NationStates Jolt Archive

sorry if i have spelt them wrong.
should the americans have done it it may have ended the war in the east quicker but so many died(over 80,00). Was it a vengence attack for pearl harbor should the japanise have attacked pearl harbour.should they have attacked a more remote area with the a- bombs ? :confused: :headbang:

The reasoning is, Truman had already approved the invasion of Japan, with losses estimated anywhere from 200K to 5 million, depending on how liberal or conservative you wanted to be in figuring it. He didn't like dragging the war out, and didn't want to destroy the Japanese mainland, which is what it would have taken to beat them. So, the Atomic Bomb was the best course, all things considered.

Think of how many civilians would have died without the bomb, in an invasion 20 times the size of D-Day...

sorry if i have spelt them wrong.
should the americans have done it it may have ended the war in the east quicker but so many died(over 80,00). Was it a vengence attack for pearl harbor should the japanise have attacked pearl harbour.should they have attacked a more remote area with the a- bombs ? :confused: :headbang:

Well I can't say I'm an authority on the subject, but as I see it in regards to the a-bombs it was either them, or an invasion of mainland Japan. The bombs were devestating and caused a lot of damage, but there was the potential to be a lot more damage/life loss if America invaded and Japan kept the no surrender attitude while said invasion was going on. It was a tradgedy that it had to come to dropping the A-bombs, but it could have been worse.

No they should not have done that!!! The bombs have killes and injuried so many people!! There are still wounded people there in Japan because of these bombs!!! NO!!!!

MAKE PEACE NOT WAR!!!

First it was 100,000 with one bomb and 50,000 with the next. Then the after effects of the bombs cause thousands dead every year because of it. Then the united states did this actually more out of wanting to try out the bomb. The US had spent much money on its development and wanted to try it out. Well anyway Russia was schedualed to invade Japan 2 days after the first attack, which was called off from the confustion. The US bombed helpless citizens. Plus sent radiation in a populated are.

But now no one will mess with the US for it is like idiotic to fight our nation, we could just nuke people out of wanting to. But Bush is a retard. no no. The Retard. He would not even Bomb Iraq. He would just send people to die. +_+

they didnt have to bomb a big city if they had shown them the power of the bomb it would have been anuth to scar them to surrender or they could have used them in the main military ports.

This has been argued to death. The short of it is (as this is an incredably complicated subject), yes. The military goverment was prepared to keep fighting no matter what. Never mind the American casulaties, there is a good chance there wouldn't BE a Japan if America invaded. Was it revenge for Pearl? Probably. Should the Japanese have bombed Pearl? No.

As have said many times, I wish we didn't drop it, but putting myself back then and knowing what we knew THEN (not now) damned if I can come up with a way to stop the war without dropping the bombs that wouldn't have killed even more people.

The spelling is Hiroshima and Nagasaki, BTW.

Edit: Mimic-Totoro, a Japanese woman, would like to request that you please study Japanese spelling, culture, and history to better understand and write about Japan.

No they should not have done that!!! The bombs have killes and injuried so many people!! There are still wounded people there in Japan because of these bombs!!! NO!!!!

MAKE PEACE NOT WAR!!!

You worthless hippie. If it wasn't for those bombs, you'd be speaking German, Japanese, or Russian now. You wimpy little peace-lovers have all of the historically correct answers for these sort of questions, when in reality you weren't there. You didn't have a loved one battling against these aggressor states. I would love to see how far your grotesquely liberal points of view would get in other parts of the world. You can be a pacifist all you want, but I'll choose the side of those brave enough to fight for their ideals rather than play hippie games online and spray these forums with nonsense like peace.

Go take a shower you granola head! :sniper:

dont get hippies angry they have magic flower powers anyway way do you thinck we would we speaking german they would never get rid off our coulture we probibly would have won without the a bomb even if we didnt we would have rebeld against them.

they didnt have to bomb a big city if they had shown them the power of the bomb it would have been anuth to scar them to surrender or they could have used them in the main military ports.

They DID show them the power of the bomb, and Japan didn't surrender. They bombed Hiroshima first and the Japanese refused to disarm. They bombed Nagasaki and they refused again at first. The US didn't have another bomb, but we said we did and that we were going to use it on Tokyo if they didn't give up this time. The Emperor finally intervened in secret (early on) to brook the surrender and was almost assassinated by the military for it. They almost didn't capitulate after TWO major cities were bombed.

The loss of life for an invasion would have been twenty times what it was with the bombs and many civilians would have been killed anyway.

While some would argue Truman dropped the bombs simply to the the Russians not to mess with us, the problem is that they didn't surrender after the first, like some thought they would. So the US dropped a second. However it was a semi bluff as we didn't have a third and it would have a been a time before we had another bomb. Had Japan not surrendered, it would have told the world we'd taken our shot and failed. So it that may have been one factor of the decision.

However with the massive army and air force we had in Europe at the time, plus the huge army and navy we had in the Pacific, the Russians knew we had military power. Some argue had we let Patton and others like him have their way we could have kicked the Soviets out of eastern Europe anyway. That is debatable.

Another common cited reason is that Truman didn't want to invade. Post war documents show that the Japanese were arming civilians with whatever makeshift weapons they could find and telling them it was their duty to die for the defense of the Emporor. Tens of Millions would have been killed and today we would be arguing that we shouldn't have killed so many civilians in the fighting.

As for the Pearl Harbor arguement, if we wanted to retaliate that badly we could have just as easily blown up Tokyo and been done with it. We could have staged Bombers out of Okinawa and bombed the mainland into the stoneage, either would have cost more damage and killed more people than the destruction of the two cities that it can be argued would have been destroyed anyway. Look at a photo of Desden, Berlin or any other German city after bombing by the Eighth Air Force.

You worthless hippie. If it wasn't for those bombs, you'd be speaking German, Japanese, or Russian now. You wimpy little peace-lovers have all of the historically correct answers for these sort of questions, when in reality you weren't there. You didn't have a loved one battling against these aggressor states. I would love to see how far your grotesquely liberal points of view would get in other parts of the world. You can be a pacifist all you want, but I'll choose the side of those brave enough to fight for their ideals rather than play hippie games online and spray these forums with nonsense like peace.

Go take a shower you granola head! :sniper:

This 'worthless hippie' was in the 1st Marine Division for the invasion of Iraq, has been back with my National Guard unit, and is now prepping again. What have you done except scream like a little girl at people?

Anyway, to address the topic....
I wonder if the power of the bomb could have been demonstrated by an airburst in a harbor or something. More people did die in the B-29 raids on Tokyo, where we dropped incindenary bombs on a city constructed of bamboo and paper, so the death toll seems kinda secondary. Having read that short book Hiroshima, most everyone thought that some kind of bomb or airplane sprayed gasoline at high altitude and set it on fire. I don't know how long it was before they found out that it was a nuclear weapon.
I guess what does suck is that the U.S. has the infamous title of being the only country to date that has used a nuclear weapon on another country, particularly on a civilian population. But hey, war is not a goddamn strawberry social.

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary for two reasons.

1.) The devastation wrought by an invasion of Japan would have been far greater that that brought about by the atom bombs, on both sides.

2.) The Russians were prepared to help the US in the invasion of Japan. Now, any person with any historical knowledge knows what happed when the Soviets “liberated” a nation in World War 2. They either claimed it or installed a puppet communist government. Imagine, a Stalinist Japan.

In short, the US saved Japan by using the atom bombs, whether it was our intention or not.

I Wasn't Talking To You Doosh Rocket

Hiroshima yes, Nagasaki, not so much. The show of force was effective and brought Japan to its knees. The second bombing was little more than a "We have more where that came from, so smarten up" thing.

You didn't have a loved one battling against these aggressor states.
I did. Did you?

Peace brother. :)

No they should not have done that!!! The bombs have killes and injuried so many people!! There are still wounded people there in Japan because of these bombs!!! NO!!!!

MAKE PEACE NOT WAR!!!

This is why pacifists shouldn't be elected into office. I don't mind if your against war but the fact is, an invasion would've cost a hell of a lot more lives than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Should we have done it? Yes! It saved countless, Japs, chinese, and American lives.

BTW: I'm getting tired of Hiroshima and nagasaki threads.

I did. Did you?

Peace brother. :)

You're goddamn right I did. My uncle survived the Bataan Death March, where those ruthless Japs were just as evil as the Nazis. My grandfather was a pilot over the pacific theatre. My great uncle was in frontline combat.

I do believe we warned the Japanese beforehand. Ignorance is a killer.

Kind of off-topic but, the guy who dropped the bomb wasn't informed that he was carrying the A-bomb. He dropped the bomb when he was given the command and noticed that the bomb was VERY unusual. Coming back home, he was like 'what the hell did I drop?'. Once he found out about the destruction that he thinks he caused, he stuck himself in an asylum and went completely crazy.

Hiroshima yes, Nagasaki, not so much. The show of force was effective and brought Japan to its knees. The second bombing was little more than a "We have more where that came from, so smarten up" thing.

Actually the 2nd bomb was necessary. Japan didn't surrender after round 1 so we hit them with round 2. They still didn't surrender till Emperor Hirohito ordered the surrender and he was nearly dethroned in a coup attempt.

I do believe we warned the Japanese beforehand. Ignorance is a killer.

Yes we did. We warned both cities to evacuate and they didn't.

Imperial Japan was an evil punch drunk boxer drunk with power, too stupid to know or care they were beaten. What do you do with an opponent who won't throw down the towel or stay down for the count? Call 'em a stupid son of a bitch and pound him again.

The reasoning is, Truman had already approved the invasion of Japan, with losses estimated anywhere from 200K to 5 million, depending on how liberal or conservative you wanted to be in figuring it. He didn't like dragging the war out, and didn't want to destroy the Japanese mainland, which is what it would have taken to beat them. So, the Atomic Bomb was the best course, all things considered.

Think of how many civilians would have died without the bomb, in an invasion 20 times the size of D-Day...

Japan was already asking for terms for surrender. They only asked that America recognize the emperor because they didn't want him to be executed. Their religion considered him to be a god after all.

The USA would only settle for unconditional surrender, but they were perfectly willing to meet the only condition that the Japanese were asking for.

They dropped the bombs over a pissing contest. That's inexcusable.

This is to all you hippies out there. PEACE KILLS! If it weren't for war more than 6 million jews would be dead. If it weren't for war millions of Iraqis would be dead by Hussein. If it weren't for war the US would be kneeling to the terrorists. I think it was very necessary to drop the bombs on Japan. They deserved it. Think about it. If the US hadn't dropped the bombs you may not even be alive. War kills. Peace kills more. :fluffle: :sniper:

Actually the 2nd bomb was necessary. Japan didn't surrender after round 1 so we hit them with round 2. They still didn't surrender till Emperor Hirohito ordered the surrender and he was nearly dethroned in a coup attempt.

Coups in Japan had'nt worked like that for centuries. The emperor wasn't the government. Whenever there was a coup both sides claimed to be fighting for the emperor. MacArthur even recognized that if he had tried to punish or remove the emperor of Japan as part of the reconstruction then he'd have a riot on his hands because the Japanese diefied him.

They didn't refuse to surrender, we refused to accept the one term that they asked for. And then when we accepted their unconditional surrender, we gave them that one term anyway. It was like that nut-kicking contest from South Park,roshambo .

This 'worthless hippie' was in the 1st Marine Division for the invasion of Iraq, has been back with my National Guard unit, and is now prepping again. What have you done except scream like a little girl at people?


Unclench. He wasn't even talking to you. He was aiming that at the confused pacifist earlier in the thread who seemed to be ignoring that a war had even started.

This is to all you hippies out there. PEACE KILLS! If it weren't for war more than 6 million jews would be dead. If it weren't for war millions of Iraqis would be dead by Hussein. If it weren't for war the US would be kneeling to the terrorists. I think it was very necessary to drop the bombs on Japan. They deserved it. Think about it. If the US hadn't dropped the bombs you may not even be alive. War kills. Peace kills more. :fluffle: :sniper:

But if it weren't for the first World War, Hitler wouldn't have come to power. So if it weren't for war there would have been no death camps in Germany. And Japan was under the rule of an Authoritarian regime. Those civilians bore far less responsilibity for Japan's actions than we bear for America's.

But if it weren't for the first World War, Hitler wouldn't have come to power. So if it weren't for war there would have been no death camps in Germany. And Japan was under the rule of an Authoritarian regime. Those civilians bore far less responsilibity for Japan's actions than we bear for America's.

Erm, no, what enabled Hitler's rise to power was the Versailles Treaty, and whilst Wilson's 14 points were largerly ignored, Clemanceau went off on a revenge spree and Lloyd George didn't do much to stop them. They wrecked the German economy, as well as the German spirit, and thus the way was paved for the collapse of the Weimar Republic and Hitler's rise to power. Had a more reasonable post-war conclusion been reached, it would have been harder for Hitler to come to power. Edit: We stayed in Germany for a long time after WW2, as we did in Japan, got them stable, built them up, and now look. Japan and Germany are two of the richest nations on Earth.

Unclench. He wasn't even talking to you. He was aiming that at the confused pacifist earlier in the thread who seemed to be ignoring that a war had even started.

Exactly. But he is a little dick. And he didn't even spell 'douche' correctly.

If it weren't for war more than 6 million jews would be dead.
I think you might be a bit confused? IF there had been no WW 2, 6 million more Jews would be alive.

When did the last peace rally kill this many people?

Casualties:

Estimates on the precise number vary widely, although most experts calculate the full civilian and combatant losses at 55 million, including the estimated 11 million lives lost due to the Holocaust, consisting of 5.6–5.9 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews made up of Poles, Roma, homosexuals, communists, dissidents, Afro-Germans, the disabled, Soviet prisoners as well as others.

Specifically, Allied forces suffered approximately 14.2 million deaths, and Axis forces suffered approximately 6.8 million deaths, Germany specifically had 5 million. The Soviet Union had the largest death toll, suffering an estimated 20 million civilian casualties along with 8 million Soviet soldiers killed.

In total, about 23 million soldiers lost their lives in the Second World War along with about 57 million civilians.

You're goddamn right I did. My uncle survived the Bataan Death March, where those ruthless Japs were just as evil as the Nazis. My grandfather was a pilot over the pacific theatre. My great uncle was in frontline combat.

Ah, I see. You're related to people who were indoctrinated with government propaganda designed to make them psychologically capable of killing however many people it took to win the war, so that must mean that what you say is automatically correct. So what happens if someone on this board is related to someone from Nagisaki? Are they right too?

Now I know that contrary objective measurements can be equally correct as the object being measured approaches the speed of light But a lie can travel around the world before the truth has put its boots on. So we know that the truth can't go all that fast, it's a slow deliberative process.

e.g. "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, it is vital to our national security that we invade."

"Hey wait! We have proof that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction and that Bush knew it all along. There's no need for a war!"

"We've been at war with him for 3 years dude. Get with the times."

Erm, no, what enabled Hitler's rise to power was the Versailles Treaty, and whilst Wilson's 14 points were largerly ignored, Clemanceau went off on a revenge spree and Lloyd George didn't do much to stop them. They wrecked the German economy, as well as the German spirit, and thus the way was paved for the collapse of the Weimar Republic and Hitler's rise to power. Had a more reasonable post-war conclusion been reached, it would have been harder for Hitler to come to power. Edit: We stayed in Germany for a long time after WW2, as we did in Japan, got them stable, built them up, and now look. Japan and Germany are two of the richest nations on Earth.

So you contend that it was the Versailles treaty that led to WWII and not WWI.

Remind me again. What was the Versailles treaty written for?

You're goddamn right I did. My uncle survived the Bataan Death March, where those ruthless Japs were just as evil as the Nazis. My grandfather was a pilot over the pacific theatre. My great uncle was in frontline combat.

Great for your dad and your uncle. What about YOU? You did not survive Bataan, or fly an plane over the Pacific. Thier actions are thier own, you don't get any claim to them by having a blood-relation. Or do you just try to stand on the shoulders of great men while you hide in mama's skirts?

I think you might be a bit confused? IF there had been no WW 2, 6 million more Jews would be alive.

When did the last peace rally kill this many people?

Casualties:

Estimates on the precise number vary widely, although most experts calculate the full civilian and combatant losses at 55 million, including the estimated 11 million lives lost due to the Holocaust, consisting of 5.6–5.9 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews made up of Poles, Roma, homosexuals, communists, dissidents, Afro-Germans, the disabled, Soviet prisoners as well as others.

Specifically, Allied forces suffered approximately 14.2 million deaths, and Axis forces suffered approximately 6.8 million deaths, Germany specifically had 5 million. The Soviet Union had the largest death toll, suffering an estimated 20 million civilian casualties along with 8 million Soviet soldiers killed.

In total, about 23 million soldiers lost their lives in the Second World War along with about 57 million civilians.

And our alternative was... what? More appeasement? "Sure chief, you can have Poland, I never liked those damn polacks anyway."

That people die in war is hardly a goddamn revelation, but it's not like there was a choice aside from war once 1939 started doing it's thing.

So you contend that it was the Versailles treaty that led to WWII and not WWI.

Remind me again. What was the Versailles treaty written for?

Get it through your head, will ya? WWI was not an inevitable lead into WWII anymore than Viet Nam was into the Gulf War. It was the Allied response to winning WWI - specifically the Treaty of Versailles - which helped create a situation where Hitler could rise to power, and therefore begin his dictatorship and subsequent war. (And, incidentally, if Germany hadn't started anything we'd probably have gone to war with the Soviet Union sooner or later.)

No they should not have done that!!! The bombs have killes and injuried so many people!! There are still wounded people there in Japan because of these bombs!!! NO!!!!

MAKE PEACE NOT WAR!!!

1. More people were killed, wounded, and went missing in the firebombing of Tokyo.

2. The Japanese had TWO MONTHS from the end of fighting in Okinawa to surrender.

Exactly. But he is a little dick. And he didn't even spell 'douche' correctly.
Oh... sorry to upset the grammar teacher. I'll be sure to spell check everything I do from now on, Mr. Douche Rocket. Good luck in Iraq.

Great for your dad and your uncle. What about YOU? You did not survive Bataan, or fly an plane over the Pacific. Thier actions are thier own, you don't get any claim to them by having a blood-relation. Or do you just try to stand on the shoulders of great men while you hide in mama's skirts?
Get off your high horse. These are my relatives that I am proud of. Of course my accomplishments pale in comparison to their's. Did I make claim on them? No, but dipshits like you read too much into stuff.

Get it through your head, will ya? WWI was not an inevitable lead into WWII anymore than Viet Nam was into the Gulf War. It was the Allied response to winning WWI - specifically the Treaty of Versailles - which helped create a situation where Hitler could rise to power, and therefore begin his dictatorship and subsequent war. (And, incidentally, if Germany hadn't started anything we'd probably have gone to war with the Soviet Union sooner or later.)

I didn't say that it was. What I said was that WWII would never have happened if WWI hadn't. That itself was a response to the contention that in a world without war, noone would have come along to stop Hitler. WWI set the stage for WWII. Just because it is concievably possible that WWI could have happened without WWII happening, doesn't mean that one didn't lead to the other.

I could enter a drag race and not die in a fiery auto wreck in a head on collision with people who didn't know that there was a drag race on that street. But if I do go drag racing and die in a fiery auto wreck then it was because I went drag racing, not just because someone else was on the same street.

As for "getting it through my head," pointed logic has the capacity to penetrate. Fuzzy logic, such as yours, has a nice layer of cushioning that makes penetration difficult.

Get off your high horse. These are my relatives that I am proud of. Of course my accomplishments pale in comparison to their's. Did I make claim on them? No, but dipshits like you read too much into stuff.

You sure are an angry little idiot. I bet they are really proud of you! Especially since you go around touting how great you are since you can tell thier stories. Even though you experienced none of it.

I think you might be a bit confused? IF there had been no WW 2, 6 million more Jews would be alive.

The war didn't cause the Holocaust. You are saying if there had been no WW II, there'd have been no Holocaust. That is incorrect. Hitler started killing Jews before the war started. The war stopped Hitler from killing even more Jews. I can't argue with your other casualty statistics, but we'll never know what the death toll for leaving Hitler in power would have been because we didn't consider that course of action. But I am glad we didn't consider leaving Hitler alone once the Japanese dragged us into the war.

You sure are an angry little idiot. I bet they are really proud of you! Especially since you go around touting how great you are since you can tell thier stories. Even though you experienced none of it.
What stories did I tell? I guy asked if I had loved ones in battle, and I answered. Don't you have an artillery shell or two to swallow?

