Roger Hicks
Veteran
Americans sometimes beat themselves up about their ignorance of foreign countries and world history, but they are not alone in their ignorance.
Today in our local cafe-bar in rural France, the patronne was looking at a commemorative booklet about Hiroshima. "Why did they do it," she asked.
Frqnces suggested that Pearl Harbor might have had something to do with it, adding that as far as many Americans were concerned, that marked the beginning of World War Two.
"Which came first," the patronne asked, "Hiroshima or Pearl Harbor?"
Before you laugh too much, reflect on the following exchange:
Caspar Weinberger (of WW2): "Well, of course, Britain has always managed to choose the winning side."
Dennis Healey: "True, Cap, but in World War Two they chose it before there was anyone else on it."
Cheers,
Roger
Today in our local cafe-bar in rural France, the patronne was looking at a commemorative booklet about Hiroshima. "Why did they do it," she asked.
Frqnces suggested that Pearl Harbor might have had something to do with it, adding that as far as many Americans were concerned, that marked the beginning of World War Two.
"Which came first," the patronne asked, "Hiroshima or Pearl Harbor?"
Before you laugh too much, reflect on the following exchange:
Caspar Weinberger (of WW2): "Well, of course, Britain has always managed to choose the winning side."
Dennis Healey: "True, Cap, but in World War Two they chose it before there was anyone else on it."
Cheers,
Roger
R
Richard Black
Guest
Roger,
This is way off topic, but I am amazed daily at the lack of knowledge by my fellow Americans. I have not lived abroad, but I imagine that it is the same in quite a few places. Jay Leno once asked some people on the streets of L.A. where the Vietnam War was fought, and one "bright-looking young lass" replied Korea. Sometimes the old joke, who is buried in Grant's tomb, still works! Thanks for bursting my bubble that everyone outside the states has a better grasp on history. What is the old saying about learn from history or you will be doomed to repeat it, or something like that.
This is way off topic, but I am amazed daily at the lack of knowledge by my fellow Americans. I have not lived abroad, but I imagine that it is the same in quite a few places. Jay Leno once asked some people on the streets of L.A. where the Vietnam War was fought, and one "bright-looking young lass" replied Korea. Sometimes the old joke, who is buried in Grant's tomb, still works! Thanks for bursting my bubble that everyone outside the states has a better grasp on history. What is the old saying about learn from history or you will be doomed to repeat it, or something like that.
All of the Purple Hearts awarded during the Iraqi War were made in WWII anticipating the invasion of Japan.
W
wlewisiii
Guest
When anyone asks me "Why?" I tell them to google for "Operation Downfall" and it's 2 parts "Operation Olympic" and "Operation Coronet". Then I ask if millions of more deaths would have really been preferable.
William
William
captainslack
Five Goats Hunter
Sad, sad, sad..... I got my degree in history and it pains me to see people so ignorant about such basic facts. Especially something as important as Hiroshima. 
But in today's fast paced, on-the-go lifestyle, everything that isn't brand new is passe and what's passe isn't important, so I guess I shouldn't surprised.
But in today's fast paced, on-the-go lifestyle, everything that isn't brand new is passe and what's passe isn't important, so I guess I shouldn't surprised.
bmattock
Veteran
"Over? Did you say 'over'? NOTHING is over until WE decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"
"Germans?"
"Forget it, he's rolling."
- Bluto, Boone, and Otter, "Animal House"
"Germans?"
"Forget it, he's rolling."
- Bluto, Boone, and Otter, "Animal House"
When I was in college, over 25 years ago now, I overheard one of the Security Guards talking with a fellow student. The guard was retired Air Force, and the "Kid" was about my age, ~20. "You never heard of the Enola Gay" the guard said "It's the plane that dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki". I looked out from under my long hair and said, "The Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, Bock's Car dropped the bomb on Nagasaki." I guess the guard's Dad did not fly B29's.
kiev4a
Well-known
The sad thing is that today there are college professors who can't comprehend what the situation was in 1945 and the number of Americans and Japanese who would have died if there had been an invasion of the Japanese Mainland. And anyone who says it could have been solved through negotiations hasn't really studied history.
