Talk:The United States and weapons of mass destruction/Archive 1

Archive 1

I deleted some personal remarks in the interest of civility. Please check to ensure that no meanings essential to discussion of how to improve this article were lost. Thank you. --Uncle Ed 12:19, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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TDC included a judgment of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki although the Hiroshima article as well as other encylopdedias such as [1] agree with the present text that "there is still considerable debate about the need to have used" the atomic bombs. Get-back-world-respect 12:00, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, there is considerable debate, and thats about it.

There is little doubt that an invasion of the Japanese mainland would have resulted in 100,000's of dead Americans and millions of dead Japanese, Okinawa showed that. The idea that Japan was on the verge of surrender is pure and utter horse shit. Although many western historians claim that Japan was pleading with the US for a peace deal, a study of the subject from Japanese historians shows that even when Hirohito decided to surrender, It was anything but certain.

Japan's Longest Day: The Pacific War Research Society ISBN: 4770028873

Read up and learn something. TDC 13:43, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

TDC, I think the point is that the U.S. could have tried something else (demonstration of the bomb, removal of the insistence on "unconditional surrender"), seen if if had worked, then bombed the Japanese if it hadn't. But as it is, saying it was a choice between bombing a city or losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers is a false dichotomy. What was so pressing about August, with the invasion scheduled for, what, November 1?

No, the point was that since the war was over and the Japs were trying o-so-hard to negotiate a surrender, that we had no right to bomb and only did it to show Stalin what bastards we were. Fact is, they were opposed to a surrender which would have taken hard fought portions of thier east asian empire and stripped the emperor of his power. We were right to demand nothing less than an unconditional surrender.

No one is saying (well, no one I've heard is saying) that we didn't have a right to use nukes if push came to shove (say, if the tide of the war changed against us), but the fact of the matter is that we got them and then used them without any attempt to avoid their use.

Bad analogy, perhaps, but let's try: Someone walks up to you and starts hitting you (Pearl), so you beat the living daylights out of him (WWII in Pacific), have him on the ground, he's putting up no real resistance. Then OK, point a gun at him and bring him to the pokey. But that isn't the time to pull a gun on him and shoot. Rjyanco 17:31, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Battle of Iwo Jima: February 19 - March 11, 1945 US casualties 6000 dead and 17,200 wounded. Only 200 Japanese were captured for an Island the size of Central Park.

Okinawa April 1 - June 14, 1945 US casualties 12,500 killed and 35,500 wounded

The level of resitance as The US got closer to Japan was increasing, not decreasing. To say that the Japanese were not putting up resistance is ludicrous. An invasion of the mainland would have been a slaughter on both sides. Also keep in mind that the Japanese did not consider surrender until after the second bomb was dropped.TDC 18:08, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Different type of resistance. Sure, in close combat the Japanese were ferocious. But in mid-1945 they had no navy or air force to speak of, and no access to raw materials to restore them. The only way combat casualties would be sustained would be with an invasion of their mainland. We could have blockaded them, say, rather than invade (or nuke) them.

By the same logic, you could make the argument that, rather than invading and occupying Iraq, with perfect foresight we should have nuked it, because of the casualties we're taking with the occupation. But we could have avoided the casualties by not invading.

Anyhow, to my mind, the presumed loss of life you cite would have occurred (I concede) if we invaded Honshu, which wasn't per se necessary -- necessary to end the war in timely fashion, sure, but not necessary to render Japan impotent, which they already were, militarily. Rjyanco 21:50, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There were only two viable options. Invade and loose 100,000's of troops, or nuke them and end it. It is interesting to point out that even after the first bomb was used there was still overwhelming resistance to surrender. The "negotiation" of a cessation of hostilities was not a viable option. TDC 16:23, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It seems that this dichotomy is the crux of your argument. Can you really not see that other options existed? Rjyanco 17:31, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I can see that other options existed, but were they feasible or desirable. I believe they were not. TDC 18:08, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You have the right to believe whatever you want. You do not have the right to make an encyclopedia article appear as if everyone agreed with you. Get-back-world-respect 18:11, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

If the Japanese had demolished our fleet, and were able to fly a single plane over Los Angeles to nuke it (without any resistence) and then were able to fly another single plane over San Francisco to nuke it (without any resistence) in an effort to induce a U.S. surrender, would you consider that an OK thing, because it would, after all, "save Japanese soldiers' lives"?

