Photographer
Robb Mann
Posts: 12327
Baltimore, Maryland, US
Japan also feared the full attention of the Soviet Union. Russia invaded and claimed the Japanese-occupied/settled Kuril Islands days after their unconditional surrender to the US. To this day Russia and Japan have not signed a peace treaty to end WWII.
I sometimes wonder if the atomic bombs caused Japan to surrender or allowed Japan to surrender.
Photographer
Frank Lewis Photography
Posts: 14494
Winter Park, Florida, US
The Men Who Brought the Dawn. On the Smithsonian Channel. This film was made back in 1995. It consists of interviews with the surviving crew members of both the Enola Gay and Bockscar. It is up close and personal and should be required viewing. These men had a job to do to end the war. They set about doing their jobs and they did them well.
Photographer
MerrillMedia
Posts: 8736
New Orleans, Louisiana, US
Fred Greissing wrote:
The disgusting truth about WWII is that the USA repeatedly targeted civilians like no other nation had.
The bombing of Tokyo deliberately going for civilian targets with close to 100,000 victims.
Hiroshima followed.
Even more disgusting and unnecessary was the bombing of Nagasaki.
This was all about shock and awe. It was not instrumental to ending the war.
The scientist behind the nuke called for a demonstration to the Japanese, but this was not what Truman desired.
Part of the absurdity of the whole history is that Kyoto was spared because an influential US General had his honeymoon there. First, the Japanese were the aggressors. Second, they were given the opportunity to surrender immediately after Hiroshima. They didn't do it. In fact, they didn't believe that the US had more atomic bombs.
There were over 14 million Allied military personnel and over 25 million Allied nation civilians killed in WW II. Japan lost about 2 million military and 350 thousand civilians. I think these numbers make the reality of the situation pretty clear.
Photographer
Allen Carbon
Posts: 1532
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
MerrillMedia wrote:
First, the Japanese were the aggressors. No. They weren't. But I guess you don't count starving the Japanese out, stopping their economy with embargos and planting fortresses aimed at Japan everywhere.
Photographer
R.EYE.R
Posts: 3436
Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Winners write history books...
Photographer
HHSubMission
Posts: 61
Denver, Colorado, US
Two sides to every story. Yes, there were trade and embargo issues as between the US and Japan prior to world war II. Japanese expansion by military force began years before. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_and_Japan The Japanese military during the 1930s and 1940s is often compared to the military of Nazi Germany during 1933–45 because of the sheer scale of suffering. Much of the controversy regarding Japan's role in World War II revolves around the death rates of prisoners of war and civilians under Japanese occupation. Historian Chalmers Johnson has written that: It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens]; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers—and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4% chance of not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30%.[39] According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate among POWs from Asian countries, held by Japan was 27.1%.[40] The death rate of Chinese POWs was much higher because—under a directive ratified on August 5, 1937 by Emperor Hirohito—the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed.[41] Only 56 Chinese POWs were released after the surrender of Japan.[42] After March 20, 1943, the Japanese Navy was under orders to execute all prisoners taken at sea.[43] Around 1,536 U.S. civilians were killed or otherwise died of abuse and mistreatment in Japanese internment camps in the Far East; in comparison, only 883 U.S. civilians died in German internment camps in Europe.[44]
Photographer
MerrillMedia
Posts: 8736
New Orleans, Louisiana, US
Allen Carbon wrote:
No. They weren't. But I guess you don't count starving the Japanese out, stopping their economy with embargos and planting fortresses aimed at Japan everywhere. The operation to cut of supplies to Japan happened in 1945, long after Japan initiated hostilities against the US and a good part of Asia/Oceana. Yes, they were the aggressors.
Photographer
Allen Carbon
Posts: 1532
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
MerrillMedia wrote:
The operation to cut of supplies to Japan happened in 1945, long after Japan initiated hostilities against the US and a good part of Asia/Oceana. Yes, they were the aggressors. Lol no???
The US, Britain, and the Netherlands East Indies initiated oil and steel embargos against Japan in August 1941.
Konoe didn't initially want to go to war with the states but the Americans refused any sort of peaceful negotiation. All this you were building fortresses everywhere. When the people started starving out thanks to the embargo, a more ruthless general took over.
America refused any negotiation talks.
America built fortresses everywhere with the guns aimed solely at Japan.
America cut off any trade coming into Japan starving its citizens out.
Yeah... America totally wasn't the first aggressors -.- Japan totally wasn't forced to take action against America -.-
At least learn your history.
