Hiroshima on TV
 

Before the AccyWeb Bleeding Heart Society shed tears for the victims of the Atom Bonbing, I wonder if anyone thinks a better balance would have been struck if the programme had been preceeded by a documentary showing the treatment meeted out to P.O.Ws ?

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The other relevant question is "How many lives did dropping the bomb save". I certainly do not accept that Japan was on its knees in the summer of 1945;as such, the only way to finish them would have been an invaision of their mainland. Given the Japanese tactics used on the outlying islands, allied planners put the cost of this in Japanese lives at anywhere between 1m & 5 million civilians alone (not to mention Japenese & Allied military lives)

I therefore have no sympathy whatsoever with the Japanese sense of victimisation; as a nation, they are still in self denial over their endless catalogue of war crimes starting in Manchuria in the 1930's through Pearl Harbour and their evil treatment of Allied POWs.

Sod this Japanese and western bleeding-heart whinging; I have no time for it.

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Exactly tealeaf. The bombs happened, they had to happen - they saved a lot more lives than they took away. Thank goodness it was the americans that got the bomb first, thats all I can say!

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agree with tealeaf 100% yeh we know the devastion @ aftermath were terrible,but at the end of the day many more lives would have been lost if it had not happened.also noticed they said at the end that japan is a NO WAR at ANY PRICE country since,and giving japanese history thats a great result.

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Who are the Accy Web bleeding hearts? Am I one? Do I get a little bleedin' badge?

If you are fighting a war you use everything at your disposal to win. The Allies had the atomic bomb and used it to end the war in the East against the Japanese. This doesn't mean you can't sympathise with the death and mutilation this event caused, just as you can feel pity and sadness for the civilian victims of the Blitz.

The fact that there hasn't been a world was on this scale for sixty years, speaks volumes about the decision to use the two atomic bombs in Japan.

Do I have to hand my badge in now?

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it was inevatable a bomb of that nature would be used sooner or later, lets just hope the need never arises again.We spend time correcting the past and not enough time saving the future.

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Without wanting this to be directed at you Mr Rindy..

So if as we should think that we at WAR against the terrorists then why are we not using everything at our disposal against them now. We are more concerned with PC and how we are seem by others than doing what we should be doing i.e. taking all possible actions against those who seek to destroy us.

Ian

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I have to agree with Mr T and the lads. It was a war in which technology give birth to some pretty grime experiences for all concerned. We should not forget the many hundreds of British women and children who also died at the hands of the Japanese. What I get sick of is how we are expected to apologise for what happen 60 odd years ago. It happened; those that started it did not give any concern for there victims and many of them still believe they where in the right. It’s now part of our history and we have got to recognise and accept what happened. I don’t object to anyone remembering these events but we should never be made to feel guilty or ask to apologise for the actions of our servicemen (and Women) or those of our leaders they all did what they had to do at the time….

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Terrorists are an unseen enemy. I don't really see the equation?

Just because in a different thread I've criticised the police not releasing information, so as to stop the suspected suicide bomber from becoming a martyr if he had of been a Muslim, and perhaps leading to more bloodshed, I don't see the relevance.

I fully support the war against terrorism, sadly there is no enemy to bomb, they are hidden everywhere.

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It’s called seek and destroy Garinda, even unseen enemies can be brought to boot, the only difficult in our country is we’ve lost the morel ground to the nimbi’s, the PC brigade and those who plead innocents but go on to support those that inflict terror on us. The British military and security force will get out there and do the job. The last thing they want is pillocks bleeding information to the unseen enemy so that they can avoid justice or a bullet.

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I'm just stating a fact. Terrorists are an unseen enemy just like the IRA were, that is there point. A nuclear weapon can't be used against them. There are no diplomatic channels to go through, and no country to bomb.

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I get mighty tired of our own side calling us terrorists and murderers and and all that crap. On another site on which I post I am a minority among bleeding heart liberals who do nothing but pull to pieces the British and American governments. Here is a response I posted on the subject of the Hiroshima bomb.

