Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Was it right?

[JCarter426]

huh? wha? no...No...NO.

 

dah! Historical ignorance makes my brain hurt! The English and the French and the Americans in WWII learned from the mistake of the treaty of Versailles and did not saddle Germany with a huge war dept, AND helped them to rebuild.

 

Yes, they did that. But they also split the country in half and turned Berlin into a war zone. If both of them had just stayed out of Germany, there wouldn't have been an iron curtain, and the Cold War probably wouldn't have escalated, at least not in Europe, which was only one front. But still, it was pretty much the same everywhere else--if both parties had just minded their own damn business, there wouldn't have been a war.

[EnderWiggin]

No

 

Did it end the war quicker? Yes. Did it save (American) lives? Yes. Was it morally and ethically the right thing to do? Absolutely not.

 

The decision to bomb Japan was made to end the war quicker and to show our (America's) dominance. What's worse, Japan was already preparing their surrender when we bombed them.

 

If it was just a bomb it wouldn't have been such a big issue, but the fallout from these bombs has been punishing the innocents ever since. Sure, 'we didn't know what would happen.' I don't eat food if it's a funny color because 'I don't know what'll happen' and then act surprised when I get sick. I throw it away, because it's not right...

 

 

QFE.

 

Inyri, I don't think you've ever said something I disagree with.

 

_EW_

[mimartin]

One question: WAS THIS RIGHT?

I don't know if it was the right thing to do our not. The world would be a better place if we would have left that genie in the bottle. However, if I were in Truman’s shoes at the time, I would have made the exact same choice. The federal government first responsibility is to the citizens of the United States of America, something the government has forgotten over past 63 years.

 

1. July 26, 1945, the United Nations issued the Potsdam Proclamation, which called for Japan’s unconditional surrender.

 

2. July 29, 1945, Japan broadcast that it would ignore the proclamation and would refuse surrender.

 

3. Two days before the Potsdam Proclamation was issued, President Truman approved “Operation Downfall,” the invasion of Japan. The conservative estimates of “Operation Downfall” put the American casualties at one million. It also estimated that 1000 Japanese and Americans would die every hour during the early stages of the invasion.

But as you say Inyri, Nobody deserves to be the targets/victims of nuclear weapons, ESPECIALLY when ALL other options have not yet been fully evaluated and attempts have been made to put them into action.

What options? There was only one option, the full and unconditional surrender of Japan. It was a yes or no question, not a negotiation. Forgive me, but didn’t Japan end the diplomat option on 12/07/1941?

 

Actually, Japan were considering it. They were considering surrendering, though on four of their own conditions.

The Potsdam Proclamation called for the unconditional surrender of Japan. Setting conditions was unacceptable to the allies.

Like Inyri said, Japanese were preparing to surrender, but America has to go "oh look at this, lets nuke a country so it can't recover for centuries!".

There was nothing to prepare for. The Allies would only accept an unconditional surrender, not something that takes a lot of planning for on the defeated nation’s part, as the word unconditional means everything is up to the victor.

But two nuclear strikes?

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. We dropped the bomb, Japan still refused to “unconditionally surrender,” so we dropped another.

I'm baffled why we thought using a relatively untested nuclear device was bright.

Because it did what it was designed to do, kill in the most shocking way possible. That much was apparent by the few test they actually did before using the device.

 

Let us also remember that we were not sure the device would actually work. I’ve always thought we should have dropped leaflets first warning citizens to get out, the problem with that is first we alert there antiaircraft defenses and second what happens if it did not work. Kind of defeats the idea of giving a free preview.

It might have been wrong to bomb civilians, but the people had a bad track record of racism themselves. I feel sorry for the civilians, but Japan (if kharma exists) had it coming to them.

I don’t really see the racism here. Sure this was a racist nation in the 1940s, but look at what we did to the city of Dresden in the late stages of the war in Europe. The RAF and the USAAF dropped over 3,900 tons of high-explosives and incendiary devices on the city, destroying 13 square miles of the city and killing between 24,000 and 40,000 civilians. Is there a real difference between dropping one bomb or dropping a hundred bombs on civilians? Yes, we were prejudice against the Japanese people, look at what we did to our own citizens of Japanese decent during WWII, but I do not believe the decision to drop the bombs were racially motivated. Revenge for 12/07/1941 was the motivation.

