On This Day: Aug 6, 1945 - Hiroshima... One of the worst days in the history of mankind?

[PlanetPakistan]

This day 63 years ago.

Close to 140,000 innocent civilians blown away. Many more were killed in days, months, years and decades after the bombs on Hiroshima(AUG 6 1945) and Nagasaki(Aug 9). IMO the second bomb on Nagasaki was completely unnecessary and was possible a move to keep the communist Soviets out of Japan(they were planning on attacking Japan and were not getting along with the Western "allies")


Lets pray for the folks who lost their lives and hope that such a thing NEVER happens again.

 

[Momo]

A dark day indeed. I hope it never happens again.

However, it is amusing to see that the only nation that has ever used nuclear weapons, accompanied by other nations that have the largest stockpiles of such weapons, is so "concerned" about the next nuclear attack coming from one third world country or the other.

 

[Caved12]

Would be great if we could live in a weapon free world. Hopefully it won't happen again.
Peace

 

[Keith]

The greatest tragedy of all time. This was the rise of the largest terrorist and human rights violationist country the world has ever known.

 

[the_best]

this is not one of the worst day of human history; it is the WORST day of human history. Unfortunately we consider those War Criminals as Hero as Winner writes the History

 

[Oxy]

This is a day of celebration in the 'Civilised West'.

 

[Taurus]

It was a very dark day, a completely unnecessary show of force by the Yanks so that they could finish the war a couple of months earlier. I've often thought that they simply wanted to test their baby out on the real world and in the process show everybody that they weren't to be messed with. I suppose there's an argument that this has stopped a lot of other nations dropping nuclear warheads out of fear, but that doesn't make it feel any better than it is.

 

[DHONI183]

This is the picture of 'aftermath' of Hiroshima:

Very sad ......

Rest in peace those who lost their lives and condolences to their beloved ones ......

 

[W63L35]

While driving to work, on radio 8am ABC national news..... this how it was reported today;

"August 6th.... today marks the anniversaries of two events in history;
as you remember last year 6 miners were trapped in a coal mine in Utah. Those 6 miners and 3 rescuers died. Relatives and friends to gather for a ceremony to remember those who perished.

Then 63 year ago, a US B-29 bomber dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima this date. 140,000 people lost their lives. Every year there is a ceremony near ground zero to remember the people who died in 1945."


Death of NINE people a year ago before the death of 140,000 people!!! wow!

 

[Foozee]

its soo sad man..... its not somethhing the world media really touches more on because it is controlled by the americans.... they sympathise so much on the holocaust as if it was the worst thing to happen in history.... IMO this is worse

 

[iZeeshan]

This is a day of celebration in the 'Civilised West'.

You really hate the US don't you?

 

[Mohsin]

August 6th- Terrible terrible day, just pray nothing similer happens ever











August 7th...................great day, one Mohsin comes into this world

 

[McBoom]

You really hate the US don't you?

Who doesn't ?

 

[TruSachFan]

sad its on my birthday

 

[Oxy]

You really hate the US don't you?

Who said anything about the USA?

I specifically stated the 'West'

No minutes of silence....no wall to wall news coverage of this 'tragedy'.

The part of the 'Civilised West' that I live in has only discussed this 'tragedy' as a neccessary action!!!!

 

[Informer]

[utube]_rHrV2QhArA[/utube]

I cannot believe that the Japanese are sent troops to Iraq to support a nation that has committed this heinous crime against them

 

[kablooee87]

I have always wondered what it would feel like to be the man that dropped that bomb. Or what it would feel like to be the man who ordered that drop.

 

[Momo]

I have always wondered what it would feel like to be the man that dropped that bomb. Or what it would feel like to be the man who ordered that drop.

The man who dropped the bomb: Col. Paul Tibbets
The man who ordered the drop: President Harry Truman

To my best knowledge, both remained pretty unrepentent till the end.

 

[kablooee87]

2 quotes regarding the bombings really struck me:

"Mechanized civilization has just reached the ultimate stage of barbarism." - Albert Camus, in the newspaper 'Combat'

and

"Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?" - Einstein/Szilard letter to Roosevelt

 

[PlanetPakistan]

I have alwabys wondered what it would feel like to be the man that dropped that bom. Or what it would feel like to be the man who ordered that drop.

he died recently
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tibbets

I am surprised that he didn't have any serious mental issues for the rest of his life.

 

[kingusama92]

just thinking about it disgusts me... I mean to what level do you have to stoop to drop a nuclear warhead on such a populated city. So many innocents losing their lives... it's absolutely mind boggling that they didn't even hesitate before doing it.

 

[switchblade]

I know am gonna draw some criticism here, but the Japanese deserved it at that time.

They had surpassed all norms of brutality and committed unspeakable atrocities on their conquered people. Probably the most cruel war time atrocities ever committed on civilians were done by japanese army on chinese and south east asian people. Read about UNIT 731 - the tortures they did on civilians of countries they conquered were faaaaaaaaaar worse than Nazi atrocities, worse than anything you could ever conceive.

If US hadnt bombed Japan, war would have continued for another few years. And with the way Japanese were fighting, they would have killed a few more million people in Asia, and taken another half a million women as sex slaves, brutally tortured and experimented on a few hundred thousands more as well. Nuking japan had the immediate affect of putting an end to all atrocities.

Heres a partial list of their atrocities, in a torture camp known as Unit 731:

* Prisoners of war were subjected to live vivisections without anesthesia.

* Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Scientists performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was feared that the decomposition process would affect the results.

* The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants.

* Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the fetus removed.

* Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.

* Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body.

* Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.

* Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines.

* Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.

* Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions.

* Flame throwers were tested on humans.

* Humans were tied to stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons and explosive bombs.

* Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects.

* To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied.

* Prisoners were infested with fleas in order to acquire large quantities of disease-carrying fleas for the purposes of studying the viability of germ warfare.

* Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 200,000 Chinese civilians.

Some other noble deeds of Japanese include making prisoners :

* hang upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to death.

* having air injected into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism.

* having horse urine injected into their kidneys.

* being deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death.

* being placed into high-pressure chambers until death.

