A photograph of the Hiroshima A-bomb Dome taken by the US military

[dArKeR]

A photograph of the Hiroshima A-bomb Dome taken by the US military following the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, killing over 140,000 people on August 6, 1945. The building, originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, was just 160m northwest of the hypocenter. The skeletal structure of the dome standing above the ruins was a conspicuous landmark, and became known officially as the ``A-bomb Dome.''
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/photo/2005/08/02/2005040024

God Bless America! Dropping two nuclear bombs on civilians; elderly, men, women and children in their homes and offices! Please tell me again what Saddam did?

[knowbody0]

1. our karma sucks

[Fescue4u]

160. Actually I would say thats Japans Karma

for Pearl Harbor..

[Splatter Phoenix]

176. But...

"On January 20, 1887, the United States Senate allowed the Navy to lease Pearl Harbor as a naval base (the US took possession on November 9 that year)."

It was not a thriving, civillian heavy area. It was a NAVAL BASE. I'm not saying it was okay, I'm merely saying it was an act of war aimed at soldiers. I saw movies on it and things, and it was horrific. But if the A-bombs were the response, it was like decapitating someone who'd just punched you and knocked out a few teeth.

[rinsd]

190. If we're taking karma into account....

....then the Japanese had alot to answer for including waging aggreesive war, colinization and brutal war crimes including the Rape of Nanking.

[Splatter Phoenix]

192. Karma...

...usually works on an individual basis anyway, doesn't it? If it works for an entire nation of people, we're ALL screwed for Iraq, trust me.

[Fescue4u]

195. yea..........

no disagreement there.

[rinsd]

200. Yes it does....

Mine was a reponse to the original poster.

I don't buy into the whole "no one is innocent" BS. I argued against it when people here embraced Ward Chruchill and I will argue against it here.

[Splatter Phoenix]

205. Yay!

:clap: Go get 'em, Yoda. :D

[knowbody0]

259. IMHO

nations do have karma. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq. we need to do some serious humanitarian deeds. plus Hiroshima was overkill.

[Johonny]

204. I agree

WW II sucked pretty much all around. Civilians were fair game targets throughout the war on both sides. 140,000 really doesn't come close to the number of civilian Chinese, Russian, Polish, Jewish... killed by the Axis.

[Fescue4u]

193. Im glad that you not saying it was ok

"I'm not saying it was okay,"

It was a terrible mistake by the Japanese, and they learned a very valuable lesson in the end.

[Splatter Phoenix]

198. Yes, but LOOK.

Just as I am not responsible, sitting here as a Dem in a red state, for the torment going on over in Iraq, many of those people in Japan were not responsible for the "tora tora tora" cries from their leaders. That's basically all I'm trying to put across...families and children should not suffer for the sins of their leaders, just as you and I should not suffer for the sins of our monkey-faced leader.

[Name removed]

220. Deleted message

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[BlueStateGirl]

304. If it's Karma for anything, it's for Nanking.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Mr_Spock]

3. Welcome to DU!

It's true that firebombing was killing 100,000's of civilians. Doesn't make it right to kill civilians though.

[MisterP]

6. half that number was what was pulled out of LeMay's ass (George Wallace's

running mate): it was doubled later.

[dArKeR]

7. The bombs should have been dropped on military targets. Isn't that what

America says and always said? Please give me your justification for dropping nuclear bombs on civilians. Thanks!

[Massacure]

101. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of great military importance to the Japanese.

Hiroshima was the headquarters and staging area for Japans 2nd General Army, responsible for the defense of Southern Japan.

Nagasaki was an Industrial center that manufactured ships, equipment, and ordnance. If I recall the bomb missed its intended target by over a mile though.

[Imagevision]

4. Yeah, there was a piece on Alkaeda hitting the US. Aug. 6th

to commerate the Japan atomic bomb hits. so, we get past the 6th? we just have what was it? the 16-18th on the second bomb the US. dropped?

no BS. read this in WAPO a few days ago.

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. This was so wrong!

:cry:

[rfrrfrrfr]

8. I am sorry

Ending a war we didn't start does not equate with the current debacle in Iraq.

Now argue all you want that the Japanese were about to surrender anyway and there was no need to drop the bombs. The simple truth is we don't know what would have happened had we not dropped them. They may have surrendered or they may have not.

I'll leave you with this wonderful thought. Imagine a world where the only thing we know about the repercussions of using Nuclear weapons are a handful of tests done in isolated areas under controlled conditions. Then imagine the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States confront each other over nuclear weapons on the small island of Cuba. Neither side having seen the results of Hiroshima or Nagisaki. What kind of diffrence would the lack of knowing what the true horror of nuclear weapons were be in the decisions being made in those crucial days?

I don't really want to think about it much. Needless to say our learning the hard lessons of what nuclear weapons actually can do at Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably saved us from a much greater disaster later on with much more powerful weapons.

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. Wrong is wrong no matter how one 'justifies' it or not.

:cry: I leave you with that thought.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

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[Old Mouse]

18. Memory is short

Another generation and the lesson is lost. Janet's breast got more interest than the Pentagon's seeking permission for use of mini-nukes. And with depleted uranium shells we have all the same effects, just slower and without the spectacular introduction.

But on the bombs, a trip to the monument destroys the impersonal distance of armchair reflection.

The bombs probably did nothing to end the war early, Communication across Japan was so destroyed that no one knew of the scale of destruction until months after the war was over. After Iwo Jima (part of the sovereign nation of Okinawa we forgot to free after the war,) there was no military left to fight, no ships, planes or ammunition... and after the firestorm of Tokyo there was no civilian support for an insurgency.

Every year the descendants of the Korean slave laborers that died in the munition factories in Hiroshima try to build their own monument. They are violently opposed by right wing groups that do not deny their claim, they just don't think Koreans are important as Japanese.

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

21. "They started it, we finished it. War is hell." Amen.

It's a very sad necessary episode in history.

This reminds me of a book I read a while back written by a survivor of the Dresden bombing, which, IMO, was less justifiable than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This arisocratic German woman lost everything except her infant daughter. She wandered the Polish countryside and other areas. Upon reflecting on war and the bombing, she basically said it's not fair, but it happened because men started the war. Hitler was a typical man starting a war for which the women and children would pay most harshly. The men either die or come back as war heroes. (that's what she said.) She implied that while the bombing was sad, it was inevitable.

[dArKeR]

105. So you are justifying Iraqi/Al Qaeda suicide bombers coming to America

and killing American women and children? Since America started the war with Iraq they are justified to do anything to end it? ""They started it, we finished it. War is hell." Amen." That's you point?

[solinvictus]

280. OMG!!

Why is George Washington behind a "W" podium?!?!?! And wearing earrings no less!!!

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

296. No. States/those who are state-sponsored are committing acts of war.

Those who do it and say, "I'm defending against American aggression" are committing crimes, because they are individuals or, as in the case of al-qaida, groups of individuals organized for the purpose of committing crimes for self-benefit. These crimes promote anarchy, not justice.

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Redstone]

32. I agree with you. If you'd like to read a fascinating book about what

might have hapened if the Cuban Missile Crisis has gone hot, check out Resurrection Day by Brendan Dubois.

Redstone

[dArKeR]

11. Maybe you can learn the hard lesson of what a military target and

a civilian target is. It's the same difference between Satan and God. For some it's easy to see. For some it's difficult to see. God Bless Everyone!

[Walt Starr]

30. The Second World War was an all out war. There were no civilian targets

All civilian activities in all nations engaged in the Second World War supported the efforts of the war.

There were no "civilian" targets. All targets were legitimate. Some simply had more strategic value than others.

[dArKeR]

74. I saw a report by Robert McNamara, The Fog of War.

In one part he was telling about him personally involved with fire bombing Japan. You could tell by his words, his tone, his body langauge that he expects to burn in Hell for enternity for these actions. See it for yourself.

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1808467470

[Walt Starr]

89. That is the cost of war

which is why war should be a last resort.

As I said in another post, all targets are legitimate. Some simply have more value than others.

[bpilgrim]

17. no military leader in theater at the time agree with you...

they all said it wasn't necessary and recommended accepting japans 1 condition - the maintaining japans long historical role of the ceremonial imperial emperor - in order to SAVE LIVES.

read all about it...
http://www.doug-long.com/ga1.htm

more...
http://www.doug-long.com/debate.htm

IMAGINE

peace

[Misunderestimator]

38. Sounds to me like you're saying that it's great these people died...

so that you and I are safe?!?

I would rather NEVER know the danger of nuclear bombs than for our country to have been responsible for that many horrible deaths and casualties.

They KNEW the destruction it could cause before dropping it on real, living, innocent people. They STILL know the destruction it can cause. Just because we dodged a bullet during the Cuban Missile Crisis, doesn't mean that ANYONE learned any lessons from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Needless to say... our "learning the hard lessons of what nuclear weapons actually can do at Hiroshima and Nagasaki" increased our risk a thousand-fold. Imagine how much better the technology is now than then.

[charlie]

43. We'd conducted close to 300 nuclear tests

before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Claims that we couldn't appreciate the destruction a bomb could do to a city without historic examples is willful foolishness.

[Selatius]

9. At the time, it seemed sensible, at least that's what they said

It was either kill several hundred thousand civilians and end the war quickly, or sacrifice another million soldiers in a pitched battle to take down Japan.

In the end, it was most likely a false dichotomy. The Japanese probably would've surrendered anyway a few weeks after the USSR declared war on Japan after finishing off what was left of Nazi Germany. The leadership was stubborn, but even they realized they had no chance taking on the USA and the USSR and win.

[dArKeR]

12. Was it the same "they" that said JFK was killed by Oswald?

The same "they" (Westmoreland) who sent 50,000 American children to slaughter in Vietnam? The same "they" who said Agent Orange was just like Kool-Aid? The same "they" who tested nuclear explosions on our own soldiers? Or just the "they" who assassination Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King?

[Swamp Rat]

14. THEY have taken Earth's capital city...

:D

[Selatius]

16. Funny how you forgot LeMay

Gen. Curtis LeMay was the one who tried to convince JFK to let him bomb nuclear sites in Cuba and even suggested that Cuba should be invaded anyway despite the Russian withdrawal, and he was the one who commanded the airforces over the Pacific. Yes, the atom bombs that were dropped on Japan were dropped on his watch.

Documents reveal today that had the invasion gone ahead, Cuba, already in possession of tactical nuclear warheads not known to anyone but the Cubans and the Russians, would've nuked any invasion force, and that would've opened up a whole world of trouble for the world.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Freedomfried]

19. The Soviets had just lost 7 and half million soldiers, 20 to 30 million

civilians, their military had just defeated the German army and they had plans to take what they felt was theirs.
Like Germany and the rest of Europe.
The atomic bombing of Japan stopped them in their tracks.

My view is that the bombing, though brutal, was justifiable at THAT time.

[The Stranger]

73. They did take Germany, at least the Eastern half.

Same goes for Eastern Europe -- atom bombs or no atom bombs.

[Jack from Charlotte]

113. I agree....

The bombing of Toykio on March 3/4th, '45 (I think that's the correct date) killed more people than the nuke on Hiroshima did. So what's the difference? Fewer planes and fewer bombs were required in using the nuke? I never hear anyone complain about the March '45 Tokio bombing.

However, I regret that we were the 1st (and currently still the only) users of the nuke bomb, regardless. When reading about the end of the war (I've probably read over 100 books on the war in the Pacific) one sees the difficulty of trying to stopp a war. Japan.... part of it's leaders.... were trying to surrender for many months. Yet, the last 2 batlles (Iwo and Okinawa) of the war were horribly brutal and costly to us. Japan wanted to make sure we knew invading their home land was going to be horrible. But in doing so they made us increasingly deterimined to wipe them out.... one way or the other. Bottom line.... There was no way after The WWI style battle of Okinawa we were not going to nuke them. No way.

[happyslug]

232. Even the US at the time did not believe Stalin had plans to invade

The main reason is the Red Army was at the end of its supply lines, thus to go further into Europe meant even more extended supply lines and this time being attacked by an Air Force with enough fuel to do some real damage (Unlike the Luftwaffe from 1942-1945 which suffered from a severe Fuel Shortage).

No Stalin by taking Eastern Europe gave himself what Russia has always wanted, a breathing space between Russia and any potential European attacker. Thus he had no desire to expand beyond the Elbe River.

On the other hand all throughout the formerly occupied Western Europe the only political parties viewed at independent of the Nazi/Fascists of Germany/Italy was the Communists. Do to this Stalin preferred to opt for Revolution in Western Europe instead of direct Military action AND THE US KNEW THIS.

The "real" reason was to show Russia that if Stalin caused to much problem in Western Europe the US could bomb Russia. As former Senator Monihan once said (Paraphrased, not an exact quote), "Nato was NOT formed to defeat a Red Army Invasion, but to control the Streets of Paris". The problem with this justification is that Stalin only wanted a buffer and as the 1940s went on this became more and more clear. By the Summer of 1945 Stalin had ordered an realignment of the Soviet Army in Germany to prepare for an attack by the Western Allies more than to attack western Europe (A Soviet Spy in British Intelligence had leaked a British study on an attack on Russian forces in the Summer of 1945, it came out to a draw given the huge size of the Soviet Army and that it would fall back on its supply line, the Russians had fuel for its planes and that the Russians would take over the whole middle east given that the Russians had three Divisions in the Mid-East while the Allies had just three Brigades AND Russia could give Japan what it needed the most to defend Japan, Fuel, Planes and Pilots).

