Would you rather have pictures of millions more, or those pictures.

Please explain why you think it is a myth that we would have lost more soldiers if we had tried to invade the islands rather than bombing them.

I am not "fine" with those images, and neither would I be fine if millions more were like that. One has to recognize what a horrible thing death is so that they do everything thing they can to prevent it.

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"It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary"

-- Ludwig von Mises

We didn't need to invade them. Even if we did, the most is realistically in the thousands, hardly millions.

Propaganda of the times sir.

We didn't do everything we could to prevent it.

It seems to me that you think they did not need to be forced to surrender at all. Had we simply left them all on their islands to do what they want they could have built more planes, more ships, and possibly an atomic device of their own. Forcing them to surrender was quite necessary to protect American lives. Had we simply blockaded the islands, they would have attacked our ships. They were training their citizens to use hand guided torpedoes that swimmers would guide into our ships. They had many of their remaining planes ready for kamikaze missions. Had we not blockaded the islands and simply went home, they could have launched more attacks on us than if we did blockade them, and they would be on our turf, not theirs. If this is not what you meant, than please explain.

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"It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary"

-- Ludwig von Mises

The other option that was tried and was worse, far worse for the Japanese was the fire bombing of Tokyo. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 million Japaneese were killed in these attacks. These people were burned to death. How you can justify a comment like, no other option was tried, that is purely ignorant. We had already killed several million, lost several hundred thousand, and with two bombs 200,000 Japanese died, the war was over. Maybe you should read about the invasion of the islands leading upto Japan, and read what happened. the fighting the sacrifice and the blood shed.

The Japanese were within a few months of having a working nuclear device. The Japanese had 2 seperate nuke plants, one was damaged in the fire bombings of Tokyo, the second was never touched and was working on a nuclear bomb upto and beyond the end of the war. When we intercepted the German U-boat with the uranium on it, destined for Japan, I don't think any other option was available but to use the bombs.

There is no morality in war, so using nuclear bombs is not a moral issue.

I was with you until the last sentence. Dropping the bomb was the most moral thing to do, and there should be as much morality in war as possible. You should try to limit the suffering.

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"It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary"

-- Ludwig von Mises

By the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, the Japan campaign was underway as Allied forces closed in on the home islands. By the end of January 1945, some Japanese officials close to the Emperor were seeking surrender terms which would protect his position. These proposals, sent through both British and American channels were assembled by General Douglas MacArthur into a 40-page dossier and given to President Roosevelt on the 2nd of February, two days before the Yalta conference. The dossier was reportedly dismissed by Roosevelt out of hand - the proposals contained all had the condition that Emperor's position would be assured, albeit possibly as a puppet ruler. At this time, however, the allied policy was to accept only an unconditional offer of surrender, although the eventual August settlement did keep the position of emperor in place[5].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan#History



'painless', I see nothing painless about a nuclear strike. What you mean is 'easiest way of getting into Japan without having to fight'.
Really the Allies didn't even need to go into Japan. Their resources and fuel were gone, their ships confined to harbour and their troops cut off. Really the allies had nothing to risk unless they wanted complete domination of the Japanese, which they did, and which is why they didn't take earlier terms which would have prevented the deaths of all those people in the photos.

ironically, while I despise the events and the apologists for civilian immolation, I think Japan came out better as a result of not having any cabal of militarists left intact.
I will never however stoop to thinking of Hiroshima or Nagasaki in terms of success, only tragedy. In the same way i see all acts of killing civilians deliberately , anywhere as acts of people of low moral fibre, be they A for allies or A for Al queda. There is no gain in killing innocents that will stand scrutiny morally. If there was, it wouldn't even raise debate.

as for McNammarra, I agree with your proposition, but viewing the documentary, which can be argued to be a neutral one politically, you get the sense that there was much more to his self examination than that one event. It's well worth the watch to see the mind in action, and it shows the nuclear attacks as mere specks in the larger picture of what was done to Japanese cities. I see him as towering figure, sociopath and cold pragmatist, the ultimate product of industrialised war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_...a_and_Nagasaki


I will also state that papers pertaining to why Truman dropped the bomb have recently been released, having previously dealt with classified information. They are all in that article that I posted a link to, if you would just read it.

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"It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary"

-- Ludwig von Mises

no one will ever know for sure how many American and other Allied troops would've died if we invaded.
no one will ever know how many civilians.
but the Japanese were not trying to surrender.
a few of the emperors advisors wanting to means nothing.
i would hope they advised him not to start the war in the first place.

the japanese army was not giving up.
and the people were going to do what they were told.
namely, kill every non-japanese person they saw,
even if it meant killing themselves.
to think no, or not many, allied (American) soldiers would've been killed in an invasion is crazy talk.

there were many reasons for dropping the bombs.
just because it was a strong demonstration to russia,
doesn't mean it didn't also save lives.
just because japan was sealed off and was running out of resources,
doesn't mean they didn't have hundreds of planes ready to be flown into enemy ships,
or millions of civilians who could live off bugs hiding around every corner in the country.
more japanese civilians would easily have been killed with prolonged conventional bombing and invasion.
it just would've been more drawn out.
and it would've come with the price tag of 'God only knows' how many US troops.
what did the US owe japan to make it worth even 1 more American life to conquer them more 'humanely'?

a little off topic,
but its always amazed me who was allied in ww2.
imperial japan and nazi germany both saw themselves as the 'master race',
and saw everyone else as inferior.
yet they had no problem allying with each other to fight a war against the rest of the civilized world.
and the fact that the soviet union was suposedly on the good side hurts my head.
stalin was probably responsible for more deaths than all the axis partners combined.
and yet,
he gets to be one of the big three and the USSR gets to emerge as a superpower

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"It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary"

-- Ludwig von Mises

From what I've heard from people whose grandparents were in Japan in WW2, and from books I've read, the Japanese population was really sick of the war and about ready to take out their own leadership over the foolishness of having picked a fight with America. I don't think the Japanese people were behind the war.

I don't know about the nukes. I don't think it was right, nuking populated urban areas like that. Did it work? Well, we have been unstoppable from pretty much that moment until Bush came along. And I do think the world has benefited from America as a superpower, in some regards at least.

Nobody dies in vain. Those explosions set in motion a chain of events that we're still riding. The ultimate outcame (always) remains to be seen. Personally, knowing what I know now (which admittedly isn't much), I wouldn't have dropped those bombs. But would that have made the world a better place? I have no idea, and neither does anybody else (I know the Republicans thinks they do but they don't either).