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14 pages in 8 hours... geez calm the heck down guys.
My 2 cents:
If we invaded, we would have been fighting civilians who were wielding rakes, kitchen knives, etc. Announcements were made to the Japanese people that the American soldiers would rape your babies and what not. The Japanese thought thought that those soldiers were horrific monsters. Don't any of you remember the Battle of Saipan where ENTIRE civilian families (children, women, the elderly) all jumped off cliffs and subsequently drowned? These 2 bombs stopped all that from happening in Japan, albeit I believe that 1 strategically placed bomb would have been better.
to address the need of a civilian city:
Hirohito would not have surrendered if it had not been for the suffering of over hundreds of thousands of his homeland people. This I'm not entirely sure about, but it's what i currently believe.
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Man too bad that nuclear holocaust never happened, just think of how strong our economies and how high our living standards would've been.
You almost make getting nuked sound like fun Klockan.
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Well I think it was definitely justified as it saved countless allied lives and japanese lives that would have been lost in the further naval battles needed to get to japan, on the beaches during the invasion and in the countryside and towns as each one was taken. Also the amount of regular bombing raids that would have continued on lots of towns over Japan would have killed many more over the months than the two atom bombs did. So overall I think it saved many lives on both sides.
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On November 03 2008 00:16 Faronel wrote:
14 pages in 8 hours... geez calm the heck down guys.
My 2 cents:
If we invaded, we would have been fighting civilians who were wielding rakes, kitchen knives, etc. Announcements were made to the Japanese people that the American soldiers would rape your babies and what not. The Japanese thought thought that those soldiers were horrific monsters. Don't any of you remember the Battle of Saipan where ENTIRE civilian families (children, women, the elderly) all jumped off cliffs and subsequently drowned? These 2 bombs stopped all that from happening in Japan, albeit I believe that 1 strategically placed bomb would have been better.
to address the need of a civilian city:
Hirohito would not have surrendered if it had not been for the suffering of over hundreds of thousands of his homeland people. This I'm not entirely sure about, but it's what i currently believe.
yes, those 2 bombs stopped all those civilians from getting killed....
asfafadsdsfafadsfadsfasFASADSFDFASSFD
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On November 03 2008 00:19 jello_biafra wrote:
Well I think it was definitely justified as it saved countless allied lives and japanese lives that would have been lost in the further naval battles needed to get to japan, on the beaches during the invasion and in the countryside and towns as each one was taken. Also the amount of regular bombing raids that would have continued on lots of towns over Japan would have killed many more over the months than the two atom bombs did. So overall I think it saved many lives on both sides.
My guess is that this is the "biased American propaganda" that people are talking about in this thread.
As an American high school student, I'm curious what sort of reading I could do on this subject to see where others are getting their information from. Everything I've read so far has been "Truman decided that the cost of American lives lost due to further conventional war outweighed the cost of using the bombs," but many here are claiming this is incorrect. I want as much of an objective opinion as possible, so may I ask where I could read about this?
Thanks in advance.
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On November 03 2008 00:22 Cobalt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2008 00:19 jello_biafra wrote:
Well I think it was definitely justified as it saved countless allied lives and japanese lives that would have been lost in the further naval battles needed to get to japan, on the beaches during the invasion and in the countryside and towns as each one was taken. Also the amount of regular bombing raids that would have continued on lots of towns over Japan would have killed many more over the months than the two atom bombs did. So overall I think it saved many lives on both sides. My guess is that this is the "biased American propaganda" that people are talking about in this thread. As an American high school student, I'm curious what sort of reading I could do on this subject to see where others are getting their information from. Everything I've read so far has been "Truman decided that the cost of American lives lost due to further conventional war outweighed the cost of using the bombs," but many here are claiming this is incorrect. I want as much of an objective opinion as possible, so may I ask where I could read about this? Thanks in advance.
Hmm, seems to me that it's simple fact. Just think about what the campaign to take Japan would have been like. And as someone else said the Japanese population were genuinely led to believe that they would be murdered by allied troops and were encouraged to commit suicide when capture was inevitable, and many did.
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On November 02 2008 14:51 baal wrote:
oh god i knew the "it saved lives in the long run" card was going to show up, but no so fast... you ignorant retards that swallow all the shit in your history book.
Japan is a fucking island, it lost all his naval capacity, its allies were defeated, surrender was matter of time, are you stupid faggots so naive to think they needed 2 cities evaporated to surrender?