Please note the Bomb was originally intended for Germany, but by 1943 the US Military concerns about the bomb being dropped on Germany and NOT exploding, and than the Germans getting the Remains and figuring out where we went wrong, was to great. For this reason by 1943 it had already been decided to drop the bomb on Japan for it was believed Japan had less of a nuclear background to fix such a dud. Thus by 1943 the Five target cities had been picked (and the US Air Force bombing Japan from 1943 onward were forbidden to drop ANY bombs on these cities). No the Scientists working on the bomb were NOT told this, most of them wanted it dropped on Berlin.

Thus the "real" reason to drop the bomb was to impress the Russians, but why did Japan surrender? The bombs did less damage than the Fire bomb raid on Japan in March 1945 (When the same methodology is used the Fire bomb raid gives twice the deaths than Hiroshima, but for political reason both the US and Japan tend to use the highest number for Hiroshima and the lowest number for the Fire Bomb Raid). Furthermore Japan took a WEEK to surrender (and even than a group in the Military wanted to fight on even attempting a coup in late August 1945 to undo the decision to Surrender).

Thus why did Japan surrender on August 15, 1945? Could it be how fast the Russian Army was moving in Manchuria? On August 6 we drooped the first bomb on Hiroshima, on August 7, the Russians began their long awaited invasion of Manchuria on August 8 we bombed Nagasaki. The reason we dropped the bomb when we did was the Russians had promised to invade within three months of Germany's Surrender (May 8, 1945) thus the US wanted to drop BOTH bombs before the Russian invasion (The US only was able to drop ONE before the Invasion).

The Russians unlike the Americans, had a well known Japanese politician in their care, a Communist but Japanese. It was the fear that if the Russians took over Manchuria and Korea (Which the Russian could have taken by October 1, 1945) than the Russians would participate in the Invasion of Japan set for November 1, 1945. The Japanese leadership feared this more than their feared an American occupation and surrendered hoping to lose only Manchuria to the Russians. When Japan surrender the US even tried to have the Japanese Army stay in Korea till we could sent in troops. The problem was the Japanese Commander in Korea said that was impossible, the Koreans would drive out the Japanese no matter what, Korea will have to be occupied by US Troops or will be occupied by Soviet Troops, the Korean people will tolerate both but NOT the Japanese army. Thus the US had to quickly occupy southern Korea as the Russians moved into Northern Korea.

My point here is the Surrender of Japan has less to do with the A-bombing than with the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria. Now since 1945 both the US (To show US Resolve and Strength) and Japan (To show it was a victim of WWII) have stressed the A-bombing for their own political agendas, thus the impression the A-bombing caused the Japanese to Surrender. The problem is the facts just do NOT add up to that result, the better political explanation is the Russian Invasion.

[Mnemosyne]

20. America's shame. n/t

[sidwill]

22. Wow what short memories

Try for a moment to remember that unlike the Iraq misadventure where WE started a war our involvement in WW2 was neccessary due to Japan attacking us first. Then also try to remember just how vicious the Japanese were on the civilian populations that got in their way in China (rape of Nanking would be a nice google start)and the pacific Islands. Then research how they treated Allied POWs basically placing them in concentration camps.

Furthermore an invasion of mainland Japan would have been much more costly both for the Japanese and for US, estimates of the civilian casualties were over a million not counting estimated Allied casualties. Any student of the war in the Pacific can cite how the Japanese fought almost to the last man in almost every instance were they defended captured islands, how would they have acted to defend their own soil.

The bombs shortened and brought to an end the worst tragedy in human history, a tragedy started by the Axis powers.

Lets not confuse the current US stupidity in Iraq with what was a justifiable and needed action in WW2.

[Mnemosyne]

24. I don't give a flying **** what was going on then,

WRONG IS WRONG!!!!!!!!!
Nothing can justify such actions! EVER!!!

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

59. Ironically, I don't think you're placing sufficient value on human life

since, among other things, the bombs resulted in saving far more lives than they took, and yes, more importantly, OUR BOYS' LIVES.

[Mnemosyne]

67. Oh yes, American lives are so much more valuable

than others.
:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[Ravenseye]

68. Which Would You Choose?

You have two options. No third option.

1) Kill 140,000 people
2) Kill 2,000,000 people

Which would you choose? No option 3. You have to pick one of those, and you can't avoid picking. Which one?

[Mnemosyne]

70. self delete

[Splatter Phoenix]

127. You're cheating.

They COULD avoid picking. I have yet to see anyone who supports the dropping of the bombs....yes, bombs PLURAL...find a proper reason for the second bomb. And a reason that isn't "they were testing their lovely new toys out, because the bomb over Nagasaki was different"...the only logical reason I can find.

[Ravenseye]

133. I'm asking a hypothetical

I'm not saying "if you were truman..."

People are picking apart here what is 'moral' and my point is that if you truly can see only those options, which one do you pick? It's easy to look at things in hindsight, it's not so easy to make the big decisions in the moment.

Yes there were more options, my point is that are you capable of making that decision when those are the two options and if so what do you choose?

As far as reasons for the second bomb, I don't know what you're reading, but I've read that the point was to show them (really bluff them because that was it for our bombs at that moment) that we had multiple bombs. It wasn't a test drop. It wasn't the only one we made. They didn't surrender immediately and we dropped another one. After that for all they knew (yes both the Japanese and the Russians) we had even more, and would just keep raining hellfire on them. If we had just dropped one, and let it go at that, the Japanese might have suspected that we used the only bomb we had, and same with the Russians.

[Splatter Phoenix]

152. Okay, okay, I admit...

You've got a good point about the test drop hypothesis. However, Edward Teller, "the father of the hydrogen bomb," argued that the power of the bomb could've been demonstrated WITHOUT the taking of human lives. That's NO human lives whatsoever, Japanese or American.

Unless you've got nuclear physicist degrees squirreled away in your hat, I'd leave the "we coulds" and "we could nots" to the professionals.

[Ravenseye]

171. I disagree

I think that if you've got a nuclear physics degree (preferably an advanced one) you're good to talk about nuclear physics, not whether or not something should be used or not.

Otherwise only Mechanical Engineers would be able to discuss whether or not we should be driving SUV's.

Nicolas Joseph Cugnot invented the first car in France in 1769 (granted it was steam powered). What if he had said that his invention could be used without taking many lives if it's speed was kept at 10 miles an hour. Why would his idea hold more merit than anyone elses.

How something can be demonstrated to another human in order to best persuade them has nothing to do with nuclear physics.

[Splatter Phoenix]

181. So...

You wouldn't want a mechanical engineer to tell you your car was a hazard to everyone else on the road?

...And let me tell you, if we all drove at 10 miles an hour, there'd be no high speed crashes, THAT'S for sure.

[Ravenseye]

183. No wrong analogy

I wouldnt' want a mechanical engineer to tell me it was morally wrong to drive a car.

Mechanical Engineer : Telling me my car is a hazard :: Nuclear Physicist : Telling me the atom bomb they made is unstable

I'm not saying that it's wrong for Teller to have said what he said, i'm just saying simply because he helped build the device doesn't mean he is better equiped to discuss the moral and philosophical ramifications of it's use.

[Splatter Phoenix]

187. *sigh*

Chew on this, then.

"Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years, "in 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…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.<15>(pg. 312-313)"
MacArthur believed the dropping of the bombs to be "completely unnecessary from a military point of view. <16>(pg. 775)""

Quoted from wikipedia.

[Ravenseye]

199. Have a nice day!

Yummy.

Look, i'm not arguing that people didn't wonder whether it should be done. Obviously they did. They wondered whether it was necessary. They wondered how it would affect Russia. They wondered what other ramifications would happen. They had too. They knew this was a huge thing. They knew that it wouldn't just have a good chance of ending teh war with Japan, but sending a message to Russia, and shocking the world. They thought about all that stuff. Good. Just because they talked about whether or not it would send a message to Russia doesn't mean that's the reason they did it, nor if it was one of the secondary purposes of the bomb (which it definately was) does it take away from what it accomplished. Eisenhower wrote those words in the 60's with the benefit of hindsight and 20 years of the nuclear age affecting his judgement. I'm sure that's how he felt, but I wonder what he would have said or written on H-Day, or what his decision woudl have been if he were PResident.

Anyway, if you're going to *sigh* at me for using logic then have a nice day!

Cheers.
:toast:

[Splatter Phoenix]

201. I'm sighing

Mainly because people here think it's okay to blast the shit out of innocent civs.

[Ravenseye]

210. I think that's one person

I don't think most of the people here think it's 'okay to blast the shit out of innocent civilians'. That's maybe what one discussion thread is about, but certainly not all.

It's all situational. Is it ok to blast the shit out of innocent civilians? Rarely, but it happens. The problem is the question is asked wrong. Is it ok to blast the shit out of innocent civilians just for the hell of it? No. Is it ok to blast the shit out of innocent civilians just to intimidate a third party? No.

Is it ok to blast the shit out of innocent civilians if you believe that if you don't 10 times that number will die? Yes.

Which takes us back to my initial hypothetical. People are far to quick to lay the moral claim that it's wrong over any such actions. My point is that logically you can't do that. You can't apply that belief onto it as a generalization because there are indeed exceptions.

A terrorist takes control of a plane full of fuel ala 9/11 and he has a dirty bomb. The plane has four terrorists and 96 innocent passengers. He steers the plane towards a packed football stadium holding 80,000 people. He's still 50 miles away when a fighter jet is on his tail. They ask you for permission to fire.

Option 1) 100 people die, including 96 innocent civilians
Option 2) 80,100 people die including 80,096 civilians

Sometimes it's ok to blast the shit out of innocent civilians. Or would you choose option 2?

[Splatter Phoenix]

215. Ahuh...

So you are of the "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few", opinion, eh?

We could argue that back and forth and back and forth and back and forth (I personally think with my own tinfoil hat that there were seriously fucked things going on with that Penn-grounded plane that was headed for the white house, but you can, and will, think what you want), but it would really get us nowhere....

I think both you and I are trying to black and white the issue, and that can't be done. If you were to look at it from a Japanese perspective "Do I want to die just because I live here and doing so would "save" Joe Shmoe Army Man from Nowhere, America?....not really...."

As to the plane option, if I were on the plane, I'd like to have a chance to stop the four terrorists and see if anyone knew anything about getting rid of bombs, and-slash-or flying planes before I had the shit blasted out of me, thanks.

A human life is a human life.

[Ravenseye]

228. And you are?

Yeah i'm of the 'needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few'. What are you? The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many?

I think some people on this board are trying to black and some are trying to white the issue. Maybe i'm closer to one side than another, but I'm also trying to look at the situation logically and rationally which I don't feel many people are doing.

I wasn't talking about whether or not you were on the plane. The question is about you making a big decision, the second hypothetical question I've asked which you'e skirted.

How much time should they give the people on the plane? What if there is five seconds to make a decision, or the plane will be out of range and will kill 80,000 people? Are you saying you'd not order the plane destroyed? I'm not talking about the Pennsylvania plane, i'm talking a hypothetical here. Can you answer it? Would you order the plane shot down?

The japanese who died at Hiroshima didn't just unwillingly die to save half a million american soldiers. They died to save what could easily have been a million and a half or more Japanese.

Another hypothetical question. You're driving a car on a dark country road. A truck barrels out of nowhere towards you. You have just a moment to choose which way to go, but there won't be enought ime to clear the truck. Do you swerve so that your spouse and child sitting on the right side of the car both die but you live, or do you swerve so that you die, but they both survive?

Life is precious. I'd shoot down that plane to save lives, I'd swerve to the right to save my family, and I'd drop the atom bomb on Japan. Each and every one of those decisions, if I had time to contemplate them, would cause me to break down and weep, but I'd do them. Sometimes there isn't a nice happy solution. That's life.

[Walt Starr]

251. My issue is I have to come down on the side of my country.

In a time of war such as World War II where we were attacked agressively and we responded with a formal declaration of war, I would have dropped the bombs even if it meant only one U.S. life would have been saved.

It comes down to how you value things, and in that situation I cannot value thousands of enemy lives above a single life of a serviceman from my country.

[wrlwnd]

225. no

Edward Teller being a physicist does not give him any insight into the political impact of a demonstration. That has nothing to do with physics, but with the state of the government of Japan, of which Truman was obviously more knowledgeable than Teller.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

Proper reason for the second bomb...

Japan didn't surrender after the first one. We gave them time to surrender after seeing one of their cities completely blown off the map, yet they wouldn't surrender until after a second city was destroyed. The Japanese didn't know that these were the only two functioning nukes -- we might have had a whole warehouse full of them.

[TankLV]

303. Because even after we dropped the first one, the japanese still refused

to surrender.

