Originally posted by Roy:
In Japan, we seriously interfered with their religion. The emperor was forced to admit that he wasn't a deity. New leaders in Japan were no longer allowed to worship at the Shinto temple either, since that religion was considered a source of trouble. Our government also took control of the trials and executions of Japanese war criminals, not the locals.
Roy
This is not necessarily the case. As my father was involved in the occupation of Japan after the war, he has indicated that the emperor was left in power for this very purpose, to placate the average population who wasn't all that thrilled about being at war in the first place.
This policy was a demand made by General McAuthor (sp?) in order to maintain control of the general population. It worked very well. The emperor was more of a diety and not a polical leader as such. The military was in control.
The person above was correct. We carried on war-criminal charges, but the Japanese police, prosecution and court-systems were left in effect in order to maintain the system.
Remember, like most wars, the civilians were not real thrilled with their military leaders trying to take over he world. When the nukes were dropped, their leaders were blamed. This is why the war was taken to civilians, a theory that used to be used to end wars as quickly as possible.
The Japanese were given freedom of religion and the emperor stayed in power until many, many years later.
In answer to the nuclear weapons. Historically, the war has to be brought to the civilians in order for them to demand their country to surrender. Thus the choices to strike Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Iraq our precision bombing as attacked military targets with few attacks on civilian targets. With the infiltration of the Islamic fundamentalists, most from Iran, we have an entirely different situation.
We also have a situation where Japan actually posed a threat to the US, especially when you consider the other Axis powers. This war was a war of survival because once Europe and Hawaii were under control, the US mainland would have been next.
Regardless of what history revisionists would like to say, the two atomic weapons saved thousands of lives when attacking the mainland of Japan.
Interestingly, when dad came into Japan by ship, the Japanese had all run to the hills, thinking a military strike was occuring. Their news was not good and most did not know about our terribly new weapon.
As much as you hear about the Japanese taking care of their old people, they left the elderly and crippled behind to be captured or killed by US forces while the rest headed for the mountains.
Of course, the forces were not attacking and simply took control of policing operations and so on.
This was somewhat off-track, but the bomb needed to be mentioned for understanding of civilian attack.
Japan did not have terrorists entering the country and trying to stop the US occupation. The whole world was upset at Japan, Germany and Italy and whatever we did to them was typically applauded by the free nations; simply due to their preemptive strikes.
Not much space to elaborate in the real history--I will recommend a good book tomorrow. You should be able to find it on ebay, it is a history book written right after the war, before the revisionists had a chance to butcher the World War.
