Hiroshima at 75: bitter row persists over US decision to drop the bomb

You just illustrated why it was justified

 

When it comes to war, they are the same.

 

It's been resolved. Whether people are satisfied or not is a different question, but the facts are clear.

What does it matter? Japan was refusing to surrender and we had every right to keep attacking them.

Definitely not. The A-bombs were intended to reduce Japan's ability to resist our coming invasion.

Definitely not the latter. As I said above, Japan was refusing to surrender and we had every right to keep attacking them.

The A-bombs were dropped on military targets. Any civilians killed were collateral damage.

The A-bombs were dropped on military targets.

That is incorrect. The point of the A-bombs was to weaken Japan's ability to resist our coming invasion.

The A-bombs were dropped on military targets.

If Japan wanted to surrender, they should have done so. We certainly weren't stopping them from surrendering.

UK bombers caused the firestorm.

US bombers focused on attacking the railyards.

Actually the number can be pinpointed. It is 25,000.

 

It's true.

It's not a secret any longer. I don't remember when it stopped being a secret, but the info has been available for awhile.

There were already a number of implosion assemblies waiting on Tinian. All they needed were fissile cores to place in them.

The next plutonium core was just leaving Los Alamos on August 11 when shipment was halted to give Japan some breathing room because they finally had started talking surrender. The core made it as far as the Los Alamos parking lot before being recalled.

Had shipment not been halted, the next A-bombing would have been around August 17-18, weather permitting.

They would have produced a further seven A-bombs over the next two months. And five more in November.

From December onward they would have produced seven or more A-bombs every month.

The plan was not to just keep nuking Japan from a distance however. The plan was to invade. At some point they would have stopped nuking them as soon as the next bomb was ready, and started saving up A-bombs so they could use them to clear away concentrations of Japanese troops when we invaded.

 

Less than 10 years after the end of WW2, the Americans had missionaries living in Japan. Can you imagine sending missionaries to the country you just recently bombed the daylights out of? And it appears the Japanese people were kind and cooperative, they must be very forgiving people.

 

Sometimes.

 

Correct.

Had an invasion of Japan been necessary the death toll would have been horrendous. Some of those Japanese civilians some people pretend to care about were being trained to attack Alled soldiers with what amounted to medieval weapons. Even those who did not actively fight would have been caught up in combat. Add to that total the number killed in ongoing bombing campaigns and the number dead from the lack of food & medicine. By the time the bombs were dropped Japan was increasingly unable to import food from outside the country due to the destruction of its merchant fleet by US submarines. Even transporting goods between the home islands by ship was difficult.The number of dead civilians alone would have exceeded the bombs.

Then throw in the massive military casualties on both sides. Hundreds of thousands of dead. The Purple Hearts the US government made in preparation for the attack were still being handed out after the Vietnam War. Japanese soldiers would have fought to the last in many cases.

Then there are the people the 'no bomb' crowd don't even pretend to care about - those who were dying every single day that the war dragged on. Allied soldiers, Japanese soldiers, POWs, civilians. I've seen estimates that something like 200,000 people a month were dying by mid-1945. Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Burmese, Indians, Australians, Americans, Koreans, Brits. Dying every day. If it took until early-mid 1946 for the war to end that is hundreds of thousands more dead. There is also some evidence that Japan might have used the occasion of an invasion of their home islands to slaughter many POWs & civilian prisoners.

Dropping the bomb was a terrible thing. Allowing the war to continue was worse. Japan had every opportunity to surrender, yet no serious attempts were made to do so (and yes, I have read in detail about the 'attempts' - none were serious). At any point the government there could have communicated clearly to the US or UK that it was ready to surrender on the terms offered, thereby saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

So, compare less than 250,000 deaths to that, because that is the choice Truman had to make.

 

I fully support the dropping of the bomb(s).

And for those who say we should have given them time to surrender-we did, first with the daily B-29 sorties, and then after dropping the first a-bomb.

Still no surrender.

The US is a fearsome opponent and in the case of total war thats even more the case.

This is the best summary I've seen.

 

It is what it is.

 

I can't change it.

 

Thank you for that information, not only does it confirm what my uncle told me but also the necessity of the bombing in Japan. The fact that the Doolittle raids nearly destroyed Tokyo and the A bomb on Hiroshima weren't enough to bring down Japan speaks volumes about their resolve to fight to extinction. I think Truman's and the American intelligence assessments saved millions of lives and the existence of multiple bombs shows that America wasn't going to send any more young men into that meat grinder. Not long ago I borrowed the TV series Pacific from the library. I don't know exactly where my uncle was but having been there for three years I assume that he fought in most of the battles, the Marines were the most heavily engaged ground force in the Pacific. The series although a product of Hollywood is hailed as the most historically accurate depiction of the extreme violence that took place in the Pacific. It gave me a deeper appreciation of the man my uncle was and his generation. I'm sure he suffered in silence, perhaps had some form of PTSD but never showed it. He came home, married, raised a family and built a business. He was loved and respected by all that knew him. He was active in the VFW and regularly volunteered at the VA hospital in Boston. He coached Little League and was a Scoutmaster. He loved kids and animals. The last ten years of his life he volunteered at an animal shelter and fostered cats and dogs until he couldn't do it anymore. I look at the current generation and they are so spoiled and entitled. It is hard to recognize anything American about them, they live here and enjoy all the blessings of liberty but regularly deride this country and our way of life.

 

Easily.
Can't you?

 

Fifteen years after the end of WWII, I was assigned to Japan. I worked along side Japanese officers who served in WWII. One of the waiters in the Officer's Club at Green Park Housing Area was a Kamikaze pilot. The war ended before he flew what would have been his one and only combat mission. We referred to him as the happiest Japanese around. I never experienced any hostility.

 

I know, YES
We would have fire bombed them and roasted hundreds of thousands of children, Russia would have invaded and Russia does what Russia does, thousands of Japanese women would have been raped, it is estimated that 100% of every girl over the age of 12 was raped in Berlin by the Russians, 100% no one was spared. I used to work with a Japanese man back in the 70's he told me that dropping the bomb was the best thing that could have happened, he said that they assumed Americans would take revenge and kill and rape people by the thousands, he was shocked that we did none of that after surrender, he is certain things would have been different had the Russians or Chinese got their first. What Japan did in China is equal to the horrors of the Nazi's, China would have exacted brutal revenge.

 

That's just sick. I don't understand some people.

 

Another vote for "it's okay to drop bombs on people."

Go figure...

 

Japan was prepared to surrender.

And I'm going with...

It's not okay to drop bombs on people.

 

Another vote for "it's okay to drop bombs on people."

Sow the wind, reap the nuclear whirlwind...

 

And another vote for "it's okay to drop bombs on people."

Vengeance is mine sayeth the nuclear armageddon...

 

Japan was prepared to surrender.

Ike worked hard to prevent the use of these bombs, btw, as did Einstein.

But Ike was no Einstein.

Unlike Einstein.

 

Japan was prepared to surrender, Ike opposed the use of the bomb.

 

Let the wind be sown...

 

No they weren't. The evidence from post war Japan Itself is that they were simply stalling for time, as insane as that seems, given the circumstances.

 

Japan was prepared to surrender.

Ike opposed the use of the bomb.

So did Einstein.

Do the math.

Please.

 

Incorrect - educate yourself.