VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, [10] ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 00:47:02 08/08/08 Fri
Author: Prairie Dawg
Author Host/IP: 12.202.229.158
Subject: Re: Never forget: Hiroshima
In reply to: Ned 's message, "Never forget: Hiroshima" on 12:48:27 08/06/08 Wed

Hmmm....I know a couple old geezers who were grunts in the Pacific. They'll never forget it saved their asses.

One of them, a marine, once told me he knew when he got off Okinawa that the next motherfucker was the invasion of Japan and he knew he was going to die there, along with everyone he knew. He'd already started sending his stuff home and making up a will, last letters home to mom and dad because he KNEW he was never coming back, because the Japanese fought to the death all across the Pacific and they would in the home country.

They were mean sons of bitches who gave no quarter and treated our boys worse than any dog, not to mention what they did to ordinary folks in China, the Philippines and southeast Asia.

And ultimately that is what they got in return although it didn't seem to bother them overly much. Their sergeants and above were armed with swords and were not reluctant to use them on American fliers and other defenseless people when they fancied a little practice-which kind of makes you think that all that bushido crap was nonsense-they were cowards.

That bomb saved lives because it ended the war, right then and right there, no bullshit about it, no half ass feelers with the Swiss, pussyfooting around with the papal legation or anything-it was game-over, stick a fork in it because Japan was finished.

Knowing what we now know, there would have been peace only if Hirohito authorized it which he was not interested in doing-and Japanese diplomacy got a pretty bad reputation four years prior in the runup to Pearl-who in Washington or anywhere else would have trusted them?

One of the old geezers was a Navy man who served on a destroyer and they were in Nagasaki a couple weeks after the bomb had been dropped and the radiation sickness was frightful. Some sailors got hold of some sake and died from radiation poisoning drinking the stuff because the whole place was still blazing hot.

When you think about it, it's appalling that it took all that to get Hirohito's attention. He wasn't bothered about the firebombing of Tokyo either. Hirohito could have ended the war at any time with a phone call and none of this would ever have had to happen to his people. He was not a good steward.

So if I was a right thinking Japanese fellow right about now I'd have to say, if anyone was to blame for the horror that overtook Japan, it was Hirohito- the one man in the world who could have stopped it with a phone call, and he didn't until that bomb forced his hand. And it was not as if Japan-and the Emperor didn't know that the war was over for Japan by the beginning of 1945, either.

Well, it was the second bomb because the rotten son of a bitch had to watch his country take two nukes before he got the message.

It reminds me of a line from Walt Kelly's Pogo "We have seen the enemy and HE is US."

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.