Photographer
VonJake-O Foto
Posts: 761
Las Vegas, Nevada, US
Allen Carbon wrote:
Lol no???
The US, Britain, and the Netherlands East Indies initiated oil and steel embargos against Japan in August 1941.
Konoe didn't initially want to go to war with the states but the Americans refused any sort of peaceful negotiation. All this you were building fortresses everywhere. When the people started starving out thanks to the embargo, a more ruthless general took over.
America refused any negotiation talks.
America built fortresses everywhere with the guns aimed solely at Japan.
America cut off any trade coming into Japan starving its citizens out.
Yeah... America totally wasn't the first aggressors -.- Japan totally wasn't forced to take action against America -.-
At least learn your history. Japan committed atrocities against the Chinese in the 1930's and that is why there was an embargo. America wasn't the first aggressors.
Photographer
HHSubMission
Posts: 61
Denver, Colorado, US
Allen Carbon wrote:
Lol no???
The US, Britain, and the Netherlands East Indies initiated oil and steel embargos against Japan in August 1941.
Konoe didn't initially want to go to war with the states but the Americans refused any sort of peaceful negotiation. All this you were building fortresses everywhere. When the people started starving out thanks to the embargo, a more ruthless general took over.
America refused any negotiation talks.
America built fortresses everywhere with the guns aimed solely at Japan.
America cut off any trade coming into Japan starving its citizens out.
Yeah... America totally wasn't the first aggressors -.- Japan totally wasn't forced to take action against America -.-
At least learn your history. I am not an expert historian, so I have been doing some reading on the internet to see if I could better understand your version of history. There are hints of what you are saying in the history written by the victors, but Japan had been aggressively expanding their territories by military force since the late 1800s. They were in many ways, following the European model, so they were not alone in their aggressive military supported expansion. The following is copied from this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor
According to this, it was Japan that forced the issue and although their expansion was economically motivated, I can't see that we made them do it, unless it is our fault that they were trying to "keep up with the Jones's".
From the link: "The attack on Pearl Harbor was intended to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and hence protect Japan's advance into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, where it sought access to natural resources such as oil and rubber.[3] War between Japan and the United States had been a possibility of which each nation had been aware (and developed contingency plans for) since the 1920s, though tensions did not begin to grow seriously until Japan's 1931 invasion of Manchuria. Over the next decade, Japan continued to expand into China, leading to all-out war between those countries in 1937. Japan spent considerable effort trying to isolate China and achieve sufficient resource independence to attain victory on the mainland; the "Southern Operation" was designed to assist these efforts.[25]
From December 1937, events such as the Japanese attack on the USS Panay, the Allison incident, and the Nanking Massacre (the International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimate concluded that more than 200,000 Chinese non-combatants killed in indiscriminate massacres, though other estimates have ranged from 40,000 to more than 300,000) swung public opinion in the West sharply against Japan. Fearing Japanese expansion,[26] the United States, the United Kingdom, and France provided loan assistance for war supply contracts to the Republic of China.
In 1940, Japan invaded French Indochina in an effort to control supplies reaching China. The United States halted shipments of airplanes, parts, machine tools, and aviation gasoline to Japan, which was perceived by Japan as an unfriendly act.[nb 7] The U.S. did not stop oil exports to Japan at that time in part because prevailing sentiment in Washington was that such an action would be an extreme step, given Japanese dependence on U.S. oil,[28][29] and likely to be considered a provocation by Japan.
Early in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the Pacific Fleet to Hawaii from its previous base in San Diego and ordered a military buildup in the Philippines in the hope of discouraging Japanese aggression in the Far East. Because the Japanese high command was (mistakenly) certain that any attack on Britain's Southeast Asian colonies would bring the U.S. into war, a devastating preventive strike appeared to be the only way to avoid U.S. naval interference.[30] An invasion of the Philippines was also considered necessary by Japanese war planners. The U.S. War Plan Orange had envisioned defending the Philippines with a 40,000-man elite force. This was opposed by Douglas MacArthur, who felt that he would need a force ten times that size, and was never implemented.[31] By 1941, U.S. planners anticipated abandonment of the Philippines at the outbreak of war and orders to that effect were given in late 1941 to Admiral Thomas Hart, commander of the Asiatic Fleet.[32]
The U.S. ceased oil exports to Japan in July 1941, following Japanese expansion into French Indochina after the fall of France, in part because of new American restrictions on domestic oil consumption.[33] This in turn caused the Japanese to proceed with plans to take the Dutch East Indies, an oil-rich territory.[nb 8] On 17 August, Roosevelt warned Japan that the U.S. was prepared to take steps against Japan if it attacked "neighboring countries".[35] The Japanese were faced with the option of either withdrawing from China and losing face or seizing and securing new sources of raw materials in the resource-rich, European-controlled colonies of Southeast Asia.
