Enola Gay?

Wrong analogy...

Is murdering 10 more reprehensible than murdering one? How about 100 vs 1000? How about 1000 vs 5000?

WildthatsthebettercomparisonAlaska
 
I determined that while the shock value was great towards the Soviets, the more immediate threat was Japan, who due to their culture were prepared to fight to the last man, woman and child until the emperor said "uncle". I still belive that today.
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Query...how much did the entry of Russia into the war affect the decision of Hirohito?

That or he wants to impress us with his superior knowledge
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Thank you...all those college loans well spent :D

WildbamajdAlaska
 
that's some pretty impressive moral equivalency
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Have you input that concept (of 'he who is w/o sin cast the first stone') into the topic at hand? Was it more right/wrong for Japan to try to take over their neighboring countries? Was it more right/wrong for the first Americans to take over this land, annihilating the natives as they went? Was it more right/wrong for the Russians to spread out across Eastern Europe? Is it more right/wrong for Israel to wipe out the Palestinians over a relatively small area of land? What about the Russians who came across the Bering sea and 'civilized' the natives?

Its only in the last generation that anyone has ever come up with the idea of being sorry for trampling on other races or people of different ethnicities, and to try to appease the survivors. People today are still trying to get governments to 'acknowledge' genocides committed against their people. What will that 'acknowledgement' produce? Will it stop the hatred?
 
What I wrote--and you can review the thread to double-check--is that not all sins are the same. Wild responded that "wrong is wrong." But clearly, wrong and wrong are not always the same. There are differences between wrongs. Every moral belief system and legal system I can think of recognizes these differences.

Stealing is not the same as murdering. The treatment of German prisoners--one of Wild's comments--or the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII is not the same as massacring civilians at Mai Lai. The unsanctioned act of massacring civilians at Mai Lai is not the same as the government policy of stuffing Jews into ovens like the Nazis did.

In my opinion, the two-sentence statement that went with the Enola Gay display painted an unbalanced, biased picture. Japan's attrocities should be acknowledged the same as ours. What will that "acknowledgement" produce? Will it stop the hatred? Maybe, but I can't predict the future. The old way of doing things sure didn't work, and later generations are left to deal with the messes that arise.
 
The treatment of German prisoners--one of Wild's comments--or the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII is not the same as massacring civilians at Mai Lai. The unsanctioned act of massacring civilians at Mai Lai is not the same as the government policy of stuffing Jews into ovens like the Nazis did.
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There was a deliberate policy of murder against German POWs by both the Soviet and US governments....query...the same as German genocide against us Jews?

If the Germans were guilty of crimes against humanity, werent also the Russians and the Japanese and us?

Tu quoque

WildanddontgetmewrongiwouldhavemadBOTHgermanyandjapanintoparkinglotsafterthewarsoimnobetteramIAlaska
 
Its debates like this that make this Board the only Board I regularly visit on the net. Thank you Rich and staff and most of you debaters ;)

WildremovinglipsfromnetherregionstoreturntopostingAlaska
 
There was a deliberate policy of murder against German POWs by both the Soviet and US governments....query...the same as German genocide against us Jews?
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Assuming your statement is true--and I have not researched it--I would still say that murdering German POWs is not the same as seeking out a race of people--many of whom were fellow citizens to Germans at the time--for complete extermination. Even if German POWs were deliberately murdered, I don't remember reading or hearing of any US policy seeking total extermination of the German people.

All of which is beside the point: the unbalanced, biased picture painted by the two-sentence statement. Why is it objectionable to point out the full motives of Imperial Japan?
 
Assuming your statement is true
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it is :)

I would still say that murdering German POWs is not the same as seeking out a race of people--many of whom were fellow citizens to Germans at the time--for complete extermination
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Why is genocide any different than mass murder of helpless folks? Look at it another way...is Stalin any less of a beast than Hitler because of his anti-semtic pogroms/ethnic cleansings which were POLITICALLY based rather than RELIGION/RACE based?

Why is it objectionable to point out the full motives of Imperial Japan?
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It isnt..as long as the full motives are historically correct...

WildgoodpointsAlaska
 
I'm not the history buff WA is, but its news to me that the Americans killed German POWs. The german soldiers were afraid of being captured by the Russians because they were continually fed rumors of the brutality dished out by the Russians. I'm referring to capture on the lines of battle, not being sent out to the Siberian work camps.

And I'm not quite sure that the comparison of the Germans standing policy of eradicating the Jews is comparable to the majority of other atrocities. For starters, the germans were indoctrinated for years prior to WWII to think of their race as an actual living being that was being made ill by the Jews. To them, that 'final solution' was no different than a medical procedure to their people. They truly considered the Jews to not even be humans.

Even though Americans hated the Japanese and Germans and pushed them into camps, their goal was not to exterminate them.
 
Why is genocide any different than mass murder of helpless folks? Look at it another way...is Stalin any less of a beast than Hitler because of his anti-semtic pogroms/ethnic cleansings which were POLITICALLY based rather than RELIGION/RACE based?
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Spaceman Spiff beat me to part of my punch, but ... it's different for the same reason I would have advocated killing our German opponents—be they Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, atheists, or whatever—in WWII but would not advocate killing Germans now. We were at war with Germany then; we are not at war with them now. If there’s no difference in the killings, why stop killing your enemy after he surrenders?

However, Germany was not at war with its Jewish citizens or with Jews elsewhere. Some might say that Hitler "declared war" on the Jews, but that’s a misuse of the term. Hitler attempted a genocide against the Jews. In the main, I see nothing wrong with killing your enemy during a war. I do see something wrong with attempting a genocide against people simply because they are of a different race or faith. Or a different political/religious/sexual orientation.

