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

[Jredbaron96]

I guess my thoughts are that at the end of the day, I'm ok with being in the minority who believes that no one should be dropping WMD's on civilian populations.

Not in Australia.
Not in America.
Not in Syria.
Not in Afghanistan.
Not anywhere.

No one's glad hundreds of thousands of peope died in the atomic bombings.

I do, however, prefer it over the deaths of milions of Japanese from invasion and starvation.

 

[vegas giants]

The unsupported claim of one man pales in comparison to the actions of thousands of people.

If I give you other sources for the quote.....would it even matter? LOL

 

[Tigerace117]

If I give you other sources for the quote.....would it even matter? LOL

Posting the unsupported claims of one guy multiple times doesn't add any credibility to those unsupported claims.

 

[vegas giants]

Posting the unsupported claims of one guy multiple times doesn't add any credibility to those unsupported claims.

I didn't think it would matter. The evidence is there though for those that want to see it

 

[Tigerace117]

I didn't think it would matter. The evidence is there though for those that want to see it

You simply can't accept the basic historical fact that Japan was not looking to surrender until after we utilized the bombs.

 

[vegas giants]

You simply can't accept the basic historical fact that Japan was not looking to surrender until after we utilized the bombs.

That's because the evidence says otherwise

 

[Toggle Almendro]

Its actually pretty accepted by a LOT of historians

The historians though accept that their conclusions are made in hindsight. They don't try to rewrite history to make it seem like Truman knew all this stuff during the war when he was making the decisions.

Well if you can provide the same level of references I can I would love to see it. No one really denies these quotes. They are well established. Even those who disagree with me on this thread agree the quotes are true

We certainly deny your mischaracterizations of the quotes.

Not in august of 1945

So how did a squad of Japanese fighters manage to chase the plane with the second A-bomb away from its primary target?

What imaginary force do you think would have prevented the ten thousand waiting kamikazes from taking off and striking troop transports?

Then take one of the quotes and put it in the proper context. That is debate. I would be happy to see it

I've been showing proper context to you for years.

For starters, statements made only after the end of the war are NOT advice given to the President during the war. And shame on you for continuing to mischaracterize them as such after this was pointed out to you.

Russia did not even have a fleet capable of invading Japan

Stalin was planning to capture Hokkaido. You'd better go tell him that he doesn't understand his own military capabilities.

How do you think they managed to capture the Kuril Islands?

They had no chance of transporting enough troops to japan for an invasion

Make sure you let Stalin know that when you explain to him that he doesn't know his own military capabilities.

But the bombs were unnecessary and a war crime

Wrong. Japan was continuing to refuse to surrender, therefore it was lawful for us to continue to attack them.

No starving needed. We could have given them the one concession they wanted and which we did give them anyway in the end.

Japan did not ask to surrender with that one concession until after both A-bombs had already been dropped. For that matter, Japan did not offer to surrender in any form whatsoever until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

And no. When we outright refuse to give them a concession, that does not count as giving them that concession.

The war was over

The war was only over when Japan surrendered. And they only offered to surrender after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

Anytime you have any evidence of ANYTHING just let us know

Sure thing.

I hereby announce to you that I have ample evidence to back up every single thing that I say.

How's that? Good? Does it need more flair?

The bombs were completely unnecessary

As long as Japan refused to surrender it was necessary for us to continue to attack them.

and were war crimes

The laws of war say otherwise. We are allowed to attack enemy military targets when we go to war.

Me too. Its inaccurate though

I defy you to point out a single error in anything I've said.

You can of course point out more than one error if you like. But let's try for at least one.

Its what Japan wanted. And we gave it to them anyway.

Wrong. Japan only offered to surrender with that concession after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

And no. Refusing to grant a concession under any circumstance does not count as giving it to them.

We could have just done that upfront and not used the bomb

Except for the fact that Japan was not willing to do so until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

And except for the fact that we had no intention of ever granting that concession.