So the second one WAS indeed necessary - even after the first.

Especially since both targets were heavily involved in the military industrial complex of the Japanese Imperial War machine.

The both were entirely justified.

Even after that one, some generals were willing to fight to the death of every man woman and child.

Not to mention that THEY were furiously trying to do the same thing at the same time to US.

But don't let truth get in the way of a nice fantasy.

Peace.

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

71. I think so. And regardless, saving American lives is priority numero uno

for el presidente.

[Mnemosyne]

78. Oh, so that's why

we invaded Iraq?!!!!!!!!!!!:sarcasm:

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

91. What's why we invaded Iraq?

:shrug: You lost me.

You're suggesting that I'm saying that we invaded Iraq in order to save lives?

Back up: there's aggression and there's defense. Japan aggressed. We defended.

[Terran]

You don't get it, do you?

Neither of those cities had any extensive military value. They were bombed as demonstrations of the power of atomic bomb, and for no other reason. It was done to persuade the Japanese to surrender. Now do you suppose they would have behaved any differently if we had simply destroyed a military target, or say, maybe an uninhabited area? The effect of the bomb is the same no matter where you drop it. 140,000 people didn't have to die to persuade the Japanese government to give up.

[Ravenseye]

55. Lets keep some perspective

How could they have dropped a demonstration bomb? We were at war with them. We were supposed to radio them and say "hey watch two miles offshore from a certain point, we're going to drop a BIG bomb". If they even GOT the message, they might just choose to ignore it, and if they didn't, they'd very likely try to shoot the plane down and intercept it.

No, I don't see how there could have been any 'demonstration' that would have been as effective in getting the Japanese to surrender.

Any 20/20 hindsight now of "oh they were abotu to surrender" is moot. At the time the CW was that the Japanese would fight to the last man and we'd lose 300k soldiers just invading the home islands, and the japanese would lose well over 1.5 million. They looked at how hard they defended Okinawa (where my Uncle fought) and realized the home islands would be the same if not more difficult.

The cities were unlucky to have been chosen, and it's horrible people there died, but two bombs and 140k lives lost saved millions by ending the war sooner.

Being horrified at the remains of a city after an atomic blast is a good emotion to have. It shows you have compassion, and realize that such destruction should never be used haphazardly. World War Two killed over 50 million human beings, including the wartime atrocities. 140,000 to force it to a close, saving millions more lives, was imho a good thing to do.

War is Hell.

[ChickMagic]

77. According to my Dad

who was in the Bataan Death March and shipped off to work in the Mitsubitshi mines, the bombs saved his life. He was due to be executed in 2 weeks when the bombs fell. His take on it is that it was a terrible thing to have to do, but it saved millions of soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Flame me if you like, but my dad has first hand knowledge.

[Ravenseye]

82. Exactly

You dad is one of the millions whose lives were saved by those bombs. That's something that these other people just don't seem to get. Yes those bombs killed people, but if they hadn't your dad along with a couple million more people would have died, including probably a substantial number of them that were killed by the bombs.

[Terran]

94. To be clear

(and I apologize for my rude-ish header, that was unnecessary), I advocated that the bombs be dropped *on* the islands of Japan--but not on big cities. I think it would have been hard for the Japanese government to ignore the warning created by a single bomb destroying an entire military base, an entire naval yard, or perhaps a large site of cultural/historical significance. Dropping it "offshore", sure that could be ignored, because what would have been destroyed? Not much. I admit that maybe surrender would not have come as quickly, but I believe it still would have come, and soon.

[Ravenseye]

100. It wouldn't have worked

Well, I can't say for certain it wouldn't have, but at the time they didn't think it would.

First of all there wasn't a military base or naval yard or site of cultural/historical significance in Japan at the time that didn't have a population center around it, so there could have been no strike on anything of value without hitting civilians.

Second, if they were going to detonate it somewhere with no civilians what would remain? A valley where the trees are all gone? There could have been no real witnesses to the event or the explosion, without telling them where to look, which would endager the pilots. It still wouldn't have held the same impact as showing the destructive power on buildings.

What we think now whether surrender would have happened or not is moot. The only thing to consider is what we thought, what Truman was told, at the time. All evidence showed that the Japanese would fight to the last man. They threw themselves alongwith their children off cliffs in Saipan in order to not be captured. Civilians fought with bamboo sticks to the death on Okinawa. We were not seeing a rational people. We were seeing a people who said, and appeared, to be willing to die or even kill themselves and their children, rather than surrender. There were two options. Invade just like we did in Okinawa and lose millions of more lives, or bomb and hope that they see the light that we can just sit back and annihilate them with ease.

Luckily it worked. Whether or not a demonstration bomb would have worked really doesn't matter, and it doesn't make what Truman did immoral or wrong. Even today though all evidence points to those bombs saving far more lives than they cost.

Not just in World War Two, but since then. If we didn't have these pictures, it's far more likely that an atomic war would have started between the U.S. and the Soviets.

[Fescue4u]

178. Hiroshima was even a big enough test

THose who think that dropping a bomb in uninhabited area would be enough to make them surrender forget that dropping the bomb on HIROSHIMA was enough to make them surrendar.

No, they only surrendared after TWO cities were destroyed.

Japan made horrible bed and then they slept in it.

Thank god Truman had the courage to do the right thing.

[Dem_Doin_Business]

290. Thats no excuse

The Truman administration had knowledge that the Japanese empire was going to unconditionally surrender. This was just placating to the growing military complex.

[The Witch]

23. My standard Hiroshima post

Any time anyone brings up Hiroshima, I feel compelled to comment:

I've been to Hiroshima. I've stood at the foot of the A-bomb dome. I've perused the Peace Memorial Museum, which details the effects of the atom bomb on the population of Hiroshima.

I've also been to Holocaust museums. They make me want to cry. This made me want to puke. Both are horrific, but the impressions were different. Perhaps it was the fact that I (as a Jew/American) was the victim in one but the perpetrator in the other. Mourning vs. remorse. But that's neither here nor there.

More to the point, I've read the Japanese hibakusha/survivor statements. For the most part, they are also mournful. But although they never deny that they've been wronged, they are so much more focused on the future than the blame. That's why it's called Peace Memorial Museum, not Hiroshima or A-Bomb Memorial Museum. They are not interested in blaming anyone or discussing whether it was right or wrong to drop the bomb. They're interested in making sure it NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

Perhaps you disagree, but that was my impression when I was there.

Incidentally, Hiroshima is a wonderfully vibrant city and I thoroughly enjoyed spending time there :)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

90. I've been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, too

and I had the moving experience of walking past the Dome at dusk on an overcast day in October.

It is utterly haunting. You can see how the internal structure of the building was twisted and deformed in the inferno, and the thought that came into my head was "Guernica."

[ChiDem]

25. It's disgusting to see people here supporting...

the nuclear bombing of innocent people.

Couldn't we have detonated one offshore as a warning ?


The USA also has a evil leader that has started a war he should not have...if a foreign power nuked Chicago and LA would it be justified ?...even if it ended the evil war our leader started ?

[Mnemosyne]

26. Great point ChiDem!

"The USA also has a evil leader that has started a war he should not have...if a foreign power nuked Chicago and LA would it be justified ?...even if it ended the evil war our leader started ?"

Glad others see truth.

:toast: :hi:

[sidwill]

28. I'll try again

Unlike the current FAUX war were we are the aggressors and where we are pursuing an imperialistic agenda, WW2 was about stopping a group of nations who were themselves bent on imperialism. The Japanese gave no quarter in WW2 they bombed civilian populations in China and the south pacific, they slaughtered innocents as a way to pacify their occupied territories. Any analysis of how the Japanese conducted themselves in the pacific theater would yeild that THEY were the aggressor, that they trampled human rights at every turn and that THEY were doing it in the name of imperialism.

Any horror done to Japan was brought about via THEIR actions.

One other thing, anybody who thinks we could have ended the war "reasonably" without using overwhelming force is basically ignorant of just how the Japanese were conducting the war. They had developed a death culture that glorified death in battle, please read up on island warfare in the Pacific, Japanese garrisons held out to the basically the last man , over and over again inflicting horrible losses on us AND the civilian populations.

Lets not misuse the concept of maral equivalency in this case, the Japanese STARTED the war. Their actions are directly responsible for every single person killed in the Pacific theater.

We were the only nation able to stop thir horror and we were right to do it.

[symbolman]

52. The japanese were finished already

there was no need to kill innocent civilians, it was brutal and macho bullshit.

The Japanese had been reduced to Kamakazee missions using kids. They had no military left to speak of, it was nearly over, just an experiment to see what the fuck would happen if we dropped one on a populated area, rather than a little island in the Pacific.

There was no NEED to do it. It was basically an insane thing to do.

Don't see much difference between the Nazis lining up the Jews to incinerate them in camps and then WE incinerate people in an instant.

Not a bit of difference, and a black mark on the soul of america, JUST LIKE NOW.

I just love these military types (and I'm a Veteran) who get erections and wag them in everyone's faces the minute an atrocity is mentioned. It's sick and they should stop that.

I was actually BORN in Japan about 100 miles away from Nagasaki in 1953 - when I look at all the mutant kids that came after that I wonder about the half life of that stuff and if I was affected somehow. Nothing like adding to the background radiation until everyone has two headed kids or blind nine pound eyeballs.

[sidwill]

240. BS

The Japanese had started a war of imperialism. In China they slaughtered 100's of thousands and starved millions. They reapt (as a nation) what they sowed.

As for the Japanese being already beaten, again I say BS. Just look at Okinawa, one can make the very same argument that Japan's military had been shattered, rolled back across the Pacific etc...but at Okinawa they again fought to the very last, taking tons of our people and lots of Okinawan civilians with them. Japan would not surender short of an invasion, and that invasion would have cost far more lives than the bombings.

Again I say, pull your heads out your collective asses and understand that there is no moral equivalent between the present day Bush shenanigans and WW2.

[symbolman]

284. Oh yeah that's right

Hilter was a decorated war hero and Bush kept Texas safe from the VietCong.

The Chinese and Japanese have invaded each other for centuries, so what..

Japan had limited resources, in the end they would lose, it's that simple in ALL WARS - Hitler just plain ran out of GAS - and NO ONE has ever beat guerilla style fighters on their own turf so that's doesn't hold up as an excuse.

How many planes can you fly into or miss Carriers, Destroyers before you are OUT of planes?

Spears? C'mon. All they had to do was CONTAIN a spent Japan - we'd already cut them to shreds. The bomb was like beating a sick child, cruel and not neccessary in the least.

It was a BAD DECISION and since the Japanese had ALREADY LOST it was nothing more than a cruel experiment to see how many people per square foot could be vaporised, and getting away with it..

[Silverhair]

247. They were NOT finished militarily.

Their Navy was gone, but their Army was mostly intact. They still had thousands of aircraft. Don't underrate the kamikaze. It doesn't take a lot of training to crash a plane into a target. Most of the kamikazees in WWII were poorly trained.

The Japanese planes for the defense called for kamikazees to be launched every hour of daylight. That would have over taxed the fleets aircraft carriers. At that time they could not launch and recover aircraft at the same time. Some of the kamikazees would have scored.

Every Japanese person was being given a bamboo spear and was expected to try to use it. No I will grant that a spear against an M-1 is an extreme mismatch. But it would have meant another death. Don't think for one second that the GI's would have done anything except kill a spear carrying kid. They might puke afterwards if they were green troops, but they would have killed anybody with any kind of weapon. Since weapons could be hidden for recovery later, they would have started killing everyone. There would have been NO Japanese left alive in any area that we occupied -NONE.

After the second bomb, the Emperor himself overruled his staff and ordered the surrender.

[Walt Starr]

31. They were not innocent people. Their nation engaged us in the war

not the other way around.

All civilian activities in Japan during the war either directly or indirectly supported the Japanese war effort, thus they were legitimate targets.

[ChiDem]

36. Oh please...

"Their nation engaged us in war" ..."thus they were legitimate targets"

You just claimed civilians are targets, I have news for you Mr. McHack...The US people engaged the nation of Iraq in war..we attacked them first, our votes went to Bush, and our tax dollars went to the war.

You just claimed I AM A TARGET...

Fuck that and your twisted views

[Walt Starr]

40. Now you are comparing apples to kangaroos

There is no way in hell to compare the current conflict in Iraq to World War II.

Doins os is beyond asinine. It's like comparing the American Civil War to the Vietnam War.

:eyes:

[ChiDem]

44. I am comparing ...

The Japanese attack on the US to the American attack on Iraq

If nuking innocent people in Japan is justified, then by default nuking innocent people in the USA is justified.

Japan attacks the US and the US nukes them

The US attacks Iraq and Iraq nukes them.

get it ?

You bring up the civil war and nam ? ...LOL...who attacked the US in the civil war ? ..LOL ..now tell me who us comparing apples and ....jeeesh

[Walt Starr]

46. Like I said, comapring apples to kangaroos

There is no comparison between the two.

Honestly, a justified case could have been made to attack Iraq based solely upon the actions of Saddam Hussein. It was not a sneak attack and it did have support in the international community. It would have simply taken longer to get everybody on board rather than the lies about WMDs.

