Japan=Nukes?

Gary Grigsby's strategic level wargame covering the entire War in the Pacific from 1941 to 1945 or beyond.

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andytimtim
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Japan=Nukes?

Post by andytimtim »

this question has been bother me for awhile after finding out about this game...Can Japan build Nuclear Bombs and drop them on the West Coast?


-Sorry if this has been brought up before!!
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mavraam
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by mavraam »

No, only the allies. And only one specific bomber squadron. And only on cities (no naval).

Its covered in the manual somewhere...
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rogueusmc
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by rogueusmc »

I don't think Japan ever even tried to develop anything like that...
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hithere
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by hithere »

Ironically, I just saw a documentary on that a couple of weeks ago. They actually did look into it but settled on Bio weapons. It was easier for them to produce and they envisioned using their "balloon bombs". They killed A LOT of Chinese during testing.
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Hard Sarge
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by Hard Sarge »

Don't think like that

in fact, there are rumors, that they had tested one off of Korea, just as the war ended

they got pic's of the Navy tossing Magalatons (spelling) that they found off of one of there ships

(don't forget, the GE were shipping lots of info and parts of all there late war weapons, and not all of the subs were caught)

one point that was interesting, was the people interveiw about what they had seen, had seen what a A bomb should of looked like going off, and at that time, only a very few people knew what it would look like

of course, it is HARD to tell if the info the writers were finding is good or bad, if they made stuff up or not, to give it more appeal, but the WWII mag had a nice little story about it (and even they said they couldn't tell if the info was good, or just a good story)

also, don't forget, for the time, you didn't need it to go boom, to have an effect, you could used it as a dust falling from there ballon bombs to make a mess out of large areas

but even with out the A Bomb, they had other stuff that could of been just as bad, pot bombs (as in flower), full of fleas that carried the plauge

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Jack Shelak
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by Jack Shelak »

Japan did have an atomic bomb program, how far they got no one knows:

http://vikingphoenix.com/public/JapanIn ... -abomb.htm

What I find interesting is that although Germany had deadly nerve gases (e.g. Sarin) and Japan had biological wepons, only the U.S. used weapons of mass destruction. Just an observation, call off the home guard!!
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ggallagher
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by ggallagher »

Just an observation...take the shabby cheapshot, revisionist history pokes at us elsewhere, please, or I'll make a tasteless comment about a country that has a picture of the Queen on one side of a coin and a beaver on the other....
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Jack Shelak
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by Jack Shelak »

revisionist history

Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not happen???

I'll take my beaver any day [:'(]

Seriously, and this is just my opinion, I think Germany did not use nerve gas because Churchill was just itching for a reason to drop his tons of stockpiled gas on German cities and Japan probably did not have a delivery system for biological wepons.
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Guderon
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by Guderon »

The moral and ethical implications of the atomic bombing of Japan will doubtless be debated forever, but I think people tend to lose sight of one important fact in this debate - that if either Japan or Germany (or both) had developed nuclear weapons during the war there can be little doubt that they would have used them.
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by ggallagher »

And for the record, Nanking, Auschwitz, Dachau also happened as well....

Perhaps I misread or misunderstood the intent of your original post, but I was (over?)reacting to the possible attempt to portray our use of the nukes during WWII as somehow lower on the morale scale than the Axis actions during that war, and also indirectly a criticism of the current debate on the central role of WMDs in modern geopolitical debate.

Attempting to assess actions of 60 years ago performed in the context of a global war that was started by the Axis by applying the world's current sensibilities re WMD proliferation to rogue states and/or terrorists is a bit disengenuous (IMHO).

So unless you want to press the point further, let's just drop it.
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paullus99
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by paullus99 »

Most definitely - in a freekn' heartbeat I'm sure.
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hithere
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by hithere »

i have to agree that the Axis didn't use them more out of logistics than moral goodness. also, the program stated that Japan did use the bio weapons on (and I am really drawing here) about 120,000 chinese to test.
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Jack Shelak
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by Jack Shelak »

The allies in the pacific had a horrible choice, do we invade Japan and suffer huge losses (100,000 marines and 1 million Japanese casualties are the estimates I have seen) or do we drop the bomb, end the war (and stop soviet expansion in the east).