 

Hate to bring this up, but to me it was a determining factor in deciding about the use of the bombs on Japan. It is estimated that the Manhattan Project cost two billion dollars in the 1940’s dollars. What would the American people had thought when they learned a million of their sons were killed in the invasion, yet the President had the means to stop the war before the invasion? Oh and by the way, we spent two billion dollars and did not use the final product. It would have been political suicide for Truman and the Democratic Party.

 

Much like Truman, I find the use of the bombs morally wrong, but also like Truman, I would have dropped the bombs too, then wait for the judgment of my maker.

 

I feel sorry for the victims and ashamed the country I love used nuclear weapons on another living thing. However, I will not second guess their decision to use them. I did not live through that time in American history and everyone I know that did live through that time or served their country during that time agrees with Mr. Truman’s decision. That is good enough for me.

[*Don*]

There was no need for such drastic measures.

Matter of fact, historians now believe that the Pearl Harbor incident was carefully planned by FDR.

Did anyone happen to see that documentary on FDR last week?

They mention how he wanted to bring America out of isolation and the depression by involving them in WWII. He even had notice of the fact that the Japanese were going to attack one of America's bases in teh Pacific. He let that happen because he wanted to incite anger at the Japanese and hence draw America into the war.

 

Americans, unfortunately, have been very unfair to the Japanese. Teddy Roosevelt himself said some very racist remarks about them when he was president.

Couple that with the Japanese relocation camps set up in America, and u should be able to get a clear picture of how Americans felt about Japanese.

 

Unsuprisingly, the Japanese affected by that incident were never fully recompensated.

 

As for whether the war would have ended quicker, I feel like it shouldn't have mattered.

Like said before in this thread, we have to choose between doing whats easy and doing whats right.

"Saving the lives of American soldiers" just doesn't seem like a good enough excuse to kill countless civilians.

Soldiers dying in battle for their country is to be expected. Civilians dying without warning isn't justifiable.

[Marius Fett]

@mimartin

 

You stand by the decisions of your leaders and government, that's understandable.

But HOW was droppig these bombs justified in ANY WAY?

 

Sure, it saved American lives, yeah, it ended the war, but at what cost?

 

The radioactive fallout from those bombs has caused the deaths of thousands of people since.

 

You say it would have been political suicude to not use the bombs after spending all that money on them?

 

Personally, I would have been glad to not have to use them, even if I had spend 2 billion dollars.

 

I would rather suffer embarassment than have the deaths of MILLIONS OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS on my concience.

[Inyri]

"It would be political suicide" is the silliest reason to do anything that I've ever heard. I believe the word we use to describe politicians who use that excuse is 'incompetent.'

 

I mean look how much money we're frivolously spending now and take a poll and see how many people legitimately care (beyond the occasional complaint).

[*Don*]

I agree with DarthDingDong

Its narrowminded decisions like these that incited so much hatred and anger at America. (which, subsequently resulted in 9/11)

 

EDIT: Deleted due to irrelevance.

[JCarter426]

The radioactive fallout from those bombs has caused the deaths of thousands of people since.

 

Now that is something interesting to point out. Not only did the US Government make nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, full aware of the consequences of the radioactive fallout, but they did it to their own people a decade later.

[Inyri]

I don't think they were 'fully aware' of the consequences of nuclear fallout when they dropped the bombs on Japan, so let's be fair. Those things take years to become apparent, and they hadn't been testing them long enough to find out. I mean how many of the 'supervisory' personnel affiliated with the Manhattan Project ended up dying of cancer because of the radiation they endured during testing? If they were 'fully aware' that wouldn't have happened.

 

On a similar note, think about 9/11. Bin Laden killed countless civilians just like America killed countless civilians in Japan. If 9/11 was wrong, then what makes hiroshima and Nagasaki any different?

 

Don't get me wrong or anything, I'm a patriotic citizen.

Its just that I can't understand why people were so dumbfounded when 9/11 happened. We can't expect to go forcefully into other countries and expect them not to hate us.

