Hiroshima, was it right? Was it wrong? We'll never know.

[lumberjack_jeff]

All we know is how it turned out.

Prior to the war, the US was an isolationist nation, competing for resources with established European superpowers. Japan was an aggressive empire who took advantage of chaos to launch a war in which they remorselessly killed up to 20 million civilians.

After the war, the US was a superpower with the moral authority to force the rest of the allies to implement the Marshall Plan which rebuilt both Europe and Japan. Japan became an economic power who have embraced a culture of peaceful cooperation and competition.

Would history have turned out differently without Hiroshima? Undoubtedly. Better? I have my doubts.

[Gman]

1. It was a great idea as far as I'm concerned

as my dad was on a troop ship in the Pacific at the time waiting to go in and invade Japan. But for the bombs, I might now be here typing this right now.

[lynne]

3. My dad was right behind yours -

- he had just finished training and had his orders for the invasion of Japan. Had the bombs not ended the war then and there, our entire family may have never existed.

[Gman]

24. My dad told the story of seeing the flash from Hiroshima

they hadn't a clue what it was. Kind of an "what the hell was that?" moment. Days later they turned the ship around and they were told the war was over.

[Botany]

2. As brutal as it was the bomb saved millions of lives

I met a man who was a P.O.W. in Japan as was beaten daily and knew he was going to
killed when the Americans invaded but the same guard that tortured him every day
was all "buddy buddy" to him after the bomb was dropped. Although, the Nagasaki
was unneeded.

A land invasion of Japan would have been brutal and killed far more than the
bomb did.

[pretzel4gore]

22. bush was god, too(?)

c'mon Botany, look at this:

taken from Gore Vidal’s ‘Dreaming War, Blood For Oil and the Bush-Cheney Junta …..pg 77/78:

“…But let me quote from a letter by the historian Kai Bird, which, to my amazement, the New York Times published (usually they suppress anything too critical of themselves or their Opinion makers):
‘Twice the reviewer dismisses as “silly’ Vidal’s assertion that Harry Truman’s use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was unnecessary because Japan had been trying for some months to surrender.
Such assertions are neither silly nor….a product of Vidal’s ‘cranky politics’ Rather Vidal has cleverly drawn on a rich and scholarly literature published in the last decade to remind his readers that much of what orthodox court historians have written about the Cold War was simply wrong. With regard to Hiroshima, perhaps Vidal had in mind Truman’s July 1945 handwritten diary reference to a ‘telegram from Jap emperor asking for peace’ ”


we're members of a doomed species living on a dying planet, and we had better smarten up, since it ALL belongs to future generations, and TRUTH MATTERS no matter how inconvenient that is

[The_Commonist]

4. I think Hiroshima was right.

I think Nagasaki was wrong.

[pretzel4gore]

5. you're mistaken...

the Marshal Plan rebuilt west europe, not the badly damaged eastern europe, or the USSR, which itself had to rebuild eastern europe. When Soviet (Worker) armies took the war to germany in 1943/1944 and looked to go all the way to Atlantic ocean, the allies hurriedly staged DDay landing. 10 months later, USSR took Berlin, and ended WW2 ...allied forces never got nearer then 300 miles to Berlin. Germany surrendered in May 1945, the US nuked Hiroshima/Nagasaki in Aug 1945, a month after Hirohito sent telegram asking USA to accept Japan surrender (there's a copy of telegram to Truman dated july 1945)...despite fact USSR owned Berlin, they gave 2/3rds of it to US, Britain and France. 'West Berlin' was an island surrounded by East Germany. even then, the 'Berlin Wall' wasn't built until 1961 (see JFK's 'We're all Berliners" speech) which was 16 years after the war. EAst/West Germany became independent countries in 1970, a full 25 years after the war. The rightwing nazis were DEFEATED by the USSR, not by allies, who preferred to see germans and Soviets kill each other (and were nearly screwed when USSR proved itself a military superpower; which allied soldiers more then liked and respected). The largest military forces ever assembled by humanity to this day were the Soviet Red Armies which tore the guts out of nazi German military (as Churchill has admitted) The fact was the allied leadership was rightwing (king edward 7th, duke windsor, was a card carrying nazi; he was forced to abdicate 3 years before the war started! 'We were so lucky!' one british stateman said later) and both churchill and Truman (Roosevelt died CONVENIENTLY a few months before Hiroshima-which he would not have allowed!)which freed allies of commitment made at Yalta to KEEP GERMANY/Europe UNITED etc. Iow, the 'cold war' was a bastard child fathered by OUR allied leadership, which the USSR was then FORCED TO PAY CHILD SUPPORT FOR until it was bankrupt!
As far as Hiroshima, it was possibly one of the worst war crimes in history. Only the rightwinger control of Japan has stopped Japanese from demanding answer for USA refusing to accept Japan surrender until Soviet Union was terrorised into occupying eastern europe, thus starting 'cold war'!
We should be ashamed of ourselves, and would be if the truth ever became known