You are right, this is way off target unless we talk about how fast the Japanese bounced back to become on of the major economic forces in the world (not to mention giving the world some excellent rangefinder cameras -- Canon, Nikon, Nicca, Leotax. BTW, anyone here using a Leotax. Years ago I had a postwar Leotax Leica II copy that had a lens that was probably better than the 3.5 Elmar. Can't afford now to find one like it.
You are right, this is way off target unless we talk about how fast the Japanese bounced back to become on of the major economic forces in the world (not to mention giving the world some excellent rangefinder cameras -- Canon, Nikon, Nicca, Leotax. BTW, anyone here using a Leotax. Years ago I had a postwar Leotax Leica II copy that had a lens that was probably better than the 3.5 Elmar. Can't afford now to find one like it.
doubs43
Well-known
Brian Sweeney said:
Going to prove that second is almost never remembered. Almost everyone knows about the "Memphis Belle" but who knows which crew and plane was second to rotate back on mission count?
What concerns me more than Europeans not knowing about the war in the Pacific is the reports I read of Japanese history books being completely revisionist and so far from truthful that they make a mockery of their responsibility for the slaughter in Asia. Officially, the Japanese have never accepted responsibility for their actions and their recounting of the war in their history books reflects that attitude insofar as I can determine.
Walker
back alley
IMAGES
i'm going to move this to the 'something different' category.
JoeFriday
Agent Provacateur
unfortunately, in the US, public schools now teach Social Studies instead of History.. and what history they do teach, it's usually the politically correct variant.. instead of studying how the Americans were brought into WW2, they 'study' the japanese internment camps and discuss whether it was right or wrong.. they generally don't mention the prisoner of war camps that 75% of the troops held there died in (not sure if that figure is accurate, but I believe it's close)
doubs43
Well-known
kiev4a said:
What many fail to realize is that the Japanese had a world-class optics industry prior to, and during, WW2. They were pretty well situated in terms of skilled workers to produce the cameras that later captured the world market. I don't have detailed information on the state of their factories or available raw materials but something was there to permit them to develope and manufacture those cameras by the early 1950's when David Douglas Duncan used a Nikkor lens on his IIIc Leicas.
Walker
K
Krasnaya_Zvezda
Guest
I swear the following is true, for I was one party of these conversations.
This was 1987, I was supervisor of a data entry unit for a major credit card company. I had a girl under me, (no jokes, please), call her 'C.', who was a freshman in college. She was complaining that her American History professor expected her to know when the Civil War was fought.
"Don't you know", I asked?
"1945?" was her reply.
"Do you know why the Civil War was fought?", I asked her.
Indignantly, she replied: "I don't even know WHO fought it, what, was it Russia and Vietnam?"
I swear on my Leica she said that.
There is worse to come.
Another girl, 'F.', who also was in my section, spoke up and said, "I don't know, neither (sic)."
At this point, I loaded my "stupid gun". I asked the second girl, "'F'., can you tell me who fought in the Spanish-American War?"
"No. Ain't never heard of it."
"When was the war of 1812?"
"I never heard of that neither" (sic).
It is no wonder that this credit card company has been third to MasterCard and Visa for 30 years.
One more anecdote regarding these same two girls:
One of them,'C.', came to me one day and told me she needed to be off on a certain Friday to attend her uncle's funeral. I certainly granted her the day, and expressed my condolences.
The following day, the other girl mentioned above, 'F.', came to me with the same request.
"That's funny," I said. " 'C.' asked me the same thing yesterday."
"Yeah, it's her uncle, too," said 'F'.
"I didn't know you two were related." Here go da bomb.
"We're not", said 'F'.
Wait a minute. "If your uncle is 'C's uncle, you are related to each other."