Japan and the U.S. engaged in negotiations during the course of 1941 in an effort to improve relations. During these negotiations, Japan offered to withdraw from most of China and Indochina when peace was made with the Nationalist government, adopt an independent interpretation of the Tripartite Pact, and to not discriminate in trade provided all other countries reciprocated. Washington rejected these proposals. Japan's final proposal, on 20 November, offered to withdraw their forces from southern Indochina and not to launch any attacks in Southeast Asia provided that the U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands ceased aiding China and lifted their sanctions against Japan.[36] The American counter-proposal of 26 November (November 27 in Japan) (the Hull note) required Japan to evacuate all of China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with Pacific powers. However the day before the Hull Note was delivered, on November 26 in Japan, the main Japanese attack fleet left port for Pearl Harbor."
Photographer
Allen Carbon
Posts: 1532
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
VonJake-O Foto wrote:
Japan committed atrocities against the Chinese in the 1930's and that is why there was an embargo. America wasn't the first aggressors. That particular quote was in correlation to America vs Japan and who the first aggressor was between the two. And against the two, America was the one who refused to have any sort of peaceful negotiation, cutting off supplies at the same time building defences around the Philippines.
My mind is blown by people thinking Pearl Harbor was the first aggressive act.
Photographer
Allen Carbon
Posts: 1532
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
HHSubMission wrote:
I am not an expert historian, so I have been doing some reading on the internet to see if I could better understand your version of history. There are hints of what you are saying in the history written by the victors, but Japan had been aggressively expanding their territories by military force since the late 1800s. They were in many ways, following the European model, so they were not alone in their aggressive military supported expansion. The following is copied from this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor
According to this, it was Japan that forced the issue and although their expansion was economically motivated, I can't see that we made them do it, unless it is our fault that they were trying to "keep up with the Jones's".
From the link: "The attack on Pearl Harbor was intended to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and hence protect Japan's advance into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, where it sought access to natural resources such as oil and rubber.[3] War between Japan and the United States had been a possibility of which each nation had been aware (and developed contingency plans for) since the 1920s, though tensions did not begin to grow seriously until Japan's 1931 invasion of Manchuria. Over the next decade, Japan continued to expand into China, leading to all-out war between those countries in 1937. Japan spent considerable effort trying to isolate China and achieve sufficient resource independence to attain victory on the mainland; the "Southern Operation" was designed to assist these efforts.[25]
From December 1937, events such as the Japanese attack on the USS Panay, the Allison incident, and the Nanking Massacre (the International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimate concluded that more than 200,000 Chinese non-combatants killed in indiscriminate massacres, though other estimates have ranged from 40,000 to more than 300,000) swung public opinion in the West sharply against Japan. Fearing Japanese expansion,[26] the United States, the United Kingdom, and France provided loan assistance for war supply contracts to the Republic of China.
In 1940, Japan invaded French Indochina in an effort to control supplies reaching China. The United States halted shipments of airplanes, parts, machine tools, and aviation gasoline to Japan, which was perceived by Japan as an unfriendly act.[nb 7] The U.S. did not stop oil exports to Japan at that time in part because prevailing sentiment in Washington was that such an action would be an extreme step, given Japanese dependence on U.S. oil,[28][29] and likely to be considered a provocation by Japan.
Early in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the Pacific Fleet to Hawaii from its previous base in San Diego and ordered a military buildup in the Philippines in the hope of discouraging Japanese aggression in the Far East. Because the Japanese high command was (mistakenly) certain that any attack on Britain's Southeast Asian colonies would bring the U.S. into war, a devastating preventive strike appeared to be the only way to avoid U.S. naval interference.[30] An invasion of the Philippines was also considered necessary by Japanese war planners. The U.S. War Plan Orange had envisioned defending the Philippines with a 40,000-man elite force. This was opposed by Douglas MacArthur, who felt that he would need a force ten times that size, and was never implemented.[31] By 1941, U.S. planners anticipated abandonment of the Philippines at the outbreak of war and orders to that effect were given in late 1941 to Admiral Thomas Hart, commander of the Asiatic Fleet.[32]
The U.S. ceased oil exports to Japan in July 1941, following Japanese expansion into French Indochina after the fall of France, in part because of new American restrictions on domestic oil consumption.[33] This in turn caused the Japanese to proceed with plans to take the Dutch East Indies, an oil-rich territory.[nb 8] On 17 August, Roosevelt warned Japan that the U.S. was prepared to take steps against Japan if it attacked "neighboring countries".[35] The Japanese were faced with the option of either withdrawing from China and losing face or seizing and securing new sources of raw materials in the resource-rich, European-controlled colonies of Southeast Asia.