Rhetorically, it was an illegal war. Legally, I question that assumption. In fact, had the case been made solely on teh basis of the actions of Saddam Hussein rather than on the WMD lies, I could have probably gotten on board so long as the long term goals were laid out blatantly and an exit strategy was presented.

[Name removed]

50. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Walt Starr]

51. Ahhh, I have now won the debate

Resorting to ad hominems indicates that you have no arguments and thus, I win the debate by default.

[Lilith Velkor]

165. Bully for you, but it's still wrong to target civilians

However, if you are one of those folk who think the Geneva conventions don't apply to the US, I hope you see the light before it's too late. Peace.

[Walt Starr]

255. When you bomb a ball bearing plant

you are targeting civilians.

[Lilith Velkor]

261. And when you resort to nonsequitors

you lose the argument by default.

[Walt Starr]

263. What non-sequitur?

It's a fact. civilians are employed at ball bearing plants. We regularly and specifically targeted ball bearing plants. Civilians were targeted throughout World War II.

[Lilith Velkor]

270. Is that supposed to convince me that targeting civilians is a good thing?

Or are you asserting that Hiroshima was a great big ball bearing plant? :crazy:

[Walt Starr]

288. Targeting ANYBODY is never a "good thing"

Targeting the civilians in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hamburg, Tokyo, etc. etc. etc., was a NECESSARY thing.

Necessary does not require being good.

[Lilith Velkor]

291. That's much clearer, thank you. n/t

[Walt Starr]

42. WOW, a DUer actually supporting the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

They started it there. We finished it with nukes.

And supporting the Japanaese bombing Pearl Harbor in a sneak attack reeks, if you ask me.

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Walt Starr]

49. We did not nuke any innocent people

They were NOT innocent. They were legitimate military targets in a total war.

[ChiDem]

61. Walt ?...come on now.

If a country goes to war, then that makes all the citizens a target ?

Holy batshit.

[Ravenseye]

75. It's a matter of perspective

You're not complaining, though I'm sure you would, about the firebombing of dresden and Tokyo. Both killed more civilians than the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The difference is what was necessary. The firebombing of Dresden was unnecessary. The war was essentially over, the city had no troop or military presence, nor large manufacturing base. That was unnecessary and nearly everyone agrees on that now.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in a different category. They were seen, no matter what hindsight tells us, at the time as a way of ending the war sooner, and saving not only American lives but Japanese lives.

If you're against all war I can respect that, but to judge Truman, and any Americans who maybe weren't even born when he had to make his decision, without a valid perspective of the times is wrong.

[Name removed]

76. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ravenseye]

79. Would that end the war?

As I said, it's a matter of perspective.

If insurgents in Iraq were to gain control of an atomic bomb, and be able to deliver it to, say Jacksonville, and detonate it. Would that end the war? Would U.S. forces flee? No. It wouldn't accomplish anything.

Truman didn't drop the bombs on Japan to lash out at them. He didn't do it to be macho. He did it because they believed that a show of such force, and the ability to obliterate their cities instantaneously would cause the Japanese to realize that the war was over. Without doing that they feared that the Japanese would NEVER realize this, and that we would be forced to invade them, losing most likely over 2 million people, both our soldiers, and theirs, and their civilians.

Don't talk to me about saving Iraqi lives. Your 'peaceful' and 'moral' methods killed my grandfather in Baghdad when our sanctions killed over 1.5 million Iraqi's. Death doesn't just come from the sky, it also comes from the pen.

Get some perspective. Just because dropping 'a' bomb on civilians is generally really really really wrong, doesn't make it always the case. Life is about choices and sometimes the options you're giving just suck.

What if you could have dropped a bomb on Baghdad in 1991 killing 140 thousand people, but if you KNEW that it would save the 1.5 million who died in the sancions and the over 100k who have died since we invaded?

[Walt Starr]

86. That was the tenet of war espoused by Sherman

and it is extermely effective.

The only reason there was not indiscriminate targeting of civilian populations with bombs during World War II was strictly a strategic consideration and had nothing whatsoever to do with morality. We could only produce so many bombs, thus it was a finite resource. Higher value military targets such as ball bearing plants and other pieces of the military industrial complex were hit with these finite resources.

It's costly taking out a target, thus the higher the value, the more likely to hit it.

Civilians work in these factories, yet we targeted them any way.

Again, all targets are legitimate, some have higher value than others. A grade school does not have the value of a ball bearing plant.

[jonnyblitz]

64. no shit. sick. nt

[Walt Starr]

92. It was a WAR, we could not have detonated one "offshore"

as a demonstration.

We had to kill people with one. When an immediate unconditional surrender did not materialize, we had to kill more people with a second.

[smartvoter]

117. No. We had to detonate a second one as it was. nt

[Walt Starr]

29. I, for one, and damned glad we did it!

Knowing everything I know today, if I could go back in time and actually be Truman, I'd make the same exact decision.

[dr.strangelove]

33. I agree

[ChiDem]

35. So Walt...

If a foreign power nuked Chicago and LA because our evil leader started a war would it be justified ?

Actually there is no need for you to answer, you already have, unless your a raging hypocrite with a 'we can do it but they can't' attitude

You view implies that if a nuke went off in Chicago or LA today...it would be a justified attack...this is what disgusts me.

Sorry...:puke:

[Walt Starr]

37. Baloney

You're copmparing apples to kangaroos.

[ChiDem]

39. NOT.

We attacked Iraq based on lies ...all for greed

If a foreign power nuked LA and Chicago to stop our unjust war it would the very same thing.

your approval ratings just dropped past bush's...You are coming off as a typical American hypocrite..

"We can do it but you can't" ...do you chant this with the Bush zombies ?

[Walt Starr]

41. Oh bull shit

You high dudgeon moralizing is justy that.

Bull shit.

We were morally, legally, and righteously justified in bombing both Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear devices.

And had we enough weapons and the Japanese had not surrendered, we would have been justified in blowing all of their islands off the face of the planet.

[ChiDem]

53. well....

I hope others don't treat us like we treat them

You are wrong on all accounts

[Walt Starr]

58. Nope I'm right and you're wrong

and all we have is that we disagree on this.

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

66. I completely agree.

eom

[Misunderestimator]

45. He is comparing innocent civilians to innocent civilians...

:shrug:

[Walt Starr]

48. The Japanese were NOT innocent civilians

There's a big difference right there. They were legitimate targets in World War II. Completely different circumstances. Total war dictates actions and World War II was total war. In fact, World War II was the last total war in human history.

It was kill or be killed. Unconditional surrender was the only acceptable outcome.

[Misunderestimator]

56. I don't buy into War is War... The "rules" of war mean nothing to me...

killing innocent civilians is killing innocent civilians.

[Walt Starr]

57. There were no innocent civilians in Japan

None.

[Misunderestimator]

60. Well... ok then. We killed a bunch of evil babies...

and sundry other non-innocents...

[Walt Starr]

62. I do not buy the "innocent civilian" outcry over the nukes

Sorry if that doesn't make you feel all wamr and cozy, but war is not a "fuzzy feeling" endeavor. It is brutal and requaires brutality to end it.

Had we not done what we did, countless thousands more would have died horribly agonizing deaths.

It was morally, the right thing to do.

[smbolisnch]

65. Morally the right thing to do?

:wow:

[Walt Starr]

88. Absolutely, I'd rather incinerate 100,000 people

than have bullets and shells end the lives of over a million, which would have bene the result of an invasion.

[Misunderestimator]

69. I agree... war is awful... We shouldn't have any.

[Walt Starr]

87. that's the only way to keep civilians from being killed

End war and there will be no war casualties.

[Silverhair]

248. So what do you do if a war comes to you? NT

[Silverhair]

249. So what do you do if a war comes to you? NT

[Name removed]

72. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[smbolisnch]

63. What would make you say such a thing?

For ridiculous statements I have read on the internets, that one about takes the cake. :shrug:

[Walt Starr]

93. Nobody is innocent in war. Everything is a target

You only pull the trigger and use a finite resource where those targets that have value are concenred.

[smbolisnch]

96. So if we were bombed and it landed

on a children's hospital, or a nursing home, or just on a young family playing in their backyard, would you tell their families and friends that they were guilty, casualties of war?

[Walt Starr]

98. They would be casulaties of war

It happens.

That's what war is. don't like it? Work to stop all war.

Unfortunately, it is still within the nature of homo sapiens to make war on his own kind.

Perhaps one day we will evolve into an intelligent species.

Edited to add: There were over 3000 casulaties of war on September 11, 2001. FACT: They were considered a target by the enemy and they were also considered high value.

We targeted military instqallations in the Iraq War. We took out civilian targets as well. When you disrupt an infrastructure in a nation, you will kill civilians. I don't care how "smart" yur bombs are, civilians will still die. Children's hospitals will still be destroyed.

This is how wars are fought. Until all war is ended, this shit will happen. Doesn't make it any more palatable, but this is the reality of human existance.

And one last time, I would rather incinerate 140,000 civilians and end a damned war than kill over a million trying to end it.

[Selatius]

106. I think declaring all Japanese civilians enemy is different...

from being forced to choose between killing off 140,000 or whatever the final toll was from the radiation to saving 1,000,000. One does not necessarily have to label women and children enemies in order to weigh the calculus of having to choose between lives. It makes it easier to kill them when one reduces them to "enemies;" this is true, but I'd rather look at the situation for what it is than try to paint it as something else. They were civilians, largely unarmed. I don't consider them "enemies." I consider them unfortunate to be born Japanese on that day, but they were nuked, period. The war is over.

[Walt Starr]

107. The sad fact of the matter is, in a war zone there are no non-targets

Everything and everybody is a target in a war zone. From there, all you have is assigned value of a target by those doing the targeting.

Sad, but true.

[SheepyMcSheepster]

188. yes........

and their "enemy" dogs and cats too!
:sarcasm:

i agree, i find this black and white reasoning to be a bit harsh.

i can't accept that it is somehow "ok" to murder all in a geographic area simply because the area is said to belong to the enemy.

[smbolisnch]

207. LOL

Keep the pets out of this!! :spank:
I know it's not just me who thinks that reasoning is crazy :)

[Silverhair]

252. War IS black & white. It is about living or dying. Very stark contrast.

Try being in a war and using shades of gray thinking and you will be killed by the B & W thinkers. That is the way things are.

[Walt Starr]

257. Thank you, that's the point I've been trying to drive home

It's a sad fact of war, but whehn you're being shot at you have no choice but to cut down whatever falls in your sights. Most of the time that ihappens to be the enemy. Occasionally it may even be friendly forces. Sadly, all too often, it ends up being a cilvilian who ony wants to get out of the way.

[RetroLounge]

109. Whatta load of revisionist bullshit

:puke:

RL

[smbolisnch]

114. Thank you

I guess I was too dumbfounded by that "no innocents" comment. :eyes:

[Walt Starr]

130. Nope, it's a fact. Everything in a war zone is a target

all that matters from there is the value of the target to those doing the targeting.

[smbolisnch]

131. It's a fact that "there were no innocent lives in Japan?"

Give me a break.

[Walt Starr]

138. None. Zero. Zilch

Sad fact about war, but a fact nonetheless.

[smbolisnch]

140. Nope, it is NOT a fact.

Keep telling yourself that, though.
:wtf:

[Walt Starr]

145. You should read some history.

Seriously, you might understand why things happen.

[smbolisnch]

146. You aren't even making a bit of sense anymore, Walt.

You are just being curmudgeonly for the sake of doing so, now.

[Walt Starr]

153. Curmudgeony responses

are all you can expect from me over snippy nonsensical responses...

[smbolisnch]

157. Nonsensical?

Hardly the case. You just can't stand it that you are wrong.

[Walt Starr]

161. Yes, nonsensical

just as your response in this case was nonsensical.

[smbolisnch]

163. Mmmmmkay.

THAT was nonsensical. :banghead:

[happyslug]

254. Than bin Laden had every right to attack the WTC

Remember Clinton tried to KILL bin Laden, we were at war with bin laden since at least the mid-1990s. Thus if everyone is a legitimate military target in war, than all of the Civilians in WTC were NOT innocent victims but military targets.

P.S. I am not advocating this position, but it is where you are heading ot with your position. Somewhere you have to draw a line and it is hard to draw a line between the fire bombings of WWII and the WTC. In fact the WTC being a center of International commerce was more of a military target than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki (Remember you fight wars with money, and the WTC was a center of commerce and trade).

[Splatter Phoenix]

208. You have a Gandhi quote in your siggy.

There's no way you and who you're arguing with are gonna get along.

No offense, but saying there were no innocents when the targets were clearly civ-targets is psychopathic reasoning, and probably 9 out of 10 psychologists would deem it extreme paranoia.

[RetroLounge]

226. We'll disagree here.

And it's not a fact just because you say so...

RL

[Walt Starr]

242. Show me a single war zone where this has not been the case in modern warfa

It's sad, but that's how it works.

