International Hiroshima was NOT a mistake

[Cherry Brigand]

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?

Context. Do you understand it?

 

[LeonardoBjj]

- The contry thats most fears atomic weapons, is the only one to have used them in civilians!

 

[Gutter Chris]

- The contry thats most fears atomic weapons, is the only one to have used them in civilians!

I'm not sure this is true. I'm pretty sure don't get hit by an a bomb has ranked pretty high up on the Russian list of worries for like 70 years too.

 

[Mike Hagger]

nuking the Japanese saved an ever increasing estimated number of lives" is largely regarded as just more American bullshit

Largely regarded by whom? Morons such as yourself? Okinawa was a clear indication many, many more US servicemen would die to completely invade Japan.

 

[Ron Mexico]

The bomb could have been demonstrated instead of dropped on civilians... 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.

Sounds like they made the right call then

 

[Mike Hagger]

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.

Imagine the President justifying a “few Americans dying” to save Japanese lives. Consider the context of the time; everyone has the benefit of hindsight and an absence of the fog of war today. So it’s easy to “know” the best decision for the best outcome. I would say the average American in 1944 gave no fucks about a few million Japanese dying vs even 1 American dying.

It’s also not like the Japanese were any less evil in China ffs.

 

[Ruprecht]

Largely regarded by whom? Morons such as yourself? Okinawa was a clear indication many, many more US servicemen would die to completely invade Japan.

Read for yourself from sources outside the US. For that matter, directly read the declassified documents released from the targeting committee and interim committee on the decision making process. Even in the US there were contemporary "morons" like Eisenhower, MacArthur, Leahy or McCloy who rejected that justification for targeting civilians or dropping the bombs.
Personally I didn't even realise that "saving lives" was the US myth until someone handed me a Chick Tract about the war as a kid.

 

[kenetics]

Watching 'Three Body Problem.' No spoilers:

Big expensive project is going on and one of the characters said something to the effect of 'the last time smart people got in the room and had unlimited funds, they gave us HIROSHIMA!'

As if it's the big bad thing that all of humanity has done. You hear it quite frequently- with all the historical revisionism that's going on- that Hiroshima was some gigantic atrocity. It was not.

WWII was TOTAL WAR. None of us in our times of peace have any idea. And if the situation arose again, where the entire world was in play, are these soft headed historically ignorant people saying that we would not repeat the action to save potentially millions of lives-- even those of the enemy?

It's ridiculous.

An assault on Japan proper would likely have resulted in, depending on who you ask, an additional 3M to 30M casualties. It was the correct choice.

Nope , radiation of those bombs cause health problems for generations to follow.

 

[kenetics]

Imagine the President justifying a “few Americans dying” to save Japanese lives. Consider the context of the time; everyone has the benefit of hindsight and an absence of the fog of war today. So it’s easy to “know” the best decision for the best outcome. I would say the average American in 1944 gave no fucks about a few million Japanese dying vs even 1 American dying.

It’s also not like the Japanese were any less evil in China ffs.

Muricans didn't even care for some groups of people dying here either.

 

[Mike Hagger]

Read for yourself from sources outside the US. For that matter, directly read the declassified documents released from the targeting committee and interim committee on the decision making process. Even in the US there were contemporary "morons" like Eisenhower, MacArthur, Leahy or McCloy who rejected that justification for targeting civilians or dropping the bombs.
Personally I didn't even realise that "saving lives" was the US myth until someone handed me a Chick Tract about the war as a kid.

What someone considered appropriate and justified in 1945 changed significantly by 1950. I actually don’t understand, you had not considered that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved American lives? It seems somewhat intuitive, given that fighting would certainly have continued for an unknown period of time. You of course are aware of the estimated loss of life presented to Thurman. Perhaps we later learned the Japanese may have been considering a surrender. But considering the ground truths; your soldiers are being assaulted by suicide attacks, your POWs are at risk of execution everyday the the war persists, nonetheless the barbaric methods the Japanese used in their treatment of civilian populations in every area they invaded. Then of course what the Japanese did to the Chinese for nearly decade; it’s absolutely not a stretch to believe these people were ready to barricade and fight until the very bitter end. It’s also not a stretch to consider the US was not dealing with a very rational group of Japanese leaders. These aren’t myths, it’s seems to be logical when viewing the pacific with context.

 

[PBAC]

Japan had no interest in surrendering at any point until the emperor made his first ever public appearance calling for an end to the war. Even the warmongers in charge couldn’t go against the emperor speaking to the public for the first time in history.

if you know Japanese that speech is pretty cool. He was still speaking an outdated version of Japanese that sounds more Chinese. The people he was giving the speech for didn't understand him. It is like a time capsule for modern people to know what old Japanese sounds like. It's be like getting oude engels on recording. So not only did he issue a surrender notice without surrendering but did it in a language they couldn't understand.

