Was it a war crime when US nuked Hiroshima & Nagasaki?

It was all Grant's fault

This is just a wild guess MA, but I'm thinking he may have been an early practioner of those infamous embellished headcounts, that were so widely used in the vietnam War.

Boys from Ann Arbor petitioned the Governor to form a Michigan cavalry regiment. The response was so enthusiastic, a Michigan Brigade was formed. The USMA class of 1862 was hurried through and graduated in August, 1861. Custer sucked up for all he was worth, and got a position on McClellan's staff. When the wind began to set in another direction, and McClellan's barque looked like sinking, Custer desparately cast about for another job. Influential friends convinced the Michigan Governor to give Custer the command of the proposed cavalry regiment. So, in fact, Custer remained a Lieutenant in the Regular Army of the United States, but became a Colonel of United States Volunteers. He got no promotion when the Michigander troopers were brigaded, however, about which he complained loudly and often, leading career officers to despise him more than they previously had, which appears to have been quite a gymnastic feat.

At Gettysburg, Stuart's cavalry arrived very late, and took up a position on the Harrisburg Pike on the Confederate left. One of the cavalry divisions of the Army of the Potomac was commanded by Judson Kilpatrick, as ambitious a son of a bitch as ever sacrificed his men on the altar of career ambition. He was commonly known to the trooper as "Kilcavalry." He ordered a thoroughly pointless charge, to which WHF Lee responded with an equally pointless charge, and the nasty little cat fight continued for hours. The following day, Kilpatrick shifted to the Confederate right, and the futile gestures were continued. The two brigades in Third Cavalry Division which were in action were commanded by Custer and Brigadier Elon Farnsworth. Farnsworth was a professional from head to toe with plenty of experience and a due regard for the common trooper which lead them to follow him anywhere. Unfortunately for Farnsworth, a great many of them followed him into death. With Farnsworth dead, and Kilpatrick looking to burnish his own military star, a glowing recommendation of the despised Custer was now in order to keep up appearances. Custer was breveted Brigadier for those two days on the fringes of the Gettysburg debacle.

In 1864, during the Wilderness campaign, Grant sent his cavalry on an extended raid toward Richmond, command by Phil ("The only good Indian I ever saw was dead.") Sheridan. At Yellow Tavern, Stuart in person arrived after a breakneck ride from the Wilderness, where he and his troopers had narrowly prevented Grant from swamping Lee's right flank, and interposed themselves between Sheridan and Richmond. In the ensuing, very nasty fire fight, one of the Michiganders fired an old-fashioned single-shot horse pistol at the Southern troopers after being unhorsed, as one of his comrades came to pick him up. That pistol ball hit Stuart, and he was dead soon after.

With little real accomplishment to show for the raid, once again, the high-ranking officers set out to congratulate one another in fine form, and this time, Custer was personally credited in the minds of the American public with killing that bogey-man of their military nightmares, James Ewell Brown Stuart. So Custer was again breveted, this time to Major General. I am reminded of your earlier "Peter Principle" remark, although in Custer's case i think it applied as soon as he was given a command larger than a standard guard mount.

As for J. E. B. Stuart, for all of his vainglory and love of military finery and trinkets, he was a good-natured, mild-mannered and very polite man, who was a deeply devoted christian (oh, the irony) and therefore became a close friend of the devout, taciturn and drab Thomas Jackson. Together, they established and promoted a chaplains corps for the Army of Northern Virginia, and promoted the "camp meeting" revivalist movement which swept through the Southern armies in the latter portion of the war.

People are just so goddamned odd, you know?

To quote that Aussie hare: "Yeppers."

Set, Good post on the Michigan calvary regiment; and the men that made our history. Thanks.

You wonderful person.

Thank you C.I.

Little known is the fact that Japan offered to surrender early on, on the condition that the emperor not be touched (he wasn't touched anyway in the end). Truman choose not to accept the surrender, and consequently tens of thousands of Americans died, completely destroying his argument that he did it to "save American lives". He did it to show the USSR the whatfor. They were schedueled to attack Japan on the 8th of August (as confirmed by the Yalta conference). America didn't want them turning it into a communist state like they did to the Iron Curtain only months before, so two days before the scheduled declaration of war, they bombed Hiroshima. According to Guiness book 155,200 died at Hiroshima or within a year of radiation poison. 74,000 more at Nagasaki. That makes 230,000 killed total. And all for a show of power. The INTERIM commitee on July 1, 1945 send truman a letter saying the bomb should be exploded without warning the residents before hand, and to explode it in an area where the houses and buildings were, qoute, "most succeptible to damage." Hiroshima was this place. It's houses were close together and wooden. The bomb flattened and burned the whole city. It had been carefully choosen to maximize civilian casualties. That's what sickens me. It's no different in concept than Hitler's Blitz on London. Kill enough people to destroy the spirit (of the already oiless, foodless, navy less, air force less, Japanese) so they will surrender.

welcome to a2k morph

I'm tempted to agree with the general thrust of your argument. But I dont think you can compare Hiroshima and Nagasaki with London.

You make the point that Japan was willing to surrender earlier, and then say the bombs forced them to surrender. This does not follow. What changed imo was American acceptance of the Japanese surrender after the bombs had been used.

I think it was a demonstration of American power, not to Japan but to the Russians as you say, and a particularly disgusting experiment which could only take place in time of war. There are others on this thread who strongly object to this thesis, as you may see.

But the question is Was it a Crime? This is still unanswered to my mind.

One point that should be considered is that this "early" surrender offer that Truman rejected, came on August 10, after both A-bombs had been dropped.

As for Truman's motives, he wanted to force acceptance of our terms with minimal loss of American life.