It was. I have posted evidence of that on this thread already. They communicated that A LOT. The emperor was willing to do anything to end the war if he got that one concession.....which he did get

Our first communication from Japan about surrendering with this concession (and in fact our first communication from Japan about surrender in any form) came only after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

And no. Not getting a concession does not count as getting it.

 

[haymarket]

Hiroshima was an attack on enemy troops. There were tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers in Hiroshima. And also a vital military headquarters.

The second A-bomb was an attack on Japanese war industry.



People can argue that it was an attack on civilians, but not with any credibility. The fire bombing was an attempt to destroy war industry.



One person proposed dropping an A-bomb over a forest, where trees all felled in a pattern radiating out from a single point would make the power of the bomb obvious.

The committee in charge of picking A-bomb targets considered setting off the bomb over Tokyo Bay where the shock would blow out windows all around the bay and everyone in the area would have a view of the mushroom cloud.

So how many army members were killed and how many civilians were killed?

 

[Toggle Almendro]

I guess my thoughts are that at the end of the day, I'm ok with being in the minority who believes that no one should be dropping WMD's on civilian populations.

Not in Australia.
Not in America.
Not in Syria.
Not in Afghanistan.
Not anywhere.

I'm sure everyone here agrees with that.

But let's not confuse enemy soldiers with civilians.

 

[Toggle Almendro]

So how many army members were killed and how many civilians were killed?

20,000 soldiers were killed at Hiroshima.

Credible estimates for the total death toll at Hiroshima (including the soldiers) range from 90,000 to 140,000.

Subtracting the soldiers we get between 70,000 and 120,000 civilians killed.

 

[Toggle Almendro]

I clearly posted evidence of the emperors peace gestures that he made thru the soviets. He wanted one solitary concession and he got it

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.

O they wanted peace and sued for it by asking for just one concession which they got

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.

And yet we granted it to them.

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

They sued for peace and the evidence has been presented

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

That's because the evidence says otherwise

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

 

[Fledermaus]

Not in august of 1945

Derp....

You are ignoring the FACT that the last Kamikaze attack was 15 August 1945....

You ignore the FACT that both fuel and aircraft were being reserved for defense of the homeland.

You ignore the FACT that thousands of aircraft remained.

You ignore the FACT thousands of pilots remained.

You HAVE to be trolling.

 

[Tangmo]

The Japanese Imperial High Command could not bring itself to surrender. Unable.

It was in fact the emperor who ordered the surrender and only after the second atomic bomb. Even then a pack of lunatic armed army officers night stormed the palace itself, unsuccessfully, to try to swipe the recorded surrender speech of the emperor and which was broadcast the next day as scheduled.

The emperor never used the word "surrender" but rather he commanded all of his subjects to "endure the unendurable." Recall that Japan going back a couple of thousand years had never been defeated in war. So it's great Japan is on our side now -- 100%.

This National Archives Photo 127-N-140564 presented by the National Park Service shows scores of suicide motorboats ready for operations against a US invasion of the Japan Home Islands.

The Japanese objective was to cause great, hopefully, from their view, intolerable damage and destruction to US naval forces prior to the main invasion. Given that Japanese naval and air forces had taken multiple debilitating defeats through three years of aggressive American offensive operations, the suicide kamikaze played a major defensive role for the Japanese at Okinawa. The kamikaze, by this time, was the main line of defense for Japan's Home Islands.

Kamikazes attack USS Comfort | Talking Proud





U.S. Military Commander in Chief Pacific-Indian Oceans Theater Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr.

Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr. is welcomed by Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the official residence, Tokyo, July 13, 2014. Harry B. Harris, Jr., was born in Yokosuka, Japan in 1956. His father was a U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer who married a Japanese woman.[4] After his family's return to the United States, Harris grew up in Tennessee and Florida, where he attended local public schools.[5] Harris graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1978.

Harry B. Harris Jr | Military Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia.


Admiral Harris and I are each on the record as 'yes'. Separately but together.

 

[Tangmo]

The vast majority of Americans are clear about the use of nuclear weapons. Not necessarily "first strike" but rather "first use."

We prefer to speak softly and carry a Big Bomb.

So to speak.

