Hiroshima: Dropped Or Not Dropped?

If we would have passed on the bomb idea obviously the war would have gone on for some more time. It is impossible to say how many would die and suffer. All we know is how many did die due to the two bombings on Japan. People will have their opinions, but they are nothing more then just that, opinions. There is a chance (only a chance) more could have died. America was preparing to invade Japan.

You can't know what doesn't happen.

And on a more pathetic note, if you didn't kill native Americans yourself, and if you didn't enslave blacks yourself, and if you didn't bomb Hiroshima/Nagasaki yourself, you have no need to apologize. What's done is done, and I did not play a part in those particular three things. Apologizing for ancestors is bullsh!t. One who wants an apology for something that was done to their ancestors in the past always has a motivation.

My refusal to apologize on behalf of men I never knew.

 

And I thought this was ProgArchives, not HistoryArchives? If only we stuck to music instead.

Edited by The Ryan

And I thought this was ProgArchives, not HistoryArchives? If only we stuck to music instead.

Why do people find it necessary to make comments like that???.......................

 

wet blanket wrote: ] If only we stuck to music instead.

You really have a problem with that naughty,nasty,big,wide-world out there dont you!

If discussing any subject other than music frightens you,get an adult to hold your hand whilst you peruse the different areas of the forum.

Meanwhile,let the rest of us who actually learn from these debates (even if it is only to be more tolerant of other members opinions) and enjoy them,get on with it,PLEASE!!!!

When the big boys and girls get excited, they say things that seem aggressive,and excessive but that is just the wa\y of adults and nobody gets hurt in the long run.

There,there.

Besides, the japanese are still waging a war against us- think of the packaging they put around blank cd cases, that you can never get open.

I don't like war, and anything that can help ending it is a good thing

the final solution to every problem is excessive violence

While it ushered in the nuclear age,which was unfortunate,the bombs had to be dropped.I don't think Japan would have surrendered any other way.The only alternative was Operation Olympus,the invasion of Japan,which would have made the bloody Okinawan invasion look like 2 kids fighting in an alley.They were projecting a MILLION American casualties for the invasion of Japan.This sounds cruel but my father was in the Pacific fleet during WW2,my uncles were Marines and fought in the Pacific war and one of them died at Iwo Jima and I think the Japanese got what they deserved,they started it all.It's only a shame we didn't drop the bomb on Tokyo.

marktheshark wrote: Besides, the japanese are still waging a war against us- think of the packaging they put around blank cd cases, that you can never get open.

they also come up with addictive videogames. that cost $50 each

nousommedusolei wrote: I've been studying the Japanese language and culture for some time now, and it's obvious that more lives on both sides would have been lost on both Allied and Axis sides if the bomb wasn't dropped because the Japanese would have fought to the very end. It was all a matter of who developed them first. As stated before, the Germans or the Japanese would have been fine with wiping us out with nuclear bombs. However, I agree with Mark on this one. We should have at least tried to demonstrate the devasting power of this nasty weaponry. Now that nuclear technology is a threat, we're going to have to deal with it. Sadly, you can't "un-invent" something. A bit off-topic, but is North Korea still developing nuclear weapons? I don't see the news much.

Not only North Korea but Iran is also building nukes, hope no one tells this to Bush because we'll have another useless war.


Edited by king of Siam

Japan was never going to surrender. The military were the decisive decision makers and they would never have put up a white flag and the Prime Minister, who would have liked to have surrendered, did not want to lose face either. Japan had never lost a war on their own territory and had an extremely proud history of military success. Honour was everything. To lose in Japan, particulary for a military commander, was a worse case senario than going to gehanna.

The fact that Japan has so willingly acceded to US foreign policy since the war, signifies their recognition of the USA as a superior power. Wether the US understood Japanese culture well enough to forsee this result is doubtful but nonetheless should be given consideration. The most convincing theories as to why it occurred appear to be:

a: US losses on Iwo Jima and the loss of 32 ships and another 200 odd damaged by Kamikaze, illustrated the extent to which Japan was willing to go to try and win the war. US capacity to publicly handle the loss of so many soldiers was considered to be a concern and they wanted to find a way to end the war as suddenly as possible.

b: Japan had already trained and put on alert, the whole nation, even school children, to fight to the death if necessary to protect their territory. The thought of US soldiers having to fight schoolchildren, mothers etc, and the possible millions of deaths that may have occurred as a result, may well have been a consideration.

c: Intelligence suggested that Russia had advanced its atomic program and 'cold war' overtones had already been building so a first strike on Japan would signal USA strength and a second strike would place a question mark over how many bombs the USA had.

d: Another possible consideration may be the atrocious treatment of POWs by the Japanese. Japanese cruelty had become the most infamous part of the war up until that point, so the compassion/mercy factor that may have caused a check on the hearts and minds of those making the decision wether to drop the bomb, may have been overriden by the brutality Japanese soldiers had meted out to Allied forces.

actually Japan was already on the verge of surrendering; the only thing that worried them was what would become of the Tenno. had American diplomacy taken that into account and offered a way out for the Tenno while keeping his face (something which was very important for Japan), the war could have been ended without dropping the bomb. the real reason for Hiroshima and Nagasaki was some muscle-play towards the Soviet Union; the cold war already dawned on the horizon.
Eintein was horrified by the dropping of the bomb; he felt responsible for it and used to say "I pressed the button" in his latter years, referring to his letter to Roosevelt from Aug 2nd 1939, in which he pointed out the possibilty of nuclear weapons and his fear the Germans were constructing one. the driving force behind this letter were Leo Szilard and Edward Teller, by the way; they visited Einstein and convinced him something should be done. of course the name "Einstein" had a lot more weight at that time than the names "Szilard" or "Teller". incidentially, Teller was the one who later created the even more powerful hydrogenic bomb.
I don't think Roosevelt would have dropped the bomb; he was a personal friend of Einstein and certainly knew and understood his motives. but, alas! Truman was no Roosevelt...
"Every step appears to be the unavoidable consequence of the preceding one, and in the end there beckons more and more clearly total annihilation" (Einstein in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, cited in VdGG's "After the Flood").
here the (in)famos letter of Einstein to Roosevelt, by the way:

in my opinion there is no doubt that dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were two of the biggest war-crimes ever commited

Edited by BaldJean

JrKASperov wrote: Really, was the dropping of two bombs and in one strike killing 140.000 !!!!! CIVILIANS necessary? I think not Just for reference, that's more than 46 Trade Center Bombings.

and those 140.000 are only those who died immediately; many more died a slow and horrid death from the radioactive fallout

in my opinion there is no doubt that dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were two of the biggest war-crimes ever commited

Hear hear!!

Actually i don't see the difference between the bombs on Hirosjima and Nagasaki, and 9/11. Both were vicious terrorist attacks.

There is NEVER an excuse to kill innocent civilians.