Tell me you didn't just compare 9/11 to bombing Japan. We bombed Japan in the context of war -- they had attacked us and we were responding with force. The attacks on the twin towers were not a response to a physical attack by the United States. They're two completely different things.

 

I get your point, but... your point doesn't really apply in this context because you're comparing apples and oranges.

[Marius Fett]

@Don

 

Well reasoned, don't get me wrong here, I like America, but those bombs were nothing short of terrorism.

 

@Carter

 

You've hit the nail right on the head there. America still continue today to test nuclear devices. They even let tourists go to see the craters! How dangerous is that!

[*Don*]

Im sorry for the misunderstanding.

Ironically, I was just repeating what I heard on CNN this morning (in reference to rev wrights comments).

[Inyri]

Never repeat what you hear on TV without thinking about it first. TV is not always right.

[mur'phon]

Neither is newspapers, radio, and forums

[Web Rider]

On topic:

In my wiev the idea behind the firebombing/nuclearbombing is insane. It for the most part like this:"By deliberately killing civilians we are hoping that the civilians will blame their leaders, and force them to end the war.". Nice exept it asumes the people won't rally behind their leaders to fight the ones responsible.

 

In many war-nations, "industy" and "civilian" populations where integrated. In the cases of Dresden and other attacks, the factories, the workshops, they were manned by Civilians, they were operated by civilians and they were in civilian areas. As much as anyone can be a civilian when they are helping run their country's war machine.

 

One of the prime reasons that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were targeted was because Tokyo was a much lager center for non-war industry and civilian populus and was therefore not hit because when Japan surrendered, they would not have had their prime city(like Berlin was) devastated by war.

 

Yes, they did that. But they also split the country in half and turned Berlin into a war zone. If both of them had just stayed out of Germany, there wouldn't have been an iron curtain, and the Cold War probably wouldn't have escalated, at least not in Europe, which was only one front. But still, it was pretty much the same everywhere else--if both parties had just minded their own damn business, there wouldn't have been a war.

 

uh...again...no, I mean, jeeze, do you ever read history or did you just hear about this "Cold War" and know that it was bad?

 

Germany was waging war with all of Europe, in order to be defeated, their war-machine must have been pushed all the way back to their capital. To show that they were utterly defeated. partitioning was indeed a bad idea, but it was the Soviets who disliked integrating the partitions, which was done in 1948 between the remaining Allies. Additionally, the Soviet Union was setting up puppet regimes and annexing Eastern European countries that had been devastated by the war into themselves.

 

The Iron Curtain, a term coined by Churchill, was only reinforced by Soviet statements in 1947 regarding that "they were at war with capitalisim and the west". Germany was not the cause, and not even CLOSE the cause of the Cold War. The Cold War was caused by Soviet expansion and the promoting of communist insurrections in other countries. And then countered and escalated by the US(since most of Europe was flattened by war) helping to support western-friendly governments that were besieged by Soviet-armed communist revolutions.

 

Additionally, it stems from things like the Truman and Marshall doctrines that were dedicated to fighting "totalitarianism" in the world. Doing so by supporting, as I said, governments under siege.

 

There was no need for such drastic measures.

Matter of fact, historians now believe that the Pearl Harbor incident was carefully planned by FDR.

no, they do not.

 

Did anyone happen to see that documentary on FDR last week?

They mention how he wanted to bring America out of isolation and the depression by involving them in WWII. He even had notice of the fact that the Japanese were going to attack one of America's bases in teh Pacific. He let that happen because he wanted to incite anger at the Japanese and hence draw America into the war.

America had several dozen bases in the Pacific, on just about every Island we visisted. And the Japanese attacked MOST of them. Saying "Roosevelt knew" is like saying he knew there were fish in the sea. Yeah, he just had no idea the Japanese wanted to go whaling instead of fishing.

 

Americans, unfortunately, have been very unfair to the Japanese. Teddy Roosevelt himself said some very racist remarks about them when he was president.

Which is to be expected when you are a nationalist at war with others.

Couple that with the Japanese relocation camps set up in America, and u should be able to get a clear picture of how Americans felt about Japanese.

Yeah...and?

 

Unsuprisingly, the Japanese affected by that incident were never fully recompensated.