Japan and the U.S. engaged in negotiations during the course of 1941 in an effort to improve relations. During these negotiations, Japan offered to withdraw from most of China and Indochina when peace was made with the Nationalist government, adopt an independent interpretation of the Tripartite Pact, and to not discriminate in trade provided all other countries reciprocated. Washington rejected these proposals. Japan's final proposal, on 20 November, offered to withdraw their forces from southern Indochina and not to launch any attacks in Southeast Asia provided that the U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands ceased aiding China and lifted their sanctions against Japan.[36] The American counter-proposal of 26 November (November 27 in Japan) (the Hull note) required Japan to evacuate all of China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with Pacific powers. However the day before the Hull Note was delivered, on November 26 in Japan, the main Japanese attack fleet left port for Pearl Harbor." We are lucky to live in a world now where history is no longer written by the victors. Each side is meticulously planned and documented making any sort of war no longer a black and white issue.
With that being said, I don't understand why people still think Japan vs America was a black and white issue with Pearl Harbour being a surprise Japan attack. Words like 'atrocities' are so easily thrown around in favor of Americas history. 1 page before this, somebody had the audacity to say that attacking civilians is the way war is won. I'm not trying to be biased but that kind of mentality can only be forgiven if said actions were committed by Americans. Literally any country can commit the same acts and the only nouns connected to that would be tyranny, terrorism and injustice.
I'm not saying that Japan was clean, no way am I saying that. I'm just saying that people really need to question who started the war between America and Japan and who decisively ended it by murdering civilians.
Photographer
MerrillMedia
Posts: 8736
New Orleans, Louisiana, US
But you are biased. You also don't know history as well as you think you do. The term "revisionist history" comes to mind, which BTW, Japan engaged in for decades after WW2.
The US was actually in possession of decoded messages at the end of of the war, from the Japanese leaders to its diplomats around the world, ordering them to conduct a propaganda campaign. The campaign included complete fiction, blaming everyone else for their atrocities and attempts to takeover Asia. Unfortunately those messages weren't decoded for many years, because once the fighting was over, the US felt it had more important things to do.
You might also consider that the Japanese used to conduct surgical experiments on prisoners without anesthesia. After they literally carved people up while fully conscious they killed them, because they had no further use for them. Can you imagine what might have happened in New Zealand, had the Japanese not abandoned a plan to invade Australia? They did so because they were short of war materiel and were too busy fighting the defenders of Asia, elsewhere. And that, my friend, was what the embargo of the early 40s and the combined war effort against Japan was about.
Photographer
Allen Carbon
Posts: 1532
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
MerrillMedia wrote:
But you are biased. You also don't know history as well as you think you do. The term "revisionist history" comes to mind, which BTW, Japan engaged in for decades after WW2.
The US was actually in possession of decoded messages at the end of of the war, from the Japanese leaders to its diplomats around the world, ordering them to conduct a propaganda campaign. The campaign included complete fiction, blaming everyone else for their atrocities and attempts to takeover Asia. Unfortunately those messages weren't decoded for many years, because once the fighting was over, the US felt it had more important things to do.
You might also consider that the Japanese used to conduct surgical experiments on prisoners without anesthesia. After they literally carved people up while fully conscious they killed them, because they had no further use for them. Can you imagine what might have happened in New Zealand, had the Japanese not abandoned a plan to invade Australia? They did so because they were short of war materiel and were too busy fighting the defenders of Asia, elsewhere. And that, my friend, was what the embargo of the early 40s and the combined war effort against Japan was about. Sorry but your credibility went away when you argued that the embargo happened in 1945.
At least I haven't gotten my history wrong. You accuse me of being biased while you come up with completely false facts.
Yup.
Photographer
MerrillMedia
Posts: 8736
New Orleans, Louisiana, US
Allen Carbon wrote:
Sorry but your credibility went away when you argued that the embargo happened in 1945.
