Hiroshima at 75: bitter row persists over US decision to drop the bomb

It might be gallows humor; let's see how many likes this 9/11 joke gets:

Who are the fastest readers in the world?

New Yorkers.

Some of them can go through 110 stories in like 5 seconds.

 

Like interacting with a bot; redundant fiction...

 

~ Gen. Dwight Eisenhower said in 1963, “ the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Apparently Eisenhower also said this in 1945.
However we likely will never know for certain what Japan and Germany had planned. The same is true today about China, North Korea and Iran.

1.}
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...wful-thing-why-dropping-the-a-bombs-was-wrong
2.} https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-27/its-time-to-confront-painful-truths-about-using-the-atomic-bombs-on-japan

 

You just lost your argument after so many times you made that claim.

I was in Japan 25 years after (not 15 as my distinguished fellow site-member had stated) and by then the retrospectives and soul-searching had agreed the Japanese would NOT have surrendered without the impetus of the two bombs.

They believed their emperor was a god, literally. That's a tough concept for many westerners to fully understand, the complete rightness of following their god into a righteous war that was not so righteous after all. Their reach exceeded their grasp and nuking them was the only way to stop it.

 

Nonsense.

And regardless, such fiction (intended to slither away from any collective responsibility for the two most horrendous war crimes in human history) is irrelevant.

Such unspeakable acts of terror are NEVER acceptable.

EVER.

 

Serious props to our own JC.

 

Even a cursory study of U.S. newspaper headlines during December 1941 and beyond shows that the term "Jap" was widespread, if not nearly universal. It (1) saved headline space, and (2) showed the same impertinence toward the Japanese as we gave to Uncle Bugeyes, Himmler, Goebbels and the other Huns.



But this one was even more to the point...

 

I was there. You weren't. Prove your claim they were prepared to surrender. Go ahead. You cannot and you know it.

 

Irrelevant/dubious. Ditto. Educate yourself or read the thread; JC's been kind enough to do your homework for you. Ditto.

 

I heard this many times over there. From their viewpoint their arrogance needed an abrupt awakening. As you also said, war doesn't have rules, except that losing is not an option.

 

That proved you're trolling.

 

Bizarre & irrelevant ad hominem - also profoundly ironic.

 

Dubious/irrelevant. Ditto. Completely false.

 

Tell me. How could you know what Japanese were thinking in 1970 when you were never there? Because if you HAD been there you'd know how profoundly contrite the Japanese people (not the government but the people) truly were. But go ahead and say it's irrelevant or whatever comes into your head. Thus far that's the best you've got --- and it fails.

War had gained them nothing, in China or against the Americans. Someone here said they weren't concerned with our military but did fear our navy. I think that's true. After all --- we had major losses at Pearl Harbor and to repay Japan meant a U.S. shipbuilding program which took time to gear up. It was a miracle we won that war in as short a time as we did.

 

Unlikely. How could you know where - or if - I was in 1970? Dubious/irrelevant. Done. Nonsense.

Mixed bag. Perhaps. Perhaps. Yes. Russia & the UK helped - a LOT.

 

If you had been there you'd say so,. convincingly. Thus far you assert but never prove, evade but never answer. You are trolling on this issue.

 

~ I have hear this very same comment from a few WW2 veterans.

 

Had we actually gone on-land, every estimate I've seen says at least one million of our troops would have died. I haven’t seen any Japanese estimate of their own losses from a U.S. invasion.

The distance between us gave Japan a false sense of security (much like we had until Pearl Harbor), but after centuries of various military skirmishes the Japanese did have formidable coastal defenses. The Yokosuka Naval Base at the southeast part of Tokyo Bay has huge work areas carved out of solid rock, and (except for their entry doors being open to radiation) would otherwise have survived a nuclear strike even back then. Yokohama facilities were similarly well-defended against a land attack (considering their design was centuries old).

 

Nonsense. Ditto. Baseless/ridiculous/irrelevant ad hominem.

 

Irrelevant - Japan was prepared to surrender. Ditto.

Off-topic.

 

~ My uncle ( 97 ) told me he was on a ship headed for Japan when the first bomb dropped. "We were all heading towards our death ." are his words as I remember. His son was sent home from Vietnam due to his child's death. When he returned most of his outfit had been killed.
Wars are best ended as soon as possible - hopefully avoided altogether. But for now that seems very unlikely .

 

The bombing of Hiroshima didn't kill as many as the firebombing of Tokyo.

And you should be banned from this thread for failing to debate in good faith.

 

Just a few facts which might be helpful. It has been claimed that Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not military targets. That depends on how you define military targets. Much of the Japanese military's supplies were manufactured in homes, especially uniforms.. Additionally, when civilian areas are attacked, it requires the enemy to divert defenses away from other targets and it requires resources to provide supplies to those "nonmilitary" targets. That was more the objective of the Doolittle Raid early in the war. The raid itself did not do a lot of damage. The Japanese did not think they needed to defend their homeland because they did not think we could attack it. The Doolittle raid changed that.

War is horrible. Total war is even more horrible, but the Japanese are the ones who started it.

 

I think it's safe to assume that if the Japanese had invented the A-bomb before us- they would not have hesitated to use it on us. Same for the Germans.
Now the idea of precision bombing, where under the ideal end result we disable defenses but do not kill anyone- is ideologically sort of some kind of ultimate human kindness. At the same time- a severe weakness.
It's also a state of denial- because of all weapons of all kinds, the most diverse, the most dangerous- ARE human beings. The objective in wars like WW I and II was not to kill everyone- it is to break the spirit and will that they hold to kill all of us. In fact, the western world is the first to make serious attempts to limit military targeting in such a way as to protect non-combatants- and that has resulted in our enemies seeing it as our weakness, for example Iraq hiding defensive guns on hospitals and places we would not bomb. "Pretty please" and "play fair" do not work when you are dealing with people bent on your destruction above all else. The only thing that works is to prove that you have the power to destroy them, utterly. That is why Japan, whose leaders had planned that the mainland battle would not end until the last Japanese citizen was dead- chose to surrender; they realized that even the most remote chance of victory was gone. Having the power is one thing. But until you can demonstrate you have the will-power to use that physical power- you are still seen as beatable. It is unfortunate that this was necessary; however all the battles with the Japanese beforehand made it clear that until they were convinced of total destruction, nothing would change. What was done- was necessary, and most certainly saved a great number of lives on both sides.

The entire purpose of superior strength is that it deters the need to do battle at all- because it insures an enemies total destruction. Assuming of course, that we have leadership with the guts to back it up.
It's like going out to Yellowstone, and kicking a grizzly bear in the ass because he's in your path. Nobody does that- because they know that the Grizzly DOES have the power to destroy them, and will not hesitate to do so. Thus, few violent conflicts between grizzlies and people ever occur there, even though they see each other frequently.

When things get really bad and you quit because you lack that kind of courage, you have lost. It's not a vicious thing- it's a necessary thing, and will be until we find a way to civilize all of our human beings.

 

The Norden Bombsight was a marvel. However, it was a long way from precision bombing. In tests, it was fairly accurate. In actual use, not so much. In tests, the aircraft could travel in a straight line at constant speed which allowed the bombsight to make fairly accurate calculations. In combat, such conditions do not last long enough to get an accurate release point.