Hey, they started the war, not us. They were also making preperations to launch biological weapon attacks against the US. Fact is the Japs fought fanaticly until the final day of the war. TDC 16:23, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How exactly were they going to launch bio attacks on the U.S. with no ships or planes? Swim over? I'd love to see documentation on what you're saying -- it seems to have as much basis as Bush's WMD claims against Iraq last year. Sure, the Japs and the Germans were trying to develop nukes. Sure, if they'd developed them first they might have used them against us (if they could have gotten anywhere near our shores). But that doesn't justify it -- the U.S.'s image of itself is as a morally superior country, and dropping nukes needlessly is the moral lowground. Rjyanco 17:31, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I am glad you challenged me on this, because I think there should be a WIKI article on this topic.

I am sure you have heard of the infamous JIA Unit 731?

In early 1944 the JIA began work on a scheme to strike the US directly. Realizing that it was impossible to do this via conventionally the Japanese used the recent discovery of the jet stream to formulate a plans to use hydrogen filled ballons to drop bombs on the US mainland. 9,000 of these balloons were deployed, each carried four incendiary and one antipersonnel bomb across the Pacific on the jet stream to create forest fires and terror from Oregon to Michigan. It is estimated that they killed about 50 people.

Unit 731 proposed using balloon bombs to carry plauge infested fleas to America in the June of 1945, and began work on the project. Unit 731 had developed a particularly virulent form of the plague while working in China. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us), the sandbags used as ballast on the balloons was cross-referenced with an 18th century French geological survey of Japan. This data was used to locate the facility where the bombs were being made and launched. After a bombing raid destroyed the hydrogen production facility along with the factory, the balloon flights ended. This raid occurred in early May of 1945, only one month before bio weapon attacks were to begin. Although Tojo had officially rejected use of plague infested balloons, rouge elements of the JIA were continuing development of the project.

News of the balloon attacks was suppressed from the US public for fear of creating wide spread panic.

Look it up if you don’t believe me. It certainly is a wild story, TDC 18:25, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I do remember reading about the lone balloon hitting Oregon or someplace.

Again, though, look at the parallels. What is worse, bio or nuke? Let's compromise and say they were equal. We developed what we did, they did what they did, and on both sides people were willing to use it. But BY using it, we lost the moral high ground. Rjyanco 21:50, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Are you one of those people who honestly believe that we are "restoring democracy" in Iraq, much like Germany was protecting its brothers in the Sudetenland? Rjyanco 15:26, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, restoring democracy implies that was at one time a viable democracy existed. So no we are not restoring anything. TDC 16:23, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Amen. Rjyanco 17:31, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

This judgement has been deleted three times within the last 24 hours. Wikipedia politics says if you go on editing the same issue it can result in a temporary ban. Get-back-world-respect 17:10, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Actually, my judgement has been deleted 3 times. TDC 17:21, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Policy is: "Never revert the same article more than three times in the same day." I reverted three times and then requested protection. Get-back-world-respect 17:29, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I dug into one of the mentions of Japanese pre-frying calls for peace that I knew of, and found a pretty horse's-mouth version. Truman's diary, 1945 July 18: "PM & I ate alone. Discussed Manhattan (if is a success). Decided to tell Stalin about it. Stalin had told PM of telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace. Stalin also read his answer to me. It was satisfactory. Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland."[2] Purists will complain Truman was mental since he follows with what a jolly good fellow Stalin is, but anyway... Loves to watch TDC rant, 142.177.169.255 23:29, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC) BTW WTF is this here and not on the H-N-nuking pages?

It is over there as well, if you want to expand it go ahead. Why do you not register and stop using WTF-abbreviations? Get-back-world-respect 23:51, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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