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. So Roosevelt was assassinated to pave the way for Hiroshima?

Okee dokee.

[pretzel4gore]

8. 911 paved the way for wall street bailout

i mean, who knows how depraved mister pig is. Death camps are 'Nuttin honey' to mister pig. torture's cool, the pig says. Roosevelt's death sure conveniently paved the way for all the bullshit that followed, didn't it. How on earth can anyone think a mangled USSR wanted to occupy anything after the idiot war? But by forcing them to do so (by threat of nukes) the rightwing quietly took control of government in the democratic west. Not that Eisenhower etc were rightwing enough. Death camps like belsen-bergin etc require a nasty kind of rightwinger (bush, or palin, maybe)

[Hangingon]

9. Well, I guess that is one way to look at history.

I love alternate history fantasies.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

10. As are you

US material was crucial to Soviet survival early in the war. The "worker" armies you desribed were often conscripted by bayonet and at times intentionally used as cannon fodder. Its was only post Stalingrad that the USSR was able to make substantive military progress. The claim that the USSR rebuilt eastern Europe is specious. Toxicity and crumbling infrastructure were about all they did. Look at what West Germany had to pour into East Germany after reunification.

Your POV is clear, but the facts on the ground at the time say you are wrong.

[pretzel4gore]

11. did D Day happen 10 months before USSR took Berlin?

What's there to argue? DDay happened because allies feared USSR take ALL of Europe unless they put forces in. As it was, it was rushed. And the Germans could easily have repulsed allies, had they wanted. But by June44 it was clear hitler was doomed. You say Soviet armies were conscripted by bayonet, but by whom? By Russians? I recall seeing pictures long ago of Russian teen girls, dozens of them, hanged by germans to punish local civilians for fighting...the Soviet Union destroyed Nazi German military (the USSR never even fought against Japan, having no argument with Japan) and it cost them many millions of lives. You forget the USSR was formed only 25 or so years before WW2, in revolutionary chaos. And you forget that MISTER PIG LIES incessantly, to us, about OUR HISTORY, regardless of results! Why believe ANYTHING the pig says about the USSR? Do you deny the USSR was born in revolution? Do you deny that the bolshevik revolutionaries used the Paris Commune disaster as template for acting in 1917/18 (when the civil war was raging in Russia)? The Paris Commune (1870) came about after France lost the Franco Prussian war, and Paris was under seige. Only 250 rightwingers were killed by Commune; rightists who in retaliation then murdered an estimated 40 thousand Parisiens when the Commune was defeated (due to chaos and confusian and so on) ...the Paris Commune, which few have even heard of, was the most influencial event since the French Revolution (when only 2500 aristocrats were gullotined during the 'Reign of terror') and if you detect cruelty, then consider where the rules were created!
And c'mon. Stalin's agreement with Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta guaranteed that Germany remain a single economic/political entity, and repay the USSR $128 billion (1945 dollars) damages. Due to 'cold war' USSR got only $20 billion, and that was with expense of occupying devasted East Europe included. Do you guys think Joe Stalin was an idiot? He was many things, but i've never heard anyone suggest Stalin was a fool- under him, the USSR defeated Germany, built itself into global superpower, developed nukes and put first man into space (the USSR abandoned its man-on-moon program when it was clear US get there first)...Stalin was a hero, and only the disaster that's soon going to befall humanity will put into context the incredible advances he made for all of us.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

