
Untold History of the United States
- sandinista
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Re: Untold History of the United States

Our struggle is not against actual corrupt individuals, but against those in power in general, against their authority, against the global order and the ideological mystification which sustains it.
Re: Untold History of the United States
Post them again if your facts are so clear and incontrovertable. I'm not going back through 28 pages.sandinista wrote:Ian wrote:Nevermind that this is a Russell's Teapot... but they weren't surrenduring! They made no signal prior to Hiroshima, not even after the Soviet invasion.sandinista wrote:Ian wrote:I've never seen any evidence that they were about to surrender when Hiroshima happened, only idle speculation.
Of course you haven't you've got the american historical blinders on.
Prove to me that they weren't ready to surrender, not just idle speculation, prove it.Ian wrote: If you can prove that surrender was indeed imminent,
There, I just proved it.
The onus is on you to disprove it. This is how critical thinking works, Sandi.your ridiculous, the onus is on you. Your telling me "Thats how it works"? Holy shit man, get over yourself. I've already posted links to articles and quotes regrding Japanese surrender, there I just proved it.
YES, the onus is on you! My reasoning stems from the fact (um, not speculation) that they had not yet surrendered. That alone is all the proof I need (we'll ignore for now the proof to the contrary, their mobilization of the people and their ignoring all previous demands by the US). They. Hadn't. Yet. Surrendered. Nothing more for me to prove - that's what history proves.
So... if they were so ready to surrender, then explain, with proven sources, that they were just about to do so and that Truman knew it. If you can do that, I swear I'll change my mind about this.
- Gawdzilla Sama
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Re: Untold History of the United States
Is that really what he's on about? Sheesh.
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Re: Untold History of the United States
No one can prove a retrospective case, in either direction. We know precisely the consequences of dropping the bomb, because that is our actual history.
We cannot do an experimental repeat of history, to explore the consequences of not dropping the bomb, and the myriad of ways in which the ending of the Pacific War could have gone from there. On the balance of probabilities, from all I've read, I think the consequences would have most likely involved a higher overall death toll, on both sides, but I can't be certain...
In any case, it is a little strange to expend so much anger and angst over a past event.
Alea jacta est.
We cannot do an experimental repeat of history, to explore the consequences of not dropping the bomb, and the myriad of ways in which the ending of the Pacific War could have gone from there. On the balance of probabilities, from all I've read, I think the consequences would have most likely involved a higher overall death toll, on both sides, but I can't be certain...
In any case, it is a little strange to expend so much anger and angst over a past event.

Alea jacta est.
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
And my gin!
And my gin!
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Re: Untold History of the United States
Whoa! The Japs were ready to surrender???
Here we go again ... maybe the best way to treat such claims is with mokusatsu :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokusatsu
See what I did there?
Here we go again ... maybe the best way to treat such claims is with mokusatsu :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokusatsu
See what I did there?

God has no place within these walls, just like facts have no place within organized religion. - Superintendent Chalmers
It's not up to us to choose which laws we want to obey. If it were, I'd kill everyone who looked at me cock-eyed! - Rex Banner
The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression. - Gary Larson

It's not up to us to choose which laws we want to obey. If it were, I'd kill everyone who looked at me cock-eyed! - Rex Banner
The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression. - Gary Larson



- Gawdzilla Sama
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Re: Untold History of the United States
Jim, we do know that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people would have died if the surrender orders had not gone out. We do know that a siege of Japan would have killed countless numbers of people, first the babies when their mothers couldn't give them suck, and the old folks who couldn't get enough to eat because it was going to the people who could fight. We know the Japanese commanders in China were ready to destroy entire towns as a Gotterdammerung gesture before they committed suicide.JimC wrote:No one can prove a retrospective case, in either direction. We know precisely the consequences of dropping the bomb, because that is our actual history.
We cannot do an experimental repeat of history, to explore the consequences of not dropping the bomb, and the myriad of ways in which the ending of the Pacific War could have gone from there. On the balance of probabilities, from all I've read, I think the consequences would have most likely involved a higher overall death toll, on both sides, but I can't be certain...
In any case, it is a little strange to expend so much anger and angst over a past event.![]()
Alea jacta est.
We have a very good idea how bad it would have been if the war had gone on.
Re: Untold History of the United States
Ambiguous at best.klr wrote:Whoa! The Japs were ready to surrender???
Here we go again ... maybe the best way to treat such claims is with mokusatsu :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokusatsu
See what I did there?

