US bombing of Hiroshima Nagasaki was it a act of terrorism?

Dude, come down..What people tried to tell you is that when at war you got understand that there will always be civilian casualties. No one will be silly enough to drop a bomb for fun, but it was necessary.The issue come down to how many lives did it save??.

 

So basicly you support killing innocent kids to save other lives, correct?

I'll like to get answer on one question if you don't mind: since when intentionally killing civilians durings wars isn't war crime?

 

So you also support killing innocent civilians to save lives?
What do you think how terrorists explain their attacks on civilians?

 

Indefinitely does not mean infinitely.

I am not sure if you are just confusing your English words or you are seriously don't understand. Since you continue to argue, I have no choice but to assume you are too dumb to comprehend the meaning of those two words. Do you care to tell us where that the word indefinitely means "unlimited, without end"?

This still cracks me up.

Yeah. I hate to jump on people here who probably speak English as a 2nd or 3rd language, but when they insist on wrong meanings of words after people explain it over and over there is really only one conclusion to make.

I don't know about always getting what you ask for. I am already blessed living in freedom and with a loving family and a wonderful wife and a beautiful little boy.

Thanks for caring.

 

*ahem* English is my third language. Please be nice to us. We really do try!

 

Yet you feel the need to abuse rep system on internet forum... I have no other choices than assume how phatetic your life must be. Keep insulting me and see what will come out of it...

 

I knew some of them had held out for a while, but 1974! Wow. Thanks for the interesting tidbit!

That sounds heavenly! You really are blessed!

You don't seem to be making friends, MP. *shakes head*

 

*ahem* I have one question if you don't mind: did they knew when will Japan surrender after they drop bombs? Or even one easier: where they sure they will surrender after droping bombs?

Being so smart (opposite to me ) you will not have problems answer those two questions...

 

You are the one that is whining. Everyone has provided facts to you, but, you cease to realize them. It's ok, you should look up the definition of indefinitely, you may learn something.

 

1. They did not know when they would before they dropped the bombs. Have to try.

2. No one can be sure of anything.

And I'm curious what you are going to do to someone leaving you neg. rep on the forum. Please, indulge us.

 

Facts? Which facts? Definition of indefinitely?
Well that's a tons of facts for sure and surely proves that frying 1000s of kids were justified...
Second, everyone? You call few peeps on forum everyone?
And third, when I read how m42 used word "indefinitely" I did undestand that he wanted to say that war would lasted for unlimited time or basicly for a very long time so I don't give a damn about "facts". Seriously.

So it wasn't like: we are going to use bombs and the war will stop huh?

Whine like you do all the time...
And I'm curious how can you call abusing rep system giving rep? Because you abuse it too?

 

So for you 50% of people at dp don't have any brains, as 50% think that the bombing was an act of terrorism

 

Better say something worthwhile instead of just throwing insults, we can also do that

admit it, it was an act of terrorism

You target civilians deliberately and it is known as terrorism ? ever looked up definition of terrorism at wikipedia?

It does not get more simple than that!

even if they attacked and did something wrong it does not give any legitimacy to american killing of Japanese civilians

 

We were talking about the definition of a word, there is no subjective opinion about that. It is a question of fact.

I didn't say anything about the people who think it was terrorism. I do find it interesting that the Japanese who suffered the bomb are fine with the US, it is Muslims around the world who look to justify their current acts of terrorism by pointing to events 50 years ago and trying to pretend they are doing the same thing. It is as transparent as when Muslims come to Western countries and use all our civil rights laws and the like to advance their backwards and oppressive world views. Watching you guys call everyone under the sun a war criminal except the Islamic terrorist groups is hysterical. Somehow you focus is on everyone but your own backyard and think nobody will notice. You are just like most of the Muslim governments who oppress their own people but try to distract from their own misdeeds by constantly pointing a finger and trying to blame Israel and the US for everything wrong in their own countries. One day responsible Muslims will stop trying to blame everyone else for their lot in life and actually work to improve their lives, their culture, their societies. At least the rest of the world can hope.

 

No, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn last night. I think its time to ignore you for a while. You're running in circles. Its getting boring.

 

1. m42 is a she. Hah! You've been beaten by a girl!
2. You obviously didn't understand.
3. Yes, it's obvious you don't give a damn about "facts"

Or what? You'll take away my birthday?

Or are you just going to stalk me between threads, nitpick, and attempt to start petty fights? Oh wait... you've already done that! *wink*

I believe it was an unfortunate, but necessary act of war. Hopefully we can avoid such extremes in the future. I firmly believe these acts saved lives.

Just like you, I am entitled to my beliefs.