* being exposed to extreme temperatures and developed frostbite to determine how long humans could survive with such an affliction, and to determine the effects of rotting and gangrene on human flesh.

* having experiments performed upon prisoners to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival.

* being placed into centrifuges and spun until dead.

* having animal blood injected and the effects studied.

* being exposed to lethal doses of x-ray radiation.

* having various chemical weapons tested on prisoners inside gas chambers.

* being injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline.

And all this was done at just ONE of the hundreds of facilities operating all over Asia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Activities

In total, the Japanese army murdered over 10 million civilians from Asia, US, western europe and australia (of which 6 million were Chinese) up till they got nuked..

And dont forget the 1 million comfort women, that were nothing more than teenage girls who were forcibly taken into sexual slavery and killed until they got pregnant.

They went beyond all norms of human savagery, used indiscriminate chemical, biological weapons, performed tortures that were unheard of.... and hopefully should never be emulated by any country.

I bet thats why to this day, most Chinese and several Americans old enough to remember the war dont regret what happened... and say its a good thing those savages got nuked.

 

[Khabri420]

mate, regardless, dropping an atomic bomb cannot be justified. If we follow your reasoning, we'd have atomic bombs going off all the time...

nevertheless, this was one of the saddest day in history...an event that has left its negative effects till date..

I know am gonna draw some criticism here, but the Japanese deserved it at that time.

They had surpassed all norms of brutality and committed unspeakable atrocities on their conquered people. Probably the most cruel war time atrocities ever committed on civilians were done by japanese army on chinese and south east asian people. Read about UNIT 731 - the tortures they did on civilians of countries they conquered were faaaaaaaaaar worse than Nazi atrocities, worse than anything you could ever conceive.

If US hadnt bombed Japan, war would have continued for another few years. And with the way Japanese were fighting, they would have killed a few more million people in Asia, and taken another half a million women as sex slaves, brutally tortured and experimented on a few hundred thousands more as well. Nuking japan had the immediate affect of putting an end to all atrocities.

Heres a partial list of their atrocities, in a torture camp known as Unit 731:

* Prisoners of war were subjected to live vivisections without anesthesia.

* Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Scientists performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was feared that the decomposition process would affect the results.

* The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants.

* Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the fetus removed.

* Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.

* Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body.

* Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.

* Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines.

* Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.

* Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions.

* Flame throwers were tested on humans.

* Humans were tied to stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons and explosive bombs.

* Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects.

* To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied.

* Prisoners were infested with fleas in order to acquire large quantities of disease-carrying fleas for the purposes of studying the viability of germ warfare.

* Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 200,000 Chinese civilians.

Some other noble deeds of Japanese include making prisoners :

* hang upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to death.

* having air injected into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism.

* having horse urine injected into their kidneys.

* being deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death.

* being placed into high-pressure chambers until death.

* being exposed to extreme temperatures and developed frostbite to determine how long humans could survive with such an affliction, and to determine the effects of rotting and gangrene on human flesh.

* having experiments performed upon prisoners to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival.

* being placed into centrifuges and spun until dead.

* having animal blood injected and the effects studied.

* being exposed to lethal doses of x-ray radiation.

* having various chemical weapons tested on prisoners inside gas chambers.

* being injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline.

And all this was done at just ONE of the hundreds of facilities operating all over Asia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Activities

In total, the Japanese army murdered over 10 million civilians from Asia, US, western europe and australia (of which 6 million were Chinese) up till they got nuked..

And dont forget the 1 million comfort women, that were nothing more than teenage girls who were forcibly taken into sexual slavery and killed until they got pregnant.

They went beyond all norms of human savagery, used indiscriminate chemical, biological weapons, performed tortures that were unheard of.... and hopefully should never be emulated by any country.

I bet thats why to this day, most Chinese and several Americans old enough to remember the war dont regret what happened... and say its a good thing those savages got nuked.

 

[switchblade]

mate, regardless, dropping an atomic bomb cannot be justified. If we follow your reasoning, we'd have atomic bombs going off all the time...

nevertheless, this was one of the saddest day in history...an event that has left its negative effects till date..

Taking 200,000 Japanese civilians lives saved at least 1 million non-Japanese lives and put an end to the most brutal war culture of this planet.

I'm no Chinese or American supporter, but I do think US did the right thing at that time as it brought an end to the ruthless and inhuman Japanese behavior during WW-II and had a positive result on Japan as they ended up building their nation as a peaceful, well respected economic world power than a loathsome military minded bunch of savages.

Well, if you still have moral qualms, think about these people for a sec:

http://www.charonboat.com/cgi-bin/ItemView.cgi?id=134

http://www.charonboat.com/cgi-bin/ItemView.cgi?id=133

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/Unit731S.jpg

http://www.hauntedamericatours.com/toptenhaunted/hauntedworld/images/Unit_731.jpg

Not nazis, soviets, did any sick stuff like these people.. it is said that the doctors at UNIT 731 used to go on their job laughing and thoroughly enjoying their work of carrying live vivisections and other sick stuff. And thats just ONE of the hundreds of places where their atrocities came out.. shudder to think what atrocities they did in Indo-china and rest of asia.

 

[PlanetPakistan]

I know am gonna draw some criticism here, but the Japanese deserved it at that time.
.

I understand your point but i am sure you will appreciate that NONE of the Japanese civilians deserved this treatment. As i hinted in the OP that you can probably justify US's decision to bomb Hiroshima but there was no need to bomb Nagasaki because the Soviets would have taken care of the Japanese.

 

[Momo]

Taking 200,000 Japanese civilians lives saved at least 1 million non-Japanese lives and put an end to the most brutal war culture of this planet.

I won't argue with your case that Japanese were the most brutal colonisers of the early part of 20th century, and their treatment of war-prisoners and foreign populations was attrocious; because you are absolutely right.

However, make no mistake about this: the Americans are not and never were notorious for basing their decisions on concern for loss of civilian lives (What they did with Vietnam and Combodia is enough to understand this, and the fact that they pulled out of Vietnam not because of civilian casualties but because the war became unpopular at home. Iraq and Afghanistan are modern day examples, and John McCain said only the other day that withdrawing from Iraq was dependent only on the loss of American troops' lives).

The decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have been reached because of a combination of saving more american troops' lives (which would have occured in case of invading the mainland), sending a message to the world about US power, keeping Soviet forces out of Japan, and a desire to end the war quickly in style; but I doubt it had anything to do with saving asian civilian life.

 

[switchblade]

The man who dropped the bomb: Col. Paul Tibbets
The man who ordered the drop: President Harry Truman

To my best knowledge, both remained pretty unrepentent till the end.

Dont judge them so hastily.. the Americans had reports of Japanese atrocities by then that had convinced them thoroughly that something very drastic and terrifying had to be unleashed or else the inhumanly savage Japanese war culture would not stop.

My Chinese friend is from Nanjing province and he approves of Japan being nuked as it was necessary to stop the war.. In Nanjing, 300,000 - 1 million civilians were slaughtered in 5-6 weeks in horrifying fashion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East stated that 20,000 women were raped, including infants and the elderly.

Rapes were often performed in public during the day, sometimes in front of spouses or family members that were tied up and forced to watch. A large number of them were systematized in a process where soldiers would search door-to-door for young girls, with many women taken captive and gang raped.

The women were often then killed immediately after the rape, often through mutilation, including breasts being cut off; or stabbing by bamboo (usually very long sticks), bayonet, butcher's knife and other objects into the vagina.

Often, Japanese soldiers cut off the breasts, impaled the women with bayonets until the blade protruded out of the back, disemboweled them, or in the case of pregnant women, cut open the uterus, removed the fetus.

Witnesses recall Japanese soldiers throwing babies into the air and catching them with their bayonets. Pregnant women were often the target of murder, as they would often be bayoneted in the belly, sometimes after rape.

Other women were forced into military prostitution as comfort women. There are also claims of Japanese troops forcing families to commit acts of incest. It has been claimed that sons were forced to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape daughters.

========

It was a sick, sick culture and something drastic and terrifying was need to stop it - and the A-bomb was just the right thing at that time.

Of course, now we have the comfort to judge USA and act all morally high from the luxory of our homes about how barbaric US behaved and all.. but I bet a few million victims of Japanese war culture would have thanked US for doing what it did.

 

[moumotta]

Chinese will approve of anything against Japanese. Treat it with caution.

 

[switchblade]

I won't argue with your case that Japanese were the most brutal colonisers of the early part of 20th century, and their treatment of war-prisoners and foreign populations was attrocious; because you are absolutely right.

However, make no mistake about this: the Americans are not and never were notorious for basing their decisions on concern for loss of civilian lives (What they did with Vietnam and Combodia is enough to understand this, and the fact that they pulled out of Vietnam not because of civilian casualties but because the war became unpopular at home. Iraq and Afghanistan are modern day examples, and John McCain said only the other day that withdrawing from Iraq was dependent only on the loss of American troops' lives).

The decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have been reached because of a combination of saving more american troops' lives (which would have occured in case of invading the mainland), sending a message to the world about US power, keeping Soviet forces out of Japan, and a desire to end the war quickly in style; but I doubt it had anything to do with saving asian civilian life.

Yes, I agree 100%. US nuke decision was based on ending the war with minimal casualties to their own people. But whatever be the reasons, but it put a halt to Japanese war machine and immediately ended the war.

 

[switchblade]

Chinese will approve of anything against Japanese. Treat it with caution.

Chinese govt still uses Nanjing and UNIT 731 as rallying points for anti-Japanese sentiment.. of course, thats BS.

Modern day Japanese are not responsible for this, just like modern day Germans are not responsible for holocaust.

 

[Oxy]

I know am gonna draw some criticism here, but the Japanese deserved it at that time.

They had surpassed all norms of brutality and committed unspeakable atrocities on their conquered people. Probably the most cruel war time atrocities ever committed on civilians were done by japanese army on chinese and south east asian people. Read about UNIT 731 - the tortures they did on civilians of countries they conquered were faaaaaaaaaar worse than Nazi atrocities, worse than anything you could ever conceive.

If US hadnt bombed Japan, war would have continued for another few years. And with the way Japanese were fighting, they would have killed a few more million people in Asia, and taken another half a million women as sex slaves, brutally tortured and experimented on a few hundred thousands more as well. Nuking japan had the immediate affect of putting an end to all atrocities.

Heres a partial list of their atrocities, in a torture camp known as Unit 731:

* Prisoners of war were subjected to live vivisections without anesthesia.

* Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Scientists performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was feared that the decomposition process would affect the results.

* The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants.

* Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the fetus removed.

* Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.

* Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body.

* Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.

* Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines.

* Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.

* Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions.

* Flame throwers were tested on humans.

* Humans were tied to stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons and explosive bombs.

* Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects.

* To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied.

* Prisoners were infested with fleas in order to acquire large quantities of disease-carrying fleas for the purposes of studying the viability of germ warfare.

* Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 200,000 Chinese civilians.

Some other noble deeds of Japanese include making prisoners :

* hang upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to death.

* having air injected into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism.

* having horse urine injected into their kidneys.

* being deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death.

* being placed into high-pressure chambers until death.

* being exposed to extreme temperatures and developed frostbite to determine how long humans could survive with such an affliction, and to determine the effects of rotting and gangrene on human flesh.

* having experiments performed upon prisoners to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival.

* being placed into centrifuges and spun until dead.

* having animal blood injected and the effects studied.

* being exposed to lethal doses of x-ray radiation.

* having various chemical weapons tested on prisoners inside gas chambers.

* being injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline.

And all this was done at just ONE of the hundreds of facilities operating all over Asia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731#Activities

In total, the Japanese army murdered over 10 million civilians from Asia, US, western europe and australia (of which 6 million were Chinese) up till they got nuked..

And dont forget the 1 million comfort women, that were nothing more than teenage girls who were forcibly taken into sexual slavery and killed until they got pregnant.

They went beyond all norms of human savagery, used indiscriminate chemical, biological weapons, performed tortures that were unheard of.... and hopefully should never be emulated by any country.

I bet thats why to this day, most Chinese and several Americans old enough to remember the war dont regret what happened... and say its a good thing those savages got nuked.

SO why didnt 'we' drop atmomic bombs on Australia - they were known to be carrying ot human experiments on Aboriginies????

