Admiral Nimitz: Three Mistakes Japan Made At Pearl Harbor

Errm NO--I dont let my mates drive me home and NO im not afraid of flying!!!! but thanks for asking!!!!

The answer to the rest of your ramblings is also NO! Im not sure of the connection but I have lived in a country where the war could be heard and if you ever experienced a war in yours --which you have not then you would not glamorize war like a 60's comic hero and stop naming things ground zero and air force 1 etc etc in such an embracing way and you may one day see war for the horror that it is, which of course is the only reason you came into the war in the first place because it was coming to you.

That would be just about the time you stopped supplying us with ammunition because we were bankrupt and gave you every piece of gold we had. The Canadians paid our bill,--thanks for that.

Large ego's, testosterone and fanatical revenge has never made a good mix, you should have learned this this by now.

England did not win the war --we won the battle. The war was well and truly lost, it can be said that yet today we still suffer the scars of the Germans 2 wars against us in one century, certainly financially.

To your final question --yes.

 

Fanatical?
Retaliation?

From the first US bomber attacks on Japan to the last, the US fought to stop the Japanese brutal, savage attacks on its neighbors in this war of aggression.

Speaking of retaliation:

The Japanese brutally ***** and murdered some a quarter million Chinese villagers in reprisal killings for sheltering the Doolittle raiders.
A raid which killed fewer than 20 Japanese in legitimate military targets in Japan.

So go ahead- continue to try to reconcile the brutality of war and the actions of the combatants in this conflict.
Just tell the whole story...


You I deem you are simply humming a popular tune.
There were far worse horrors in this war- some attributable to the US military.
Again- what is your point?

 

I thought I had addressed this point. Hiroshima was not a band of angry unmanaged renegade soldiers running amock --was it.

Reconcile the brutality of war? What are you talking about Im trying to remind you of the brutality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,--the only 2 nuclear bombs to be used ever.

 

Frosty is a wee bit anti-American, as has been made obvious by his posts in other threads.

For the purposes of this discussion, he doesn't really care much that the Japanese killed literally millions of people; he's too busy being upset that the Americans suddenly and efficiently killed a fraction as many of the Japanese.

Frosty, would you have felt better about the Americans if our forces had physically landed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima and spent weeks looting, raping and brutally murdering men, women and children Japanese-style, instead of killing them with a couple of nuclear bombs? Or if we had treated Occupied Japan after the war the way the Japanese treated the areas they occupied before and during the war?

 

Wrong wrong wrong but I expected that.

I am participating in your (not mine ) thread and posting as I think -I have no objective or axe to grind.

I talk Hiroshima and Nagasaki and you throw out all kinds of totally disimilar battles.!!!!
and thats the point isnt it --Hiroshima was not a battle but you had found a way of killing 20,000 in 1 second. The Germans would have worked all day to have gotten through half of that.

It would have looked sooo much better in the History books had you not done that.

Ille try one more time--you could have made a demonstration of your death machine in other ways, even 4 -or 5 if necessary but no --18,000 ton bomb 200 yards from a school.

Im sure you've got the point its just difficult to accept that you might have been --you know --wro--wro--wr--.

 

You're obsessed, Frosty. I've never seen you have a good word to say about the US yet.

Tell you what: why don't you try counting up the number of schoolchildren the Japanese killed, before you continue your rant against the Americans? Then explain to me why you give the Japanese a pass on the millions of people they killed, while obsessing about a couple of hundred thousand we killed.

No... I don't think bombing an empty island or setting off a bomb offshore would have had quite the same effect that wiping out a couple of cogs of the Japanese industrial/war machine had on its leaders. They needed it properly stuffed in their faces, so they'd get the point. And doing it twice also made the point that we might be able to do it repeatedly, until there was nothing left worth surrendering.

You're actually complaining that we didn't slaughter people the old-fashioned way, like the Japanese and Germans did? So we'd look better in the history books? That's some strange thought processes you have there, son....

 

Bombing a Japanese island was considered, but the fanatical nature of their high command would have (and did on previous military lose assessments) discount the damage assessment and they would have shouldered on in the name of their god, the emperor. The bomb was an end to a means that at this point had become so unpopular that a continued and protracted invasion, likely with the USSR coming through the north (just like Berlin) wouldn't have sat well with the American public, let alone it's leaders.

Invasion estimates ranged from 1/4 of a million to over 2 million GI's which was unpalatable. The Russians had lost in the area 25 million so another 10% to them was meaningless, but to the USA, doubling or quadrupling the loses up to that point wasn't a possible consideration.

What WW II did more then anything was finish off the idea of empires and imperialism and make city/states the normal regional control. This process was begun in WW I and though continued it's decline through the two decades between the wars, was finally realized after WW II. Imperialistic expansion came to a halt, but communistic expansion increased exponentially. The USA was aware of this trend, as were all the other rational western societies.