Get off your high horse. These are my relatives that I am proud of. Of course my accomplishments pale in comparison to their's. Did I make claim on them? No, but dipshits like you read too much into stuff.

Such as "my uncle was in a war so I'm right, end of discussion?" You're invoking your relatives to win an argument and them pretending that it is distasteful to criticize the veterans and conflating that with your own position.

That's exactly the sort of thing that makes me say that conservatives are the more feminine political thinkers. Women conflate emotion with reason because the two sides of their brains are more well connected. However, they're better at it, so when men try to say things like "if you're anti war, you're unpatriotic," or "my war hero relative said it, and you wouldn't say anything bad about a war hero would you?" women intuitivly realize that it's complete bullshit, and vote democrat in higher numbers.

Men have to actually learn what they're doing, otherwise they vote in elections the same way that they loose arguments to their wives. Like when a woman says that it's sexist to say that she's only mad at you because she's on her period. It may well be the case, and the man can only fall silent and apologize because being right is less important than keeping a mad woman from throwing the furniture out the window. That's exactly the man who votes Republican, and years later says it was a good idea to drop The Bomb.

Japan was already asking for terms for surrender. They only asked that America recognize the emperor because they didn't want him to be executed. Their religion considered him to be a god after all.

The USA would only settle for unconditional surrender, but they were perfectly willing to meet the only condition that the Japanese were asking for.

They dropped the bombs over a pissing contest. That's inexcusable.

Japan didn't actually begin these talks with the US until after we dropped the first bomb. Sure they began discussing that possibility internally after the battle of Midway, but the US was not aware of such a surrender condition until after the first bomb was dropped.

Kind of off-topic but, the guy who dropped the bomb wasn't informed that he was carrying the A-bomb. He dropped the bomb when he was given the command and noticed that the bomb was VERY unusual. Coming back home, he was like 'what the hell did I drop?'. Once he found out about the destruction that he thinks he caused, he stuck himself in an asylum and went completely crazy.

Besides being completely untrue, that’s a great point you make.
I read an interview with one of the pilots. He said that he was informed in the mission briefing just how much destruction the bomb would cause. He cuts off interviews by people who ask him if he knew he was dropping a nuclear bomb. He won’t deal with that kind of ignorance.

Such as "my uncle was in a war so I'm right, end of discussion?" You're invoking your relatives to win an argument and them pretending that it is distasteful to criticize the veterans and conflating that with your own position.

That's exactly the sort of thing that makes me say that conservatives are the more feminine political thinkers. Women conflate emotion with reason because the two sides of their brains are more well connected. However, they're better at it, so when men try to say things like "if you're anti war, you're unpatriotic," or "my war hero relative said it, and you wouldn't say anything bad about a war hero would you?" women intuitivly realize that it's complete bullshit, and vote democrat in higher numbers.

Men have to actually learn what they're doing, otherwise they vote in elections the same way that they loose arguments to their wives. Like when a woman says that it's sexist to say that she's only mad at you because she's on her period. It may well be the case, and the man can only fall silent and apologize because being right is less important than keeping a mad woman from throwing the furniture out the window. That's exactly the man who votes Republican, and years later says it was a good idea to drop The Bomb.

ONCE AGAIN... reading too much into stuff. Did I say anything about being unpatriotic?

I didn't say that it was. What I said was that WWII would never have happened if WWI hadn't. That itself was a response to the contention that in a world without war, noone would have come along to stop Hitler. WWI set the stage for WWII. Just because it is concievably possible that WWI could have happened without WWII happening, doesn't mean that one didn't lead to the other.

Ah, I see what you're saying now. What I sam saying is that war does not necessarily lead to war. I'm not denying that WWI led to WWII, I'm denying that it was an inevitability, and moreover I was pointing out with Versailles one of the major things which could have been done differently to ensure it wasn't an inevitability. WWI happened and nothing could change that but WWI wasn't predestined to cause WWII.

I think you might be a bit confused? IF there had been no WW 2, 6 million more Jews would be alive.

When did the last peace rally kill this many people?

Casualties:

Estimates on the precise number vary widely, although most experts calculate the full civilian and combatant losses at 55 million, including the estimated 11 million lives lost due to the Holocaust, consisting of 5.6–5.9 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews made up of Poles, Roma, homosexuals, communists, dissidents, Afro-Germans, the disabled, Soviet prisoners as well as others.

Specifically, Allied forces suffered approximately 14.2 million deaths, and Axis forces suffered approximately 6.8 million deaths, Germany specifically had 5 million. The Soviet Union had the largest death toll, suffering an estimated 20 million civilian casualties along with 8 million Soviet soldiers killed.

In total, about 23 million soldiers lost their lives in the Second World War along with about 57 million civilians.

What was the other option? Keep giving Germany more and more land until they had the world? Appeasement has never worked, and never will. We had to fight them.

The Holocaust still would have happened, as the ideas supporting it were already in development in the early 20th century (German Eugenics Society). Their book, The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life was the basis of Nazi purification plans and was written in the 1920's (around the time the Nazi party was formed).

Those casualties would have been far worse had we done nothing. All of Africa would have been eradicated, all of South America, eventually all of Asia. Hitler wanted to murder or enslave every race on Earth to ensure that the Aryans would be dominant. That's what peace "at any cost" with Hitler would have killed.

WWII prevented this from happening, albeit at dreadful cost. War costs lives, but can also save many more.

Coups in Japan had'nt worked like that for centuries. The emperor wasn't the government. Whenever there was a coup both sides claimed to be fighting for the emperor. MacArthur even recognized that if he had tried to punish or remove the emperor of Japan as part of the reconstruction then he'd have a riot on his hands because the Japanese diefied him.

And that was his terms. Yes he kept the emperor but he removed his godlike status. He was never to be looked to as a God every again. Yes, coups hadn't worked in Japan but this coup took place because they want to.....

KEEP ON FIGHTING

They didn't refuse to surrender, we refused to accept the one term that they asked for.

I suggest you go back and check your history books. They didn't approach the US my friend. They approached the USSR. The USSR agreed to mee with them but then canceled the meeting! Then the USSR declared War on Japan.

And then when we accepted their unconditional surrender, we gave them that one term anyway. It was like that nut-kicking contest from South Park,roshambo .

He was kept but he was no longer a God. Big distinction there. And if the coup that followed the surrender order that came from the emperor (who should've been brought up for warcrimes if you want my opinion), there was a coup by the military junta who wanted to keep on fighting. Ironic isn't? The emperor sends an envoy to the USSR, the meeting gets canceled, USSR declares War 2 days after Hiroshima. August 9th, Nagasaki goes up. Emperor issues orders of surrender then he was nearly ousted by those that wanted to keep it going.

What do you think would've happened if the coup was successful? I could tell you but you wouldn't like it.

An invasion of the mainland wouldn't have been necessary: a blockade would have done it. Japan need recourses from the outside; oil reserves were nearly empty and the IJN wasn't but a shadow of its former self: almost no capital ships and again no spare oil to fuel those. The only reason they trew a bomb is because Japan was moving to surrender to Russia and the mighty American government couldn't let that happen.

Anyhow there is never and I repeat never a good reason to throw a bomb: it's not only the civilian casualties but also ecological and long-term consequenses.

Kind of off-topic but, the guy who dropped the bomb wasn't informed that he was carrying the A-bomb. He dropped the bomb when he was given the command and noticed that the bomb was VERY unusual. Coming back home, he was like 'what the hell did I drop?'. Once he found out about the destruction that he thinks he caused, he stuck himself in an asylum and went completely crazy.

You're waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off. Read this book. It's not a rah-rah, but it IS the memoir of the only man who was on BOTH atomic bomb missions.

War's End: An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission
by Charles W. Sweeney

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This has been argued to death. The short of it is (as this is an incredably complicated subject), yes. The military goverment was prepared to keep fighting no matter what. Never mind the American casulaties, there is a good chance there wouldn't BE a Japan if America invaded. Was it revenge for Pearl? Probably. Should the Japanese have bombed Pearl? No.

As have said many times, I wish we didn't drop it, but putting myself back then and knowing what we knew THEN (not now) damned if I can come up with a way to stop the war without dropping the bombs that wouldn't have killed even more people.

The spelling is Hiroshima and Nagasaki, BTW.

Edit: Mimic-Totoro, a Japanese woman, would like to request that you please study Japanese spelling, culture, and history to better understand and write about Japan.


Thank you for that. And please thank Mimic-Totoro as well. I've tried to figure out a way to answer many posts, but at the moment I can't seem to find one that's both appropriate and non-flaming. So I won't say anything beyond the above is the best answer any of you here will probably get.

Wow. Ignoring the massive flamefest, allow me to add my two cents.

The main point of contention in this debate is always whether or not Japan was willing to surrender BEFORE the Hiroshima bomb. If you accept that Japan was not willing to surrender before Hiroshima, an invasion of Japan was likely the only way to conclusively end the war. Such an invasion would have been catastrophic for both sides, especially if you believe the stories that the Japanese military was arming its civilians to fight literally to the last man, woman and child. And since it was obvious immediately afterwards that they were not swayed by the first atomic bomb, the second bomb can be justified as well. Only after Nagasaki was the Japanese military brass sufficiently awed by the power of the US to agree to surrender. It was a bit of a gambit on the Americans' side to risk the Japanese not accepting surrender terms after Nagasaki, as the third bomb was months away.

However, if you believe that the Japanese military was willing to accept surrender terms before the first bomb, then it become quite apparent that both atomic bombs were simply a show of force to the Russians. This is inexcusable. The Americans sacrificed 150,000 Japanese lives for a mere big-dick contest with the Soviet Union, truly a callous act.

It all depends on how you look at the situation.

Alright, here is an alternative to dropping the bomb. Now, please note, that I am NOT a huge history buff like some of the others here, so if there is a problem with this idea, please let me know.

Okay, here it is. Since Japan's had no navy whatsoever after Midway, rather then drop the bomb or invade, wouldn't it have been better if they just blockaded them until they gave up? Now, I relize that this would have taken a much longer time, but starving the Japanese out of the war would have lead to much fewer casualties. And while the Soviet Union was scedualed(sp?) to invade 2 days after the bombings took place, it is my understanding that the Americans had all intentions of dropping the bomb when they asked Stalin to make the invasion. If they had merely told them to hold off, the Soviets wouldn't have been an issue.

But hey, I could be wrong. It just seems to me that it would be a much less drastic way to end the war then dropping the A bomb.

EDIT: Whoops, seems like Tiralon beat me to the punch. Sorry about that.

Alright, here is an alternative to dropping the bomb. Now, please note, that I am NOT a huge history buff like some of the others here, so if there is a problem with this idea, please let me know.

Okay, here it is. Since Japan's had no navy whatsoever after Midway, rather then drop the bomb or invade, wouldn't it have been better if they just blockaded them until they gave up? Now, I relize that this would have taken a much longer time, but starving the Japanese out of the war would have lead to much fewer casualties. And while the Soviet Union was scedualed(sp?) to invade 2 days after the bombings took place, it is my understanding that the Americans had all intentions of dropping the bomb when they asked Stalin to make the invasion. If they had merely told them to hold off, the Soviets wouldn't have been an issue.

But hey, I could be wrong. It just seems to me that it would be a much less drastic way to end the war then dropping the A bomb.

EDIT: Whoops, seems like Tiralon beat me to the punch. Sorry about that.

The Soviets would not have stopped the invasion just because the Americans asked. The end of WWII was a land grab between the US and the USSR, pure and simple. A Soviet satellite in Japan would have been great for the USSR.

Alright, here is an alternative to dropping the bomb. Now, please note, that I am NOT a huge history buff like some of the others here, so if there is a problem with this idea, please let me know.

Okay, here it is. Since Japan's had no navy whatsoever after Midway, rather then drop the bomb or invade, wouldn't it have been better if they just blockaded them until they gave up? Now, I relize that this would have taken a much longer time, but starving the Japanese out of the war would have lead to much fewer casualties. And while the Soviet Union was scedualed(sp?) to invade 2 days after the bombings took place, it is my understanding that the Americans had all intentions of dropping the bomb when they asked Stalin to make the invasion. If they had merely told them to hold off, the Soviets wouldn't have been an issue.

But hey, I could be wrong. It just seems to me that it would be a much less drastic way to end the war then dropping the A bomb.

EDIT: Whoops, seems like Tiralon beat me to the punch. Sorry about that.

The Japanese most CERTAINLY had a fleet after Midway.

US Strength
Three carriers,
~50 support ships Four carriers,
~150 support ships

US Casualties
1 carrier, 1 destroyer, 307 men 4 carriers, 1 cruiser, 2,500 men

Japanese Strength
Four carriers,
~150 support ships

Japanese Casualties
4 carriers, 1 cruiser, 2,500 men

...it was a big win for the Americans, and it did halt further Japanese expansion. But it was NOT nearly the end of the Japanese fleet, which fielded 10 major carriers at the beginning of 1940.

What was the other option? Keep giving Germany more and more land until they had the world? Appeasement has never worked, and never will. We had to fight them.

The Holocaust still would have happened, as the ideas supporting it were already in development in the early 20th century (German Eugenics Society). Their book, The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life was the basis of Nazi purification plans and was written in the 1920's (around the time the Nazi party was formed).

Those casualties would have been far worse had we done nothing. All of Africa would have been eradicated, all of South America, eventually all of Asia. Hitler wanted to murder or enslave every race on Earth to ensure that the Aryans would be dominant. That's what peace "at any cost" with Hitler would have killed.

WWII prevented this from happening, albeit at dreadful cost. War costs lives, but can also save many more.

We had all that stuff here. Hitler got his ideas of eugenics from us. Not to mention we also had a large facist movement. So why didn't we have a holocaust?

When countries suffer national humiliation and are made to feel that their nation has no strength, and that it can't protect them, they start voting in people who they think are going to make them stronger. That's why Bush won't stop talking about terrorism. He wants to be given the power that a scared populace willingly hands over (forget Godwin, I'm talking about politics here, not inherent evil).

America was fairly secure, and at the top of its game, that's why we had the roaring 20's. It's also why facist movements weren't able to get very far. What did the US have to fear? It had recently established itself as a world power and WWI was just the final convirmation for the doubters.

Germany had the opposite situation. Everything had fallen apart. Even their brief experiment with democracy was a failure. So they went for facism to rescue them from the ruin of WWI. Even as the Nazi's rose to power, there were quite a few parties that opposed them (in some cases they were actual parties, watch the movie Swing Kids). But they had a bit of a disadvantage in being less militant and less authoritarian. Germany even had social movements that resembled the hippy movment of the 60's. Although it wasn't explicitly about resisting war, because they didn't know that a war was coming.

Sort of like how Democrats outnumber Republicans on college campuses, but Republicans make up for it by being louder and angrier and happily tear down democrats' posters and shout down their meetings. If the German population hadn't been so angry and scared for their nation after WWI the Nazi's wouldn't have achieved the power that they did. They'd just have gone for a party more akin to our current Republican party.

Yes. The American leaders had a duty to THEIR people who THEY lead. To sacrifice more American lives in an invasion of Japan is just ludicrous. If you were a leader at that time and didn't approve of the bombings, you should be shot as a traitor. American citizens are NOT your friggin play things in a war as they apparently were with the Japanese and their government at the time. We had EVERY justification to drop the bombs and drop more if they did not surrender even after the first two. It has little to do with vengence than it has to do with reducing the nation's citizens involvement in the war to save lives.

That war was about survival, on individual levels, as it is on national and political levels. Nobody has ANY "moral" high ground when it comes to criticizing Americans for their decision at the time.

In all honesty, who ARE you ****s to say otherwise outside of just pissy people who spend to much time on the net?

No they should not have done that!!! The bombs have killes and injuried so many people!! There are still wounded people there in Japan because of these bombs!!! NO!!!!

MAKE PEACE NOT WAR!!!

World peace, never going to happen.

Don't forget, regular war kills people too.

There are still people in America wounded from Pearl and the rest of the war.

700,000 casualties versus a predicted loss of several million in an invasion (that's just US loses).

These things should only be used to prevent larger loss of life, as demonstrated during WW II.

We must also look at Japanese society at that point. For their entire history, surrender was never an option, never once during their entire history. Usually, those that surrendered killed themselves. To stop the Japanese, we'd have to destroy the whole country, as civilians would end up fighting because of this no surrender mind set. The A-bombs were an attempt to save lives. (addressing a point made earlier, they were at the same time meant to awe the Russians)

Sort of like how Democrats outnumber Republicans on college campuses, but Republicans make up for it by being louder and angrier and happily tear down democrats' posters and shout down their meetings.

I've heard plenty of examples of Democrats being noisy, angry, and tearing/shouting things down. It's hardly a one-sided phenomenon.

Have any of you, especially among you Americans, ever actually met any of the people you bombed in those cities? Because I have. I wonder how many of you armchair generals would still vote 'yes' in the poll above if you had, yourselves.

Probably only the most viscious and bloodthirsty ones. And most of those would be serial Bush apologists and video-game enthusiasts.

You should all be incredibly ashamed of yourselves.

Have any of you, especially among you Americans, ever actually met any of the people you bombed in those cities? Because I have. I wonder how many of you armchair generals would still vote 'yes' in the poll above if you had, yourselves.

Probably only the most viscious and bloodthirsty ones. And most of those would be serial Bush apologists and video-game enthusiasts.

You should all be incredibly ashamed of yourselves.

I would. And I don't care if you think it's callous.

Have any of you, especially among you Americans, ever actually met any of the people you bombed in those cities? Because I have. I wonder how many of you armchair generals would still vote 'yes' in the poll above if you had, yourselves.

Probably only the most viscious and bloodthirsty ones. And most of those would be serial Bush apologists and video-game enthusiasts.

You should all be incredibly ashamed of yourselves.


I disagree with you and I'm certainly not ashamed of it. I believe that using the bomb saved more lives than they cost. Yes, 700,000 lives were lost because of them. To say that the possible cost in lives for an invasion should not have been considered seems short sighted to me.

Another issue…

If we agree that:

1) Japan would not have surrendered (at the very least – the Japanese Army would have gone to great lengths to avoid this).
2) It would have been very costly for the Allies (mostly US) to invade mainland Japan.
3) The A-bombs convinced the Japanese Emperor that further fighting was futile, and gave him the necessary power to force the High Command to accept an unconditional surrender.

Then it would seem that using the A-bombs (horrifying weapons as they were) was justified.

But…

What was the justification for using them on civilian targets? Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not an expert on this subject), but does the Geneva Convention not forbid any attack on civilians?
This question, of course, can also be asked in regards to the London Blitz and the firebombing of German and Japanese cities…

What was the justification for using them on civilian targets? Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not an expert on this subject), but does the Geneva Convention not forbid any attack on civilians?


Hiroshima and Nagasaki were industrial cities. Both cities were industrial centers full of factories used to build, among other things, weapons and machines Japan used to prosecute the war against us. It would be hard to argue that the fact that both were population centers was not considered by those who wanted the world to see our demonstration of power, but the justification was that they were manufacturing centers.

Hm.. Sadly, I don't understand half of anything you guys are saying and I have never studied up on this subject. I hardly even knew that they bombed another city other than Hiroshima. Well, I did, but barely, if that's possible. Anyway... Just: ROFLMFAO @ Kaledan and Deez-Taint-Kootz.
You doosh rocket.........

XDXDXDXD :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Another issue…

If we agree that:

1) Japan would not have surrendered (at the very least – the Japanese Army would have gone to great lengths to avoid this).
2) It would have been very costly for the Allies (mostly US) to invade mainland Japan.
3) The A-bombs convinced the Japanese Emperor that further fighting was futile, and gave him the necessary power to force the High Command to accept an unconditional surrender.

Then it would seem that using the A-bombs (horrifying weapons as they were) was justified.

But…

What was the justification for using them on civilian targets? Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not an expert on this subject), but does the Geneva Convention not forbid any attack on civilians?
This question, of course, can also be asked in regards to the London Blitz and the firebombing of German and Japanese cities…

I don't think the Geneva Conventions in question were ratified until 1949, a few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I could be wrong, but I think it was that series of them which forbade those kinds of attacks. Moreover, even when they were attacked the government was loath to surrender, and the military complex came very close to overthrowing the Emperor in order to pursue the war!

Have any of you, especially among you Americans, ever actually met any of the people you bombed in those cities? Because I have. I wonder how many of you armchair generals would still vote 'yes' in the poll above if you had, yourselves.