There is a reason why nuclear weapons are banned dont you think?
Sup "faggot", get your facts straight.
We didn't just randomly drop 2 bombs, they didn't surrender and WEREN'T GOING TO SURRENDER.
After the 1st bomb they still didn't surrender, this pretty much proves the fact that they were never going to surrender, so the 2nd was dropped, and also the 2 cities did have major housing facilities for the military(which included bases) as-well as military factories, and food that kept running the war.
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Well to save American lives i think its completely justified. Its like when your playing SC and the one kid who has lost every other base except his main and turtles up thinking he has a chance. We had warned Japan that we would use force such as nukes and they ignored it. We nuked them once, they still held their "never give up" mentality. So, we nuked them again in which they finally surrendered.
Just think of this, There's a baby on the train tracks and a train full of people heading towards it. You can pull the lever and save the baby, but kills all the people in the train. Or you can instead let the train keep going and kill the baby to save the train full of people.... What would you choose?
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On November 03 2008 00:22 Cobalt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2008 00:19 jello_biafra wrote:
Well I think it was definitely justified as it saved countless allied lives and japanese lives that would have been lost in the further naval battles needed to get to japan, on the beaches during the invasion and in the countryside and towns as each one was taken. Also the amount of regular bombing raids that would have continued on lots of towns over Japan would have killed many more over the months than the two atom bombs did. So overall I think it saved many lives on both sides. My guess is that this is the "biased American propaganda" that people are talking about in this thread. As an American high school student, I'm curious what sort of reading I could do on this subject to see where others are getting their information from. Everything I've read so far has been "Truman decided that the cost of American lives lost due to further conventional war outweighed the cost of using the bombs," but many here are claiming this is incorrect. I want as much of an objective opinion as possible, so may I ask where I could read about this? Thanks in advance.
http://worldwar2database.com/html/japansurrender.htm
Clearly the time to surrender had come. Incredibly, many in the military wanted to fight on, preferring death to capitulation. The cabinet, made up of elder statesmen, tried to send out peace feelers through neutral Sweden, Soviet Union, and Switzerland as early as June 1945.
On July 28, the government issued a carefully worded response to the Potsdam Declaration, which unfortunately used a word with a double meaning. English-language broadcasts used the word "ignore" and the Western press picked up that sentiment. Truman announced he had rejected the peace offer and dropped the atomic bombs.
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On November 02 2008 14:50 Amber[LighT] wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2008 14:47 baal wrote:Only a fucking ignorant heartless redneck would think so. A bomb thrown at fucking civilians??, it was inhumane and its amazing its not classified in history as an horrible crime against humanity like the holocaust was. It wasnt dropped on a military base or something of that sort, it was dropped in the middle of a city full of civlians, women and children being burned alive while they were having a family meal wtf. lol and pearl harbor never happened.
DO NOT USE THIS JUSTIFICATION
first pearl harbor was a military base
Even if it was not, then the opponent doing something like pearl harbor does NOT justify the destruction of two civilian cities
EDIT: The Justification I believe is most viable would be that 100,000-200,000 people would have died in a land assault, according to my history book, on the US Side, and at least as many on the Japanese side.
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On November 03 2008 00:34 Rygasm wrote:
Well to save American lives i think its completely justified. Its like when your playing SC and the one kid who has lost every other base except his main and turtles up thinking he has a chance. We had warned Japan that we would use force such as nukes and they ignored it. We nuked them once, they still held their "never give up" mentality. So, we nuked them again in which they finally surrendered.
Just think of this, There's a baby on the train tracks and a train full of people heading towards it. You can pull the lever and save the baby, but kills all the people in the train. Or you can instead let the train keep going and kill the baby to save the train full of people.... What would you choose?
....
....
....
Your analogy is flawed
War is not a game. You cannot say, the lives of our MILITARY are worth more than the lives of twice their number in CIVILIANS
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http://worldwar2database.com/html/atombomb.htm
Within two weeks, the 504th Composite Group was ready to fly from Tinian to Japan and deliver its multimillion-dollar payload. From the list of targets that had been preserved for the test, the primary target of Hiroshima was selected. The B-29, "Enola Gay," piloted by the squadron commander, Col. Paul Tibbets, flew to Japan and dropped the bomb on August 6, 1945. The bomb was nicknamed “Little Boy” and used U-238 as its nuclear core.