[smbolisnch]

243. It is your OPINION.

You seem to have difficulty distinguishing your opinion from fact.
:shrug:

[Walt Starr]

244. Then show me the warzone where it has not happened. n/t

[smbolisnch]

245. That doesn't make it right, or acceptable simply because

bombs aren't particular about who they hit. Is that so diffiult to understand? :shrug:

[Silverhair]

256. Ancient war too. Look at the Mongols.

If a city tried to fend off their attack, they killed EVERYONE in the city. If a city surrendered before the first attack, they killed ALL the males.

It ain't new.

[Walt Starr]

258. And there is only one way to put an end to it

End all war.

To end World War II, we had to incinerate more than 140,000 people. Sad choice, but true nonetheless.

[smbolisnch]

54. Looks that way to me, too.

:shrug:

[sleipnir]

34. Enough with this! Learn your history first, then post!

I hate having to see these pictures as much as you do. I also deplore nuclear weapons. But the reality is that we had to do what we did to Japan.

I'm sure you're probably not familiar with the Japanese motto, "Every Citizen, A Solider" but that explains what would have happened had we tried to invade their country.

Some estimates for the potential invasion and occupation of Japan circa August, 1945 put loss of life as high as 1-1.5 million Japanese with 300,000 GI deaths.

By ending the war this way, we actually saved hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives, who by the way, were under the control of the Military. Again, not sure if you know this, but in Japan, the Military has a hell of a lot more influence than they do here. The civilian leadership wanted to surrender before the atomic attacks, but couldn't because the Japanese Military Brass refused.

An invasion of Japan would have been required and it would have been a lot more deadly than what happened to two cities.

Oh, and just for kicks, the Firebombing of Tokyo killed more people than both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Now that was an atrocity, and a precursor to what the War would have become had we not dropped the two bombs.

[YOY]

108. You might also mention

the mechanations the Soviet Union at the time to commit a land invasion in Japan...just as it had done in Berlin. Stalin did not have a problem with sacrificing a few more.

Like Berlin a race (between Allies) to conquer the dying enemy first was looming.

A twisted "What if?" would be if Stalin had managed to get his land invasion on the way before the American one could happen. "What if Japan was yet another Soviet Satalite State?"

Innocent babies and children aside. Japan under Fascist Militarism was NOT the economic, scientific, peaceful country it is today. World War II was not the "War on Terror" or the quest for oil or whatever the hell their calling it.

The face of War has changed true...but it is still the same ugly monster deep inside.

[WilliamPitt]

80. Hm

There were twelve divisions of Japanese troops arrayed across the only available invasion point, plus several thousand kamikaze pilots and planes, several thousand 'flying missile' manned bombs, and several thousand single-man suicide subs. Beyond that, there were a few million old men, old women and children armed with bamboo sticks to fight off invading troops.

An offshore detonation would not have deterred the fanatics in the Imperial Japanese government. Invasion would have become the only option had they decided not to use the bomb. The massacre would have made the A-bomb casualties look quaint by comparison.

And one last thing, very crass but a reality: You are Harry Truman, you are shepherding the country through the worst war in human history, hundreds of thousands of your country's boys are clawing their way across the Pacific and staring down the barrel of a mainland Japan invasion. You are suddenly handed a super-weapon that can end this horrid war in one stroke.

You think: What on earth would I say to the families of the soldiers killed in an invasion if they find out I had this weapon but didn't use it?

Answer: There is nothing that could be said.

There is a good deal of self-righteous revisionism that goes into the arguments against using those bombs. I don't think anyone here can appreciate what it was like back then during that war, how much death and deprivation and fear was involved, how close we came to losing on more than one occasion, and what the concept of 'Total War' really means.

It's nice to say dropping the bomb was wrong. But I'd give a good portion of my paycheck to see the naysayers dropped into a time machine and sent to Truman's chair. I'd be curious to see what the decision would be.

[Ravenseye]

85. Bingo

That's what I've tried to say, but you use them fancy liberal Boston words so nice it makes it sound all better.

Anyone who says that if they were Truman they wouldn't have dropped the bomb is either ignorant or crazy. That's my non-fancy way of putting it.

[Walt Starr]

95. Thank you, Will

Given that very few DUers have ever experienced warfare on any scale even remotely approaching what World War II was, it's difficult for most to understand the magnitude of that time period.

[RetroLounge]

110. and you fought in WWII???

Wow!

RL

[WilliamPitt]

122. Did you?

I didn't. But I have about 50 books on my bookshelf about the war, every aspect, and I have read them all. Unless you can convince yourself that all those books by all those authors are revisionist history, my take has already been stated.

[RetroLounge]

223. Nope. It was just a question...

One cannot claim to have knowledge firsthand if one was not there, correct?

RL

[RetroLounge]

227. I think you need to go back and reread.

I did not refer to the use of the bomb, good or bad, as revisionist history.

Do *you* think there are no innocent civilians in war?

"There were no innocent civilians in Japan. None" Do your 50 history books agree with this or not?

:shrug:

RL

[WilliamPitt]

233. I do not agree with that

That nation and its citizens were hijacked by an Emperor with Imperial desires and a bunch of fanatics who thought they could not fail.

The civilian carnage from the bombs was obscene. The carnage from an invasion would have rendered the word 'obscene' impotent. And I do believe the government of Japan was not about to quit. You don't put twelve divisions of soldiers and several thousand suicide bombs on ready alert for shits and giggles, nor do you train your civilian populace to fight armed soldiers with sharpened bamboo sticks.

This was a religion thing. The Emperor was God, and not to be defied.

[RetroLounge]

234. Thank you.

"The carnage from an invasion would have rendered the word 'obscene' impotent" - on both sides, yes.

RL

[Karmadillo]

279. Fifty books! And you done read 'em all? Well, shucks, ain't no point in

arguin' no more. Then again, there do appear to be a number of multi-book reading historians who have reached conclusions at odds with your own. It seems to me any number of people, most of whom people here admire, would have decided not to drop nukes on civilian targets. Hard to believe such a decision would have made the world a worse place.

[Walt Starr]

123. No, but at least I've educated myself as to the magnitude

by discussing it with those who DID fight in World War II.

Sadly, the current generation is so far removed they cannot go to first hand sources any longer.

[smbolisnch]

126. But how can you justify the deaths?

Aside from whether or not dropping the bomb was right or wrong, you just write them off. Forget the fact that they were innocent civilians? :shrug: How can you do that?

[Walt Starr]

134. They were citizens of an enemy nation in a time of war

In a war, you kill the enemy.

It's easy to write them off. Hell, if the difference was toi kill one million Japanese citizens or allow a single U.S. Marine Corps private to die on August 6, 1945, I'd take the lives of the million Japanese citizens every time.

[smbolisnch]

136. So then if you think that innocents in a war zone are justified deaths,

you must think that about Iraqis as well. So then, what are you doing here? :shrug:

[Walt Starr]

137. When did Congress declare war on Iraq? n/t

[smbolisnch]

141. What the f*@k are you talking about?

You are avoiding the question.

[Walt Starr]

143. No, when did Congress declare war on Iraq?

Seriously.

Congress decalred war on Japan. When did Copngress declare war on IRaq? You act as if they did.

[smbolisnch]

147. Are we not at war? nt

[Walt Starr]

151. No, we are not.

The constitution is clear. A state of war only exists when Congress declares war. We are engaged in a conflict, but it is not a war.

[smbolisnch]

156. We're not? My mistake.

:rofl:

[Walt Starr]

159. Glad you can admit when you make a mistake

Also glad you'll stop comparing apples to kangaroos.

[smbolisnch]

162. Oh not you with your apples and kangaroos talk again.

:rofl:

[obnoxiousdrunk]

250. We are in

a struggle against extremism. That's what they call it now a days.

[smbolisnch]

253. Oh Ok...

I didn't know we were being so technical! :hi:

[evolved Anarchopunk]

216. Walt, this is a little "after-the-debate", and all of this is after the

fact, nobody here is denying that, you seem to keep going back to that as a last refuge of logic. What people are doing by expressing their horror with such a senseless loss of life is applying current-day standards on avoidable vs. unavoidable conflict (Iraq) and a somewhat naive understanding of 'total war' to a subject that is all but a fairy-tale to all but the oldest of us here, one that can not be paralleled in such a way. And they are wrong for doing so.

Or are they?

Think outside the box Walt, all war is two Metaphysical concepts (government) clashing on a physical level (bullet to the gut/brain). It's utterly ridiculous, and that realization is a positive one, as well as the fact that these tragedies have placed us in the most commanding and prosperous position any country (I dare say) has ever enjoyed! These are facts, your right, do you hear me you're right, America is in a great position, The US government has never officially declared war against Iraq, Miller Light has more taste than Bud Light. Blah blah woof woof. Jumping from fact to fact is like dancing on needles- look at the bigger picture below Walt, because that's exactly what your whiny comrades here on DU are doing, evaluating the total necessity of WAR & GOVERNMENT.

I personally believe, in this day and age that any government that lines up its people, subverts their consciousness with vile racism (where all war truly resides) and sends them off to war is an unjust government, not worthy of my support or even my consideration. They are murderers and thieves, our government is. And all people are considering here is that it has always been that way...

The entire time you guys argued I wanted so badly for someone after the heart of my old Anarchist self to just step in their and show you what closed-minded people you both are. But no one here stepped to the challenge, so now you get the watered-down version of me, pleading with you to abandon the idea of a righteous government, because truly one has never existed, despite our increased reliance on them as a species.

O, and your assertion that one Marine life is worth more than 1 million Japanese lives... shame. Why don't you leave that decision up the individual Marine, I know for a fact that he would disagree with you, the essence of the soldier is selfless sacrifice Walt, please be selfless yourself. And please respond if you have the time (nicely!), I've tried to be respectful while I disagree wholly that any government has the imperative to kill.

[Walt Starr]

221. I seriously doubt we could ever have a discussion about any of this

because you begin on a premise that I cannot and will not agree with.

[evolved Anarchopunk]

230. fair 'nuff n/t

[Silverhair]

262. Are you a total pacifist?

It sounds like you are. If you are, then you must accept that if your view had been widespread among the allies in WWII, then the logical consequence would have been that the Axis powers would have gained complete control of all the peoples of the world.

Or do you somehow believe that would not have happened?

[Splatter Phoenix]

217. Aww, no, sonneh, we're not in a war.

We just invaded a country and started killing folks! What makes you think that's not a war? Your silly congress announcing it?

Oh yeah. You can call a dog's tail a leg, to paraphrase Lincoln, but by no means can the dog walk now on five legs.

[Silverhair]

260. You justify it by comaring it to the millions of lives you save.

The third choice, as Truman saw it, would have been to allow the military dictatorship in Japan to continue and fight the same war again in another generation. The gov't of Japan had to be changed. And we did it.

[RetroLounge]

224. Fair enough.

THanks for answering my question.

"Sadly, the current generation is so far removed they cannot go to first hand sources any longer"

Too true, and sad...

RL

[tomg]

282. I am glad that you mentioned an older generation.

My father was in the army before Pearl Harbor and was discharged one month before Pearl Harbor. After the attack he re-enlisted, went to OCS, took part in the Leyte and Mindanao landings and some rather brutal Pacific campaigns. The worst, he said, was writing letters home.
Immediately after the surrender, he was sent to Japan. Shortly after getting there, he and a couple of his buddies went to visit Hiroshima. He told me that when they saw what had happened - they had no idea what to expect - they simply turned away. When I asked him how he felt, all he could say was that on the one hand they all knew casualties going in would have been horrible (this was a guy who was given long underwear in the Pacific because he was probably going in by way of the Aleutians), and on the other hand the sight of that city was just burned into him. He just didn't know, but, he thought there might have been another way. He only spoke about this with his family twice. The first time was when I was going for a CO, and the second was to my kids when the two oldest were 20. This guy is 88, and all he knows is that it was all horrible and he thinks there might have been another way to do it.

[Lilith Velkor]

197. My father did, and he thought it was wrong.

:shrug:

[ChiDem]

97. I don't agree.

Anyway, you are making assumptions.

You assume that a offshore detonation 'would not have deterred the fanatics in the Imperial Japanese government' ...I don't agree.

You also claimed the nuclear bombs were a 'super weapon that could end the war with one stroke' ...you are right about that, nobody ever thought such a thing was possible, but here it is and it works even better than we thought.

My view is that the announced offshore detonation would have sobered the most radical minds, we are perfectly comfortable talking about these weapons today..but at the time, it was hell unleashed.

[Walt Starr]

99. Good Grief, all sides knew about the potential for the atom

The Japanese had their own nuclear weapon program:

http://www.answers.com/topic/japanese-atomic-program

:eyes:

If they had developed it first, do yoiu think for an instant they would not have used it on San Francisco and L.A.?

An "announced detonation offshore" would ahve accomplished nothing more than to waste an incredibly valuable resource and would have served to reduce the entire global nuclear arsenal by half.

[ChiDem]

102. thats only your opinion.

Your opinion is also that the citizens of Japan were all targets, so that doesn't carry much weight.

"waste an incredibly valuable resource"

Are you kidding ? ..you sound like a republican putting a bombs worth above a humans worth.