Probably only the most viscious and bloodthirsty ones. And most of those would be serial Bush apologists and video-game enthusiasts.

You should all be incredibly ashamed of yourselves.

No, I have not met any such person. (EDIT: And neither would I want to, if I were going to be in the position of making the call. The leader who grounds national policy in ethos loses.) And yes, I would advocate using them if I were alive in the '40s with the knowledge of today. Nukes bring about terrible death, destruction, and suffering. But if the US hadn't used them, you'd probably be talking about how barbaric soldiers were for firing on the eight year olds charging them with bamboo spears. Please, keep some perspective. The weapons themselves are horrible, but they're better than the consequences of invasion.

We can argue the morality of the 2 bombs but consider this:

Is the fact that they were used and people saw the effects and after effects what kept people from having a nuclear war?

I can understand why the USA used nukes in Japan, but I think it was wrong. Perhaps they could have shown a test bomb in a remote area first, as a threat? Doing it twice in civilian targets is fairly unjustified when the civilian government might have been seeking a ceasefire.

Have any of you, especially among you Americans, ever actually met any of the people you bombed in those cities? Because I have. I wonder how many of you armchair generals would still vote 'yes' in the poll above if you had, yourselves.

Probably only the most viscious and bloodthirsty ones. And most of those would be serial Bush apologists and video-game enthusiasts.

You should all be incredibly ashamed of yourselves.

I bet you almost all of them would not be here if we had opted for a convention invasion. They would have certainly been killed either accidentally in American conventional bombing raids or killed directly after being desperatly thrown at the Americans by the insane Japanese high command.

We can argue the morality of the 2 bombs but consider this:

Is the fact that they were used and people saw the effects and after effects what kept people from having a nuclear war?

I would believe it probably did.

I can understand why the USA used nukes in Japan, but I think it was wrong. Perhaps they could have shown a test bomb in a remote area first, as a threat? Doing it twice in civilian targets is fairly unjustified when the civilian government might have been seeking a ceasefire.

1. We did test the device.
2. Japanese wanted to save face. Losing the war cost them alot of face. Because of this, they would've rather died than face the fact that they lost.
3. They were industrial cities that were building war machines for the Japanese armies. I really wouldn't call them civilian targets.

If they had just surrendered after Hiroshima, we wouldn't have bothered to bomb them a second time. They didn't. Also did you try to factor in the human cost if we did try to invade? The numbers are worse than the bombs themselves.

I bet you almost all of them would not be here if we had opted for a convention invasion. They would have certainly been killed either accidentally in American conventional bombing raids or killed directly after being desperatly thrown at the Americans by the insane Japanese high command.

Well, I guess we'll never know, will we? But what I do know is that the sweet little silver-haired ladies I met, the ones with the facial features still mangled forty years after the fact, were, at the time I met them, precisely the same age I was (11 years old) when they lost their homes, their mothers and fathers, their friends, and everything they took for granted in their lives, as young children so often do.

Why did I cross paths with them? They wanted to have the opportunity to address the audience at an anti-nuclear proliferation rally in NYC. To tell people what happened. To try to prevent what happened to their lives from happening to anyone elses' lives. and they were deemed a security threat, and turned away from the US. I met them in Montreal, where they saw a number of us off at the bus terminal on our way to NYC.

None of you know a goddamn thing about the horror you allude to and then discount with a flourish of the keystrokes. Armchair generals, all. Try looking a disfigured, cancer-ridden oldster in the eyes - knowing they were a civilian, an innocent, a child, for crying out loud - knowing you and yours took everything, including that woman's innocence away that day in 1945. Pffft. What am I saying? Most of you wouldn't bother. Most of you probably breathe sighs of relief knowing most of them have already passed on, so no need for potentially-embarrasing or awkward exchanges.

I refuse to listen to people talk of the deaths of 700,000 slaughtered human beings as being somehow preferable to some set of theoretical circumstances that never came to pass. It's not so much a case of "guess we'll never know" as "I don't wanna know. Period."

It is important to remember in this several facts. First, before the bombings, Tojo was offered the chance to surrender or "meet complete and total destruction" and refused. Secondly, after Hiroshima, Tojo was again offered the chance to surrender and again declined. This is after he had seen the first bomb and what happened. Third, after Nagasaki, the US offered Tojo the opprotunity to surrender a third time and the only reason he accepted was because Hirohito forced him to. If Tojo had had his way, he wouldn't have even surrendered after Nagasaki. If it took two atomic bombs plus persuasion by Hirohito to convince Tojo to give up, immagine what would have happened if a regular invasion would have been staged.

We can argue the morality of the 2 bombs but consider this:

Is the fact that they were used and people saw the effects and after effects what kept people from having a nuclear war?

Thank you for posting my thoughts (after I finally read through the 5 pages I felt like posting exactly this.)

I mean, after all, there seems to be a reason why nobody else has used nuclear weapons after WW2.

Should the U.S. have dropped the bombs? From a today perspective, maybe not. From the perspective of WW2 U.S., well, they did for whatever reasons - and despite the casualties those two bombs caused, one could argue that it has saved more lives in the long run than it destroyed.

But that doesn't keep me from arguing for peace and non-military solutions first, before considering the use of proportional force.

Well, I guess we'll never know, will we? But what I do know is that the sweet little silver-haired ladies I met, the ones with the facial features still mangled forty years after the fact, were, at the time I met them, precisely the same age I was (11 years old) when they lost their homes, their mothers and fathers, their friends, and everything they took for granted in their lives, as young children so often do.

Why did I cross paths with them? They wanted to have the opportunity to address the audience at an anti-nuclear proliferation rally in NYC. To tell people what happened. To try to prevent what happened to their lives from happening to anyone elses' lives. and they were deemed a security threat, and turned away from the US. I met them in Montreal, where they saw a number of us off at the bus terminal on our way to NYC.

None of you know a goddamn thing about the horror you allude to and then discount with a flourish of the keystrokes. Armchair generals, all. Try looking a disfigured, cancer-ridden oldster in the eyes - knowing they were a civilian, an innocent, a child, for crying out loud - knowing you and yours took everything, including that woman's innocence away that day in 1945. Pffft. What am I saying? Most of you wouldn't bother. Most of you probably breathe sighs of relief knowing most of them have already passed on, so no need for potentially-embarrasing or awkward exchanges.

I refuse to listen to people talk of the deaths of 700,000 slaughtered human beings as being somehow preferable to some set of theoretical circumstances that never came to pass. It's not so much a case of "guess we'll never know" as "I don't wanna know. Period."


I would have made the same decision the generals back then made. The horror you speak of would not have affected my decision in the least. I'm confident enough in those "theoretical circumstances" to have made that decision. I don't doubt that the loss of life would have been far greater in an invasion. Call me callous for weighing one number of possible casualties against a known number of casualties without regard to the faces and the horror. Because you are right - I am looking only at the numbers. I feel the right decision was made and sadly, the faces and the horror do not figure at all in that.

You and I just have to agree to disagree.

Just read the quote of Black Forrest.

Indeed, if we never A-bombed Hiroshima/Nag., then not only would we waste so many lives (civilian and military alike), but we would've had to deal with the Cold War with neither nations having a good grasp as to what horrors an A-bomb could do.

The sheer knowledge that the other nation had the capability to turn any city of your own into another Hiroshima probably saved the entire world from a nuclear war. And keeps us from using the A-bomb in a war that completely wastes it. Such as the Iraqi War for example. It's a stretch, but it's still a speculation.

<snip> If it wasn't for those bombs, you'd be speaking German, Japanese, or Russian now. <snip>

No, instead we are talking american and what a great improvement that is......not. There is no sense of glory, of hope, of honour in any american word. English, yes, not american. We English have 'u's in our words as a reminder that we are part of a bigger, wider world, and to show that we are proud of it. You american twats have removed every memory of the wider world, your words have become american, not international. German is a beautiful, poetic language, as is Russian and Japanese, they all have a poetry that american lacks. Yes you have poets in america, but do you have an actual poetic language? Absolutely not. You NEED poets in order to make your language poetic, Germans, Japanese, Russians, they do not need poets.Their language is already poetic. So you tell me, what would be wrong with 'us' speaking German, Russian or Japanese today?

<snip>

Seeing your position here I would like to know if you think there were any better alternatives to dropping the a-bombs?

Seeing your position here I would like to know if you think there were any better alternatives to dropping the a-bombs?

Yes.

Yes.

Any chance you could elaborate on what they might be?

Have any of you, especially among you Americans, ever actually met any of the people you bombed in those cities? Because I have. I wonder how many of you armchair generals would still vote 'yes' in the poll above if you had, yourselves.

Probably only the most viscious and bloodthirsty ones. And most of those would be serial Bush apologists and video-game enthusiasts.

You should all be incredibly ashamed of yourselves.

No, but my neighbor down the street served as a mechanic at Pearl Harbor. :p

I can understand why the USA used nukes in Japan, but I think it was wrong. Perhaps they could have shown a test bomb in a remote area first, as a threat? Doing it twice in civilian targets is fairly unjustified when the civilian government might have been seeking a ceasefire.

What civilian targets? How about ALL the non-nuclear bombs dropped on Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, London... since the innovation of long range arms (WW1 mostly, when shelling cities and dropping bombs from Zeppelins came into vogue), cities have been considered military targets, since soldiers are garrisoned there and the city produces war materials.

Japanese Civilian Governement? What the heck is that? They didn't HAVE one!

There are 2 major misconceptions about the atomic bombs.

And there is no definitive "yes it was good" or "no it was bad" answer.

1. an invasion would not have been necessary. The Japanese are known for their resiliance and unwillingness to admit surrender, but in this case they were backing down. Interviews in 1946 with heads of the Japanese wartime government revealed that they would have surrendred before November, even without Russia entering the war or the bomb being dropped. On June 20, 1946 a secret council between the emperor and the Supreme War Direction Council decided to end the war. The only thing that stopped it from ending immediately was the slowness of bureaucrocy.

2. Nobody, not even the scientists knew how bad the bombs would be. They thought it would just be a really big explosion. They didn't know severe radiation would be released into the air. When the first reports of people dying from radiation were released by the Japanese, the scientists said they were lying. It took a while before people were convinced that it released deadly amounts of radiation.

So the bomb was unnecessary, however you can't fault those who built and dropped it because the Japanese official position was to fight to the death, and nobody knew just how bad it would be. They thought it would be no worse than the routine bombings of German cities (which killed more people).

No, instead we are talking american and what a great improvement that is......not. There is no sense of glory, of hope, of honour in any american word. English, yes, not american. We English have 'u's in our words as a reminder that we are part of a bigger, wider world, and to show that we are proud of it. You american twats have removed every memory of the wider world, your words have become american, not international. German is a beautiful, poetic language, as is Russian and Japanese, they all have a poetry that american lacks. Yes you have poets in america, but do you have an actual poetic language? Absolutely not. You NEED poets in order to make your language poetic, Germans, Japanese, Russians, they do not need poets.Their language is already poetic. So you tell me, what would be wrong with 'us' speaking German, Russian or Japanese today?
You know damn well what he meant and don't you try to pin this on us. He used the languages of German, Russian, and Japanese as a symbolism for imperialism. Nazi Germany could've taken over Europe. Imperial Japan could've swiped China and southeast Asia. The USSR could've taken Europe after WW2.

Who gives a fuck whether or not English has u's in their words and American English doesn't?

WHO FUCKING CARES? It's a goddamn language. LANGUAGES DO NOT MEAN ANYTHING OTHER THAN A MEANS TO COMMUNICATE!

There are 2 major misconceptions about the atomic bombs.

And there is no definitive "yes it was good" or "no it was bad" answer.

1. an invasion would not have been necessary. The Japanese are known for their resiliance and unwillingness to admit surrender, but in this case they were backing down. Interviews in 1946 with heads of the Japanese wartime government revealed that they would have surrendred before November, even without Russia entering the war or the bomb being dropped. On June 20, 1946 a secret council between the emperor and the Supreme War Direction Council decided to end the war. The only thing that stopped it from ending immediately was the slowness of bureaucrocy.

2. Nobody, not even the scientists knew how bad the bombs would be. They thought it would just be a really big explosion. They didn't know severe radiation would be released into the air. When the first reports of people dying from radiation were released by the Japanese, the scientists said they were lying. It took a while before people were convinced that it released deadly amounts of radiation.

So the bomb was unnecessary, however you can't fault those who built and dropped it because the Japanese official position was to fight to the death, and nobody knew just how bad it would be.

Nice piece of revisionism, there.

1. It's easy for them to say that, after they'd been forced to surrender, anyway.

2. That was true BEFORE Trinity, not afterwards. Even Oppenheimer was surprised of the power of the blast in the desert. No, and IF YOU'D READ "WAR'S END", you'd know that they were pretty sure of how much devestation the bomb would cause.

No, but my neighbor down the street served as a mechanic at Pearl Harbor. :p

One of my wifes great uncles was part of the recovery effort. He had to go in and fish out bodies. :eek: He became a drinking man after that......

Any chance you could elaborate on what they might be?

You've had 60 years to work those alternatives out for yourselves, but unsurprisingly, you've never bothered. What difference would it make now, other than to provide fodder for the more bloodthirsty hawks circling this thread?

I know they'd like a piece of me, but they won't get it.

So, simply put, no. I would not care to elaborate, elucidate, or illuminate on this matter. I'll leave all of you, untroubled, to make up reasons why killing 700,000 was a good thing, and I won't even bother sticking my nose in to say you're all full of shit.

Let the back-slapping and the temporary re-animation of bogeymen from 60+ years ago commence again. The loudmouth pacifist who actually saw the end results of American atomic weaponry, spoke with it, and accepted an origami swan from its' scarred, trembling spotted old hands has left the thread.

We can argue the morality of the 2 bombs but consider this:

Is the fact that they were used and people saw the effects and after effects what kept people from having a nuclear war?

Yes, totally.

The lessons learned from bombing Japan have essentially prevented an all out nuclear war. Look at the Cuban missile crisis, I'm sure the words 'Hiroshima' and 'Nagasaki' were uttered many a time.

Yes it was a ghastly thing to do, but read any history book and it will tell you that the US plan was to stage a giant invasion fleet, one that made D-Day look like a bike ride. From there, the war would have lasted what, another 3 years? 5 years? 10 years? How many millions more would have died from combat, starvation, disease?

Those that scold the bombings of H&N don't look at the bigger picture. No, blockades would have done nothing. Show of force did nothing. There were only 2 options: invade, or drop the A bomb. Sure the casualties we inflicted were unfortunate, but even after 2 A bombs Japan still would have fought to the bloody death.

The A bombs were also a wake up call to the world. Everyone saw first hand the affects such weapons have, and without those lessons we probably would be enjoying a nice nuclear winter right now, courtesy of the USA and USSR.

So, simply put, no. I would not care to elaborate, elucidate, or illuminate on this matter. I'll leave all of you, untroubled, to make up reasons why killing 700,000 was a good thing, and I won't even bother sticking my nose in to say you're all full of shit.

Have you actually realized yet that none of us LIKE nukes? None of us WANT nukes to be dropped? Has it occurred to you that those people who's pain turned you forever against conflict would probably be in exactly the same situation, or dead, because they'd have been armed and told to fight the American soldiers? 700,000 - if that is the number, 'cause I'm reading less than half that in most places - hell even a million, was better than five or ten million, whoever they were.

Nice piece of revisionism, there.

1. It's easy for them to say that, after they'd been forced to surrender, anyway.

2. That was true BEFORE Trinity, not afterwards. Even Oppenheimer was surprised of the power of the blast in the desert. No, and IF YOU'D READ "WAR'S END", you'd know that they were pretty sure of how much devestation the bomb would cause.
My source: Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of American History by Richard Shenkman.

Where's yours?

You don't have one, that's what I hate about these threads, it's just pages upon pages of people spouting their own opinions and trying to pass them off as fact. You just think they weren't going to surrender, I offer sources to prove that they were and you just shrug it off as "revisionism". No, the idea that the Japanese were going to fight to the death is revisionism used to justify the bomb after the fact.

That's point number 1.

Number 2- the book was written by a soldier (never heard of it before, but a little google search can be a powerful thing). Even though he was flying the plane, I doubt they told him shit. A blast in the desert can tell you how big the bomb will explode, but it won't tell you that everyone in the area will get a terrible bout of radiation poisening.

"The people who made the decision to drop the bomb made it on the assumption that all casualties would be standard explosion casualties... The reion over which there would have been radiation injury was to be a much smaller one that the region of so-called 100% blast kill... Any person with radiation damage would have been killed with a brick first."
-Dr. Norman Ramsey, scientist in the Manhattan project.

I can understand why the USA used nukes in Japan, but I think it was wrong. Perhaps they could have shown a test bomb in a remote area first, as a threat?

Um...we did. Suffice it to say nothing happened as a result of this.

You know damn well what he meant and don't you try to pin this on us. He used the languages of German, Russian, and Japanese as a symbolism for imperialism. Nazi Germany could've taken over Europe. Imperial Japan could've swiped China and southeast Asia. The USSR could've taken Europe after WW2.

Who gives a fuck whether or not English has u's in their words and American English doesn't?

WHO FUCKING CARES? It's a goddamn language. LANGUAGES DO NOT MEAN ANYTHING OTHER THAN A MEANS TO COMMUNICATE!

Which makes a language pretty damn important don't you think? Think about it, someone accidently says your mother is a whore and a war is started. Don't be so angry about my argument. You know full well that language and the means to communicate is very important. Your country tends to forget that on occassion (many in fact) and reverts to more primative means of communication (beating the other person - or in this case country - over the head with a big rock - or in this case a nuclear bomb - until he submits).

In fact your argument is frail anyway. The main part of WW2 had nothing to do with Japan, the allies had just about beaten Russia and Germany anyway, and besides, both countries were killing more of their own men (civillians and non-civillians) than they were the allies men. As for Japan and China.....why was that a problem for your country, please explain? Because from what I know of the history of this planet, and your country for that matter, you have always hated China for being communist, which isn't actually a bad thing to be if you look at the theory of communism.

Which makes a language pretty damn important don't you think? Think about it, someone accidently says your mother is a whore and a war is started. Don't be so angry about my argument. You know full well that language and the means to communicate is very important. Your country tends to forget that on occassion (many in fact) and reverts to more primative means of communication (beating the other person - or in this case country - over the head with a big rock - or in this case a nuclear bomb - until he submits).

I just want to get this straight. So....warning someone not once, not twice, but THREE times to surrender is a primitive means of communication? Seems to me that the problem lies with the one listening (Japan) and not the one communicating.

In fact your argument is frail anyway. The main part of WW2 had nothing to do with Japan, the allies had just about beaten Russia and Germany anyway

Russia was apart of the allied forces until they began fighting over who would control Berlin.


As for Japan and China.....why was that a problem for your country, please explain?

Japan issued a written declaration of war against America. We received it several hours after Pearl Harbor (which in and of itself, was a declaration of war). That made it a real big problem for America, especialy since Japanese fleets were nearing America's doorstep.

Shit, the Japs were sending bombs to the American mainland tied to giant baloons.....

You've had 60 years to work those alternatives out for yourselves, but unsurprisingly, you've never bothered. What difference would it make now, other than to provide fodder for the more bloodthirsty hawks circling this thread?

I know they'd like a piece of me, but they won't get it.

So, simply put, no. I would not care to elaborate, elucidate, or illuminate on this matter. I'll leave all of you, untroubled, to make up reasons why killing 700,000 was a good thing, and I won't even bother sticking my nose in to say you're all full of shit.

Let the back-slapping and the temporary re-animation of bogeymen from 60+ years ago commence again. The loudmouth pacifist who actually saw the end results of American atomic weaponry, spoke with it, and accepted an origami swan from its' scarred, trembling spotted old hands has left the thread.

This post by you dobbstown, proves that you don't have an answer for his question. Why don't you try answering it the next time instead of being an insulting dumbass you can't see the fact that bombs save MILLIONS OF DAMN CIVILIANS! MILLIONS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE WERE SAVED! Do you understand that or are you to closed minded to see the FULL PICTURE!

Edit: Also war is all about numbers. What method will save countless lives that'll end the war? That was the question Truman and only Truman, can answer. In this case, it was the bomb. If we had invaded, the number of casualties would've pailed the numbers that died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki COMBINED! The bombs allowed us to end the war quickly and with the least amount of casualties. I don't like nukes but I support the use here because after looking back, it was the right decision to make.