- Gawdzilla Sama
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Re: Untold History of the United States
The fact that they wouldn't give their ambassador in Switzerland negotiating points cannot be ignored.Făkünamę wrote:Ambiguous at best.klr wrote:Whoa! The Japs were ready to surrender???
Here we go again ... maybe the best way to treat such claims is with mokusatsu :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokusatsu
See what I did there?
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Re: Untold History of the United States
Not in the slightest. There is no evidence from any source that the Japanese leadership seriously contemplated/discussed the Potsdam terms until after Hiroshima ...Făkünamę wrote:Ambiguous at best.klr wrote:Whoa! The Japs were ready to surrender???
Here we go again ... maybe the best way to treat such claims is with mokusatsu :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokusatsu
See what I did there?
God has no place within these walls, just like facts have no place within organized religion. - Superintendent Chalmers
It's not up to us to choose which laws we want to obey. If it were, I'd kill everyone who looked at me cock-eyed! - Rex Banner
The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression. - Gary Larson

It's not up to us to choose which laws we want to obey. If it were, I'd kill everyone who looked at me cock-eyed! - Rex Banner
The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression. - Gary Larson



- JimC
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Re: Untold History of the United States
I think "know" would best be replaced by "is highly likely"Gawdzilla Sama wrote:Jim, we do know that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people would have died if the surrender orders had not gone out. We do know that a siege of Japan would have killed countless numbers of people, first the babies when their mothers couldn't give them suck, and the old folks who couldn't get enough to eat because it was going to the people who could fight. We know the Japanese commanders in China were ready to destroy entire towns as a Gotterdammerung gesture before they committed suicide.JimC wrote:No one can prove a retrospective case, in either direction. We know precisely the consequences of dropping the bomb, because that is our actual history.
We cannot do an experimental repeat of history, to explore the consequences of not dropping the bomb, and the myriad of ways in which the ending of the Pacific War could have gone from there. On the balance of probabilities, from all I've read, I think the consequences would have most likely involved a higher overall death toll, on both sides, but I can't be certain...
In any case, it is a little strange to expend so much anger and angst over a past event.![]()
Alea jacta est.
We have a very good idea how bad it would have been if the war had gone on.
Nurse, where the fuck's my cardigan?
And my gin!
And my gin!
- sandinista
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Re: Untold History of the United States
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.htmlJapan Seeks Peace
Months before the end of the war, Japan's leaders recognized that defeat was inevitable. In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. When Germany capitulated in early May, the Japanese understood that the British and Americans would now direct the full fury of their awesome military power exclusively against them.
American officials, having long since broken Japan's secret codes, knew from intercepted messages that the country's leaders were seeking to end the war on terms as favorable as possible. Details of these efforts were known from decoded secret communications between the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and Japanese diplomats abroad.
In his 1965 study, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (pp. 107, 108), historian Gar Alperovitz writes:
Although Japanese peace feelers had been sent out as early as September 1944 (and [China's] Chiang Kai-shek had been approached regarding surrender possibilities in December 1944), the real effort to end the war began in the spring of 1945. This effort stressed the role of the Soviet Union ...
In mid-April [1945] the [US] Joint Intelligence Committee reported that Japanese leaders were looking for a way to modify the surrender terms to end the war. The State Department was convinced the Emperor was actively seeking a way to stop the fighting.
A Secret Memorandum
It was only after the war that the American public learned about Japan's efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan, for example, was obliged by wartime censorship to withhold for seven months one of the most important stories of the war.
In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)
This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:
Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
Surrender of designated war criminals.
Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):
The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.
Peace Overtures
In April and May 1945, Japan made three attempts through neutral Sweden and Portugal to bring the war to a peaceful end. On April 7, acting Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu met with Swedish ambassador Widon Bagge in Tokyo, asking him "to ascertain what peace terms the United States and Britain had in mind." But he emphasized that unconditional surrender was unacceptable, and that "the Emperor must not be touched." Bagge relayed the message to the United States, but Secretary of State Stettinius told the US Ambassador in Sweden to "show no interest or take any initiative in pursuit of the matter." Similar Japanese peace signals through Portugal, on May 7, and again through Sweden, on the 10th, proved similarly fruitless.
By mid-June, six members of Japan's Supreme War Council had secretly charged Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo with the task of approaching Soviet Russia's leaders "with a view to terminating the war if possible by September." On June 22 the Emperor called a meeting of the Supreme War Council, which included the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the leading military figures. "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers," said Emperor Hirohito. "We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will strive now to study the ways and the means to conclude the war. In doing so, try not to be bound by the decisions you have made in the past."
