How many people think that the United Stated were justified in dropping that big Atomic bomb twice on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

I am not sure it was the right thing to do, although I have no idea what else could have been done.

Some thought the Japs were about to surrender while others think the Japs would have never threw in the towel.

Dropping those bombs was in no doubt a tragic event in history and who knows perhaps it did save lots of American, British and Japenese lives.

we'd probably be still at war with japan

Difficult one this - any nation that's been subjected to something so horrific is likely to cry that they were about to surrender anyway, but given the way I understand opinions in Japan were changing at the time maybe they were. I can only say 'I understand' here as it all happened some years before even my parents were born... What I know on the subject I gleaned largely from the World at War series and their angle on it was that the constant stream of Japansese fighters being killed to maintain the country's dignity was gradually seen as senseless amongst the people of Japan. Fanaticism gradually replaced by a common sense borne through desparation. Whether the Japanese emperor of the time felt the same way to an extent that he'd have surrendered without Hiroshima and Nagasaki being bombed is another matter, though the World at War's sources seemed to think he would. Perhaps it'd be helpful to look at how many were killed in the bombings, compare it against the numbers killed in combat every week and ask if the Japanese military could have held out that long (though, of course, this doesn't take into account the numbers of UK and US troops being killed who didn't even want to be in this war that, in this part of the world, Japan had started).

I'm told that, unlike Germany, Japan doesn't see itself as having done anything wrong in the war. I know this is a huge generalisation and my sincere apologies to anyone reading this who is Japanese and is deeply guilty of their country's actions in WW2. However, if it is true, it is telling, and goes hand-in-hand with an opinion that their country is more important than themselves (the reason for the fanaticism that lead to so many Japanese deaths). And it's not something that's relegated to history - China's present stance towards it's neighbours is partly based on it's opinion that any land that was once China's should always be China's, hence the problem it has with Taiwan trying to be independent. Then again, Taiwan's modern history started (I think) in the 40's with the escape of the Chinese government to Taiwan and Taiwan's belief that they will once again rule China in the future! Was there some of the same thinking leading to the Japan-China war in the 30's (Japan - originally part of China (?) - feeling it wants China 'back')? It does highlight how illogical China's thinking is in this respect - after all, if Taiwan is 'once China always China' then what stops it from being 'once Japan always Japan' or 'once Holland always Holland'?

One thing more on the subject of the bomb - did it's release set a dangerous precedent and release the world's most horrific weapon into the world, or did it prevent nuclear war during the 60's and 70's by demonstrating the destruction caused by a relatively small weapon of this sort?

Unfortunately, there was no alternative because we were dealing with a nation who were brainwashed into thinking that Japan was unbeatable and would have fought to the death not recognising the word surrender.

An example of this attitude was that a Japanese soldier living in the jungle twenty years after the war didn't know and he survived living off roots and still prepared to fight the enemy.

They didn't know the meaning of defeat and would have gone on for ever, so we had to drop the bomb to make them realise it was useless to resist any more.

What is done is done. It is all very well and good decades later dicussing if they were right or wrong.
It was a horrible event for the people who suffered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As to whether the US has faced any punishment I do not know. Also I do not know if the effects of the bomb were known at the time - we sure as hell do now.

I think it may have been meant to happen - in the sense that God or the powers that be decided we needed to learn a damned hard lesson. If the US had not dropped the bombs then perhaps we would have dropped them at a later date when everyone had them and would not be here to talk about the rights and wrongs of it.

What a hell of a sacrifice though.

Moon Maiden

It is debatable to think it was necessary to drop a second one though.

NO! It was NOT the right thing to do. While I can understand some debate on the first strike, the second was not needed and was just a show of might. The Japanese were being defeated we could have proactively hunted those that wanted to fight and dealt with them.

i'm half japanese. lets get that out the way :wink:

let me say, having been round the hiroshima atomic bomb museum, heard stories from my own grandmother on her eyewitness accounts of the bomb, and just through study in my time, there was no need whatsoever for the bombing of hiroshima, let alone nagasaki.

the americans knew japan was on the verge of collapse. essentially they had this awesome new weapon and they wanted a live field test. there was no justifiable reason to bomb japan, we were losing and losing badly in the end. japan's fanatic policy was one of fight to the death, and there can only be so many japanese soldiers if they keep throwing themselves like lemmings at the enemy.

i accept the points some ppl made about possible benefits of the bombs, like an increased awareness and possibly changing the future as countries did not drop bombs of even larger magnitude later, but make no mistake these are happy coincidences, and not positive arguments for dropping bombs on anyone.

i think it did have a profound effect on future wars though, i for one wouldnt want to see carnage on that scale happen in this dan and age

It was mass murder.