You are right, many thousands of people in Hiroshima died on that fateful day. However, I wonder how many lives were saved because those people lost theirs. The dropping of the two atomic bombs brought Japan to its knees and resulted in their surrender. America was at the time preparing to invade Japan and many thousands of war-weary soldiers on both sides were set to lose their lives. When war is waged on the ground in any country, it is impossible not to have many civilian lives lost in the fighting. I'm quite sure that most of the Japanese people thought that their country was 'in the right' and would have looked upon the Americans as an unjust invading army who would rape, pillage and generally strip the country of its assets and freedom, and this could well have resulted in many civilians taking up arms and killing and dying also. Let's just remember here who started the bloody war in the first place. Had the bombs not been dropped, the resulting ground offensive could have killed just as many Japanese as did the bombs. The fact that they were dropped undoubtedlly saved many American lives.
Let us now look at the aftermath. Did America go in and take over the country, strip it of its assets and enslave the Japanese people? No. Japan is now one of America's biggest trading partners and was given a great deal of help after the war to help their trade and help them to be accepted back into the world as a respected country. They're doing very nicely thank you. Same with Germany. Would America have been afforded the same consideration if Japan had won the war? I think not. Would England have been afforded the same consideration by Germany if they had won the war? I think not. It seems to me that a lot of people are forgetting that, generally speaking, we're the bloody good guys.

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Its interesting that we've also had the same crap from some Germans, with a large number of them now referring to Churchill & Sir Arthur Harris as "War Criminals", on the basis that the British and US strategic policy of bombing German cities from 1942 onwards was no more than terror bombing and had little military usefulness, with the bombing of Dresden being a classic example.

I'm sorry, Herr Fritz, but you're wrong, matey. At least you got to shoot down Lancasters and B17's and lynch the pilots. The Nazis were the ones who begin the policy of laying waste cities, starting with Guernica, then Warsaw,Rotterdam and London...they sowed the seed and then they reaped the whirl wind. Except our technology was bigger and better than theirs. - although I really do think there was nothing greater than a terror weapon than the V1's and V2's of 1944/45.

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Churchill & Sir Arthur Harris were men of their time, without these leaders and the men that followed them we would have been finished.

Do you like my new no swearing policy?

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Given that this year is the 60th anniversary of the end of WW2, it might have been a good idea to have put piccy of the WW2 leaders on stamps, or even better, bank notes. Bomber Harris on the back of a ten quid note, with Viscount Slim on the back of a twenty,would go down well, I think (although possibly not with our German and Japanese tourist visitors)

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I wouldn’t mind the idea of a set of commemorative Stamps…I hope that when Gayle becomes involved in the thread and I value her opinion in the same respectful way as anyone else’s. I do hope that there will be Photographs of our war time leaders on display both civil as well as Military at the VE-VJ celebrations……………

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My vote for someone to go on a commerative stamp would be Alan Turing. His breaking of the U-boat Enigma code helped save hundreds if not thousands of lives in the Battle of the Atlantic. He is also regarded of the father of modern computing and early software design. Sadly he took his own life because of his homosexuality in 1954, when we lived in a less tolerant society than today.

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They do have quite a nice statue of him, sitting on a bench in the middle of a little park in the centre of Manchester.

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Turing, Barnes Wallis and the likes of Frank Whittle are all unsung heroes of war, like many others that worked ceaselessly and unselfishly for there country and people and never sought publicity other than to promote funding for there good work. There are many others to be yet identified who did just as much…….can we keep sexuality out of this one please…………

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I also agree that Churchill was a great wartime leader, but my Great Grandfather, veteran of the Boar War and WWI, never forgave him for s***ing on the working man in the Great Strike. Also he's already featured on a set of stamps in 1965 the year I was born.

I have seen the statue of Turing, I think I tried to talk to him when I was tipsy once.

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Just stating a fact, that was the reason he gave in his suicide note. My Grandfather died in the same war aged twenty two to give me the freedom to state the fact. Sorry if it offends you, i'm not making an issue of it.