13. Stalin was never a hero. Even the communists tossed his fascist ass on the ash heap of history.

[pretzel4gore]

27. Stalin was so much the revolutionary, he died broke

he cared so little about anything else but the REVOLUTION it's almost impossible to believe it! Stalin neglected his family so much his son was captured by nazis (who tried to use the poor drunken kid to blackmail Stalin- who literally laughed at that) and his daughter Svetlana went to USA where she devoted her life to smearing Stalin. The lies that are told about Uncle Joe are a seamless cover, so much one might HOPE a ProgressiveProf might actually concede that the pig lies about everything else- maybe he's lying about Stalin? You (nor I) don't have to belive anything unless we wanna, but ....i know Shirer's 'Rise and Fall of 3rd Reich' was criticised by many historians for skipping over the ordinary fascism aspect of nazism and blaming the German people for their 'racial predisposition' to nazism! Such misreadings allow fascism to prosper in places where it should be run outta town like in the USA- but then that forgets that the fascists were and are the most powerful force in our politics! Such mistake maybe leads to a junyer bush, and eventually to a president palin (with rush limbah-humbug her VP)


and old homer simpson waiting on deck

[lumberjack_jeff]

30. He cared only for his own power

"Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million<4> were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition.<46>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union#Ethnic_Operations

If you think that Stalin is unfairly maligned, you are seriously delusional.

[Hawkowl]

26. D-Day allowed the USSR

D-Day allowed the USSR to make substantial military progress on the Eastern front. Stalin was screaming for the allies to invade for years to take the pressure off the Soviets. If the allies hadn't launched D-day it is likely the Germans could have held the Soviets off indefinitely (See WWI).

[pretzel4gore]

35. consider the timeline

D Day happened on June 6th 1944. Soviet army took Berlin in April 1945- ten months after DDay. And Look at Berlin. The Red Army met the allies 300 miles past Berlin- the city was ALL THEIRS. Yet Stalin gave US, Britain and France almost 2/3rd of the city? Why? If he was a greedy, one track minded idiot interested only in power, why give up West Berlin? And if USSR so terrible, why didn't Berlin Wall get built until 1961- 16 years after war was over? It defies common sense that the USSR, which lost an estimated 20 million people in hitler's insane war, and suffered in 1945 dollars an agreed upon $128 billion damages- which Germany would somehow be made to pay; and the only way that possible if Germany was rebuilt and prosperous (re: the Marshal plan)..A UNITED Germany, that is. Also consider this:
World War Two, only 21 yeas after hideous bloodletting of 1st world war, people saw advances in EVERYTHING, and especially in organization administration and planning for vast GI operations. It showed the regular people literally anything was possible; if there was a will, there was a way! And that must have terrified the ruling classes. Controlling the postwar population became THE vital thing, and it's STILL GOING ON! Maybe it is that control, that managing of society, that determines what the record tells us about what went on? Maybe Stalin was in fact, a genius of sorts, who took an impoverished brutalised nation, Russia (remember, Stalin was from Georgia, a Soviet satelite state) formed the Soviet Union based upon idea that the workingclass/peasants would select its leadership. Under Stalin, the USSR defeated nazi Germany. it built itself into an industrial powerhouse...it developed nuclear weapons. Within a decade of Stalin's death, the USSR launched Sputnik. All this says there was more to Stalin then just bullyboy meanness we're constantly told about.

[Botany]

15. w/ out a doubt that is really one of the craziest things I have ever read

Japan tried to surrender in July 1945

FDR was killed so we could drop the bomb

DDay was hurried up

We forced the USSR to take over eastern europe

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

16. I cannot stop laughing

"When Soviet (Worker) armies.."

Yeah, all the other armies in WWII were made up primarily of aristocrats.

It was, indeed, the Russian empire that defeated Germany. The US and British role was much more minor than we are taught to believe. WWII in Europe was Germany vs. the Russian Empire with the rest kind of a side-show.

But to invoke the "worker" army status of USSR forces as if they were some cool self-motivated class-warriors is hilarious.

The forces assembled by Russia were primarily wretched conscripts from lands Russia had conquered. Most of the forces spoke no Russian.