Nor have the Japanese even apologized for the rape of Nanking. One evil does not condone another of course, but if we're going to go "America is evil because it treated the Japanese badly!!!" you can't leave Japan out of the picture.

 

As for whether the war would have ended quicker, I feel like it shouldn't have mattered.

decades of war....or winning now. Yeah, winning totally doesn't matter in a war.

Like said before in this thread, we have to choose between doing whats easy and doing whats right.

wars are about winning, not doing what's right. If people did what's right, the Japanese would never had started. And if we truly did what was easy, we would have surrendered.

"Saving the lives of American soldiers" just doesn't seem like a good enough excuse to kill countless civilians.

Soldiers dying in battle for their country is to be expected. Civilians dying without warning isn't justifiable.

Wars are about winning. Not to mention, when "civilians" are fully supporting the war-effort through working in it, acting in it, ect...it's hard to call them "innocent" or even "civilians". During a war, only the most distant targets are "civilians", and in Japan, everyone helped the war effort.

 

@mimartin

You stand by the decisions of your leaders and government, that's understandable.

But HOW was droppig these bombs justified in ANY WAY?

by the following reasons.

 

Sure, it saved American lives, yeah, it ended the war, but at what cost?

When you are at war with somebody, you consider the smallest cost to yourself. Do you think any other nation would have afforded the Allies such consideration? The Nazi's were massacring Jews and Gypsies and Homosexuals and the handicapped and everyone else who didn't agree with them, while the Japanese massacred the Chinese.

 

The radioactive fallout from those bombs has caused the deaths of thousands of people since.

yes it has.

 

You say it would have been political suicude to not use the bombs after spending all that money on them?

after spending some 2 billion dollars, which, at the time, was such an ungodly high number, yes, it would have been. With the war in europe over, the people and politicians alike wanted a quick and decisive end to the war with Japan, not a long drawn out struggle.

 

Personally, I would have been glad to not have to use them, even if I had spend 2 billion dollars.

Somebody else would have. The Bomb was as much winning the war as showing the Soviets to stay out of Japan and the pacific. As much as it was showing the Japanese that we were not weak as they percieved us to be.

 

I would rather suffer embarassment than have the deaths of MILLIONS OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS on my concience.

NOBODY IS INNOCENT IN WAR.

The Japense populus was in full support of the war effort. They believed in it, they supported it, they worked in it, they helped it in every way they could. There were no Japanese going around saying "war is bad!" "end the war!"

And AGAIN: Wars are about winning, how is letting innumerable soldiers die, along with more japanese die, along with years more of war, and a situation like the piecing up of Germany in Japan, along with Soviet expansion into the Pacific a better solution? And nobody having used "the Bomb" somebody would have, and maybe instead of just having two to use, they'd have 20, or 30, and they'd all be a 100 times more powerful?

 

Is that better? hundreds of thousands dead on all sides in a campaign to conquer Japan and resulting in a nuclear war with hundreds of millions?

 

Now that is something interesting to point out. Not only did the US Government make nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, full aware of the consequences of the radioactive fallout, but they did it to their own people a decade later.

No, they did not. On both counts.

 

I agree with DarthDingDong

Its narrowminded decisions like these that incited so much hatred and anger at America. (which, subsequently resulted in 9/11)

Yes, bombing Japan during a war resulted in 9/11...I have many words for you...all of which will get me banned.

 

On a similar note, think about 9/11. Bin Laden killed countless civilians just like America killed countless civilians in Japan. If 9/11 was wrong, then what makes hiroshima and Nagasaki any different?

Okay, you just DONT get it do you? CONTEXT! everywhere CONTEXT! You can't just compare two completly unlike events and call them the same!

 

Don't get me wrong or anything, I'm a patriotic citizen.

since you don't know your history, you are not.

 

Its just that I can't understand why people were so dumbfounded when 9/11 happened. We can't expect to go forcefully into other countries and expect them not to hate us.

Japan does not hate us. Germany does not hate us for out WWII actions. The secret CIA training of the Taliban was just that, SECRET. We didn't know about it, and they WANTED it to fight the Soviets who were invading their country.

 

EDIT:

@Don

Well reasoned, don't get me wrong here, I like America, but those bombs were nothing short of terrorism.

