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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Nov 29, 2019 19:19:12 GMT
By the by, the Japanese navy did not inform the army or state of the four carrier losses until 1945. Okay, but was Japan so sealed off from the rest of the world that nothing, nothing whatsoever was reported or heard from across the Pacific in the U.S.A., where Japan surely had contacts if not spies?
There were radio broadcasts, newspapers, magazines. The average Japanese may not have had access to such information but those higher up must surely have had some contact with someone, something from the United States, Hawaii at least, as well as Australia and New Zealand.
Japan was fairly technologically advanced, yet it was a backward, reactionary nation politically. Relatively few people had access to outside sources, but some must surely have heard the news from Midway, or heard of it..
They thought it was lies. Like the scattered Japanese who kept fighting in the Philippines for decades after 1945. They would deliver newspapers printed in Japan, saying the war was long over. Lies. They would deliver letter written by family saying the war was over. Lies. They would bring their commanding officers, who would tell them to surrender, the war was over. Lies.
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Post by truecristian on Nov 30, 2019 11:42:20 GMT
My dad died in battle of Tokyo in 1945.rip dad
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Post by telegonus on Nov 30, 2019 19:38:21 GMT
Okay, but was Japan so sealed off from the rest of the world that nothing, nothing whatsoever was reported or heard from across the Pacific in the U.S.A., where Japan surely had contacts if not spies?
There were radio broadcasts, newspapers, magazines. The average Japanese may not have had access to such information but those higher up must surely have had some contact with someone, something from the United States, Hawaii at least, as well as Australia and New Zealand.
Japan was fairly technologically advanced, yet it was a backward, reactionary nation politically. Relatively few people had access to outside sources, but some must surely have heard the news from Midway, or heard of it..
They thought it was lies. Like the scattered Japanese who kept fighting in the Philippines for decades after 1945. They would deliver newspapers printed in Japan, saying the war was long over. Lies. They would deliver letter written by family saying the war was over. Lies. They would bring their commanding officers, who would tell them to surrender, the war was over. Lies.
That's right. There were stories of Japanese soldiers living on various Pacific islands, unaware that the war was over, from the Seventies, decades after the hostilities ended.
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Post by theravenking on Dec 1, 2019 19:50:25 GMT
Hirohito was brought up to believe he was an infallible God. Of course he signed off on everything, because he believed what he was told. He was not a practical man, he didn’t know about life’s complexities. His generals told him the war was a good idea – he trusted them. He was told they were going to win – he believed it. He believed this was his destiny. Up until the last moment he believed in Japanese victory. He was deliberately kept in the dark about the outcome of many decisions. Had they told him that Japan was going to conquer space and fly to the moon, he would've believed that too.
It’s only when he was made to realise his actual situation that he agreed to surrender. Which just shows how little he knew about the truth. Had he been made aware of the immense suffering his people had to endure he might have surrendered earlier. He was no monster. He was just a weak man, badly prepared for the role he had to play in history.
There is an excellent movie about this: The Sun (2005)
The view of Hirohito in the post war era was that he barely knew Japan was at war until Tokyo was fire bombed. He was painted as a somewhat dimwitted puppet who cared more about marine biology that being Emperor. That wasn't true. He did know the war was going badly (you couldn't help notice when bombs were falling). He was totally unprepared to be Emperor but being Emperor was being a figurehead. Only one of his ancestors, his grandfather Meiji, actually did something since the 12th Century. And even Meiji would have had trouble with the turbulent Japan of the interwar period, called "Government by Assassination". Japan had placed all it's hopes on Germany and when that wend down the toilet, on the US unwillingness to pay the price for invasion.
He did criticize the running of the war at times. When the war was going bad (after Leyte Gulf, I believe), he asked the military (I'm paraphrasing) "In 1941, you told me we couldn't end the war in China because China was too big. So then you started a war to conquer the Pacific Ocean. That isn't too big?".
Read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, by Herbert A. Dix. Very well researched. If only Hirohito's diary could be read, but the Japanese government will never allow it.
A very informative post. Thank you!
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Post by mstreepsucks on Dec 1, 2019 21:03:08 GMT
4 a minute I thought this was gonna be something about Nintendo.