She was dumbfounded. I had to draw a diagram on a piece of paper showing her how she must be related to 'C'.
'C', when she found out, was just as astonished as 'F'.
I was determined to get out of management as soon as I could (and I did, and have never gone back.)
This was 1987, I was supervisor of a data entry unit for a major credit card company. I had a girl under me, (no jokes, please), call her 'C.', who was a freshman in college. She was complaining that her American History professor expected her to know when the Civil War was fought.
"Don't you know", I asked?
"1945?" was her reply.
"Do you know why the Civil War was fought?", I asked her.
Indignantly, she replied: "I don't even know WHO fought it, what, was it Russia and Vietnam?"
I swear on my Leica she said that.
There is worse to come.
Another girl, 'F.', who also was in my section, spoke up and said, "I don't know, neither (sic)."
At this point, I loaded my "stupid gun". I asked the second girl, "'F'., can you tell me who fought in the Spanish-American War?"
"No. Ain't never heard of it."
"When was the war of 1812?"
"I never heard of that neither" (sic).
It is no wonder that this credit card company has been third to MasterCard and Visa for 30 years.
One more anecdote regarding these same two girls:
One of them,'C.', came to me one day and told me she needed to be off on a certain Friday to attend her uncle's funeral. I certainly granted her the day, and expressed my condolences.
The following day, the other girl mentioned above, 'F.', came to me with the same request.
"That's funny," I said. " 'C.' asked me the same thing yesterday."
"Yeah, it's her uncle, too," said 'F'.
"I didn't know you two were related." Here go da bomb.
"We're not", said 'F'.
Wait a minute. "If your uncle is 'C's uncle, you are related to each other."
She was dumbfounded. I had to draw a diagram on a piece of paper showing her how she must be related to 'C'.
'C', when she found out, was just as astonished as 'F'.
I was determined to get out of management as soon as I could (and I did, and have never gone back.)
W
wlewisiii
Guest
November 1, 1945
November 1, 1945
Since this is now in "Something Different", I feel like I can continue to post in it.
Here's the text I just sent to the local newspaper as a letter to the editor. It oversimplfies, alas, due to size constraints:
"I note with interest the varied memorials today to those who died in the nuclear attack on the city of Hiroshima. And I presume that on August 9, there will be similar memorials to those who died in Nagasaki. There were approximately 120,000 people who died in the initial attack and perhaps twice as many over time from a variety of injuries caused by the attacks. Horrific as that number seems to us, today, separated by the expanse of 60 years they really aren't that many. For example, the firebombing of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe had killed more people than did the two nuclear attacks. But even those casualties pale when compared to other possibilities.
On August 1, 1945 there were two paths to the future for Imperial Japan and the United States. I will not go into what brought these nations to that point, any of dozens of good history texts can tell you that. Instead I would rather take a moment and encourage anyone reading this letter to remember this November 1 as the 60th anniversary of the most important event of World War II that did _not_ happen. That was to have been D-Day for Operation Olympic.
That was the day that an unimaginable bloodbath for both nations was to have begun. It has been estimated that 500,000 Allied soldiers would have died and up to 2,000,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians during Operation Olympic. This would have only been in the battle for the southernmost of the Japanese main islands, Kyushu. Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu at the Tokyo Plain south of the capital, would have been still to come. In the end it was estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7 to 4 million American casualties, including 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. It is important to remember that in our world where Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked, there was a total of 292,000 Americans who died in battle, with another 671,000 wounded, in all theaters and battles of the war.
Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. As of 2005, all the American military casualties of the following sixty years — including the Korean and Vietnam Wars — have not exhausted that stockpile.
Finally I would simply like to ask the readers of this letter to remember how many of their relatives served during the war. Had this invasion occurred, a large number of you would not be here to read this letter for your fathers and grandfathers would have died in what would have been the greatest bloodletting the world had ever seen.