What is certain is that Japan was preparing the bloodiest reception ever for the Allies if they had invaded Honshu, the southernmost island in Japan. Truman would never have been able to hold office if he had a working weapon and choose not to use it. Also, the Alliance between the Western powers and the Soviets was growing tenuous after the fall of Germany; Truman, an unknown quantity to the Soviets, had to show he was unafraid to use a weapon of mass destruction, especially one that only the United States possessed at that time.
What is not certain is the extent that the Japanese could have responded to the Allied unconditional surrender calls of August 6 and 7, 1945. The damage by conventional bombing to the transportation and communication network prevented the Japanese government from fully understanding what had happened in Hiroshima.
So the government did nothing, and on August 9, 1945, the B-29 "Bock's Car" dropped the “Fat Man” Plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, the tertiary target.
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United States22883 Posts
On November 02 2008 22:56 MoltkeWarding wrote:
As an addendum, the notion that the Americans dropped the bomb to scare Stalin might have produced that effect on Stalin (who reacted to the news of Hiroshima calmly, and without much impression, whatever his private feelings may have been,) but pre-dates the Cold War by 2 years.
In 1945 the foreign policy of America was still attempting to build a universal post-war order, including Soviet participation, hence the scale of concessions made to the Soviet Union at Yalta. The Cold War began in 1947, not 45, and it was not until 49-50 that the notion of two worlds was crystallized. Truman informed Stalin about the bomb at Potsdam, in an exchange which did not carry any sign of a threat.
Truman first learned of the atomic bombs as a tool to force diplomacy from the Soviet Union. This was definitely taken into consideration during the meetings. Tensions between the two sides had already been rising which led to their fight at Potsdam. There was no policy approach until the Truman Doctrine, but Truman was definitely using the military to fulfill that purpose.
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On November 03 2008 00:43 DamageControL wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2008 00:34 Rygasm wrote:
Well to save American lives i think its completely justified. Its like when your playing SC and the one kid who has lost every other base except his main and turtles up thinking he has a chance. We had warned Japan that we would use force such as nukes and they ignored it. We nuked them once, they still held their "never give up" mentality. So, we nuked them again in which they finally surrendered.
Just think of this, There's a baby on the train tracks and a train full of people heading towards it. You can pull the lever and save the baby, but kills all the people in the train. Or you can instead let the train keep going and kill the baby to save the train full of people.... What would you choose? .... .... .... Your analogy is flawed War is not a game. You cannot say, the lives of our MILITARY are worth more than the lives of twice their number in CIVILIANS
I never said that they were worth more, i said it was completely justifiable if its to save American lives. Its not the RIGHT thing to do killing thousands, but it can be justified. We wouldn't have anything to argue about if the Japanese just surrendered anyways.
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Yes, we should have invaded killing countless american soldiers in the process.
My grandfather was literally "in line" for this invasion, just in case it had to happen. He told me it was announced that every 1 in 3 of them would not come back if they had to launch a ground/sea assault on the mainland.
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On November 03 2008 00:58 Rygasm wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2008 00:43 DamageControL wrote:On November 03 2008 00:34 Rygasm wrote:
Well to save American lives i think its completely justified. Its like when your playing SC and the one kid who has lost every other base except his main and turtles up thinking he has a chance. We had warned Japan that we would use force such as nukes and they ignored it. We nuked them once, they still held their "never give up" mentality. So, we nuked them again in which they finally surrendered.
Just think of this, There's a baby on the train tracks and a train full of people heading towards it. You can pull the lever and save the baby, but kills all the people in the train. Or you can instead let the train keep going and kill the baby to save the train full of people.... What would you choose? .... .... .... Your analogy is flawed War is not a game. You cannot say, the lives of our MILITARY are worth more than the lives of twice their number in CIVILIANS I never said that they were worth more, i said it was completely justifiable if its to save American lives. Its not the RIGHT thing to do killing thousands, but it can be justified. We wouldn't have anything to argue about if the Japanese just surrendered anyways.
My apologies then, I was so infuriated by your SC analogy.
And your baby on the tracks analogy.
If they were as beaten as you say they were, then I don't think we should have dropped the bomb simple as that. Because then it becomes an abuse of a winning situation, rather than a true military necessity.
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"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.
"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
The options weren't a ground invasion or the bomb. And how anyone can argue that a nuclear bomb ever have saved a single life is beyond my understanding. The bombings were major war crimes and the reasons for nobody being held responsible and brought to trial is as always the fact that the victors are never held responsible.
