japanese war crimes-- was hiroshima

"robert arndt" wrote in message
om...
"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
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"old hoodoo" wrote in message
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They were the bad guys, thats a given. That is not the issue.
The issue is, did we, the good guys, go down to the bad guys level.

Given that we didnt tie wounded POW's to trees
with barbed wire and use them for bayonent
pratctise I'd say no we didnt.

No, we just interned Japanese-Americans for years in camps behind
barbed wire at home.


Yep and as cruel in many ways as that was they survived
they mostly survived the war, which wasnt true for millions
of those interned by the Japanese and Germans.

Its my understanding that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targeted
because they were undamaged cities... it had nothing to do
with their military production capacity.


Your understanding is deficient

True, many wanted Tokyo on the top of the list of 7 initial targets...

Hiroshima was the HQ and base for one of the major
armies tasked with defending Japan. At least 3 divisions
were in the area when the attacked happened and the
aiming point was the HQ building. Moreover Hiroshima
was a major naval base.

Nagasaki was one of the centres of the Japanese armaments
industry with major Mitsubishi aircraft and munitions
plants which were destroyed in the attack.

The instructions issued by Harry Truman were that the
targets were to be military targets.

Keith

Note:

Nagasaki wasn't even the original target for the 2nd bomb. It was
Kokura but due to bad weather problems "Bock's Car" moved on to the
secondary target of Nagasaki.

Quite so, Kokura was also a major centre for military
production with the Kokura Arsenal being a major production
centre for weapons and munitions including chemical weapons.

The third bomb, of which components were on Tinian, lacked a plutonium
core and was stopped from recieving one (in transport) on Aug 11 by
military order. If a core had arrived, "Fat Man II" would have been
probably been dropped by the B-29 "Great Artiste" on a repeat mission
over Kokura around Aug 18-20, 1945.
So, I'd say Kokura was spared "twice". Lucky *******s.

Perhaps but Yokohama was also on the target list

The memorandum from the targetting committee and their reasons
for selection are available online at

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistle...xt/bma13tx.htm

Kyoto was removed from the list due to its cultural significance even
though it had become a major industrial centre


Keith