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[QUOTE=garinda]I also agree that Churchill was a great wartime leader, but my Great Grandfather, veteran of the Boar War and WWI, never forgave him for s***ing on the working man in the Great Strike. Also he's already featured on a set of stamps in 1965 the year I was born.


And your point is? Did not Mrs Thatcher do the same? Win a war and then fought against the people…its called politics….

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In the General Election following the war, the British public showed their thanks by voting against him. Typically British.

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I regularly have a chat with him about how the match went, round about 6.45 on a Saturday when I'm wending my way home from the IES. He's a good listener.

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We are, you asked me to keep sexuality out of it, I thought the reason for his his taking his own life was relevant re: freedom, that's all.

Off thread sorry, A-b said we hadn't been invaded since 1066 in another thread which I can't find. This was true for mainland Britain, though of course Jersey was invaded and occupied by Germans in 1940.

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Turing did not leave a suicide note; although the cause of death was an apple contaminated with arsenic, the motive behind his death remains a mystery and one theory is that he was dealt with by the security forces because like a lot of gays he was a major security risk (think Burgess, Maclean, Blunt). He had also been convicted of a crime 2 years previously.

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Yes the bomb was a good idea. They treated prisoners badly and I wonder how many civilians were killed in Pearl Harbour and other attacks? Wonder how many people burned to death there?

I was a little annoyed at the BBC for the way they made the program; as if it was America's fault. If it hadn't had been dropped, there would have been a lot more wars since and up to now. At that time it was the right thing to do to end the blooshed.

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ah but if the Yanks had made it it would have all been our fault! :)

But then again, they won the battle of Britain for us and the whole of WW2 was sorted out by them according to the way they tell the story now

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That was before they saw the destruction.

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I thought that they used an enigma machine rescued from a capture U-Boat for deciphering the Enigma code and that it was other codes that he deciphered with his computer machine thingy.

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I always wondered why the statue had an apple in his hand - now I realise the significance!

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In perspective but on a greatly smaller scale. Troops are always jubilant in victory are when they have a result in Battle. It’s not personal it’s a way of dealing with a lot of feelings, its gallows humour……In NI a company of a famous unit had a big sign in the bar. It read “Vauxhall Astra –Built by robots, Stopped by D. Coy” to visiting troops and other services thought it was hilarious, but it commemorated the deaths of a number of joy riders including a beautiful young girl which these lads had to come to terms with in their own way…….any victory will be celebrated, get use to it because no matter how unpalatable it is if they stop doing so, they will stop coping………..

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Nobody will ever know whether it was suicide or not. However, his conviction for homosexuality had resulted in the courts ordering him to undergo a course of oestrogen injections to control his libido. This, plus the close attention of the authorities, might have cause him to snap.

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[QUOTE=WillowTheWhisp]
Wasn't the "crime" he was convicted of that of being homosexual and having a personal relationship with another man? QUOTE]

There has never been a crime of being a homosexual in this county; what was a crime, until 1967, was the committment of homosexual acts between adults. The law was changed in that year to allow for such acts between consenting adults and has since been amended to reduce the age to 16 (In other words, a paedophile's charter). So its quite simple; Turin, however great a mathematician and scientist, had been found guilty of committing a crime and as such was a criminal. End of story.

We appear to have digressed somewhat from the theme of this thread, that of the ethical and strategic case for nuking Japs in 1945. I know that 'Owd Bert does have a personal interest in this because had the US not done so he would have spent the following months and possibly years fighting his way up through the Japanese mainland, with all the risk of injury and death. However, I suspect he may be pleasantly surprised by the relative absence of whinging, do-gooding idealists on here and the fact that most of this younger generation would have been more than happy to join Capt Tibbets aboard the Enola Gay and press the bomb release button when the time was right.

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A good point raised by Tealeaf there. Thousands of British and Commonwealth troops were already in theatre waiting to support mainland landings by the yanks…The Royal Navy was also there in numbers and the RAF was readying to redeploy much of the European Tactical Air Force to the Far East under Tiger Force. British losses would have been tremendous and many of our fathers and Grandfathers wouldn’t have made it back. That means we might not be here……………

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"We appear to have digressed somewhat from the theme of this thread, that of the ethical and strategic case for nuking Japs in 1945. I know that 'Owd Bert does have a personal interest in this because had the US not done so he would have spent the following months and possibly years fighting his way up through the Japanese mainland, with all the risk of injury and death. "

Thanks for mentioning it Tealeaf-- Yes, I was a 22year old out in India, with a girl to come back to. Prospects seemed much rosier when training was halted to tell us the news.

