Why is America given shit over Nagasaki and Hiroshima?

[Release]

It's war. And wars are horrible acts.
But it was a war that mattered.

Nah this doesn't fly. It was a war that needed to be fought and won but the context of the bombings were that the war was for all intents and purposes over and I have a strong feeling the Japanese would have instantly surrendered had they been simply shown the destructive power the allies now had access too. No country that fought in that war gets out with their hands clean and this is one terrible act in a long list.

[Shadowferal]

Nah this doesn't fly. It was a war that needed to be fought and won but the context of the bombings were that the war was for all intents and purposes over and I have a strong feeling the Japanese would have instantly surrendered had they been simply shown the destructive power the allies now had access too. No country that fought in that war gets out with their hands clean and this is one terrible act in a long list.

Doesn't matter.
It's easy to say how wrong it was 70+ years after the fact, and after we've gathered all the info on the implications of a nuke war. The full ramifications couldn't be truly known until it was used in action.
It was a new thing then. And a world war demanded everything...consequences can come after it's been won. And be happy that you can cry the blues decades later.

Learning such consequences of a nuke war may have cost a steep price. But it could have been far worse.

[Independent voter]

Nah this doesn't fly. It was a war that needed to be fought and won but the context of the bombings were that the war was for all intents and purposes over and I have a strong feeling the Japanese would have instantly surrendered had they been simply shown the destructive power the allies now had access too. No country that fought in that war gets out with their hands clean and this is one terrible act in a long list.

We, the British US and Russians, gave the Japanese 10 days notice before Hiroshima, we dropped millions of leaflets all over Japan and broadcasted it on powerful radio transmitters.

"Japan must immediately surrender or face complete and utter distruction"

Also it was made clear their emperor could stay.

Also even after dropping two bombs, the emperor moved to surrender and the Japanese military launched a coup against him in the hopes that they could continue fighting.

[Release]

Doesn't matter.
It's easy to say how wrong it was 70+ years after the fact, and after we've gathered all the info on the implications of a nuke war. The full ramifications couldn't be truly known until it was used in action.
It was a new thing then. And a world war demanded everything...consequences can come after it's been won. And be happy that you can cry the blues decades later.

Learning such consequences of a nuke war may have cost a steep price. But it could have been far worse.

I agree it could have been worse but I am of the opinion it could also have been better. We have the benefit of hindsight to guide our judgement and that does stand as a form of justification for the actions they took but I don't feel it excuses it. They extensively tested the bombs in the desert and had a great deal of very intelligent people working on them. They had a good idea what it would do to those cities before they dropped it.

I just feel I would have liked to see the results had Japan been made aware with either a video or if necessary a demonstration in a nearby ocean before escalating it to civilian centers.

[Akainakali]

Nah this doesn't fly. It was a war that needed to be fought and won but the context of the bombings were that the war was for all intents and purposes over and I have a strong feeling the Japanese would have instantly surrendered had they been simply shown the destructive power the allies now had access too. No country that fought in that war gets out with their hands clean and this is one terrible act in a long list.

Given that they didn't surrender after the firebombing of Tokyo that was far more destructive and lethal than the atomic bombings and the leveling of most of their cities or even the first atomic bombing, how does it follow that they would have folded just from a demonstration?

The Japanese in WWII were basically insane, they fought on and refused to surrender long after it was clear that they had no hope of winning and that all they could accomplish was to kill as many foreigners as they could before they were killed.

To the people of the time, the atomic bomb was basically just a far more efficient and effective method of accomplishing what was already being done. You send one aircraft and use one bomb, to do what was being done by hundred of aircraft and tens of thousands of bombs.

It wasn't until AFTER the atomic bombings that the full horror of what nukes could do was clear and even then it took years (and a lot more tests) for the implications to be fully understood. A demonstration on an unpopulated target would not have made them clear in the same way.

[Release]

Given that they didn't surrender after the firebombing of Tokyo that was far more destructive and lethal than the atomic bombings and the leveling of most of their cities or even the first atomic bombing, how does it follow that they would have folded just from a demonstration?

The Japanese in WWII were basically insane, they fought on and refused to surrender long after it was clear that they had no hope of winning and that all they could accomplish was to kill as many foreigners as they could before they were killed.