Never has an army been treated so badly by its owner. Stalin had little interest in the non-Russian bulk of forces returning alive to make trouble (aka seek freedom) in their native lands and threw the poor bastards into daily suicide scenarios as the war wound down.

And of those heroes of the great patriotic war that survived, a lot of them ended up in forced labor camps. (Not nearly as fun as the GI bill.)


But yeh... power to the people, or something...

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. Enemy at the Gates was a well-told story of the eastern war. n/t

[pretzel4gore]

23. the word 'Soviet' means 'workers'

the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was the union of 'workers' socialist republics, that all. You guys forget- class determined everything in olden days (some say even today)....it cost lotsa money to give a kid several years extra schooling in university, and not long ago, university was only for the privileged few, due to cost.

I can't believe i'm on a leftwing website...

[Gman]

25. LOL! This place is leftwing... at times very out there left wing

but you out flank anybody I've ever seen here! No offense at all intended. I find your point of view very intriguing.

I agree that the USSR played an immensely bigger role in defeating Germany than what we were/are told in the US. And when you consider post-war assassinations in the context of history, JFK, RFK, MLK, even the record number of threats on Obama, it's not at all implausible that Roosevelt was assassinated by the right wing. I don't think there is any evidence to prove that. But they had their motivations and had even tried to overthrow the US government under Roosevelt in the 30's.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

31. You have no clue or concept of the topic

The worst class predation in any army involved in WWII was in the red army.

It was in the running as the least egalitarian fighting force ever assembled.

Bad treatment was largely based on ethnicity and class.

The officers routinely considered the draftees literal animals.

Most of the troops were barely lumpen-prole.

(And they were not college men.)

If you want congratulations for praising Joe Stalin you will need to go further than "a leftwing website".

Jesus... even the Daily Worker comments section will probably bounce your ass for that kind of gibberish.

I honestly don't know where the cool Stalinist websites are. Good luck in your search.

[MilesColtrane]

17. FDR would not have allowed the bombing of Hiroshima?

Pure, baseless speculation on your part.

After all, he was the one who ordered the creation of Manhattan Project, and who thought it was important enough to sink 2 billion dollars into it.

On the contrary, I believe that he would have been just as quick to pull the trigger.

Roosevelt lived and breathed the war every day until his death in office.

He was the one getting the casualty figures and the detailed reports of the atrocities being committed by the Japanese Army.

There was probably no one who wanted the war to end quickly and decisively more than Franklin Roosevelt.

[MajorChode]

20. You got several things wrong and/or omitted pertinent facts

Without western material support, the Russians would have collapsed during the German invasion of Russia. There was nothing hurried about the D-day landing. Those plans were in the works from the moment the US entered the war. Even with US material support, Russia would never had been able to enter Berlin had it not been for the western front. So to suggest that the nazis were defeated solely by the efforts of Russia is very far afield from reality.

The Japanese never sent a surrender telegram to Truman. The telegram you are referring was sent via diplomatic channels to Stalin. Furthermore the telegram in question never mentioned specific terms of surrender, just that Japan was interested in peace. The telegram also goes on to say that Japan would "fight on with all its strength" if the west insisted on unconditional surrender. So the only thing you can really derive from that message was that Japan would sue for peace only with favorable terms for themselves. No US president was going to negotiate based on those terms. Regardless that path of negotiation flowed through Russia and Stalin flatly refused Japan. So somehow the assumption here is that we could have forced Stalin to accept peace terms that weren't in our interest to begin with?

The "Soviet Union was terrorised into occupying eastern europe(sic)"??? I don't know where to even start here.

[pretzel4gore]

33. we were the good guys? period?

taken from Gore Vidal’s ‘Dreaming War, Blood For Oil and the Bush-Cheney Junta' …..pg 77/78:

