This Day in History

[Raellus]

There's a logical fallacy here that I'd like to point out. I don't think one can justify the killing of Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by arguing that the Japanese [military] killed many civilians throughout Asia. The women and children and senior citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't the ones killing civilians in China and elsewhere, so they didn't really "earn" the fate that befell them. Most people wouldn't argue that Yugoslavian or French or Ukranian or Polish (etc.) civilians deserved to get shot by the Nazis as reprisals for partisan actions. That, in most people's minds, would constitute a clear war crime. Unfortunately, this standard gets tossed out the window when it could be applied to "enemy" civilians. I guess that I just don't believe in collective punishment.

From the standpoint of projected military and civilian casualties for planned invasion of the Home Islands, I can understand the reasoning to drop the bombs. Preserving the lives of American and Allied servicemen that surely would have perished during an invasion of the Home Islands is certainly a logical rationale. Considering that the Japanese high command was actively mobilizing civilians, including women and children, to participate in the defense of the Home Islands, civilian casualties in Japan would likely have been much higher than the toll exacted by the atomic bombings. In that sense, the bombings most liklely saved many Japanese civilian lives. There's a cold mathematical logic there that it is difficult to argue against.

That said, I wish a purely military target was selected for the first bombing, instead of a civilian population center. I think that would have been the more ethical path to tread.

To complicate things further, a secondary motive of the bombings was to demonstrate American power to the emergent Soviet Union. That this display cost tens of thousands of third party civilian lives is kind of messed up.

[dragoon500ly]

Flipping through a variety of military histories, I don't believe that there has ever been a war in which the civilians did not suffer to some degree, but the advent of the 20th Century has seen the concept of "Total War" which seeks to not only to defeat the enemy military on the field but to destroy his means to resist and to damage his will to continue to resist.

Americans like to delude themselves that we "fight fair", that we only "fight other soldiers", that "we use every means to avoid civilian losses", nothing can be further from the truth. Using B-17s (or B-52s) to target factories that manufacture war material is a great idea, but too many factories have neighborhoods nearby that house the workers and their families...and bombing from the air is not quite as accurate as we like to believe it is. And the Air Force is not the only service with this problem. Don't forget that in the Normandy fighting, the US Army reduced the town of St. Lo to rubble in an effort to blast its defenders out of their positions, just to name one example out of thousands.

In the US, the President simply issues broad guidelines to the Joint Chiefs and it is their responibility to issue the necessary orders to the theater commanders and so forth. Truman was faced with the hardest decision that any President ever had to make, not only did he have to make the decision to use atomic bombs, he also had to approve the target list. Based on the information that he had at the time, based on the ruthlessness that the Japanese military had shown, based on the willingness of Japanese civilians to kill themselves rather than endure capture at the hands of the Americans, faced with the predicted losses that the invasion of Japan would have meant, not only to the Allies, but to the Japanese as well, he made the decision to target two, untouched cities as a demonstration that the Allies were willing to reduce Japan to ashes. Faced with the prospect, finally, the Japanese made the decision to accept the offer and surrender.

Right or wrong, his decision has been blasted for the sixty odd years since he made it. It has become popular nowdays to mock Truman, to proclaim him a racist willing to end the war, now matter how many Japanese he had to kill and so on. Even serious scholars are willingly to follow the current fad and damn him as the man responsible for directly ordering the deaths of civilians in the most horrific manner possible.

For myself, I can only sit back and wonder at the courage he showed, at his willingless to make a decision to end the most terrible of wars at any cost, and above all the manner that he lived out the rest of his life, certain that he made the only decision possible.

[ArmySGT.]

Today in WW II: 23 Aug 1939 Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia sign a mutual non-aggression pact [Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement] with secret clauses giving the Soviets access to the Baltic states.

[Webstral]

I know a lot of people call into question the use of the Bomb on two Japanese cities. One has to wonder, though, whether it would be better to kill ten or a hundred times as many women and children in a more decentralized fashion. There is every reason to believe that the fighting for the Japanese home islands would have been every bit as bloody as Okinawa. The death toll among Japanese civilians would have been catastrophic—even compared to the death toll from strategic bombing to that point. A million American soldiers, a half-million British soldiers, four million or more Japanese soldiers, and 10 million or more Japanese civilians… To me, there’s no real choice. If you can save these lives by taking 100,000 in a spectacular fashion, take the 100,000 and call it bargain.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Webstral

A million American soldiers, a half-million British soldiers, four million or more Japanese soldiers, and 10 million or more Japanese civilians…

I'd like to think that the ANZACs would've been there too. Maybe not though, MacArthur basically froze us out near the end of the war. He had Aussie troops conducting operations in side theatres that were basically a waste of time. He obviously didn't think our guys rated. Try telling that to the men that fought on the Kokoda Trail, basically holding back the Japanese alone and buying time for Australia until the US committed troops.

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by Targan

I'd like to think that the ANZACs would've been there too. Maybe not though, MacArthur basically froze us out near the end of the war. He had Aussie troops conducting operations in side theatres that were basically a waste of time. He obviously didn't think our guys rated. Try telling that to the men that fought on the Kokoda Trail, basically holding back the Japanese alone and buying time for Australia until the US committed troops.

No argument from me! The ANZACs more than earned their reputation as Fighting Bastards!