Originally posted by "bassoon"

It was mass murder.

Yes, thats exactly how I feel about it..

sentofuno, I truly wish I could talk to your grandmother. The stories must be amazing... My apologies for the mass murderings my country conducted on your wonderful people...

Originally posted by "Tampa USA"


sentofuno, I truly wish I could talk to your grandmother. The stories must be amazing... My apologies for the mass murderings my country conducted on your wonderful people...

well, 'my' ppl weren't so wonderful to 'your' ppl either, the japanese were brutal when it came to pow's.. but i appreciate the gesture :wink:

i can tell you some of the stories she told me, like how her family abandoned their homes for the mountains near kure (a small town near hiroshima. it still has the worlds largest shipyard, and built the yamato, the flagship of the navy) because it was also considered a target.

she actually witnessed the blast from the mountains, of course no-one knew what it was (so.. i'm not sure now why they fled if they didn't know what was coming..) but it was beyond anything she'd ever seen in her life since..

apparently my grandfather would have been killed in the blast had he not decided to skip school that day :D. he also witnessed the blast but he died about 12 years ago, so i never heard any stories from him, i was only 9 years old at the time.


i hope my second hand stories are better than nothing tampa :P

it was definatly a sad point in the human race's history :(

has anyone walked all the way round the peace gardens? there is an enscription all around it about hiroshima

They had to test it somewhere!!

Yes, it was justified in dropping one.

I've never been as sure about the dropping of the second bomb.

It was well known that the Japanese were going to put up a hell of a fight for the home islands. Looking at how they fought on places like Okinawa and Iwo Jima, the casualties of allied and Japanese troops, and Japanese civillians would have been vast. As well as combat, there would have been starvation and sickness. I believe estimates were made that would have put the casualties in to millions.

The immediate casualties from the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima were 135,000 dead and injured, split roughly 50/50. The immediate casualties from Nagasaki were 64,000, split about 60% dead, 40% injured.

As a comparison, The British Army lost almost 60,000 men (20,000 dead) on July 1st, 1916 - the first day of the Somme. It's quite possible that the casualties from an assault on the Japanese home lands would have exceeded these figures on a day by day basis - you only need a week of these figures to exceed the TOTAL dead in the atomic attacks.

The argument about a test detonation is an interesting one. In July 1945 the Trinity test showed that the bomb would work, but the materials were only available at that time for two more devices - one based on Uranium 235 and the other based on Pultonium. To get a 'bomb production line' running was going to take a few more months, so the US had two, at the most 3, weapons at their disposal until September at the very earliest.

Whilst it's deplorable that so many civillians died, we did the same in Europe, it just took longer. Coventry, Dresden, Hamburg - war's like that. Kills the innocent and the guilty together. Finishing off the war with 2 atomic bombs probably saved millions of lives - including those of some of my family who would have been shipped out to 'finish the job'.

It's also useful to remember that during the 'Rape of Nanking' in December 1937 between 200,000 and 300,000 Chinese men, women and children were killed by Japanese soldiers. In the Japanese invasion of China and subsequent occupation, over 10 million Chinese died. Slaughter of the innocents is not a one sided business.

Joe

I really cannot decide if this was justified or not, but as for the fact that so many civillians died... this is true and it's awful, but in WWII it wasn't like most of soilders had signed up anyway, they were just civillians that had been drafted... bit harsh to put more value on peoples lives because they are at home... would have been better if no one had died at all.

I have just been hit by the realisation that my baby grandson was born on the anniversary of the first attack:- he was born 6th Aug, last year.

sorry! hijack over.

What i am trying to say is that Ii find the idea of Nuclear weapons absolutely terrifying, and abhorrent.

however, I am torn about posessing them....

because, what do we do? if the percieved "enemy" has nuclear weapons, and is threatening to use them against us, we need them to protect ourselves, surely?

I have friends and in-laws who were in the far east at that time; my sister's father-in law was a Japanese POW, and came back to Britain, barely alive. Like another friend who was in Burma, what the "bomb" being dropped meant for them, was life, and liberation. My friend said that had it not been done, he would never have got back. He would not have survived more than another few weeks in the POW camp.

I am not saying that only the allied troops suffered any atrocities. And the civillian casualties, that are still affected, because of the dreadful effects that the radiation had on them, passed down from the parents... it's awful!


