legal tender

I see we have that old problem again about if "it" should have been used or
not..

Well I did some research. I checked over the wanted adds in papers from Ca
to Wa for Oct and Nov 1941.
I did not see any adds from America asking another country to attack us.
Ok we got that out of the way,
We did not ask to be attacked or dragged into a war. We all agree on
that????

The Japs did not honor the Geneva Convention, they did honor the rules of
war.
The Geneva Convention says treat the prisoners good, rules of war say kill
all of the enemy.
The japs thought it was a dishonor to surrender, that is why our men who did
surrender were treated as badly as they were. (are we listening out there?)
Tojo was a God to them and they gave it all for him and would have fought to
the last man. I seem to remember many jumped off cliffs rather than
surrender.

As we did not start the war or want it, why should we have anymore Americans
killed than was necessary??
Did we forget what the japs did in China? or in any other country they
occupied..
And yes you can say this or that about the Jap civilians, but let me ask you
a question, If we were invaded, as a civilian would you fight??
So do not say the Jap Civilians would not have fought. Remember Tojo was a
God to them. {Think back to the concessions we made for him at the
surrender}
Yes they would have fought with sticks, pitch forks and any else they could
have gotten their hands on, just as I would if this country was invaded.
Would we have lost up to 1,000,000 men? Maybe less, maybe more.
Patton was right, you win wars by making the enemy die for his country..
Remember Korea? Remember Nam? we lost our ass's there. A lot of good men
died there because we were not ready, we did not think, we did not do that
etc etc.

When the 2nd bomb dropped all the fight was gone. We had Japan under
control.
Granted the A bomb is a nasty piece of work, but if the Japs had it they
would have used it and more than 2 times.
No I hope the bomb is never used again, or any thing like it, but it doesn't
matter much as most countries have stuff worse than the A bomb, and they are
not afraid to use it if givin the chance..

Oh by the way this was told to me by another person doing research on the
last days of the war. I have not had a chance to check it out, so this is
hear say. If we would have gone with the invasion of Japan, we would have
set up on some of the closer islands near the base of Japan. Appox 1 to 1
and 1/2 months after we would have been getting set up a massive typhoon
came through those islands. It wiped out everything and anything that would
have been on the island.. If we would have been there this would have been a
sign for the Japs to fight harder. Remember the Divine Wind, Kamikaze? This
would have been taken as a sign from the Gods..

Nope I know it was justified..
Frank

lacrobat

no they don't.


there?)


ah the old Japanese honour system defence.

explain why they did not all commit seppuku after (or rather than) the
surrender, why prison camp guards turned up to surrenders pretending to be hospital staff?


Tojo was not considered a god by them.

keith willshaw

No sir , the rules of war do not.


there?)

Which is balderdash. During the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 they treated
their prisoners well, during WW1 the German POW's taken were so
well treated many stayed on voluntarily after the war .

The simple fact is the militarists who took power in the 30's
used brutality as a deliberate technique of control, both in
their own army and in their dealings with others.

Do try and get the facts straight. Hideki Tojo was a general in the army
who became prime minister of Japan in October 1941.

The God emperor was Hirohito who while nominally having
absolute power had none in reality. Up until the 1920's
the Japanese political system was lareky analagous to
that of Britain. There was a cremonial head of state
with an elected Parliament, there was however a fatal
flaw in that the armed forces were responsible directly to
the Emperor and were thus able to circumvent Parliamentary
control and effectively seize power.

Keith

michael starke

The recent book by James Bradley, "Flyboys" spends many
pages trying to explain the reasons behind the cruel treatment
of American POW's by the Japanese.

He writes that the Japanese where perplexed at America's indignation
and contempt of the way the war in China was being waged
considering that the model they were following was America's treatment
of it's own indigenous people who, in some cases, were rounded
up and slaughtered. He also cites the poor treatment Philippinos got
by American forces after the Spanish occupation. Bradley says the
Japanese were not doing anything different than Americans
had done in the west.

The Japanese said the Geneva Convention rules did not apply to
Americans because they indiscriminately bombed civilians in
their raids on Japan.

I'd be interested in other opinions of "Flyboys" as I was somewhat
disappointed in sub-textural message of moral relativism that permeates
the book. We can't make moralistic determinations because we
all acted badly at some point in our history? I'm not sure I buy that.

I see a difference in the institutionalized brutality that came from the
top down in Japan and the individual acts listed by Bradley as being
committed by the American forces.

As horrible as the A bomb was to use, it wasn't any worse than the
firebomb raids on Tokyo which killed many more in just one night.

mjs

This

lacrobat

"Flyboys" sounds like a load of bollocks.

The ' the Americans bombed Japanese civilians argument' hardly applies to
the Baatan death march victims and does not apply at all to commonwealth
prisoners, who were treated as badly (see Changi, Sandarkan death march,
etc).

The other arguments ignore the fact that the Japanese had shown earlier
(WW1) that they were quite capable of not behaving with total brutality.

The brutality was a policy decision on the part of the Japanese.

xmarx467

I was disappointed in Bradley's book. I ordered it based on a presentation I
saw him make on C-SPAN. It's an important subject that deserves and
intelligent, learned and thoughtful examination by someone with decent writing
skills. A much better book on the general subject, although painted in broad
detail and not down to the flight crew level, is:
"Power Across the Pacific: A Diplomatic History of American Relations With
Japan"
by William R. Nester, New York University, 1996. Since Bradley brings up the
subject of US treatment of the Indians, it is interesting that Nester is both


warfare, having written the very good "The First Global War : Britain, France,
and the Fate of North America, 1756-1775," and "The Arikara War: The First
Plains Indian War, 1823," among many other solid works.

If I'm not mistaken, did not the Japanese enthusiastically bomb Chinese
civilian population centers?


Chris Mark

charles gray

I would say that you are correct in most areas-- but there is some
evidence that Hirohito was more "in the know" than has been commonly
believed.
Of course, there are also those who say that this is simply trying
to "rewrite" history, and I for one don't have the knowledge base to
decide between the two viewpoints.

b2431

There were documents that proved Hirohito's complicity in specific projects
like Unit 731. The other deity MacArthur turned them over to the Japanese.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

keith willshaw

Absolute bollocks, the average Japanese soldier in China had never
heard of the Shoshone or Sioux and the US Army certainly didnt
issue instructions that raping women was OK but only if you
killed them afterwards, the Japanese army did.


So when did the US Army adopt germ warfare in the Phillipines

Complete Bollocks. The US raids on Japan didnt start in earnest
until almost 10 years AFTER the Japanese bombed civilian
centres in China

Brutality was a deliberate policy of the Japanese militarists.
Its that simple.

Keith

charles gray

andwhile there were arguable atrocities by American soldiers, it
should also be noted that this occured during a very ugly guerrilla
war-- but that civilians not-involved in such hostilities were by and
large not simply left alone, but actively aided by the American
authorities.
For example, the Philipene education system was almost completely
built by the U.S. among other things. More importantly, you should
note that the U.S. agreed with the Taft amendment to return the
phillipines to local control, and followed through in 1946-- the
planned date being delayed due to the war.
Japan, conversely, viewed their possessions as resource points, from
which everything of value was to be extracted. This included the human resources.


And such an arguement would play better if you could say the
treatment of U.S. fliers differed noticably from that of other POWS--
when the Bataan death march occured, bomb one hadn't fallen on Japan.
At no point can I think of any officer who gave and seriously aattmped
to insure compliance with, order mandating the treatment of Allied
POW's in accordance with the conventions Japan had signed.


As shown by just how *loved* Japan is in most of Asia.