[headquarters]

Opinions vary of this man - he did abandon his troops after the PI was overrun in 1942. He also advocated using nuclear weapons in Korea in 1951.

All in all - I think he had good taste in sunglasses

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Targan

I'd like to think that the ANZACs would've been there too. Maybe not though, MacArthur... obviously didn't think our guys rated. Try telling that to the men that fought on the Kokoda Trail, basically holding back the Japanese alone and buying time for Australia until the US committed troops.

I want to preface this post by admitting that I don't know a whole lot about Australia's military involvement in WWII. I'm not trying to stir up drama here, or insult anyone. I want the Australian perspective on this issue and that's why I'm posting this here.

In his history of the final year of the Pacific theater, Retribution, Max Hastings, a British historian, gives a scathing assessment of many Australian units in the Pacific theater, claiming that they fought neither hard nor well. He attributes this to the fact that the British sent the best Aussie units to fight in North Africa and Italy, leaving less well equipped, trained, and motivated troops behind to defend Australia. These units would later be sent to New Guinea and elsewhere in the PTO to fight the Japanese and, with a few notable exceptions, they did not perform particularly well. Hastings goes on to rip MacArthur for his costly vanity project of retaking the Philippines.

He also rips the Australian dockworkers for striking multiple times throughout the war, serious hampering Allied logistics.

How are these two issues seen by Australians? Is there anything there or is Hastings so sort of Australiophobe?

[weswood]

IMO, the whole not attacking civilians idiology came about because of WWII. During and prior to that war even civilised nations attacked civilian populations. I'm not as educated as a lot on this board but the bombing of Berlin by the Allies and the bombing of London comes imediately to mind. As far back in American history, during the French & Indian War, one of our early presidents had a reputation for destroying indian villages to deny thier fighters shelter & supplies. Even as far back as the first century of Christianity the Vikings had a reputation for sacking Churches, IMO because there were few warriors and good loot in them.

I think WWII was a turning point for civilised people, they (we) saw the horror of women & children killed not just during attacks but from diseases and starvation afterward. Note that I say civilised nations, there's still some out there that are bugfuck crazy.

[Jason Weiser]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I want to preface this post by admitting that I don't know a whole lot about Australia's military involvement in WWII. I'm not trying to stir up drama here, or insult anyone. I want the Australian perspective on this issue and that's why I'm posting this here.

In his history of the final year of the Pacific theater, Retribution, Max Hastings, a British historian, gives a scathing assessment of many Australian units in the Pacific theater, claiming that they fought neither hard nor well. He attributes this to the fact that the British sent the best Aussie units to fight in North Africa and Italy, leaving less well equipped, trained, and motivated troops behind to defend Australia. These units would later be sent to New Guinea and elsewhere in the PTO to fight the Japanese and, with a few notable exceptions, they did not perform particularly well. Hastings goes on to rip MacArthur for his costly vanity project of retaking the Philippines.

He also rips the Australian dockworkers for striking multiple times throughout the war, serious hampering Allied logistics.

How are these two issues seen by Australians? Is there anything there or is Hastings so sort of Australiophobe?

Rae,
I try not to take anything Hastings says too seriously. His book on Normandy was kinda insulting where he asserted the Germans were the finest army in the world at that point. I suppose in 1941, they were. But by 1944? Their finest was making all kinds of fatal land deals on the Eastern Front and what was left was concentrated in the Waffen-SS and select units. The rest? Pick from Soviet and Polish POWs, older reservists, the lame and the sick and occupation troops. And the way he denigrated all the Allies, well, John Keegan was so maddened by it, he wrote Six Armies in Normandy as a response. Much better book IMO.

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by Raellus

In his history of the final year of the Pacific theater, Retribution, Max Hastings, a British historian, gives a scathing assessment of many Australian units in the Pacific theater, claiming that they fought neither hard nor well. He attributes this to the fact that the British sent the best Aussie units to fight in North Africa and Italy, leaving less well equipped, trained, and motivated troops behind to defend Australia. These units would later be sent to New Guinea and elsewhere in the PTO to fight the Japanese and, with a few notable exceptions, they did not perform particularly well. Hastings goes on to rip MacArthur for his costly vanity project of retaking the Philippines.

He also rips the Australian dockworkers for striking multiple times throughout the war, serious hampering Allied logistics.

How are these two issues seen by Australians? Is there anything there or is Hastings so sort of Australiophobe?

I'm not an Australian, but a Pacific War student. It's kinda true, but not the whole truth.

The NZ (Wellington, IIRC) dockworkers' union were definitely not feeling any urgency in July '42, when the Marines needed to combat-load their ships before the Guadalcanal landings. Marines had to take over the docks. I'm not aware of any other incidents, that may have been the most serious.

Australia raised, IIRC, roughly 3 divisions before 1942, and two of those went to the Mediterranean, another went down at Singapore, so that left scattered small militia units to get overrun by the Japanese. If there had been more (and air cover) to make a real fight of Rabaul, that could have changed the course of the war. When those troops came back to fight on New Guinea, they struggled with the harsh terrain and slim logistics, but IMO they put in a better record than the green Americans in late 1942.

After that, it seems like MacArthur did his level best to sideline the Australians. It got to the point where there were Australian staff officers and units assigned to the Sixth US Army, so he created "Alamo Force", using only American elements to do all the same things that Sixth Army was supposed to do.