Wars generally stop when both sides agree to stop killing each other, and usually something remains of both sides. With a genocide or pogrom, the perpetrator generally stops only after nothing remains of the other side, or the perpetrator is forced by the other side to stop.

As for Stalin, he makes Hitler look like an "also ran."
 
Even though Americans hated the Japanese and Germans and pushed them into camps, their goal was not to exterminate them.
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Really? Ever seen examples of our attiude towards the Japanese in WWII? Monkeys? Apes?

WildmoretofollowAlaska
 
Well, Wild, a touch of a finger to my leather flying cap and a waggle of the wings. Though the engagement was fun, you've exhausted me, so I'm heading back to my side of the lines.

I'll close with this sentiment. When I joined the Navy, I did it "so my kids wouldn't have to." I was not the first, the last, or the only person to feel that way. After a few years, I decided my motive--noble and genuine as it may have been--wasn't quite correct. I can't foresee a time when my kids or grandkids or other people's kids and grandkids "won't have to." Humanity just can't seem to achieve that goal.

So I decided it was better to "do it so that my kids would have the greatest advantages on their side when they had to." And that's why I believe we need more truth to things such as the Enola Gay: so our kids can understand and make new history rather than ignore and repeat the old.

P.S. That's the index finger I referred to. :)
 
Really? Ever seen examples of our attiude towards the Japanese in WWII? Monkeys? Apes?
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You made this statement in response to an assertion that we weren't attempting to exterminate the Japanese. Since we did not, you actually showed that notwithstanding our prejudice, we acted as humans. This is a decided contrast to the Japanese, who saw all non-Japanese as subhuman and treated them accordingly.
 
"There was a deliberate policy of murder against German POWs by both the Soviet and US governments...."

I don't know about the Soviet government, but the accusations that the US Government engaged in a campaign of murdering German POW's is a crock of crap.

It stems from the erroneous interpretation of an order by Gen. Eisenhower near the end of the war, and was NOT a policy of the US Government or the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

To date, only the author of the accusation (a Canadian, I'll be damned if I can remember his name...) James Bacque.

To date, no other serious historian (Bacques is a failed novelist, by the way) has joined Bacques accusation -- in fact there are many American, British, French, and even German, yep, GERMAN, historians who believe that Bacques work holds absolutely no validity at all.

Ah, but Mr. Bacques has a rejoinder to that... he claims, in finest conspiracy theory form, that the governments involved in these alleged murders have conspired to keep the truth concealed, and have actively thwarted serious historians who have tried to look into these alleged incidents.

A few facts that need to be entered into evidence, and which Bacques (and you) conveniently ignore.

After 6 years of war, much of it on the losing end of things, many in the German army, and many more in the German nation, were in seriously advanced states of malnutrition. The same was true of Japan. Deaths by malnutrition in both nations were on the rise among the weakest in society. Along with malnutrition came numerous diseases that prey on people in situations such as these -- bacterial and viral infections of all kinds, dysentery, cholera, typhus, even a common cold can be fatal to someone in a weakened condition.

In all captured areas of Germany prior to the surrender, western Allied troops began feeding programs for German civilians.

When the German nation surrendered, it suddenly became the Allied responsibility to feed and care for millions of new mouths -- the same is true of Japan.

Bacques ignores those critical factors, choosing only to focus on the most sensational aspects of the post war period.

In short, Bacques has no support within the academic community, his interpretation of the facts leaves much to be desired, and he presents speculation as fact.

In other words, he's full of ****, and is as much of a joke in the historical community as Michael Belsilles (sp?) is.
 
"Really? Ever seen examples of our attiude towards the Japanese in WWII? Monkeys? Apes?"

Yep, and yet, after the Japanese surrender in World War II, there were over 75 MILLION Japanese left alive -- civilians and military personnel alike.

The propaganda that was developed during the war, such as Bugs Bunny's Nip the Nips, wasn't done in an effort to exhort Americans into a war of genocide.

A perfect example of the absense of genocide are the interred Japanese-Americans.

In Germany internees were often executed or worked to death in factories.

No such atrocities occurred in the American internment camps -- Japanese-Americans were well fed and had access to standards of medical care that were, in many cases, unavailable to white Americans.

At the end of the internment period, the Japanese were released, given IIRC $50 a person, and a bus or train ticket back to their former states of residence.

Yes, their property was seized -- but unlike in Japanese POW or German concentration camps, these people walked out, on average, as healthy as they walked in.

Here's another point that puts the lie to your apparent claim -- MORE Japanese-Americans walked out of those camps in 1945 than had walked into the camps in 1942 -- the birth rate exceeded the death rate by a substantial margin.
 
> Is murdering 10 more reprehensible than murdering one?

Of course.

And the US Army's actions at Sand Creek have no bearing whatsoever upon the labelling of the Enola Gay. Get a grip.


*TWIT FILTER ENGAGED*
 
"By the way, are you familiar with the actions of the Japanese army in the Russo Japanese war."

Yes.

By and large there were no incidents of atrocities committed against Russian military prisoners or civilians in captured areas.

Are you at all familiar with the rise of Japanese militaristic nationalism, the events that sparked the movements, the leaders, any of that?

I have to say by your questions/comments, no.
 
I don't know about the Soviet government, but the accusations that the US Government engaged in a campaign of murdering German POW's is a crock of crap.
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I'd say the accusations about the Soviets is probably an equal blend of crap and truth. Many Germans didn't become POWs to start with. But after that, many survived the war. A good friend of mine had an uncle in the contingent of German POWs who were freed in 1952 or so, and were told to march back to Germany from Siberia. He made it, almost 10 years to the day after being captured.
 
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