You are advocating a form of arbitary justice as implemented by the Zionists in Israel!!! They arrest & torture the totally innocent relatives of 'suspected' terrorists!

They be;ive its OK to kill a group of 99 innocent women & children with a missile attack if it might lead to killing 1 suspect!!!

 

[DHONI183]

[utube]_rHrV2QhArA[/utube]

I cannot believe that the Japanese are sent troops to Iraq to support a nation that has committed this heinous crime against them

Believe me....... I´m in tears .........

 

[the_best]

swithchblade brother,
you were duped. Japan was preparing to surrender after ijima. The nuclear one just move the date a week at best further. The second one this was a cold blooded murder. Do you know during WWII - Hiroshima, Nagasaki and another town (probably Sendagi/Sendai was not seriously bombed by US force) to test the ferocity of the power of bomb. And no amount of Japanese atrocacy should justify bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then Pakistan and India (both have nuclear weapon) should nuke UK for their atrocracy in Indian Subcontinent. Like Jews Holocast Card, Chinese has their Nunjing card. How many time you have heard about british atrocarcy during opium war; Or Europeans amy conducted shabby treatment of the Romanies (popularly known as gypsies).

 

[Indiafan]

It was going to happen once anyway. The magnitude and the scale of the aftermath has acted as a deterrant. if hiroshima had not happened, perhaps on a later day, a more powerful(perhaps Hydrogen bomb) might have been used on another country with worse effect.

 

[PlanetPakistan]

It was going to happen once anyway. The magnitude and the scale of the aftermath has acted as a deterrant. if hiroshima had not happened, perhaps on a later day, a more powerful(perhaps Hydrogen bomb) might have been used on another country with worse effect.

......but it happened twice!

 

[switchblade]

SO why didnt 'we' drop atmomic bombs on Australia - they were known to be carrying ot human experiments on Aboriginies????

You are advocating a form of arbitary justice as implemented by the Zionists in Israel!!! They arrest & torture the totally innocent relatives of 'suspected' terrorists!

They be;ive its OK to kill a group of 99 innocent women & children with a missile attack if it might lead to killing 1 suspect!!!

If the Aussies were at war with Polynesia and aborigines, and Polynesians nuked Aussies for their own reasons that helped put an end to the extermination of Aborigines, would you still frown up on Polynesia rather than be glad that it helped stop the genocide ?

Furthermore, you cannot compare what Israel is doing with Japanese atrocities in China and south asia. They are doing horrible crimes like denying them a homeland and racial segregation, but they are not:

1. Taking millions of palestinian girls as comfort women
2. Using chemical, biological weapons on palestinians
3. No sign of any torture camp modelled on UNIT 731 exists.

Even white supremacists never did such things to blacks as Japanese did to Asia.

 

[Keith]

Dont judge them so hastily.. the Americans had reports of Japanese atrocities by then that had convinced them thoroughly that something very drastic and terrifying had to be unleashed or else the inhumanly savage Japanese war culture would not stop.

The americans are very good at convincing themselves of anything. I mean the the huge cache of weapons of mass destruction found in iraq shows this.

 

[Momo]

The americans are very good at convincing themselves of anything. I mean the the huge cache of weapons of mass destruction found in iraq shows this.

Well said Keith. The Americans have always been masters of weapons of mass deception.

 

[laz]

At least switchblade shows some common sense .The rest is top quality garbage which is pathetic at best

 

[DHONI183]

I have a question by the way, did they drop the bomb after announcing it or not? I mean, did the people living in Japan knew about what was to strike?

 

[McBoom]

I have a question by the way, did they drop the bomb after announcing it or not? I mean, did the people living in Japan knew about what was to strike?

What do you think?

 

[Momo]

I have a question by the way, did they drop the bomb after announcing it or not? I mean, did the people living in Japan knew about what was to strike?

Doesn't make much difference whether or not people knew what was going to strike. That's because people (even if they know everything) are in no position to do anything about it. All the decisions are in the hands of the government. So dropping all those leaflets (even if they were dropped) was a useless act, and takes nothing away from the barbarity displayed.

 

[switchblade]

You know, you will find more Americans criticizing the usage of nuke weapons against Japan than any Asian country. Especially in modern times since Japan is such a good ally of US, people find it hard to believe that they were once such a loathesome military power that terrorized a majority of world's population so cruelly.

However, most Chinese, filipinoes to this day will overwhelmingly say its a good thing that Japan got nuked to end the war.

So I really dont see how you can use the A-bomb as an anti-American rallying point or example of US barbarianism, since its a majority of Chinese and other asian victims of Japan who endorse it, not Americans (barring a few nationalist variety).

And after reading about the actions of the Japanese, I dont blame the Chinese on this particular issue. Trust me, if someone did a UNIT 731 to my hometown, I would be mighty as well.

 

[switchblade]

The americans are very good at convincing themselves of anything. I mean the the huge cache of weapons of mass destruction found in iraq shows this.

Dont dismiss every action of Americans as barbaric, aggressive, etc just becoz of a few serious foreign policy disasters they had recently. Even a broken clock is right twice (once if its a 24 hour clock) a day.

 

[Gonzo]

Who said anything about the USA?

I specifically stated the 'West'

No minutes of silence....no wall to wall news coverage of this 'tragedy'.

The part of the 'Civilised West' that I live in has only discussed this 'tragedy' as a neccessary action!!!!

It was. Had the A-bomb not been used, the US would have been forced to enact Operation Olympic (the invasion of Japan). The projected casualties for this invasion would have been between 450,000 and 500,000 US casualties with Japanese between 580,000 and 630,000. Now, had this failed (which it most likely would have given the total Japanese mobilisation of the island), the US plans were to switch to a strategy of blocakde and bombardment. This would have meant the systematic destruction of Japanese infrastructure such as railroads, roads, waterways etc. The effect on the rice harvest would have been catastrophic. Rice production was at 10 million tons in 1942 and fell to 6.3 million in 1945, with a sustained American bomber offensive things would have got even worse. In May 1946 the food ration for Tokyo was at 1042 calories per day, and that was in peacetime. Tokyo depended on 97% of it's food from outside the city, so by spring 1946 if Japan was still at war, millions would be dying of starvation. And let's not even bring the Soviet Union into this, if the war had dragged on into '46 a Russian invasion of Japan would have happened, meaning a 2nd Germany during the cold war and a 2nd Berlin in Tokyo. Another cold war flashopint in Japan could have meant nuclear annihalation altogether.

