Do you think nuking Japan was a necessary evil?

[Chrysia]

That's IS the case however. As you so eloquently stated, you weren't there (obviously) and have no military strategical training. So without these things, how can you say it wasn't the ONLY choice. As for the sarcasm, a direct result of too much time in these forums "taking it" from people who cannot remain civil in discussion. I can however remain civil if you can. I am not trying to make you believe what I believe. I am trying to understand how you believe what you do with no way of being able to make said call.

I believe I've made myself quite clear. There is never only one choice. Never. Hell, there's rarely only two choices. And that's what I want people to realize, the decision to drop the bombs was not a decision solely about the Japanese part of World War II. It was a strategy actually primarily designed to stymie further Soviet expansion.

[Skroe]

I believe I've made myself quite clear. There is never only one choice. Never. Hell, there's rarely only two choices. And that's what I want people to realize, the decision to drop the bombs was not a decision solely about the Japanese part of World War II. It was a strategy actually primarily designed to stymie further Soviet expansion.

I want to see evidence of this.

Names.
Places.
Meetings were held.
Documents and statements written by key decision makers at the time.


This stinks of something someone made up once and has been passed around as "oh yeah that makes sense". It's on the level of "the US finances Al Qaeda/The Taliban" even though they showed up on the scene years after the US stopped providing support to the Afghan Mujahideen (many of which became the Northern Alliance anyway). People intrinsically want simple, well formed explanations to complicated, highly nuanced, murky affairs. The human brain just processes it better and strives for that clarity.

In mid 1945, the Cold War was still years away. The USSR were not adversaries. The vision of the Post-war world was in it's broadest outlines. How could people at the time know what would happen between 1947 and 1950.

This theory - and it's a laughable one - ascribes a kind of foreknowledge to policy makers at the time that they simply could not have had. Moreover the policy-descision chain in actually using the bomb was very narrow. It was the country's most guarded secret and information on it was highly compartmentalized.

Your theory here requires that that small group, maybe around six people living in 1945, had to agree that some forward looking stuff about the USSR, was the real reason. Prove that, you prove your point. Can't or don't prove that, you have at best, baseless speculation.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Japan was trying to surrender for many months prior to the bombs being dropped. We didn't need to drop the bomb on them.

If you are curious about the facts of the historical event, here is a good place to start - http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_weber.html

Note that there are tons of references in that article. Go ahead and read them for yourself.

One does not try to surrender. You simply dismantle all weapons, all ammo, all soldiers/sailors/marines remove uniforms. Over the radio you have your leaders say unconditional surrender. It is done.

[Chrysia]

One does not try to surrender. You simply dismantle all weapons, all ammo, all soldiers/sailors/marines remove uniforms. Over the radio you have your leaders say unconditional surrender. It is done.

Not all surrenders are unconditional. The Emperor was trying to surrender with conditions, in spite of opposition from his military council. The nuclear strikes pushed him over the edge to fully defy his military council and accept unconditional surrender.

[Deleted]

was evil to use nuks they shdove kiled them the right way with guns

[Thoughtful Trolli]

#1 nuking japan was absolutely necessary, there would have been way more lives lost on both sides if the war was done conventionally.

#2, the real question is if anybody else knows that shiguru miyamoto used Super Mario Bros. to brainwash US brass during demilitarization procedures and successfully completely took control of the whole world only to have it taken from him and now nobody knows who's really in control because of course the first thing they do after they have you trained in their eon's long hell camp in your own head is make you forget you were brainwashed and make you think you were just playing an honestly benign 8 bit graphic system, and even shiguru lost control, even shiguru lost control who's really the highest of the high now huh? Who is it?

[MasterOfNone]

I believe I've made myself quite clear. There is never only one choice. Never. Hell, there's rarely only two choices. And that's what I want people to realize, the decision to drop the bombs was not a decision solely about the Japanese part of World War II. It was a strategy actually primarily designed to stymie further Soviet expansion.

while i agree to disagree that there was only one clear choice at the time, i personally think you would have to go a LONG way to prove the second part of your statement. i'm not saying its not possible, just seems unlikely to me. many of the telegrams you posted would lead you to believe that, but its still not exactly a smoking gun if you understand where i am coming from. to make sure i fully understand you, what are you implying as a clear alternative? you are advocating there is never only one choice. while time spent trying to find that second choice (and thus you being correct), tens of thousands if not more could have died while trying to figure it out. me and you seem to be on the same page as far as understanding each other sans that point alone. i am honestly curious as to what option you feel like would have been appropriate to save lives. be realistic please. i know its easy to say "we could have done x,y, or z" , but hindsight is 20/20. you really need to put yourself into their shoes at that time. mitigating the loss of life was paramount and the quickest most decisive way to end the entire war. ironically, it worked.

