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Atomic August.

Bum

I survived. Suck it, Schrodinger.
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Looking out over the skyline of Hiroshima, 96-year-old Junji Sarashina points out places from his childhood.

"That was my grade school. Not too far from here," he tells his granddaughter, showing her around the area.

Sarashina was 16 years old and working in an antiaircraft munitions factory when the United States dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.


It has been 80 years this week since the dropping of two atomic devices ended the war in the Pacific.
 
Allan said:
WWII - 70 to 80 million deaths. All due to a small handful of insane men.
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Not really. Imperial glory was on the minds of many, just as it is on the minds of most denizens of the Russian Federation.
 
Imagine a time
When it all began
In the dying days of a war
A weapon — that would settle the score
Whoever found it first
Would be sure to do their worst —
They always had before…

Imagine a man
Where it all began
A scientist pacing the floor
In each nation — always eager to explore
To build the best big stick
To turn the winning trick —
But this was something more…

The big bang — took and shook the world
Shot down the rising sun
The end was begun — it would hit everyone
When the chain reaction was done
The big shots — try to hold it back
Fools try to wish it away
The hopeful depend on a world without end
Whatever the hopeless may say

Imagine a place
Where it all began
They gathered from across the land
To work in the secrecy of the desert sand
All of the brightest boys
To play with the biggest toys —
More than they bargained for…

Imagine a man
When it all began
The pilot of “Enola Gay”
Flying out of the shockwave
On that August day
All the powers that be
And the course of history,
Would be changed for evermore…

Manhattan Project
-Rush
 
Cosmo said:
Not really. Imperial glory was on the minds of many, just as it is on the minds of most denizens of the Russian Federation.
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The Russian government is not even remotely as insane as the people running Imperial Japan.

If they were there wouldn’t be much left of the United States.
 
armycowboy said:
The death toll from the bombs was between 150k and 250k. That's a terrible figure, but far fewer than how many would have been killed during an invasion of Japan.
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Yeah, I've heard the made up numbers that we have to accept as real, as real as the numbers we slaughtered in reality. I do not accept.
 
The Brad Dad said:
Yeah, I've heard the made up numbers that we have to accept as real, as real as the numbers we slaughtered in reality. I do not accept.
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It really doesn't matter what you want to accept or not. The reality is invading Japan would have been a meat grinder.
 
The Brad Dad said:
Yeah, I've heard the made up numbers that we have to accept as real, as real as the numbers we slaughtered in reality. I do not accept.
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….Imperial Japan was run by a psychotically fascist regime whose soldiers were actively conscripting vast numbers of civilians, Volksturm style, to fight any invasion of the Home Islands. Saipan and Okinawa pretty clearly demonstrated they saw their civilians as better off dead than under foreign occupation.

The casualty estimates are not at all unrealistic, sadly.
 
Like, I genuinely don’t think this can be emphasized enough— Imperial Japan was utterly psychotic, and killed millions upon millions of people in China alone.

That fact is never really mentioned or dwelled on in the West, because the U.S. spared and recruited some of the worst war criminals Japan had to offer after the war in the name of something something fighting the Soviets—-

For example, Unit 731’s leader, Colonel Ishii, as well as Nobusake Kishi, a man who gained the nickname of “The Monster of the Showa Era” for his role in turning Manchuria into a country sized concentration camp, were both protected and aligned with the U.S. in the aftermath of the Japanese surrender.

Kishi would able to use that support from the U.S. to ascend to the Prime Ministership of Japan and craft a long and successful political dynasty……

Being eventually succeeded by his grandson…

Shinzo Abe.
 
Agreed. Over 100,000 died at Okinawa. That would have been child's play compared to invading the mainland. And the vast majority of the casualties would have been Japanese civilians.
 
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