It is likely that he could have saved more American lives if he had been willing to forgo forcing Japan to accept our surrender terms, but that was not acceptable. (In fact, if the goal was simply to save American lives, we could have surrendered the day after Pearl Harbor and saved quite a few lives.)


I am skeptical that tens of thousands of Americans died between Truman rejecting Japan's offer and Japan accepting our terms.

I'm sure some died though.





That is incorrect. He did it to show Japan the whatfor.





However, they were lagging behind in their commitment, and were going to enter the war a couple weeks late.

When Truman told Stalin the A-bombs were a success, Stalin rushed to get into the war on the date he promised.





I'm sure we would have preferred that they not be Communist. However, our primary concern was just making Japan accept our terms without having to resort to a bloody invasion.





The Hiroshima figures are a little high.

Reliable estimates range from 90,000 - 140,000 for Hiroshima, and 60,000 - 80,000 for Nagasaki.

20,000 of the dead at Hiroshima were fresh soldiers awaiting deployment.





Well, if Japan hadn't been committing such horrible crimes, we wouldn't have felt the need to give them such a dramatic show of power.





It was chosen because it was a target that would maximize the dramatic impact of the scale of the destruction to the Japanese government, and because it was a target with significant military import.

It is significant that Japan only offered to surrender on our terms after the first two bombs were used.

And even when they made their unacceptable offer of surrender, we responded by delaying the third A-bomb for three days.





Well, Truman did fear that the Soviets would delay entry into the war for quite some time, and he hoped that the fact that we had functioning A-bombs would get them to get into the war earlier.

It turns out that the Soviets were only going to be a couple weeks late - not nearly as long as Truman feared, but Truman was right in his belief that the A-bombs would spur the Soviets into action.


But the main target of the show of power was the government of Japan.





All militaries make an effort to take note of the effects when a weapon is used in combat for the first time.





Do the customary laws of war require an effort to discriminate between civilian and military targets?

Did the A-bombings make an effort to discriminate against civilian and military targets?

Oralloy

We have had this discussion many times. You say the bombs forced the Japanese to change their minds. I say the bombs allowed the Americans to change theirs.

Why was the Japanese offer to surrender prior to the bombing deemed unacceptable, when the only condition they made, regarding the treatment of the Emperor, was in fact granted to them after the bombing?

Conversely, if American plans for the future of Japan entailed the installation of a constitutional monarch, and Japan was willing to surrender providing the Emperor was treated decently, why was the war not ended before the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?


Your last 2 questions


Do the customary laws of war require an effort to discriminate between civilian and military targets?

Did the A-bombings make an effort to discriminate against civilian and military targets?


1. Yes
2. No

So are you saying the abombings were contrary to the laws of war and were therefore a crime?

Oralloy

We have had this discussion many times. You say the bombs forced the Japanese to change their minds. I say the bombs allowed the Americans to change theirs.

Why was the Japanese offer to surrender prior to the bombing deemed unacceptable, when the only condition they made, regarding the treatment of the Emperor, was in fact granted to them after the bombing?

Conversely, if American plans for the future of Japan entailed the installation of a constitutional monarch, and Japan was willing to surrender providing the Emperor was treated decently, why was the war not ended before the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?


Your last 2 questions


Do the customary laws of war require an effort to discriminate between civilian and military targets?

Did the A-bombings make an effort to discriminate against civilian and military targets?


1. Yes
2. No

So are you saying the abombings were contrary to the laws of war and were therefore a crime?

Not exactly.

I say that we dropped the bombs in the hope that it would change Japan's minds.

Japan, however, was going to change their mind regardless of the bombs, once the Soviets went to war against them. We just didn't realize it.





But we didn't change our mind.





The offer came on August 10, after the second A-bomb.

It was unacceptable because we had no intention of granting them any guarantee for the Emperor.

And we did not grant them such a guarantee at any point. When Japan accepted our terms, the only guarantee regarding the Emperor was that MacArthur would have the power to depose the Emperor at will.





Before August 10, Japan's government had four unacceptable terms:

a) that the Emperor retain full sovereignty as ruler of Japan

b) that there be no occupation of the Japanese home islands

c) that Japan be in charge of trying their own war criminals

d) that Japan be in charge of standing down their own military forces


We didn't know these terms because they did not try to communicate them to us, but we did know that they were seeking terms that were not compatible with the what we were demanding of them.





Yes.

Hey, this war of words is gonna last longer than the war. LOL

Is this horse dead yet? Do i have time for a few more licks before it gets hauled off to the knacker's yard?

Yeah, go ahead, Set. Another voice would be welcome.

This has probably been posted SOMEWHERE in this thread, I just cant slog through 68 pages of posts to find it.

The Military, in 1998, finally came down to its last 100,000 Purple Heart medals that it contracted for with the company Graco. It took 53 years of wars and combat to use up 4/5ths of the Purple Heart medals that it had expected to award for the invasion of Japan.



LINK

It is the height of arrogance to 'Monday Morning Quarterback' the people who were on the scene and living with the expectations of watching a HALF A MILLION Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines get wounded or killed and judge them as criminals in droping a weapon that could, in one fell swoop, eliminate the need for all those deaths.

well oralloy you amaze me

you say it was a criminal act

yet allthis time you have put forward justifications for it.

Set if you would care to post anything by way of arbitration (anything less than 100 pages that is) I would abide by that

Steve - to my certain knowledge Oralloy has on one of the previous pages here acknowledged that dropping nuclear weapons on Japan was indeed a war crime, but that it was executed in a good cause.

That is my position on the subject also - on the off chance you wished for it!