How would you like to know that your husband/brother/son died in an invasion when word got out that we had a nuclear device that could've been used to end the war quickly?

I'm sorry that you are not understanding this Dobbsworld. No one likes nukes. Not even me. However,when you look at things from the generals and admirals perspective, it was the right decision to make. Think of all the casualties that would've happened if we had to invade! It would've required an invasion if we wanted to end the war. How many civilians (both jap and chinese) would've died if we had. Ever consider that number? I have and I cringe when I do think of the numbers that come to mind.

As for Japan and China.....why was that a problem for your country, please explain? Because from what I know of the history of this planet, and your country for that matter, you have always hated China for being communist, which isn't actually a bad thing to be if you look at the theory of communism.
I swear to God, I am constantly among all other Americans called ignorant and arrogant. But I look to people like you and I say something along the lines of "Haha, yeah."

If your supposedly superior to us in every way, start acting like it.

Russia not joining with the Allieds is a common misconception. Which is odd, when you look at their casualty figures they really took a beating while Britian and America regrouped, not only buying them vital time, but making a huge push into Berlin, crushing the Axis between Allied forces.
As for the 'importance' of the Pacific conflict, the defeat of Imperial Japan just as essential, as they would have been a persistent threat to world stability, and a conflict is always important. Remeber China, and the genocide? Yeah, those are bad.
As for the atom bomb, it was a tough decision, maybe not the best one, I can't casually gase into alternative timelines, but considering the US's circumstances, it was the 'right' thing to do. NB: Nothing is ever truly 'right' in war. It's dirty and wrong. Always. But sometimes it HAS to be done, even if we don't want it, for the good of all, like in WWII. The war in the Pacific was hell on earth for both sides (though the tank graveyard deserts, the ruins of France and the starving, bloodsoaked cities of Russia were no picnic either). Bringing it to a stop was probably all on their minds.

The loudmouth pacifist who actually saw the end results of American atomic weaponry, spoke with it, and accepted an origami swan from its' scarred, trembling spotted old hands has left the thread.

.

I said you weren't getting a piece of me, now back off, Cornfed.

.

I said you weren't getting a piece of me, now back off, Cornfed.

Your the one that can't seem to open his eyes to the countless number of people who would've died if we did invade. Its nice to see that you care more for the 700,000 people that did die but how about the number that would've perished in an invasion. Think about that before spouting off.

And stop calling me cornfed Dumbsworld!

This a PM thing or something?
Y'know, you're both entitled to express opinions, provided, of course, you don't seriously believe you'll change others. Oh, and I gave up calling people names when I was 12.

Your the one that can't seem to open his eyes to the countless number of people who would've died if we did invade. Its nice to see that you care more for the 700,000 people that did die but how about the number that would've perished in an invasion. Think about that before spouting off.

And stop calling me cornfed Dumbsworld!

Gee, now - lemme see:

Do I care more about 700,000 people who were actually frickin' killed than I do about some random number of people who might have been killed, but weren't?

Gee. That's a real brain-teaser, isn't it? The answer's just dancing on the tip of tongue, you know? Like when you're trying to remember whether you put four scoops or five scoops of coffee into the perculator. Damn, this will just drive me nuts...

If you're looking to get me to blow my stack and get forumbanned in honour of Eutrusca's return, think again.


Anyway, enough of gratuitously violating my pledge not to return to this thread. All these pedantic number-games don't mean shit compared to what I saw with my own brown eyes, people.

I just want to get this straight. So....warning someone not once, not twice, but THREE times to surrender is a primitive means of communication? Seems to me that the problem lies with the one listening (Japan) and not the one communicating.



Russia was apart of the allied forces until they began fighting over who would control Berlin.




Japan issued a written declaration of war against America. We received it several hours after Pearl Harbor (which in and of itself, was a declaration of war). That made it a real big problem for America, especialy since Japanese fleets were nearing America's doorstep.

Shit, the Japs were sending bombs to the American mainland tied to giant baloons.....

That's america's problem...it warns people to surrender it doesn't negotiate terms other than "we rock, you don't give us what WE want and we may just not let you live".

I don't really care if Germany and Russia weren't fighting side-by-side in ww2; the fact is, they were both enemies by the end.

WAR IS NEVER RIGHT AND NEVER HAS TO HAPPEN, EVER. (to anime fandom). There is ALWAYS a way out of a war, you just have to look closely, and get someone with more than a three year old intelligence to do so.

(to Colodia - "your" means something belonging to "you". I believe you meant "you're"....that isn't me being superior I just like to get it right. As for me being superior, I don't believe I am, no one is superior to anyone else, we are all the same. Don't be so ignorant as to think otherwise.

That's america's problem...it warns people to surrender it doesn't negotiate terms other than "we rock you don't give us what WE want and we may just let you live".

I don't really care if germany and russia weren't fighting side-by-side in ww2, the fact is they were both enemies by the end.

WAR IS NEVER RIGHT AND NEVER HAS TO HAPPEN EVER. (to anime fandom). There is ALWAYS a way out of a war, you just have to look closely, and get someone with more than a three year old intelligence.

(to Colodia - "your" means something belonging to "you". I believe you meant "you're"....that isn't me being superior I just like to get it right. As for me being superior, I don't believe I am, no one is superior to anyone else, we are all the same. don't be so ignorant as to think otherwise.
Oh, sorry. It must've been my blind ignorance. And a gut reaction to someone downplaying Americans in a pathetic way and acting as if he were a part of a superior culture. :rolleyes:

(BTW, don't bother using the grammar card. One look at your post and you have no right to say a word.)

War ALMOST never has to happen, i'll give you that. There were occassions where many nations could have prevented the war in the Pacific. But they were ignorant of events due to the distraction in Europe, and Japan charged in ,possibly due to a starvation of resources (liberal), possibly due to an expansionist attitude (conservative).
But against the Axis, it was all or nothing. There was no true negotiating with Nazi Germany, who we must remember left the Leauge of Nations and started the war official by flat out refusing to cease his attack on Poland. 'Peace in our time' was a joke. Through appeasment we gave him power and territory, territory he refused to give up, and it was our responsibility to clean up the mess we helped create. THERE WAS SIMPLY NO OTHER WAY TO STOP THEM. And we did. And every day i'm proud of that.

That's america's problem...it warns people to surrender it doesn't negotiate terms other than "we rock you don't give us what WE want and we may just let you live".

It is hard to negotiate with people who slam their airplanes into ships and commit suicide so as not to be captured.

I don't really care if germany and russia weren't fighting side-by-side in ww2, the fact is they were both enemies by the end.

This doesn't make sense..they were always enemies.

WAR IS NEVER RIGHT AND NEVER HAS TO HAPPEN EVER. (to anime fandom). There is ALWAYS a way out of a war, you just have to look closely, and get someone with more than a three year old intelligence.

Yes, then Germany and Japan shouldn't have started it. America didn't start WW2 you know, we stayed out of it until we were attacked. We didn't even enter when the British asked for assistance when they were getting bombed to Hell by the Germans. Don't blame America for WW2, we didn't invade/ blitz into other nations and commit genocide on exponential levels.

Let's look at both countries: Germany and Japan.

Germany: Lead by Adolf Hitler. A psychopath who believed that the German race was superior to all other races. Could we have negotiated with him? No. He was plotting to build what he called 'America bombers' and a superbattleship capable of hitting the American mainland. There is evidence of this.

Japan: Lead by Emperor Hirohito, whos army was about as fanatical as they come. They believed that their Emperor was a God, and they were willing to give their lives in an instant to fight for his will.

Now, could America seriously have negotiated surrender with 2 countries that viewsedAmerica as inferior and their own races superior? I highly doubt it.

Gee, now - lemme see:

Do I care more about 700,000 people who were actually frickin' killed than I do about some random number of people who might have been killed, but weren't?

THERE NOT RANDOM NUMBERS! THAT'S THE POINT! If we had invaded, over a million people would've been killed. That is not a made up number Dumbsworld. That is a factual number. About time you realize that. They ran a cost analysis of an invasion which is standard procedure. The number appaled them.

Gee. That's a real brain-teaser, isn't it? The answer's just dancing on the tip of tongue, you know? Like when you're trying to remember whether you put four scoops or five scoops of coffee into the perculator. Damn, this will just drive me nuts...

And its obviously driving you insane because you never looked at the fact that more people would've died in an invasion (which has been provedn) thank in both atomic bombs COMBINED. Besides that, more people actually died in the firebombings than both atomic Bombs combined(another proven fact) Wake up to this fact.

If you're looking to get me to blow my stack and get forumbanned in honour of Eutrusca's return, think again.

He's back?

Anyway, enough of gratuitously violating my pledge not to return to this thread. All these pedantic number-games don't mean shit compared to what I saw with my own brown eyes, people.

Then you sir, are very stupid! If you don't want to take into account the cost analysis of an invasion of Japan, then you are arguing with one hand tied behind your back. Good bye.

THERE NOT RANDOM NUMBERS! THAT'S THE POINT! If we had invaded, over a million people would've been killed. That is not a made up number Dumbsworld. That is a factual number. About time you realize that. They ran a cost analysis of an invasion which is standard procedure. The number appaled them.



I agree. The actual number they came up with was staggering. I seriously believe that if we did not drop the nukes, there would be no Japan today.

War ALMOST never has to happen, i'll give you that. There were occassions where many nations could have prevented the war in the Pacific. But they were ignorant of events due to the distraction in Europe, and Japan charged in ,possibly due to a starvation of resources (liberal), possibly due to an expansionist attitude (conservative).
But against the Axis, it was all or nothing. There was no true negotiating with Nazi Germany, who we must remember left the Leauge of Nations and started the war official by flat out refusing to cease his attack on Poland. 'Peace in our time' was a joke. Through appeasment we gave him power and territory, territory he refused to give up, and it was our responsibility to clean up the mess we helped create. THERE WAS SIMPLY NO OTHER WAY TO STOP THEM. And we did. And every day i'm proud of that.

By killing thousands of innocent civilians? You see that as a way to "clean up the mess [you] helped create"? How is that right in any sense of the word? Because they killed a few hundred military personell, you had to kill over a hundred and fifty thousand innocent civillians? Up until now, I saw america as fairly civilised (well, if i ignored the fact that capital punsihment was still extant in most of the states), but now, now I seem to have seen the true mind of america's "civilisation".

To be honest, I think Japan and Germany (then and now) WERE/ARE more superior to the states. They certainly have more honour, even though they really have less to be proud of.


they were always enemies
Russia was apart of the allied forces until they began fighting over who would control Berlin.

Someone should check his facts.....the allied forces were Britain, France etc....that means Russia used to be a British enemy.......so where does "they were always enemies" come from?

I agree. The actual number they came up with was staggering. I seriously believe that if we did not drop the nukes, there would be no Japan today.

Thank you. We've been trying to tell Dobbsworld that but apparently, he doesn't want to listen.

I don't think there would've been a Japan today if we did have to invade as well.

As for the invasion, didn't the plan include the use of Chemical weapons? I think it did but I need to double check that.

hmmm, most people here say as if japan was the agresore here, (parden my spelling, dyslexia, you learn to hate it)

But, if like me, you have studied world history, you will know actually america and europe are the agressors, i wont go into details but europe, and america colonised asia (the US had the phillipines, formaly owned by spain) and japan wanted europeans out, and made a war over it, thats the long term reason, maybe not the "powder keg incident" , which in this case was american oil.
and the fact japan wanted to expand to feed its industry, and america feared japanese expansion, so the japanese took the initiative and attacked pearl harbour.

Someone earleir said that america could of kicked the russians out of east europe, i dont know what planet he's living on but for the majority of the cold war, the soviets had MUCH better , and much more conventianal forces then nato, which is why we NEEDED the bomb as a deterant. it dosnt matter if you have millions of infantry and tanks, nuclear weapons make all that meaningless.

and for japan, without a doubt yes, it had to be done, the war could of lasted years after, and japan would of been split into four, like germany after ww2, so it was in japans interests to.

You can bleat all day about people personals experiences, 500,000 people die every single day, will you pray for each of them? nope, u cant.

You can argue about the death of this incident or that incident where this many thousends dies, andd that many hundred died, as stalin said, the death of a person is a tradegy, the death of a milion is a statistic.

THERE NOT RANDOM NUMBERS! THAT'S THE POINT! If we had invaded, over a million people would've been killed. That is not a made up number Dumbsworld. That is a factual number. About time you realize that. They ran a cost analysis of an invasion which is standard procedure. The number appaled them.

WE HAVE TIME MACHINES!?!?!?! SWEET!!!

seriously, how the fuck could you predict the future? Of course you can say "well they were training citizens to fight." With what? Wooden sticks. I've seen the video of Japanese citizens training hand to hand combat with wooden sticks....because they're so much more powerful than a shitload of M-16s and machine guns :rolleyes:

Of course I just argued myself into a corner, but I did it just for the sake of arguing. Wasn't that fun? :D And I'll actually admit it.

I support the dropping of the bombs because an invasion would've meant more casualties on the American side, and probably more on the Japenese side...thought there's no way to know for sure. We also warned the Japanese gov't that if they didn't unconditionally surrender they would face "swift and utter destruction." They didn't offer so we nuked them. They still didn't back down after a couple days so we did it again. It's a dark time in human history, but so is the Holocaust. It had to be done.

btw, it's "they're" not "there"

As sorry as I feel for you seeing the horrors of the atomic fallout firsthand, I truly do, you are aware that the continued war would have brought equal horror for mankind.?
I feel truly sorry for you and those people. But I also feel sorry for a friend of an uncle, who was broken by the Japanese POW system and died a hollow shell of a man, and Chinese civilians staring at the corpses of their families before being added to the pile. Or even stories of men ripped apart by gunfire and drowning in their own internal fluids. Conventional weapons are no d*mn picnic either.

The predictions were accurate statistical analysis. You cannot deny that an invasion of a fortified island nation packed with civilians and soldiers that would rather blow themselves, and their own troops/civilians up to pieces than be captured (two greandes under the arms and a possum surrender was one recorded trick as well as all out bansai charges, which were popular) would have cataclysmic casualties. Cross reference horrific casualties at The Battle of Stalingrad to see what sort of thing happens when a nation refuses to give up.

Oh, and while we're being accurate, M-16s were introduced around the Vietnam War. Thompsons and Garland M-1s were consistently more reliable than non-existant firearms. (still capable of inflicting horrific injuries. Remember what I said- being shot and bleeding out is a nasty way to go)

I'm in an odd position on this one. I very much wish it hadn't had to happen, but with the situation as it was, if it wasn't for the bombs I wouldn't be here.

We don't have many photos of my grandad as a young man. He still only weighed about seven stone when he got home, and that was after six months or so of recuperation.

No, instead we are talking american and what a great improvement that is......not. There is no sense of glory, of hope, of honour in any american word. English, yes, not american. We English have 'u's in our words as a reminder that we are part of a bigger, wider world, and to show that we are proud of it. You american twats have removed every memory of the wider world, your words have become american, not international. German is a beautiful, poetic language, as is Russian and Japanese, they all have a poetry that american lacks. Yes you have poets in america, but do you have an actual poetic language? Absolutely not. You NEED poets in order to make your language poetic, Germans, Japanese, Russians, they do not need poets.Their language is already poetic. So you tell me, what would be wrong with 'us' speaking German, Russian or Japanese today?

Is it OUR fault that our language doesn't sound as 'poetic' as those? No, it just developed that way. By the way, English is largely derived FROM German and Latin.

Also, how the fuck do friggin spelling differences between 'honor' and 'honour' or 'color' and 'colour' make you "part of a bigger, wider world?" Please explain to me how ommitting a single letter can have such a profound impact, especially because it doesn't effect the pronunciation AT ALL.

*ahem* anyway....

I'm surprised that no one has brought up the fact that had we not dropped the bombs, the war probably would have lasted into the 60s or 70s. It's proven; a group of Japanese soldiers on a small island in the Philippines ignored the orders to surrender and harrassed the civilian population on the island for several decades. It was a group of 3, but 2 of them died pretty early on, I believe. The last one still conducted guerilla operations against the civilians on the island; even when they brought in his brother and sister to tell him the war was over he refused to believe them. He didn't surrender until the early 70s.

Now, imagine that, but instead of three soldiers, two or three hundred thousand. It's also possible that had we invaded and taken over the Japanese home islands, their troops in China would still have kept fighting.

Finally, with an invasion you have the prospect of parititioning Japan between the Allies and the USSR... it would have been Germany all over again. Plus it would have given communism a foothold in another Asian country.

" I've seen the video of Japanese citizens training hand to hand combat with wooden sticks....because they're so much more powerful than a shitload of M-16s and machine guns

btw, it's "they're" not "there"


i hate being technical, but here goes,

the m-16 wasnt around untill vietnam, 20 years later. and japanese pople with sticks, sure it wasnt a karate class? :p

one fact that no one really brought out, is that America was not the only country trying to produce the Atomic Bomb. Germany, Russia, they also had programs that were trying to build similar weapons.

So here's the question. Two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or one bomb, more powerful being dropped on a larger city.

The bombs on Japan did stop the war. They also opened the eyes of the people of the world on the horrors of such "wonder weapons" now ask yourself this,

What would've happened if those bombs were not dropped.
well possibly, (assuming that no Atomic/Nuclear Weapons were ever used)

1) There wouldn't be a UN Nuclear Watchdog organization to monitor and control the creation/usage of such nuclear weapons.

2) More countries would have nuclear Weapons and thus there would be no accounting for the number of Nuclear devices.

3) The chances of that the London bombings/Madrid/World Trade Centers would have involved Nuclear Weapons instead of Conventional ones.

4) The first use of such weapons would result in more deaths than the two atomic bombs combined and may spark off WWIII since more countries would have such weapons.

5) The Cuban Missile crisis probably would have sparked off a Nuclear War.

so, I'm glad such horrors were made public and the real results of the Atomic Bomb was revealed when the weapon was relatively weak. for any later, with more powerful weapons, would have, most likely, ended mankind.

yes, it was horrible, but it was done. I would rather we (mankind) not do it again.

Believe it or not, there was a target in Nagasaki. The Mitsubishi arms plant was the target, but the B-29 missed it by about mile. The nearest thing it hit was a prison a couple hundred feet away.

However...

Should you ever visit Nagasaki (where I live) you will see that the A-Bomb museum is very one sided and does not say anything about Pearl Harbor.

WE HAVE TIME MACHINES!?!?!?! SWEET!!!

seriously, how the fuck could you predict the future? Of course you can say "well they were training citizens to fight." With what? Wooden sticks. I've seen the video of Japanese citizens training hand to hand combat with wooden sticks....because they're so much more powerful than a shitload of M-16s and machine guns :rolleyes:

btw, it's "they're" not "there"

gee, have you ever heard of Iwo Jima, where 20,000 Japs were ahniliated? They were fighting like fanatics over a small piece of volcanic turd that was sticking out of the ocean. I heard there were only maybe 20 or so japanese survivors all together. Can you just imagin the body count of them defending their homeland? Nuking them was the only way to make them stop! And to clear up another thing for another thing said earlier, we did have a third bomb on the way, and the target was Tokyo

I agree. The actual number they came up with was staggering. I seriously believe that if we did not drop the nukes, there would be no Japan today.
I disagree... Japan would still be there...






As the 51st State of America. :D

Believe it or not, there was a target in Nagasaki. The Mitsubishi arms plant was the target, but the B-29 missed it by about mile. The nearest thing it hit was a prison a couple hundred feet away.
lol, because the nuke was designed to target one specific building :rolleyes:

gee, have you ever heard of Iwo Jima, where 20,000 Japs were ahniliated? They were fighting like fanatics over a small piece of volcanic turd that was sticking out of the ocean. I heard there were only maybe 20 or so japanese survivors all together. Can you just imagin the body count of them defending their homeland? Nuking them was the only way to make them stop! And to clear up another thing for another thing said earlier, we did have a third bomb on the way, and the target was Tokyo


actually IWO JIMA was VERY importants strtegicly, before, japan was out of bombing range, iwo jima had/has 3 airfields on it, and B-29,s taking off from there could get to japan...... so, once iwo jima fell, japan was subject to a huge bombing capaign, maybe iwo jimo is nothing, but you fail to realise its strategic importance.

WE HAVE TIME MACHINES!?!?!?! SWEET!!!