It is hard, in the context of a nation tangled up in a needless conflict brought about by our leaders greed, to remember that sometimes a cause is just and that sometimes a great violence is the only way to avoid an even greater violence. Would the additional millions of deaths really been preferable? That is a question that each of us can only answer in the small, still, silence of our hearts."
William
November 1, 1945
Since this is now in "Something Different", I feel like I can continue to post in it.
Here's the text I just sent to the local newspaper as a letter to the editor. It oversimplfies, alas, due to size constraints:
"I note with interest the varied memorials today to those who died in the nuclear attack on the city of Hiroshima. And I presume that on August 9, there will be similar memorials to those who died in Nagasaki. There were approximately 120,000 people who died in the initial attack and perhaps twice as many over time from a variety of injuries caused by the attacks. Horrific as that number seems to us, today, separated by the expanse of 60 years they really aren't that many. For example, the firebombing of Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe had killed more people than did the two nuclear attacks. But even those casualties pale when compared to other possibilities.
On August 1, 1945 there were two paths to the future for Imperial Japan and the United States. I will not go into what brought these nations to that point, any of dozens of good history texts can tell you that. Instead I would rather take a moment and encourage anyone reading this letter to remember this November 1 as the 60th anniversary of the most important event of World War II that did _not_ happen. That was to have been D-Day for Operation Olympic.
That was the day that an unimaginable bloodbath for both nations was to have begun. It has been estimated that 500,000 Allied soldiers would have died and up to 2,000,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians during Operation Olympic. This would have only been in the battle for the southernmost of the Japanese main islands, Kyushu. Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu at the Tokyo Plain south of the capital, would have been still to come. In the end it was estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7 to 4 million American casualties, including 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. It is important to remember that in our world where Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked, there was a total of 292,000 Americans who died in battle, with another 671,000 wounded, in all theaters and battles of the war.
Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. As of 2005, all the American military casualties of the following sixty years — including the Korean and Vietnam Wars — have not exhausted that stockpile.
Finally I would simply like to ask the readers of this letter to remember how many of their relatives served during the war. Had this invasion occurred, a large number of you would not be here to read this letter for your fathers and grandfathers would have died in what would have been the greatest bloodletting the world had ever seen.
It is hard, in the context of a nation tangled up in a needless conflict brought about by our leaders greed, to remember that sometimes a cause is just and that sometimes a great violence is the only way to avoid an even greater violence. Would the additional millions of deaths really been preferable? That is a question that each of us can only answer in the small, still, silence of our hearts."
William
K
Krasnaya_Zvezda
Guest
kiev4a said:
A giant can of worms explodes in RFF.
The details of the Japanese surrender are far more complex than what is generally believed. And the "accepted" version of the surrender has a major flaw on the face of it.
The United States demanded unconditional surrender of the Japanese, who held out for one condition only: That the Emperor would remain on the throne.
Japan was ready and willing to surrender prior to the atomic bombings, provided that condition was met.
Two atomic weapons were subsequently dropped--- Japan then surrendered, with one condition: The Emperor remained! There was no unconditional surrender, but you won't find that in American history texts.
As significant, or possibly more so, in the decision of the Japanese to surrender , was the USSR's declaration of war on the empire of Japan on August 8, 1945.
Source, "Hiroshima: Fifty Years of Debate", New York : Dillon Press ; 1994.
K
Krasnaya_Zvezda
Guest
Ah yes, "Olympic". Logically unnecessary.
By August 1945, Japan had no navy. No air force. Their army had 1 million troops, but they were in Manchuria--- against whom the USSR was mobilized.
The US could have easily starved Japan--- already starving, and with now far less access to raw materials than they had been in 1941, when they were already at a deficit--- with an unchallenged naval blockade, while simultaneously leveling Japanese cities with impunity, using conventional or nuclear weapons.
The motives for Olypmic were not to bring about the end of the war; they were to punish the Japanese to the fullest extent, at whatever cost. Is it not always so in war, that politicians and generals are willing to sacrifice millions of their own, to uphold some honor, to make some point?
