[quote]Soldierslim wrote:
XCelticX wrote:
I did a little research: They NEVER refused to surrender. I also read that “Japanese feelers for peace had already been received and ignored by the Allies”.{quote}
Very true. The Japanese were willing to surrender before any of these events took place, under ONE condition; that they be allowed to keep thier Emperor after the War. BUT, the U.S. called for “unconditional surrender” and the Japanese’ plea to keep their emperor was, indeed, a condition. So the War dragged on.
The quote that you surfaced is also true. The Emperor himself personally pleaded with the Soviets (an Allied power) to make peace with the U.S. for him. The Soviets however refused to pass this info on the the U.S. Why would the Soviets choose to not be a peacful mediator between the two waring nations? Control of the post-war world. They knew that if they entered the war against Japan they could spread their influence. [/quote]
If you read all the posts on your own thread you might have seen that someone has more or less asserted that peace could have been had if it weren’t for America’s terms.
The way you talk about people just going about their lives, you make it sound like Switzerland. A lot of the people who died had family members fighting in the war committing terrible atrocities. For many of them living their meant supporting the war effort.
If we had invaded all of those people were expected to become kamakazi’s including the school kids.
If you think that wouldn’t have happened. you should watch the film of an entire village throwing themselves off of a cliff in Saipan.
It’s some of the most heartwrenching film I’ve ever watched. What makes it bad is the knowledge that they most likely wouldn’t have been mistreated.
The American, Canadian and British forces had a fairly good record during the war. Certainly better than the Axis.
The worst things usually happened with frontline troops. Which makes sense. Sending prisoners back to the rear, can take needed men away from a front line unit.
By childish games I mean not facing up to what they did at Pearl Harbor. Instead of talking to the Americans or the British, countries they attacked they started trying to drag the Soviets into it.
As Winston Churchill said aboutthe Germans “They sowed the breeze and they reaped the whirlwind.”
We were lucky that the war didn’t drag into 1946-47. The Japanese had kamakazi weapons that would have wreaked terrible loss of life on the allies. Look up what happened to the USS Franklin. They planned to do this to all the US carriers with a piloted version of the V1 flyingbomb.
If the Japanese had managed to feild jet fighters it would have given their war effort a whole new lease on life. It would have enabled them to shoot down the B29’s which could fly too high for most of japans propeller driven planes to reach.
It also would have made it unsafe for Mustangs.
The active ingredients in A bombs were not easily produced. We wouldn’t have wanted to risk sending them out in planes that couldn’t get through.
Without a reliable delivery system the bomb was useless.
We should also consider that in some ways Japan was in a better position to produce A bombs than Germany. Thanks to their ownership of Korea. Which has significant uranium reserves.
As for today’s military commitments, the reasons why there is such a divergence of views are numerous. One big problem is a lack of knowledge.
There are a lot of kids on college campuses who don’t know much about history or geography who derive the bulk of their understanding of war from watching Vietnam war movies and listening to their old hippy teachers.
Like it or not the American military is the glue that is holding the world order together. Look at the Chinese and Taiwan or North and South Korea.
Japan is a nice juicy prize that the chinese or koreans could just walk over. What would the Russians be acting like.
Everytime the United States has drastically downsized it’s military, it has found itself in a war. It’s nice to think about peace dividends but it’s dangerous to let wishful thinking delude into lowering your guard too soon.
That’s one of the lessons we learned from the Barbary pirates, and from world war two. The worlds first and hopefully last nuclear war.
Right now the US military so far outclasses any potential rivals that it’s not worth trying to compete. This is why Europe shouldn’t sell high tech weapons to the Chinese.
It also could set off an arms race in Asia, that would slow the Asian Tigers economic growth.