UNBelieveable!! Pearl Harbor: New Japanese version for all..

[srgalahad]

"The reasons why don't mean squat in today's world. Remember and honor the dead, and move forward."

I beg to differ...

"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it," (George Santayana) - the "reasons" are the critical part. In spite of the reverence we promote and hold as a beacon, the "dead" are unfortunate consequences of decisions and mistakes made by others. Yes, we should be aware of the cost of the decisions, but equally aware of how they came about in the first place. Remembering the dead won't prevent a repeat performance but knowing WHY they died might cause people to avoid going down the same path again. (Of course, that means teaching - and learning - a balanced view of events, not the history written as by the winners.)

 

[AndyG43]

But there's no mention within the museum's exhibits, (as I recall) of the reason for the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

NC

Sorry, I realise this post may be considered a little controversial, but it needs to be made.

There is a reason why this is not mentioned, and it is not about revisonist history. The justificaton given at the time for the use of the atomic bombs was that it woud save millions of lives, both the life of Allied troops & the Japanese service personnel & civilians who were said to be ready to fight to the death. There was still a core of the War Cabinet surrounding Hirohito who wanted to fight on, and initially they rejected the Potsdam Ultimatum (which called for their surrender); so Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th and Nagasaki was bombed on the 9th.

But was it really necessary? Could the war have been won by conventional means, without vast loss of American lives? I'll give you the voices of some of your own countrymen:

"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." - President Eisenhower

"'If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.' And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" - General Curtis LeMay

"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

"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

Maybe, maybe, Hiroshima has some justification; the bombing of Nagasaki does not - only 3 days had elapsed, the Japanese were still coming to terms with what had happened, and there is very, very strong evidence that they had decided on August 8th to sue for peace. One school of thought says that Truman authorised the use of the bombs more to intimidate the Soviets than the Japanese; I guess we will never know the truth.

I know this post won't be popular, so feel free to attack me if you must. But think carefully before you do, because there is just a chance I'm talking sense.

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/#cite_note-60

 

[glh]

Personally, I subscribe to the old adage:

"If there had been no Pearl Harbor, there would not have been a Hiroshima and Nagasaki".

When a nation is in a war, it does what is required to win in order to impose your will on your enemy. That's basic Klausewitz. George Washington knew this, Lincoln and Grant knew it, Pershing knew it and so did Roosevelt, Marshall, Eisenhower, Bradley and literally all the general officers in WW2.

If you don't do what is required, results such as Korea, Vietnam and probably Afghanistan/Iraq in the future where non-resolution or stalemate is the basic outcome. Unfortunately, much blood and treasure has been wasted in the process in these cases.

 

[Tom Clayton]

"The reasons why don't mean squat in today's world. Remember and honor the dead, and move forward."

I beg to differ...

"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it," (George Santayana) - the "reasons" are the critical part. In spite of the reverence we promote and hold as a beacon, the "dead" are unfortunate consequences of decisions and mistakes made by others. Yes, we should be aware of the cost of the decisions, but equally aware of how they came about in the first place. Remembering the dead won't prevent a repeat performance but knowing WHY they died might cause people to avoid going down the same path again. (Of course, that means teaching - and learning - a balanced view of events, not the history written as by the winners.)

Point taken. I certainly didn't mean that today's generations shouldn't learn from the mistakes of the past. Only that the time for blame is long gone. So I suppose I should ammend that second sentence:

Remember and honor the dead, learn from the mistakes made, and move forward.

 

[stiz]

Who invaded Siam, Burma, Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies following the strike on Pearl Harbor?
Who invaded the north coast of New Guinea and then tried to take Port Moresby on the south coast?
Who bombed Darwin, Australia in 1942
Who sailed into the Indian Ocean and attacked British installations as far west as India?
Who invaded the Solomon Islands in early 1942 in order to flank Australia?
Who was allied to Italy and Nazi Germany in the Tripartite Treaty?

those happened after 1941, so they dont really count in a "who started it" dissucsion

 

[Jagdflieger]

Stiz,

Those events were promulgated by the Imperal Japanese Staff planning prior to the war or the modification of plans made prior to the war. They were not the actions of a nation that persued a policy of peace, but those of a nation that knowingly planned a war and then actively prosecuted it. They are evidence, if you will, of the indepth planning and preparation of the Japanese prior to attacking the West and thus their inclusion in the discussion. Military planning does not happen overnight and the planning for the start of the Pacific war by the Japanese started long before December 7th.

For a succinct and single reason for the Pacific War, I guess the one overriding event was the Japanese expansion into China and Mongolia and their brutal excesses there. The world was horrified at the slaughter and the rather benign action of western embargos was certainly justified from any moral standpoint. To have precluded the war and stoped the embaros, all that Japan had to do was return her forces from China and Mongolia (Korea too if you want to listen to their poinit of view) in order to return to the fold of the Leage of Nations. Had there been no conquest of China and Mongolia (Korea was a fait accompli) there would have been no embargos.

The Japanese remained a closed and feudal society until late in the game and after watching the western powers establish colonial empires, I'm pretty sure that they wanted their place in the sun too. The raison d'etre for colonialism is trade and development of raw material to support that. The Japanese were handicapped by their meager resources and their planning to catch up to the western powers could only be satiated by the conquest of the Dutch East Indies and South East Asia. Also, the Tripartate Pact was signed on September 27, 1941, a couple of months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Malaya and the Philippines and it supported their plans for the upcoming conquests by allying the Japanese to the victor apparent of the European War.

With the western powers engaged with and largly beaten by Germany in 1941, there was no better time than 1941/42 to grab their place in the sun.

I guess my sumation is: Is that you don't start a war without a plan and the Japanese had a well developed plan that they executed to perfection up until May and June 1942 at the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway.

 

[deathfromafar]

This is nothing new. For quite some time Japanese society has often embraced the might and capability they had at the time as well as make multiple attempts to revise history to lay blame elsewhere. A guilty conscience are often the prime motivator. Having spent a bit of time in Japan as well as working amongst Japanese people, I was struck by how many of them were unapologetic for the war in general or had no formal acknowledgement of the vast atrocities IJ Forces committed in Asia and the Pacific rim. In contrast, I had met several WW2 Japanese military veterans in my travels who clearly expressed deep seated remorse for what they had either seen or knew of having been committed by their military in occupied nations. The two things these veterans burned into me was that they felt historians in Japan would try to bury all that they could get away with and that more troubling was the youth of Japan embracing all the wrong and dishonorable parts of their history in the war. Many of the older wiser Japanese understand what they did and that ultimately their own destruction was sealed by their own hands.

We all keep hearing different claims by history revisionists of who's fault it was but no matter what, there was absolutely zero justification for what the Empire of Japan did back then. The atrocities they committed went well beyond their meager explanation for justification. We need not apologize for beating them into the ground and ending that horrible war. The only morality in the immorality of war is ending it by defeating the enemy who started it.