To the people of the time, the atomic bomb was basically just a far more efficient and effective method of accomplishing what was already being done. You send one aircraft and use one bomb, to do what was being done by hundred of aircraft and tens of thousands of bombs.

It wasn't until AFTER the atomic bombings that the full horror of what nukes could do was clear and even then it took years (and a lot more tests) for the implications to be fully understood.

I agree the mentality of the Japanese was basically fight and never surrender but at the end of the day once the nukes were dropped they DID surrender. Japan by this time was fucked and in no real fighting shape aside from the defense of a ground invasion so what was the hurry and harm in trying a demonstration first?

[Deleted]

Pretty damn close. ~78 I am sure his number was an estimate.
The official start was September 1, 1939.

Well Nagasaki was August 1945

- - - Updated - - -

Britain helped the US build the atomic bomb, if it wasn't for our British bros we wouldn't have had the bomb until after the war.



The Queen gave this guy a knighthood for his work on the British and US atomic bombs.

Also Britain along with Russia agreed to the use of the bomb as they signed the Potsdam Declaration too.

We're as thick as thieves.

Why are you reposting this when we already debunked your point ?

[Allybeboba]

I agree the mentality of the Japanese was basically fight and never surrender but at the end of the day once the nukes were dropped they DID surrender. Japan by this time was fucked and in no real fighting shape aside from the defense of a ground invasion so what was the hurry and harm in trying a demonstration first?

We have told them this numerous times in this thread. They simply just don't care if Japan wasn't going to surrender without an all out mainland ground assault.




We are STILL waiting for someone to start the "Why is Germany given sh!t over the holocaust?"

[Flurryfang]

Japan raped its way across China and was in league with a nation that wanted to commit genocide on those it deemed impure, alcoholics, addicts and so on.

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

They did horrible things that make the atomic bombs look like vacation. While the civilians were not directly guilty ( they still fed those soldiers, produced their weapons and ensured they had a place to retreat to ) of all those things, they were still what kept the army afloat.

So why exactly is it wrong, in a war against an axis of tyrants and psychopaths, to fight fire with fire? Had the Axis won we'd have seen hundreds of millions killed due to their race. Two atomic bombs are a small price to pay in order to quell that evil for good.


What kind of General could look the wives of his fallen soldiers in the eyes and say

'' We could've ended the war sooner. Your husband would still be alive, had I bombed their cities. But I put the lives of their civilians, the ones that feed the army, above that of my own men. "

Holy hell, I'd see that as treason. As the military leader your main goal is to kill the enemy and protect your own men/nation. And that's precisely what they did.

They bombed entire cities full of civilians. A very small % of the casualties were military personel and the rest was just civilians trying to keep their life in order. That is why they are given some shit here and there for what they did and why it is still a thing being debated.

Killing civilians in war is never okay and people are being put in court for such things. If the US had use more then just the 2 bombs to show their destructive use, then there would proberly have been quite many remarks after the war. Luckily, most people have seen the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as the last horrors of the war and something which had to happend.

[Forogil]

I agree the mentality of the Japanese was basically fight and never surrender but at the end of the day once the nukes were dropped they DID surrender. Japan by this time was fucked and in no real fighting shape aside from the defense of a ground invasion so what was the hurry and harm in trying a demonstration first?

The hurry was that there was a war going on - people were fighting for their lives; Japan had captured foreign soil - and held prisoners of war; and wasn't treating them well.

A demonstration was actually considered - but it was deemed that it would not be effective (and cause unnecessary risks). Just a big splash in the sea that people would ignore. Considering that Japan didn't surrender immediately after two bombs that estimate seems correct.

[Teri]

I agree the mentality of the Japanese was basically fight and never surrender but at the end of the day once the nukes were dropped they DID surrender. Japan by this time was fucked and in no real fighting shape aside from the defense of a ground invasion so what was the hurry and harm in trying a demonstration first?

Japan also surrendered because Soviets broke the Non Agression pact they had for 4 years(and would have lasted till 1946), at first Japan wanted to use the USSR as middle-man for better peace terms.

Second Nuclear bomb and Soviet invasion(on Japan-Held China) just happened to be on the exact same day.

Japan just couldn't fight an eventual Dual-invasion.

Eventually the fighting continued for a while, and Korea got divided in 2, Russia still holds Sakhalin & Kuril Islands to this date.