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Post by Hairynosedwombat on Dec 3, 2019 12:00:06 GMT
Japan is a great ally now but during the first half of the 20th century they were nothing short of savages. At least the Japanese military. People like to point to things like the My Lai massacre as an example of a war crime but that had nothing on the Rape of Nanking or the Japanese treatment of POW's or other atrocities committed against the Chinese and citizens of Indochina. Hirohito should have been hung for failing to keep a leash on his commanders. Dropping 2 nukes on them was the least that could have happened. Are you kidding? The 2 nukes killed a comparable number of people as the rape of Nanking. Adding the suffering of hundreds if thousands more suffering terrible radiation and burns. You make excuses for your countrys own responsibility for comparable suffering. America even emulated Japan 15 years ago with its illegal war of conquest including torture of thousands and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
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njcardfan
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Post by njcardfan on Dec 3, 2019 12:03:30 GMT
Japan is a great ally now but during the first half of the 20th century they were nothing short of savages. At least the Japanese military. People like to point to things like the My Lai massacre as an example of a war crime but that had nothing on the Rape of Nanking or the Japanese treatment of POW's or other atrocities committed against the Chinese and citizens of Indochina. Hirohito should have been hung for failing to keep a leash on his commanders. Dropping 2 nukes on them was the least that could have happened. Are you kidding? The 2 nukes killed a comparable number of people as the rape of Nanking. Adding the suffering of hundreds if thousands more suffering terrible radiation and burns. You make excuses for your countrys own responsibility for comparable suffering. America even emulated Japan 15 years ago with its illegal war of conquest including torture of thousands and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Hundreds of thousands? Where do you get your numbers from? The View? LOL, um, OK. You're an idiot plain and simple. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths. LOL, you're too much. Oh, and I wish we would have dropped a 3rd nuke on Japan.
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Post by Hairynosedwombat on Dec 3, 2019 12:11:58 GMT
Are you kidding? The 2 nukes killed a comparable number of people as the rape of Nanking. Adding the suffering of hundreds if thousands more suffering terrible radiation and burns. You make excuses for your countrys own responsibility for comparable suffering. America even emulated Japan 15 years ago with its illegal war of conquest including torture of thousands and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Hundreds of thousands? Where do you get your numbers from? The View? LOL, um, OK. You're an idiot plain and simple. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths. LOL, you're too much. Oh, and I wish we would have dropped a 3rd nuke on Japan. According to Wikipedia the death toll of the rape of Nanking was betwee 40,000 and 300,000. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs killed between 129,000 and 226,000, with uncounted numbers more injured. A 2006 estimate gave the Iraq war death toll betweeb 151,000 and 600,000, with many more since. And it is people like you in Japan and the US who bask in the blood of innocents.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Dec 3, 2019 19:24:29 GMT
Japan is a great ally now but during the first half of the 20th century they were nothing short of savages. At least the Japanese military. People like to point to things like the My Lai massacre as an example of a war crime but that had nothing on the Rape of Nanking or the Japanese treatment of POW's or other atrocities committed against the Chinese and citizens of Indochina. Hirohito should have been hung for failing to keep a leash on his commanders. Dropping 2 nukes on them was the least that could have happened. Are you kidding? The 2 nukes killed a comparable number of people as the rape of Nanking. Adding the suffering of hundreds if thousands more suffering terrible radiation and burns. You make excuses for your countrys own responsibility for comparable suffering. America even emulated Japan 15 years ago with its illegal war of conquest including torture of thousands and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. How many Japanese would have died if the US had to invade the Home Islands?
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Post by Hairynosedwombat on Dec 3, 2019 21:42:20 GMT
Are you kidding? The 2 nukes killed a comparable number of people as the rape of Nanking. Adding the suffering of hundreds if thousands more suffering terrible radiation and burns. You make excuses for your countrys own responsibility for comparable suffering. America even emulated Japan 15 years ago with its illegal war of conquest including torture of thousands and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. How many Japanese would have died if the US had to invade the Home Islands?
Estimates are in the hundreds of thousands. Elements in the Japanese High Command planned that a civilian uprising would produce such a blood bath that Japan could sue for peace on favourable terms after the invasion. Only when the US agreed to spare Hirohito did enough Japanese High Command agree to surrender. That is beside my point. The other poster suggested the Americas hands are clean and Japan was a monster. War doesn't work that way. For example the Nuremberg War Crimes trials made a determination that was carried into the UN Charter, that a war of aggression is the prime war crime because it is the genesis of all other war crimes. The Iraq war fits that description.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Dec 4, 2019 0:01:07 GMT
How many Japanese would have died if the US had to invade the Home Islands?
Estimates are in the hundreds of thousands. Elements in the Japanese High Command planned that a civilian uprising would produce such a blood bath that Japan could sue for peace on favourable terms after the invasion. Only when the US agreed to spare Hirohito did enough Japanese High Command agree to surrender. That is beside my point. The other poster suggested the Americas hands are clean and Japan was a monster. War doesn't work that way. For example the Nuremberg War Crimes trials made a determination that was carried into the UN Charter, that a war of aggression is the prime war crime because it is the genesis of all other war crimes. The Iraq war fits that description. Hundreds of thousands? Add a zero. The US never would have given “terms “ to the Japanese short of allowing Hirohito to stay as a figurehead. I’ve seen Japan terms. Keep Formosa, Korea, Manchuria, try their own war criminals. They were deluded
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loofapotato
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Post by loofapotato on Dec 6, 2019 4:37:25 GMT
This is probably the most in depth but simplified detail of the battle.
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loofapotato
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Post by loofapotato on Dec 6, 2019 4:46:07 GMT
Also interesting notes of how the Germans perceived Japan.
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