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I have redirected Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night here, because they are the same operation (and Operation PX seems to have been the official name for this plan).
There is a lot of discussion on the talk page of the other article about whether the plan was cancelled after/by the atomic bombings and end of the war. The serious sources I have consulted (the same ones, more or less, cited in this article) all suggest it was cancelled in March 1945. As does this page as it stands.
If there are sources that suggest that a) they were seriously putting it into consideration again in August 1945 (which seems very unlikely given how few I-400 subs they had, and the fact that they were tied up in other (highly dangerous and unlikely to succeed) missions, b) have actual citations/evidence for this (not just an assertion — I want at least a solid footnote that goes to something serious), c) that the end of the war decisively stopped such plans, then it would be great to add them here.
But from what I can tell in my investigations so far, such sources do not exist, probably because this did not happen. (It is, of course, an entirely separate thing as to whether one attributes the end of the war to the atomic bombs — scholars argue about that quite a bit.) I suspect that this is a bit of a myth that been built up over the years as yet another justification for the use of the atomic bombs. I do not have a problem with people coming up with justifications or arguments for the atomic bombings, but I do take issue with ones based on myths. So if anyone is tempted to add a line back in about the atomic bombs... please make sure it is very well-sourced. -- NuclearSecrets ( talk) 03:51, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a dictionary, hence the following is problematic:
Operation PX was a codename for a planned Japanese attack ...
Changed to:
Operation PX was a planned Japanese attack ... , [as codenamed for a specific consideration].
This is slightly more awkward on one level, but it crucially averts the distancing effect of taking the codename as primary.
Critics of use of the term "collateral damage" see it as a euphemism that dehumanizes non-combatants killed or injured during combat, used to reduce the perceived culpability of military leadership in failing to prevent non-combatant casualties.
This was not a codename. It was a planned attack on civilians of an especially vicious nature.
On the night of 9/10 March 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) conducted a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo, the Japanese capital city.
This attack was code-named Operation Meetinghouse by the USAAF and is known as the Great Tokyo Air Raid in Japan.
If that page were titled Operation Meetinghouse, should the article begin:
Operation Meetinghouse was a codename for a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo conducted by the USAAF in March 1945.
No, it should not. Just my opinion, I suppose, but a strongly held opinion all the same. — MaxEnt 17:02, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
User:JuggernautAstronaut wrote in an edit summary:
And suggested the following change to the lede:
I assume the website link is meant to be this.
The above source is a newsletter entry that asserts:
It then goes on to discuss an entirely different operation. At the end, he discusses the relative lack of feasibility of Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night (something which makes no specific reference to any plans or interest), and then concludes that "The U.S. use of the two atomic bombs made the whole discussion moot," by which he clearly means that the end of the war made it moot (whether the atomic bombs were the major cause for the end of the war is a separate discussion).
For sources, he cites Geoghegan's Operation Storm, Gold's Japan’s Infamous Unit 731, and Polmar's "Japan’s Deadliest Weapons."
As I have noted on the old talk page for the pre-merged article, both Geoghegan and Gold clearly state that the plan was cancelled in March 1945 on and say nothing of it being revitalized. Polmar's article ( here) says nothing of the operation at all.
So we have, as before, a number of serious works of study that do not support the claim. We have one "newsletter" that makes the claim but provides no evidence for it. Without any disrespect meant to Mr. Cox, his article is not enough, in my view, to warrant making such a large claim. I think it is highly possible that his article was influenced by other less-careful sources — including possibly earlier incarnations of this article — that did not actually try to substantiate the claim seriously.
As I wrote on the other talk page: I also fear that since the Wikipedia article itself had very strong-but-unsourced sentiments about this topic for many years, it is possible that this unsupported assertion has adopted the status of "truth" in many, many web pages on the Internet, an example of what Randall Munroe called Cytogenesis many years back. So I think we need to be very vigilant in making sure we are citing things that are being rigorous about their claims and citations. I do not the above article really does that; even the text of it is vague ("developed a renewed interest" — how so? in what way? how serious? how evidenced?).
If there is a serious work of scholarship that attempts to substantiate this claim, I would be more than happy to include its claims in the article. As it is, I have not found any such works of scholarship, and I suspect this is something of a historical urban legend or myth, perpetuated for the obvious reason (which is what it seems to be doing for Mr. Cox) that it appears to (further?) justify the atomic bombings. Whatever one thinks about the atomic bombings, supporting them with loose claims, much less possibly myths, is not helpful. NuclearSecrets ( talk) 22:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
References
{{
cite web}}
: External link in |website=
(
help)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I have redirected Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night here, because they are the same operation (and Operation PX seems to have been the official name for this plan).
