Seppuku by plane perhaps dominated those that realised they had failed.
Courage not cowardice; balls not bluster
- Thread starter Xelor
- Start date
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
Not from what I've read. The belief was that is they fought hard enough, to the death if need be, the Allies would "weary" of the losses and seek terms. The suicide craft (Operation Ketsugō) were to focus on the transports, hitting ships crowded with up to 2,500 troops, plus crew. That's a poo-poo load of men in the water. If 1% got through that would have been 100 hits on the troop ships. I don't recall that we had 100 ship transports assigned to Operation Olympic.
Fair enough...
Committing the supreme sacrifice for their "Living God", Emperor Showa, knowing that they had failed.... could be Seppuku...a ritualistic suicide with a homicidal twist...
I was under the impression that the Japanese were prepared to fight to the end and to the death as part of the "State Shinto" ideology that forced the Allies to nuke bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps I am mistaken...
see : > The Shinto Directive < if interested...
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
The Gadgets were part of the larger whole. We were throwing everything at the Japanese, hoping to make them decide to cease hostilities. Hiroshima didn't dissuade Gen. Anami from wanting to continue the war, but his aide's reports on Nagasaki convinced him the Allies could destroy the Japanese polity. This moved him into the "surrender camp", and suddenly the "Big Six" (The Supreme War Council(軍事参議院 Gunji sangiin))* were split on the proposed progress of the war. For the first time Japanese history they had to report to the Emperor that they couldn't decide on a program. This put the ball in Hirohito's court and he called for acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration.
*Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, War Minister, Navy Minister, Army Chief of Staff, Navy Chief of Staff.
The US did not give the Japanese time to evaluate Hiroshima. That was deliberate - the US rushed Nagasaki, choosing a lower level target rather than waiting out the weather.
That was in line with the purpose of making sure Hiroshima was a surprise attack, without any warning of the existence of the weapon or anything else which might have led to surrender without actual use of the Bomb (especially the Nagasaki plutonium design) on a city full of people.
That also (thread relevance) illustrates the nature of the courage involved in gun obsession in the US. Along with the gun panic of 2008/9 - when grown white men with jobs and everything emptied the retail stores of ammunition in a ginned-up bug-eyed racial panic after Obama's win - and immediately relevant the racial Japanese internment camps, bracketing, we see the basic role of bullying and its underlying cowardice (as mediated by race in the US, of course) in strategic and tactical thought.
Vociferous
Valued Senior Member
Gun owner doesn't mean "gun-toter." Even if it did, the sample size is obviously not representative, if you know anything about statistics.
A Waffle House at 3am is likely to be patronized by people who recently left a bar or have been drinking. Since possessing a gun while intoxicated is illegal and concealed carry permit holders have been shown to be more law-abiding than even police, here, it is a very unlikely place and time to find one.
And I guess you didn't hear about the NRA member rushing to stop a church shooting with his AR-15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutherland_Springs_church_shooting#Shooting
Or any of these:
1. In Chicago earlier this year,
2. In a Philadelphia barber shop earlier this year
3. In a hospital near Philadelphia, in 2014
4. In Plymouth, Pa., in 2012
5. Near Spartanburg, S.C., in 2012
6. In Atlanta in 2009
7. In Winnemucca, Nev., in 2008
8. In Colorado Springs, Colo., in 2007
9. In Edinboro, Pa., in 1998
10. In Pearl, Miss., in 1997
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...civilians-with-guns-ever-stop-mass-shootings/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaughan_Foods_beheading_incident
2. In a Philadelphia barber shop earlier this year
3. In a hospital near Philadelphia, in 2014
4. In Plymouth, Pa., in 2012
5. Near Spartanburg, S.C., in 2012
6. In Atlanta in 2009
7. In Winnemucca, Nev., in 2008
8. In Colorado Springs, Colo., in 2007
9. In Edinboro, Pa., in 1998
10. In Pearl, Miss., in 1997
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...civilians-with-guns-ever-stop-mass-shootings/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaughan_Foods_beheading_incident
Again, gun-free zones, where people are not legally allowed to carry a gun, are not representative. Your arbitrary choice of location skews the results.