“…But let me quote from a letter by the historian Kai Bird, which, to my amazement, the New York Times published (usually they suppress anything too critical of themselves or their Opinion makers):
‘Twice the reviewer dismisses as “silly’ Vidal’s assertion that Harry Truman’s use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was unnecessary because Japan had been trying for some months to surrender.
Such assertions are neither silly nor….a product of Vidal’s ‘cranky politics’ Rather Vidal has cleverly drawn on a rich and scholarly literature published in the last decade to remind his readers that much of what orthodox court historians have written about the Cold War was simply wrong. With regard to Hiroshima, perhaps Vidal had in mind Truman’s July 1945 handwritten diary reference to a ‘telegram from Jap emperor asking for peace’”
---------------
there's something called 'american exceptionalism' which says WE are good, and though WE make mistakes, it is always due to error, and never due to our viciousness, or greed, or any of the seven deadly sins. Such thinking is common in empires- there are Brits who still think 'wogs' start at the English Channel (i've met a few) Chinese racial arrogance is famous the world over, and why not-their culture was ancient when the English were still wearing blue paint. One of bush's neocons wrote an essay where he said 'the future will sing songs about us' etc- the premise being that, right or wrong, impoverishing to powerlessness anyone who didn't accept the capitalist/racial superiority ideal represented by foxnews CNN etc, was in fact a damn good thing! Period. As you know, the victims of the bush neocons, of the the capitalist/racist superiority crowd, has since come to include the american people themselves (see $700 billion bailout!) and Obama is president in part due to anger at all the rightwing bs. The same bastards who said 'we make the history' were convinced they could, and would, dress it up to make sure the kiddies were taught that a) them dirty iraqis and b) afghanis etc deserved to die, because they were evil! How naive rightwingers are. The truth, regardless, will win out. No matter how gross the crimes they commit (i recall reading about nazi idea that exterminating jews and enslaving rest of humanity would be acceptable once it was done, but the true story would just have to be buried, since it was so ugly) and no matter how long the rightwing criminals embed lies in the record, some day it will become known: WE WERE THE BAD GUYS all along! Or at least we were just as bad as everybody else! And since we won, that no excuse to lie about it
btw, i get some of these ideas from a book called 'Myth of the Good War' which reexamines the background of WW2, and some of the ways the reactionary right got away with, in effect, mass murder. also the fact only 2500 people were killed in the 'reign of terror' during 1796 French Revolution (which itself was inspired by American Revolution of 1776)

[MajorChode]

36. Do you actually have a point to make here?

All you've done is cut and paste the opinions of someone you assumably agree with.

[pretzel4gore]

39. MajorChode!!

I put lotsa work into that post. And I KNOW i cannot win any argument about Stalin. Mister pig needs Stalin to be a monster, like Hitler. He needs that like a junkie needs smack. Please consider that Iraq had no wmds, and though tens/millions opposed war against Iraq, it still took place, to lip smacking satisfaction of mr pig and his loudmouths foxnews/cnn! btw I love you all, and alway will :)

[MajorChode]

40. I'll take that as a no

Cheers!

[proteus_lives]

21. You need more foil?

I'll run out to the supermarket it you're running low.

:tinfoilhat:

[lunatica]

6. It is history but it is also good that we revisit this issue every year

Our history is what it is from the invasion of this country to the demise of our economy today. As long as we have the courage to question our past actions there is hope for our future. I know that not enough Americans do this, but here at DU we do. That's one of the reasons I hang around here.

[S_E_Fudd]

12. Understandable...

Presented with a way to nearly instantly end a war that had been dragging on so long and had cost millions of lives, I don't think anyone in the position Truman was in would have made a decision not to use them...

However, I do believe if Truman really had a sense of how much long lasting damage would be done he might have rethought Nagasaki...

In the cruel artitmetic that war forces us to use, it did save lives in the end...

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. It was a mistake.

I agree with Winston Churchill, it was a mistake. And Douglas MacArthur. And Chester Nimitz. And the government commission set up to ask exactly this question, the one that interviewed all the top Japanese officers after the war.

The U.S could have gotten the exact same results without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and without a land invasion.

That said, the degree of the mistake is arguable, and I think many make the mistake of monday morning quarterbacking when assigning the degree of blame. From the prospective of Truman and the generals who decided to use the bomb, the A-bomb was only just a really big bomb. Everything we know about nuclear weaponry today, they never knew about nor considered. They didn't know about nuclear holocaust, or nuclear winter, or nuclear proliferation, or mutual assured destruction, or fallout, or radiation poisoning, or radioactive iodine contamination of milk, or childhood leukemia. Or any of that shit. From their perspective, it was just a really big bomb, which could be measured in terms of tons of TNT, like any other bomb. The P-51D was a big improvement over the P-51A, there was never any question of using it in a shooting war. The new firing pins on the U.S. torpedoes were a vast improvement over the old Mark VI detonator. From the perspective of the top brass, the A-bomb was just another new weapon in a war that saw a lot of new weapons, an "improvement" over blockbusters.