So I am unashamedly biased.

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Have we any nuclear physicists on here. Two of the girls who survived the Hiroshima bomb were said to have been within 250 metres of the epicentre of the explosion yet they have lived into their eighties. So just how dangerous is exposure to radioactivity?

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The apple was actually poisoned with cyanide. I wouldn't be as impertinent as to suggest you are always wrong, as you recently did with me, but on this occasion you are wrong. Nor would he be open to blackmail, because of his sexuality, which in such a sensitive position is surely a good thing.

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So an equal age of consent for people is a paedophiles charter? You do talk some absolute, vile crap sometimes.

The equalising of the age of consent to 16 for all young people, regardless of sexual orientation brought equality of freedom to all. Was the age of consent ok when it was 16 for hetrosexual girls and boys and lesbian girls? Is it just homosexual boys you have a problem with?

Whatever the age, rightly or wrongly being 16, it should be the same for all. Boys are no more prey to paedophiles than girls are to lecherous older men at the age of 16.

My parents lived with the knowledge that from the age of 17 to 21 I could of been imprisoned for the sexuality I was born with, NOT CHOOSEN. Although, I was classed as mature enough to have joined the army and perhaps given my life for my country, and of course old enough to vote. It was just the gender of the person I may or may not gone to bed with [in private] that the State feared for my innocence.

[Sorry Willow you had alreaDy corrected the cyadide mistake before I got to this post.]

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I think the thread started to wander when Entwisi mentioned terrorism then someone else mentioned Churchill and commerative stamps.

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To be pedantic, it was entwisi in post 8 with terorists, and Tealeaf in post 16 with commerative stamps that were the first two threads to leave the subject of Hiroshima.

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Sorry. Double post.:(
Blames shaking typing finger.:(

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With respect neither has anything to do with young boys…..A nuke is a terror weapon and Churchill certainly assisted the yanks with the device at the centre of the question. That’s not the point I was making Gary. We should show some respect to Owd Bert has the originator of the question and leave sexuality out of it…….We’re all a little responsible for the wander myself, Ian and Tea included, but in post 46 Owd Bert made the point that we had digressed. My point is that we should show him some respect and return to and stick to the origins of what is a very serious post.

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Point taken, as we just agreed in our pm's. Just stating that it had already wandered before Tealeaf mentioned a paedophiles charter, which I strongly felt I had to answer.

My first post in this thread was going so well. Far from being a wooly liberal, I seemed to be in the same boat as everyone else, even the defender of young boy's virtues.;)

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Eh? Read the title of the tread again....this is 60 years since the dropping of the bomb and that TV programme (along with several others) with its partial and slanting presentation of the facts is part of the commemeration. I can't see any problem with bringing up this notion of commemeration. In fact, if I'd have had my way I'd have brought out stamps....

Nagasaki 9th August 1945 2nd class (with Mushroom cloud backdrop)

Hiroshima 6th August 1945 1st Class (with flattened city backdrop)

Kamikaze Pilot on Okinawa going down in flames (40p)

Formal Surrender on Missouri (68p)

If we can lauch a stamp series called "The best of ITV" (coming soon) then I see no reason why we should'nt have had a VJ series of stamps. Afterall, come mid-October, we shall be having Trafalgar stamps.

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However, a line at the bottom of each stamp will read "commemorating the victory of the red team over the blue team" so as not to cause offence to the French and Spanish.

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tell me you are winding us up wynonie pleeeeeeese

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Yes, I am, but nothing would surprise me in present-day Britain.

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thats exactly why i asked the question, i despair sometimes, maybe if they ever drop another i would suggest on a remote island filled with the politically correct brigade and the rest of the dogooders. ;)