International Hiroshima was NOT a mistake

[giusti825]

There's no consensus among historians that Japan was about to surrender, and there were significant deal breakers between the US position and Japanese position in surrendering. Most of the stuff you're citing isn't actually contemporary evidence, and a lot of post-event hindsight.

Note that there were multiple coup attempts as soon as Japan announced it was surrendering.

I just pasted the first two articles that popped up..... There were pages and pages more. Take some time to read for yourself, including the scholarly works.

The idea that we dropped nukes to save lives is one of the most obvious pieces of horseshit propaganda of all time.

Firstly, more people were killed in the firebombing of Tokyo than either nuclear bomb. Firebombs would have done the job just fine without the generations of innocent civilian fallout victims, birth defects and cancer patients that had nothing to do with the war.

Secondly, the Japanese had no hope of winning the war against the US. Surrender was coming anyway. It would have been far better to have lost a few more lives to service the surrender than to unleash such generational devastation on hundreds of thousands of people.

As a side note, given Senator Lindsay Graham's comments this week, I feel like this subject (justification of nuclear warfare) may be being brought up with the idea that it would be justifiable for Israel to nuke Gaza.

I'd like to make it perfectly clear right now that a technologically advanced military with precision targeting weapons capabilities nuking a civilian population trapped in a concentration camp would be one of, if not the most morally bankrupt event our species will have ever witnessed.

 

[ferrisjso]

The US has a better argument for this than most things they do now.

The navy seems to have had a decent plan for starving out the Japanese without a ground invasion and massive casualties. On the other hand the Japanese had a nuclear program(that one of Nazi Germanys last actions was to try supporting unsuccessfully) and just waiting them out for years could have seriously backfired. Not that the Japenese had a target to aim a nuclear weapon at or anything they didn't but just saying.

 

[avenue94]

The idea that we dropped nukes to save lives is one of the most obvious pieces of horseshit propaganda of all time.

The nukes were primarily dropped as part of the US's shock strategy, which was focused on ending the war (with the terms the US was offering) as quickly as possible, and by extension saving US lives. It wasn't meant to do save Japanese lives, that's arguably an unexpected accident, historically speaking.

Firstly, more people were killed in the firebombing of Tokyo than either nuclear bomb. Firebombs would have done the job just fine without the generations of innocent civilian fallout victims, birth defects and cancer patients that had nothing to do with the war.

As most parties found out immediately after the bombings, atomic weapons are far more impactful than firebombing raids. Your logic is faulty in that you are assuming that if the US had just stuck to fire bombings it would have ended the war as well. But
1. There is no guarantee that Japan would have surrendered after 2 or 3 or 4 more Operation Meetinghouses.
2. These raids would have probably killed as many or more Japanese.
3. Fire bombing as mass casualty events is contingent on enough infrastructure being there for a fire storm. Or in other words, the US was running out of targets where it could start a firestorm.

Secondly, the Japanese had no hope of winning the war against the US. Surrender was coming anyway. It would have been far better to have lost a few more lives to service the surrender than to unleash such generational devastation on hundreds of thousands of people.

Japan had no hope of winning since probably 1943, at the latest. It wasn't the US intention, but ending the war at the point it ended almost certainly saved lives. I don't think you understand how bloody a US invasion would have been, especially for the Japanese. And I don't even mean the highest estimates as those are a bit ridiculous.

You also are assuming that there was a decision on whether or not to use the bomb. That is patently false and ahistorical. There was never any doubt that the bomb would be used, because frankly the military didn't know what they had created. I'll note that the casualty and yield predictions for the bombings were much lower than reality. As I mentioned, you keep applying hindsight to decisionmakers who simply didn't have the information we do.

 

[nixkid]

150k civilians died during the battle of Okinawa that summer. Here's Oki on a map in comparison to the size of the main island (s):

The fact that Okinawa was a small island made the civilian causalities a lot worse because the Japanese did not evacuate it. They had no where to go. They were trapped in a war zone.

Okinawan ethnic group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyuan_people) is separate from the majority Japanese ethnic group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato_people) and the imperial government was fairly indifferent towards them. There was failure to evacuate, forced conscription of underage boys, Japanese imperial soldiers using civilians as human shields, and the government encouraging civilians to commit suicide (by telling them that the American soldiers would torture them) when the battle was clearly lost. Not to mention intense fighting in a relatively confined space. It was a fairly unique situation and there is reason to believe that rate of civilian causalities would not have been as high on the mainland (though total number may very well have eclipsed Hiroshima/Nagasaki).

