Killing civilians is never justified.

 

A civilian who works in a bomb factory is a war asset just like the machines in that bomb factory.

Same for the ones who grow food for the soldiers who are killing our soldiers.

Same for any civilian doing anything to support the war effort.

In the case of Japan that meant probably all civilians.

And besides.
Yellow River Flood
Rape Of Nanking
The Bataan Death March
The Occupation of the Philipines

 

i think 1 would have done the trick

 

Then you don't know history. They were given three days between them to surrender, they flatly REFUSED. It wasn't until after the second one that they finally said, we will, but ONLY if we can keep the emperor as our leader. The US agreed.

 

Sure better than trying to invade the mainland.

Don't start nuttin won't be nuttin!

 

HUH??????

Who the hell started the damn war????? Damn right!!!! Why should one more of our boys die????

 

War is a horrible thing. If you are not willing to destroy every living thing in your path, then do not go to war. On the flip side if it is bad enough to go to war over, then destroy everything including the very memory of your enemy.

 

always easy to second guess and monday morning quarter back expecially from a safe distance of 70 years.

 

Imagine what mankind could do for the better of mankind if we weren't always trying to think up the newest, best way to kill each other.

I'm not some anti-war hippie and it is my opinion that conflict must be part of our genetic makeup.

 

On the other hand, imagine where we would be without war. Not saying that we wouldn't have eventually gotten there, but necessity is the mother of invention, and protection from death is a pretty good driver.

Jet power came from WWII, nuclear power from WWII, coal to oil(we aren't doing it yet, but the technology exists) from WWII, and rocketry came from WWII.

Computer technology came from Korea and Vietnam for targeting.

 

my dad would have never had me or my wifes dad had her. they would most likely died in the invasion planned for 1946. the us ordered 500 thou body bags with a standby order for another 500k. and orderd 750 thou purple hearts medals with another standby order. they were put in awarehouse after the war. and used them from korea nam iraq and untill this day i read, japans casualties were estimated to be 5 to 7 million. and the us planned to use 7 more atomic bombs, both uranium and plutonium. ps and theres a lot more thats not generaly know by the public us or other that was planned by both sides.

 

my dad would have never had me or my wifes dad had her. they would most likely died in the invasion planned for 1946. the us ordered 500 thou body bags with a standby order for another 500k. and orderd 750 thou purple hearts medals with another standby order. they were put in awarehouse after the war. and used them from korea nam iraq and untill this day i read, japans casualties were estimated to be 5 to 7 million. and the us planned to use 7 more atomic bombs, both uranium and plutonium. ps and theres a lot more thats not generaly know by the public us or other that was planned by both sides.

My dad was very involved in the planning for the invasion.

You numbers are CORRECT! He spoke of this many times, we expected to lose 1 Million soldiers...

 

Don't Wish For An Alternate Reality

Because you might get it. The bombs saved one million allied deaths and up to ten million Japanese deaths. There was a war going on. It's rather pointless to speculate.

Sure the Japanese MAY have surrendered without the bombs. But they may not have also. Our people went with the best info they had at the time and they acted. HB

 

Because you might get it. The bombs saved one million allied deaths and up to ten million Japanese deaths. There was a war going on. It's rather pointless to speculate.

Sure the Japanese MAY have surrendered without the bombs. But they may not have also. Our people went with the best info they had at the time and they acted. HB

No they would never have surenderedand those bombs saved millions on both sides. We wanted to end the war and we did. I have often wondered why we wont use them its like a gun with no bullets you have to chamber won and squeeze one off. Vietnam,iran,korea they would have truly turned out differently. Definately vietnam! If was israel I would hold a conventional war against iran stop being a punching bag for my neighbors and when they team up wipe them all out

 

Ultimately the dropping of the Atomic bomb was an act of humanity, simply for the fact that by killing 200,000 of those Japanese civilians by dropping the bomb, it save around 5-7 million other Japanese soldiers and civilians, and a Million American Soldiers.

 

Get over it.

It's really, really, really old news.

 

Do you think they were justified?

Hiroshima: Dropping the Bomb - YouTube

if we had not dropped the bomb we would have invaded. in that event there would have been nothing left of japan or its people. both my grandfathers were marines who fought in the pacific theater, my great uncle was awarded the Congressional medal of honor for valor in the pacific. i can tell you after all the Japanese atrocities they witnessed in the south pacific they were gungho to kill them all, allthe japs as they called them. they hated the Japanese for the rest of their lives. before asking questions, do a little more than watch a documentary. do a little research of what the japs did to the people of the pacific islands and the Chinese. they killed a million Chinese with modern weapons while the Chinese had swords, single shot rifles,horses up against the japs fully automatic machine guns,airplanes,bombs,chemical and biological weapons. the japs were using the island people as their food source, eating the women and children. yea we should have hit Tokyo.

