Your views on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I believe the bombings were completly necessary... They brought an end to a long war that could have went on for many more years... As for the civilians dying... Thats just a part of war... Its still happening to this day

 

"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..." - Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

 

Hey Chris how much are the recyclers paying in AZ for glass now ? Clear or brown ?? ( THAT was so wrong & I'm so bad )

 

Not that I'm trying to pick on you, but many people don't now this, and your comment had me think of writing this.

The Japanese knew what was coming, and what I don't mean by that is the nuclear bomb, but the invasion of Japan by Allied forces.
So they knew eventually they would be invaded, which hasn't happened in Japan in many years I believe? Hundreds of years? Correct me if wrong.

So what they did was train the civilian population, I'm not talking about males, I'm talking about all females and males, and also children. If you could pick up a gun, they would train you to fight. And they prepared them to fight the Allied forces.

SSOOoooooo lets imagine we didn't drop the bomb, and we decided to invade the island of Japan. So what would happen? I would imagine many, many, many, MANY more people would have died, vs. what the bomb did.
A lot of women and children and many other people.

But we will never know, the Emperor of Japan may have called off the defense of the island, and surrendered for all we know? But he could have also ordered a defense and many people would have died for all we know too?

There never is a right thing to do in war because war is never the right thing. But If there ever was a "right" thing to do in this God forsaking piece of crap of a situation like WW2, this was it. It's dog eat dog, let's drop this bomb and get this war over with. It was FUBAR, but it needed to be done in my opinion.

 

If I remember my world history correctly,an offer of surrender was on the table when the a bombs where dropped,all this was being discussed in meetings between allied forces in Germany, therefor it is surly debatable if it was necessary to drop the bombs.

 

X2

Damn good post, I agree 110%.

 

Chris, I know where you are coming from and understand that sometimes war IS the only answer, and I'm no peace loving, tree hugger hippy. I've got lots of friends over in iraq, some of which have been killed fighting for our beautiful country. BUT people share your feelings and thought process are the reason that there will always be perpetual war on earth. Just because you can completely obliterate somebody doesn't mean it should be done. NUCLEAR weapons are things that should never be used, and I wish they had never been created.

To the person who said that they were training their women and children to fight, I did know that. Think about it though. We have women in our military, and many men/women teach their kids and family members to shoot guns and operate weapons. Just because the government over there had "trained" (aka gave these people who want nothing to do with it guns and told them how to pull the trigger) it doesn't mean that everyone was trained to do so, and that the innocent majority deserves to be nuked!

Now if we were to have gone in there and have mowed them down with machine guns and what not, that would be a different story. I'm not anti-war, don't get me wrong, it has to be done sometime, but the TWO nuclear bombings were out of line and overkill IMO.

But to each his own I usually stay out of political discussions because its just a back and forth and nobody ever convinces anybody to think differently haha but I'm bored and most of you seem like pretty inteligent people!

Ps. I may have not made sense somewhere in there, but I wrote it all out as one stream of thought and don't feel like going through and reading it haha.

 

I don't recall anything about that, but I know the Japanese were and still are very "strict" kind of people, that would never surrender and would gladly die for their empire.
We could have sent them all the surrender papers in the world, and they still wouldn't.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm not sure why talks of surrender meetings with a group of Allied forces would cause a mandatory stop to it? We were telling them to surrender before we dropped the bomb, they did not comply. And they did not comply after the first bomb; again this lack of surrendering and the code of the Samurai, which was not to surrender.

 

couldnt have said it better myself.

 

If Japan had the intent to surrender they should have done it sooner. Unfortunately they took a long time to do so.

 

Tell your dad, with all my heart and sincerity thanks for his service. I believe that my grandfather will shake his hands if they meet. Thank you.

 

But, for the Japanese, surrender was not in their vocabulary, that's why we dropped the bomb on them and not Germany.

America's AWESOME action send a clear and prescient message to Hitler, who was also furiously researching the atomic bomb, which not only forced the Japanese to surrender but began the dismantelling of the 3rd Reich and the end of WWII. Such is history. SO could have been a different story.

Pity that the greatest superpower in the world has lost those balls.

'Nuff said.

By me. Next?

 

Hey you're absolutely right, I didn't even look at it like that to be honest. That would work if everybody started at peace, then nobody would fuck with anyone else, as you said. But it's hard to use that method to have peace when there is any kind of conflict going on at the time, which there is now. Who's gonna be the first to stop if everyone thinks, "touch me and i'll have to fuck you up." ?

 

...Hitler was very dead and Germany had already very much surrendered well before we nuked Japan. Like, 4 months before.

 

Thats what i thought lol.... i was googling it just to make sure my history wasnt confused

 

I would bet that if Harry Truman had refrained from using the atomic bomb and a couple of hundred thousand American troops had ended up as casualties in the invasions of Kyushu and Honshu, these same people would today be calling out Truman for allowing all those poor boys to die when he had a weapon that could have ended the war and didn't use it.

More people died in the firebombing raids of Tokyo than they did with the atomic bomb.

 

I think it's not for me to say. I wasn't there. I had no direct family in the war (one grandfather was blind in 1 eye, one was an MP in Texas... not sure why).

But, consider this. There were 2 nuclear weapons in the world at the time. The thought of "what's to come" was so grave that they used 100% of the world's arsenal. That's pretty profound.

Don't forget, WW2 was a different time. Carpet bombing (Dresden, Tokyo, etc) was common, "smart bombs" were 50 years away, and civilian casualties were the norm. You think The Battle Of Britain tarted only military targets? And, FYI, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were involved in the war. Pretty much every city had a legitimate military target. Every island we took from Japan was pretty much a battle of attrition - why would mainland Japan be different?

It's not terrorism when it's sanctioned by a legitimate government in a time of war. At least, by definition.

And, Chris, I hate to argue with you, but I think that the US soldiers do fight the same, it's just the military is hamstrung by things like "rules of engagement" and concepts of surgical strikes, civvie casaulties are bad, etc. Look at examples, like Mogadishu, Hue or Fallujah. Horrendous battles, but reminiscent of the intensity of WW2. It's just we're lucky they weren't 4 years in the making.

 

It's not terrorism because the allies won and wrote the history books.

In China the Tienanmen Square protests never took place. I remember reading an article a while back where, ironically, a young censor working for the Chinese government didn't censor Tienanmen Square information because it had been censored from him throughout his education and he didn't know what it was.

The point is, when you win the war, you decide what was and wasn't wrong.