mtfester@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:

> Eric Takabayashi <etakajp@yahoo.co.jp> wrote:
> > mtfester@netMAPSONscape.net wrote:
>
> >> > Are the deaths and killings of Okinawan non-combatants to be called "mistakes"?
> >>
> >> In some cases, yes.
>
> > And the others, in which killing of non-combatants was not a "mistake"?
>
> You're getting decent at grasping the painfully obvious.

No, because still I don't know what you think of any killings of non-combatants by Americans
which were not "mistakes". You won't even bite on the the My Lai Massacre. Was Calley or any of
the handful of men who made it to court martial, "jerks"?

> > I know innocents die in war. The issue is how or why they died or were killed.
>
> Uh, yes, that's certainly a statement on your part, Mr Takabayashi...

Why? All true.

> So please tell us how the US was supposed to know which caves housed
> entirely civilians.

Check.

> Then, of course, you could read the accounts of the battle, where the
> IJA deliberately moved into caves where the civilians hid, and fired at
> US troops from among the civilians.

Heard.

> Tell us, please, how GI Joe is supposed to be able to quickly sort out
> goats from sheep in that situation.

Don't do it quickly.

How would you like Japanese or Germans to treat resistance coming from caves of civilians? The
same as Americans did to Japanese?

> >> > So why the bombings of the cities?
> >>
> >> Gosh, that's tough. How 'bout:
> >> that's were industry and communications centers are? That's where the
> >> Japanese military were?
>
> > All those cities?
>
> Sorry, were the words too large?

No, just your generalization.

> > Would Americans have been any more upset if the Japanese bombed all of Honolulu, than if
> > they had focused their attack on Pearl Harbor?
>
> Sorry, this doesn't make sense.
>
> Had they bombed Oahu at the time, they would have been bombing a city
> not at war,  as the Japanese didn't bother to declare such.

That is not the question.

> > Have you read of the "forgotten Hiroshimas"?
>
> You mean, we dropped more than 2 a-bombs?

There were other bombings, and more deaths. But not even Japanese want to consider them. Even
survivors of the Tokyo Firebombing will call themselves forgotten, for good reason.

> > http://www.godhatesjanks.org/forgotten-hiroshimas.html
>
> Uh, this is cute; "rants, silliness, benign nationalism", etc.

Try commenting on actual content, or at least views.

> >> >Just this month, I read the estimate of over 600,000
> >> > deaths nationwide (don't know if that included the A-bombs). Even Fukuyama was bombed,
> >>
> >> I read that a long while ago.
>
> > Hard to tell by your lack of reaction.
>
> Actually, what is easy to tell by your reaction is that you have NOT
> read very much on the war, and likely will not.

Why do I need to read more to understand the concept of historical double standard, particularly
regarding the views of posters on this thread?

> >> > Yet another reason to downplay American killings of Japanese/Okinawans.
> >>
> >> Sorry, who's downplaying it?
>
> > You, apparently.
>
> Sorry, but your English  is obviously less up to snuff than you believe.
> I am giving you facts,

Facts about the Gifu firebombing, please, to counter the claims of the website and researchers
quoted who went to the primary sources:

http://tinyurl.com/g0su

The amount of destruction wrought in Gifu simply could not be explained away as an attempt to
stop Japan's ability to make war; many local residents have long suspected that there was an
ulterior motive, a hidden agenda at work.

Evidence of this was found in the summer of 1998 by Yozo Kudoh, chairman of the Tokuyama History
Committee in Tokuyama, Yamaguchi Prefecture. He was one of several researchers nationwide whom
were scouring for records pertaining to small-town air raids by the US military. During his
research at the National Archives in Washington DC, he stumbled upon sheafs of composite aerial
photographs (called "litho mosaics") taken during US reconnaissance missions, depicting overhead
views of Japanese towns all over the country. The litho mosaic of Gifu was found in this pile,
marked like the others with lat/long crosshairs that converged on an intersection at the very
center of downtown. According to Mr. Kudoh, the US military had basically taken pictures of
Japanese municipalities nationwide, painted them with bulls-eyes, and handed them to bomber
pilots. No specific military targets are mentioned in any of the photographs, and recovered
field order documents only cite one or two concrete objectives which an across-the-board
firestorm could not possibly justify.

In the field orders pertaining to Gifu, all that is mentioned are the six numbers, "061062".
These numbers correspond to the hash marks on the litho mosaic of Gifu City proper, taken on
December 11, 1944, pointing to a target at the intersection of what is now Kinkabashi and
Tetsumei Street, the geographical center of town. Mr. Kudoh believes that "the B-29 bombardiers
were instructed to aim for an area within a radius of 4,000 feet from this target, in the belief
that doing so would completely burn the city flat."

To Yoshiki Shinozaki, local historian and chairman of the Gifu Peace Museum Committee, the
implications are clear. "The US military's claim of aiming for military industry was in name
only," he commented for an article published by the Gifu Shinbun newspaper on August 4, 1998.
"They were targeting the civilian population all along. Witnesses described a