Come on, you should know (oops, said no in the first post) better than to rise to the bait. :P

And sorry, I shouldn't go about pronging people in the guts with daft provocative posts.

:P

And firebomb Tokyo - much trickier with all that wood. Have you seen Fog of War with Robert McNamara? He says he is a war criminal over the bombings of Tokyo. Found that a remarkable admission.

Sure the Japanese could have avoided war with America for a while, but their interests had been in conflict for years and I would argue it was war that had been coming. The US can hardly be exonerated on the imperialistic front. You are also seeing it from a very American point of view rather than how the Japanese would have seen it. The Japanese (like the Germans) would have seen American support of their enemies as provocation.

It doesn't matter if you think embargoing oil, supporting the Chinese was not provocative, the Japanese did. You even admit as much yourself when you say 'the Japanese felt threatened'. Whether the American government intended to be provocative is irrelevant.

It is mythical to think that the US would not have entered the war, but for Pearl Harbor. Sure the US was isolationist to some degree, but the so-called US national interest lay in supporting the UK and China (from the political classes point of view, at least) and by doing this it leads to the clear view within the Axis powers that the US was an enemy. Its like saying Lend Lease, Cash and Carry and so on were neutral when they weren't.

I don't think it is as simple as saying 'the Japanese started the war'

I didn't say they cared about the Japanese, they wanted to end the war and unless the Japanese unconditionally surrendered, they were going to level the country with conventional weaponry, which WOULD have led to more deaths.

On a side point, I'd like to clarify a point I never brought up earlier: while I support the American decision to drop the bomb on HIroshima to put an exclamation point on the war and force an *unconditional* surrender, I definitely question the decision to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki. In my opinion, the first bomb proved the point. A few weeks should have been allowed to pass to give the Japanese time to adjust to the shock of having a city decimated. It seemed superfluous and rather cruel to me. A second city shouldn't have suffered that fate.

True. The second bomb should not have been dropped. The threat of a second bomb following the Hiroshima blast would have been enough to force the surrender. But the Americans were not willing to risk it. They wanted to end the war ASAP before the Russian took more control of Asia.

Once the war ended, the first thing the US Navy did was land in Incheon to keep the Russians from taking all of the Korean Peninsula. Had the Russians been given a few more weeks Korea as a whole would suck right now. But even so I think the war would have ended before then. Once the reports of Japanese losses in Manchuria to the Russians (assault took place directly after Hiroshima bombing) would have been confirmed they would have thrown in the towel. The triple whammy of Hiroshima A-bomb, Manchurian military losses and second possibility of A-bomb would have been enough.

It was all a power play between Russia and the US and Japan got caught in the middle. The US wanted to end the war and flex their military might. Russia wanted to take advantage of Japan's weakening position to take control of all their North Eastern Asian possessions. But Japan was not the victim. They created that situation.

As for the Hiroshima bomb, it was a must. America made the right call. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a naive tree hugging liberal hippie or, someone who chooses to misinterpret the facts..

Japanese started the war throughout Asia once they chose to become imperialistic following the Meiji Restoration. They went and fought the Russians. They won. They fought the Chinese and Koreans. They won. They fought the British, the Dutch and the French and won. They fought the Americans and lost.

By going and  expanding through direct military conflict they provoked America in to action. What was America supposed to do? Were they going to say, "Yeah, sure, go ahead and attack our allies, and have our oil while you are at it." They took measures as a direct response to Japan's aggressive behavior. Your argument is like saying if you poke me and I push back, then you punch me in the face, it was me who provoked you. It doesnt work like that. Sure the Western powers probably had no business meddling around in Asia, but never did a foreign power directly attack Japan soil (before World War II) since Kublai Khan sent his failed fleets. And even when Japan rose to become a military power and started screwing over other Asians they were given several concessions.

Japan got greedy. They wanted more and more. Of course their actions were going to bring them in to conflict with the other military powers of the world. And whats worse, they were exceptionally cruel in how they took land from others. To this day many Chinese and Koreans still hate the Japanese for what they did over 60 years ago.

I'm not saying they deserved to be nuked. No one does. There should have been a better way, but given the circumstances America made the right call, and Japan suffered the consequences of something they brought among themselves.

True. The second bomb should not have been dropped. The threat of a second bomb following the Hiroshima blast would have been enough to force the surrender. But the Americans were not willing to risk it. They wanted to end the war ASAP before the Russian took more control of Asia.

Once the war ended, the first thing the US Navy did was land in Incheon to keep the Russians from taking all of the Korean Peninsula. Had the Russians been given a few more weeks Korea as a whole would suck right now. But even so I think the war would have ended before then. Once the reports of Japanese losses in Manchuria to the Russians (assault took place directly after Hiroshima bombing) would have been confirmed they would have thrown in the towel. The triple whammy of Hiroshima A-bomb, Manchurian military losses and second possibility of A-bomb would have been enough.

It was all a power play between Russia and the US, and Japan got caught in the middle. The US wanted to end the war and flex their military might. Russia wanted to take advantage of Japan's weakening position to take control of all their North Eastern Asian possessions. But Japan was not the victim. They created that situation themselves.

As for the Hiroshima bomb, it was a must. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a naive liberal or someone who chooses to misinterpret the facts..

Thank you. Finally, someone else in this thread that understands the importance of stopping the Russians from swarming over China, taking the entirety of Korea, and possibly even claiming a portion of Japan. It was of utmost importance to draw a line in the sand after tension started building up after Potsdam when the true horror of an expansionist Stalin-ruled USSR became obvious to everyone.

Because, as bad as the Japanese were to the Chinese and Hitler was to the Jews, Stalin made them look like Boy Scouts with his paranoia and quest for unbridled power. And no, that's not hyperbole. He was far and away the most terrifying force of WWII.

We could go back to Commodore Perry for the start of this, of course.

Japan became imperialistic, I'm not denying that, nor am I blaming the Americans or Japanese for what happened. I am saying that American behaviour was interpreted as provocative (I'm sure the Japanese were quite aware that they were jumping over US interests, of course). In the spirit of the imperialistic age all of this is understandable as the ideology of the period was quite different, though much of it including manifest destiny remains 'til this day.

America was imperialistic too, remember.

No it wasn't. There was no need to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian people.