I still dissagree, I think that thousands of human lives is a "incredibly valuable resource" ....as where you think a bomb is a "incredibly valuable resource"

[Walt Starr]

103. Nuclear bombs were worth thousands upon thousands of people

in August of 1945.

The value of the two nuclear bombs in our arsenal at that time cannot be dismissed. They were at LEAST ten times more valuable than all of the people they killed because that's how many lives the use of those weapons saved.

High dudgeon moralizing on the subject notwithstanding.

[wrlwnd]

129. and that's only your opinion

I still dissagree, I think that thousands of human lives is a "incredibly valuable resource"

That's backwards if you believe that those bombs saved hundreds of thousands of lives, including many thousands of Americans, which I happen to believe.

[Karmadillo]

119. Well, if you used your paycheck to finance Eisenhower's

voyage to that chair, he wouldn't have dropped it. I'm guessing he was no less patriotic than most of us and maybe even better informed (though the bravado on this thread makes the latter hard to imagine).

http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

"...in 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

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

[Walt Starr]

124. Damn, am I glad Ike wasn't the one empowered!

Truman was, and he made the RIGHT decision.

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

144. It was easy for Ike to be magnanimous in 1963

because we eventually won and Japan surrendered. He can look back and say, "Well, yes, maybe we shouldn't have done it." And maybe he really meant it, but like Clinton apologizing on behalf of the US for taking over Hawaii, it's easy to do it in hindsight.

[Silverhair]

265. Ike had been fighting the Germans and NO experience with the Japanese.

German soldiers surrendered. Japanese fought to the last man, time and again.

[Karmadillo]

276. Somewhat irrelevant. If you read the post I was responding to,

you'll see I was pointing out reasonable men could, contrary to the implication of the post, decide not to drop the bomb. In addition, if you read below, you'll see a post noting MacArthur (who, I believe, had substantial experience with the Japanese) also opposed dropping the bomb. The opinion of two fairly well-respected military men suggests the smug certainty of the drop the bomb on civilians proponents should possibly be a little less smug.

[rman]

285. Yup that's history as written by the winner;

favorable to the winner, surprisingly enough, but likely not entirely true.

[WilliamPitt]

299. Disprove it

I can show you my library. Tell me where my figures and facts, particularly regarding the contra-invasion force, are incorrect.

[JPZenger]

81. Some Type of A Bomb Drop Was Justified

We actually saved more Japanese civilians by dropping an A bomb and ending the war quickly, than if there had been an all-out invasion of Japan.

We also saved Japanese civilians by ending the war and thereby ending the conventional bombing. More people were killed in one night of non-nuclear fire bombing in Tokyo than were killed in either A bomb attacks.

However, I question whether the SECOND A bomb should have been used - particularly so soon. Also, I wish the attacks could have occurred on a less populated area with a mostly military use, as opposed to the center of cities. (Yes, I understand that there were military facilities in these cities and important rail yards used by the military).

[Ravenseye]

84. From What I've Read

*looking for the source*

From what I've read the thinking on dropping the second bomb was to say "see? we have plenty of them and we can keep dropping them all the time." If we had just dropped one, there was thinking that the Japanese might think we only had managed to make one. By dropping two, it showed that we weren't just lucky. That we were producing them, and that we could produce more.

[Finder]

83. Dropping the bombs was a message to the Soviets.

We could not let the Soviets take Japan--which they would have. Truman believed the targets were purely military although he did realize there would be collatoral damage not nearly as many as there were.

There are so many different perspectives to look from it is impossible to agree to anything except that it was a tragedy and we cannot change the past.

What we can do is make sure it is NEVER repeated.

[hunter]

104. Here's a photo of the same place from my own album...

It was taken a few years later by a young U.S. sailor stationed there.

If you ever have the opportunity to talk to anyone who was there after the bomb, they will tell you stories that will haunt you forever.

War is an utterly irrational behavior. You can't "blame" any group of humans for these irrational behaviors. You can't rationalize the horror of Hiroshima.

The war between the United States and Japan was a collision between two racist empires. When Woodrow Wilson was attempting to create his "League of Nations" the Japanese immediately recognized the proposal's racist nature (mostly because of their own ingrained racism) and attempted to insert language that would recognize the equality of the international "races." The Wilson administration would have none of that. By his own actions Wilson clearly believed in some sort of racial hierarchy, and ideally his white race (whatever the hell that was) was destined to lead the world. The Japanese had very similar views about their own destiny.

With the stage thus set, war with Japan was probably inevitable.

[Dunedain]

111. Okay

Now show a picture of the Batan death march, or Tarawa, or some first hand accounts of the the first month of fighting on the diseased ridden island of Guadalcanal. Alone, your picure matches your opinion, put into context, your words are naive at best. Go read books from people who fought in that war, not some screed that seeks to assign a moral shortcoming to our every action. Go find men who fought the Japanese, they will tell you how that picture came to be, and why, even though it is a horror they wish to never see again, it was the right decision at the time.
Also, isn't it odd, the two countries that we the united states destroyed, rose from the ashes to become economic leaders of the world? We had a small part in that, which to me is a testament of our real legacy and motive. Curious when you juxipose the post war period of western germany and japan to that of the countries under soviet influence.
George Bush may be a dirty son of a bitch, definatly not worthy of his position, but what that ass clown is doing today has absolutly nothing to do with what are the events of WWII.

[RetroLounge]

112. I have no idea if the bombs were justified

but I am leaning toward yes, as the war was ended and lives saved. My own Great-Uncle was a POW in the mines near Hiroshima and his life was saved by the war ending when it did. Horrible, yes, but I am not Truman, and I was not there, and second guessing it is just historical mental masturbation.

But the statement made here that there were absolutely no innocent civilians in Japan?

Just wow! Most heartless thing I've ever heard. Rush would be proud. :puke:

RL

[Karmadillo]

115. Anyone think Howard Zinn makes a good point?

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Bombs_August.html

<edit>

Hardly a surprise. The bombing of Hiroshima remains sacred to the American Establishment and to a very large part of the population in this country. I learned that when, in 1995, I was invited to speak at the Chautauqua Institute in New York state. I chose Hiroshima as my subject, it being the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of the bomb. There were 2,000 people in that huge amphitheater and as I explained why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unforgivable atrocities, perpetrated on a Japan ready to surrender, the audience was silent. Well, not quite. A number of people shouted angrily at me from their seats.

Understandable. To question Hiroshima is to explode a precious myth which we all grow up with in this country-that America is different from the other imperial powers of the world, that other nations may commit unspeakable acts, but not ours.

Further, to see it as a wanton act of gargantuan cruelty rather than as an unavoidable necessity ("to end the war, to save lives") would be to raise disturbing questions about the essential goodness of the "good war."

<edit>

But why? Gar Alperovitz, whose research on that question is unmatched (The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, Knopf, 1995), concluded, based on the papers of Truman, his chief adviser James Byrnes, and others, that the bomb was seen as a diplomatic weapon against the Soviet Union. Byrnes advised Truman that the bomb "could let us dictate the terms of ending the war." The British scientist P.M.S. Blackett, one of Churchill's advisers, wrote after the war that dropping the atomic bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia."

There is also evidence that domestic politics played an important role in the decision. In his recent book, Freedom From Fear: The United States, 1929-1945 (Oxford, 1999), David Kennedy quotes Secretary of State Cordell Hull advising Byrnes, before the Potsdam conference, that "terrible political repercussions would follow in the U.S." if the unconditional surrender principle would be abandoned. The President would be "crucified" if he did that, Byrnes said. Kennedy reports that "Byrnes accordingly repudiated the suggestions of Leahy, McCloy, Grew, and Stimson," all of whom were willing to relax the "unconditional surrender" demand just enough to permit the Japanese their face-saving requirement for ending the war.

more...

[redqueen]

118. Yes.

This place is getting depressing...

[Dunedain]

120. .

I like chocolate milk.
:9

[MisterP]

116. I had a timely dream two nights ago: a real doozy of an h-bomb,

multi-megatons, had been dropped plumb in the Green Zone in Baghdad: the rubble of a metropolis glowed red against the sandy hills, but it was not hell, since there was not a single damned soul in the place. There was no sound, as there was nothing to make sound--perhaps a keening wind, but dreams cannot be whole experiences.

[JRob]

121. In scanning this thread, what amazes me is that anyone can attempt

to justify the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people by claiming that they were somehow responsible for the fact that their country was at war with the US.

Read up on the Japanese government of the era and say that the people of Japan were complicit in any action taken by Japan other than doing as they were told...

That attitude is the same as justifying 9/11 or any subsequent attack on the western world that kills innocents by saying that we are somehow responsible for the actions of the Bush administration or their proxies...

I never voted for the asshole and last time I check neither did about 50% OF THE COUNTRY.

So explain to me again Walt and others how a subservient society oppressed for centuries by it's Imperialist multi class system deserved to die.

[Walt Starr]

132. On August 6, 1945 if my choice was every living Japanese citizen

or a single United States Maring Private, I would have chosen to save the life of the single U.S. Marine private over the millions of Japanese citizens.

That's how war works.

[charlie]

148. Haha, no

That's how Walt works. And maybe General Buck Turgidson. Maybe. You're really straining the boundaries of the absurd just to make a point there.

[smbolisnch]

150. EXACTLY. nt

[Walt Starr]

155. No, that's how war works

Sorry if you don't like it, but that's how it works.

On August 6, 1945, the vast majority of Japanese citizens would have chosen killing every last living American citizen over the life of a single Japanese Army private.

[charlie]

191. Nope

Ferocious Japanese nationalism doesn't excuse your responsibility for that absurd calculus. War doesn't come with a printed rulebook, it comes with a goal, winning. There are any number of ways to get there and believe it or not, they don't all include obliterating entire nations (planets? galaxies?) to spare one of our own.

[JRob]

170. OK soldier, now go give that starving Indian child this blanket...

My country, right or wrong... right?

:freak:

[Walt Starr]

212. In the case of WWII, my country was RIGHT

and Japan was WRONG

[carlvs]

186. I'm sorry

But the title of the above post seems to advocating Genocide... I hope you are not willing to go that far.

[Walt Starr]

211. Where did I advocate genocide?

I stated if the choice was the deaths of every Japanese CITIZEN or a single Marine private, I'd want the private to live.

[carlvs]

218. Let's see...

I think the term "deaths of every Japanese CITIZEN" would fall in that territory...

[Walt Starr]

219. You'd be wrong

but thanks for playing.

[carlvs]

237. Good God!

If you can't see the line you crossed when you stated:

"On August 6, 1945 if my choice was every living Japanese citizen or a single United States Maring Private, I would have chosen to save the life of the single U.S. Marine private over the millions of Japanese citizens"

then I rather not have anything to do with you...:argh:

[Walt Starr]

239. No line was crossed at all

In a war, you kill the enemy. Japan was our enemy.

[Ravenseye]

142. They didn't deserve to die

Of the over fifty million people that died in world war two only a handfull deserved to die. Hitler. The Death Camp Guards of Germany and Japan.

The Russians fighting in their T-80's or running into Stalingrad weaponless didn't deserve to die, nor did the British pilot shot down over the channel, nor did the young german girl burned alive in dresden, nor the japanese anti-aircraft soldier in Hiroshima.

We're not talking about who deserved to die. We're talking about whether the United States commited an immoral act by dropping the atom bomb. It seems to me that some people can't wrap their heads around the fact that those are actually two different questions.

[JRob]

172. I get it... always have.

[Ravenseye]

179. Really?

Always? When you were four? :hi:

[JRob]

236. "always" insinuates from the time I was conscious of such things...

B-)

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

158. The innocents had their lives jeopardized by their Japanese overlords.

When you thrust the lives of those you allegedly control into high-risk circumstances, by doing things such as bombing Pearl Harbor, you risk bringing death to those people. So the onus really belongs almost entirely on the Japanese.

I would not say that the innocents deserved to die, no.

But as the Japanese knew, in war, people die, sometimes innocents, and that was the risk they took. They lost. It's tragic.

When I've been in Europe, I've looked at all the post-war reconstruction and thought to myself, how tragic that all the millions of lives were lost, cities such as Dresden had to die, but that's the choice they made. :shrug: You can't stop people from committing suicide.

[JRob]

222. How was it their choice? If you die in a suicide attack in the coming

year or two who's responsible?

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

229. Those who ran feudal Japan chose to bomb Pearl Harbor.

That's what I'm saying. It was a suicidal choice.

If I die in a suicide attack in the coming year or two (God forbid), how should I know? Can you be more specific? You mean, like, if something like London happened here?

[JRob]

235. Exactly... Those who run the US chose to attack Iraq, choose to

continue pushing an agitating mid-east policy. What's the difference.

My assumption is that you do not support our current policy, so if you die or I die or anyone for that matter dies because of actions taken in retaliation, who is to blame?

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

238. The culpability would need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis

There is a different standard applied towards states than towards individuals or groups engaged in organized crime, such as al-Qaida.

In deciding to drop the bombs, the United States met the standard.

By committing suicide attacks and claiming Iraq as an extenuating circumstance, individuals do not meet the standard.