 

[Momo]

It was. Had the A-bomb not been used, the US would have been forced to enact Operation Olympic (the invasion of Japan). The projected casualties for this invasion would have been between 450,000 and 500,000 US casualties with Japanese between 580,000 and 630,000. Now, had this failed (which it most likely would have given the total Japanese mobilisation of the island), the US plans were to switch to a strategy of blocakde and bombardment. This would have meant the systematic destruction of Japanese infrastructure such as railroads, roads, waterways etc. The effect on the rice harvest would have been catastrophic. Rice production was at 10 million tons in 1942 and fell to 6.3 million in 1945, with a sustained American bomber offensive things would have got even worse. In May 1946 the food ration for Tokyo was at 1042 calories per day, and that was in peacetime. Tokyo depended on 97% of it's food from outside the city, so by spring 1946 if Japan was still at war, millions would be dying of starvation. And let's not even bring the Soviet Union into this, if the war had dragged on into '46 a Russian invasion of Japan would have happened, meaning a 2nd Germany during the cold war and a 2nd Berlin in Tokyo. Another cold war flashopint in Japan could have meant nuclear annihalation altogether.

The two bolded portions are the only two considerations that went into the decision for dropping the bombs. The rest is quite irrelevent (the US doesnt give a damn about the infrastructure of other countries). See #26 above.

 

[Robert]

It was. Had the A-bomb not been used, the US would have been forced to enact Operation Olympic (the invasion of Japan). The projected casualties for this invasion would have been between 450,000 and 500,000 US casualties with Japanese between 580,000 and 630,000. Now, had this failed (which it most likely would have given the total Japanese mobilisation of the island), the US plans were to switch to a strategy of blocakde and bombardment. This would have meant the systematic destruction of Japanese infrastructure such as railroads, roads, waterways etc. The effect on the rice harvest would have been catastrophic. Rice production was at 10 million tons in 1942 and fell to 6.3 million in 1945, with a sustained American bomber offensive things would have got even worse. In May 1946 the food ration for Tokyo was at 1042 calories per day, and that was in peacetime. Tokyo depended on 97% of it's food from outside the city, so by spring 1946 if Japan was still at war, millions would be dying of starvation. And let's not even bring the Soviet Union into this, if the war had dragged on into '46 a Russian invasion of Japan would have happened, meaning a 2nd Germany during the cold war and a 2nd Berlin in Tokyo. Another cold war flashopint in Japan could have meant nuclear annihalation altogether.

Here you have it, really. Let's face this unpalatable truth: the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks saved millions of Japanese lives. When faced with death on that potential scale, the moral arguments collapse and you may as well use the utilitarian approach.

 

[Gonzo]

The two bolded portions are the only two considerations that went into the decision for dropping the bombs. The rest is quite irrelevent (the US doesnt give a damn about the infrastructure of other countries). See #26 above.

You're right, but it is all irrelevent to my point. I was defending the decision to drop the bomb in the first place, not the thought process of the American leadership.

 

[Keith]

the thought process of the American leadership.

An oxymoron of the highest quality

 

[Keith]

At least switchblade shows some common sense .The rest is top quality garbage which is pathetic at best

Just because views differ, does not make you nor me right nor wrong.

This quoted reply above was utter garbage and should be forwarded to the recycle bin. he he, see what is meant about viewpoints?

Then again, a large percentage of asian men have beards therefore OBVIOUSLY most must be terrorists.

I live in africa and OBVIOUSLY we have wild animals running around our gravel roads. What was that? Oh no, an elephant just crapped on my veggie patch outside. Better jump on my vine and zoom through to the local witch doctor to report it. Hope no lions get me on the way.

 

[Momo]

You're right, but it is all irrelevent to my point. I was defending the decision to drop the bomb in the first place, not the thought process of the American leadership.

I was criticising the decision to drop the bomb on the basis of those two reasons on a moral basis (I refuse to accept that loss of japanese life, infrastructure, or rice production were considered while taking the decision). Now, I realize that empires don't operate on moral principles, and U.S. is not the first empire to operate on might-is-right principle.

 

[DHONI183]

Doesn't make much difference whether or not people knew what was going to strike. That's because people (even if they know everything) are in no position to do anything about it. All the decisions are in the hands of the government. So dropping all those leaflets (even if they were dropped) was a useless act, and takes nothing away from the barbarity displayed.

That´s alright Momo. I was just interested in knowing it.

 

[Robert]

I realize that empires don't operate on moral principles,

Of course not. Every major power in WW2 committed atrocities. It was total war and the concept or morality was suspended. The only thing that counted was hurting the other empires so badly as to eliminate their capacity to make war.

 

[Braveheart]

This day 63 years ago.

Close to 140,000 innocent civilians blown away. Many more were killed in days, months, years and decades after the bombs on Hiroshima(AUG 6 1945) and Nagasaki(Aug 9). IMO the second bomb on Nagasaki was completely unnecessary and was possible a move to keep the communist Soviets out of Japan(they were planning on attacking Japan and were not getting along with the Western "allies")


Lets pray for the folks who lost their lives and hope that such a thing NEVER happens again.

The worst act of Terrorism the world has ever seen.
The USA must be constantly reminded of this, and never let them forget it.

 

[hussein]

64 years ago now... hope it never happens again

 

[hasanb]

The part of the 'Civilised West' that I live in has only discussed this 'tragedy' as a neccessary action!!!!

A necessary action to protect the lives of a few thousand american soldiers....pathetic

 

[Wassixpakistani]

This is one of my strongest reasons of hatred against America .

 

[kablooee87]

For a moment, look past the what's truly important and think about the mindset of Truman and Co. who carried out this atrocity.

- Military commanders advised Truman that the Japanese were near collapse already

- Scientists wanted to drop the bomb in a desolate patch of ocean to minimize civilian casualties but this option was seen as not dramatic enough and wouldn't send as strong a message

- A military base was NOT targeted as the anti aircraft fire posed too great a risk

 

[DHONI183]

Bump!

