Was the invasion of Okinawa necessary

Discussion in 'Nuclear, Chemical & Bio Weapons' started by Josephwalker, Feb 22, 2019.

  1. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Such as?
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2019
  2. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    When you have no further defense of your position, deny reality? Not working for you, champ.
     
  3. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Can't speak for Japan but under the U.S. Militia Code every American male of military age is a member of the unorganized militia.
     
  4. Badaboom

    Badaboom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Japan waged a total war and wasn't shy of exterminating civilians themselves. Read up on Nanking and the conquest of the Philipines. This means civilians were fair game as they were part of the military industrial ressources.
     
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  5. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The United States has only fought two wars as total war, the American Civil War and the Second World war.

    During the American Civil War the Union waged a total war while the South didn't.

    During WW ll the USA, UK and the USSR waged total war from day one.

    The USA on December 8th 1941.
    The UK in July of 1940.
    The USSR in June of 1941.

    Germany didn't start waging total war until 1943 and by then they had already lost the war.

    As for Japan, I'm guessing Japan started waging total war around the time America did.
     
  6. Badaboom

    Badaboom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Nah, they started when they invaded China. Even by then, childrens were "drafted" in the equivalent of the hitler youth and worked in munitions/weapons shop in their off time. Also, the japanese considered enemy civilians as lower than crap from the first day. They raped and killed woman and children right and left. Men were worked to death in slave labor camps.

    The WW2 japanese don't deserve any sympathy.
     
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  7. Toggle Almendro

    Toggle Almendro Well-Known Member

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    I don't know. I think they might have been effective at eliminating large concentrations of troops.
     
  8. Toggle Almendro

    Toggle Almendro Well-Known Member

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    We didn't target civilians though. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets.
     
  9. Toggle Almendro

    Toggle Almendro Well-Known Member

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    Do you recall your words "It is a disgraceful use of human suffering about a war that contained so much of it."?

    http://www.politicalforum.com/index...inawa-necessary.551366/page-4#post-1070264305

    Collateral damage is unfortunate, but we needed to make Japan surrender and both cities were military targets.


    Wrong. Your denial that the cities were military targets is untrue.

    Your claim that Japan tried to talk to us about surrender before the A-bombs is untrue.


    Such as your untrue claim that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not military targets.

    Such as your untrue claim that Japan tried to surrender to us before the A-bombs had been dropped.


    There is nothing real about your untrue claims.

    And it is proper that your untrue claims be denied. People should hear the truth.
     
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  10. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Technically, they did not "invade" China.

    The Japanese Occupation of China started way back in Boxer Rebellion in 1900-1901. And it started at the same time that 7 other nations started their occupation. This is because Japan was part of the Eight-Nation Alliance (including Austria-Hungary, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, and the US). This is because after the Chinese Civil Wars each of those nations took a part of China as a protectorate to help end the constant fighting (as well as to end the siege on the International Legation).

    The problem is that once Japan decided that they needed to create the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere they wanted to control all of China themselves. This is the last in a series of occupations and expansions to their empire. Conquering Taipei, Creating Manchuko and putting the Puppet Emperor Puyi ("The Last Emperor") on the throne. Annexing Ryukyu Islands, then Chosin (Korea). They had been expanding for over 80 years by that time.

    But yes, their greatest action prior to December 1941 was clearly in China. That is why I consider that the true start of WWII (along with the Abyssinian War), not what happened in Poland or Hawaii.

    Notice how the Japan apologist rants at "250,000 Japanese killed". Yet ignores the over 300,000 killed in Nanking. Ignores the macabre newspaper articles which carried beheading contests that were treated like a baseball game. Ignores the over 3 million Chinese killed in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
     
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  11. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    That does not matter to the apologists.

    Never mind that Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Second General Army, the Regional Homeland Army, was a huge logistical base with munitions and ammo dumps littering the area, as well as the home of over 20,000 soldiers and 3 Army Divisions.

    Never mind that Nagasaki was one of their main navy bases. It was also the largest submarine base that Japan had left. Was the headquarters of the Sasebo Naval District fleet. Was also the home of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, where a large chunk of the Japanese fleet was built.

    Including the Battleship Musashi.

    Nope, for some reason those were not "legitimate targets" to the apologists. They will scream no matter what because somebody dared to oppose their right to conquer and enslave others.
     
  12. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    But U.S. Marines ate babies for breakfast and both the Japanese and U.S. Marines didn't take prisoners on the battlefield.

    Total war has more to do what was going on the home front.
    Total mobilization of the the civilian population contributing to the war effort.
    Industry converting to manufacturing weapons, munitions, ships, planes, etc.
    Heavy rationing of meat, dairy products, clothing, gasoline and if you owned a car those tires had to last you for the entire duration of the war.