PT

Originally posted by Plain Talker


<snip>

And the civillian casualties, that are still affected, because of the dreadful effects that the radiation had on them, passed down from the parents... it's awful!


PT

Oddly enough, I don't believe that there have been many, if any, detected genetic problems in the offspring. There's an interesting piece here

http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q340.html

The reasoning I'd heard was that people who were hit with enough radiation to cause genetic damage were actually killed by blast and heat. There'd probably be bigger long term effects from radiation accidents such as Chernobyl or fallout from H-Bomb tests because the levels of radiation that people are exposed to is higher and there are no other effects, like blast and heat, 10 or 15 miles away.

Joe

I'd like to think that by dropping them back in 1945 when the technology was still primative went some way to preventing them from being used at a later date.

If two bombs were used today, the death rate and after effects would be much more devastating.

Originally posted by alchresearch
If two bombs were used today, the death rate and after effects would be much more devastating.

Indeed. A bomb detonated at ground level in New York today could see Eight hundred thousand killed and a further nine hundred thousand injured instantaneously.

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Example/ExampleStart.shtml

During the cold war the Russians built a mammoth weapon called the Tzar that was capable of a detonation 6,500 times the size of the Hiroshima blast...

Originally posted by halevan
An example of this attitude was that a Japanese soldier living in the jungle twenty years after the war didn't know and he survived living off roots and still prepared to fight the enemy.
Isn't that a Disney film?

Chris.

No Chris it's true, see below

http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa120700a.htm

There is a full description of why they hid for so long here :

http://www.wanpela.com/holdouts/index.html

It is believed there may still be some undiscovered hideouts in the Philipines, where some 4,000 soldiers went at the end of the war. In Nov 2003 a search was launched, not sure if they discovered anyone or not....

Originally posted by alchresearch
I'd like to think that by dropping them back in 1945 when the technology was still primative went some way to preventing them from being used at a later date.

If two bombs were used today, the death rate and after effects would be much more devastating.

A twenty kiloton bomb today is much the same a a twenty kiloton bomb of 50 years ago. The after-effects depend upon the radiation received by individuals who aren't close enough to be killed outright in the original blast. Apart from the size of the bomb, this depends upon things like whether the bomb is an air-burst or ground burst (the latter throws up more fallout) and even whether the weapon is designed to be radiological (the Russians developed a bomb with a cobalt sheath designed essentially as a 'dirty' weapon to leave a lot of fallout behind).

A lot of single stage fission bombs in stockpiles today are what are called 'dial a yield' weapons, which are designed so that before you drop them you configure them for the blast you want. This has given us te situation where you can have a nuclear bomb that produces less blast effects than a conventional fuel air explosive bomb.

Joe

Originally posted by rtapper
Indeed. A bomb detonated at ground level in New York today could see Eight hundred thousand killed and a further nine hundred thousand injured instantaneously.

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Example/ExampleStart.shtml

During the cold war the Russians built a mammoth weapon called the Tzar that was capable of a detonation 6,500 times the size of the Hiroshima blast...

The seismic shock from the tzar was felt travelling all the way around the earth . . .

. . . . FOUR TIMES! It was detonated on the island of Novaya Semlya within the arctic circle and was part of the reason the first START treaties were signed.

On the whole right/wrong issue, there is evidence that Hitler was also working towards nuclear weaponry and can anyone honestly say they would have preferred HIM to start the use of nuclear weapons?
On the issue of nuclear weapons in general, they are here and here to stay. Physics is a truth and nothing can undo it! The physics of stars is similar to the physics of nuclear weapons therefore anyone smart enough to understand that sort of literature can build an A-bomb.
The point is this, we can never rid the world of them. The only reason we haven't had a nuclear war is MAD.
Mutually Assured Destruction: that is to say that anyone who might consider using nuclear weapons (e.g. USA v. USSR in the seventies) had to respect the fact that launching them would ensure their own death. What's the point of a war no-one will "win" even in their own eyes?!
So, we continue to develop, build amd maintain a nuclear arsenal and we the civilian masses must learn to accept that. Was it right to have dropped one ever? Depends on your standpoint. My grandfather served in the navy in the pacific in '42 - '44 and was witness to much horror but he had a great deal of respect for the Japanese people. Even so he believed it was the right thing to do as it brought home to the Japanese leadership that they were clearly out-gunned and in a war, this perecption is what will bring fighting to an end,