If I had been Truman, I would have done the same thing (i.e. drop the bomb)...


p.s. political debate is healthy in a democracy
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andytimtim
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by andytimtim »

are you sure it was 100,000 marines, ive read somewhere that the americans expected 500,000 casulties!! or maybe it was japan that said that!!, could some one clear this up!!
hithere
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by hithere »

ORIGINAL: Jack Shelak

The allies in the pacific had a horrible choice, do we invade Japan and suffer huge losses (100,000 marines and 1 million Japanese casualties are the estimates I have seen) or do we drop the bomb, end the war (and stop soviet expansion in the east).

If I had been Truman, I would have done the same thing (i.e. drop the bomb)...


p.s. political debate is healthy in a democracy

I agree that political debate is good..but...is this really the place?
Quote from one of my drill sergeants, "remember, except for the extreme heat, intense radiation, and powerful blast wave, a nuclear explosion is just like any other explosion"
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Becket
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by Becket »

The invasion plan for Japan (I forget the name now, dammit, but it was planned for 46) anticipated 1 million US casualties.

To put this in perspective, the number of US killed in WWII is approx. 250,000.

However, this number may be overly high, as the Soviets incurred minimal casualties defeating the million-strong Kwantung army in August 45. Of course, the Kwantung army was a shadow of its former self, but the point is that the Allies had learned a lot about modern warfare by 45 while their opponents ability to resist had markedly deteriorated.

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ggallagher
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by ggallagher »

Jack...am in total agreement re political debate...was just set off by a perception of historical revisionism.

FWIW, one of the tragedies of modern life (both here in the US and abroad) is the lack of knowledge that the vast majority of people have regarding such historical contexts. We wargamers tend to be better read than most and can appreciate (and debate) the various issues with a bit better appreciation for the past.

And BTW, this sense of historical deja vu also needs to be understood within today's context on issues such as Muslim/Japanese internment.....Patriot Act (ugh!).....Nazi/Terrorist appeasement, etc.

I may be too much an alarmist, but I get a feeling that we may look back on the 2000's in the same way the world looked back on the 1930's.....
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by Caltone »

ORIGINAL: Jack Shelak

What I find interesting is that although Germany had deadly nerve gases (e.g. Sarin) and Japan had biological wepons, only the U.S. used weapons of mass destruction. Just an observation, call off the home guard!!

What an outrageous comment. I suppose I should be used to the off the wall comments from the Blame America crowd, but it always gets my goat.

Hey Jack do a google on Unit 731 or even Auschwitz. While you're at it, take off the blinders.
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Becket
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by Becket »

ORIGINAL: Jack Shelak
What I find interesting is that although Germany had deadly nerve gases (e.g. Sarin) and Japan had biological wepons, only the U.S. used weapons of mass destruction. Just an observation, call off the home guard!!

I'd call encircling massive areas of Soviet land, then rounding up the people who don't fit your world view and shooting them to be an exercise of mass destruction, even if the weapons employed were starvation and firing squads. And let's not even talk about what happened in Nanking and other areas under Japanese occupation.

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Arnir
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RE: Japan=Nukes?

Post by Arnir »

ORIGINAL: hithere
ORIGINAL: Jack Shelak

The allies in the pacific had a horrible choice, do we invade Japan and suffer huge losses (100,000 marines and 1 million Japanese casualties are the estimates I have seen) or do we drop the bomb, end the war (and stop soviet expansion in the east).

If I had been Truman, I would have done the same thing (i.e. drop the bomb)...


p.s. political debate is healthy in a democracy

I agree that political debate is good..but...is this really the place?

I would say no. Shouldn't this be a general forum topic now that the answer to the original poster's question has been answered? These threads usually go nowhere fast.
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