Your statements make me want to throw my history books at you. What you are saying is terrorism because it's so stupid! You are encouraging people to be ignorant of reality! The Atomic Bombing may have been good or bad, but at least get your facts straight on what happened!

 

You've hit the nail right on the head there. America still continue today to test nuclear devices. They even let tourists go to see the craters! How dangerous is that!

NO, they do not. They never have let tourists see the craters. And we havent done a nuclear test since the 90's. It was all part of the SALT 1+2, and START and STAR treaties with the Soviet Union in the 80's.

 

And Japan allows tourists to see the Atomic Bomb blast sites as memorials to the people who died there. The radiation from the nuclear weapons used in Japan are so minimal, you get more cancer from the sun than from Hiroshima.

[*Don*]

Never repeat what you hear on TV without thinking about it first. TV is not always right.

 

Lol...

yea, i havd an unhealthy tendency to do that.

I also have a tendency to speak before I think.

[Q]

Oh, please. Terrorism?!

 

In case you didn't know, The Japanese were hardly innocent. Civilians were legitimate targets in World War II, and were victimized by both sides on many occasions.

 

Also: conventional raids during the war caused comparable civilian casualties.

 

Does this make it right? Of course not. Hell, war isn't "right," but that does not keep it from happening.

 

And remember, folks: hindsight is 20/20.

Were the Japanese considering surrender? Yes.

Did the U.S. know that? No.

 

What the U.S. did know was that the Japanese were a fanatically fatalistic people who would more often than not prefer death to surrender. So before you judge the U.S., try a little context on for size.

[Jae Onasi]

There is a great tendency for people to assume that what we know now about science and medicine, we also knew 60 years ago or more. We did not know nearly as much as we do now. In fact, a lot of the medical studies on radiation poisoning/sickness came about because of doing research on Japanese who had survived these 2 bombs, along with the secret studies done by the military on soldiers. There were no long-term studies on radiation medicine at that point and expecting the leaders to have know that ahead of time is unrealistic.

 

Want to know the state of medicine at that time? We had 3, count them, 3 antibiotics. We had the rudimentary start of anesthesia beyond using ether. Surgery was just starting to come onto the scene in a significant way. We had absolutely no knowledge of DNA. The polio vaccine for mass use wouldn't be developed for another 10 years.

 

Want to know the state of science? Rocket science was brand new. Radar was pretty new. Use of sonar was pretty new. Submarine science in its modern sense was new. Einstein was still working on his relativity theory and the Big Bang theory hadn't yet been developed. We knew precious little about what radiation was going to do long-term on a mass scale.

 

The leaders could only work with what they knew at the time. FDR and Churchill knew that the Japanese were unlikely to surrender without significant fighting. They _did_ think about what the war was going to cost in personnel, materiel, and time with and without deploying the atomic bombs. These bombs were the lesser of two evils. If Japan had surrendered unconditionally after the first bomb, there would have been no second atomic bomb dropped.

 

In regards to Hitler--we most certainly did not get involved in a war with him because it was just some huge misunderstanding and supreme prejudice against certain classes of people. Hitler was a megalomaniac and his goal was to rule all of Europe and quite possibly the entire world. He thought it was his right as an Aryan. Extermination of the Jews, as horrible as it was, was a minor secondary issue compared to running the war machine that mowed through Austria, Poland, France, and a very large part of the rest of Europe. In fact, European leaders tried to use diplomatic means ('appeasement') for a long time to try to get Hitler to stop. Diplomacy failed utterly because they weren't dealing with a reasonable person.

 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot remotely be compared to the heinous attacks on 9/11. Yes, the nuclear attacks were horrible, but they were dropped during wartime. The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 were nothing more than acts of cowardice by some two-bit terrorists who refused to promote what is supposed to be a religion of peace in anything but a violent matter. They were not done in a time of war, and the two acts are entirely different.

[JCarter426]

The Iron Curtain, a term coined by Churchill, was only reinforced by Soviet statements in 1947 regarding that "they were at war with capitalisim and the west". Germany was not the cause, and not even CLOSE the cause of the Cold War. The Cold War was caused by Soviet expansion and the promoting of communist insurrections in other countries. And then countered and escalated by the US(since most of Europe was flattened by war) helping to support western-friendly governments that were besieged by Soviet-armed communist revolutions.