What a sad day in history of mankind it was........

 

[shahrukh619]

Saved alot of money from a nuclear weapon. It said that if there is ever going to be a WW3 it will mostlikely be a nuclear war.

 

[ZenBowman]

Hard for me to feel sorry for 1945 Japan after I read about what they did to the Chinese, they were absolute animals at the time and had the vast support of their populace, who believed that it was their destiny to rule over others.

 

[kkmix]

Very sad day indeed. What's worse is that it is barely discussed or talked about here in the 'west'.

However, it is amusing to see that the only nation that has ever used nuclear weapons, accompanied by other nations that have the largest stockpiles of such weapons, is so "concerned" about the next nuclear attack coming from one third world country or the other.

valid point ... hypocrisy at its best.

 

[Looney]

unbelievable what power can do to us

 

[DHONI183]

Hard for me to feel sorry for 1945 Japan after I read about what they did to the Chinese, they were absolute animals at the time and had the vast support of their populace, who believed that it was their destiny to rule over others.

How sure are you that every citizen of Hiroshima and Nagasaki supported the cause of their rulers? However, the bomb targetted everyone of their citizens including innocent children.

 

[DHONI183]

Very sad day indeed. What's worse is that it is barely discussed or talked about here in the 'west'.

The German literature (at schools etc.) is very clear on this inhumane act of the American forces.

 

[OZGOD]

This day 63 years ago.

Close to 140,000 innocent civilians blown away. Many more were killed in days, months, years and decades after the bombs on Hiroshima(AUG 6 1945) and Nagasaki(Aug 9). IMO the second bomb on Nagasaki was completely unnecessary and was possible a move to keep the communist Soviets out of Japan(they were planning on attacking Japan and were not getting along with the Western "allies")


Lets pray for the folks who lost their lives and hope that such a thing NEVER happens again.

Agree. We should also add the firebombing of Tokyo on Feb 9-10 1945.

The first raid using low-flying B-29s carrying incendiary bombs to drop on Tokyo was in February 1945 when 174 B-29s destroyed around one square mile (3 km²) of the city.[citation needed] Changing their tactics to expand the coverage and increase the damage, 335 B-29s took off[3] to raid on the night of 9–10 March, with 279 of them[3] dropping around 1,700 tons of bombs. Fourteen B-29s were lost.[3] Approximately 16 square miles (41 km²) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting firestorm, more than the immediate deaths of either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic bombs.[4][5] The US Strategic Bombing Survey later estimated that nearly 88,000 people died in this one raid, 41,000 were injured, and over a million residents lost their homes. The Tokyo Fire Department estimated a higher toll: 97,000 killed and 125,000 wounded. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department established a figure of 124,711 casualties including both killed and wounded and 286,358 buildings and homes destroyed. Richard Rhodes, historian, put deaths at over 100,000, injuries at a million and homeless residents at a million.[6]

The destruction and damage were greatest in the parts of the city to the east of the Imperial Palace.[citation needed] Over 50% of Tokyo was destroyed by the end of World War II.[citation needed] The firebombing of Tokyo was the deadliest air raid of World War II;[8] greater than Dresden,[9] Hiroshima, or Nagasaki as single events.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

As well as the indiscriminate bombing of London, of Dresden, of Berlin and other cities during the war. I guess in their defence they didn't have these newfangled smart bombs back then eh.

 

[ElRaja]

although this was a terrible act to commit against civilians, the defeat of the japanese empire is one of the greatest things that happened to man kind.

i have read a lot about the attitude of the japanese of that time with respect to other groups of people and hw they treated war criminals, etc and let me just say i was relieved to find out a few years ago that my grandfather died fighting against them for the british and was not made a pow, for the fate of pow was often worse and usually resulted in death anyway.

i do not agree with the bombing but i can never have any remorse for that japanese regime and their agenda. its all well and good to hate america if thats how you feel, but you cannot tar every action they have taken hsitorically with you opinion of them now.

if it wasnt for american assistance in wwII winning the war would have been much more difficult and had the west have lost that war we would live in a much worse world than we do today.

for all the things i disagree with about america i will always respect their contribution in defeating germany, japan and the rest of the axis forces during ww2.

 

[Markhor]

Imperial Japan had meted out immense brutality and were not willing to back down.

Attitudes towards the Japanese had hardened following the liberation of the Allied POW camps.There were many accounts of horrific conditions and barbaric treatment.

There are Chinese miners who were butchered and brutalised under the Japanese occupation.

There are accounts of miners having to drink water from the bottom of the dreadful coal pits,having their legs and arms tied and being carried away and kicked down a hole where wild dogs were waiting down there,biting and tearing the bodies to pieces.

My grandfather fought the Japanese in Burma in WWII and can vouch for Japanese atrocities.

One year earlier there would have been no choice for the Allies - to win the war the President would have had to order his forces to press on island by island.In June 1945 there was a choice.Truman had met his military advisers asking what to expect from an invasion of the Japanese mainland.They estimated at least 220,000 casualties in a campaign that would last well into 1946.And that was just on the Allied side,the costs to Japanese civilians themselves would have been terrible too.

Many Japanese soldiers committed suicide and chose death rather than surrender and opt for a peaceful negotiation to the end of the conflict.

After the Nagasaki bomb,some of the military leaders attempted to overthrow Emperor Hirohito and continue the war.

 

[ElRaja]

Imperial Japan had meted out immense brutality and were not willing to back down.

Attitudes towards the Japanese had hardened following the liberation of the Allied POW camps.There were many accounts of horrific conditions and barbaric treatment.

There are Chinese miners who were butchered and brutalised under the Japanese occupation.

There are accounts of miners having to drink water from the bottom of the dreadful coal pits,having their legs and arms tied and being carried away and kicked down a hole where wild dogs were waiting down there,biting and tearing the bodies to pieces.

My grandfather fought the Japanese in Burma in WWII and can vouch for Japanese atrocities.

