What do you all make of this?

Jonny Hart pretty much lost it when he started having cavemen in pro-creationist cartoons.

I mean, can't he see the small problem with this?

 

I take it to mean that the cartoonist thinks we (Americans) have finally forgiven the Japanese for Pearl Harbor because we are buying Toyotas. People of my generation who grew up in the 1950s and later wouldn't understand it to well. But I have had older friends who fought in WWII and who wouldn't buy a Japanese car or camera or anything else if they had a choice. Not because of Pearl Harbor but because of the Japanese treatment of allied POWs. Others including some ex POWs were willing to forgive, if not forget, as soon as the war was over.

 

We won the war. We paid them back in spades: They launched a surprise attack against a military base, killing a lot of unprepared soldiers (I use the term in its most general sense) and civilian military support personnel. Japan and the U.S. were already on very bad terms. There was a war going on and the U.S. was clearly favoring the other side. There is never any justification for war! But within the context of an ongoing war, this was no more an act of "infamy" than any other attack on a country not yet officially involved in hostilities. E.g., the U.S. attack on Iraq.

In retaliation, at the end of the war, when Japan was all but crushed, we obliterated two civilian Japanese cities.

In the balance of blame, we have no call to hold a grudge against Japan, more than half a century later.

P.S. I would much prefer to buy American-made goods. I switched to buying Japanese cars because all the American car makers were making nothing but crap! If the American car makers want me to be "patriotic" and buy their cars, they first have to make a car that's not crap, because it's more unpatriotic and un-American to sell millions of crap cars than it is to buy one Japanese car because they're the only people making cars that don't fall apart or explode as you drive them down the highway. (E.g. the Ford Pinto.)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 9 2006, 04:51 PM) [snapback]359828[/snapback]</div>

Maybe it's more personal (although I could find nothing else about his brother-in-law, and don't know whether he was even in the pacific) (from http://cagle.msnbc.com/hogan/interviews/hart/home.asp)Joh:
Johnny hart talking about the creation of the charater Wiley:
"Wiley was patterned after my brother-in-law—Bobby’s sister’s husband—he lost his leg in the Second World War, so I gave him the peg leg. Wiley’s a really immaculate kind of person, very clean, and always spotless, taking showers all the time—maybe not twice a day, but just a particular man—which isn’t all that funny for a peglegian. So I did the reverse on him—I made Wiley the character hate water, and I turned him into a slob. And then I thought it would be funny to assign a poetic nature to him. My brother-in-law’s whole life is interesting: a man who lost his leg when he was, I guess, 16 or 17 years old, he was very athletic and active. He’s only got like an eight-inch stump, but sports is his whole life! Television sports—baseball, football, he lives for it. So of course I assigned him to be coach of the prehistoric sports teams!"

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 9 2006, 12:51 PM) [snapback]359828[/snapback]</div>

Revisionist history as seen through the eyes of a pacifist.

Try telling that load of crap to one of my uncles who fought in North Africa and Europe, and was wounded and a POW. In gratitude he was then sent to the Pacific in preparation for invading Japan.

If the atomic bombs were not dropped, many times more Japanese and Americans would have been killed with the upcoming invasion. In a very real way, dropping the bombs saved more lives than they killed.

A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.
The entire war cost the United States a total of just over a million casualties, with 400,000 fatalities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

Daniel, save your anti-war rhetoric for preventing future wars, not denigrating the intentions and lingering emotions of those who fought past wars . . . YOU WERE NOT THERE! YOU DID NOT HAVE TO LIVE THROUGH IT!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sufferin' Prius Envy @ Dec 9 2006, 02:11 PM) [snapback]359870[/snapback]</div>

Absolutely true. The Japanese were not about to surrender without a way to save face. The bombs gave them a way to do that and they were still reluctant. Also if the bombs had not been used to end the war when they were the Soviets would certainly have invaded more of Northern Japan, they did get several islands. If that invasion had taken place there probably would be a North Japan today that would look something like North Korea does.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 9 2006, 12:51 PM) [snapback]359828[/snapback]</div>

Tell that to the citizens of Nanking. :angry:



Wildkow

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sufferin' Prius Envy @ Dec 9 2006, 02:11 PM) [snapback]359870[/snapback]</div>

This has been repeated so many times that some impressionable people actually believe it. Japan was defeated. It was no longer a threat to anybody. But the momentum of the Manhattan Project was so great, and the military's obscene desire to see what the A-bomb would actually do to a real city with real people in it was so fierce, that a rationale was invented.

Why were Hiroshima and Nagasaki chosen to be the targets? Two civilian cities with no military significance! Simple: Because they had no military component to them, precisely because they were civilian cities, they had not been bombed with conventional bombs, as had all possible military targets. The military planners wanted a test of what these bombs would do to an undamaged city. This had less to do with any military purpose than with using unarmed Japanese civilians as guinea pigs in the most obscene experiment ever devised by the mind of man.

Why was the second bomb dropped before Japan even had time to respond to the first? Because it was built to a different design, with a different fissile material, and a full and complete test required testing both kinds.

But of course they needed a rationale, a justification. So they came up with the hypothetical death toll for an unnecessary invasion.