There is a lot of discussion on the talk page of the other article about whether the plan was cancelled after/by the atomic bombings and end of the war. The serious sources I have consulted (the same ones, more or less, cited in this article) all suggest it was cancelled in March 1945. As does this page as it stands.
If there are sources that suggest that a) they were seriously putting it into consideration again in August 1945 (which seems very unlikely given how few I-400 subs they had, and the fact that they were tied up in other (highly dangerous and unlikely to succeed) missions, b) have actual citations/evidence for this (not just an assertion — I want at least a solid footnote that goes to something serious), c) that the end of the war decisively stopped such plans, then it would be great to add them here.
But from what I can tell in my investigations so far, such sources do not exist, probably because this did not happen. (It is, of course, an entirely separate thing as to whether one attributes the end of the war to the atomic bombs — scholars argue about that quite a bit.) I suspect that this is a bit of a myth that been built up over the years as yet another justification for the use of the atomic bombs. I do not have a problem with people coming up with justifications or arguments for the atomic bombings, but I do take issue with ones based on myths. So if anyone is tempted to add a line back in about the atomic bombs... please make sure it is very well-sourced. -- NuclearSecrets ( talk) 03:51, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a dictionary, hence the following is problematic:
Operation PX was a codename for a planned Japanese attack ...
Changed to:
Operation PX was a planned Japanese attack ... , [as codenamed for a specific consideration].
This is slightly more awkward on one level, but it crucially averts the distancing effect of taking the codename as primary.
Critics of use of the term "collateral damage" see it as a euphemism that dehumanizes non-combatants killed or injured during combat, used to reduce the perceived culpability of military leadership in failing to prevent non-combatant casualties.
This was not a codename. It was a planned attack on civilians of an especially vicious nature.
On the night of 9/10 March 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) conducted a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo, the Japanese capital city.
This attack was code-named Operation Meetinghouse by the USAAF and is known as the Great Tokyo Air Raid in Japan.
If that page were titled Operation Meetinghouse, should the article begin:
Operation Meetinghouse was a codename for a devastating firebombing raid on Tokyo conducted by the USAAF in March 1945.
No, it should not. Just my opinion, I suppose, but a strongly held opinion all the same. — MaxEnt 17:02, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
User:JuggernautAstronaut wrote in an edit summary:
And suggested the following change to the lede:
I assume the website link is meant to be this.
The above source is a newsletter entry that asserts:
It then goes on to discuss an entirely different operation. At the end, he discusses the relative lack of feasibility of Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night (something which makes no specific reference to any plans or interest), and then concludes that "The U.S. use of the two atomic bombs made the whole discussion moot," by which he clearly means that the end of the war made it moot (whether the atomic bombs were the major cause for the end of the war is a separate discussion).
For sources, he cites Geoghegan's Operation Storm, Gold's Japan’s Infamous Unit 731, and Polmar's "Japan’s Deadliest Weapons."
As I have noted on the old talk page for the pre-merged article, both Geoghegan and Gold clearly state that the plan was cancelled in March 1945 on and say nothing of it being revitalized. Polmar's article ( here) says nothing of the operation at all.
So we have, as before, a number of serious works of study that do not support the claim. We have one "newsletter" that makes the claim but provides no evidence for it. Without any disrespect meant to Mr. Cox, his article is not enough, in my view, to warrant making such a large claim. I think it is highly possible that his article was influenced by other less-careful sources — including possibly earlier incarnations of this article — that did not actually try to substantiate the claim seriously.
As I wrote on the other talk page: I also fear that since the Wikipedia article itself had very strong-but-unsourced sentiments about this topic for many years, it is possible that this unsupported assertion has adopted the status of "truth" in many, many web pages on the Internet, an example of what Randall Munroe called Cytogenesis many years back. So I think we need to be very vigilant in making sure we are citing things that are being rigorous about their claims and citations. I do not the above article really does that; even the text of it is vague ("developed a renewed interest" — how so? in what way? how serious? how evidenced?).
If there is a serious work of scholarship that attempts to substantiate this claim, I would be more than happy to include its claims in the article. As it is, I have not found any such works of scholarship, and I suspect this is something of a historical urban legend or myth, perpetuated for the obvious reason (which is what it seems to be doing for Mr. Cox) that it appears to (further?) justify the atomic bombings. Whatever one thinks about the atomic bombings, supporting them with loose claims, much less possibly myths, is not helpful. NuclearSecrets ( talk) 22:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
References
{{
cite web}}
: External link in |website=
(
help)