OK, I've said enough; this is the place we discuss our love of rangefinders and photography, and politics and religion be damned. Those subjects are better left to other, less civil forums.
By August 1945, Japan had no navy. No air force. Their army had 1 million troops, but they were in Manchuria--- against whom the USSR was mobilized.
The US could have easily starved Japan--- already starving, and with now far less access to raw materials than they had been in 1941, when they were already at a deficit--- with an unchallenged naval blockade, while simultaneously leveling Japanese cities with impunity, using conventional or nuclear weapons.
The motives for Olypmic were not to bring about the end of the war; they were to punish the Japanese to the fullest extent, at whatever cost. Is it not always so in war, that politicians and generals are willing to sacrifice millions of their own, to uphold some honor, to make some point?
OK, I've said enough; this is the place we discuss our love of rangefinders and photography, and politics and religion be damned. Those subjects are better left to other, less civil forums.
Last edited by a moderator:
W
wlewisiii
Guest
Yep. That was the Navy's argument. So? They lost to the Army and Olympic was going ahead.
As you pointed out above, it's never that simple. Even after the nuclear attacks there were those in Japan who were prepared to violently prevent the Emperor's radio message/surrender. At that point there were still many who viewed the best end of the war as being able to take the largest possible honor guard with them into the next life.
There are few things about war that is logical - as someone who spent 16 years wearing Uncle's green, I'm very familier with that. The firebombing of Dresden was nothing but vengenance as well. The only reason Harris and LeMay weren't tried as war criminals is that we won: LeMay was at least honest enough to admit that.
So it goes. Then, now and for as long as humans walk this earth for it is what we are.
William
As you pointed out above, it's never that simple. Even after the nuclear attacks there were those in Japan who were prepared to violently prevent the Emperor's radio message/surrender. At that point there were still many who viewed the best end of the war as being able to take the largest possible honor guard with them into the next life.
There are few things about war that is logical - as someone who spent 16 years wearing Uncle's green, I'm very familier with that. The firebombing of Dresden was nothing but vengenance as well. The only reason Harris and LeMay weren't tried as war criminals is that we won: LeMay was at least honest enough to admit that.
So it goes. Then, now and for as long as humans walk this earth for it is what we are.
William
K
Krasnaya_Zvezda
Guest
Yes, you are quite correct.
"So it goes. Then, now and for as long as humans walk this earth for it is what we are."
We can aspire to be more than that, surely.
"So it goes. Then, now and for as long as humans walk this earth for it is what we are."
We can aspire to be more than that, surely.
W
wlewisiii
Guest
Depends upon your belief structure. I'm a Democratic Socialist so I believe that humans can improve, but I'm also a Christian so I believe that's qualified by a "only so much". I do tend towards the Universalist heresy, so what the heck, in the longest run it will work out...
<LOL>
KZ, I really have actually enjoyed this conversation tonight and I do hope it has been better than a blood pressure raiser for you as well. I've popped "Enola Gay" by OMD up on iTunes in honor of this thread...
Thank you,
William
<LOL>
KZ, I really have actually enjoyed this conversation tonight and I do hope it has been better than a blood pressure raiser for you as well. I've popped "Enola Gay" by OMD up on iTunes in honor of this thread...
Thank you,
William
back alley
IMAGES
these 'discussions' might be stimulating and even educational but i don't understand the need for them here on a forum for rangefinder cameras.
roger, you're an interesting fellow and a bit of a 'shit disturber' as my dear departed mother used to say.
it's as if there is some need to keep things in flux but with an edge drifting toward the negative.
personally, i don't care for it, not even a little.
joe
roger, you're an interesting fellow and a bit of a 'shit disturber' as my dear departed mother used to say.
it's as if there is some need to keep things in flux but with an edge drifting toward the negative.
personally, i don't care for it, not even a little.
joe