[thechat] West v. East (was: civilized vs. uncivilized)

Erika Meyer emeyer at lclark.edu
Wed Sep 26 12:07:33 CDT 2001


><snip>
>>I certainly have issues with US conduct during WWII.  Hiroshima.
>>Nagasaki.
>
>While I recognise (albeit disagree with) the PoV that says that
>Hiroshima was a necessary evil, I really do not think that Nagasaki
>was necessary for the Japanese to get the point.
><snip>
>
>So, you think it would have been better for the Allies to invade Japan at a
>cost of untold millions of Japanese lives, not to mention a million Allied
>casualties instead of dropping the bombs?

Isn't it nice when your leaders give you a choice?

My point: mass murder of innocents is unethical regardless of the 
circumstances.

Joe's point (I think): Even if you think a 50,000 civilians in city 
#1 should die in order to make a point about what could come if Japan 
didn't surrender.... It was probably not necessary to kill another 
50,000 and destroy a second city a mere 3 days later.

The US has been known to blow these things up on relatively 
uninhabited islands... (the Japanese war masters may have wondered, 
'do they have more than one such bomb?')

>After the first bomb was dropped, Truman again called for them to surrender,
>http://www.nuclearfiles.org/docs/1945/450808a-pr-war.html, which they again
>rejected, then and ONLY then did he give the Ok to drop the second.

I pray my government will never this stubborn.  I grew up haunted by 
nightmares of these bombs.  I want the nightmares to go away.

>Even then the War Council didn't want to surrender, Hirohito had to 
>order them to accept the terms. So Yes, Nagasaki WAS necessary for 
>the Japanese to get the point.

Was the point: "surrender or we will kill all your women and children"?

(Boy, that Osama Bin Laden sure is an bad guy, isn't he.)

>With the amount of indoctrination of Bushido that pervaded the Japanese at
>the time, it is very likely that the scale of suicides and suicide attacks
>against the Allied armies would very likely have killed almost every
>Japanese above the age of 14 and the attendant destruction of cities with
>the Japanese Army fighting for every square inch of ground would have more
>than likely destroyed the Japanese culture.

Ah!  So we bombed them for their own good!

Is this how Americans should be saved from their indoctrination?

>They were committing suicide
>defending outlying islands, what would have happened on the Home Islands?

I don't know.

Erika
-- 




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