But where those allowed to carry and charged with protecting schools aren't cowards, like in Parkland, they do save lives:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/20/us/maryland-school-shooting-resource-officer-response-trnd/index.html
http://wreg.com/2018/04/21/hero-officer-stopped-florida-school-shooter-in-3-minutes-sheriff-says/
Or law enforcement actually follows up on threats, unlike in Parkland:http://wreg.com/2018/04/21/hero-officer-stopped-florida-school-shooter-in-3-minutes-sheriff-says/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...-law-enforcement-but-families-need-to-step-up
https://nypost.com/2018/04/04/how-patriots-star-receiver-may-have-stopped-a-school-shooting/
https://nypost.com/2018/04/04/how-patriots-star-receiver-may-have-stopped-a-school-shooting/
Mass shootings are not frequent. And even though 30% of Americans own guns, only less than 1% carry every day. That means that two relatively rare circumstances have to come together at the same time and place. Again, too uncommon to be representative. But run of mill self-defense with a gun occurs much more that gun crimes, and at representative sample sizes.
The only bad gun for self-defense is the one you don't carry. Most gun owners (90 million) do store their guns safely. Maybe you've never heard of trigger locks, gun safes, and lock boxes (for cars).
At the end of the day, you're a woefully uninformed leftist.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
Hiroshima was a legit military target, military headquarters for the prefect. It also has military industries scattered throughout the civilian housing area, by direction of the military. They made the urban area a target. One of the bombs went off almost directly over several thousand Japanese troops lined up for morning inspection, making it one of the most effective single shots fired during the war. And, of course, the bombs convinced Gen. Anami the war was over, making them the most important diplomatic weapons of that period.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
BTW, we didn't warn the Japanese of any other bombing attack, that I remember. The bombs were just big bombs in the eyes of the military.
We officially and purposefully dropped the Bombs in the expectation that they might very well force surrender. Not from the explosions and damage to two cities - that had been matched and more by ordinary bombing - but from their awesome potential to destroy Japanese civilization so easily and at such little risk to ourselves. We would never have to invade, never pay the price the Japanese were counting on being too high.
It was the knowledge of the Bomb, its existence and nature, that was anticipated would force surrender. That knowledge was concealed from the Japanese until we could arrange to drop a plutonium design Bomb on a major city full of people.
"Diplomatic weapon"?
The rhetorical lengths necessary for Americans to conceal from themselves what the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were are demoralizing in themselves.
- -
So weapons more useful for performing mass shootings than anything else can be severely restricted without greatly affecting gun owners.
Neither does "conceal carry permit holder" - a mistake you have made several times.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
Ice, your version of history is a lot flashier than reality. The bombs were dropped on the orders of the commander in the theater. They were sent to the area with orders to drop them. Timing was not specified.
As far as assessing US motives for dropping nukes on Japan, pro or con, one needs to note that the US only had two working bombs with no further warheads in production until 1949, plus the one that was tested at Los Alamos. There was a reasonable chance one or both of the bombs wouldn't detonate either in combat or in an official demonstration, and a risk that Japan could have called America's bluff after both warheads were used up one way or the other.
I think the kamikaze thing was a bit overrated, though. The US navy would have developed tactics to counter it, and their aircraft had near-total supremacy in the skies by that point. Japan was completely starving and cut off from global trade, the US could have just sat it out while building up a specialized invasion fleet.
I think the kamikaze thing was a bit overrated, though. The US navy would have developed tactics to counter it, and their aircraft had near-total supremacy in the skies by that point. Japan was completely starving and cut off from global trade, the US could have just sat it out while building up a specialized invasion fleet.
Timing depended on weather.
Urgency was specified - the entire thing had already been delayed by months to ready the Nagasaki design. The Hiroshima bomb was dropped at the first good opportunity. The Nagasaki bomb was flat out rushed.
1) It wasn't just a bluff. Had the Japanese not surrendered, the US was perfectly capable of cranking out more bombs - and would obviously have done so, rather than launch an invasion. The US - the military who did not know about the Bomb - was already considering simply starving the Japanese out over the coming winter - their railroad system destroyed, they had no way of transporting food without ending the US blockades - and building a few bombs would have occupied the idle time.