 

If I may quote myself here...

 

If both of them had just stayed out of Germany, there wouldn't have been an iron curtain, and the Cold War probably wouldn't have escalated, at least not in Europe, which was only one front.

 

I never said Germany was the cause of the Cold War. I said that the US and the Soviet Union's handling of Germany after WWII was one factor that led to the escalation of the Cold War.

 

Again,

 

But still, it was pretty much the same everywhere else--if both parties had just minded their own damn business [i.e. stayed out of Germany, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc.], there wouldn't have been a war.

[mimartin]

You stand by the decisions of your leaders and government, that's understandable.[/Quote]No, I’m not one to stand by my government or leaders without questioning them.

But HOW was dropping these bombs justified in ANY WAY?[/Quote] What is justifiable in war? Was it justifiable for the Japanese to attack without a declaration of war? We were still looking for a diplomat option at the time, yet they used that ruse in their surprise attack. Not exactly the type of government you go back into negotiations with to end the war.

 

England hands are not completely clean in this matter, after all it was Roosevelt and Churchill that came up with the terms of the unconditional surrender in January 1943 at a conference of Allied Powers held in Casablanca. The biggest stumbling block to a Japanese surrender was their right to keep the Emperor.

 

Sure, it saved American lives, yeah, it ended the war, but at what cost?[/Quote] No, it saved American lives, Austrian lives, British lives, Canadian lives and it also saved Japanese lives soldiers and civilians.

 

The radioactive fallout from those bombs has caused the deaths of thousands of people since.[/Quote] It is truly a tragic byproduct of the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are the tragic byproduct of war. Maybe we should strive to eliminate the truly immoral thing, war.

 

You say it would have been political suicide to not use the bombs after spending all that money on them?

Personally, I would have been glad to not have to use them, even if I had spend 2 billion dollars.[/Quote] How about 2 billion dollars and one million allied lives? Don’t you figure in an invasion where the estimate is one million American losses there are going to be Japanese losses of equal value or greater than the American losses? How many more Japanese cities where going to be firebombed with inclinator bombs? Remember the reasons Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen, they were among the few cities left that had not been firebombed and would allow the military to ascertain the effectiveness of the bombs.

 

I would rather suffer embarassment than have the deaths of MILLIONS OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS on my concience.

I am under the impression that millions of civilians would have been killed under an invasion. I will not use the word innocent, because the Japanese government had already mobilized the civilians to push the invaders back into the sea. On July 29, 1945 when Japan broadcast its response to the Potsdam Proclamation they also closed the schools in order to prepare the children for the American invasion.

 

The Japanese plan was to induce such causalities on the U.S. so that the American’s become demoralized and would then accept a less-than-unconditional surrender allow them to keep their Emperor and save face. So yes, they were planning to surrender, but only under their terms.

 

The Japanese were not the defeated nation many have portrayed in this tread. If the Operation Downfall would have taken place the Americans 14 divisions landing at Kyshu would have faced 14 Japanese division, 7 mixed brigades and 3 tank brigades. In other words the Americans would have been out numbered 3 to 2. These also were not poorly trained troops, the defenders were the hard core of the home army that had been preparing for this day. They knew the land and had the defensive needed to push the Americans back into the sea. The Japanese still had 40 submarines and 12, 725 planes (something the American intelligence did not know when drawing up their one million estimate). All the Japanese wanted to do was last ten day. In ten days they thought they could deliver a blow strong enough for the Americans to accept the Japanese surrender under their terms. I have no doubt the Japanese people would not have issued a devastating blow to the American forces. I also do not believe the Americans would accept any condition on the surrender and thus the war would have continued from city to city, from home to home.

 

Again it was immoral I do not dispute that, but so is war in and of itself. Innocents die in war and that is tragic. There is no justification for using nuclear weapons, but I will say it again. In Truman’s shoes I would have done the exact same thing. The alternative is just as unacceptable to me.

[Marius Fett]

You make a good arguement, but I stand by what I said earlier. I would NOT drop a nuke unless there was no choice.