Who needs a time machine? These aren't made up numbers. These are real life facts.

seriously, how the fuck could you predict the future? Of course you can say "well they were training citizens to fight." With what? Wooden sticks. I've seen the video of Japanese citizens training hand to hand combat with wooden sticks....because they're so much more powerful than a shitload of M-16s and machine guns :rolleyes:

M-16s weren't around yet Achtung. Bambo Spears and grenades was what they were being trained with. As for the numbers, the military ran a war game on the invasion of mainland Japan. The number of Japanese civilians was to much for Military high command.

Of course I just argued myself into a corner, but I did it just for the sake of arguing. Wasn't that fun? :D And I'll actually admit it.

I support the dropping of the bombs because an invasion would've meant more casualties on the American side, and probably more on the Japenese side...thought there's no way to know for sure. We also warned the Japanese gov't that if they didn't unconditionally surrender they would face "swift and utter destruction." They didn't offer so we nuked them. They still didn't back down after a couple days so we did it again. It's a dark time in human history, but so is the Holocaust. It had to be done.

btw, it's "they're" not "there"

We also warned the civilians what was coming too and to leave. Go figure.

gee, have you ever heard of Iwo Jima, where 20,000 Japs were ahniliated? They were fighting like fanatics over a small piece of volcanic turd that was sticking out of the ocean. I heard there were only maybe 20 or so japanese survivors all together. Can you just imagin the body count of them defending their homeland? Nuking them was the only way to make them stop! And to clear up another thing for another thing said earlier, we did have a third bomb on the way, and the target was Tokyo
Where thousands of Americans were killed as well? Why didn't we just nuke that? Oh yeah, we wouldn't have that statue of the American GIs planting the flag. haha, yeah, if you read my edit I agree with you. I was just being an ass :D .

M-16s weren't around yet Achtung. Bambo Spears and grenades was what they were being trained with. As for the numbers, the military ran a war game on the invasion of mainland Japan. The number of Japanese civilians was to much for Military high command.
Oh yeah. I was thinking of Vietnam. Then M-1s or M-2s or whatever they used...I used to know all that stuff then just forgot it as useless information. You still can't possibly say for sure that the number would've been higher for Japanese civilian deaths if there was an invasion.

lol, because the nuke was designed to target one specific building :rolleyes:

Nukes today do! :D

First it was 100,000 with one bomb and 50,000 with the next. Then the after effects of the bombs cause thousands dead every year because of it. Then the united states did this actually more out of wanting to try out the bomb. The US had spent much money on its development and wanted to try it out. Well anyway Russia was schedualed to invade Japan 2 days after the first attack, which was called off from the confustion. The US bombed helpless citizens. Plus sent radiation in a populated are.

The areas were actually chosen because of their lack of population compared with their ammount of industry. Had they wanted to kill a lot of helpless people they would have gone after Tokyo [Which was one possibility under consideration]

But now no one will mess with the US for it is like idiotic to fight our nation, we could just nuke people out of wanting to. But Bush is a retard. no no. The Retard. He would not even Bomb Iraq. He would just send people to die. +_+
We are trying to help these people, many of them already don't trust us and you want to a-bomb them?

actually IWO JIMA was VERY importants strtegicly, before, japan was out of bombing range, iwo jima had/has 3 airfields on it, and B-29,s taking off from there could get to japan...... so, once iwo jima fell, japan was subject to a huge bombing capaign, maybe iwo jimo is nothing, but you fail to realise its strategic importance.

Actually no they weren't out of range of Japan. There was a radar site on Iwo Jima that was warning Japan of the B-29s coming in. The bombings were occuring long before we took Iwo Jima and have you looked at the stats of Iwo Jima? It wasn't that big at all. It really was a volcanic turd and that was the more polite name. LOL

lol, funny, alright, i poseted to quick to see he edit.

also, wargames can very accurately predict outcomes of battle and capigns, exept the battle of midway...... no military acadamy can get the same result.
If there's one "modern" day military leader I respect, it's Admiral Chester Nimitz for that one reason...and he got himself an entire aircraft carrier fleet line in his name :) . Midway was badass!

You have to remember in war, sometimes no-one has to die to take land (Rommel retreating from large patches of desert, allowing free occupation), sometimes people die in their hundreds to take a single piece of geography (Again in the desert, why not. The Germans digging into a supply point and the Allieds trying to take it, or vice versa.) Happened all the time. Some 'volcanic turds' are more important than others.

You've had 60 years to work those alternatives out for yourselves, but unsurprisingly, you've never bothered. What difference would it make now, other than to provide fodder for the more bloodthirsty hawks circling this thread?

I know they'd like a piece of me, but they won't get it.

So, simply put, no. I would not care to elaborate, elucidate, or illuminate on this matter. I'll leave all of you, untroubled, to make up reasons why killing 700,000 was a good thing, and I won't even bother sticking my nose in to say you're all full of shit.

Let the back-slapping and the temporary re-animation of bogeymen from 60+ years ago commence again. The loudmouth pacifist who actually saw the end results of American atomic weaponry, spoke with it, and accepted an origami swan from its' scarred, trembling spotted old hands has left the thread.

I meant no disrespect in asking the question, I just wanted to know what you thought, sorry if you took it that way. I mean if they thought there was a better way to do it then nuke them they probably wouldn't have done it, but this is just me looking at the nuke where people are/invade were the options being weighed upon, perhaps if they detonated a bomb outside of where it could do damage, but still easily visable it might have had an effect enough to cause surrender, although I don't think it would work myself it (at least to myself now) could have been a plan.

Oh yeah. I was thinking of Vietnam. Then M-1s or M-2s or whatever they used...I used to know all that stuff then just forgot it as useless information. You still can't possibly say for sure that the number would've been higher for Japanese civilian deaths if there was an invasion.

Actually, you really don't need to predict something like that. I don't have too at anyrate. I got my numbers via what they ran their war game on.

Actually no they weren't out of range of Japan. There was a radar site on Iwo Jima that was warning Japan of the B-29s coming in. The bombings were occuring long before we took Iwo Jima and have you looked at the stats of Iwo Jima? It wasn't that big at all. It really was a volcanic turd and that was the more polite name. LOL

there was bombing from the.... i think there called aleutions, they lead on from alaska, and yes, there was bombing, but they coudnet carry a full pay load and coudent reach all of japan, iwo jima gave them an excellent base to conduct a round the clock bombing campaing of japan, and okinawa for that matter.

"I'm surprised that no one has brought up the fact that had we not dropped the bombs, the war probably would have lasted into the 60s or 70s. It's proven; a group of Japanese soldiers on a small island in the Philippines ignored the orders to surrender and harrassed the civilian population on the island for several decades. It was a group of 3, but 2 of them died pretty early on, I believe. The last one still conducted guerilla operations against the civilians on the island; even when they brought in his brother and sister to tell him the war was over he refused to believe them. He didn't surrender until the early 70s.

Now, imagine that, but instead of three soldiers, two or three hundred thousand. It's also possible that had we invaded and taken over the Japanese home islands, their troops in China would still have kept fighting.

Finally, with an invasion you have the prospect of parititioning Japan between the Allies and the USSR... it would have been Germany all over again. Plus it would have given communism a foothold in another Asian country. "

You are so right, you know that?
I read a great book called "The Last Mission:The Secret History of World War II's Final Battle "
To put the story in a nutshell, it talks about the final mission we launched on Japan. This is what happened. When Emperor Hirohito made the surrender speech, there were many disgruntled war advisors that did not want to surrender and keep Japan fighting, EVEN AFTER HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI.
Their plan was to kidnap the emperor, and make a false speech in the name of Hirohito to keep the war on, no matter what. They were to destroy the copies of the emperor's speech as well. They were to kidnap him as he made a short walk through his palace to a waiting car. As they were ready to do this, the Army Air Force was sent another mission to hit an oil plant just north of Tokyo. As the planes came overhead to bomb the target, the air raid sirens went off and the blackout was enforced all over tokyo, including the palace. At that exact moment the kidnappers were ready to grab Hirohito when the lights went out. They started bumbling around and just missed him as he stepped into his car and drove off. They then went on a rampage through the palace to find the recordings of the surrender and they trashed the place but they could not find it because of the black out. Luckly the speech was played a few days later, and peace returned. Go check it out, its a great book about how lucky we all got!!

you are right, even germany carried on, untill 1947, SS units , known as werewolfs conducted a guerilla capaign against the american and british occupying forces, if thats what germany did, i dread to think what such a nationalist country such as japan would do.

Someone should check his facts.....the allied forces were Britain, France etc....that means Russia used to be a British enemy.......so where does "they were always enemies" come from?

You misread me.

Allies: USA, France, Britain, Russia

Axis: Germany, Italy, Japan

Russia and Germany were always enemies, that is what I said. You misread.

Where thousands of Americans were killed as well? Why didn't we just nuke that? Oh yeah, we wouldn't have that statue of the American GIs planting the flag. haha, yeah, if you read my edit I agree with you. I was just being an ass :D .


Oh yeah. I was thinking of Vietnam. Then M-1s or M-2s or whatever they used...I used to know all that stuff then just forgot it as useless information. You still can't possibly say for sure that the number would've been higher for Japanese civilian deaths if there was an invasion.

we lost 7,00o troops, japs lost over 20,000 dead.
Jap POWs 200.
just to clear it all up of course.
And yes it would have been high anyway. On Okinawa the civilian population was commiting suicide by jumping off the cliffs and blowing themselves up with grenades. Believe me, it would have been VERY high!

there was bombing from the.... i think there called aleutions, they lead on from alaska, and yes, there was bombing, but they coudnet carry a full pay load and coudent reach all of japan, iwo jima gave them an excellent base to conduct a round the clock bombing campaing of japan, and okinawa for that matter.

It sure wasn't the aleutians. They were bombing from SIAPAN!!! That's right, Siapan. Didn't you say you were a student of history?

You misread me.

Allies: USA, France, Britain, Russia

Axis: Germany, Italy, Japan

Russia and Germany were always enemies, that is what I said. You misread.

Not in context....that is, if you were replying to my previous post in context - in which I was saying that the allies had become enemies with Russia, and you said ..... I quote..... "they were always enemies"

In short, Yes the USA should have used the bombs, and Yes Japan should have bombed Pearl Harbour. The thing they didn't do was to keep pushing the attack, but oh well they can learn from their mistakes.

Every nation has the right to defend itself and the right to invade other nations if they see fit, but if you start something don't get all pissy when another nation comes in and gives you a whole bunch of retribution.

Its war ... if your in it you can't sit there and complain that someone is kicking your arse in a way you don't like.

on Okinawa alone, 130,000 civilians died.
Suicide. For fear of what the Americans would do
to them, as was propaganda that was
forced upon them to believe that we would torture
them all and rape and kill, and other horrible things.
All of this said by their military officials.
How can people say that we should have never nuked
them? It would have been a very long war,
and a very costly war.

In short, Yes the USA should have used the bombs, and Yes Japan should have bombed Pearl Harbour. The thing they didn't do was to keep pushing the attack, but oh well they can learn from their mistakes.

Why do you think that Japan should've bombed Pearl Harbor?

It sure wasn't the aleutians. They were bombing from SIAPAN!!! That's right, Siapan. Didn't you say you were a student of history?
They were bombing from Saipan, but also from Iwo Jima, and Okinawa,
and also from guadalcanal.
Attu and Kiska were retaken from the japanese on August 24, 1943.
That was it.

That's a far tougher question...
...you're asking is it right to potentially start a war, especially considering the very brief period between declaration and attack?
In foresight, hell no.

They were bombing from Saipan, but also from Iwo Jima, and Okinawa,
and also from guadalcanal.
Attu and Kiska were retaken from the japanese on August 24, 1943.
That was it.

Correct Bluzblekistan :)

Why do you think that Japan should've bombed Pearl Harbor?
I would not put it that way, but
The japanese saw the US as a threat to their expansion in the
Pacific. So they bombed Pearl to get us out of the picture.
In their eyes, they had to bomb us, to get us ko'd out of the Pacific.
But they missed the oil tanks at Pearl, and they missed the Carriers which
were out that time. They pretty much screwed themselves over
in the long run! Even the master planner said, "I fear all we have done
is awaken a slumbering giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve."

well, so long everyone, and keep this thread going!

Thank you Corneliu!!

:)

From a callous point of view, it was a hell of a plan. Could have destroyed a valuable battleforce. Wrong day. The carriers weren't where they should have been. Crushing defeat turned into propaganda storm. Crap like this makes wars so damn risky.

The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, because the USA cut of Japans supply of oil and raw materials which in a highly industrialising nation that Japan was at the time, pissed them of a bit. So the Japanese retaliated by an all out blow on the US Navy, the only means of attack the US had, a week earlier...and who knows.

As 4 the whole A bomb thing, definately YES, the war would have gone on forever costing countless more lives on both sides due to the Japanese no surrendor policy and death being so honourable to a family

Not in context....that is, if you were replying to my previous post in context - in which I was saying that the allies had become enemies with Russia, and you said ..... I quote..... "they were always enemies"


You're confusing yourself. You originally said:

The main part of WW2 had nothing to do with Japan, the allies had just about beaten Russia and Germany anyway

To which I said 'Russia was apart of the allies'.

To which you said:

I don't really care if germany and russia weren't fighting side-by-side in ww2, the fact is they were both enemies by the end.

Then I said 'This doesn't make sense..they were always enemies', implying you were still talking about Russia and Germany, which you were.

Then somehow you got the impression I was talking about Russia not being apart of the Allies, which I never said.

Saying this, with the Master in mind, GOOD GREIF! What has gotten into you people?

In addressing some of the points made by this flame studded thread (Which I’m seriously considering using to heat my home this winter, Nagano being damn cold):

The Japanese were offering terms of surrender. The term was that the emperor would be kept. Kept is the key word however, this would not be a defanged symbol that the Emperor Heisei (Akihito) is now, or the Emperor Showa (Hirohito) was after the war, he would retain all power and titlement granted under the Meiji Constitution. Even when the Japanese offered, later on, to re-write the constitution (indeed, even after the war, their drafts) kept the language of the Meiji Constitution intact. Since no one else has seemed to have read said document, here is what it says (in English):

CHAPTER I.
THE EMPEROR
Article 1. The Empire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal.
Article 2. The Imperial Throne shall be succeeded to by Imperial male descendants, according to the provisions of the Imperial House Law.
Article 3. The Emperor is sacred and inviolable.
Article 4. The Emperor is the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty, and exercises them, according to the provisions of the present Constitution.
Article 5. The Emperor exercises the legislative power with the consent of the Imperial Diet.
Article 6. The Emperor gives sanction to laws, and orders them to be promulgated and executed.
Article 7. The Emperor convokes the Imperial Diet, opens, closes, and prorogues it, and dissolves the House of Representatives.
Article 8. The Emperor, in consequence of an urgent necessity to maintain public safety or to avert public calamities, issues, when the Imperial Diet is not sitting, Imperial ordinances in the place of law.
(2) Such Imperial Ordinances are to be laid before the Imperial Diet at its next session, and when the Diet does not approve the said Ordinances, the Government shall declare them to be invalid for the future.
Article 9. The Emperor issues or causes to be issued, the Ordinances necessary for the carrying out of the laws, or for the maintenance of the public peace and order, and for the promotion of the welfare of the subjects. But no Ordinance shall in any way alter any of the existing laws.
Article 10. The Emperor determines the organization of the different branches of the administration, and salaries of all civil and military officers, and appoints and dismisses the same. Exceptions especially provided for in the present Constitution or in other laws, shall be in accordance with the respective provisions (bearing thereon).
Article 11. The Emperor has the supreme command of the Army and Navy.
Article 12. The Emperor determines the organization and peace standing of the Army and Navy.
Article 13. The Emperor declares war, makes peace, and concludes treaties.
Article 14. The Emperor declares a state of siege.
(2) The conditions and effects of a state of siege shall be determined by law.
Article 15. The Emperor confers titles of nobility, rank, orders and other marks of honor.
Article 16. The Emperor orders amnesty, pardon, commutation of punishments and rehabilitation.
Article 17. A Regency shall be instituted in conformity with the provisions of the Imperial House Law.
(2) The Regent shall exercise the powers appertaining to the Emperor in His name. http://history.hanover.edu/texts/1889con.html

This is what the Japanese were asking for, this and nothing else. Please remember that when saying if only America has given into the polite Japanese request to retain the emperor.

On invasion: Many people have pointed out that we cannot really know how many Americans would have been killed if the home islands were invaded. However, having studied Japanese history of their period, I can state that the Japanese civilian population was willing to fight. Junior high school students, female ones at that, were getting daily drills with bamboo spears, their targets were landing American soldiers. Children were being taught how to strap bombs on themselves and roll under tanks. It sounds frighteningly like the Iraqi insurgency, doesn’t? The home defense plan was entitled “100 Million Deaths with Honor”; does THAT tell you the mindset of the Japanese and their willingness to fight? The fact that a coup was attempted should tell you how much portions of the Imperial military were eager to fight till the end. By the way, coups have happened in Japan before; actually that was how its history went. It should be noted however, that the accepted (and very Japanese) practice was to CONTROL the Emperor and the Imperial family as figure heads and pull the strings from the shadows. The fact that the Emperor was actually IN control of the government is rather unique in Japanese history. Once again, my conclusion is that I cannot think of a way to have stopped the war without killing many more people, or totally destroying Japan, than the two bombs.

To Dobbsworld: Yes, yes I have met them. Not only have I been to Hiroshima and walked in that city, not only around the area that was hit by the blast, but in the lively and vibrant city that has moved on with normal Japanese shouganai “It cannot be helped” mentality. The bomb STILL lives in the Japanese mind and heart; I encounter it in places I would not have thought to have looked, such as the textbook I use to teach Japanese junior high school students English. Soon they’ll get to an English story about Hiroshima. I have also received sympathy from older Japanese once they find out that I am from Nevada, which they know is the test state for America’s atomic weaponry. But Japan lives and has moved on. So yes, I have met these people, not only have I met these people, I am engaged to one!

My fiancee’s grandfather and father were in Hiroshima on that terrible day. Her father was in the mountains and escaped, but her grandfather, having missed the blast, was pelted with the black rain. Her family has named listed within the tomb containing the names of the victims of the atomic bomb at the Peace Park in Hiroshima. When I visited the museum last New Year’s, we had to stop a number of times as the pictures and artifacts brought back memories of her grandfather, and his untimely death due to A-Bomb Disease.

Her grandfather HATED America for what it had done, Dobbsworld, and he had a long, loud argument with her father, my future father-in-law, when my fiancée announced her intention to study in America.

But what gives us BOTH hope is that the two of us are engaged and DO love each other. While I never met her grandfather, she takes great comfort that her father likes me, and more importantly to her, MY grandfather (a veteran from the Battle of Okinawa), likes and accepted her as my future wife. There is a lesson in there to everyone who has posted on this thread, please reflect upon it.

Our reactions, upon having left Hiroshima were the same, it had to be done, there was no other good way, but never, EVER, again.

You've had 60 years to work those alternatives out for yourselves, but unsurprisingly, you've never bothered. What difference would it make now, other than to provide fodder for the more bloodthirsty hawks circling this thread?

I know they'd like a piece of me, but they won't get it.

So, simply put, no. I would not care to elaborate, elucidate, or illuminate on this matter. I'll leave all of you, untroubled, to make up reasons why killing 700,000 was a good thing, and I won't even bother sticking my nose in to say you're all full of shit.

Let the back-slapping and the temporary re-animation of bogeymen from 60+ years ago commence again. The loudmouth pacifist who actually saw the end results of American atomic weaponry, spoke with it, and accepted an origami swan from its' scarred, trembling spotted old hands has left the thread.

That's what I like about Dobbs, always willing to accept the opinions of others... :rolleyes:

Everyone seems to think that COL Tibbets did not know what he was carrying. His flight plan after the release of the bomb says that he knew there would be a big, big blast. He dropped the weapon, then immediately began a steep, diving turn to get back away from the blast zone (the bomb would be lobbed forward as it dropped from the 300+mph speed of the B-29), which was something never done dropping convention weapons. The fact that they had been given a special assignment and flown practice missions such as this suggests otherwise. Plus, they had a Navy CPT on board to arm the weapon in flight, so I don't think that any of them had any doubts as to what they were doing.

My source: Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of American History by Richard Shenkman.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I'm sorry, I refuse to accept a book published by a holding company of the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY as a serious scholarly work. What's next? Dianetics?!?

Where's yours?
Read the whole thread, Luke.
http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9232133&postcount=51

You don't have one, that's what I hate about these threads, it's just pages upon pages of people spouting their own opinions and trying to pass them off as fact.