[Chrysia]

while i agree to disagree that there was only one clear choice at the time, i personally think you would have to go a LONG way to prove the second part of your statement. i'm not saying its not possible, just seems unlikely to me. many of the telegrams you posted would lead you to believe that, but its still not exactly a smoking gun if you understand where i am coming from. to make sure i fully understand you, what are you implying as a clear alternative? you are advocating there is never only one choice. while time spent trying to find that second choice (and thus you being correct), tens of thousands if not more could have died while trying to figure it out. me and you seem to be on the same page as far as understanding each other sans that point alone. i am honestly curious as to what option you feel like would have been appropriate to save lives. be realistic please. i know its easy to say "we could have done x,y, or z" , but hindsight is 20/20. you really need to put yourself into their shoes at that time. mitigating the loss of life was paramount and the quickest most decisive way to end the entire war. ironically, it worked.

A blockade, might have saved lives. Might have cost more. Again, I don't want to claim anything, because we cannot know what the alternate methods would have resulted in. There are too many factors.

[Deleted]

I want to see evidence of this.

Names.
Places.
Meetings were held.
Documents and statements written by key decision makers at the time.

There's this thing called Google. Why do you bother with politics if your research skills are at kindergarten level? You obviously can't know very much.

[provaporous]

205 38.46% No

Seriously? How deluded can you be that 2 bombs is worse than the millions that would of died if we had to invade Japan. Japan would of fought until no males remained, their whole society would of been destroyed. I honestly cannot think of any reason to not use the bomb.

edit: people are talking about a blockade: yea no that wouldn't of worked, do you honestly think the admirals and generals would of just got to the shores of Japan just to sit offshore and get shot at while blocking the (non-existent at this point) cargo ships?

[gyrados]

japan started with us and we finished it

[Chrysia]

205 38.46% No

Seriously? How deluded can you be that 2 bombs is worse than the millions that would of died if we had to invade Japan. Japan would of fought until no males remained, their whole society would of been destroyed. I honestly cannot think of any reason to not use the bomb.

edit: people are talking about a blockade: yea no that wouldn't of worked, do you honestly think the admirals and generals would of just got to the shores of Japan just to sit offshore and get shot at while blocking the (non-existent at this point) cargo ships?

Shot at with what? The Japanese navy was almost out of fuel, pretty close to out of ships, most of their planes were in disrepair. The one thing that is unquestionably true about the situation with Japan is that an invasion of the mainland would have been a monumentally bad decision, that we can definitely agree on, but no, the Emperor would not have had his men fight until all the males were dead. The Emperor was tired of the war, he just needed the right motivation to tell the military to go fuck themselves.

[-Gr-]

Pretty much deserved it so yeah, I wouldn't take it back if it was possible. WE cemented ourselves in the earth as bad mother fuckers when we did it and people took us seriously after. 'Murica

[MasterOfNone]

A blockade, might have saved lives. Might have cost more. Again, I don't want to claim anything, because we cannot know what the alternate methods would have resulted in. There are too many factors.

Agree completely. However, as it sits, would you not agree that we realistically only had one choice at that TIME?

[Independent voter]

A blockade, might have saved lives. Might have cost more. Again, I don't want to claim anything, because we cannot know what the alternate methods would have resulted in. There are too many factors.

Blockade? We'd still be at war with Japan.

Japanese Imperials would still be in charge.

[Jimusmc]

Definitely we've gave them plenty of time to surrender yet they didn't

id kill as many that died in those two cities to save millions of lives on both sides.

[spinner981]

Pretty much this. They had intelligence at the time they were making this decision that the Japanese Government was seeing the military party lose ground, and surrender was almost certain. It was just a matter of time, waiting for the political pressures to play out, a matter of weeks. The possibility of a land invasion of Japan proper was basically not going to happen either way.

Dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was more about demonstrating to Stalin that the Americans had beaten them to nuclear technology, since Russia had started to flex its muscles by then, than for any military objective in the WWII theater itself.

Hindsight is 20/20. Fact of the matter is that it ended the war. You can try to grasp at whatever reasoning you want or spin whatever logic you want to attempt to claim that it was 'evil', but in the end it still ended the war, and your logic/reasoning would only serve as a testament to the reasoning that they should have dropped the bombs earlier.

It's easy to play "If they did this, then obviously it would have ended up better!" after the fact, but back then when the possibility of hundreds of thousands of lives were hanging in the balance of this decision, it wouldn't be as easy as merely critiquing the actions of historic figures who ended a war.

[Chrysia]

Agree completely. However, as it sits, would you not agree that we realistically only had one choice at that TIME?

I'd say we had a lot of choices that weren't particularly good and we went with what seemed the least bad to end the war in the smallest time frame while simultaneously restricting further Soviet expansion. I don't really like saying that the choice we made was the only choice, because it, again, ignores a lot of factors.

[Kellhound]

A blockade, might have saved lives. Might have cost more. Again, I don't want to claim anything, because we cannot know what the alternate methods would have resulted in. There are too many factors.

Dropping the bombs cost no US lives, and it is VERY unlikely a blockade would have incurred no US casualties.

[Charge me Doctor]

It wasn't necessary, it was simply evil.

At this point of history Japan was ready to surrender, bombs weren't needed. Land invasion wasn't needed. And peace talks already were in place.