Is that true? After two atom bombs dropping, you'd think that would be the nail to the coffin (for lack of a better phrase).
If Dike is healthy and if he is released for the Gold Cup he should play, regardless of transfer status. At some point we need our USMNT players to actually play with the USMNT with some regularity. This goes for other players too. Gregg and US Soccer (partly due to COVID) have struggled getting our main group of guys together and I think it is really going to hurt us that we have no cohesion when big games like WCQ or even World Cup games come around. Dike is not CP or Weston, he needs games with the USMNT, even though he also needs time with his potential new club in preseason. This is always a tough situation, but we see other countries continually bring in their A team no matter what. We need to do a better job of that. Lets hope Dike gets GC games and gets the big transfer too.
ability to occupy two central defenders. Two cannon laser legs. Better aerial ability. Happy to have both. Want to see Dike against the best competition possible, so a move soon would be great.
I am far from an expert, but from the 3 books I've read + a couple of podcasts on WWII, the source material from the Japanese leaders seems to be that they were holding out surrender in order to secure a conditional surrender, brokered by the Soviets. When the USSR moved to attack instead of put pressure on the US to accept a negotiated surrender (which could have ranged from Japan keeping some territory to keeping Hirohito as emperor), the Japanese knew that wasn't happening and surrendered. I haven't read anything about specific reactions at the time to the atomic bomb(s), but it's worth noting that the firebombing of Tokyo killed more people. It's also worth noting that it was touch and go on where the surrender would happen -- while the heads of the Army and Navy were reluctantly on board (and they ran the country), large swaths of the military and the civilians wanted to fight to the last. It had been long running propaganda and was a fundamental part of the culture. Japan had a history of attempted and somewhat successful military coups in the decades previous; I don't think people realize how martial a culture and government Japan had pre-war and through the war. It was entirely reasonable to believe that the Japanese would literally fight to the last man, woman and child ... and even after the bombs dropped and the surrender, it was a real concern. But yes, the real trigger for the surrender was Russia setting up to attack. not the bombs. I've always read that it was not specifically fear of Soviet occupation but just realizing that they would have to surrender unconditionally and no one would come to help them negotiate terms. May be six of one and a half dozen of the other.
Yes. The US had been firebombing Japan months before the atomic bombs had been dropped, effectively leveling their wooden cities. In the Shinto religion, it is believed the emperor is a descendant of the sun god. Which is why when surrendering, MacArthur took a picture with Hirohito and made them publish it in every Japanese newspaper. To show he was no god but just a rather short man. It’s also why the monarchy wasn’t dissolved and Hirohito wasn’t subject to war crime trials.
Next question: Would a more generous peace under the Versailles Treaty have prevented the rise of national socialism in Weimar Germany? Discuss.
One of those guys in the quote above has missed a lot of goal scoring opportunities which is what strikers should do.
They absolutely were going to fight to the bitter end, but the atom bomb had much less to do with their surrender than is generally believed, and some historians believe that it was a big deal optically, but that it would have taken many more atom bombs to stop Japan fighting on into 1946. A USAF fighter pilot had been shot down over Japan on the 8th, two days after Hiroshima. Under torture, he had claimed the USA had about 100 bombs ready to go (in fact there were two: one would be ready by the 18th, and another in early September), and this dud information had been passed straight on the War Minister, general Korechika Anami. Needless to say, the inner cabinet was greatly alarmed at this information and wondered if this might not mean the end of, not just the Japanese state, but also the Japan as a polity and even the Japanese as a nation. General Anami agreed that this was indeed likely but, on the morning of August 9th - just as Russia formally declared war - he asked his colleagues to consider "would it not be wondrous for this whole nation to be destroyed like a beautiful flower?" As early as 1944 Japan's high command had settled on a grand strategy of fighting the USA relentlessly so that that the losses from an invasion (according to some estimates, 200k American dead, just to establish a stable beachhead) would break America's will and let Japan negotiate a favourable peace: no allied occupation, disarming itself and, above all, keep the emperor, its military-dominated political system and most of its empire - Taiwan, Korea and, especially, Manchuria. The fly in the ointment with this strategy was that it assumed that Stalin would be grateful for Japan staying neutral in 1941-42 (seriously, they actually believed that Stalin would be grateful) and would not join the war. When Russia declared war on the morning of the 9th of August, a few hours before the Nagasaki bomb was dropped, even the generals realized that game was up. The bomb was seen as a deeply negative development, certainly, but as long as the Americans were still several months away from assembling an invasion force, the government had felt they could play for time and maybe even persuade Moscow to stay neutral and broker a peace acceptable to them. Now, with a second bomb dropped, the last oil refinery badly damaged and the Manchurian and Sakhalin island garrisons in very poor shape, they realized that the Russians might invade the northern island of Hokkaido in as little as a fortnight. Quite simply, Japan's capitalist-economics-in-the-service-of-feudal-militarism political system was finished. The only question was whether Japan would be rebuilt and reorganized by the Japanese themselves along as it was along lines acceptable to the USA, or whether it would be rebuilt by the Soviets, directly. Not a difficult choice that, if you're a royalist or a capitalist. It was a whole lot harder for the militarists in the army to accept (the navy was another matter) because any surrender meant them losing their raison d'etre - quite literally in their minds - along with their positions, so there was an attempted coup on August 12th that lasted 3 days, but they were out of options. Once the Americans agreed that the emperor could keep his throne, Japan surrendered. The bomb was a factor, but way, way less than pop history would have us imagine.
@AngelaMerkin has covered it, but there's no reason to believe that you couldn't have both of them in the starting lineup. Daryl would lead the line - just not as a target man, puhleease - and Sarge playing off of him as a wide(r) forward in a 4-3-3-, the SS in a 4-4-2 or an AM in a 4-2-3-1. Berhalter does have some serious thinking to do.
There's no room in our lineup for a wide Sargent. He either needs to bang in goals as a striker or watch someone else give it a shot.
Given the last few pages, I think we're in need of a thread title change. I suggest "Interesting Conversations Not Related to Daryl Dike" but am open to a clever pun if one of our more creative posters can come up with one. It'll be dedicated to all topics except Daryl and strictly moderated, with cards handed out anytime anyone mentions our boy. Paging @bungadiri, @TheFalseNine and Dark Knight.
Good satire, but it's the silly season. Let's indulge ourselves a bit until there's a) some actual news about Daryl that b) means he's actually crossing the Pond again.
He did. The "information" he gave was passed on to the Mininistry of Defence and then to the minister, who passed it on to the cabinet. Meanwhile the pilot, one Marcus McDilda, had been flown from Osaka to Tokyo for interrogation - by a graduate of CUNY - where he admitted that he'd made it all up to stop the torture and save his life. He was right. When the surrender was announced, the guards at the POW camp back in Osaka beheaded their 50 prisoners. He, being in Tokyo because he had once been classified as a Very Important Prisoner, retained that classification long enough to be freed by the occupation's advance guard 20 days later. At that stage, Japan had 100k allied prisoners. It was well understood that all of them would have been liquidated immediately if Japan had been invaded.