:rolleyes:

You just think they weren't going to surrender, I offer sources to prove that they were and you just shrug it off as "revisionism". No, the idea that the Japanese were going to fight to the death is revisionism used to justify the bomb after the fact.

That's point number 1.

Right... I suppose you're on the "NASA faked the moon landings" too?
FACT: The Japanese DID NOT surrender anytime between the end of the Battle of Okinawa and the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. If memory serves, that was nearly 2 months.
FACT: The Japanese DID NOT surrender between the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though THREE DAYS had passed.
FACT: It was a MONTH between the bombing of Nagasaki and the signing of the Surrender on the USS Missouri.

Number 2- the book was written by a soldier (never heard of it before, but a little google search can be a powerful thing). Even though he was flying the plane, I doubt they told him shit. A blast in the desert can tell you how big the bomb will explode, but it won't tell you that everyone in the area will get a terrible bout of radiation poisening.

If you can't accept the book by a man who gave CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY REGARDING THE VERY ISSUE WE'RE DEBATING, then I suggest you need to reconsider your point of view and what you consider valid sources.

"The people who made the decision to drop the bomb made it on the assumption that all casualties would be standard explosion casualties... The reion over which there would have been radiation injury was to be a much smaller one that the region of so-called 100% blast kill... Any person with radiation damage would have been killed with a brick first."
-Dr. Norman Ramsey, scientist in the Manhattan project.

Kindly DATE when Dr. Ramsey said that. I think you'd be interested to find that the IDEA of fatal radiation was still in the future. Did he say it before or after the bombings?
Heck, we still had troops MARCHING INTO the blast zone AFTER the war in nuclear tests to see how fast we could "take control" of a zone!

Was it a vengence attack for pearl harbor
Everything the US did in the Pacific was to some extent revenge for pearl harbour. I imagine it a bit like today and September 11.

should the japanise have attacked pearl harbour.
Obviously no one should start a war. But I can understande the reasoning for their attack moreso than the reasoning for dropping the Nukes. And the Phosphor Bombs etc.

should they have attacked a more remote area with the a- bombs ?
Yes.

Thank you for that. And please thank Mimic-Totoro as well. I've tried to figure out a way to answer many posts, but at the moment I can't seem to find one that's both appropriate and non-flaming. So I won't say anything beyond the above is the best answer any of you here will probably get.
Thank you, I'll let her know.

Well, I guess we'll never know, will we? But what I do know is that the sweet little silver-haired ladies I met, the ones with the facial features still mangled forty years after the fact, were, at the time I met them, precisely the same age I was (11 years old) when they lost their homes, their mothers and fathers, their friends, and everything they took for granted in their lives, as young children so often do.

Why did I cross paths with them? They wanted to have the opportunity to address the audience at an anti-nuclear proliferation rally in NYC. To tell people what happened. To try to prevent what happened to their lives from happening to anyone elses' lives. and they were deemed a security threat, and turned away from the US. I met them in Montreal, where they saw a number of us off at the bus terminal on our way to NYC.

None of you know a goddamn thing about the horror you allude to and then discount with a flourish of the keystrokes. Armchair generals, all. Try looking a disfigured, cancer-ridden oldster in the eyes - knowing they were a civilian, an innocent, a child, for crying out loud - knowing you and yours took everything, including that woman's innocence away that day in 1945. Pffft. What am I saying? Most of you wouldn't bother. Most of you probably breathe sighs of relief knowing most of them have already passed on, so no need for potentially-embarrasing or awkward exchanges.

I refuse to listen to people talk of the deaths of 700,000 slaughtered human beings as being somehow preferable to some set of theoretical circumstances that never came to pass. It's not so much a case of "guess we'll never know" as "I don't wanna know. Period."

What about the millions of innocents that Japan killed before and during WWII. Japan oppressed every East Asian ethnic group except the Tibetans and Mongolians. What about the young Filipinos who had to march untill death because they fought for their freedoms? What about the Pacific Islanders who were forced to work as slaves for the Japanese and were caught between the Japanese and Americans? What about the Chinese civilians who were brutally murdered by Japanese soldiers? What about the Korean children who were forced to relinquish all aspects of their native culture and assimilate into the Japanese?

Why should you weep over the 700,000 who had to die rather than 2 million, plus every industry and major city? How are they more important than the countless more that would have died due to invasion? How are they more important than the millions who died at the hands of the brutal Japanese? They are the ones who continue to honor the demons who ordered millions dead as gods.

FACT: The Japanese DID NOT surrender anytime between the end of the Battle of Okinawa and the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima.
FACT: The Japanese DID NOT surrender between the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though THREE DAYS had passed.
I don't feel like outlining the timeline and everything that happened with the Japanese leadership before, during and after. I assume some will have done so already on this thread (which I haven't read in full).
But it is more complex than just saying "They could have surrendered! Really it's their fault we dropped the bombs!"

Absolutely this should have been done. It saved lives in the long run. Japanese and American lives to start off with. Also it showed the world the horrors of a nuclear attack. I think it showed the following nuclear powers what they would deal with in the event of a nuclear war. If it didnt happen in Japan. It just may have happened on a grand scale. None of us would be here today perhaps.

They are the ones who continue to honor the demons who ordered millions dead as gods.
They do not, at least not in the way that you are thinking of (unless you know more about Shinto than you have posted here). It should also be noted that a large majory of Japanese favor the idea of building a non-religious monument to the war dead and taking it away from Yasukuni-Jinja.

... They are the ones who continue to honor the demons who ordered millions dead as gods.
Slow down there, buddy.
Yes, the Japanese did many horrible things. And if you want to weigh up, they probably were worse than the stuff the Allies did to them (although dropping Phosphor on civilians is kind of below the belt).
But is that the point? Is that your argument?
Shouldn't those that claim the moral high grounds be able to look at the merits of the act only, rather than at revenge and payback?

I don't feel like outlining the timeline and everything that happened with the Japanese leadership before, during and after. I assume some will have done so already on this thread (which I haven't read in full).
But it is more complex than just saying "They could have surrendered! Really it's their fault we dropped the bombs!"

It's more complex, but the idea stands that the Japanese gov't was paralysed between the hawks and the doves at that point. But in order to achive unconditional surrender, the dropping of the bombs was necessary.

But in order to achive unconditional surrender, the dropping of the bombs was necessary.
a) This has probably been said before, but when the Emperor made the decision to surrender, it wasn't actually clear what had happened just yet. The best bet was that it was a huge conventional raid, as the scientific advisors of the Emperor still maintained an A-Bomb was not feasible for any time soon.
b) Why unconditional? Now there is an interesting question - one people could have fun with...

b) Why unconditional? Now there is an interesting question - one people could have fun with...
The whole unconditional surender was stated policy between the Alied powers at the time. I believe it had to do with the notion of pulling NAZI Germany's teeth. They didn't want Hilter to remain in power and rearm and do this again in a few years (as had already happened between WWI and WWII). Japan got the unconditional lable as being part of the Axis powers, although as the war went on and the tolls mounted, it seemed to be the only way to prevent this from happening again. Since that was the stated policy, agreed between The US, UK, and USSR, the US could hardly go back on it. Also, as I have (very lenghtly) stated, Japan's condition was unacceptable.

They do not, at least not in the way that you are thinking of (unless you know more about Shinto than you have posted here). It should also be noted that a large majory of Japanese favor the idea of building a non-religious monument to the war dead and taking it away from Yasukuni-Jinja.

Well why don't they pressure Koizumi to stop praying to fucking Tojo and his cronies? If they really learned what Japan did rather than getting the whitewashed version, then they'd be clamoring for the removal of war criminals from that damn shrine.

What about the millions of innocents that Japan killed before and during WWII. Japan oppressed every East Asian ethnic group except the Tibetans and Mongolians. What about the young Filipinos who had to march untill death because they fought for their freedoms? What about the Pacific Islanders who were forced to work as slaves for the Japanese and were caught between the Japanese and Americans? What about the Chinese civilians who were brutally murdered by Japanese soldiers? What about the Korean children who were forced to relinquish all aspects of their native culture and assimilate into the Japanese?

Why should you weep over the 700,000 who had to die rather than 2 million, plus every industry and major city? How are they more important than the countless more that would have died due to invasion? How are they more important than the millions who died at the hands of the brutal Japanese? They are the ones who continue to honor the demons who ordered millions dead as gods.
Don't forget Unit 731.

Yes, it DID end the war, but talking about dropping an a-bomb, and seeing the results some 60 years later are completely different.

...Nagasaki was not the original target of the day, but they did have many targets. The original cities were (on Kyushu)

Sasebo (Major naval base)
Kokura/Kita Kyushu (Major city)
Fukuoka (Major City)
Nagasaki (Naval yard/arms plant)

Should you ever visit Japan, it is well worth the trip to Nagasaki.
(No, they don't hate Americans there)

The reasoning is, Truman had already approved the invasion of Japan, with losses estimated anywhere from 200K to 5 million, depending on how liberal or conservative you wanted to be in figuring it. He didn't like dragging the war out, and didn't want to destroy the Japanese mainland, which is what it would have taken to beat them. So, the Atomic Bomb was the best course, all things considered.

Think of how many civilians would have died without the bomb, in an invasion 20 times the size of D-Day...

Yes its very possible he saved japanese lives as well. The shock of the a-bomb was the only thing that could have gotten the japaneses to surrender. You know even after we dropped two the military still attempted to kill the Emperor for saying he would surrender. They where training their woman and children to beat us with sticks after we invaded to test the will of American invaders they would have to shoot theses normally non combanatants to save themselves which sounds simple but its not Have you ever shot A child? And even if the soldier did Defend himself what little men Japan had left they would send behind their woman and children to shoot the men they would use their own families as distractions. Any one who says we shouldnt have done it is either a pacifistic ideal fool or they dont understand the true nature of Japans will and Fanatascism durring world war 2.

-snip-
Actually, the original targets were in Germany. But with the war over, they had to try it out somewhere else... :p

My source: Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of American History by Richard Shenkman.

Where's yours?

You don't have one, that's what I hate about these threads, it's just pages upon pages of people spouting their own opinions and trying to pass them off as fact. You just think they weren't going to surrender, I offer sources to prove that they were and you just shrug it off as "revisionism". No, the idea that the Japanese were going to fight to the death is revisionism used to justify the bomb after the fact.

That's point number 1.

Number 2- the book was written by a soldier (never heard of it before, but a little google search can be a powerful thing). Even though he was flying the plane, I doubt they told him shit. A blast in the desert can tell you how big the bomb will explode, but it won't tell you that everyone in the area will get a terrible bout of radiation poisening.

"The people who made the decision to drop the bomb made it on the assumption that all casualties would be standard explosion casualties... The reion over which there would have been radiation injury was to be a much smaller one that the region of so-called 100% blast kill... Any person with radiation damage would have been killed with a brick first."
-Dr. Norman Ramsey, scientist in the Manhattan project.

HAHAHA and i suppose the Jews made up the holocaust when are you going to wake up to the real world, and accept the fact that people arent all so nice that they arent all kind at heart THAT SOME ARE FUCKING LUNATICS. Proof you offer speculation and unproven conspiracies you really think any country could Stage something so Vast not even a country with Americas resources. Wake UP.

Slow down there, buddy.
Yes, the Japanese did many horrible things. And if you want to weigh up, they probably were worse than the stuff the Allies did to them (although dropping Phosphor on civilians is kind of below the belt).
But is that the point? Is that your argument?
Shouldn't those that claim the moral high grounds be able to look at the merits of the act only, rather than at revenge and payback?

There was no moral highground in world war two there was a low ground and lower ground we where on the low ground Axis was on the lower

Am I the only one here that thinks it's rather strange to argue if an aspect of a war is moral? ;)

Am I the only one here that thinks it's rather strange to argue if an aspect of a war is moral? ;)
I'm more interested in the fact that we are arguing over something that was already done. I mean it's not like we can change it or not make it happen. (well, we could not put it in all the history books... ) :rolleyes:

Am I the only one here that thinks it's rather strange to argue if an aspect of a war is moral? ;)
Morality is a huge part of war.

I'm more interested in the fact that we are arguing over something that was already done. I mean it's not like we can change it or not make it happen. (well, we could not put it in all the history books... ) :rolleyes:
Its called learning from your mistakes its called should we ever be put in a simlar situation what should we do? the history can teach us that. Its called trying to understand the political and cultural as well as moral events in history that shapped our world thats what this is about.

you are right, even germany carried on, untill 1947, SS units , known as werewolfs conducted a guerilla capaign against the american and british occupying forces, if thats what germany did, i dread to think what such a nationalist country such as japan would do.
Unlike Germany, which wasn't nationalistic at all. Not a bit.

Also, as I have (very lenghtly) stated, Japan's condition was unacceptable.
Right, I went through the past 12 pages. What a flamefest!
Now, they wanted to keep the Emperor - as the head of state, with the power to do whatever he wanted, more or less. Is that correct?
If yes, then what is so wrong with that? (And I know I'll probably get slugged now, but just on principle - why was it so important to chose their form of government for them?)

Am I the only one here that thinks it's rather strange to argue if an aspect of a war is moral? ;)
Strange, yes. But necessary.
If people continue to argue that really it was okay to do whatever was deemed necessary, and now pull out arguments to actually declare it a "good" thing - then what is to stop people from shortcutting the argument next time the "need" to bomb the shit out of someone comes up?

Well why don't they pressure Koizumi to stop praying to fucking Tojo and his cronies? If they really learned what Japan did rather than getting the whitewashed version, then they'd be clamoring for the removal of war criminals from that damn shrine.
*sighs* Ok, lesson on the fun that is Japanese politics.
One, there is a group of people in Japan, who's names translates into something along the lines of "Bereaved Families and Victims of the War", they have been a large and stable voting bloc keeping Koizumi in power. He apparently promised them to visit Yasukuni-jinja yearly in exchange for their support. Koizumi, it should be mentioned, is rather like President Bush in that he believes that once has has said or promised something, he cannot or should not back out, no matter the consequences.

Two, I know its name is the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, but in actuality the LDP is VERY conservitive and stays in power due to some strange aspects of Japanese election laws and applealing to the conservitive elements, many of whom are war appologists. They form the core of the party, and then the LDP sways enough of the population at large to keep its seats. All of this means that even though the majority of Japan would LIKE Koizumi to stop, he problably isn't going to as it would offend his base that keeps him in his chair.

He isn't actually praying, by the way, Shinto doesn't work quite like that. And, it should be noted, Yasukuni-jinja is seperate from the goverment and under its own power. It would be like the US goverment asking a Catholic church to remove a saint icon as that particular saint offended someone.

Not to mention Japanese ideas of death are very different from the western ideas. Mainly along the lines that once a person dies, so does their crimes. That's partially the reason why suicide was considered (and still is at times) proper atonement as it would remove the stain. So it's a bit confusing to the Japanese why is everyone making a big deal of this.

This is of course an over simplifiction of what's going on and why. It's very complex and it would take yet another too long post to cover it. But I hope that it helped you. Simply, the majority wants him to stop as it's causing problems, but he probably will not. He might authorize another memorial, assuming he can get the support of his base, but there is nothing that can force him to go to that, or future prime ministers for that matter.

Unlike Germany, which wasn't nationalistic at all. Not a bit.


Right, I went through the past 12 pages. What a flamefest!
Now, they wanted to keep the Emperor - as the head of state, with the power to do whatever he wanted, more or less. Is that correct?
If yes, then what is so wrong with that? (And I know I'll probably get slugged now, but just on principle - why was it so important to chose their form of government for them?)


Strange, yes. But necessary.
If people continue to argue that really it was okay to do whatever was deemed necessary, and now pull out arguments to actually declare it a "good" thing - then what is to stop people from shortcutting the argument next time the "need" to bomb the shit out of someone comes up?

The situation where the Emperor was not only absolute authority but worshipped as a god meant that (almost) everything he said was carried out, especially when it came to war crimes.

*snip*

First let me ask where you being sarcastic when you said that about Germany? Because there was only one country more nationalistic than Germany at the time and that was Japan. Second let me say this The "need" for an atomic bomb will never again arrive. Every government is scared shitless to drop one for fear of getting their asses royally roasted by every one else. Second their (in my mind) will never be a country as Fanatical as Japan again its not possible in the modern world. Japans Fanatacism was the product of being isolated for thousands of years with the relativly same cultural, technilogical, moral, and government code for thousands of years and then they were thrust into a modern world when they were still in the stonages I admire how fast they adapted and became a Power to contend with it and proved it by whooping Russias ass. However When ever something like this happens YOU Are bound to Have an insanley nationalistic people especially when its a system like jappans a feudal cast system with a percieved GOD at the top. And when your GOD tells you your fighting monsters that will eat your children and ravage your womment. Who are you Gonna believe your GOD or the strange men in planes dropping flyers to try to convince Japan of its intentions Which you would percieve as an underhanded trick so the "American Monsters" could have their way with your country. The dropping of the A-bomb would be neccesary under those circumstances fortunaltey because of the modern world circumstances those dire can never arise again.

*snip*

First let me ask where you being sarcastic when you said that about Germany? Because there was only one country more nationalistic than Germany at the time and that was Japan. Second let me say this The "need" for an atomic bomb will never again arrive. Every government is scared shitless to drop one for fear of getting their asses royally roasted by every one else. Second their (in my mind) will never be a country as Fanatical as Japan again its not possible in the modern world. Japans Fanatacism was the product of being isolated for thousands of years with the relativly same cultural, technilogical, moral, and government code for thousands of years and then they were thrust into a modern world when they were still in the stonages I admire how fast they adapted and became a Power to contend with it and proved it by whooping Russias ass. However When ever something like this happens YOU Are bound to Have an insanley nationalistic people especially when its a system like jappans a feudal cast system with a percieved GOD at the top. And when your GOD tells you your fighting monsters that will eat your children and ravage your wommen. Who are you Gonna believe your GOD or the strange men in planes dropping flyers to try to convince Japan of its intentions Which you would percieve as an underhanded trick so the "American Monsters" could have their way with your country. The dropping of the A-bomb would be neccesary under those circumstances fortunaltey because of the modern world circumstances those dire can never arise again.

Its called learning from your mistakes its called should we ever be put in a simlar situation what should we do? the history can teach us that. Its called trying to understand the political and cultural as well as moral events in history that shapped our world thats what this is about.
I would agree except for Two points.

1) the title of the thread is Horoshima and Nagusaki should the USA have done it? which means they are asking not about future events but the one event in the past. Remember, Hindsight is always 20/20

2) The US (as well as other Nuclear bearing countries) had conflicts since then, and no Nuclear Weapons were used (not counting Nuclear Powered Vessels.) so the lesson was learned.

now here is a hypothetical Question. If the US didn't drop the A-bomb on Japan, would Nuclear Weapons (100x more powerful than the A-Bomb) have the same safeguards that they do now?

First let me ask where you being sarcastic when you said that about Germany?
Yes. In terms of sheer fanaticism, Nazi Germany was on equal terms with Japan, believe me.

Second let me say this The "need" for an atomic bomb will never again arrive.
You know what I mean. Any "immoral" act, targeting civilians or otherwise that normally could be classified as a war crime will do.

Second their (in my mind) will never be a country as Fanatical as Japan again its not possible in the modern world.
Oh, I'd never say never...

And when your GOD tells you your fighting monsters that will eat your children and ravage your womment.
Everyone did that though, irrespectively of form of Government.

Who are you Gonna believe your GOD or the strange men in planes dropping flyers to try to convince Japan of its intentions Which you would percieve as an underhanded trick so the "American Monsters" could have their way with your country.
I would believe my "god" I suppose. But imagine the Japanese dropping flyers on US cities. Again, this has nothing to do with the form of Government.
And is it not an "underhanded" trick to get the local population to sabotage the enemy's actions?

The dropping of the A-bomb would be neccesary under those circumstances fortunaltey because of the modern world circumstances those dire can never arise again.
Again, never say never.

Yes. In terms of sheer fanaticism, Nazi Germany was on equal terms with Japan, believe me.


You know what I mean. Any "immoral" act, targeting civilians or otherwise that normally could be classified as a war crime will do.


Oh, I'd never say never...


Everyone did that though, irrespectively of form of Government.


I would believe my "god" I suppose. But imagine the Japanese dropping flyers on US cities. Again, this has nothing to do with the form of Government.
And is it not an "underhanded" trick to get the local population to sabotage the enemy's actions?


Again, never say never.

