[Lathdrinor]

Originally Posted by Mumitroll

and which factors would that be? neither Germany, nor Japan, nor the USSR were in a similar situation even once.

Racism, imperialism, the doctrine of total war, the acceptance of brutality, the lack of any real rules governing the use of WMDs.

good. once you admit that, you also have to drop your relativizing argument "but mom everyone did it". no, not everyone did it. the Nazis had their concentration camps and lots of other fun things, the Japanese military treated Chinese and Koreans like animals, and the USSR sent millions of prisoners of war to Siberian prison camps - where many didnt come back from (although that was still a far cry from the German prisoner camps).

but none of them coldbloodedly killed 200,000+ civilians in 3 days when it wasnt even necessary.

From your perspective, in retrospect, it wasn't necessary. From the perspective of the Allied high-command, which did not know whether Japan would surrender, it was necessary to save American lives and to prevent the Soviets from taking the initiative. It was great power politics, not wanton cruelty.

indeed. thats why i am saying that Truman belongs pretty much in the same row as Hitler and Stalin. and not in "one of the most respected American presidents" one.

Truman and Churchill both had their flaws, but neither were as terrible as Hitler and Stalin, not in number of killings done, and not in the reasons for those killings. Honestly, you're comparing someone who ordered the bombing of industrial targets in Japan - an aggressor nation - with someone who ordered the genocide of the Jews (or, in Stalin's case, the systematic slaughter of those who did not support him). There is no comparison.

which do you think is more fun: to die in a gas chamber or when your skin is being burned off your body by a 500 degree radioactive blast wave?

If Truman had ordered the atomic bombing of Japan because he hated the "Japs" and wanted them to die, he would be akin to Hitler. But since he ordered the atomic bombing of Japan on the advice of his generals, who believed that it would save American lives and prevent the Soviets from invading, his intentions were fundamentally different. I'm sorry, but intentions do matter in the evaluation of a deed. That's why there's a difference between manslaughter and murder.

Failing to make a distinction between the Jews, who Hitler targeted out of pure malice and hatred, and the Japanese, who were waging a war against the US that they started, is absurd.

the US' contempt for the lives of the Japanese though was not far off.

Nonsense!

If the Nazis had won, they would've exterminated the Jews. Did the US exterminate Japan? What genocides did the US carry out in Japan after the war? The US spared the Japanese Emperor, for crying out loud. Would Hitler have spared the Jews? The Nazis wrote policy documents detailing how they were going to slaughter the Jews, the Gypsies, and the Slavs after the war and enslave the other races.

not by the majority. around 60% think that was "unavoidable". that's brainwash for you. and thats today, 60 years later. in 1945, how do you think, how many Americans supported dropping nuclear bombs on Japanese cities?

In 1945, how many Japanese would've supported using anything to defeat the US? Once again, you're talking about two nations locked in total war, here, not two nations at peace.

uh-huh.. its government maybe. do you think US military bases are welcome with the people in Okinawa? i was there last year. pretty much nobody likes having US military there. Okinawans do get a lot of revenue from US bases, but in recent years the anti-American sentiment has become stronger, so that the majority simply wants the Americans out of there. a similar thing goes for Yokosuka - there were demonstrations against the George Washington aircraft carrier arriving there in September.

A small price to pay, no offense, for losing a war you started. There is truly little room for Germany and Japan, both of which treated their enemies with incredible scorn even after those enemies were defeated, to criticize US actions after its victory in Japan.

Is Japan not the world's second largest economy, today? Do you think the Japanese would've built, say, China into a superpower after they defeated it?

I sincerely doubt it.

America, however, never apologized for dropping the nuclear bombs. even although Japanese governments have asked for it many times.

And that's unfortunate, of course, though like I said above, it's not on the same level as the Holocaust.

you get there by 1) money and 2) propaganda. Japan was rebuilt not out of altruism, but because it was a key outpost in the Far East against the USSR, with the Korea war, etc. also, in the first post-war years, the US enforced strict censorship on everything in Japanese media, banning any criticism of the allies, and rather forcefully imposing US culture and US systems on them. That subservient attitude stayed for a long time, although in recent years it has been going downhill rather continuously as well - albeit slowly. Japan still needs the US as a defense against China - at least until the JSDF is sufficiently strong itself (which might be not too far off - it's being gradually made ever more powerful).

Like I said, compare that to how the Germans and the Japanese treated their defeated enemies. After fifty years of US occupation, Japan is the second largest economy in the world and has a fully functioning defense force that might, in time, become a powerful modern army. No European empire ever gave such treatment to its colonies.