OK, so there are several points here, so I will address them in no particular order.

The Japanese started the war, we ended it. FDR had one main concern prior to nuking the enemy, saving American lives. We had the advantage after Midway, but if we would have had to fight on mainland Japan the cost of American lives would have been extremely high. If you need proof of that look at the American and Japanese death tolls on the islands leading up to Japan itself.

The Emperor, who was an accomplished bio chemist and advocated the use of bio weapons, would have without a doubt used them on our troops if we would have come a shore on the Japanese mainland. If you need proof, google WWII Japanese bio testing, there is some interesting captured films to be found, but be warned you will need a strong stomach to watch them.

Comparing 9/11 to the nuking of Japan is apples and prime rib. Terrorism and declared war are not even close to being comparable.

During WWII it was very obvious who the enemy was, for the most part they wore well marked uniforms, their weapons of war were well marked as well. The Japaneses first attack though unannounced was against a military target and all subsequent battles fought were again, against targets of military value! Were civilians killed, yes, but they were collateral damage, not the prime target!

9/11 on the other hand, was terrorism. The towers were pure civilian, no military importance what so ever. The Pentagon and the White House are of military importance but in the case of the Pentagon only lightly damaged and the White House not at all. The weapons used were not well marked weapons of war but privately owned commercial jets, filled with civilians! Bin Laden was not the head of a country, he was not the general of an army. He was a rich fuck that had made himself the leader of a bunch of religious fundamentalist cowards.

 

Civilized countries try to avoid intentionally bombing thousands of innocent civilians, declared war or not.

 

All nonsense. Japan was finished. There was no need to invade the mainland or incur a single additional U.S. casualty. And Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not "targets of military value"...certainly not targets that justified the use of nuclear weapons. The sole purpose of the bombs was to terrorize Japan into immediate surrender.

 

I really can't believe I even clicked on this thread.......

 

+1

Hiroshima and Nagasaki had little to no military importance, if I'm remembering correctly. We bombed them specifically because they were non-military. The idea that the two cities were vital to the Japanese military is one that annoys me to no end.

 

That is what we should have done to them.

 

We keep forgetting that one of the fundemental reasons behind the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to bring a quick end to the war. The Japanese had already agreed to surrender but they put in place stipulations on keeping land on the mainland that they had conquered and keeping keeping thier emperor too. We were not willing to leave segments of asia under Japanese control nor were we willing to allow them to keep the emperor. But the most important reason to speed the whole process up was that the Soviet Union at the end of hostilities in Europe started shifting troops and tanks east and declared war on Japan. They had been nuetral up to that point but saw the opportunity to sieze control of land in asia the same way they had managed to take huge swaths of Europe.

Ending the war as quickly as possible to keep Stalin from capturing huge chunks of Asia while the Japanese mulled over thier surrender was the main point of the whole thing. That and sending the message to Stalin that we were in possesion of a super weapon that could make his asperations of global domination hard.

Was it necessary to drop the bomb? Probably not. Was it a nice thing to do? Wats nice about war? seriously? Was it the right thing to do? The jury is still out but I am voting it was the right thing to do. But what so many people forget so willingly is that there was another incident just a short while befor the atomic bombings that was far worse. The fire bombing of Tokyo killed and maimed more people than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. And that includes all the people who died of radiatin related ailments after the atomic bombings. The people of Tokyo didnt die instantly in a blinding white flash either. Most either burned to death or suffocated from the firestorm consuming all the breathable oxygen or super heating the air and burning out thier lungs while burning off thier skin at the same time. People were found in huddled masses in bomb shelters having suffocated from all the air being sucked out of them. Men, women, children...just like Hiroshima and Nagasaki...but more of them over a longer period of time.

It was war...and lets face it, in the 1940's everyone in the whole world saw the lives of other people in a very diferent light than we do now. Cultural ideals were very different and so were the rules.

 

Well fuck it then.

 

That dude reminds me of Jay Leno for some reason. Think it's the chin.

 

You both should study WWII history a bit more. Hiroshima was an industrial city and also the site of the Military Command for the defence of the southern part of the island, so it had a large military base in place!

Kokura was the primary target, Nagasaki was the secondary. Kokura Arsenal was there and Kokura was also a large sea port. Due to cloud cover and mechanical problems with the bomber they deverted to Nagasaki. Also of note is the fact that they missed. The bomb was off by 5 miles.

The upside to Nagasaki being bombed, is 1,200 of our POWs were delivered to a camp at Kokura the day the attack was to happen.

The bottom line is war sucks, but it sucks less if your the winner!