But it does raise an interesting question though. Is it morally better to directly kill civilians by your own actions or to potentially allow more civilians to be killed indirectly (either by the actions of your adversary or as unavoidable collateral damage)? I think trying to justify intentionally killing civilians is a slippery slope. Maybe with a once in a lifetime advantage created by a weapon that is guaranteed to end the war quickly. But in any other situation...its a hard sell.

 

[oldshadow]

It was required to save America life's and to force Japan into an unconditional surrender.

It took two bombs ( all we had) to force that and the military still did not want to surrender. They wanted to fight to the last person.

 

[evansusmc2]

Japan didn't surrender because of the 100's of thousands killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they surrendered because of the fear that Tokyo was next.

Some goof in the youtube comments said it was because they feared Russia.

 

[The XL]

It's vile and disgusting, but I don't see how it's any more vile and disgusting than all the civilians killed and people forced to fight in conventional warfare

 

[evansusmc2]

Japan was already defeated on all fronts. Surrender was imminent. Dropping the bombs was a show of force / deterrent for any potential enemies post war.

It was completely unnecessary and took more lives than it saved.

Before the bombs were dropped.... Were ALL of Japanese forces pulled out of Australia, Korea, Nanking, and Philippines? I've heard many different things from people.

Edit: OK forget I mentioned Australia. The Japanese got beat back and failed at taking over there.

 

[SummerStriker]

Okay

The hottest takes of 1947

 

[Gutter Chris]

The argument that Japan didn't deserve to be nuked has always been silly. They are the fuck around and find out champions of the world and they earned it. This wasn't some military action like Vietnam where we maybe didn't need to be at war at all ....this was a war with global consequences.


Any of you bozos ever stop to think the reason Russia and the USA didn't go hot is because we actually had an idea of what an abomb war would look like and that those 2 bombs might have saved more lives than it's possible to calculate? Every single person on this planet might owe their existence to 2 bombs in 1945. It's kind a big historical what if.

 

[Hog-train]

I have always heard two differing accounts of the bombings and don't know which is true.

1. The nukes were necessary because Japan was not going to surrender and the bombings saved countless more lives.

2. Japan was going to surrender regardless and the bombs were used was a warning to the Soviet Union and the Japanese were seen as subhuman so didn't matter.

 

[evansusmc2]

When they became part of the USSR probably.

You think USSR would have been able to occupy that country with the amount of losses they just took?? That's a bold statement.

 

[Madmick]

I don't care if it saved Japanese lives (which it almost certainly did).

It incontrovertibly saved American lives. That's what matters to me. It's what would have mattered to me if I had been alive, then. They bombed us first. If a bunch of tissue-clutching from-the-safety-of-an-already-decided-future armchair quarterbacks are bothered with that...

Fuck 'em.

 

[jamel]

No shit…


All the tests they ran prior to dropping the bomb.


They knew exactly what the devastation was gon be.


What they didn’t understand was the long term impact or the blast radius.

 

[fedorthegoat777]

The US dropped a bomb on civilians and killed numerous innocent people.

So if Putin deploys a small nuke in Ukraine to win his war and save Russians it is ok? Can Israel fire off nukes also?

 

[Poon Goon]

So if Putin deploys a small nuke in Ukraine to win his war and save Russians it is ok?

I'm not a history buff, but I don't believe that Ukraine pulled Pearl Harbor type shenanigans to start shit with Russia.

 

[tenniswhiz]

It's not historically ignorant or historical revisionism to question the morality and ethics of the bombs; people were doing that in the immediate aftermath.

John Hersey's Hiroshima was published in 1946, which caused a lot of debate.

Hiroshima (book) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Nagasaki; The Necessary Bomb?

Recounts the events which surrounded America's use of t…

www.goodreads.com

This was another thoughtful book about it.

 

[lifelessheap]

My Grandpa was an Alamo Scout. He went behind enemy lines against the Japanese. If those nukes don't drop he is invading, and I am probably never born.

 

[Gotosleepho]

I'm not a history buff, but I don't believe that Ukraine pulled Pearl Harbor type shenanigans to start shit with Russia.

No but the concept of the question he is asking isn't necessarily dependent on that. From the Russians point of view I'm sure they could find some grievance based on Ukraine's actions. So to end the conflict with Ukraine would dropping a large bomb on them be okay?

 

[Cole train]

I read online they were giving up purple hearts made for invasion of japan up to this day, was expected to be that bad (nice job kuribyashi)

Crazy stuff if true