Organized crime groups probably can never meet any standard sanctioning such acts due to the fact that by definition, their actions threaten civilized life and encourage anarchy and vigilantism.

[rinsd]

175. See Ward Chruchill.......

"by claiming that they were somehow responsible for the fact that their country was at war with the US."

His mentality is real popular around here at least when applied to the source of all evil, the United States.

[JRob]

289. assuming that by "His mentality" you also mean my mentality

let me clarify My mentality of which you know nothing about... Rich, power hungry people and governments pursue goals and objectives that very often lead to conflict and have little to no merit for common people. In fact the suffering is generally limited to people who have little to no control over their destiny with respect to these conflicts.

WWII was a great cause worthy of the many costs, but to demonize the innocents that died in the process is crazy!

Maybe the bombs were necessary, maybe it was merely a exhibition of our strength but I will not discount the loss of life as "justified" because the government of the US was at war with Japan. It's a fucking tragedy regardless of who, what and where.

[rinsd]

294. Response....

"Rich, power hungry people and governments pursue goals and objectives that very often lead to conflict and have little to no merit for common people. In fact the suffering is generally limited to people who have little to no control over their destiny with respect to these conflicts."

That I can certainly agree with.

Churchill took it a bit farther as I am sure you're aware and there was much discussuion here on the "there are no innocents" front. Even Churchil himself expanded it to say he and his family are not innocent because of US transgressions(in his essay he actually cites the "ghosts" of Hiroshima which is strange considering his argument and what the Japanese had done during the war). I call bullshit on the whole concept. Whether Japanese or Americans, civilians are civilians and in war they are more likely die in numbers exceeding the fighting armies.

[Kraklen]

125. The supporters of the bombings...

are for some reason assuming that a land invasion of Japan would have been inevitable without the bombings.

I don't know why.

[LSK]

135. then explain to me how the war would have ended???

And how would the Japanese leaders been held accountable to war crimes? Yes JAPAN committed WAR CRIMES ON CIVILIANS.

[Kraklen]

139. Yes, the Japanese committed war crimes on civilians.

But you're arguing that incinerating hundreds of thousands of civilians was worth it to prosecute war criminals.

Doesn't make much sense, buddy.

How would it have ended? Conditional surrender. In fact, the same deal we ended up accepting anyway.

[LSK]

149. what makes you think the Japanese were going to surrender so fast?

You tell us dont use the bomb, and you tell us a mainland invasion of Japan wasnt required, so what ELSE would have made Japan surrender???

[Kraklen]

154. Because the Japanese were entirely defeated.

Duh.

[LSK]

166. they didnt think so

[Kraklen]

167. Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower thought so.

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

-Dwight Eisenhower.

[LSK]

173. Oh, you mean the Commmander in the EUROPEAN THEATRE...

Okkkkkkkkk

So really, what were we supposed to do, sit on our boats and wait for them?

[Kraklen]

174. And former president.

Are you a former president?

OK then.

[LSK]

177. how is being president 7 years later relevant??

[Kraklen]

180. Well, you know...

I think a former Supreme Allied Commander and former president would know just a bit more about WWII than the average jackass.

[LSK]

184. but the fact that he spent most of WWII focused on Europe means nothing

Id really like to know why he is an "expert" on the state of the Japanese leaders when he spent the entire war focusing on Germany????

Maybe if you quoted a Pacific Theatre general, I might believe you.

And if Ike is going from what he was told by Pacific generals, tell me that, instead of calling me some dumb schmuck who isnt president.

[Kraklen]

194. You want a pacific theater general? There's this guy: MacArthur..

Ever heard of him?

"Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, consultant to Gen. MacArthur during occupation of Japan, "The Pathology of Power", pg. 65, 70-71.

[LSK]

202. thank you, that is all i ask for

Now your argument has some credibility. In spite of all my arguing here, I would rather have it that the damn bomb was never invented.

[rinsd]

182. Gerald Ford is a former president....

...and he believed the Soviets had no influence over Eastern Europe.

While I have a huge magnitude of respect for Eisenhower, he was not involved in that theater of operations. The European and Pacific theaters were very very different.

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

206. Again, easy for Ike to say that in 1963 with the benefit of hindsight.

Nothing against Ike, just saying, any of us can do the same thing and wax magnanimous, "we shouldn't have done it, it wasn't necessary, surely they would have surrendered."

[wrlwnd]

213. Harry Truman did NOT think so

And he was the one who had to make the decision.

[edbermac]

168. The Japanese were not entirely defeated...

Did the Nazis surrender when the Allies were practically knocking on Hitler's bunker? There was practically a coup by the Japanese military in Aug 1945 to overthrow the Emperor and fight until the bitter end. If we hadn't dropped the bomb and invaded the Japanese mainland instead it would have been a bloodbath.

[JVS]

231. The fact that they waited until after the second bomb to surrender...

seems indicative of a high level of will to fight

[Kraklen]

268. Or that the U.S. had made it's point.

Which would explain why the U.S. agreed to the same conditions after the bombing that Japan was offering before the bombings, i.e. the Emperor gets to stay.

[LSK]

128. i understand why we did it, but

I wish that bomb had never been invented.

[Fescue4u]

164. Thats the picture of peace

The ending of the war. It would have been immoral not to nuke Hiroshima

That is a picture of countless lives saved in the invasion of Japan.


Today soldiers wounded in Iraq received purple hearts...Purple hearts manufactured in 1944.

The US manufactured hundreds of thousands of purple hearts in preparation for the slaughter that was to have taken place in the invasion of Japan.

Thankfully, the A-Bomb was dropped and the invasion never took place.

One result is that we now have a 200 year supply (or more) of purple hearts.

Yes, even the purple hearts that John Kerry has, was destined for 3 victims of Japan.

[jljamison]

169. Let me tell you about someone who would have been in the invasion

I have a friend who is much older than me. He is about 78. He quit high school 6 months early to enlist in the Navy in 1944. He trained as a landing craft driver.

This is a man who eventually became a star NFL receiver in the 1950s. He has 4 children and a bunch of grandchildren. He is an honorable man who lives his days doing charity events and playing golf. I won't name him because he would not seek this attention. But he has certainly left a positive mark on this world.

He and potentially hundreds of thousands of other young american men would have died in the invasion of japan. The experience at Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Guam, Guadalcanal and others demonstrated the unrelenting ferocity the japanese fought with in defending indefensible positions where they could only know that eventually they would die and lose.

When he trained as a landing craft operator, his chances were pretty slim. If drivers lived through the first landing, they had to turn around, pick up another load, and go back in. Followon landings were not nearly as organized and massive, so the landing craft were much easier targets, at least until japanese artillery were destroyed.

It is entirely too easy for us today sitting "in the cheap seats" to cast judgement on the decision which led to the avoidance of the invasion of japan which would have led to potentially millions of lives lost, both american and japanese.

Just try and put yourself in the position of the GI facing going ashore on those landing craft and convince yourself that it would be better for you and hundreds of thousands of your fellow GIs to die often horrible deaths in this invasion rather than use a new powerful weapon that *might* end the whole thing, though at a high moral cost.

I have trouble with the notion of using such weapons on cities. It is a reminder that we as civilians will ultimately pay the price for the transgressions of our government, and that we need to take seriously decisions about who we want in goverment and what we want them to do in our name. Obviously it is more transparent how to do that in an elected democracy rather than an empire, but the notion still stands.

[Historic NY]

185. H I R O H I T O could have avoided the bombs......

if he accepted the Allies unconditional surrender. I read most of the comments here reflecting back at that time. Yes, the bombs were terrific, as some say innocent were killed. A lot of the folks seem to forget the brutal Japanese policies of the war which incidentally didn't just begin with Pearl Harbor. I would remind you of the "Rape of Nan-king", the slaughter of almost 370000 innocent Chinese. Hirohito is responsible for the actions of Tojo & the Imperial Japanese War Staff, but he essentially allowed them to wage war in his name as the Emperor of Japan. They ignored the warnings & to the end resisted surrendering. It took the Emperor until Aug. 14th to finally agree to surrender. There was even a military coup to prevent his broadcast to the Japanese people.

In hindsight we can all sit here and critic the decisions to drop the bombs on the target cities. The decision was made and executed based on the real time facts & intelligence of what Japan had planned in the defense of the main land. Personally I don't Truman exactly knew or was briefed about the destructive force of the bombs, he did know that using them would shorten the war or end it.

Mainland Japan was prepared to defend itself, with it home defense forces made up of hundreds of thousands of civilians. The previous weeks and months of combat in the Pacific at Iwo Jima & Okinawa, only solidified in American commanders minds the fierce opposition American troops would face invading Japan. My father fought his way across the Pacific, from New Guinea to Okinawa. He said Okinawa was probably the worst he had seen. Japanese troops were suicidal in their attacks. They instilled such a fear of Americans that hundreds of innocent Okinawans killed themselves rather than be taken by our forces.

In ramping up for the invasion, troops from Europe were being put on boats to be taken to the Pacific. I've seen estimates of causalities expected. Our total force would have been somewhere around 1,900000 men for the invasion. It was estimated that the cost of invasion would result in 500000 American causalities & a million civilians. The invasion of Saipan in June 1944 solidified in war planners minds that the Japanese would fight to the death, even against overwhelming odds.

The final toll of American casualties on Okinawa was the highest experienced in any campaign against the Japanese. Total American battle casualties were 49,151, of which 12,520 were killed or missing and 36,631 wounded. Army losses were 4,582 killed, 93 missing, and 18,ogg wounded; Marine losses, including those of the Tactical Air Force, were 2,938 killed and missing and 13,708 wounded; Navy casualties totaled 4,907 killed and missing and 4,824 wounded. Nonbattle casualties during the campaign amounted to 15,613 for the Army and 10,598 for the Marines. The losses in ships were 36 sunk and 368 damaged, most of them as a result of air action. Losses in the air were 763 planes from 1 April to 1 July.

The cost to the Japanese was even higher. Approximately 110,000 of the enemy lost their lives in the attempt to hold Okinawa, and 7,400 more were taken prisoners. The enemy lost 7,800 airplanes, 16 ships sunk, and 4 ships damaged.

The "Potsdam Declaration" described Japan's present perilous condition, gave the terms for her surrender and stated the Allies' intentions concerning her postwar status. It ended with an ultimatum: Japan must immediately agree to unconditionally surrender, or face "prompt and utter destruction". Truman left specific orders that the bombs were not to be used until after Aug. 2, 1945 at the conclusion of the conference. The Japanese continued to hold out expecting to negotiate for a better deal.

War is a terrible thing and this was war waged on a world wide scale. I wouldn't presume to second guess Truman's decision, he made it and the war ended. The American people were war weary then and applauded his decision.

http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/japsurr.html

http://www.tribo.org/nanking/index.html

[Fescue4u]

189. If Japan had surrendered on August 5th

This could have been avoided.

Simplistic yes, but no more simplistic than any other history revisionist theory.

Not dropping the bomb would have been immoral.

[hunter]

196. What a hideous thing this thread has turned into.

It's okay to look at a picture of Hiroshima and simply be sad.

What's past is past, what's done is done. This train wreck happened; you patch up the survivors as best you can, and move on, doing whatever you can to stop such atrocities from happening again.

There can be no heavenly justifications for World War II, most especially the atomic bombing of Japan. This will be a black mark on the soul of the United States forever.

The United States is the only nation that has used nuclear weapons in anger. We should feel bad about that. There is nothing heroic about killing people.

The scales of Justice were broken on the day Hiroshima died.

[rinsd]

203. "The scales of Justice were broken on the day Hiroshima died."

Oh please...the Scales of Justice were broken by Hiroshima?

In the brutality that was WW2, the nuclear bombings were probably among the less offensive morally.

[wrlwnd]

209. wow

No "heavenly justifications for World War II"?

Who in the world ever implied that??? You do realize that WW2 was not started by the USA right?

[Walt Starr]

267. The USA didn't even get involved until years after the fact. n/t

[Walt Starr]

266. The only thing in the nuclear bombings of WWII that I feel bad about

is that the Japanese Empire put us into a position where we had to develop the weapons and use them.

[hunter]

277. Walt, I was walking around Arlington a few weeks ago...

We were visiting the grave of my wife's uncle. He was killed in action during the very last days of the war in Europe.

My dad's father "graduated" from World War II as a major. He joined the army to fight but he never saw action because the army decided his skills were better used elsewhere... he was one of the guys who arranged for Hollywood celebrities to visit the wounded in hospitals. He saw a lot of broken kids.

My mom's dad was a Conscientuous Objector during the war. (Yes, there were a few of those...) If he'd had the misfortune of living in Germany or Japan during the war, the authorities there would have killed him. He was a pacifist and a troublemaker. Here in the United States the worst consequences he suffered for his somewhat unrealistic political views were that he got beat up and harassed by the cops.

It has been my privilige to know a great many veterans. Quite a few of them fought in the Second World War, and I have heard their stories. I understand very well that the United States was fighting to win. But I refuse any claims that fighting can be noble or just. Shit happens, people die, and you make the best of it. Many veterans were extraordinarily brave, but we did not win because God and Justice were on our side. We won because the Germans and the Japanese did not have the resources to continue fighting.