 

As I said earlier, they could have just dropped one in the sea near Japan to demonstrate their power rather than annhialate all those civilians.

[*Don*]

Yes, bombing Japan during a war resulted in 9/11...I have many words for you...all of which will get me banned.

 

Okay, you just DONT get it do you? CONTEXT! everywhere CONTEXT! You can't just compare two completly unlike events and call them the same!

 

Japan does not hate us. Germany does not hate us for out WWII actions. The secret CIA training of the Taliban was just that, SECRET. We didn't know about it, and they WANTED it to fight the Soviets who were invading their country.

 

 

First off, we can all just ignore those comments.

I realize that they stemmed from a different conversation from television.

 

no, they do not.

 

America had several dozen bases in the Pacific, on just about every Island we visisted. And the Japanese attacked MOST of them. Saying "Roosevelt knew" is like saying he knew there were fish in the sea. Yeah, he just had no idea the Japanese wanted to go whaling instead of fishing.

 

As for FDR planning America's entrance into WWII, there are plenty of evidence for that. Matter of fact, it's documented in the history books that they make us read in high school.

FDR's cabinet was looking for a way to uplift the country out of the Depression and war was the best stimulus at that time.

 

Yeah...and?

 

Which means that the American population had a biased view against the Japanese. I'm not blaming them for it, I'm just saying that they weren't really bothered about how the Japanese felt.

 

decades of war....or winning now. Yeah, winning totally doesn't matter in a war.

 

The Japanese didn't want to UNCONDITIONALLY surrender. If the Allies had settled for a conditional surrender, the war could have also ended sooner.

 

wars are about winning, not doing what's right. If people did what's right, the Japanese would never had started. And if we truly did what was easy, we would have surrendered.

Wars are about winning. Not to mention, when "civilians" are fully supporting the war-effort through working in it, acting in it, ect...it's hard to call them "innocent" or even "civilians". During a war, only the most distant targets are "civilians", and in Japan, everyone helped the war effort.

 

That line of thought would end up justifying the deaths of many Allied citizens, since many of them actively participated in the war effort too.

[PoiuyWired]

No

 

Did it end the war quicker? Yes. Did it save (American) lives? Yes. Was it morally and ethically the right thing to do? Absolutely not.

 

On the other hand, there is absolutely no reason to drop the second bomb. It seems obvious that there is going to be a surrender after the first one. And really, one bomb is just as obvious as to when it comes to showcasing the devistation power.

[Inyri]

Agreed. True Avery made a very good point of that earlier, in fact. One would have been plenty. To be honest, one was too much (of course our pro-force friends here won't agree on that point).

 

Some of us think war is wrong any way you slice it, and any 'rationalization' is nothing more than an excuse.

[mimartin]

As I said earlier, they could have just dropped one in the sea near Japan to demonstrate their power rather than annhialate all those civilians.

When I was in high school, that was my argument too. I could not understand why we would use such a weapon on even our worst enemy. Besides, my local town has a Japanese chemical plant in it. I was and still am friends with a number of Japanese citizens.

 

However, what if we invited them to watch or great new super weapon from a safe distance and then dropped it out of the plane and nothing happened? Think that might convince them to fight even harder? Let’s also remember we only had two working bombs. What if after our demonstration we dropped the second on a city and it worked. What if the Japanese still refused to surrender? After all maybe the next one wouldn’t work either. Let’s also remember it took the second bomb to convince the Japanese to surrender unconditionally, they didn’t seem overly concern about their citizens either.

The Japanese didn't want to UNCONDITIONALLY surrender. If the Allies had settled for a conditional surrender, the war could have also ended sooner.

Why should the Allies settle for anything less than the unconditional surrender? I don’t remember Japan allow us to set condition to start the war.

AAs for FDR planning America's entrance into WWII, there are plenty of evidence for that. Matter of fact, it's documented in the history books that they make us read in high school.

FDR's cabinet was looking for a way to uplift the country out of the Depression and war was the best stimulus at that time.

Very true, including our embargo against Japan that lead directly to their surprise attack.

[Inyri]

they didn’t seem overly concern about their citizens either.

It's easy to say that sitting on this side of the pond, while having no legitimate insight on the 1940's Japanese government besides what's written in text books.