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The dropping of two nuclear bombs on Japan was absolutely justified. Japan was offered the opportunity to surrender after the first device was delivered by the United States by their special, guaranteed next day delivery air mail service but the intransigent Japanese war lords were determined to carry on the bitter end. The battle of Okinawa was an indicator of the carnage which would occur if the U.S. was forced to invade Mainland Japan. The American led allied forces( overwhelmingly American), lost 14000 dead and 82000 injured during their invasion of Okinawa. The Japanese lost 77000 dead, excluding the civilian dead estimated at 150,000. Japan started the conflict with their sneak attack on Pearl Harbour and were kicked all the way back to Okinawa, the last island before Japan. Every military expert and historian agree that the dropping of the bombs saved a significant number of lives, not only on the American side but also those of Japanese civilians and military personnel. Apart from all that with Japans infamous sneak attack and their barbaric treatment of allied P.O.Ws that was akin to today's treatment of captives by the so called I.S. filth who decapitate their victims just as the Japanese did. But how the sanctimonious arm chair generals love to vomit their juvenile nonsense all over my computer screen.
The war was ending anyway. These bombs killed several hundred thousand innocent civilians just to prove to the Russians that the US was dominant and that they shouldn't mess with them.
Time for a history lesson about the end of World War Two.
There were one of two ways Japan was going down. Yes, Germany had surrendered but Japan was still existent and quite powerful.
1. We were going to nuke them and cause them to surrender in doing so. (Which we did).
2. We were going to invade Japan itself which would have caused THOUSANDS (No exaggeration) more than the nukes (For everyone, The Soviets, The Americans, The British, The Canadians, and The Japanese).
The Cold War was caused due to FDR's lack of ability to see into the future (which Winston Churchill saw happening). Winston, however saw that the Soviets or to be more precise Communism itself, was going to be a growing threat immediately after the war and he knew we should push back the Soviets as far as possible. But due to the lack of ability to take Berlin, the Soviets took Berlin by storm. The reason FDR did not want to attack Berlin was because FDR did not want to cause any more lives to be taken by the war with Germany. So Stalin, being Stalin, he took Berlin.
Also to blame nukes for the cause of The Cold War is pointless. The Cold War would have occurred with or without nuclear weapons.
After America and the Russians defeated Berlin, only Japan was left. But they too were on their last legs by the Summer of '44. We had already been fire-bombing Tokyo with carrier based planes carrying incendiary bombs, before we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I bet you didn't know that we had already killed more civilians with those BEFORE dropping the nukes than we did with Fat Man and Little Boy.
SO by the first week of August in 1945 Japan had already agreed to all of our surrender terms. Except for one: they simply wished to keep their beloved Emperor in place, as he holds a sort of Divine status according to their Shinto Religion.
Thus, we could have, in all likelihood, hammered out an agreement in a few days. The alleged amphibious invasion of Japan would have therefore been unnecessary.
But see? We had already spent millions of dollars and months and months developing the nukes with the Manhattan project. We simply HAD to see if they worked or not.
And here's the REAL reason we killed over 300,000 innocent civilians by nuking those two cities, Russia was on their way over to Japan in order to help us out and defeat them. Stalin's plan was to rush in at the very end of the war with Japan and then claim it to add to his sphere of Soviet Influence.
He felt that Russia deserved this, for two reasons: ONE--he was still smarting after his country defeat by Japan during the Japan-Russo war some 35 years earlier.
And TWO: Russia took an incredible amount of casualties fighting Germany. Some 20 million!! This is about 40 times MORE than the USA did, who lost around 400,000 TOTAL in WWII. (recall that the War had been going on since the Fall of 1939 and we did not get to Europe for a couple more years).
SO, with the incredible cost of lives to his country,Stalin felt entitled to take Japan as part of his spoils.
We knew this. We did not want Japan to go to the Russians.
So they nukes were simply a sort of "hands off, Russkis!" message to Stalin. To show him what we had and that WE were to take Japan, not him.
Thus, Fat Man and Little Boy were merely the first two shots fired in the Cold War.