There is something unimaginably barbaric about the willingness to incinerate two entire cities full of people, regardless of the reason. I do not understand people who are still so angry, half a century later, that they can justify such acts. And to think that some of them call themselves Christians!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 10 2006, 02:35 AM) [snapback]359970[/snapback]</div>

Was that the Japanese justification for Nanking? Fact is, more civilians were killed in Nanking by japanese soldiers than both atomic bombs combined. I don't see you shedding a tear for those peaceful civilians tho.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Dec 10 2006, 12:02 PM) [snapback]360039[/snapback]</div>

Joseph Stalin killed a lot more than that, yet I didn't see you mention him in your post so using your logic here, you obviously approve of what he did.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stev0 @ Dec 10 2006, 01:35 PM) [snapback]360053[/snapback]</div>

FYI -- I wasn't the first person to mention Nanking... and it was ignored by subsequent posters, which to me indicates a lack of empathy. However, last I checked we weren't talking about the Soviet Union or atrocities committed thereupon. Do I approve of Stalin? Obviously not. Does your deflection of the subject mean you approve of Nanking? I wonder...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombin...ma_and_Nagasaki
The link has both support and opposition views on the bombings.

While the reasons might have been fuzzy, I feel the outcome was probably the best case. If we didn't drop the bombs, we would likely have just ended up fire bombing more cities. And more were killed in the fire bombing of Tokyo than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Plus, blockading Japan would likely have lead to the spread of famine and disease among the population.

 

I wonder if even Hart knows what he meant by that. Is he acknowledging that once bitter enemies have become friends and valuable partners? Is he saying that the US ultimately lost the war by other means? Does he want to go and kick some nip heinie?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Dec 10 2006, 09:02 AM) [snapback]360039[/snapback]</div>

Then you've read virtually nothing of anything I've written. No, I have not mentioned by name every outrage ever committed. But I have repeatedly and consistently excoriated all violence, all war, and all the people who resort to violence and war.

You sound a bit like the guy from the old Hollywood westerns who says, "An Injun killed my wife and I'm gonna kill every Injun I can find." In your case, the Japanese army committed terrible atrocities in China and elsewhere, so you feel the U.S. was justified in oblitering two civilian Japanese cities.

Two wrongs do not make a right, and one atrocity committed against civilians does not justify another atrocity being committed against civilians.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Dec 10 2006, 01:00 PM) [snapback]360058[/snapback]</div>

One person threw in Nanking in an attempt to sidetrack the discussion. My point is Japanese attrocities in Nanking are as irrelevant to the discussion as Soviet attrocities are.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 10 2006, 06:32 PM) [snapback]360138[/snapback]</div>

I've read enough.

You specifically stated that the Japanese attacked a military target in Pearl Harbor. Fair enough, they did. Then you state that we attacked civilian targets in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fair enough, we did.

But context is important, and from just what was aid above, you'd think we had really upped the ante by bombing civilian targets. However, the sheer amount of atrocities committed by the Japanese really need to be considered in light of what we did. See here and prepare to be numbed. Never forget, the Japanese started committing atrocities against civilians first. 9 million Chinese civilian deaths are hard to erase.

Never forget.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sufferin' Prius Envy @ Dec 9 2006, 02:11 PM) [snapback]359870[/snapback]</div>

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 9 2006, 10:35 PM) [snapback]359970[/snapback]</div>

This has been repeated so many times that some unimpressionable people still can't believe it.

What kind of dumb logic argument are you trying to pull? <_<
Just because people don't believe as you, that automatically makes them impressionable?

"We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war."
- Kōichi Kido, advisor to Emperor Hirohito

"A golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war."
Hisatsune Sakomizu, chief Cabinet secretary for Japan in 1945

I'm guessing they were impressed upon by the bomb . . . and the need to surrender ASAP.

Supporters of the bombing also point out that waiting for the Japanese to surrender was not a cost-free option—as a result of the war, noncombatants were dying throughout Asia at a rate of about 200,000 per month.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 9 2006, 10:35 PM) [snapback]359970[/snapback]</div>

Apparently you were not an Allied POW held by Japan. <_<

Supporters also point to an order given by the Japanese War Ministry on August 1, 1944, ordering the disposal and execution of all Allied POWs, numbering over 100,000, if an invasion of the Japanese mainland took place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombin...ma_and_Nagasaki

So, are you saying the Allies should have just waited around for who knows how long - while the Russians invade Japan from the north – and 200,000 civilians die per month???? Just how sadly uimpressionable are you???? :huh:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 10 2006, 06:32 PM) [snapback]360138[/snapback]</div>

Though in WWII, atrocity against civilians was the policy. I'm not sure (correction welcomed) whether it started with the Luftwaffe's bombing of civilian populations, but by the end, the doctrine of total war included pulverizing enemy cities. The civilian workforce that helped enemy production was considered a legitimate target. The firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden are every bit as grisly as Nagasaki and Hiroshima, although obviously without the long-term radiation poisoning. Even if we had not used the atomic bomb, we would likely have used conventional weapons to similar effect.

It's just really easy, I think, to revisit these decisions from today's perspective, and forgot what the prevailing thinking was at the time. Something that seems a question of great moral consideration today -- whether or not to use an atomic bomb -- was much less so then, when we were doing equivalent damage with convential bombing. That we were targeting civilians was again, not an aberration, but accepted wartime strategy.

I also recall the bomb being used with some urgency to prevent the Soviets from invading/acquiring Japan, although it's been a number of years now since I read Richard Rhode's The Making of the Atomic Bomb (which I cannot recommend highly enough) and my facts might be a bit rusty.