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Did the US do the right thing in dropping the atomic bombs on Japan to end WWII?

Did the US do the right thing in dropping the atomic bombs on Japan?

  • yes

    Votes: 72 69.9%

  • no

    Votes: 20 19.4%

  • not sure

    Votes: 11 10.7%
  • Total voters
    103
Toggle Almendro said:
We received no peace gestures from Japan through the Soviets.

Further, Japan hoped for a lot more than that one concession when they went to the Soviets.

And we gave Japan and the emperor exactly zero concessions.



Japan made a surrender offer only after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

And no. They did not get the concession that they were asking for.



When we refuse to give a concession under any circumstance, that means the concession is denied.



They sued for peace only after both A-bombs had already been dropped.



Here is what the evidence says:

Date of Hiroshima: August 6

Date of Nagasaki: August 9

Date of Japan's offer to surrender with a single concession (their first offer to surrender in any form): August 10
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I see a lot of claims and no evidence as usual.
 
joG said:
It is a question of priorities, I should say and of the circumstances into which the decision is embedded. At the time it seemed very important to let the Japanese understand that the war was over and there was a second reason of equal or even greater importance. Do you know it?
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There was no reason to use the bombs. The war was over
 
joG said:
As circumstances are now, it would be counterproductive.
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Everyone is a military genius.....guess what the military geniuses said about using the bomb then?
 
Fledermaus said:
Your mistaken opinion is noted.

Japanese forces were still engaged in Kamikaze strikes until 15 August and a state of war still existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
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They were beaten, defeated and crushed. There was no need for the bomb
 
Fledermaus said:
That it was the most efficient weapon.

At least that is what LeMay said.
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Here is the evidence

On September 20, 1945 the famous "hawk" who commanded the Twenty-First Bomber Command, Major General Curtis E. LeMay (as reported in The New York Herald Tribune) publicly:

said flatly at one press conference that the atomic bomb "had nothing to do with the end of the war." He said the war would have been over in two weeks without the use of the atomic bomb or the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 336, Chapter 27)
The text of the press conference provides these details:


LeMay: The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb.
The Press: You mean that, sir? Without the Russians and the atomic bomb?

. . .

LeMay: The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

(See p. 336, Chapter 27)

On other occasions in internal histories and elsewhere LeMay gave even shorter estimates of how long the war might have lasted (e.g., "a few days"). (See pp. 336-341, Chapter 27)
 
vegas giants said:
Everyone is a military genius.....guess what the military geniuses said about using the bomb then?
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Actually, I have read quite a few differing contemporary and later opinions by military and political professionals. To which of these do you refer?
 
joG said:
It wasn't, if you were an infantry soldier on a boat routed for the enemy beaches.
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And yet we have infantry soldiers dying in Afghanistan....it seems they don't matter as much
 
vegas giants said:
And yet we have infantry soldiers dying in Afghanistan....it seems they don't matter as much
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I didn't think you had ever thought about the topic very seriously.
 
haymarket said:
If that is true, then the motivation was largely political and the military aspect may have been achieved through other means rather than targeting a population center like Hiroshima.
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I don't know of any other way to kill those 20,000 soldiers other than the A-bomb. Except maybe ground combat in an invasion.

The motivation was to push Japan towards surrender, the same motivation behind all of our attacks against them. Is that political?
 
Toggle Almendro said:
I don't know of any other way to kill those 20,000 soldiers other than the A-bomb. Except maybe ground combat in an invasion.

The motivation was to push Japan towards surrender, the same motivation behind all of our attacks against them. Is that political?
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Or we could have given them what they wanted which we did anyway
 
RabidAlpaca said:
You can keep wasting your time writing me all you want, but I stopped reading your posts after you made the ridiculous claim that we should've nuked all of Afghanistan before the second tower fell on 9/11 by a group of Saudis. Sociopaths to that degree can not be reasoned with or think rationally.
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Falsely accusing people of being a sociopath is a pretty silly way to excuse your inability to respond.

I'm the most rational person to ever have the privilege of debunking your untrue claims.

Don't tell me you're one of those truther characters.
 
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