All that hoopla about the cost of a land invasion was simply government propaganda, as an attempt to justify it.
Just like when we fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident 20 years later so we could get into Vietnam.
Don't drink the Kool-Aid. We did NOT need to nuke Japan. We only did it to scare off Stalin.
That article you referenced is garbage. I don't see any evidence from Japans side of the story. They were not going to surrender. In fact, the Japanese refused to surrender after the first bomb, believing they could withstand the atomic bomb. I will agree that the Soviet Unions imminent foray played a big role. How could you say we didn't need to nuke Japan when the Soviet Union was ready to step in. Makes no sense at all. That is one of the reasons we had to nuke them, to end the war and keep Stalin out.
Here is an article from a Japanese professor who cites sources from within Japans inner circle at the time. This article provides immense material into Japans thinking at the time.
You misunderstood me, I guess. My point was exactly that: that we nuked Japan primarily because Stalin and the Soviets were on the way, and we wanted to scare 'em off. To show them what we had.
Japan never thought they could survive another atomic blast. We really didn't give them much time, you will recall, after dropping Fat Man, before we dropped Little Boy on Nagasaki. Only three days later. A phone call to Tojo telling him more bombs were on the way after Hiroshima would have done the trick: forced surrender.
But I still maintain that even the first bomb was unnecessary. Another couple weeks of dropping traditional non-nuke incendiaries on them would have done it. Maybe not even that. As I said before, Japan was on her knees and ready to surrender anyway. All they wanted was to be allowed to keep Tojo in place.
So,yeah...I am still sticking to my OP claim that Fat Man and Little Boy were basically the first two shots fired in the Cold War. I have not read your linked article yet, but will do so later tonight. Thanks.
You just have been taught incorrectly. America did not help the USSR take Berlin. USSR took Berlin by themselves, due to the fact FDR did not want to lose anymore lives.
How I would know this is due to the fact my great grandfather fought in Germany during WWII and was right next to Berlin. However the call to invade Berlin never happened. The USSR took this to their advantage and "liberated" Berlin. Churchill wanted to see the USSR be pushed back as far as possible because he knew that the USSR (however great their alliance was during WWII) was going to be a large threat.
America never defeated or even helped the USSR take Berlin.
Yes, we had been bombing them for quite some time but the Japanese (who somehow were even more fearsome than the Germans) do and did not surrender. Hell, when we flew over their area they were training children to fight. Listen to the stories of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki! They will spoon feed you with truth.
The Japanese never fully surrendered (even after the nukes) until 1973.
Ah, I see your a conspiracy theorist. Look up the real history, my grand uncle was training in the USA barracks to invade Japan. I forget the name of the operation but they were planning it aswell and were spending millions on it as well. But when the Manhattan Project was completed they thankfully nuked Japan and ended the war with a lot less lives being lost. However there were still some Japanese troops that continued to fight (back to referencing 1973).
Reading the rest of your post. I'm going to ignore you and your conspiracies. Talk with a WWII vet and they will tell you what really happened.
In never said the USA sacked Berlin, and I am full aware that it was Russia. But we WERE in Germany and surrounding areas, and liberated many of the concentration camps.
I respect the fact your gf fought in WWII, but it sounds like he was just an average soldier, who, and as a veteran myself I know this, is not privy to the machinations and the strategies that are formulated above his pay grade, like with presidential and world politics. He only knew what they told him.
And I also never claimed the Japs "fully surrendered" before we dropped the bombs. I said they had conceded to all of our peace treaty proposals except for one. I still stand by this. Look it up.
I am NOT a conspiracy theories on all things. Most of them I think are bunk. Like the 9/11 Insiders. But I DO believe in the explanation I gave in my OP as to why we dropped the bombs. I am by far not the only one. Many revisionist historians know this. you would do well to read some of them. Guys like Howard Zinn. (Did you read the link I gave you in my Original post? You should.) It is naive to believe everything they teach you in school, or that is in those high school text books.
Remember the old adage, "It's the winners who write the history books."