Check out this mock war scenario of Iran attacking the USA as Japan had attacked at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the results of a scientific survey today of Americans, and the question of the thread about using nuclear weapons....


Scott Sagan, a professor of political science at Stanford University and his fellow researchers asked research firm YouGov last July [2016] to survey a sample of 620 Americans about a mock war scenario with Iran.

The scenario was carefully prepared to create a 21st century version of Japan’s 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

In it, Tehran has attacked a U.S. aircraft carrier, killing 2,403 military personnel — the same number of casualties as in the Pearl Harbor attack — after it was caught violating the 2015 nuclear deal.

When pressed to choose from two options: to carry out an attack against Iran that would sacrifice the lives of 20,000 American soldiers, or to drop a single nuclear weapon on a major city near Tehran, killing an estimated 100,000 Iranian civilians, the survey showed 59 percent of respondents backed using a nuclear bomb to attack a city.

The result indicated that, when provoked, Americans today could encourage their president to use a nuclear weapon, rather than constrain their leader, Sagan said during a telephone interview with The Japan Times. “We should not enter into a blame game to discuss who should apologize to whom for what,” Sagan said. Rather than focusing too much on historical issues, we should be more future-oriented and try to reduce the possibilities of a nuclear war and reaffirm our commitment not to deliberately attack noncombatants during a war, Sagan argued.

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said the Japanese people have yet to form a national consensus on Japan’s past wars of aggression, and some people still try hard to justify them. “The government couldn’t make any decision until the Emperor stepped in to make a ‘sacred decision’ to end the war. Why was the war prolonged and atomic bombs dropped? Japanese people should first think about the responsibility of their own government.”
(emphasis added)

After 71 years, debate over A-bombs shows no sign of resolution | The Japan Times


Anyone who looks at the data on the death and damage caused by kamikaze against the U.S. armed forces in the Pacific during WW II might be horrified by the horrors of it. U.S. military commanders and civilian command authority examined it all very closely. Many of 'em experienced it. Potus Truman said he'd have dropped more of 'em if he'd had 'em. Truman knew well more were in the works.







Truman was discouraged by Japan’s refusal to accept the demand for unconditional surrender issued at Potsdam.

“It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam,” he said in a radio address regarding the bomb.

“Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.

“Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such number that and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.”

Read more here: ?A rain of ruin?: Watch Truman announce the Hiroshima atomic bomb | The Kansas City Star

 

[RabidAlpaca]

You can throw these emotional arguments around all you want, what you have is called a story, what I have stated are facts.

If a foreign government nuked Seattle I would fully expect our government to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against a similar size city of theirs. If we were in a major war and the other actor had been targeting our civilians for years I would not morally oppose using a nuclear weapon on them. War is war. If you want to try making moral equivalence arguments with 9/11 then OK, still doesn't change the circumstances in which we dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.

Then it must really upset you that we didn't nuke Korea, Vietnam, Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. We were at war, therefore they all deserved to die. Keep living with your sociopathic tendencies.

U.S. Military Commander in Chief Pacific-Indian Oceans Theater Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr.

Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr. is welcomed by Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the official residence, Tokyo, July 13, 2014. Harry B. Harris, Jr., was born in Yokosuka, Japan in 1956. His father was a U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer who married a Japanese woman.[4] After his family's return to the United States, Harris grew up in Tennessee and Florida, where he attended local public schools.[5] Harris graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1978.

Harry B. Harris Jr | Military Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia.


Admiral Harris and I are each on the record as 'yes'. Separately but together.

It's also important to note that our best buds Japan are also calling for the elimination of ALL nuclear weapons. You know, because their only purpose is killing as many civilians as possible, which is a war crime and an unspeakable atrocity.

Japan Calls For Denuclearized World On 72nd Anniversary Of Hiroshima

 

[haymarket]

20,000 soldiers were killed at Hiroshima.

Credible estimates for the total death toll at Hiroshima (including the soldiers) range from 90,000 to 140,000.

Subtracting the soldiers we get between 70,000 and 120,000 civilians killed.