One year earlier there would have been no choice for the Allies - to win the war the President would have had to order his forces to press on island by island.In June 1945 there was a choice.Truman had met his military advisers asking what to expect from an invasion of the Japanese mainland.They estimated at least 220,000 casualties in a campaign that would last well into 1946.And that was just on the Allied side,the costs to Japanese civilians themselves would have been terrible too.

Many Japanese soldiers committed suicide and chose death rather than surrender and opt for a peaceful negotiation to the end of the conflict.

After the Nagasaki bomb,some of the military leaders attempted to overthrow Emperor Hirohito and continue the war.

its nice to find someone else who has a connection to the war, unfortunately my grand father died fighting on the thai malay border.

i only found out about it after accidently clicking on a link to a war memorial because i was trying to find my village on google maps, lols.

do you know what regiment your grandfather was in, mine was in 3/16 punjab regiment.

no one in my family knew what happened to him until two or three years ago, when i found out.

 

[Markhor]

I don't know,I'll ask my dad - My grandfather (my father's father) died in the 1980s (I think he was blinded in one eye during the war) and haven't really asked my father about it,but I would love to find out more,might ask my father to dig out some pictures or certificates but he died in Pakistan so I don't know if they are still there.

 

[ElRaja]

I don't know,I'll ask my dad - My grandfather (my father's father) died in the 1980s (I think he was blinded in one eye during the war) and haven't really asked my father about it,but I would love to find out more,might ask my father to dig out some pictures or certificates but he died in Pakistan so I don't know if they are still there.

yeah its really interesting once you start researching it. i went through lots of old diary entries on the internet of the guy in command of 3/16 the day my grandfather died, and in a day i pretty much formed a complete picture of what happened on that day.

i told my dad about it and he was astounded that i found in a day what his whole family had been trying to find out for the best part of 65 years.

i guess thats what they call serendipity. one thing i want to do is to go to singapore with my dad where the war memorial is. its the only remnant of my grand dad, and its on the other side of the world, lols.

 

[Kean0]

A day of shame from the past for the USA: Hiroshima

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33792789

The article credits this bombing as the reason for bringing the World War to an end.

This is the nation which now goes around telling others not to have nuclear weapons.

Rest in peace all the 270,000 people who were killed.

 

[Sidilicious]

I kind of agree with the article. More than 270,000 would have been killed had the war gone on longer.

I dont agree with using a nuclear weapon, but you cannot blame the USA of 1945 for their effort in reducing nuclear weapons proliferation. Any usage of the nuclear weapon will be catastrophic even if it is limited to a particular region.

 

[Robert]

Rest in peace all the 270,000 people who were killed.

270,000 is a small fraction of the number that would have died if the war had gone on for another year.

After Iwo Jima, a military invasion of the Japanese mainland was projected to have cost 1,000,000 US troops. The number of Japanese military casualties would be similar, and the potential civilian death toll unthinkable.

The alternative was for the USN to blockade the ports and starve the Japanese into surrendering, but how many civilian deaths was Hirohito prepared to accept? Better to give him the option to surrender honourably to the new technological terror, and end the killing.

 

[Robert]

These "what if" scenarios are fascinating.

If Operation Overlord had failed, Nazi Germany would have had another year. They would probably have perfected an atomic weapon, and they had an SRBM to load it into.

London would have been wiped off the map in 1946, then Moscow.

 

[Navdeep Srivastava]

These "what if" scenarios are fascinating.

If Operation Overlord had failed, Nazi Germany would have had another year. They would probably have perfected an atomic weapon, and they had an SRBM to load it into.

London would have been wiped off the map in 1946, then Moscow.

Yep you are absolutely correct, people have the tendency of forgetting atrocities committed by Japan and Germany and the people died in the bomb attack was very small fraction( I know its suck) . Japan was ready for anything and easily another million or two have died.

 

[KingKhanWC]

270,000 is a small fraction of the number that would have died if the war had gone on for another year.

After Iwo Jima, a military invasion of the Japanese mainland was projected to have cost 1,000,000 US troops. The number of Japanese military casualties would be similar, and the potential civilian death toll unthinkable.

The alternative was for the USN to blockade the ports and starve the Japanese into surrendering, but how many civilian deaths was Hirohito prepared to accept? Better to give him the option to surrender honourably to the new technological terror, and end the killing.

Complete nonsense.

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that concluded (52-56):

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

General (and later president) Dwight Eisenhower – then Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces, and the officer who created most of America’s WWII military plans for Europe and Japan – said:

The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.

Newsweek, 11/11/63, Ike on Ike

Eisenhower also noted (pg. 380):

In [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude….

Admiral William Leahy – the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American military decisions in World War II – wrote (pg. 441):

It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

General Douglas MacArthur agreed (pg. 65, 70-71):

MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed …. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.

Moreover (pg. 512):

The Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face ‘prompt and utter destruction.’ MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General’s advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary.

Similarly, Assistant Secretary of War John McLoy noted (pg. 500):

I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs.

Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bird said:

I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted.

***

In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn’t have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb.

War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.

He also noted (pg. 144-145, 324):

It definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn’t get any imports and they couldn’t export anything. Naturally, as time went on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would then be in a position to make peace, which would have made it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had to bring Russia in.

General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force “hawk,” stated publicly shortly before the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan:

The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

The Vice Chairman of the U.S. Bombing Survey Paul Nitze wrote (pg. 36-37, 44-45):

concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945.

***

Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for November 1, 1945] would have been necessary.

Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence Ellis Zacharias wrote:

Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia.

Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.

I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.

Ellis Zacharias, How We Bungled the Japanese Surrender, Look, 6/6/50, pg. 19-21.

Brigadier General Carter Clarke – the military intelligence officer in charge of preparing summaries of intercepted Japanese cables for President Truman and his advisors – said (pg. 359):

When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.

Many other high-level military officers concurred. For example:

The commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was reported to have said in a press conference on September 22, 1945, that “The Admiral took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russia’s entry into the war.” In a subsequent speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.” It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s assessment was “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.” Eisenhower also stated that it wasn’t necessary for Truman to “succumb” to [the tiny handful of people putting pressure on the president to drop atom bombs on Japan.]

British officers were of the same mind. For example, General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, said to Prime Minister Churchill that “when Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.”

