Grave_n_idle wrote:NERVUN wrote:Grave_n_idle wrote:So, because I'm saying something that doesn't match what the administration claimed and because the administration did not make declarations that what actually happened was not what had actually happened (crazy, I know) it's 'revisionism' (because, obviously, I'm actually rewriting the history here, rather than just claiming that the excuses used were false)?
Some of Truman's advisors told him to use Little Boy on barren areas. Some others claimed that Little Boy needed to be used on a settled area. That was an actual choice that was made - to drop a pure symbol, or to inflict massed casualties. We carefully positioned observors, and then repositioned them half a week later.
The logic suggests we wanted to kill people, rather than just scare people. The logic suggests we wanted to see what happened when you dropped nuclear devices on civlian areas (we'd already tested the technology here).
There is nothing revisionist or illogical about what I'm saying. It just doesn't match the propaganda you were raised on.
No, Galloism is quite right, you have nothing coming close to proof.
So I'll join him, bull fucking shit.
Let me repeat that, bull shit.
Do I need to do it again? Ok, bull shit.
You have nothing until you can come up with a source for your claims.If it's 'bullshit' then there can be no evidence... which is, of course, what you (were raised to) expect.
Raised? Oh, you mean the 5 years of study I put in at my university on Japan, it's culture and history? You mean the close to two decades of informal study I have made of WWII? You mean the 5 years I have spent here in Japan reading up on what was going on in Japan at the end of WWII? THAT raised?
What do YOU got?However, Truman's own personal writings reveal that HE fully believed that Japan were going to surrender anyway - and not only were our own forces aware of this, but many important people (especially in the military) were telling Truman NOT to attack civilian centres, and agressively condemned the move after the fact. Add to that - experts believed that Truman was lying about the risk of lost American lives if we HAD engaged militarily. One evaluation suggested that a WORST-case scenario for American casualties... would have been less than 50,000. We actually LOST American lives because we refused to entertain the ONE Japanese concern for surrender (survival of the Emperor) until AFTER the two bombs were dropped.
Oh I love you. Thank you for bringing up these wonderful points that I can shred. Point one, Truman had stated that much embellished figure of 1 million, but the figures that were being used by Truman were probably one done by the Joint Chiefs which showed "in April 1945, the figures of 7.45 casualties per 1,000 man-days and 1.78 fatalities per 1,000 man-days were developed. This implied that the two planned campaigns to conquer Japan would cost 1.6 million U.S. casualties, including 370,000 dead" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_ove ... o_invasion There's also a WONDERFUL walk though about what could have been waiting for us here: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/giangrec.htm so this wasn't just a fricken walk though the park and Truman KNEW it.
And 2, I'd LOVE too address this "Oh, if ONLY we had let them know they could keep the Emperor" idea. There are three reason why that wouldn't have been possible, one is political, one is diplomatic, and one is with the understanding of just what the hell the Japanese were asking for. The political reason is simply that the US had been working on unconditional surrender, it simply would not have been possible, after 4 years of war and sacrifice to suddenly tell the American people, "Well, we don't actually MEAN unconditional". The second, the diplomatic one, is a mirror of the first. The US had already agreed to the Potsdam Deceleration to accept unconditional surrender only from Japan. This was agreed with both the USSR AND the UK, again, the US could not have unilaterally suddenly declared, "We changed our minds". Finally though, and this is what I LOVE from these threads, the fact that no one actually bothers to read up on Japan before jumping in, when Japan wanted to secure the status of the emperor, they weren't talking about the emperor as he is now, the symbol of the state and the unity of the people, but the emperor as he was under the Meiji Constitution, you know, pretty much having absolute power that could be exploited by the military, like it HAD been. This would have been like saying that we would accept the surrender of Germany and allow Hitler to remain in power with all the powers given to him.
Yeah, BRILLIANT idea there.It's interesting - there's a lot of evidence out there (that people like you and Gallo ignore). The only place where I am saying anything even vaguely revolutionary - is that most scholars argue the tests were designed to scare the soviets, rather than just to test the weapons.
And this 'exploded myth' isn't new - here's an article from 15 years ago:
http://www.csmonitor.com/1992/0806/06191.html
Yeah, an article that claims that the scholarly consensus is that... Bullshit. This is still hotly argued between scholars. There is no consensus and NOTHING that I have read (And believe me, I have read a lot on this topic, from BOTH sides of the Pacific), has claimed in all seriousness that the bombings were made JUST to test them.
And you STILL have not shown proof of the above. Do you actually have anything?