Thank you for those figures. So overwhelmingly the deaths at Hiroshima were civilian and military casualties were somewhat secondary.

I toured the Truman Presidential Museum in Independence, MO two weeks ago and much of it is devoted to the decision to drop the bombs. I came away with the nagging impression that war fatigue was setting in among our people - even the military to some extent - and when Germany fell there was a feeling that we needed to get this last part of the war over and get it done quickly.

 

[joG]

Then we should drop nuclear weapons on day one of every war

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?

 

[joG]

And as anyone who's ever lived near a military installation knows, there's always a civilian population that builds around the post. If the US wanted to strictly bomb military installations and cause less civilian deaths they had the ability to do so with non-nuclear weaponry.



It's fallacious to assume what wouldn't have happened if we didn't drop the nukes. Would Japan have fought until they were down to women and children? Maybe. Would they have surrendered after every military installation was bombed and razed by non-nuclear weaponry? Also possible. What is mind boggling to me how we have convinced ourselves that US was better served killing innocent people was the better alternative to just more bombs. It's apparent the Japanese had no way to oppose the US aerial superiority, so why not continue to fight and destroy them from the safety of the sky while causing far less civilian casualties than weapons of mass destruction.



Those "Americans" that would have died were servicemen who understood the risks of their profession entailed to them. As cold as it sounds, they either opted in, or got drafted to do a job that may kill them. The citizens of Japan didn't bomb Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Army did that.

All the more reason to protect your own. They were willing to defend their society and you think that a reason to allow enemy persons to live, while you want your own boys that are protecting you to die? That is really sick in my opinion. Also, your opinion does not take into account the second reason for using the bombs in the manner they were used. Do you even know it?

 

[Fledermaus]

Then it must really upset you that we didn't nuke Korea, Vietnam, Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. We were at war, therefore they all deserved to die. Keep living with your sociopathic tendencies.



It's also important to note that our best buds Japan are also calling for the elimination of ALL nuclear weapons. You know, because their only purpose is killing as many civilians as possible, which is a war crime and an unspeakable atrocity.

Japan Calls For Denuclearized World On 72nd Anniversary Of Hiroshima

The only purpose of a nuke is to kill as many civilians as possible?

Are you effing serious?

Is that why nuclear warhaed for torpedoes, air to air missiles, short range tactical rockets and short range missiles were developed?

They were weapons of war.

And like practically every weapon of war it COULD be used for war crimes.

Hell, bolt action rifles sufficed for the Einsatzgruppen. Engine Exhaust and Zykpon B for the SS. Swords and Spears of the Crusaders and Muslims.

 

[joG]

We had two bombs. Why ever take the chance? Some would drop nuclear weapons now on Afghanistan and Syria. Would you?

As circumstances are now, it would be counterproductive.

 

[Toggle Almendro]

Thank you for those figures. So overwhelmingly the deaths at Hiroshima were civilian and military casualties were somewhat secondary.

Depends. If the goal is to kill soldiers it would be the reverse.

I toured the Truman Presidential Museum in Independence, MO two weeks ago and much of it is devoted to the decision to drop the bombs. I came away with the nagging impression that war fatigue was setting in among our people - even the military to some extent - and when Germany fell there was a feeling that we needed to get this last part of the war over and get it done quickly.

That is my understanding as well.

 

[Toggle Almendro]

Then it must really upset you that we didn't nuke Korea, Vietnam, Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. We were at war, therefore they all deserved to die. Keep living with your sociopathic tendencies.

So he's a sociopath because of words that you put in his mouth???

their only purpose is killing as many civilians as possible,

Nonsense.

which is a war crime and an unspeakable atrocity.

Good thing that's not their purpose then.

 

[haymarket]

Depends. If the goal is to kill soldiers it would be the reverse.



That is my understanding as well.

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.

 

[RabidAlpaca]

So he's a sociopath because of words that you put in his mouth???
Nonsense.
Good thing that's not their purpose then.

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.

 

[Tigerace117]

That's because the evidence says otherwise

Actually, the evidence does not say otherwise. Case in point? You have not been able to show that it does.