Those attacks very likely saved civilian lives. Again, no one knows how long the war would have continued, nor had it continued, how many Japanese civilians would have died. The projections were far from positive.

 

Yes, you do. Reread your posts.

1. Beaten?!? Ummmm how can you manage to "beat" anyone on internet forum?!?
2. Nor did you. Othervise I would got answer on my question: since when deliberately killing innocent people during war isn't war crime?
3. Yes, I don't give damn about "facts".

Yet they didn't know will Japan surrender after they use nukes but somehow you avoided to answer my question about that...
Yet again do you support of killing innocent people or commiting war crimes to save other innocent people?

 

Let stop fucking around. If you had any concern about war crimes you would be talking about the atrocities committed by Japan and Germany - and today by hundreds of Islamic terrorist groups. Your whole point is to try and bash America. Well it is tired and pathetic. You are probably too young or ignorant, but most of the world well knows that the United States helped save the rest of the world from Germany and Japan.​

Crimes

The Japanese military during the 1930s and 1940s is often compared to the military of Nazi Germany during 1933–45 because of the sheer scale of suffering. Much of the controversy regarding Japan's role in World War II revolves around the death rates of prisoners of war and civilians under Japanese occupation. The historian Chalmers Johnson has written that:

It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens]; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers—and, in the case of the Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4% chance of not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30%.[17]

According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate among POWs from Asian countries, held by Japan was 27.1%.[18] The death rate of Chinese POWs was much larger because—under a directive ratified on August 5, 1937 by Emperor Hirohito—the constraints of international law on treatment of those prisoners was removed.[19] Only 56 Chinese POWs were released after the surrender of Japan.[20]

Mass killings

R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military murdered from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture."[21] According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were killed, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 millions in the course of the war.[22]

The most infamous incident during this period was the Nanking Massacre of 1937-38, when, according to the findings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred as many as 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war, although the accepted figure is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.[23] A similar crime was the Changjiao massacre. In Southeast Asia, the Manila massacre, resulted in the deaths of 100,000 civilians in the Philippines and in the Sook Ching massacre, between 25,000 and 50,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore were taken to beaches and massacred. There were numerous other massacres of civilians e.g. the Kalagong massacre.
A Japanese soldier with a "hunt trophy", taken presumably[citation needed] in 1942 during operation sankō, the "Three Alls Policy", as it was nicknamed by Chinese.

Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."

Additionally, captured allied service personnel were massacred in various incidents, including:

* Laha massacre
* Banka Island massacre
* Parit Sulong
* Palawan massacre
* SS Tjisalak massacre perpetrated by Japanese submarine I-8
* Wake Island massacre-see Battle of Wake Island

Note: this is not a complete list of massacres. There were many others.

Human experimentation and biological warfare

Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China. One of the most infamous was Unit 731 under Shirō Ishii. Victims were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia, amputations, and were used to test biological weapons, among other experiments. Anesthesia was not used because it was believed to affect results.

To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was later amputated; the doctor would repeat the process on the victim’s upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone, the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments.[24]

According to GlobalSecurity.org, the experiments carried out by Unit 731 alone caused 3,000 deaths.[25] Furthermore, according to the 2002 International Symposium on the Crimes of Bacteriological Warfare, the number of people killed by the Imperial Japanese Army germ warfare and human experiments is around 580,000.[26] According to other sources, "tens of thousands, and perhaps as many as 400,000, Chinese died of bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax and other diseases...", resulting from the use of biological warfare.[27]

One of the most notorious cases of human experimentation occurred in Japan itself. At least nine out of 12 crew members survived the crash of a U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 bomber on Kyūshū, on May 5, 1945. (This plane was Lt. Marvin Watkins' crew of the 29th Bomb Group of the 6th Bomb Squadron.[28]). The bomber's commander was sent to Tokyo for interrogation, while the other survivors were taken to the anatomy department of Kyushu University, at Fukuoka, where they were subjected to vivisection or killed.[29] On March 11, 1948, 30 people including several doctors were brought to trial by the Allied war crimes tribunal. Charges of cannibalism were dropped, but 23 people were found guilty of vivisection or wrongful removal of body parts. Five were sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment, and the rest to shorter terms. In 1950, the military governor of Japan, General Douglas MacArthur, commuted all of the death sentences and significantly reduced most of the prison terms. All of those convicted in relation to the university vivisection were free by 1958.[citation needed]

In 2006, former IJN medical officer Akira Makino stated that he was ordered—as part of his training—to carry out vivisection on about 30 civilian prisoners in the Philippines between December 1944 and February 1945.[30] The surgery included amputations.[31] Ken Yuasa, a former military doctor in China, has also admitted to similar incidents he was compelled to participate in.[32]

Use of chemical weapons

See also: Changde chemical weapon attack

According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Emperor Hirohito authorized by specific orders (rinsanmei) the use of chemical weapons in China.[33] For example, during the Battle of Wuhan from August to October 1938, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375 separate occasions, despite Article 23 of the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)[7] and article V of the Treaty in Relation to the Use of Submarines and Noxious Gases in Warfare[34] and a resolution adopted by the League of Nations on May 14, condemning the use of poison gas by Japan.