The USA had a choice, put a big, quick halt to the war or continue the conventional conflict through 1946, probably 1947 as well, at which point the USSR would have had all of Korea, huge portions of Japanese occupied China and the upper islands of Japan proper.

It's easy to say the USA did this and did that, but would the USSR have rebuilt Europe or Japan or the other nations that the axis powered obliterated? The Chinese revolution was in the works, so ultimately they would have sided with the USSR to divide up the Pacific rim countries. Do you really think this would have been a better way to go? After rebuilding these countries, would the USSR or China let them return to individual nation status? Oh please, the big land grab that Stalin took, remained in place literally sucking the life out of each country's resources, until the fall of the USSR in 1989. The same is and would have been true of China had the war continued through their revolution. The USA has good and bad things about it, but in regard to the way it handled the despot countries in WW II, I can't think of any other nation that would have treated them better, spent more and left them relatively unmolested.

 

I'm not totally sure of this reasoning, but I suspect the choice of those two cities over that of targeting the Emperor himself, or the other very hi-level military men, might have been made such that there remained in place some hi-level people that could ultimately make the decision to surrender. If we had wipped that upper level of leadership out, it might have been much more difficult to 'negoiate' a peace with a singular authority.

Regrettably we had to target a major city to make a lasting impression on those in power. It was a cost of this war, and as an American I don't regret the decision at all...it had to be done.

Interestingly I lived a very young life experience on Okinawi in 1947-48 with my father in Corp of Engineers.

The USA did what it had to do in WWll against two brutal and expanding military forces. Whatever it took to bring that to an end just has to be accepted.

Where I do find fault with American decisions to go to war is Vietnam and the second Iraq war...unjustified and stupid decisions.
Eisenhower warned us:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY

 

Stimson's 1947 piece in Harper's might be worth reviewing at this point:

http://www.aasianst.org/eaa/stimsonharpers.pdf

"...As I look back over the five years of my service as Secretary of War, I see
too many stern and heartrending decision to be willing to pretend that war is anything else than what it is.
The face of war is the face of death; death is an inevitable part of every order that a wartime leader gives.
The decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over a hundred thousand
Japanese. No explanation can change that fact and I do not wish to gloss over it. But this deliberate,
premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put
an end to the Japanese war. It stopped the fire raids, and the strangling blockade; it ended the ghastly
specter of a clash of great land armies."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_L._Stimson

 

That's a long way from spending four years actually fighting in a vicious war and having on your shoulders the responsibility for the lives of millions of soldiers and possibly the freedom of your nation if you bungle it too badly.

Pearl Harbor is in the US and so was the World Trade Center. But, yes, we have done a pretty good job at keeping the wars out of the US. That's hardly something for us to feel guilty about.

First, naming something "ground zero" is not glamorizing war. You are just waving your hands wildly with that one. Second, you are failing to distinguish between glamorizing war vs. glamorizing heroism and courage. There is a difference even if you can't see it.

You contradict yourself here. If the US didn't see war for the horror it is, why was there so much resistance to getting involved? Why did Roosevelt get re-elected on the premise that "he kept us out of the war"? Why did it take a sneak attack by Japan that killed thousands of people to get Americans behind the war?

Kind of screws with your preferred narrative, doesn't it? And, oh, you seem to think that the US let England down even though we kept England supplied through U-boat-infested waters that cost the lives of many Americans. And when the _Japanese_ bombed Pearl Harbor, we didn't immediately start a war against the Japanese, even though they took the Philippines and captured thousands of Americans, no, we started an invasion of North Africa to take the pressure off of England and then invaded Europe at the cost of millions of dollars and thousands of lives before we turned our attention to the ones that attacked us. But, hey, we let England down, the country that we owed so much to for ... what exactly? And also, by the way, most Americans of the time thought this was just another in the endless series of European wars, and this one was caused by England and France for their outrageous Versailles treaty after WWI.

Did you ever notice that Europe was having wars every twenty years or so until us warlike Americans started taking a firm hand in international affairs over there? Probably just a coincidence, though.

Absolute rubbish. The Americans funded both the British and the Russians in WWII and gave them millions more after the war.

You must be confusing the US with the sabre rattlers in England, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia pre WWI. Before that war, everyone in Europe glorified war in a way that has never been done in the US. You are projecting your own culture onto ours.