If you are going to go to the ridiculous extreme of imagining what would have happened if we didn't use the atomic bomb, you might as well go back further and imagine some sort of circumstance where nobody fought a war in the first place. Who knows, maybe somebody stronger than Woodrow Wilson could have created a League of Nation that worked. Or maybe the whole damned disaster was inevitable.

But the war is long over.

One of the great lessons I take away from the Second World War is how much of it was fueled by racism. That's strikingly clear in the case of Nazi Germany and our textbooks are very keen to point that out. But racism in the United States and Japan is not so commonly reported. The Japanese were fighting for the glory of their race and their Empire while many people in the United States were fighting against "the yellow menace." The more Japanese, or Chinese, or Koreans that died, the better. (That's probably why you don't read much about Chinese and Korean victims of the Japanese Empire in U.S. textbooks.)

There were plenty of people in the United States whose racist attitudes towards Asians ran just as deeply as their racist attitudes towards blacks. Many people were very happy when Japanese-Americans were forcibly removed from California coastal communities. I still occasionally meet very elderly people who talk about "the Japs" the same way some racist people talk about "niggers." I haven't had to call anyone on it for a few years now, but that's only because I assume any very elderly person who says something like that has lost the part of their mind that censors their tongue.

Most everyone else knows better, even if they are racist pigs at heart.

I am not accusing you of being racist, Walt, but much of your rhetoric in this thread would certainly inflame those who are racists. The very negative reaction you are getting here may be a consequence of that.

[Walt Starr]

287. I can see what you're saying, and there are a lot of "might have beens"

All it would have taken is for a single gas mask to have failed on the Western Front during World War I and a psychopath would have never become Fuhrer.

I can understand some of the reactions to my rhetoric, but the fact still remains. When a nation goes to war, and I mean an all out war such as World War II, there is no second best. There is only victory or the end of your way of life.

We are very fortunate as very few DUers have ever experienced something like that. We can afford to pick and choose what we feel is the correct and incorrect battles to fight. I, for one, am very happy that even if we fail in Iraq, like we failed in Vietnam, the consequences are nowhere near as dire as what the world would have experienced had the Allies failed in World War II.

This is why any comparison of the situations where we were attacked by Japan and where we invaded Iraq are comparisons of Apples to Kangaroos.

Perhaps my rhetoric could be construed as inflammatory. The intention was not there, but I can see your point. For that, I apologize.

[charlie]

214. Anyhoo...

Just want to say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are gorgeous cities today (been to both) and the Japanese are pretty swell people. Despite the detour into the madness of world war, things turned out good all around.

[Cleita]

241. A Pandora's box was opened in the days the first A bombs

were dropped. Regardless of the rightness or wrongness from either side, a horrid genie was released from the bottle that can never be put back. I was alive during WWII and old enough to remember the last days of WWII and my generation grew up with the threat of those bombs until it was temporarily forgotten about when we entered the space age circa 1958.

The point I am making is, it didn't take people long to realize that we had achieved the dubious ability of annihlating not only our species but our whole planet. In the wrong hands (and as far as I'm concerned, we aren't the right hands as long as the wacky right wing is in power over us)the threat of this will hang over future generations forever.

I really wonder if the alternate possibilities wouldn't have been better in the long run.

[Silverhair]

271. The bomb would have been invented anyway.

Probably by the Soviets. Can you imagine the world if the USSR had gotten the bomb first, say around 1958?

[Cleita]

272. They did get it.

I can't see the difference. Don't you remember Julius and Ethel Rosenberg being tried and executed for giving the bomb secrets to the Soviet Union? I don't know if they were the scapegoats or actually guilty but somehow the Soviets got it. The arms race was accelerated because they knew we had it and used it. What if no one knew we had the bomb?

[Silverhair]

273. Basic physics of it was already known.

After the fall of the USSR it was found the the Rosenbergs were indeed guilty.

Science fiction writers were already talking about an A-bomb in the 1930's. The basic idea was already known in advance. The problem was in the engineering.

If it had never been invented, I think that WWIII would have been fought in Europe between NATO and USSSR. The fear that a war might go nuclear made both side careful.

It is a law of nature that the more heavily armed an animal is, the less likely he is to fight one of his own kind. The risk becomes too high, so lions and tigers have lots of threat displays to replace the actual fight. Realtively unarmed animals will fight readily as they don't do much harm to each other.

[Cleita]

275. You miss my point.

A lot of stuff is known theoretically in science circles. What I am saying is that it should have stayed there in theory or on the drawing board.

[Silverhair]

278. Impossible.

And maybe it is better that it has been invented. I think that it stopped WWIII from happening by making all the nuclear nations more cautious with each other. Have you considered that?

Note India and and Pakistan have been at war several times after both gained independence, until both became nuclear. In the last episode of tensions between them they resorted to diplomacy. war was too expensive to contemplate for them.

[Cleita]

281. Yes, a weird peace like our cold war with Russia,

but now that any wacko can get their hands on this technology, and they know the results thanks to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it's a matter of when and not if the first wacko decides to bomb another nation with a nuke. I keep getting the disturbing feeling it is going to be our wacko, Bushler, going after another ME target. We are no longer the sane, rational guys here with this underground PNAC government running our country and controlling our arsenal and our military. This is a very dangerous group of wackos who control everything.

However, I am going off track here. I still think if the Bomb had remained on the pages of science fiction, we would be a lot safer. Since you and I won't come to an agreement about this, I guess we will be on opposite sides of the argument.

[rman]

283. Who should decide?

Would you want to leave it up to the scientists to decide what stuff gets develloped and which not, or do you thing society should be involved? Should scientists just keep it secret? Do you think they can?

And what about if during war time the government tells scientists they must devellop some particular technology? Does the government not carry some responsibility, and by extension we the people to?

[Cleita]

286. This is such an awful, terrible weapon, I do think

it should have been debated by all agencies involved before a consensus, to develop or not develop, was reached. Even more importantly, if developed, when and how desperate should our side have been that it would be considered the last resort used. Instead, it is my understanding that it was developed by scientists who took instructions and funding from the military, who in turn were answerable to the commander-in-chief. I don't think there was ever any discussions or debates between science, the military and the government as to whether to proceed with this. It was just done under a chain of command. I could be wrong, but I have to go by the historical information that is available to the general public.

[Silverhair]

293. It was debated and consensus WAS reached.

And the nation WAS desperate. The Manhattan project was begun in 1942. At that time the Allies were LOSING the war. Japan was rampaging through the Pacific. The German forces were deep inside Russia.

The entire idea was suggested to FDR by scientists and a letter was signed by Einstein himself.

The conditions you as for WERE MET.

[Cleita]

295. Excuse me but it was one man, Harry S. Truman, who made

the final decision. He could have decided not to. Now Harry is one of my favorite Presidents but I think in this he erred. There is pretty good evidence too that the Japanese were ready to surrender, but officially we will never know. Does anyone know that Truman offered this to the Japanese, an ultimatum that we would bomb them with this super weapon if they don't surrender? I don't think such an offer was made so we still weren't at the desperate stage.

I believe that the reason General MacArthur spared the Emperor's life was because he knew that we jumped the gun and to bring Emperor to trial and execution at that time would be tantamount to assassination once all the facts were known in the future.

I know that Americans want to believe they did the right thing and will profer any number of arguments to back their beliefs so as not to feel too guilty. However, it doesn't change the fact that this was a pivotal event in history that changed the world forever.

[Silverhair]

297. Read your own post # 286 please!!!

You said: it should have been debated by all agencies involved before a consensus, to develop or not develop, was reached.

That is what I was responding you. Now you are switching the topic to consensus about it's use. Those are two different things.

[Cleita]

298. Hey buddy, I'm not switching anything.

A consensus would be if all the agencies involved had agreed on one thing and the President had to go along with it because he was out voted. What happened is they decided the bomb should be dropped and presented their opinions to the President who then made the decision to do so. In the first case, a consensus, he had to go along with the decision. In the second case, which is what happened, he made the decision to accept their opinion. He could have decided not to drop the bomb in the second case, which he wouldn't have been able to do in the first case.

However, I believe if the decision had remained with the agencies involved, they would have been a lot more hesitant about implementing this particular solution. We all know where the buck stopped and so did Harry. It was and still is our system. He had the final choice though and could have decided otherwise.

[Silverhair]

300. You did make a switch.

First you talked about consensus to develop. That I responded to.

Now you change it to consensus to drop.

Two different things.

Just as the situation in 1942 and 1945 was very different.

[Cleita]

302. Okay, read whatever you want to in this.

I don't really care because I know I'm right, and I won't be responding to you anymore because this thread is getting too long and I'm on dial-up.

:hi:

[happyslug]

305. The German High Command in 1942 would have disagreed with you.

The German High Command made no long term plans after December 1941, for with the failure to take Moscow, Germany had lost the war. The German High Command had to deal with Hitler who was unwilling to listen to any plans that indicated ultimate defeat and that he should negotiate with the Allies. Thus from December 1941 onward the German High Command saw nothing but a slow defeat of their forces till Berlin fell to the Russians (This had more to do with the lost of access to oil than any other single factor, prior to June 1941 the Main source of German Fuel was Russia, Germany had stockpiled about 6 months worth of fuel for its invasion of Russia but that was gone by December, thus Germany was doomed to defeat for the lack of oil) but do to Hitler the Germans did not act on those calculations.

Japan plans were just as bad, its great naval Commander told the Japanese High Command that he would give them three months of Victories and than Japan would have to negotiate with the Americans. Japan hoped America would take a defeat in the Pacific so to concentrate on Europe, thus concede the Western Pacific to Japan in exchange for Europe. Thus Japan had reached it s limit at the Coral Sea and Midway and afterward was slowly being defeated.

My point here is the US was WINNING THE WAR by 1942. The advance of the Germans and Japanese in 1942 was meaningless, as meaningless as the various pacification moves the US did in Vietnam in the 1960s and in Iraq today. Just because you are on the Offensive does NOT mean you are winning. Offense in an area of no importance to the ultimate purpose of the War is meaningless. The Germans Advanced to Stalingrad because they could not that it would lead to the end of the war (The Germans would have been better off doing nothing in 1942 thus saving precious gasoline for the upcoming battles of 1943-1945). As to Japan most of the Pacific it already had BEFORE December 1941. Taking most of the small Central Pacific Islands from the Germans in 1941 and taking over Indochina and other French possessions in the Western pacific in early 1941 from the French (Who were occupied by the Germans at the time). Thus Japan only needed to take the American (The Philippines, Guam, and Wake), British (Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia) and Dutch (Today's Indonesia and the main military objective of the Japanese with its extensive oil fields) territories in the Western Pacific.

[jukes]

246. i'm very much afraid

that the apologists in this thread have never smelt the flesh of an incinerated baby; never been seriously burned, torn, cut, starved, or otherwise traumatized. never suffered severe dehydration from puking and shitting themselves to near death from radiation poisoning, heavy-metal poisoning, cholera, etc. i suspect they have never seen such things, either. so VERY easy to intellectualize cause>effect, if you've no experience of that effect.

so easy to qualify the legalities of war when 1 is not ducking, dodging, nor pissing themselves in the mud. i bet the average iraqi doesn't care much whether congress declared this war or it's merely a "conflict"; i also bet there's a whole bunch of iraqis that wd nuke us if they cd, and feel justified and satisfied at the result.

we ARE engaged in a war. "limited" or "unlimited" means fuckall to the blind, the legless, the burned. to those victims of "shock & awe", i just bet the citizens of the united states are war criminals, each & every 1 of us.

also ANY suggestion that the invasion of iraq had ANYTHING to do w/ the attack in New York is naive at best; outright lying republican propaganda is MUCH more likely.



the winners ALWAYS determine that the losers committed the war crimes.

[Fescue4u]

269. I totally aggree

" that the apologists in this thread have never smelt the flesh of an incinerated baby; never been seriously burned, torn, cut, starved, or otherwise traumatized"

It is pathetic that there are those who make excuses for the country who perpetuated the above at Pearl Harbor.

Oh wait.....thats you.

[ladeuxiemevoiture]

292. Well, then, you'd be surprised at what some of us have endured.

Also, some of us had relatives killed in Allied bombings of Germany. Do we have a right to an apology for the deaths of our German relatives?

What do the revisionists have to say about that?

[Imagevision]

301. I'm sure parts of Fallujah look similar in appearance

[BelgianMadCow]

264. Over here, we suddenly get a documentary about Hiroshima...

strange, media over here have been whispering quiet on the DSM & Rovegate (only short AP-based blurbs) but now we get this documentary :wtf:

[Gloria]

274. Back in the 60's I had a penpal from Nagasaki--we wrote regularly

and exchanged gifts. I still have the wonderful kimono-clad doll she sent me.

Then her father developed cancer. I don't know what happened to her ultimately, because I never heard from her again after she told me the news.

I felt awful about it then....and to this day, I still do.

[pinto]

306. Locked.

This has run its course.