Soviet Attack Hastened End of World War II

[Wing Nut]

LONDON - On Aug. 8, 1945

[Wing Nut]

Interesting...  Kind of puts a new light on the Japanese surrender and whether the use of the atomic bomb was as necessary as has been told...

[FLYING_TRUCKER]

Hi Kevin

I often wonder about why people question the use of the two atomic bombs being dropped.

War is hell, it is as simple as that.

The two bombs saved countless Allied lives.  Talk to any veteran who came back from the Pacific Theater and they will tell you that not using the bombs would have been irresponsible of the Govenments in power.

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug

[ozzy72]

The Soviet aspect of WWII is often ignored except for a few battles, I am finding this area more and more interesting these days.
For example did you know that the Germans killed more Soviet soldiers as slave labour than all the Jews and Gypsies put together, but no one talks about it....

[ATI_7500]

The two bombs saved countless Allied lives.  Talk to any veteran who came back from the Pacific Theater and they will tell you that not using the bombs would have been irresponsible of the Govenments in power.

That's just one point of view. Did someone ever ask Japan for their opinions on the bombs?

[Scorpiоn]

The Soviet aspect of WWII is often ignored except for a few battles, I am finding this area more and more interesting these days.
For example did you know that the Germans killed more Soviet soldiers as slave labour than all the Jews and Gypsies put together, but no one talks about it....

I've often wondered of that myself, but don't say anything about it because I'm automatically a neo-nazi. Wait!  That's exactly what they used to call me at school!  Nickname: Nazi! Not sure how that one works out; I'm half Polish/Russian.

That's just one point of view. Did someone ever ask Japan for their opinions on the bombs?

I'm quite convinced the amount of American souls saved is laughable when compared to Japanese souls.  As far as I've known, the average Japanese citizen practically never hears of the war, as they're quite ashamed of it.  All they know of World War II is the atomic bombs and Pearl Harbor - not unlike the US.

[Ivan]

The conflict there provides the famous story about the Il-2 that was attacked until the japanese guy was out of ammo. The russian tailgunner was quoted afterwards "... and then i blew him out of the sky."

[Hagar]

That's just one point of view. Did someone ever ask Japan for their opinions on the bombs?

In fact they have been asked & I believe the great majority agrees that it was the right thing to do. The Japanese tend to be more philosophical than Westerners about these things.

[Minotaur]

They attacked the US w/o a formal declaration of war.

War Crimes:
Japan and Japanese citizens, mostly military forces, carried out a campaign of terror during World War II that is unsurpassed in bestiality and savagery in modern times. On top of combat losses, Asian and Allied nations lost millions of non-combatant dead to all causes: bombardment of cities, slave labor, massacres, summary executions, medical experiments, germ and gas warfare, beheading, beating and rape, stabbing, gun shot, hanging, torture, boiling alive, impaling on bayonets, burning alive, starvation, medical neglect, etc. Japanese businesses and the Kwantung Army cooperated in the operation of the Opium Monopoly Bureau to finance Japan's war machine with the creation of millions of Chinese addicts. At least 200,000 women were forced to serve as sex slaves. Allied POW survived World War II at a 2% rate in Nazi camps, but POW held by the Japanese died at more than a 37% rate ( list of camps). Of all the belligerents, only the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics treated POW with the same brutal indifference as Japan. In 1945, Japanese leaders ordered the death of all remaining POW, "leaving no trace". The Japanese reign of terror began in earnest in 1931. The nightmare did not end until late 1945, only after allied forces entered territories held by the Japanese, often days, weeks and even months after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 1945).

My estimate is that 11M civilians and 4.5M soldiers died in the Asian/Pacific War. That's 15,500,000 deaths which can probably be blamed on the Japanese to one extent or another.


Nuff said

[ozzy72]

Minotaur you have to consider that the only reason that war was not declared was due to the cock-up by the Japanese Embassy taking so long to translate the message for delivery to the US...
All in all a bit of a mess really.....

[Minotaur]

Minotaur you have to consider that the only reason that war was not declared was due to the cock-up by the Japanese Embassy taking so long to translate the message for delivery to the US...
All in all a bit of a mess really.....

Yes, I understand that and agree with you. But the fact remains that up until the Japanese attacked the US. They were trying to stay out of the war. Yes, they were sending aid to Britain all along. Yes, they would have probably eventually entered the war anyway.

I had 2 uncles that served in the Pacific during WWII and both had stories of the atrocities committed by the Japanese. One was even on a destroyer that was attacked by Kamikazes that injured him badly.

But when you consider the horrific things perpetrated by the Japanese on Nanking that are most notorious. Over the six weeks of the massacre, in addition to the murder of about 300,000 civilians, the Japanese troops raped over 20,000 women, most of whom were murdered thereafter.