In 2004, Yoshimi and Yuki Tanaka discovered in the Australian National archives documents showing that cyanide gas was tested on Australian and Dutch prisoners in November 1944 on Kai islands (Indonesia).[35]

Preventable famine

Deaths caused by the diversion of resources to the Japanese military in occupied countries are also regarded as war crimes by many people. Millions of civilians in south-east Asia—especially Vietnam and the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), both of which were major rice-growing countries—died during a preventable famine in 1944–45.[36] (See, for example, the articles on the Vietnamese Famine of 1945 and Japanese occupation of Indonesia.)

An estimated 2 million Vietnamese, or 10% of the population then, died during the famine of 1944–45.[37] A later UN report stated that 4 million people died in Indonesia as a result of famine and forced labour during the Japanese occupation.[38]
Aitape, New Guinea, 1943. An Australian soldier, Sgt Leonard Siffleet, about to be beheaded with a shin gunto sword. Many Allied prisoners of war (POWs) were summarily executed by Japanese forces during the Pacific War. Executioner Yasuno Chikao, later captured and sentenced to hanging, had his sentence commuted to 10 years imprisonment.[39]

Torture of POWs

Japanese imperial forces employed widespread use of torture on prisoners, usually in an effort to gather military intelligence quickly.[40] Tortured prisoners were often later executed. A former Japanese Army officer who served in China, Uno Shintaro, stated:

The major means of getting intelligence was to extract information by interrogating prisoners. Torture was an unavoidable necessity. Murdering and burying them follows naturally. You do it so you won't be found out. I believed and acted this way because I was convinced of what I was doing. We carried out our duty as instructed by our masters. We did it for the sake of our country. From our filial obligation to our ancestors. On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans. When you're winning, the losers look really miserable. We concluded that the Yamato [i.e. Japanese] race was superior.[41]

Cannibalism

Many written reports and testimonies collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese personnel in many parts of Asia and the Pacific committed acts of cannibalism against Allied prisoners of war. In many cases this was inspired by ever-increasing Allied attacks on Japanese supply lines, and the death and illness of Japanese personnel as a result of hunger. However, according to historian Yuki Tanaka: "cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers".[42] This frequently involved murder for the purpose of securing bodies. For example, an Indian POW, Havildar Changdi Ram, testified that: "[on November 12, 1944] the Kempeitai beheaded [an Allied] pilot. I saw this from behind a tree and watched some of the Japanese cut flesh from his arms, legs, hips, buttocks and carry it off to their quarters... They cut it small pieces and fried it."[43]

In some cases, flesh was cut from living people: another Indian POW, Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified that in New Guinea:

the Japanese started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the soldiers. I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the Japanese. The remainder of us were taken to another spot 50 miles [80 km] away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died.[44]

Perhaps the most senior officer convicted of cannibalism was Lt Gen. Yoshio Tachibana (立花芳夫,Tachibana Yoshio), who with 11 other Japanese personnel was tried in relation to the execution of U.S. Navy airmen, and the cannibalism of at least one of them, in August 1944, on Chichi Jima, in the Bonin Islands. They were beheaded on Tachibana's orders. As military and international law did not specifically deal with cannibalism, they were tried for murder and "prevention of honorable burial". Tachibana was sentenced to death, and hanged.[45]
November 9, 1945. Jemadar (junior commissioned officer) Chint Singh of the Indian Army at an identification parade in New Guinea, indicating a Japanese soldier who he claimed mistreated him while he was a prisoner of war. Japanese forces used many Indian Army personnel captured in Malaya and Singapore as forced labour in the South West Pacific.

Forced labor


The Japanese military's use of forced labor, by Asian civilians and POWs also caused many deaths. According to a joint study by historians including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyoshi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie, more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Kōa-in (Japanese Asia Development Board) for forced labour.[46] More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma-Siam Railway.[47]

The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between four and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military.[48] About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%.

According to historian Akira Fujiwara, Emperor Hirohito personally ratified the decision to remove the constraints of international law (Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907)) on the treatment of Chinese prisoners of war in the directive of August 5, 1937. This notification also advised staff officers to stop using the term "prisoners of war".[49] The Geneva Convention exempted POWs of sergeant rank or higher from manual labour, and stipulated that prisoners performing work should be provided with extra rations and other essentials. However, Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention at the time, and Japanese forces did not follow the convention.