[Forogil]

Killing civilians in war is never okay and people are being put in court for such things.

Killing civilians isn't "okay" - but acceptable in some cases.

The Geneva convention (after WWII and not ratified by e.g. the US, https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/appli...2563CD0051DC9E ) only prohibits "indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations" and attacks "targeting civilians", but not military attacks that kill civilians as well.

[Akainakali]

I agree the mentality of the Japanese was basically fight and never surrender but at the end of the day once the nukes were dropped they DID surrender. Japan by this time was fucked and in no real fighting shape aside from the defense of a ground invasion so what was the hurry and harm in trying a demonstration first?

For one thing we didn't have a massive supply of them.

At the time they were used, I think we might have had something like one more.

They were due to start rolling off the assembly lines a few months after they were first used, but I believe even the Japanese correctly calculated based on what they knew from their own nuclear program that we didn't have a lot of them.

You can argue counterfactuals all you like, but saying "Oh they were just about to surrender" is a dubious statement at best, even with what we know now about their thinking and the actual outcome.

Also and I can't emphasis this enough, thinking about nukes with a post-Hiroshima mindset is completely missing the point, if you want to argue about why they were used.

NOBODY back then had a real understanding of what the effect of nukes would be. To them, it was basically just a more effective and efficient way of doing what they were already doing.

Like it or not, killing large numbers of civilians was pretty much unavoidable in WWII. The bombers had a error radius measured in at best thousands of feet and that went up to MILES for any night attacks. The claims of precision bombing were laughable at best. There's a reason they used hundreds of bombers in attacks and it wasn't because they could drop a few bombs and hit their targets.

[Flurryfang]

Killing civilians isn't "okay" - but acceptable in some cases.

The Geneva convention (after WWII and not ratified by e.g. the US, https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/appli...2563CD0051DC9E ) only prohibits "indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations" and attacks "targeting civilians", but not military attacks that kill civilians as well.

I think when you have a bomb, that can clear an extreme amount of area, using it on 1 factory does not excuse the dead of the rest of the town. Today, some drone strikes, which kill a small amount of civilians, is even looked at for killing too many civilians for the number of enemies they kill.

Since the bomb was only used twice and have not been used after, the bombing of Japan is kind of forgiven by most of the world, since it ended the war.

[Forogil]

For one thing we didn't have a massive supply of them.

At the time they were used, I think we might have had something like one more.

Actually zero additional ones were completed (one of the designs had been tested in the US earlier; the other design hadn't even been tested when it was used). The next would be ready a week or so later.

[Annoying]

Actually zero additional ones were completed (one of the designs had been tested in the US earlier; the other design hadn't even been tested when it was used). The next would be ready a week or so later.

Yeah, I live an hour and a half away from trinity site. Have some tritium in a vial on a bookshelf somewhere.

[Deleted]

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
-President Dwight D. Eisenhower

The japs told the russians they would surrender completely, as long as the emporer was allowed to remain as a figurehead.

Americans rejected this and reminded allies that they agreed on unconditional surrender and popped a second bomb.

Japan offered unconditional surrender, americans accepted and said btw you can keep emporer as a figurehead.

Nuclear trolling at its finest.

[Independent voter]

The japs told the russians they would surrender completely, as long as the emporer was allowed to remain as a figurehead.

Americans rejected this and reminded allies that they agreed on unconditional surrender and popped a second bomb.

Japan offered unconditional surrender, americans accepted and said btw you can keep emporer as a figurehead.

Nuclear trolling at its finest.

Not true. The Potsdam Declaration was leafleted all over Japan with millions of leaflets 10 days before Hiroshima. It said Japan must surrender immediately or face complete and utter destruction. It also didn't mention the emperor which is diplomatic speak for "the emperor can stay if that's what you want".

[Marcellus1986]

genocide

noun
the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular nation or ethnic group.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/genocide

You're an idiot.

Still isn't genocide

[Deleted]

Not true. The Potsdam Declaration was leafleted all over Japan with millions of leaflets 10 days before Hiroshima. It said Japan must surrender immediately or face complete and utter destruction. It also didn't mention the emperor which is diplomatic speak for "the emperor can stay if that's what you want".

Your interpretation of that lack of mentioning the emporer is still debated. My knowledge of japanese culture and linguistics means i really can't argue either way.