as
>stated in his autobiography, co-auth-
>ored with McGeorge Bundy. "It is pos-
>sible," said Bundy, "in the light of
>the final surrender, that a clearer
>and earlier exposition of American
>willingness to retain the Emperor wo-
>uld have produced an earlier ending
>to the war. . . ."
I know you're not quoting McGeorge Bundy on the most efficacious way to end a war and force a surrender, are you?
>
>>The bottom
>>line is, this was a war where civilians were legit targets
>>too, that was the de facto rule.
>
>At the beginning of World War II,
>the bombing of civilians was reg-
>arded as a barbaric act. As the
>war continued, however, all sides
>abandoned previous restraints. But
>international law has always disti-
>nguished between civilians and comb-
>atants. Legal context to the decision,
>from a variety of international treaties
>and the 1996 World Court opinion.
I'm not talking about on the books international law, that's why I said de facto.
>
>>And the Holocaust is on an entirely different level,
>
>Of course it is... It was committed
>by the enemy and not us.
Trick please. As bad as the internment camps were, they didn't have any gas chambers. And as bad as the a-bomb was, is it really more horrific than killing people through firebombing, or starving them to death with a blockade? If you really think the only difference between the Holocaust and Hiroshima is nationalist perspective, you've got some serious growing up to do. And since you're already in your 30s, you should pick up the pace.