Comfort women


The terms "comfort women" (慰安婦, ianfu?) or "military comfort women" (従軍慰安婦, jûgun-ianfu?) are euphemisms for women in Japanese military brothels in occupied countries, many of whom were recruited by force or deception, and regard themselves as having been sexually assaulted or sex slaves.[50]

In 1992, historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi published material based on his research in archives at Japan's National Institute for Defense Studies. Yoshimi claimed that there was a direct link between imperial institutions such as the Kôa-in and "comfort stations". When Yoshimi's findings were published in the Japanese news media on January 12, 1993, they caused a sensation and forced the government, represented by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi, to acknowledge some of the facts that same day. On January 17, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa presented formal apologies for the suffering of the victims, during a trip in South Korea. On July 6 and August 4, the Japanese government issued two statements by which it recognized that "Comfort stations were operated in response to the request of the military of the day", "The Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women" and that the women were "recruited in many cases against their own will through coaxing and coercion".[51]

The controversy was re-ignited on March 1, 2007, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe mentioned suggestions that a U.S. House of Representatives committee would call on the Japanese Government to "apologize for and acknowledge" the role of the Japanese Imperial military in wartime sex slavery. However, Abe denied that it applied to comfort stations. "There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it."[52] Abe's comments provoked negative reactions overseas. For example, a New York Times editorial on March 6 said:[53]

These were not commercial brothels. Force, explicit and implicit, was used in recruiting these women. What went on in them was serial rape, not prostitution. The Japanese Army’s involvement is documented in the government’s own defense files. A senior Tokyo official more or less apologized for this horrific crime in 1993... Yesterday, he grudgingly acknowledged the 1993 quasi apology, but only as part of a pre-emptive declaration that his government would reject the call, now pending in the United States Congress, for an official apology. America isn’t the only country interested in seeing Japan belatedly accept full responsibility. Korea, China, and the Philippines are also infuriated by years of Japanese equivocations over the issue.

The same day, veteran soldier Yasuji Kaneko admitted to The Washington Post that the women "cried out, but it didn't matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance."[54]

On April 17, 2007, Yoshimi and another historian, Hirofumi Hayashi, announced the discovery, in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, of seven official documents suggesting that Imperial military forces, such as the Tokeitai (naval secret police), directly coerced women to work in frontline brothels in China, Indochina and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these, a lieutenant is quoted as confessing having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokeitai members having arrested women on the streets, and after enforced medical examinations, putting them in brothels.[55]

On May 12, 2007, journalist Taichiro Kaijimura announced the discovery of 30 Netherland government documents submitted to the Tokyo tribunal as evidence of a forced massed prostitution incident in 1944 in Magelang.[56]

In other cases, some victims from East Timor testified they were forced when they were not old enough to have started menstruating and repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers.[57]

A Dutch-Indonesian "comfort woman", Jan Ruff-O'Hearn (now resident in Australia), who gave evidence to the U.S. committee, said the Japanese Government had failed to take responsibility for its crimes, that it did not want to pay compensation to victims and that it wanted to rewrite history.[58] Ruff-O'Hearn said that she had been raped "day and night" for three months by Japanese soldiers when she was 21.

To this day, only one Japanese woman published her testimony. This was done in 1971, when a former "comfort woman" forced to work for showa soldiers in Taiwan, published her memoirs under the pseudonym of Suzuko Shirota.[59]

There are different theories on the breakdown of the comfort women's place of origin. While some Japanese sources claim that the majority of the women were from Japan, others, including Yoshimi, argue as many as 200,000 women,[60] mostly from Korea and China, and some other countries such as the Philippines, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Netherlands,[61] and Australia[62] were forced to engage in sexual activity.[63]

On 26 June 2007, the U.S. House of representatives Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution asking that Japan "should acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its military's coercion of women into sexual slavery during the war".[64] On 30 July 2007, the House of Representatives passed the resolution, while Shinzo Abe said this decision was "regrettable".

 

No matter what you say it doesn't change the facts. Japan war crimes is no way excuse for using nukes. Period. This thread is about was US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki an act of terrorism or not. It isn't about "the atrocities committed by Japan and Germany or today by hundreds of Islamic terrorist groups" so don't change the subject.
Again, answer the question if you can or simply go away and stop changing the subject. Thank you.

 

@brwntwn
blah blah blah ... we are not talking here about what Japanese or Germans did in ww2

like I said, whatever they did do not make american wrongs as rights