 

if we had not dropped the bomb we would have invaded.

There was plans from the US to invade Japan first, it was called Operation Downfall, however that was because the most upper brass did not know about that closely guarded secret of the Manhattan Project.

Different non civilian dense targets could have been used. The psychological effect alone on the command and population would have been just as effective had it been dropped on a military target that had less civilian numbers around them.

But in the game of war, human life of your enemy wether man, woman or child is nothing but statics on paper.

 

At that time, it was justified.

In more modern times, we would have a hard time justifying it. I dread to think of the event that would justify it in more modern times.

People sometimes forget how new the concept is of sparing civilians and cities. They have been fair targets throughout history. Look at any major wars.

I also don't believe anybody knew for sure what the aftermath would be. That's part of the reason we didn't continue using atom bombs in every conflict after that.

Anyway, I prefer to not judge that generation as I sit safely in my comfortable recliner speaking English instead of Japanese/German.


mike

 

our view then was that American lives were more valuable then our enemies lives. Having spent 5 years in Japan - I can say I love the Japanese people- BUT we were at war and IF we had been forced to invade japan... we would have lost close to 100,000 Americans.

When you are at war... Leaders must do everything possible to reduce the amount of deaths that WE THE PEOPLE suffer.

Japan was not going to surrender and without the BOMB.. we would have had many widows and fatherless children - And that was our concern. When you are battling a COUNTRY - everybody there must be viewed as an enemy... they had civilians building airplanes, and ships, and ammo... these civilians were actively taking part in working to kill americans and

Hiroshima was a one of the largest military zones in japan. It held the Army Marine Headquarters and the Second Army and Chugoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima.

Nagasaki was an industrialized city with a natural harbor in Western Kuushu

LETS also not forgot the pottsdam Declaration

here is a good read/
http://www.atomcentral.com/hironaga.html

 

it's like having a gun at a knife fight and refusing to use the gun to end it. why?

 

WE may end up useing a NUKE on IRAN. I hope not but lets not sacrafice anymore of our kids. If it comes to war then end it in 1 day no boots on the ground. JMO

 

Well, I think it's very sad that so many civilians did have to die. However it is extremely important to keep in mind what could have happened if that bomb wasn't dropped:

- The US would engage in conventional warfare with Japan

- Depending on the circumstances, it might not have had the manpower (or support from the population) to attack the nazi reich.

- This would mean that the second world war would result in a decisive victory for either the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, and Western Europe would be under a socialist dictatorship for a long time.

- This would mean that I would not have been free today, to write this post.

 

I have rear the book, "Hiroshima" by the German priest who was in Japan when it happened. Some of the accounts will make you sick.
HOWEVER
I go with George Patton Jr. I think the quote goes
"I want you to remember son, that no SOB ever won a war by dieing for his country, He wao it by making the other SOB die for his country."
Sorry about the SOB. but it is part of the quote. You win the war anyway you have to. Apparently the Atomic bomb actually killed fewer people then the fire raids did.

 

You can't turn civilians into glass by heating them. That's silicion, not civilians. Sir.

 

Meet me at the beach.

 

The incident (both bombings) was very sad but things probably worked out as well as they possibly could from that point. While it was logically justified, that does not make it morally justified. War in general is immoral.

What's really sad is that politicians on both sides of a conflict are the ones who make poor decisions that lead up to a war, but the average people, whether civilians or military, end up facing the consequences. Further, most of them rarely realize they've been played for fools, and instead go gung-ho into the situation, either killing their counterparts on the other side or dying themselves.

Most public schools in the US leave out the part where the situation with Japan developed over the course of decades. Pearl Harbor and the resulting Pacific War was just the culmination of trade and military stresses that had been building for a very long time. Leaders on both side were myopic and aggressive. Japanese leaders were more militaristic, but American leaders certainly didn't do anything substantial to try and defuse tensions and did a lot early on during colonialism to give Japanese fascists some material to work with. By the 20th century it was all about machismo and who started it first, rather than trying to deescalate a growing conflict.

The question isn't whether Hiroshima/Nagasaki were justified - we can't really answer that. The question should be, how can we stop it from happening again in the future? How can we avoid a collision course with nations like China that start out as puffery but end up as real conflicts?

It would be in everyone's survival interest if we could get to a situation in the world where war isn't even considered a last resort - it's just not considered an acceptable option. It's not even considered at all. Some may say this is an unrealistic ideal, but anything that increases my chances of survival, I think is worth pursuing.