By early July the US had intercepted messages from Togo to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, showing that the Emperor himself was taking a personal hand in the peace effort, and had directed that the Soviet Union be asked to help end the war. US officials also knew that the key obstacle to ending the war was American insistence on "unconditional surrender," a demand that precluded any negotiations. The Japanese were willing to accept nearly everything, except turning over their semi-divine Emperor. Heir of a 2,600-year-old dynasty, Hirohito was regarded by his people as a "living god" who personified the nation. (Until the August 15 radio broadcast of his surrender announcement, the Japanese people had never heard his voice.) Japanese particularly feared that the Americans would humiliate the Emperor, and even execute him as a war criminal.
On July 12, Hirohito summoned Fumimaro Konoye, who had served as prime minister in 1940-41. Explaining that "it will be necessary to terminate the war without delay," the Emperor said that he wished Konoye to secure peace with the Americans and British through the Soviets. As Prince Konoye later recalled, the Emperor instructed him "to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity."
The next day, July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow: "See [Soviet foreign minister] Molotov before his departure for Potsdam ... Convey His Majesty's strong desire to secure a termination of the war ... Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace ..."
On July 17, another intercepted Japanese message revealed that although Japan's leaders felt that the unconditional surrender formula involved an unacceptable dishonor, they were convinced that "the demands of the times" made Soviet mediation to terminate the war absolutely essential. Further diplomatic messages indicated that the only condition asked by the Japanese was preservation of "our form of government." The only "difficult point," a July 25 message disclosed, "is the ... formality of unconditional surrender."
Summarizing the messages between Togo and Sato, US naval intelligence said that Japan's leaders, "though still balking at the term unconditional surrender," recognized that the war was lost, and had reached the point where they have "no objection to the restoration of peace on the basis of the [1941] Atlantic Charter." These messages, said Assistant Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss, "indeed stipulated only that the integrity of the Japanese Royal Family be preserved."
Navy Secretary James Forrestal termed the intercepted messages "real evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war." "With the interception of these messages," notes historian Alperovitz (p. 177), "there could no longer be any real doubt as to the Japanese intentions; the maneuvers were overt and explicit and, most of all, official acts. Koichi Kido, Japan's Lord Privy Seal and a close advisor to the Emperor, later affirmed: "Our decision to seek a way out of this war, was made in early June before any atomic bomb had been dropped and Russia had not entered the war. It was already our decision."
In spite of this, on July 26 the leaders of the United States and Britain issued the Potsdam declaration, which included this grim ultimatum: "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces and to provide proper and adequate assurance of good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."
Commenting on this draconian either-or proclamation, British historian J.F.C. Fuller wrote: "Not a word was said about the Emperor, because it would be unacceptable to the propaganda-fed American masses." (A Military History of the Western World [1987], p. 675.)
America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.
The sad irony is that, as it actually turned out, the American leaders decided anyway to retain the Emperor as a symbol of authority and continuity. They realized, correctly, that Hirohito was useful as a figurehead prop for their own occupation authority in postwar Japan.
Our struggle is not against actual corrupt individuals, but against those in power in general, against their authority, against the global order and the ideological mystification which sustains it.
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Re: Untold History of the United States
Who gives a shit what I'd do? I don't know what I'd do. I don't know everything. I'm not Doctor bloody Bernofski. What I'd do is completely irrelevant. The important thing is what I would not do, what I would never do, what no civilized nation or people should ever do. You mentioned other instances of genocide in an earlier post. Yes, that's exactly my point. Heinous acts, weren't they, perpetrated by the scum of the earth, weren't they? And then we did the same. Making us scum also. Forgive me if that doesn't sit well with me, and I consider it, oh, I dunno, wrong in some way.Ian wrote:Stop whining and give us a reasonable alternative that would've ended the war quicker.tattuchu wrote:Are we or are we not the good guys? ARE WE OR ARE WE NOT THE FUCKING GOOD GUYS? If we're not the good guys, then take the goddamn Constitution and the Bill of Rights and throw them in the fucking trash because they're worthless.
If we're going to justify the unjustifiable, reconcile the irreconcilable, then we are no longer the good guys, and the American dream, which used to actually mean something, and should still mean something, is dead. Put a fork in it, it's done. The grand experiment has been concluded, and it is a failure.
People think "queue" is just "q" followed by 4 silent letters.
But those letters are not silent.
They're just waiting their turn.
But those letters are not silent.
They're just waiting their turn.
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Re: Untold History of the United States
Sandinista, I can't see your post WITH ALL THE FLAGS WAVING IN MY FACE.
People think "queue" is just "q" followed by 4 silent letters.
But those letters are not silent.
They're just waiting their turn.
But those letters are not silent.
They're just waiting their turn.
Re: Untold History of the United States
I was actually referring to the word itself and the ambiguity in translation.klr wrote:Not in the slightest. There is no evidence from any source that the Japanese leadership seriously contemplated/discussed the Potsdam terms until after Hiroshima ...Făkünamę wrote:Ambiguous at best.klr wrote:Whoa! The Japs were ready to surrender???
Here we go again ... maybe the best way to treat such claims is with mokusatsu :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokusatsu
See what I did there?