[lumberjack_jeff]

19. Positive modern relations between the US and Japan...

... have been built on a framework of (pick one) mutual shame and guilt or belief that ample penance/retribution has occurred.

World War 1 didn't end with the same kind of finality. Neither side felt that the other had adequately paid for their part... unresolved animosity and ambition which 30 years later led to WWII.

Both arguments are flawed; no one knows it was a mistake (or the right thing to do) without an accurate appraisal of the alternate. Personally, had WWII ended like WWI, I think it's likely that we'd have already experienced WWIII, in which the combatants would all have been much better armed.

[suston96]

28. "All we know is how it turned out"? Not so..........

We knew how it would turn out.

After watching "World War II - The Final Days" and specifically the invasion of and battles for Okinawa, there is no doubt that they were necessary to avoid prolonging a war that would have involved millions of deaths and casualties on all sides.

Japanese military and civilians fought to the death on Okinawa - considered part of the Japanese homeland - inflicting heavy casualties on the US and allies. Check out link below.

The US begged the Japanese to surrender after the first bomb. Answer was still no. A very sad but certainly not a regrettable decision by us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa

[lumberjack_jeff]

29. I'm thinking of the longer-term society, not merely bodycount. n/t

[suston96]

32. There would have been no Japanese society.....

All societies would have bled for years based on those "bodycounts". Stopping that horrible war was exactly what the battered and bleeding world "societies" needed.

I was two birthdays from being drafted into that horror. With no a-bombs I could and would have been.

[LWolf]

34. We know, and it's not that complicated.

Weapons of mass destruction are wrong.

[pretzel4gore]

37. I want to post this so all can see it...Truman admitted nuking was for revenge

taken from Gore Vidal’s ‘Dreaming War, Blood For Oil and the Bush-Cheney Junta' …..pg 77/78:

“…But let me quote from a letter by the historian Kai Bird, which, to my amazement, the New York Times published (usually they suppress anything too critical of themselves or their Opinion makers):
‘Twice the reviewer dismisses as “silly’ Vidal’s assertion that Harry Truman’s use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was unnecessary because Japan had been trying for some months to surrender.
Such assertions are neither silly nor….a product of Vidal’s ‘cranky politics’ Rather Vidal has cleverly drawn on a rich and scholarly literature published in the last decade to remind his readers that much of what orthodox court historians have written about the Cold War was simply wrong. With regard to Hiroshima, perhaps Vidal had in mind Truman’s July 1945 handwritten diary reference to a ‘telegram from Jap emperor asking for peace’”

------------------------------------------
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity” - WB Yeats, ‘the Second Coming’
--------------
dosee doe the busheviks are singing to the twangy screech of the one note fiddle...
(btw someone should alert the public to its danger- we have an authoritah that has a} threatened to use nukes on a 3rd world nation for considering developing its own nuke powers and b) sat back while a major city was destroyed, even AFTER a rock band made a popular song about it c) throw bush's pal Kenlayanegg off the speeding train and ...and…ten thousand other outrages which no democratic party rep would even dare to consider!)
….either our societah is so goddam corrupt it deserves all this, or some unimaginable tragedy involving numberless innocents is unfolding in front of our eyes, a tragedy that, karma wise, must play out all the way....it's as if the old rightwing guy down the street who blames everything bad on liberalism and toleration and generous spirits has to be personally shown the error of his thinking; and only when that flatulent half-wit gets it, and only then, will the nuclear power USA escape from its paralyzed and helpless state!

[David Zephyr]

38. Wrong.

Howard Zinn explains it quite well.

[Rex]

41. Really, all this talk about a super death machine...it was just bigger

and nastier than they billions of bullets and millions of bombs we dropped. Is one kind of murdering device really worse than any other? Now, should they have dropped it over the water FIRST (as a show of force) that is the real question imo. Some say the Japaneze would never have surrendered...but they did.