    Where as Germany didn't mobilized for total war until it was to late. The German people still wanted their bratwurst and beer, automobiles, butter, shoes, etc.
    By the time Albert Speer and the German industrialist convinced Hitler and the Third Reich to mobilize the German homefront they had already lost the war.
     
  13. Questerr

    Questerr Banned

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    The Japanese were intending to not have any large concentrations of troops until right before attacking US forces. By that time, our troops would be in danger of being caught in the blast or irradiated.
     
  14. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    The Japanese stopped the large massing of troops about half way through the island hopping campaign of WWII.

    If you look at the earliest battles of the Pacific Theater, you see the Japanese conducting a "Defense at the beach" strategy. Tarawa, Peleliu, and others. They took horrible casualties for relatively few US deaths. And the islands still fell rather quickly. This is especially seen at Tarawa, where they said they would defend for 100 years against 1 million men. But the battle lasted for only 3 days, and all but 17 of over 4,700 defenders were killed.

    By the time of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the Japanese learned better. Stay way back from the shore bombardment, with your troops separated in smaller units ready to come together as needed. Then when the attackers get close come out of hiding and attack in larger groups. Let the Americans have the shore, but bleed them white for every foot of land they took away from shore. They did this very effectively in the final battles of the war, and was their intent on the home islands.

    The intent of using atomics during Operation Downfall was to use the blasts a day or so in advance of the actual invasion, to soften up the positions that were to far back for effective off-shore bombardment. So there would have been no problem from blast casualties. And the effects of radiation at that time were still not really understood.

    The plan for Downfall with atomics was to have up to 15 bombs available for such actions. High altitude air-bursts at 2,000 feet outside of cities, then the Allies moving to occupy the city the next day. The cities were picked as those that would have been key command and control or logistic points for supplying the defenders.
     
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  15. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    From my reading they also indented to use them (sparingly) should any major Japanese troop concentrations develop that posed a direct threat to the Allied advance or otherwise blocked a key line of approach that could not be overcome without (in the assessment of the Allied Commanders) significant losses to their own troops.

    And yes the Allied High Command was aware of the potential risk to their own troops so the idea was that (if they were used at all for this type of target) bombs would be dropped before allied forces had moved into any kind of large scale, direct contact with the enemy. Remembering that a separation of 15 to 20 kilometers from ground zero of a Hiroshima sized bomb (wind-age and terrain depending) was, at the time expected to provide more than sufficient protection to your own side - especially if you knew it was coming and issued a warning a shortly in advance of the blast. And that was for infantry in the open, troops in vehicles would have been expected to be 'safe' at closer distances.
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2019
  16. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    You could spend the rest of your days studying the topic and you would expire before you knew 1/2 of what I do about the various aspects of WWII, so thanks. Is it your contention that we threw our own citizens into concentration camps and incinerated hundreds of thousands of women, children, and the elderly in atomic horror to avenge the citizens of other countries in Asia? On the order of a president who hated Asian people?
     
  17. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    100% bullshit. The whole point was to kill as many civilians as possible to send fdr's 'message.'
     
  18. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Stop LYING. Nothing has been ignored. Go ahead and explain the direct relation between those two events. Do you think that fdr, who hated Asian people as much as he did Jews, intended the Manhattan Project to be a massive act of revenge on behalf of China? Is that why we developed the atomic bomb?
     
  19. Badaboom

    Badaboom Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yeah, yeah, try harder.
    Your batting average is 0.01 on the troll meter.
     
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  20. Toggle Almendro

    Toggle Almendro Well-Known Member

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    Wrong. Hiroshima was targeted because it was a huge military center filled with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers, and because it was the military headquarters in charge of repelling our coming invasion of Kyushu.

    Nagasaki was targeted because it was an industrial center with massive weapon factories.


    Nonsense.
     
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  21. Toggle Almendro

    Toggle Almendro Well-Known Member

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    Have you read "Japan's Longest Day" by the The Pacific War Research Society?

    How about "Japan's Decision to Surrender" by Robert J.C. Butow?

    If you know so much about this subject, why are you perpetually wrong about everything?
     
  22. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    All of my claims are demonstrably true.
     
  23. Toggle Almendro

    Toggle Almendro Well-Known Member

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    Wrong. Your claim that the A-bomb targets were not military in nature is demonstrably false.

    Your claim that Japan offered to surrender before the A-bombs is demonstrably false.
     
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  24. Tim15856

    Tim15856 Well-Known Member

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    So, you think Truman nuked civilians in order for FDR to get his message out?
     
  25. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Yup
     

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