Japanese war propoganda to their own citizens was worse than anything the US has told its own citizens. Citizens in areas that would be captured by Americans killed themselves because they believed the Americans were monsters, when the real monsters were the Japanese high command.

Japanese war propoganda to their own citizens was worse than anything the US has told its own citizens...
Unless you're proposing that US propaganda was not aimed at dehumanising the enemy, be it the Hun or the Jap, I agree.
My point is, whatever the form of government, all sides attempt to turn the enemy into vermin with their propaganda because that makes it easier to justify killing them.
I don't know if you ever saw some of the newsreels from that time (here in Australia they bring it on a community program called "Why we fight" :D ), or the Looney Toons from that era...

Unless you're proposing that US propaganda was not aimed at dehumanising the enemy, be it the Hun or the Jap, I agree.
My point is, whatever the form of government, all sides attempt to turn the enemy into vermin with their propaganda because that makes it easier to justify killing them.
I don't know if you ever saw some of the newsreels from that time (here in Australia they bring it on a community program called "Why we fight" :D ), or the Looney Toons from that era...
Japan was far worse than any other country... they not only advocate the annihilation of entire enemy races, once the war started to go bad the Japanese government and military encouraged Japanese civilians to commit suicide for their fascist ideals. After all, the Japanese military made a sport (literally, decapitation competitions covered in the Tokyo newspapers) out of murdering millions of Koreans, Chinese, and others in the Pacific Holocaust. The Japanese military also killed Japanese civilians on Okinawa, and that is why many Okinawans today refuse to fly the flag of Japan and remember the battle of Okinawa as a war crime perpetrated by the Japanese government. The Japanese culture of death in WWII was unparalleled and bewildering.

Japan was far worse than any other country......except Germany...
...encouraged Japanese civilians to commit suicide for their fascist ideals.
Although that was part of the culture, not fascism.
After all, the Japanese military made a sport (literally, decapitation competitions covered in the Tokyo newspapers) out of murdering millions of Koreans, Chinese, and others in the Pacific Holocaust.
Never heard of that one before. It's possible, but could you give me a link?
...many Okinawans today refuse to fly the flag of Japan and remember the battle of Okinawa as a war crime perpetrated by the Japanese government.
And others (or even the same) want the Americans to get the hell out of there...

Oh, and which of my points are you disagreeing with?

What is the difference between the fire bombings of Tokyo , Hamburg and Dresden and the Atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima ?

Would you even be having this discussion if the US , instead of invading Japan , just bombed them into ashes using conventional means and starved the Island to death to force them into surrender ? It may have cost millions more in Japanese lives but is this better than having a A- bomb dropped ?

Google info on the firebombings and firestorms in just those three cities .
is it somehow favorable to burn slowly or suffocate than to vaporize ?

...except Germany...
That is actually debatable, now that after decades of self-exculpating revisionism by the Japanese government data is finally emerging about all the concentration camps, medical experiments, and other war crimes committed by Japan in the pacific war. There were also far more dissidents in Germany than in Japan, and the Japanese population was more effectively brainwashed by nationalism, since Shinto nationalism was rooted in thousand-years old tradition while in Germany Nazism was almost an alien ideology imposed onto a nation that had previous experience with liberal reform and enlightenment.

Although that was part of the culture, not fascism.
All East Asian societies tend toward authoritarianism, although wartime Japan brought matters to a bloody extreme. As I've said, the fascist tendencies of Confucianism were ingrained in Japanese traditional culture, making the masses' brainwashing far easier to accomplish.

Never heard of that one before. It's possible, but could you give me a link?
The incident was known as the "Nanking Murder Race" and reported in Japanese morning newspapers.

http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/nanking.htm
"News reports of the happenings in Nanking appeared in the official Japanese press and also in the West, as page-one reports in newspapers such as the New York Times. Japanese news reports reflected the militaristic mood of the country in which any victory by the Imperial Army resulting in further expansion of the Japanese empire was celebrated. Eyewitness reports by Japanese military correspondents concerning the sufferings of the people of Nanking also appeared. They reflected a mentality in which the brutal dominance of subjugated or so-called inferior peoples was considered just. Incredibly, one paper, the Japan Advertiser, actually published a running count of the heads severed by two officers involved in a decapitation contest, as if it was some kind of a sporting match."

Read "Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang and you can see pictures of upbeat headlines on the news front pages detailing this absurd and gruesome competition.

And others (or even the same) want the Americans to get the hell out of there...
The current controversy has little to do with opinions about the conduct of Japan and US during WWII. It's mostly centered around some American grunts being jackasses. Anyways, I'd want Americans to get the hell out of there, since these farflung bases are wasting my tax dollars. Furthermore, the Japanese flagwaving ultranationalists who want the Yankees to vacate are transplanted from the main islands. They are likely not native Okinawans, who constituted an independent sovereign nation that was conquered by imperialist Japan in the 1870s. The Okinawans have had the great misfortune of being stuck between two huge and ambitious superpowers, the US and Japan. I am not familiar with what native Okinawans think about the US military bases, but the few that I've talked to all condemn Japan's cultural and military imperialism of their land.

Oh, and which of my points are you disagreeing with?
I disagree with your moral equivalency of Japanese and American propaganda and war effort. Of course I'm biased since I'm Chinese and China was horribly fucked up by Japan during the war, but there is no doubt in my mind that for all the collateral damage and atrocities committed by the allies, the axis were worse, and I am 100% sure that the world is a better place because the nations of Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan were put down by the good guys.

The USA would only settle for unconditional surrender, but they were perfectly willing to meet the only condition that the Japanese were asking for.

They dropped the bombs over a pissing contest. That's inexcusable.
Not true, they wanted the emperor to still retain the power outlined in the Meiji constitution. We didn't want him to have that sort of power.

They are likely not native Okinawans, who constituted an independent sovereign nation that was conquered by imperialist Japan in the 1870s. The Okinawans have had the great misfortune of being stuck between two huge and ambitious superpowers, the US and Japan. I am not familiar with what native Okinawans think about the US military bases, but the few that I've talked to all condemn Japan's cultural and military imperialism of their land.
The Kingdom of Okinawa was taken by Japan in 1609, though left as a vasel state. Most native Okinawans don't want the Americans there either.

The Kingdom of Okinawa was taken by Japan in 1609, though left as a vasel state.
Vassalization in Asia just means that the vassal pays its lord some tribute. Vassals were still independent. Korea has long been a vassal of China although no one doubts that Korea has seen independence for thousands of years. Japan regularly paid tribute to China and after the Seven Years War China even managed to get Japan to become a formal vassal of the Chinese Empire (although that arrangement quickly ended).

Ryukyu Kingdom (as Okinawa was called back then) operated as a completely independent nation for hundreds of years until the 1870s when Japanese gunships formally annexed the kingdom to the Empire of Japan. Okinawa didn't even speak Japanese until the Meiji government outlawed the old Okinawan culture in the late 1800s-early1900s and forced everyone to speak Tokyo Japanese.

Most native Okinawans don't want the Americans there either.
I won't really blame them, since some American grunts raped local girls, run over people in cars, and have done some less criminal but still stupid things.

Ryukyu Kingdom (as Okinawa was called back then) operated as a completely independent nation for hundreds of years until the 1870s when Japanese gunships formally annexed the kingdom to the Empire of Japan. Okinawa didn't even speak Japanese until the Meiji government outlawed the old Okinawan culture in the late 1800s-early1900s and forced everyone to speak Tokyo Japanese.
To a certian extent, Japan though had far more infulance on Ryukyu than China did in Korean affairs.

Oh well, the debate is rather off topic anyways.

-snip-
Propaganda is indeed the same on all sides. There is moral equivalence in that case.
The war effort is a different matter.

Hey, I'm "glad" that the Nazis didn't win (I guess, you can never tell for sure), but I'm not necessarily glad the Allies won the way they did.
The "collateral damage" as we call it today was seen differently back then. Allied commanders knew very well that terror bombings don't end a war, they'd just seen it in Britain a year or so earlier. They also knew that they weren't hurting Germany's industry (or Japan's for that matter - although I'm not sure on that one) very much either. And yet they continued to bomb both countries in a manner that, had it been done on the other side, would've had people hanging.

What I'm saying is: today it is generally accepted that WWII had some bad guys, some not-so-sure guys and a few "good guys". I don't think that is entirely appropriate if you look at the conduct of the Allies.
So I would think British and US-ian citizens have the choice of either accepting that
- they were not "good guys", merely the lesser of two evils,
- or that they on occasions behaved in a way that does not befit the good guys.

So far what I see is a lot of "We are the good guys and always have been! And the bombings really aren't that bad because...."
Which is what I really disagree with.

Exactly. But he is a little dick. And he didn't even spell 'douche' correctly.


I agree.

The main question is whether they should have dropped the bomb on the targets they did:

- Nagasaki was in fact the second-choice target of the day, the main military base they wanted to attack was obscured by cloud, so they headed to the more urban Nagasaki and bombed that instead.

- The Hiroshima bomb was unnessecary since the Japanese Govt. had already taken the decision to surrender.

Thoughts?

Kind of off-topic but, the guy who dropped the bomb wasn't informed that he was carrying the A-bomb. He dropped the bomb when he was given the command and noticed that the bomb was VERY unusual. Coming back home, he was like 'what the hell did I drop?'. Once he found out about the destruction that he thinks he caused, he stuck himself in an asylum and went completely crazy.

Wrong. I was reading an interview some magazine had with him, he never went crazy. Frankly, anyone who would have gone nuts over destroying a city would have never made it past background checks for a mission that important, nor would they even be a bomber pilot, considering that destroying cities was something they did on a regular basis.

Anyway, both bombings were of course needed. It took the second bombing to convince the Japanese government of surrender, and even then there was an attempted coup by the army that failed. I've seen someone suggest that the bomb should have been dropped on a "military installation." I know for certain that Hiroshima was a valid military target. It had a large and busy harbor and served as a divisional headquarters for the Japanese army, and was home to tens of thousands of soldiers. Then there's the industry that was concentrated in the city.

Also, you have to look at it from a realistic viewpoint. If you destroy two cities and the enemy refuses to surrender, so you launch a ground invasion anyway, at least that's two cities and their garrisons that you don't have to worry about anymore.

Wrong. I was reading an interview some magazine had with him, he never went crazy. Frankly, anyone who would have gone nuts over destroying a city would have never made it past background checks for a mission that important, nor would they even be a bomber pilot, considering that destroying cities was something they did on a regular basis.

Anyway, both bombings were of course needed. It took the second bombing to convince the Japanese government of surrender, and even then there was an attempted coup by the army that failed. I've seen someone suggest that the bomb should have been dropped on a "military installation." I know for certain that Hiroshima was a valid military target. It had a large and busy harbor and served as a divisional headquarters for the Japanese army, and was home to tens of thousands of soldiers. Then there's the industry that was concentrated in the city.

Also, you have to look at it from a realistic viewpoint. If you destroy two cities and the enemy refuses to surrender, so you launch a ground invasion anyway, at least that's two cities and their garrisons that you don't have to worry about anymore.

Except it's now been confirmed that the Japanese Government were already preparing to capitulate after the news of the first bomb reached them.

Thoughts?
Rather than the targets, which were changed by the day - there were dozens in both Japan and Germany and ticked off according to weather conditions, it'd probably be better to talk about the actual act of dropping them rather than where they were dropped (although that opens another interesting facet of the discussion)

The Bomb didn't actually add much to the Allied arsenal that they couldn't do already. They killed many more people with other ordinance in other raids. In that sense, one cannot argue about the bomb alone, but only about the strategy of terror-bombing in general.

The Bomb was good because it more or less materialised the total superiority the Allies had over Japan. A demonstration of the bomb was basically a demonstration of US power.

Which is where I think it would've been possible to tell the Japanese they were going to drop it on a rock in front of the coast, the Japanese could've got some cameras and scientists to watch and that would've been an even more effective demonstration, considering that for a long time the Japanese didn't actually know they were hit by a new weapon.

If the Emperor then still couldn't have gotten himself to give up, then okay. But the attempt was never made.

Rather than the targets, which were changed by the day - there were dozens in both Japan and Germany and ticked off according to weather conditions, it'd probably be better to talk about the actual act of dropping them rather than where they were dropped (although that opens another interesting facet of the discussion)

The Bomb didn't actually add much to the Allied arsenal that they couldn't do already. They killed many more people with other ordinance in other raids. In that sense, one cannot argue about the bomb alone, but only about the strategy of terror-bombing in general.

The Bomb was good because it more or less materialised the total superiority the Allies had over Japan. A demonstration of the bomb was basically a demonstration of US power.

Which is where I think it would've been possible to tell the Japanese they were going to drop it on a rock in front of the coast, the Japanese could've got some cameras and scientists to watch and that would've been an even more effective demonstration, considering that for a long time the Japanese didn't actually know they were hit by a new weapon.

If the Emperor then still couldn't have gotten himself to give up, then okay. But the attempt was never made.

I agree, nuking an uninhabited mountain somewhere would have sufficed, but instead the US killed 150,000 people (Plus radiation casualties).

Have any of you, especially among you Americans, ever actually met any of the people you bombed in those cities? Because I have. I wonder how many of you armchair generals would still vote 'yes' in the poll above if you had, yourselves.

Probably only the most viscious and bloodthirsty ones. And most of those would be serial Bush apologists and video-game enthusiasts.

You should all be incredibly ashamed of yourselves.

Considering the casualty estimates for both sides in the event of invasion, I'd toss Sendai into the fire as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if it'd end the war.


I agree, nuking an uninhabited mountain somewhere would have sufficed, but instead the US killed 150,000 people (Plus radiation casualties).

No it wouldn't. Again, look at this from a realistic viewpoint. You have only two devices, are you going to expend one on a worthless mountain? Remember that if they aren't impressed by your "display", and the invasion still occurs, then that's another city you have to deal with, along with its garrison and industry. That means more lives lost from your men because you decided to waste a mountain.

You've had 60 years to work those alternatives out for yourselves, but unsurprisingly, you've never bothered. What difference would it make now, other than to provide fodder for the more bloodthirsty hawks circling this thread?

I know they'd like a piece of me, but they won't get it.

So, simply put, no. I would not care to elaborate, elucidate, or illuminate on this matter. I'll leave all of you, untroubled, to make up reasons why killing 700,000 was a good thing, and I won't even bother sticking my nose in to say you're all full of shit.

Let the back-slapping and the temporary re-animation of bogeymen from 60+ years ago commence again. The loudmouth pacifist who actually saw the end results of American atomic weaponry, spoke with it, and accepted an origami swan from its' scarred, trembling spotted old hands has left the thread.

Bye. The sanity level in this thread just rose when you left.

No it wouldn't. Again, look at this from a realistic viewpoint. You have only two devices, are you going to expend one on a worthless mountain? Remember that if they aren't impressed by your "display", and the invasion still occurs, then that's another city you have to deal with, along with its garrison and industry. That means more lives lost from your men because you decided to waste a mountain.

The US had SIX devices, not two.

It also had the capacity to produce dozens more within a few short months.

If nuking Japan into submission was required, the US could have done it.

Wasn't it worth the risk of loosing just one of those bombs in a demonstration of power than killing 700,000 people?

No it wouldn't. Again, look at this from a realistic viewpoint. You have only two devices, are you going to expend one on a worthless mountain? Remember that if they aren't impressed by your "display", and the invasion still occurs, then that's another city you have to deal with, along with its garrison and industry. That means more lives lost from your men because you decided to waste a mountain.
a) How much industry actually got destroyed in Nagasaki or in Hiroshima?
b) You still assume that the Japanese wouldn't have surrendered. The issue was already on the table at the time. Don't you think that might have been the tiny weight that tipped the balance?
c) There was no time pressure, was there. Even if you only had had one single bomb (and there were more than two), it wouldn't take long to make another one, and for the time being the Japanese couldn't do anything anyways.

a) How much industry actually got destroyed in Nagasaki or in Hiroshima?
b) You still assume that the Japanese wouldn't have surrendered. The issue was already on the table at the time. Don't you think that might have been the tiny weight that tipped the balance?
c) There was no time pressure, was there. Even if you only had had one single bomb (and there were more than two), it wouldn't take long to make another one, and for the time being the Japanese couldn't do anything anyways.

a) Not much that hadn't already been disabled by the naval blockade. Mostly it just caused Terror.

b) Quite possible.

c) Well, there was the Russians, communist Japan wouldn't have been fun.

Except it's now been confirmed that the Japanese Government were already preparing to capitulate after the news of the first bomb reached them.

The key word there is preparing, but they hadn't done so yet, and we had no way of knowing that.

The US had SIX devices, not two.

It also had the capacity to produce dozens more within a few short months.

If nuking Japan into submission was required, the US could have done it.

Wasn't it worth the risk of loosing just one of those bombs in a demonstration of power than killing 700,000 people?

Six then? I still stand by the reasoning behind my post. If they refuse to surrender, its now six cities you don't have to worry about instead of five.

a) How much industry actually got destroyed in Nagasaki or in Hiroshima?
b) You still assume that the Japanese wouldn't have surrendered. The issue was already on the table at the time. Don't you think that might have been the tiny weight that tipped the balance?
c) There was no time pressure, was there. Even if you only had had one single bomb (and there were more than two), it wouldn't take long to make another one, and for the time being the Japanese couldn't do anything anyways.

1. I'd have to find a detailed list if you want specifics, but I can mention that there were about 24,000 soldiers in the city, and it was selected for the target list because it was both an industrial center and had a harbor.
2. I'm going by what the US government knew at the time, and they didn't know that the Japanese government was contemplating the issue.
3. Actually, there is time pressure. War costs money after all, and every day it drags on is another day of expenses, inevitable casualties from accidents or combat, and soldiers seperated from their families.

Yes absolutly and not for reasons that you would think.unlike Germany ,Japan waged its war on the united states for economics and politiccal donmination of the region . the japanese culture embraced ties to thier nation on a spirtual level. people who think the Japanese would so easily roll over should read little ship, big war by stafford, robert and focus on what happened to ships on what is refered to the ping line.another example is is the battle of saipan there the population commited suicide rather than surrender.I believe an attack on the home islands would have roused the home population like no other.to the bushido an assault on Japan and adirect threat to the emporer would be unacceptable.last war as a facet of national will is at bottom line the utter destruction of another nation states ability to enforce its own will or to resist yours.it is not an action to take lightly because once enacted it cannot be reversed and no one not directly allied to you can ever trust you.l

History is written by the winners...

you know nothing !!!
The first bomb maybe but just maybe was neccesary in a certain way ... but the second was just wiping them out ...
The same thing happend in dresden i think were the british just destroyd the metropole with firebombs after no soldiers or military targets were there...that's war !!! cruelty on both sides ...

wake up !!! there are no good and bad guys in the world like you see it on CNN or in your "Missing in Action - killing all the bad gooks films" !!! damn wake up

the world isn't black and white, good and bad !!!

eyeryone in war has blood on his fingers, that's it, some more some less. You can't walk out of something like that with white velvet gloves.

I just can't understand why a grand nation like the US can't admit an error ? is it so hard ? everyone is thankful that you helped to free the european continent from tha nazis, of course ... but nobody is inerrable...


sorry i'm kind of upset when i read stuff like that....the people there are still suffering(99% civil victims) from the devastating force that two bombs had....they killed children Women, man !!! wake up !!! that's disgusting ....

History is written by the winners...

*snip*

sorry i'm kind of upset when i read stuff like that....the people there are still suffering(99% civil victims) from the devastating force that two bombs had....they killed children Women, man !!! wake up !!! that's disgusting ....

Here here!

whatever the plans made by the japanese we were not privy to them until after the second bomb was dropped.As for being a Bush apologist I have nothing and no one to apologise for. Our current president IS a president and sets policy instead of taking popularity polls and asking his wifes permission to make a decision .considering the last presidents record on fidelity ,if you can humiliate the one person you sworn to protect above all others what do the american people matter. :headbang:

1. I'd have to find a detailed list if you want specifics, but I can mention that there were about 24,000 soldiers in the city, and it was selected for the target list because it was both an industrial center and had a harbor.
2. I'm going by what the US government knew at the time, and they didn't know that the Japanese government was contemplating the issue.
3. Actually, there is time pressure. War costs money after all, and every day it drags on is another day of expenses, inevitable casualties from accidents or combat, and soldiers seperated from their families.
1. As far as I am aware, it was on the target list because it was not yet bombed, among other reasons. And find me a Japanese city without industry or a harbour.
2. Possible. But the attempt wasn't made, was it?
3. Money? Are you sure you want to use money as your argument?