- sandinista
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Re: Untold History of the United States
Yah, "highly likely" if it fits your ideology, highly likely indeed.JimC wrote:I think "know" would best be replaced by "is highly likely"Gawdzilla Sama wrote:Jim, we do know that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people would have died if the surrender orders had not gone out. We do know that a siege of Japan would have killed countless numbers of people, first the babies when their mothers couldn't give them suck, and the old folks who couldn't get enough to eat because it was going to the people who could fight. We know the Japanese commanders in China were ready to destroy entire towns as a Gotterdammerung gesture before they committed suicide.JimC wrote:No one can prove a retrospective case, in either direction. We know precisely the consequences of dropping the bomb, because that is our actual history.
We cannot do an experimental repeat of history, to explore the consequences of not dropping the bomb, and the myriad of ways in which the ending of the Pacific War could have gone from there. On the balance of probabilities, from all I've read, I think the consequences would have most likely involved a higher overall death toll, on both sides, but I can't be certain...
In any case, it is a little strange to expend so much anger and angst over a past event.![]()
Alea jacta est.
We have a very good idea how bad it would have been if the war had gone on.

If you want to see the flags a waving this is the forum to come to, thats why I find it so entertaining. Ratskep rejects.tattuchu wrote:Sandinista, I can't see your post WITH ALL THE FLAGS WAVING IN MY FACE.
Our struggle is not against actual corrupt individuals, but against those in power in general, against their authority, against the global order and the ideological mystification which sustains it.
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