OK, was it wrong to bomb Japan?

Not in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

 

Already provided it. That you didn't bother to read it speaks volumes of your ability to carry on a debvate.

Here again is a small sample of your experts being wrong;


American Military Leaders Urge President Truman
not to Drop the Atomic Bomb

Interesting note;

""The Joint Chiefs of Staff never formally studied the decision and never made an official recommendation to the President. Brief informal discussions may have occurred, but no record even of these exists. There is no record whatsoever of the usual extensive staff work and evaluation of alternative options by the Joint Chiefs, nor did the Chiefs ever claim to be involved. (See p. 322, Chapter 26)""

""In his memoirs Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff--and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff--minced few words:



[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . ""

They did not surrender in fact, the Big Six were deadlocked even after the first bomb. The Emperor himself stated that he surrendered because of the second bomb.

""Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946:



The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before. (See p. 331, Chapter 26) ""

So it was done so scientists could see it work. No credibility here.

""The Under-Secretary of the Navy, Ralph Bard, formally dissented from the Interim Committee's recommendation to use the bomb against a city without warning. In a June 27, 1945 memorandum Bard declared:



Ever since I have been in touch with this program I have had a feeling that before the bomb is actually used against Japan that Japan should have some preliminary warning for say two or three days in advance of use. The position of the United States as a great humanitarian nation and the fair play attitude of our people generally is responsible in the main for this feeling. ""

and;

""Rear Admiral L. Lewis Strauss, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy from 1944 to 1945 (and later chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission), replaced Bard on the Interim Committee after he left government on July 1. Subsequently, Strauss repeatedly stated his belief that the use of the atomic bomb "was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion. . . ." (See p. 332, Chapter 26) Strauss recalled:



I proposed to Secretary Forrestal at that time that the weapon should be demonstrated. . . . Primarily, it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate. . . . My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to the Japanese observers, and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a good place--satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomaria [sic] trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomaria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood. . . . I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest . . . would [have] laid the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they had been matchsticks, and of course set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities, their fortifications at will. . . . (See p. 333, Chapter 26) ""

Impossible and totally counter productive. A warning would have provided propaganda for the Big Six to rally the nation even more and, if it didn't work, prolong the war even more as it would provide even more propaganda as to the fallibility of the Allied powers.

""
In his "third person" autobiography (co-authored with Walter Muir Whitehill) the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated:



The President in giving his approval for these [atomic] attacks appeared to believe that many thousands of American troops would be killed in invading Japan, and in this he was entirely correct; but King felt, as he had pointed out many times, that the dilemma was an unnecessary one, for had we been willing to wait, the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials. (See p. 327, Chapter 26) ""

So this guy figures that a complete social breakdown where seventy million people living on seven thousand islands staving to death with disease runing rampant in biblical proportions with the government having little or no control is the solution. So, how many deaths would occur then, tens of millions with no government existing to be able to surrender or control the population when and if they did if and when US troops landed.

 

You are simply presenting your opinions with no references or evidence. And they are wrong.

 

Definitely a good thing. Ended a war and showed the world that we don't (*)(*)(*)(*) around.

 

I love how you and others are trying so hard to rewrite history as of course there was plenty of food that got to those cities even if the majority of those cities populations starved to death.

 

Nope and not on Iwo Jima or Okinawa either.

 

Because they were never totally cut off. Japan was totally cut off. Its fishing fleet was at the bottom of the ocean. Its highly urbanized population could have been cut off from food by targeting the railway network. Japan at that time depended on food imports from its fishing fleet. It could not have survived the winter of 1945 without a coup by soldiers desperate to end the war to keep their families from starving.

 

So you agree with Lemay that the bomb was dropped so scientists could see it work. Incredible.

You agree that counter to what the Japanese say and historical records of the minutes of the meetings of the Big Six state that they were going to surrender. Incredible that you ignore history and yet pretend to speak about it with faux authority.

 

I am calling this a win for the Atomic bombs.

Keep in mind too that Generals at that time just accepted our own losses kind of matter of fact.

They calculated wins by we killing more of them than they killed of ours.

Japan is an island nation. And was well suited to self defense.

 

Japan de-facto surrendered at that point of time. It was an act of genocide to intimidate USSR and nothing more.

 

You have posted no such minutes as evidence. I believe Nimitz when he says they were ready to surrender. Surrender talks happened far below the Big Six level and to claim that Nimitz and Halsey and LeMay and Arnold and on and on knew nothing about what was going on is ridiculous.

 

If they hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor, I would likely be against us nuking them. However, they attacked pearl harbor and we dropped our Freedom Bombs! Let freedom ring Japan!

 

They weren't ready to surrender even after the first bomb was dropped.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=Yq...#v=onepage&q=japan big six deadlocked&f=false

 

We shoulda dropped a 3rd

 

In fact, the Japanese had manufactured and deployed rocket powered manned aircraft by the end of the war, and prop aircraft can and did "deliver" nuclear weapons.

The Viet Minh, like many other army's were able to operate on very little food when pressed. The starving, barefoot Army CSA Army under R. Lee was able to inflict heavy casualties on Grant's military during end stage siege warfare.

Peasant workers have continued to sustain themselves and function through deadly famines in spite of mass death from starvation. Review history for countless examples of the kind of hardships human beings have endured and survived.

 

No, that would require dignifying it.. If you can't get a fact as basic as the year right, you don't know what you're talking about.

 

The facts are never the friend of the people who would care to rewrite history it would seems.

 

Curtis LeMay was a very brilliant, but very dangerous man.

He was the kind of man who would have started WWIII (he came close once).

Of course, he was George Wallace's running mate in '68.

 

Of course it wasn't we could have killed them all with fire bombs. Much higher body count...600k killed in the fire bombing of Toykyo,

 

My my trying once more to re-write history it would seems.

They was ask real nice to surrender and even to the very last second part of the military try to prevent the Emperor from surrendering by trying to seized him and the recording of his surrender speech before it could be broadcast to the Japanese people.

 

They were ready to surrender
https://mises.org/library/hiroshima-myth
The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945. The Japanese monarchy was one of the oldest in all of history dating back to 660 B.C. The Japanese religion added the belief that all the Emperors were the direct descendants of the sun goddess, Amaterasu. The reigning Emperor Hirohito was the 124th in the direct line of descent. After the bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9 of 1945, and their surrender soon thereafter, the Japanese were allowed to keep their Emperor on the throne and he was not subjected to any war crimes trial. The Emperor, Hirohito, came on the throne in 1926 and continued in his position until his death in 1989. Since President Truman, in effect, accepted the conditional surrender offered by the Japanese as early as May of 1945, the question is posed, "Why then were the bombs dropped?"

 

So then finally you agree that they were not willing to surrender unconditional according to the Potsdam Declaration.

 

It was a horrible mistake.

 

What was the need for an unconditional surrender if we gave them the very conditions they wanted anyway? We bombed those cities and gained NOTHING for it from Japan.

 

To eliminate the possibility of what occurred with the Treaty of Versailles and having to deal with Germany yet again. We learn from history. And we didn't give them what they wanted, the Emperor was reduced to being a figurehead.