Except it's now been confirmed that the Japanese Government were already preparing to capitulate after the news of the first bomb reached them.

WRONG the Japenese even after the bombings were still preparing to fight to the end .
Even after the Emperor was convinced to surrender he faced faced a coup attempt and the recording of the Emporers speach had to be hidden in the imperial palace .
There is NO "proof " that the Japenese were ready to surrender only that SOME Japenese had recognized the futility of the war and were attempting to find a way to surrender . There would be no guarantee of success for them .
The EMPEROR of Japan had to make the decision .

I just can't understand why a grand nation like the US can't admit an error ? is it so hard ? everyone is thankful that you helped to free the european continent from tha nazis, of course ... but nobody is inerrable...

The US made no error . To invade Japan would have cost too many lives both American and Japenese . Do you really think after the bloodbath of an invasion of Japan that the country would have been treated as well as it was ? After being slaughtered by flamethrowers and explosives up close and personal do you think Japenese civilians would have been in a mood to cooperate with the occupiers of their country ? The Russians slaughtered the Mongolian Japenese Army and forced the prisoners to labor in the USSR until they died . What would the RUSSIANS have done in Japan if they had invaded ? Would Japan be like Korea ?

War is not pretty but in this case the actions and policy of Japan and Nazi Germany brought about their destruction by the same governments they chose to attack and subjugate .

-snip-
It's a long and sometimes complex story. Don't make me tell it.

Actually the Japanise where already in peace talk with America when the bomb was dropped, I'm pritty certain that just that one bomb would have been enough to ensure Japanise surrender, the 2nd one was just a ruthless act of barbarity.

I see the second bombing as nothing more than a revenge attack, it served no purpose other than to force a goverment to change it's ideals.

You know, the same aims as really as those terrorists who attacked New York and London.

Actually the Japanise where already in peace talk with America when the bomb was dropped, I'm pritty certain that just that one bomb would have been enough to ensure Japanise surrender, the 2nd one was just a ruthless act of barbarity.

I see the second bombing as nothing more than a revenge attack, it served no purpose other than to force a goverment to change it's ideals.

You know, the same aims as really as those terrorists who attacked New York and London.

I guess someone here, needs another history listen of what Japanese Army was doing prior to Hiroshima. Do we have to go through the history lesson?

Actually the Japanise where already in peace talk with America when the bomb was dropped,

Wrong.

I'm pritty certain that just that one bomb would have been enough to ensure Japanise surrender, the 2nd one was just a ruthless act of barbarity.

Wrong. The Japs were told to surrender before the first bomb, but they didn't. They were told to surrender after the first bomb, but they didn't. Then they were told to surrender after the second bomb, and they wised up (the coup and a few other factors played a part, but I'm sure a third nuke on Tokyo was enough).

I see the second bombing as nothing more than a revenge attack, it served no purpose other than to force a goverment to change it's ideals.

And what ideals would this be? Ever heard of the Rape of Nanking? An estimated 369,366 Chinese civilians and POW's were slaughtered, and an estimated 80,000 women were raped. Thousands of victims were beheaded, burned, bayoneted, buried alive, or disemboweled. Are these ideals YOU support?

a) This has probably been said before, but when the Emperor made the decision to surrender, it wasn't actually clear what had happened just yet. The best bet was that it was a huge conventional raid, as the scientific advisors of the Emperor still maintained an A-Bomb was not feasible for any time soon.
b) Why unconditional? Now there is an interesting question - one people could have fun with...

a) Except that the US had been sending a single bomber over Japanese cities, dropping a single concrete bomb as practice runs for WEEKS before Hiroshima. Call me nutty, but I'd have gotten suspicious about that.

b) Because that's what was agreed to by the Allies at the Casablanca Conference, and it held for all Axis powers -- Germany, Italy & Japan.

I've heard of them, and I know the history, but I will never condon the killing of thousands of civillians. Just becasue they did it dosn't mean you should. If you had targeted, say, a millitary bease or somthing I would have no problem.

I've heard of them, and I know the history, but I will never condon the killing of thousands of civillians. Just becasue they did it dosn't mean you should. If you had targeted, say, a millitary bease or somthing I would have no problem.

*sigh*

Do we really have to explain this all over again?

Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great war-time importance because of its many and varied industries, including the production of ordinance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials.

What better military targets could you ask for?

No I didn't know all that, I have a histroy A-Level in Anceint History, and I'll willingly admit I know little about the Percific Theater of the 2nd world war, other than what we skimmed over at school. I know a lot about the Europian theater though.

*sigh*

What better military targets could you ask for?

My understanding is that there WERE several 'better' strategic opportunities presented to Command; however, it was felt that the symbolic effect of a nuclear strike on a population would hasten the end of the war; in this sense we much ask ourselves if given sufficient strategic importance, a counter value nuclear attack should be considered legitimate.

If Truman had not dropped the bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the war would have dragged on much longer (I'm thinking 1947 or 1948) and would have taken probably at least 1 million lives, if not many more. Invading Japan would have been extremely difficult and would have taxed the resources of the Allies working together, let alone the United States separately.

The loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives is horrible, but the cost of even a successful campaign to invade Japan would have been far greater. It definitely would have been a Pyrrhic victory.

If Truman had not dropped the bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the war would have dragged on much longer (I'm thinking 1947 or 1948) and would have taken probably at least 1 million lives, if not many more. Invading Japan would have been extremely difficult and would have taxed the resources of the Allies working together, let alone the United States separately.

The loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives is horrible, but the cost of even a successful campaign to invade Japan would have been far greater. It definitely would have been a Pyrrhic victory.

This is a fine line of reasoning, but in general, the US, and the West as a whole, denies the idea that attacks on civilians can be considered legitimate, no matter what the strategic gain. For example, we would have considered it illegitimate for the US to have nuked Baghdad, even if it could have been shown the war would have been shorter and less bloody.

This is a fine line of reasoning, but in general, the US, and the West as a whole, denies the idea that attacks on civilians can be considered legitimate, no matter what the strategic gain. For example, we would have considered it illegitimate for the US to have nuked Baghdad, even if it could have been shown the war would have been shorter and less bloody.

Slightly different scenarios.

The people of Baghdad were more or less 'slaves' under their govenment, whereas the Japanese were fanatically loyal to their Emperor. At the Battle of Okinawa, there were what...70% civilian losses? Mostly due to civilians picking up weapons and shooting themselves, or throwing themselves off of cliffs. Over 100,000 of them died, and very few civilians were actually killed in battle. Rather, the majority of civilian casualities were suicides caused by fear of torture (many were told that "to become a Marine you have to kill your mother.")

When you're dealing with those kinds of people with those mindsets, you can't help but tell yourself that dropping the A bomb was the right thing (with land invasion being your other alternative). The comparison you make to Baghdad doesn't make sense, because for the most part the civilian populace hated their government and were not willing to commit suicide (this is excluding the insurgents and terrorists, I'm talking about the average every day civilian).

This is a fine line of reasoning, but in general, the US, and the West as a whole, denies the idea that attacks on civilians can be considered legitimate, no matter what the strategic gain. For example, we would have considered it illegitimate for the US to have nuked Baghdad, even if it could have been shown the war would have been shorter and less bloody.

Read up on WWII history. We've bombed whole cities using conventional weapons. In WWII it was legit. We may not have liked it but we did it.

Let me go over this for all of you.

1. Remember Pearl Harbor, The Battaan Death March, The Rape of Nanking?

2.Do we just sit there and let people do that?

3. No, we need to show them how innocent people felt being attacked directly themselves.

4. We delivered threats. They ignored.

5. We attacked Hiroshima. They were on there knees but refused to surrender.

6. Then we attacked Nagasaki. They surrendered.

I've studied this war for years now. I know a lot about it.

This 'worthless hippie' was in the 1st Marine Division for the invasion of Iraq, has been back with my National Guard unit, and is now prepping again.

Thanks and- Best wishes to you.

This ladies and gentlemen, is why you don't fling names around about people you barely know.

Let me go over this for all of you.

1. Remember Pearl Harbor, The Battaan Death March, The Rape of Nanking?



Unfortunately, many people arent aware of the details of these attrocities. They also arent aware that Japanese soldiers were ordered to and intent on fighting to the death, not surrendering simply if they were overwhelmed.

on Okinawa alone, 130,000 civilians died.
Suicide. For fear of what the Americans would do
to them, as was propaganda that was
forced upon them to believe that we would torture
them all and rape and kill, and other horrible things.
All of this said by their military officials.
How can people say that we should have never nuked
them? It would have been a very long war,
and a very costly war.


I agree with you. The reason some people think an invasion is better is simple. Because some people are EXTREMELY short sighted and their own beliefs mean more to such people than any number of human lives. They're seemingly willing to sacrifice unlimited numbers of OTHER people for their beliefs - the cost in extra lives means nothing to them in the quest to preserve and even further their own principles - it's all about hatred for the evil nuke.

Except it's now been confirmed that the Japanese Government were already preparing to capitulate after the news of the first bomb reached them.

But they DIDN'T!

The Japanese slaughtered more people than the Nazis did.

The Japanese slaughtered more people than the Nazis did.

Example - the Nanking massacre. - http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.12.96/cover/china1-9650.html

What was hiroshima/nagasaki anyway? If it was, like, the japanese equivalent to the pentagon, then i can agree with that. But if it didnt contain any military facilities at all, then the bomb should not have been dropped.

What was hiroshima/nagasaki anyway? If it was, like, the japanese equivalent to the pentagon, then i can agree with that. But if it didnt contain any military facilities at all, then the bomb should not have been dropped.

They were major industrial centers for manufacturing. Full of factories where thousands of tons of raw materials taken by force from Korea and China were shipped. Both cities were manufacturing tanks, guns, aircraft, bombs and other goods used to fight the war.

What was hiroshima/nagasaki anyway? If it was, like, the japanese equivalent to the pentagon, then i can agree with that. But if it didnt contain any military facilities at all, then the bomb should not have been dropped.


*sigh*

As stated before

Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great war-time importance because of its many and varied industries, including the production of ordinance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials.

Here's an interesting article on the subject (http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1995/vo11no17/vo11no17_bomb.htm)

The choice was an easy one to make for America.

More American soliders die or lets kill thousands of Japenese.
Which would you choose ?

You can say it was in America's best self interest to do so, but don't
justify it. Because morally it was wrong. How many civilians died in this ?
Was this not an act of terror ?

And I find it very humerous that America being the only country to ever
use the bomb, now tries to police who has the bomb.

There are also these nice people called the UN, ineffective or no, who don't like the idea of people having nuclear weapons. But back on topic...

Here's an interesting article on the subject (http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1995/vo11no17/vo11no17_bomb.htm)

I have serious problems with that article - it mentions this - "Those who never wanted any hostilities between Japan and the United States were known as "the peace party." They counted among their number Emperor Hirohito and several high officers in the navy."

This differs with actual historical documents which prove that the emperor endorsed the attack on Pearl Harbor before it was launched. He gave his blessing to the planners of the attack and approved it.

And this quote - "The other faction, the militarists led by Army leader Tojo, was known as "the war party." It was this group's belief that Japan should rule the Pacific and most of the lands touching it. These individuals were responsible for launching the vicious attack on our naval base at Pearl Harbor, Japan's only victory of any consequence during the entire war."

This assessment is also too narrowly focused. General Hideki Tojo is depicted there as a war monger. But historical documents show that his actions were undertaken to preserve Japan's economy. One of the reasons Japan did attack the US is because we demanded they withdraw all troops from China (including repudiating the Nanking government) and Korea. Since Japan had virtually no resources of its own and relied on her imperialist economy (which depended on resources shipped in from its commonwealth of subjugated states), giving up China and Korea would force the collapse of the Japanese economy.

The decision for a preemptive strike came after considering the strength of the US Navy at that time by Japanese high command. General Tojo knew that the US navy could sink all Japanese warships within a few weeks of the start of a war. That most of the US pacific fleet lay at Pearl Harbor gave him an opportunity he felt he could not pass up, given what was at stake.

So while his aims certainly put him at odds with us, they certainly weren't founded on his being a bloodthirsty war monger.

But the article is flawed from the start. The claim it makes that Japan was sending overtures for peace is completely false. The documents used to support that skewed point of view are all internal Japanese memos between government officers which only prove that Japan WANTED to make such overtures. There is no proof anywhere that they actually did make such overtures. The only credible one was the peace proposal sent by Japan in January of 1945 through General MacArthur which rejected the US desire to end the Japanese belief in the emperor as a god. While some early demands by the US insisted the emperor be removed and exiled, that stipulation had already been stricken from future comminuques when it became obvious the Japanese would not budge on that one point. Many people are still upset that the emperor was not made to stand trial for his complilcity in the attack on Pearl Harbor but MacArthur had already informed the Japanese peace negotiators not to worry about that. What MacArthur meant by that exactly is still being debated, but when he first met the Emperor, he explained he never intended to remove him or make him stand trial.

This quote - "As has already been noted, the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima on August 5th; the USSR entered the war on August 8th; and the second bomb devastated Nagasaki on August 9th. Japan was finally permitted to surrender on August 14th" - is laughable. The author of that article is an activist with an agenda with little regard for historic accuracy. Japan WAS given the opportunity to surrender after Hiroshima and they summarily refused it.

The author is trying to rewrite history, forcing me to label that article as shameless propaganda.

The choice was an easy one to make for America.

More American soliders die or lets kill thousands of Japenese.
Which would you choose ?

Please look at the bigger picture. Millions of Japanese would have died in a mainland invasion, and not only from combat. Either they would probably commited suicide (again, look at the Battle of Okinawa), or die from hunger or disease.


You can say it was in America's best self interest to do so, but don't
justify it. Because morally it was wrong. How many civilians died in this ?
Was this not an act of terror ?

We weren't just looking out for OUR self interests, your argument seems biased and with no info to support any of your claims. No, this wasn't an act of terror. The decision was simple: invade Japan and cause millions of deaths, or drop the A bomb and kill much less. At the time the A bomb had not been used except in testing, so nobody really knew for sure what kind of damage it could do (they had an idea, but they tested it in the desert, not over cities).

And I find it very humerous that America being the only country to ever
use the bomb, now tries to police who has the bomb.

Because we've seen the effects of such terrible weapons, and we want to make sure they are never used again. What is so wrong with that? We don't want to use them, and we don't want others to use them. And you do realize that America isn't the only country 'policing' nuclear weapons? What do you think the UN does?

Have any of you, especially among you Americans, ever actually met any of the people you bombed in those cities? Because I have. I wonder how many of you armchair generals would still vote 'yes' in the poll above if you had, yourselves.

Probably only the most viscious and bloodthirsty ones. And most of those would be serial Bush apologists and video-game enthusiasts.

You should all be incredibly ashamed of yourselves.

Well, I for one have met a few, seeing as I've lived in Japan for more than 14 years, including a year in Nagasaki prefecture. And I voted yes. And I can tell you I personally know Japanese people who've told me that, while terrible, it was on no uncertain terms absolutely the right thing for the US to do. And interestingly, almost all of them were of the war generation and remember the events.

Please look at the bigger picture. Millions of Japanese would have died in a mainland invasion, and not only from combat. Either they would probably commited suicide (again, look at the Battle of Okinawa), or die from hunger or disease.




We weren't just looking out for OUR self interests, your argument seems biased and with no info to support any of your claims. No, this wasn't an act of terror. The decision was simple: invade Japan and cause millions of deaths, or drop the A bomb and kill much less. At the time the A bomb had not been used except in testing, so nobody really knew for sure what kind of damage it could do (they had an idea, but they tested it in the desert, not over cities).


I seriously doubt this was the reasoning. Everything i've ever read has always said Truman's decision was based on losing more American lives vs. the Japanese, whether or not they were military or civilian.

I think they had a pretty good idea what it would do, not only to the infrastructure, but also to human life. And even if this was the case, I think
they saw what it did with the first bomb, yet decided to drop another....


Because we've seen the effects of such terrible weapons, and we want to make sure they are never used again. What is so wrong with that? We don't want to use them, and we don't want others to use them. And you do realize that America isn't the only country 'policing' nuclear weapons? What do you think the UN does?

Again, this is America claiming to have a higher moral ground after commiting atrocities. The only thing we fear is that someone will use it on us.

Have any of you, especially among you Americans, ever actually met any of the people you bombed in those cities? Because I have. I wonder how many of you armchair generals would still vote 'yes' in the poll above if you had, yourselves.

I guess some of us haven't heard of issen gorin.

I seriously doubt this was the reasoning. Everything i've ever read has always said Truman's decision was based on losing more American lives vs. the Japanese, whether or not they were military or civilian.

Isn't that what you do in a war???

...I personally know Japanese people who've told me that, while terrible, it was on no uncertain terms absolutely the right thing for the US to do. And interestingly, almost all of them were of the war generation and remember the events.

Yes the right thing to do for the US, but not necessarily the right thing to do. There is a difference.

Yes the right thing to do for the US, but not necessarily the right thing to do. There is a difference.then what's your arugument.... the time of the A-Bomb was a war between the US and Japan. If you agree that it was the Right Thing for the US to do, then why argue.

When we're in a war, The last thing I want our leaders thinking of is "gee... this course of action won't agree with (some countries that are not involved in the war) thus We shouldn't do it even tho it will save countless more lives."

War is Hell. Choices are made that not everyone will agree with, Intellectually or Morally. but sometimes they need to be made.

First it was 100,000 with one bomb and 50,000 with the next. Then the after effects of the bombs cause thousands dead every year because of it. Then the united states did this actually more out of wanting to try out the bomb. The US had spent much money on its development and wanted to try it out. Well anyway Russia was schedualed to invade Japan 2 days after the first attack, which was called off from the confustion. The US bombed helpless citizens. Plus sent radiation in a populated are.

But now no one will mess with the US for it is like idiotic to fight our nation, we could just nuke people out of wanting to. But Bush is a retard. no no. The Retard. He would not even Bomb Iraq. He would just send people to die. +_+

Well, seeing as how

a)There could be no new freedom in Iraq if we nuked them

and

b)If you think the international outcry is bad now about Saddam being ousted, imagine what the whining would be if we nuked Iraq instead... instead of, "Let's take down Saddam so that the majority can rule with a free vote" imagine if we'd said, "To hell with the towelheads, let's turn Saddam and his brood into a large sheet of glass."

and

c)Russia has more nukes than we do, and the problem with that is not that they have more but that they don't know where half of them are... you can bet some Russians with terrorist ties would love an excuse to ship some nukes to terrorists.

...

c)Russia has more nukes than we do, and the problem with that is not that they have more but that they don't know where half of them are... you can bet some Russians with terrorist ties would love an excuse to ship some nukes to terrorists.
If it were so, a mushroom cloud would have already risen above some Western city...

Isn't that what you do in a war???

No, even in war there is right and wrong. Its not as simple as do what it takes to win the war, or I was just following orders.

I'm a video game enthusiast, and thus love war. Apparently. Wow, I never knew I was such a raving pscyho. An ignorant assumption, I shall ignore it in the name of a debate.

I have never seen the victim of a nuclear blast. This does not automatically make me a fool. Or a bloodthirsty maniac. Have you seen a napalm victim, trying to peel their own flesh off to stop the burning? (vietnam, I know...) Or a citizen of Dresden, sorrounded by unquenchable fire, but not caring because he's trying so hard to force the meagre drain of oxygen into his lungs.? No? Then how can you comment on how horrible these experiences are?

Books. Journals. Photos. Second hand information isn't as good as primary, but don't think for a second I didn't think of how horrible a nuclear blast is. But at the same time I thought about how horrible war is in general. I believe it was the best long term choice.

then what's your arugument.... the time of the A-Bomb was a war between the US and Japan. If you agree that it was the Right Thing for the US to do, then why argue.

When we're in a war, The last thing I want our leaders thinking of is "gee... this course of action won't agree with (some countries that are not involved in the war) thus We shouldn't do it even tho it will save countless more lives."

War is Hell. Choices are made that not everyone will agree with, Intellectually or Morally. but sometimes they need to be made.

My argument is that dont' justify it. We did it to end the war. We did it to save American lives. And to some degree we did it to scare the Russians. That is it. Dont' be morally superior about it.

We didnt' do it to save Japanese lives. And take responsibilty for your actions. We killed a lot of Japense civilians. War targets are supposed to be military, and to a lesser degree infrastructure.

And yes I am not naive to think that civilans dont' get targeted. They probably have been in every war ever fought. But I will say that doing so is a war crime.