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I see alot of people calling the U.S. inhumane for dropping the bomb, saying they should have been tried as war criminals. But many of you have forgotten the atrocities committed by the Japanese, Italian and German forces. The Bataan Death March comes to mind. Tens of thousands of American prisoners were forced to walk hundreds of miles with little or no food/water.
"Prisoners were attacked for assisting someone failing due to weakness, or for no apparent reason whatsoever. Strings of Japanese trucks were known to drive over anyone who fell. Riders in vehicles would casually stick out a rifle bayonet and cut a string of throats in the lines of men marching alongside the road. Accounts of being forcibly marched for five to six days with no food and a single sip of water are in post war archives including filmed reports."
"The exact death count has been impossible to determine, but some historians have placed the minimum death toll between six and eleven thousand men; whereas other post war allied reports have tabulated that only 54,000 of the 72,000 prisoners reached their destination— taken together, the figures document a casual killing rate of one in four up to two in seven (25% to 28.5%)"
The atomic bomb was used against a savage nation which chose to become an enemy of the United States. They attacked us unprovoked and unprepared, they brought this upon themselves. When we were trudging through the Pacific Islands our casualty rates were insane. When thinking about a main land invasion the casualties were projected to be much much more. Even if they are exaggerated they are unacceptable when considering losing hundreds of thousands of American lives.
I also see a lot of people freaking out about how many civilians were killed and how Nagasaki and Hiroshima were terrible choices for targets. Many of you are forgetting that the killing of civilians was commonplace at the time. Only now with huge amounts of technology is the tactic of bombing able to be so precise. In reality just as many citizens died in the invasion of one small island of Japan as did in the atomic bombing.
"The battle has one of the highest number of casualties of any World War Two engagement: the Japanese lost over 100,000 troops, and the Allies (mostly United States) suffered more than 50,000 casualties, with over 12,000 killed in action. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, wounded or attempted suicide. Approximately one-fourth of the civilian population died due to the invasion."
One fourth of the civilian population.... Imagine if we had to invade the mainland. These stats are from the Battle of Okinawa which took place on the RyuKyu islands of Okinawa. Okinawa is an outlying state of Japan and not nearly as densely populated as the mainland. Killing civilians was part of the deal back then and need I remind you that the Japanese killed, raped and generally stomped on the Chinese for years before we made it. A lot of people seem to forget that Japan started this war.
Edit: Also please stop saying that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not military targets. Both were home to the major production facilities of the Japanese army and home to many weapons plants. They were just as much military targets as any city that was bombed during WW2. Just because the civilian casualty rates were so high does not mean that it was not a military target. Would rather it was dropped on the industrial center of Tokyo? Gimme a break where Truman dropped them was meant as a warning to the Japanese and meant to cripple their production capabilities.
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On November 03 2008 01:07 DamageControL wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2008 00:58 Rygasm wrote:On November 03 2008 00:43 DamageControL wrote:On November 03 2008 00:34 Rygasm wrote:
Well to save American lives i think its completely justified. Its like when your playing SC and the one kid who has lost every other base except his main and turtles up thinking he has a chance. We had warned Japan that we would use force such as nukes and they ignored it. We nuked them once, they still held their "never give up" mentality. So, we nuked them again in which they finally surrendered.
Just think of this, There's a baby on the train tracks and a train full of people heading towards it. You can pull the lever and save the baby, but kills all the people in the train. Or you can instead let the train keep going and kill the baby to save the train full of people.... What would you choose? .... .... .... Your analogy is flawed War is not a game. You cannot say, the lives of our MILITARY are worth more than the lives of twice their number in CIVILIANS I never said that they were worth more, i said it was completely justifiable if its to save American lives. Its not the RIGHT thing to do killing thousands, but it can be justified. We wouldn't have anything to argue about if the Japanese just surrendered anyways. My apologies then, I was so infuriated by your SC analogy. And your baby on the tracks analogy. If they were as beaten as you say they were, then I don't think we should have dropped the bomb simple as that. Because then it becomes an abuse of a winning situation, rather than a true military necessity.
I agree my SC analogy was in both bad taste and really unnesessary. I do agree with you that we probably shouldnt have dropped the bomb. But the argument stands on if it was justified, imo it is/can be .
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.lewrockwell.com/latulippe/fm_victim.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.warchat.org/pictures/hiroshima_and_nagasaki_victims_nuclear_bombing.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.japanfocus.org/images/UserFiles/Image/2642.kuznick.tibbets.abomb/hiroshima_afterbomb.jpg)