 

ROFL, my god, where did you learn history? "We" weren't losing, we had kicked their asses all the way back to Japan. There the Japanese military command was determined to dig in and fight to the last Japanese, which would have cost probably millions of casualties on both sides. Dropping the atomic bombs, while they may have killed a quarter million people (including immediate casualties and those who have died from bomb-related causes since), may have saved millions, ours and theirs.

Godalmighty, what drivel are they teaching kids these days?

 

Congrats! Showing such complete ignorance is very difficult to achieve.

Tim929 and Druidoak seem to have a solid grasp of the events. Kimiko and Silverlycan should probably brush upon their history. I especially like Silverlycan's hypocrisy. With one hand he dismisses the countless thousands raped to death in Nanking as "war is hell" while with the other hand he expresses to be "annoys me to no end" (sic) with the bombing of two "non-military" cities.

Try reading Racing with the Enemy - Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (2005). Concerning the massive loss Japanese civilian lives in the summer of '45, he lays the blame at the feet of the deadlocked Japanese policy-makers. This book is unprecedented in presenting detail within the Japanese/Soviet/U.S. govt's in the summer of '45. Things leading up to these events were so complex...

Want to try to moralize the whole affair? Read Moral Combat; A History of WWll by Michael Burleigh (2010). Burleigh is a tremendous British historian who points out that the delay in (Japan) surrendering was killing countless thousands of people under the control of the Japanese military including p.o.w.s, soldiers, sailors, and civilians (including japanese who were starving to death). Who speaks for these folks???? Burleigh also asks how are WE to judge, who didn't live through this war.

Laura Hillenbrand wrote Unbroken (2010) that graphically describes what it was like to be an American pow in Japan in '45. It had me begging for the U.S. to drop Little Boy and Fat Man in may or june, instead of august. Of course this wasn't possible.

If you are interested in the bombings... reserve these three books first, at your local library.

 

Well. I am not sure where you get your history, but "we" wern't losing. We had pushed Japan back to their last lines of defense. The bombs were dropped to bring about the end of the war, so that we would not lose perhaps 100,000 American troops in a conventional land invasion of the Japanese mainland.

I don't think we need to apologize for saving our own troops, or for doing whatever was necessary to end that war. I get so sick of hearing people whine about the innocent women and children of our enemies. I don't recall them ever showing any concern for our women and children.

If women and children are going to die, and in all wars they do, then I would just as soon it be their women and children, not ours. They started the war. Whatever befalls them is on their heads, not ours.

 

Im still waiting for someone to work thier way around the firebombing of Tokyo. Again...more people died in one night of incendiary bombing than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, including the casualties resulting from radiation exposure.

 

I was trying to convey the pointlessness in comparing that the bombing of Japan by the US was somehow justified because the Japanese had commited such horrors such as the Rape of Nanking, which I think someone was trying to say, though I probably misread it. I wasn't trying to dismiss Nanking as being 'not that bad, because war is hell and all' (not your words, I know, just my perception of what you're trying to say. ).

I'm terribly ignorant of the history of WW2, that much is clear. The idea that Hiroshima and Nagasaki being non military civilian cities was taught to us in high school. It was a very, very shitty high school.

 

Indonesia, Africa, Australia, Ireland, The Caribbean especially Jamaica, parts of Asia, India, the Middle East.

You really wanna start this shit, you fucking hypocritical little cowards? We didn't pretend to "civilize" people while taking their land and slaughtering them under the title of "colonization". We didn't bring guns to a weapon-fight or pull some bitch-shit like smallpox blankets or pretending to be people's friends. We were attacked by the Japanese. We were at fucking war, a war we were provoked into.

You PURPOSELY slaughtered civilians. You're fucking terrorists.

Funny how you all tend to forget that.

 

You seem like an inteligent guy. We were all taught that same line of BS. Google "The Rape of Nanking" for starters. Also google "Japanese war crimes". Be warned though, some of the stuff is sickening.

We all were taught about Germany, Hitler and the Holicost. What Germany did to the Jews was terrible, 6 million dead. Japan killed on the low side 12 million, high side 50 million Chinese.

 

People seem to forget that it wasn't just Jews that Hitler had exterminated. I think (it's late and I'm sleepy) there was roughly an equal amount of homosexuals, disabled, and assorted undesirables that were also killed as part of the 'Final Solution'.

I read about Unit 731 some time ago. Words fail to describe what happened. And yet, a part of me is interested in the things they did there, an academic sort of interest. I want to know everything, you know. Sometimes that means learning about the unpleasant.

 

Hitler also wanted to wipe out all the Russians because he said they were an inferior race and he wanted the country for the German expansion...

 

Hitler wanted a lot of things. He got greedy. Now he's dead.