So tell me this, Frosty: people like you are always criticizing the US for practically everything we ever do to defend ourselves and never seem to find a moment to criticize the people we were defending ourselves against. There is lots of criticism about the the two nuclear bombs by people who have nothing to say about the Japanese atrocities. There is tons of complaining about the relatively few people killed by the US during the proxy wars with Communist Russia and China, and no concern for the tens of millions of people murdered and enslaved by the Communists during that same period. Lots of angst about the villages in Vietnam bombed by the US where no more than a few thousand were killed, but nothing about the hundreds of thousands murdered and enslaved when you got your way and the US stopped trying to defend South Vietnam. Israel gets the same treatment: tons of criticism for a few innocent civilians who get killed when Israel attack terrorists who are hiding behind innocent civilians but nothing about these terrorists sending their own expendable women and children to bomb restaurants and buses, or when they fire rockets into towns to kill civilians.

Do you understand why Americans and Israelis look at this criticism and decide that you are nothing but a man who hates Americans and Jews? There is no reasoning, moral position that could lead to this sort of ridiculous lopsided criticism of the defenders while ignoring the much worse horrors committed by the aggressors. If you have any explanation for this attitude rather than irrational prejudice and hatred, I have yet to hear it.

 

Par and Brian good posts thank you.

Davey this is a conversation I cant reply to you wave around all over the place. However.

Wars every 20 years on Europe? what are you talking about, there were 2 in a century and England didnt start them. No --the accolade for warmongering in the last 'decade' would go to you.

Are you not aware that US abandoned our arms supplies at the end of the war because you thought we would not be able to pay and Canada paid our bills? Yes sounds terrible does'nt it. Ille wait for a Canadian to explain it to you. ( please read below)


No ofcourse you dont glamorise war, how popular was Rambo and any other silly movie with death and destruction with a super hero with bulging biceps and a huge big silly gun, Rambo was America fighting the world-- A true American film. Im sure you could come up with some more super American war hero's,-- and not even correct, U571 for instance was total fabrication it was Uk that got the inigma.
You love ********, you invented the word and embrace it. We made films of war but they were during the war for moral, not 60 years after.


Im not anti American I am anti American attitude occasionaly, waving a big foam number one finger is annoying sometimes when your 76th in the world at this and 40th in that,-- kinda gets a bit nausious.

My intention was not to wander over to the 2nd world war but I guess my point on the strategy of Hiroshima is now known.

 

Funny thing about all those horrible American films; they rake in more money overseas than they do at home. Look at the top grossing movies in England for the last twenty years; damn near all of them were American.

http://www.25thframe.co.uk/yearly_charts.php

I guess that's because, ummm, you know, we Americans bomb all the other countries, yeah... until they surrender, and uhh...force their own citizens to go see American films in their local theatres....yup, that's it.

Jeez... leave it to Frosty to confuse action movies for adolescent boys with American foreign policy.

 

Adolescent,!!! brilliant. that just about hits the nail on the head.


You described the movies as horrible --those were not my words,--no that would be the word for Snuff movies which I believe is yet another American gift to the world.

 

Perhaps you would care to explain this further?


Oh and frosty- you come from a long line of complainers:

"The British regarded us then as well-meaning but blundering intercessors whom they rather preferred to have on their island than the Jerries. We were, in the well-known phrase, 'overpaid, oversexed and over here', and we were in British eyes overdecorated, overstaffed, overmaintenanced and overbearing."

 

Well Im sorry Binti it is self explanatory.

Its about thee same time our backs were to the wall and we were nearly done, Churchill asked Trueman for any vessels --anything,- scrap ships --literally anything we could cobble up and use after all France was only 22 miles across the channel, Begging is the word.

'We have nothing suitable' is the exact historically correct reply.

And yes we were bankrupt. In this dire situation Trueman spoke the famous speech that brought America into the war " they make bombs while we make refrigerators' was one quote.

It was then that the terrible reality sunk in that after us was you and that your participation could no longer be delayed or you would be fighting a war on your own land, something Us has never done.

The Canadians paid for the shipment that the US denied us. all our gold went to the US. As I said before we won the battle but lost the war,--it was so close.

I have known a few men that fought in the war not too many left now. A Spitfire mechanic friend who I no longer see ,he is in uk now in a home ,he is 97.

He told me that when the American volunteers came to Biggin hill they would fly along with the Brits in Lanasters and Halifax etc etc . They seemed to return very quickly with bomb holds empty and un damaged. It was though what incredible pilots they were and were cheered and many pints bought for them at the pub,--untill--

It was found that they dropped bombs in the channel and returned home via the long way with excuses of being lost etc..

After that a British soldier had to fly with them with a gun to make sure the drop was properly completed.

And No-- you wont find that in a History book it would do no good to anyone, but yet is the story of a very old man that was there... I have unfortunately just recently heard it again from another completely different source.

You guys wont know this stuff, its not the Rambo thing you would go for is it?

It is for these reasons that when an American smiles at me and says " if it was'nt for us you would be speaking German" is probaly true but you don't know how hard that hurts because you know nothing but journalism.

So when you next smuggley say "we saved you arse' just have a thought you were contributory to it being there.