The Japanese attrition strategy was blown.
2) The bluff factor - that the US had dozens of the things lined up - was also inherent in dropping the things. It was made worse - more likely to be called - by failure to warn and inform.
3) There was no reason to withhold information about the Bomb's existence regardless. Its existence - even if the Nagasaki design had somehow fizzled - presented the same choice either way. There were plenty of Japanese physicists on hand capable of understanding and explaining the facts of the matter. And the demands of secrecy removed would have sped up manufacturing.
4) The Hiroshima bomb was as reliable as a hammer, and everybody knew it - it wasn't even tested. No one has ever built a Hiroshima design bomb that failed to blow up on demand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)
But all of this is background, illustration, of the matter at hand: the cowardice inherent in so many aspects of gun violence and its responses in the US. Bothsides problem.
Surrender? Conditional or unconditional may have been at stake. The allies wanted nothing less than unconditional surrender, if I am not mistaken.
(M)
(M)
This is tangential.
The Allies cut off surrender negotiations after Trinity was successful, and refused to consider terms or engage in negotiations while preparing the Bombs. The final surrender was not completely unconditional - Hirohito remained Emperor, in particular, and that proved wise during the transition - and it was on terms not radically different from what had been on the table for negotiation months earlier.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
There was another atomic bomb en route to Tinian and the production schedule was to be 3 bombs per month. Gen. Marshall was to be giving tactical control over ten bomb for use during the invasion of Japan, four earmarked for Kyushu and six for the Kanto Plain/Tokyo area.
The blockade proposal had too many problems. First, we would have to keep our forces surrounding Japan until that notoriously stubborn country decided to give up. Secondly, the first people to die in a starvation blockade are the babies at the breast, the sick, and the elderly, people who weren't needed for the war effort and would have been fed poorly, if at all.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
The Japanese ambassadors around the world were begging the Cabinet for instructions and they weren't getting them. We knew this from MAGIC intercepts. The Japanese government did not have a plan in place for accepting terms of any kind until after Nagasaki.
They didn't know about the bomb until after Nagasaki.
That was several months of war - with many American dead also - during which the US knew that it would never have to invade Japan, and Japan did not know it would have to surrender, that there would be no opportunity to force a war of attrition. During all that time, the US kept the Bomb a secret, and refused to meet with the Japanese diplomats - a major reason they were in need of instruction. They had no idea why even their overtures through Russia were being stonewalled (the Russians of course did know, since they knew about the Bomb).
That was not a problem, as the massive firebombings and - eventually - the surprise bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, demonstrated. For that matter, we saw this in the sanctions against Iran and Cuba and China and Vietnam and North Korea, the Contra war and other such efforts in South America, and long before that in the Indian Wars of the frontier.
All of these were acts of bullying, fronting a core of cowardice.
The courage of bullies and racists is brittle stuff - a shell or veneer, with a soft core of panic. The courage of pacifists is a core, with the fear on the outside. To put things in newage babble terms.
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Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
Where did you get that "knew it would never have to invade Japan", please? I've been on this topic since Desert Shield and haven't heard that one.
As for the blockade, the men with guns would have still had enough to eat. They weren't going to surrender just because Japanese were dying by the millions. The day the Voice of the Crane was to be heard throughout Japan for the first time Army troops were trying to find the recording Hirohito made and destroy it.
As for the blockade, the men with guns would have still had enough to eat. They weren't going to surrender just because Japanese were dying by the millions. The day the Voice of the Crane was to be heard throughout Japan for the first time Army troops were trying to find the recording Hirohito made and destroy it.
From the moment that the Hiroshima design was completed, it would fit on an airplane, it would yield in the kiloton range, and the project leaders reported that success to US command, there was never going to be an invasion of Japan. What for?
They weren't going to have any fuel, ammunition, or steel. They weren't going to have any shelter or replacement clothing or medical supplies. And they were going to run out of food, in places. Meanwhile, the US is building more Bombs.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
Oooh, boy. Well, you have a nice day.