Women of all ages (including children as young as seven and elderly women in their seventies) were violated, many of them being gangraped or attacked on multiple occasions. Some women were held captive so that the could be repeatedly abused. Rapes were committed in broad daylight, in front of spouses, children, or other family members, and with appalling frequency. The soldiers' usual practice, officially condoned by high-ranking officials so as to "avoid difficulties," was to murder the women when they were finished with them. This was most often done by cutting off their breasts and/or disemboweling them with a bayonet to the abdomen. Senior officers were not only aware of these acts, but participated in them as well.

Particularly disturbing is that the Japanese perpetrators derived great pleasure from these heinous crimes, while their superiors condoned and even supported them. One outstandingly revolting account is of several soldiers who, after raping and killing a pregnant woman, presented her fetus on a bayonet to their commanding officer, who replied with laughter. There were innumerable gruesome occurrences like this ...
acts of cruelty seemingly beyond human capacity ...but commonplace, in the massacre of Nanking.

This is but one in a long history of atrocities committed by the Japanese from 1931 through 1945. The Japanese as far as I'm aware are completely unrepentant about this, so why would one expect the US to be repentant about saving the lives of an estimated 1 million soldiers and God only knows how many non-combatants?

BTW, I have no hatred for the Japanese, in fact I dearly loved the country and it's people after my short stay there in the 1970's. I'm just stating historical facts.

[Felix/FFDS]

Minotaur you have to consider that the only reason that war was not declared was due to the cock-up by the Japanese Embassy taking so long to translate the message for delivery to the US...
All in all a bit of a mess really.....

Ozzy - but it doesn't change the basic fact - the attack was already going ahead, and had the Japanese ambassador delivered the "declaration of war" it would only have "formalized" a few minutes before the actual events.

For a hitorical parallel, just look at the Austro-Hungarian "ultimatum" to Serbia.  It was basically a document that no country could be expected to accept.  Serbia accepted the ultimatum, but Austria-Hungary nevertheless declared it wasn't enough and invaded anyway.

I think that the Russian entry into the war was more of a self-serving action on the part of the Soviets than a gesture of "solidarity"  with the Allies.  The Soviets most probably realized that if they weren't at war with Japan, they could not expect to be at the table when the the Japanese empire was partitioned up.

Another historical note.  THe Soviet Army of 1945 was not the purge-ravaged mass of 1938/39 (Nohoman incident which was basically a cock-up, unintentional border crossings while pursuing bandits that got out of control.  neither side was really going for territorial gains beyond what they already had.).  The Japanese Army of 1945 was not the same battle hardened army of teh Chinese conquest.  They were still solid and powerful, but by then the did not have the logistics, and possibly the experience,. the best troops having been sent elsewhere.   The Soviets already had better armament, tactics, and were more than capable of fighting over basically open ground.

[Scorpiоn]

Wasn't there some documentary awhile back about Allied Pacific atrocities?

There's two sides to every page...

[ozzy72]

Ozzy - but it doesn't change the basic fact - the attack was already going ahead, and had the Japanese ambassador delivered the "declaration of war" it would only have "formalized" a few minutes before the actual events.

I fully appreciate that Felix, I was just clarifying one of the statements made by Minotaur. For combat to be favourable you need at least two out of the three elements speed, aggression and surprise. The Japanese had all three at Pearl Harbour, the result was horrific but inevitable....
If the use of Ultra and other intelligence mechanisms hadn't been so closely guarded that commanders on the ground didn't know of intelligence coming from it then maybe Pearl Harbour could have been less damaging. Alas hindsight is always twenty-twenty

[Minotaur]

Wasn't there some documentary awhile back about Allied Pacific atrocities?

There's two sides to every page...

I'm certain there were and normally these came as a response to atrocities that have been witnessed. But I honestly haven't heard of any that on the scale that the Japanese or Germans did to allied troops.

I fully appreciate that Felix, I was just clarifying one of the statements made by Minotaur. For combat to be favourable you need at least two out of the three elements speed, aggression and surprise. The Japanese had all three at Pearl Harbour, the result was horrific but inevitable....
If the use of Ultra and other intelligence mechanisms hadn't been so closely guarded that commanders on the ground didn't know of intelligence coming from it then maybe Pearl Harbour could have been less damaging. Alas hindsight is always twenty-twenty

The Pearl Harbor attack was far worse than it should have been. The Japanese aircraft had been picked up on the then new fangled invention known as radar and though a trained operator figured it out in time to warn his superiors. Those superiors put it off as a flight of B-17's. Despite the fact that it was coming in from the NW instead of the East. That and the exceptional intelligent move of placing all aircraft in a group where they could be easily destroyed.