On hearing that the atomic test was successful, Ismay’s private reaction was one of “revulsion.”

Why Were Bombs Dropped on Populated Cities Without Military Value?

Even military officers who favored use of nuclear weapons mainly favored using them on unpopulated areas or Japanese military targets … not cities.

For example, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss proposed to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal that a non-lethal demonstration of atomic weapons would be enough to convince the Japanese to surrender … and the Navy Secretary agreed (pg. 145, 325):

I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. Primarily it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate… My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest… would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will… Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation…

It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world…

General George Marshall agreed:

Contemporary documents show that Marshall felt “these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave–telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers….”

As the document concerning Marshall’s views suggests, the question of whether the use of the atomic bomb was justified turns … on whether the bombs had to be used against a largely civilian target rather than a strictly military target—which, in fact, was the explicit choice since although there were Japanese troops in the cities, neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki was deemed militarily vital by U.S. planners. (This is one of the reasons neither had been heavily bombed up to this point in the war.) Moreover, targeting [at Hiroshima and Nagasaki] was aimed explicitly on non-military facilities surrounded by workers’ homes.

Historians Agree that the Bomb Wasn’t Needed

Historians agree that nuclear weapons did not need to be used to stop the war or save lives.

As historian Doug Long notes:

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission historian J. Samuel Walker has studied the history of research on the decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan. In his conclusion he writes, “The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisors knew it.” (J. Samuel Walker, The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update, Diplomatic History, Winter 1990, pg. 110).

Politicians Agreed

Many high-level politicians agreed. For example, Herbert Hoover said (pg. 142):

The Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945…up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; …if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs.

Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew noted (pg. 29-32):

In the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the [retention of the] dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the [Japanese] Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision.

If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer.

Why Then Were Atom Bombs Dropped on Japan?

If dropping nuclear bombs was unnecessary to end the war or to save lives, why was the decision to drop them made? Especially over the objections of so many top military and political figures?

One theory is that scientists like to play with their toys:

On September 9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, was publicly quoted extensively as stating that the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a “toy and they wanted to try it out . . . .” He further stated, “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment . . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it.”

However, most of the Manhattan Project scientists who developed the atom bomb were opposed to using it on Japan.

Albert Einstein – an important catalyst for the development of the atom bomb (but not directly connected with the Manhattan Project) – said differently:

“A great majority of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of the atom bomb.” In Einstein’s judgment, the dropping of the bomb was a political – diplomatic decision rather than a military or scientific decision.

Indeed, some of the Manhattan Project scientists wrote directly to the secretary of defense in 1945 to try to dissuade him from dropping the bomb:

We believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for an early, unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable. If the United States would be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race of armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.

Political and Social Problems, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 76, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 323-333).

The scientists questioned the ability of destroying Japanese cities with atomic bombs to bring surrender when destroying Japanese cities with conventional bombs had not done so, and – like some of the military officers quoted above – recommended a demonstration of the atomic bomb for Japan in an unpopulated area.

The Real Explanation?

History.com notes:

In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective …. It has been suggested that the second objective was to demonstrate the new weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union. By August 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had deteriorated badly. The Potsdam Conference between U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill (before being replaced by Clement Attlee) ended just four days before the bombing of Hiroshima. The meeting was marked by recriminations and suspicion between the Americans and Soviets. Russian armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe. Truman and many of his advisers hoped that the U.S. atomic monopoly might offer diplomatic leverage with the Soviets. In this fashion, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan can be seen as the first shot of the Cold War.

New Scientist reported in 2005:

The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.

Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.

“He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species,” says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, US. “It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity.”

***

[The conventional explanation of using the bombs to end the war and save lives] is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US.

***

New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman’s main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was “looking for peace”. Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

“Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan,” says Selden.

John Pilger points out:

The US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.

We’ll give the last word to University of Maryland professor of political economy – and former Legislative Director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and Special Assistant in the Department of State – Gar Alperovitz:

Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.

***

Instead [of allowing other options to end the war, such as letting the Soviets attack Japan with ground forces], the United States rushed to use two atomic bombs at almost exactly the time that an August 8 Soviet attack had originally been scheduled: Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. The timing itself has obviously raised questions among many historians. The available evidence, though not conclusive, strongly suggests that the atomic bombs may well have been used in part because American leaders “preferred”—as Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Martin Sherwin has put it—to end the war with the bombs rather than the Soviet attack. Impressing the Soviets during the early diplomatic sparring that ultimately became the Cold War also appears likely to have been a significant factor.

***

The most illuminating perspective, however, comes from top World War II American military leaders. The conventional wisdom that the atomic bomb saved a million lives is so widespread that … most Americans haven’t paused to ponder something rather striking to anyone seriously concerned with the issue: Not only did most top U.S. military leaders think the bombings were unnecessary and unjustified, many were morally offended by what they regarded as the unnecessary destruction of Japanese cities and what were essentially noncombat populations. Moreover, they spoke about it quite openly and publicly.

***

Shortly before his death General George C. Marshall quietly defended the decision, but for the most part he is on record as repeatedly saying that it was not a military decision, but rather a political one.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-re...-was-not-to-end-the-war-or-save-lives/5308192

 

[Junaids]

I'm with [MENTION=7774]Robert[/MENTION].

Nobody is to blame for Hiroshima and Nagasaki apart from the Japanese.

 

[pakistanigoneaussie]

I'm with [MENTION=7774]Robert[/MENTION].

Nobody is to blame for Hiroshima and Nagasaki apart from the Japanese.

then please tell me why the top military brass of America was against it, this was a political decision on the part of Trueman

this is from Eisenhower's memoirs

"In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.

2. Douglas MacArthur - Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific

"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." - From Norman Cousins' (consultant to General MacArthur) memoir "The Pathology of Power"

3. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet

"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." - Quoted in the New York Times (6 October 1945) and from Gar Alperovitz's work "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb"

4. Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman

"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." - From Leahy's memoir "I Was There"

 

[Sidilicious]

Easy to point flaws now with hindsight. But at that point they took the decision they did given the information they had.

But [MENTION=74271]O[/MENTION]P are you stating that they should not discourage nuclear arms proliferation now, because of an action 70 years back?