You said After America and the Russians defeated Berlin but who cares. Yes we were in Germany and the surrounding areas.
While it was above my grand father's pay grade, a good friend of his was of the proper pay grade to obtain such information legally. The man/woman often told my grand father what the plans were.
(The reason I don't give names is because 1. I don't know who told my grand father what was happening 2. I wouldn't want to get the man/woman in trouble for doing so.)
I'm going to repeat what I said earlier, 1. Remember how the Japanese claimed to be our friends? Then bombed us in Pearl Harbor afterward? 2. The survivors of the nuclear bombardment clear memory of being trained/seeing others be trained to fight the Americans, British, Canadians, and the USSR. That does not sound like they were planning to surrender. 3. I never said you believed all conspiracy theories. But the link and the message you gave me were conspiracy theories.
So if you have a situation where you could either let things continue as they are, ensuring a very large number of people will die, or intervene and kill a smaller group of people, you don't think that the decrease in loss of life can be considered justification?
Smaller amount of people?!?!?! In both bombings combined, about 200,000 people were killed! The war wouldn't have carried on much longer since Japan was failing!
The war wouldn't have carried on much longer since Japan was failing!
The nature of the pacific front was far more horrifying than the European front, militarily speaking (as in excluding the Holocaust). Due to the Japanese Army's Bushido code, American and, to a greater extent Russian, troops fell in large numbers to take each and every island.
The total number of military deaths from the pacific theater came out to approximately 22,000,000. The total death tole including civilians came out to be 36,000,000. On top of that you also have the Soviet-Japanese War which ran concurrently with our Pacific Theater, in which nearly 100,000 were killed.
As you pointed out, the high-end estimate for the bombings is approximately 200,000.
Now we often think in hind-sight that the Japanese government was falling apart, and that without the bombs the war would have ended "soon". The problem is that "soon" is a relative and entirely speculative term. We do have hard numbers on how many people were killed in the Pacific Theater, and the numbers, as you can see, are staggering. We chose a number we knew would be around 200,000, in order to avoid adding additionally millions to that death toll.
I agree with you. It would have been much better to invade the mainland and continue the war for another 10 years or longer. I mean just look at Vietnam. That war went on for what seemed like forever and it was opposed by many in the USA. Did I mention that we lost that one. The American people supported this war, especially on Japan.
What could have possibly gone wrong with a long, drawn out conflict half way around the world on foreign soil where possibly hundreds of thousands of American military men would be blown up, shredded with machine gun fire, and sent to be tortured in prison camps. Not to mention the possibility that we may have actually come out on the losing end.
Exactly how many Japanese do you think would have lost their lives in this long drawn out war. I would venture to guess millions, since they were a fanatical society who would have fought to the bitter end.
What about the inevitable quagmire that would have resulted when the Soviet Union would have shown up. I bet that never crossed your mind, did it.
Or is it maybe you like when the USA loses wars. I never thought about that. The more I think about it, the more I have to say that the bombs were the best answer. Many lives were saved, especially Americans. Are you from Japanese descent? That would explain everything. The bombs only killed 80,000 to 200,000 depending on who you believe, a much smaller number than a long drawn out affair.
Also, did you know that the USA was prepared to drop 12 bombs in all if need be. Good thing the Japanese surrendered when they did or it could have gotten ugly for them.
Finally, to all the idiots out there who thought a naval blockade would have ended the war. Get real, there was no guarantee that it would have been successful, hell, we may have lost that part of the war. Nice article to learn about the situation.
You do realize that nobody gets blown up by an atomic or nuclear bomb, right? Your post implies that is the ultimate ending for someone. A nice article for you to know what really happens when a nuclear bomb is detonated.
No, Emperor Hirohito had already planned to surrender and end the war. The atomic bombs were just an excuse. Now, I am ethnically Chinese and the Chinese and Japanese are enemies with each other. Most of that is due to the fact, that they killed so many people in WWII. However, the atomic bombs were not justified. Japan's allies had all already quit, and the country itself was already on the brink of quitting. The atomic bombs killed many people and was not necessary. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!