At least I haven't gotten my history wrong. You accuse me of being biased while you come up with completely false facts.
Yup. The initial embargo of war supplies and the materials to make them started in the early 40s. The food embargo happened in 1945. Perhaps you should go look it up.
Photographer
Allen Carbon
Posts: 1532
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
MerrillMedia wrote:
The initial embargo of war supplies and the materials to make them started in the early 40s. The food embargo happened in 1945. Perhaps you should go look it up. Since I blatantly said this,
"The US, Britain, and the Netherlands East Indies initiated oil and steel embargos against Japan in August 1941. "
I have no clue what you are accusing me of.
Sorry but your credibility is still shot.
"The Americans didn't do an embargo until 1945 long after blahablah" - You
"Embargos were initiated in August 1941"
"...oh I meant food embargo and other things" - you
This whole argument started because someone accused Japan of being the first aggressors. I've already proven otherwise. Any other discussion point was never part of the argument. We aren't discussing the meaning of war.
Photographer
MerrillMedia
Posts: 8736
New Orleans, Louisiana, US
Time to leave this alone, because soap box is no longer. It is what it and if you refuse to accept, its on you.
Photographer
Allen Carbon
Posts: 1532
Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
MerrillMedia wrote:
Time to leave this alone, because soap box is no longer. It is what it and if you refuse to accept, its on you. lol. so the person who clearly got the facts wrong accuses me of soapbox drama? That's quite convenient.
sure lol. bye then!
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Photographer
Fred Greissing
Posts: 6427
Los Angeles, California, US
MerrillMedia wrote:
Time to leave this alone, because soap box is no longer. It is what it and if you refuse to accept, its on you. Pathetic back out if I ever saw one.
Photographer
Fred Greissing
Posts: 6427
Los Angeles, California, US
I think the important point to take from this is that the USA decided to murder over 100,000 children between the bombing of Tokyo and the two nukes to show the world that the USA had the bigger dick.
Murdering children is the worst war crime possible.
Trying to justify this because the Japanese were the first aggressors (and that is not so black and white) is ridiculous.
It would be like catching a rapist that raped an adult and raping the rapists inoccent baby sister to render justice.
The absurditiy of the whole thing is demonstrated by an American General taking another Japanese city off the target list because he had gone there for his honeymoon.
It is absolutely remarkable how the Japanese have rebounded from such destruction.
Photographer
GK photo
Posts: 31025
Laguna Beach, California, US
Fred Greissing wrote:
I think the important point to take from this is that the USA decided to murder over 100,000 children between the bombing of Tokyo and the two nukes to show the world that the USA had the bigger dick. come on. are we really comparing american dicks to japanese dicks? i suppose that the imperial expansion (pre wwii, or during) has no place in your arguments?
Fred Greissing wrote:
Murdering children is the worst war crime possible. the japanese never murdered children in the decade before 12-7-41? or any time before that?  i know some filipinos who'd argue that one.
Fred Greissing wrote:
It is absolutely remarkable how the Japanese have rebounded from such destruction. yep, especially taking into account that their vanquisher allowed them to do so, as long as they kept their dicks in their pants. one can only wonder how things would be if they had been able to control the areas they annexed/defeated in the pre-war years, had not uncle sam dealt them the imperial death-knell.
hell, american 'business interests' buried the american steel industry in favor of the japanese. money doesn't see a flag, as long as the flag isn't being carried by a division of armed troops, or a naval armada.
and following that logic, the germans have done pretty nicely of late as well. just without the panzers and wehrmacht.
Photographer
rfordphotos
Posts: 8866
Antioch, California, US
No side is blameless in war.
But- there are actions nations take that make war inevitable -
for example:
Unit 731
The Rape of Nanking
The genocidal policy of Japan in both China and Korea towards civilians
I had 4 uncles staged for the invasion of Japan (two Marines, two Army), and two more plus my Father on naval vessels in the waters off Japan. After the Island campaign, particularly Iwo Jima and Okinawa, none of them really wanted to invade Japan. They had a different view of the validity of the atomic bomb to end the war.
I knew and spoke many times with two survivors of the Bataan Death March. They didnt see things your way either.
And that is the point here- it is easy to sit here in 2014 and second guess and "woulda-shoulda-coulda" done this or that. But as in most things, context is everything. In the context of 1925-1945, the world and the path thru it looked a lot different.
I would like to think we had learned something in WWII. Not at all sure we did though.
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i know some filipinos who'd argue that one.