 

i see the same thing happening now. i don't see anyone in a position of power who is doing anything but escalating. i think we are in the first days of ww3. i pray i am wrong. but look at Iran,Russia,china all lining up against the west. remember that ww2 was what ended the great depression. we are now in the second great depression. the governments all around the world are fudging their economic data. its worse than they are letting on. they are pulling the wool over our eyes as they plan their new world war to reshape the global power paridyme. just like last time, only this time they have the UN and agenda 21. what better way to depopulate the earth than a few dozen well placed nukes.

 

This is the question of our "era". We know from all of the island hopping that the Japanese were a "fight to the end" people. We know from post war inspection that they had trenches and other hiding places already set up, and that they still had a huge reserve of "flesh" to throw at the machine.

The question that needed to be asked is, what is the price of a life? Fewer people died from either bomb, than were killed in the Tokyo fire bombing, or in the Dresden fire inferno, so the numbers aren't significant in that regard. The total number killed vs. the total number killed if it was a traditional "invasion" are also much lower.

The final piece that we must understand is that at the time of usage, NO ONE understood the long term effects or even if there were going to be any long term effects. It was all theory, and there wasn't even any good science to go along with the theory.

It was a strict mathematical computation of total numbers killed in either way. Japan had ample chances to surrender, and three days between the first and second. Both places struck were military cities, so it was not just a "kill ratio" attack as Tokyo would have been.

 

I remember WW-2 very well.
I used to work with a men that survied the Bataan death march.
Worked with another man the was on the last ship that left the Philipines. It got torpedoed close to land, and out of the 3 thousand on board, 27 made it to land. They got captured by the japanese and was marched to the beach and while they were setting a machine gun up to shot them, a man on each end of the group hit the 2 guards and they all ran for the jungle. 7 made it. They hid out in the mountains for 4 years, living on rats, etc.
Another friend of mine was capitured by the Japanese when his B-29 got shot down. He was 6'2 and 190 lbs when he was captured, and at the end of the war he was released and was 87 lbs. He was tortured every day.
Another friend of mine was a neighbor of Paul Tippets, the pilot of the B-29 that dropped the bomb. Paul gave me an autographed copy of his book.
You need to read it. Pops

 

The reasons for dropping atomic bombs on Japan have already been pointed out in previous posts. To summarize: to bring a speedy end to the war.

Another reason was to show the Russians that the U.S. had the technology and wasn't afraid to use it. Although the U.S. and Russia were allies during WWII to defeat the Germans, we weren't on the best of terms. Russia was also developing atomic weapons. We just beat them to it. This is what lead to the cold war. Now everyone knows the outcome of nuclear war and has, so far, kept anyone from using them.

 

If you study the US invasions of the various Japanese held islands, especially Saipan and Iwo Jima ..... you get a glimpse of what the US faced invading the home islands .... the suicide plane raids were so severe that the USN couldn't continue suffering the losses ....

If you feel sorry about the Japanese civilian deaths from the nuc bombing .... it was difficult to keep the Japanese civilians from committing suicide on Saipan .... an invasion of the home islands, would have meant mass suicides and crazy banzai charges using improvised weapons .... all were planned and ready to implement .....

Think Japan would be the same today after an US invasion? The nuc bombs actually saved Japan from themselves .....

 

If you study the US invasions of the various Japanese held islands, especially Saipan and Iwo Jima ..... you get a glimpse of what the US faced invading the home islands .... the suicide plane raids were so severe that the USN couldn't continue suffering the losses ....

If you feel sorry about the Japanese civilian deaths from the nuc bombing .... it was difficult to keep the Japanese civilians from committing suicide on Saipan .... an invasion of the home islands, would have meant mass suicides and crazy banzai charges using improvised weapons .... all were planned and ready to implement .....

Think Japan would be the same today after an US invasion? The nuc bombs actually saved Japan from themselves .....

It might be noted that Japs were still on these islands FIGHTING WWII as late as the 1980's when age finally got to them and they surrendered.

The naysayers generally lack and understanding of other peoples. Espeicailly the occidentals and the ME Muslims. My father was an expert on the former, spoke fluent Jap/Chinese and spent a good part of his life living there. They do not think the way we do, they value human life differently and in the case of the ME they are truly living in the 1200's, hate progress of any kind and lack any broad based schooling.

 

Do you think they were justified?

Yes, We traded a quick end of the war for a couple of glowing cities. We saved millions of American Lives and judging by Iwo Jima and other Japanese Island Campaigns we actually saved a lot of Japanese Lives too.