 

[Mike Hagger]

Here’s a hypothetical; Japan is first to create a nuke, you think they hit fort such and such or Los Angeles? China makes a nuke in 1943, they going after navy harbor so and so or Tokyo? You think the Soviet’s strike a submarine base or an airfield, or maybe Berlin? Munich? The Brit’s they gonna strike a Mauser factory, an industrial complex? I’m sure it’s possible any of these countries demonstrate its power without directly hitting a city as maybe a threat but I believe considering the emotional investment of the war, that these countries do likewise to what the Americans did. Perhaps even more violent…

 

[Ruprecht]

What someone considered appropriate and justified in 1945 changed significantly by 1950. I actually don’t understand, you had not considered that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved American lives? It seems somewhat intuitive, given that fighting would certainly have continued for an unknown period of time. You of course are aware of the estimated loss of life presented to Thurman. Perhaps we later learned the Japanese may have been considering a surrender. But considering the ground truths; your soldiers are being assaulted by suicide attacks, your POWs are at risk of execution everyday the the war persists, nonetheless the barbaric methods the Japanese used in their treatment of civilian populations in every area they invaded. Then of course what the Japanese did to the Chinese for nearly decade; it’s absolutely not a stretch to believe these people were ready to barricade and fight until the very bitter end. It’s also not a stretch to consider Thurman was unlikely to be dealing with a very rational group of Japanese leaders. These aren’t myths, it’s seems to be logical when viewing the pacific with context.

No, we weren't taught that indiscriminately massacring civilians was about "saving lives". That was the American myth. We were of course taught about flagging morale and the desire for a quick end to the war, along with the history of civilian targeting throughout the war.
The myth that the decision was about "saving lives" was started defensively by Henry Stimson as a political reaction to the stories of the horrors of the bombing from reporters on the ground, and repeated a few years later in his memoir. Along with the obfuscation of the effects of radiation attempted at the time.
In fact the US estimates for casualties in an invasion that were presented to Truman were much lower than the 500,000 (and the figure for estimated dead was much lower again) from Truman's memoir, or the figure of a million Stimson gave in his 1947 article. A number that was repeated by Churchill (who upped it from 1 million casualties to 1 million fatalities) and has been inflated further as time went on until I think the current chart topper is Dr Tom Lewis with 32 million "saved".
Now of course we have the declassified documents which give the actual casualty estimates and the decision making process of targeting civilians. We know "saving lives" wasn't a prominent feature of the decision making.

 

[DanSavage]

The bomb could have been demonstrated instead of dropped on civilians... 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.

Tokyo was fire-bombed between March 9-10, 1945 using B-29 bombers and incendiary bombs. (napalm) During these raids ~16 square miles of downtown Tokyo were destroyed, killing 100,000 people and leaving over a million homeless. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki was hit on August 9, 1945.

A demonstration with a forewarning was suggested at the time, but they only had enough fissile material for two bombs. Staging a demonstration would waste what fissile material they had on hand. Also, the bombs were intricate devices and any opposition by the Japanese air defenses could cause the device to not work properly. It was also thought at the time that a purely technical demonstration would not cause the Japanese to surrender.

An estimated 129,00 and 226,000 deaths occurred in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

[DanSavage]

We know "saving lives" wasn't a prominent feature of the decision making.

During the bombing of Japan over 63 million leaflets were dropped warning civilians about impending raids on targeted cities. Many civilians believed the leaflets were truthful and fled the cities before the raids occurred.

Thirty-three cities were targeted for leaflet dropping campaigns and firebombing raids. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not among the cities listed, nor were they included in the firebombing raids.

 

[A Very Serious Cat]

More people were killed in the firebombing of Tokyo than by either nuke

While they were unique the death toll wasn't really unprecedented

 

[Ruprecht]

During the bombing of Japan almost 63 million leaflets were dropped warning civilians about impending raids on the cities. Many civilians fled the cities before the raids occurred.

Not for the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki they weren't. Another myth.

 

[My Spot]

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.

Option A: Lots of Americans and lots of civilians die
Option B: Lots of civilians die

 

[Streeter]

Japan as I understand it would never surrender they would rather die or that was the mentality. I hate saying dropping the bomb was better for Japan but maybe it was . The devastation was localized and the main cities Tokyo and Osaka were left alone. Had a large scale invasion happened the loss of life would have been insane on both sides. Aucks the bomb was ever used but it likely helped both sides here on bigger picture.

 

[7even]

We would have never gotten Dragon Ball Z or other anime shows if we didn’t nuke Japan. It was the right choice.