Do you think nuking Japan was a necessary evil?

[GasaiYuno951]

But you think a military base and a city are equivalent targets?

you do know the 2 cities bombed were military production towns right?

[Kubaal]

But you think a military base and a city are equivalent targets?

Im pretty sure you are the one that brought this into conversation. I simply stated Japan's actions, and the US's reactions. You can argue who had the biggest stick, but I would still careless.

[Betelgeuse]

Whether it needed to happen or not, it happened. President Harry S. Truman (D) is directly responsible for approving the attack. Just goes to show what happens when a Democrat gets too much power.

[Alydael]

After witnessing Obama (whom I despise) set foot into Hiroshima presumably to simply to assert his American might seeing how he made no apology or feel any real remorse, coupled with the responses of other Americans, this old topic came to mind again. Was nuking Japan necessary? I mean for how we demonize the act in one end, other Americans would remind you that Japan was ax-crazy during those times and we forced them into a surrender that saved more lives.

So he should apologize that Japan attacked us at Pearl harbor and then we defeated them? What tactics should we have used against a militant nation, that believed their emperor was basically a deity and was sealing kamikazi pilots into planes to fly suicide missions against us? They didn't even surrender after the first bomb..... If that didn't work, what would you suggest?

[DJ117]

Yes it was necessary. I don't consider it evil. It was the best option available.

The Japanese started the war and treated prisoners like vermin. They knew they had lost, but Samurai code made them unable to accept defeat. A split Japanese military command could not agree on accepting unconditional surrender at the end of the war. They famously replied "to kill with silence" to the Allies just before the first bomb was dropped. They could only agree that no blame should be put on the Emperor.

The only man in Japan who could end the war was the Emperor. Their crazy society is what caused the bombs to drop. A surrender would never come. A majority of the Japanese High Command was prepared to fight till the end. Millions would had died, you hippies with your almighty hindsight.

[Alydael]

But you think a military base and a city are equivalent targets?

I suggested throwing flowers at them and asking them to "play nice," but, "surprisingly" no one listened to me......

They didn't even surrender after the first bomb...... What lesser tactic do you think would have succeeded? Or maybe you believe no civilians would have died in a land invasion? Maybe they are immune like the npc's in video games?

[Felya]

I disagree, the Americans would continue to "test" nuclear explosions in plain sight of the USSR and the point would still be made.

Granted maybe not to the full effect that it did by dropping them on cities but both sides would have still continued in the same cold war as they have in reality.

That's the thing, it wasn't just that the bomb was used. But, that U.S. had the nerve to drop it on people. As bad as it sounds, which also relies on hindsight being 20/20, U.S. being the only country to ever drop the bomb on a live population, prevented others from doing the same. It's probebly bias based on the side I'm on, but U.S. doing it in the context of WW2, is better than USSR doing it during the Cold War.

[nonameelf]

I suggested throwing flowers at them and asking them to "play nice," but, "surprisingly" no one listened to me......

They didn't even surrender after the first bomb...... What lesser tactic do you think would have succeeded? Or maybe you believe no civilians would have died in a land invasion? Maybe they are immune like the npc's in video games?

Why would a land invasion even be necessary? Their navy was crushed and their air force in shambles. It's not like they were going to leave the island any time soon.

[Dreknar20]

But you think a military base and a city are equivalent targets?

equivalent in terms of importance?

[Demona3]

No. That is false. Some Japanese officials were considering surrendering, but they hadn't done so. Some US officials thought the bombs unnecessary - since the Japanese would surrender in a few months of conventional bombing (which would have cost more lives).

But please link your well-researched results of googling so we can see your true colors.

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/30/bo...pagewanted=all

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/...ambitions.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-rea...-lives/5308192

Happy reading.

Also, I bet you wouldn't believe me if I told you that the US gave Nazi scientists asylum to use them for their intelligence for our own benefit. I suggest picking up a book called "Operation Paperclip". Hell, just google "Operation Paperclip".
Really amazing what they don't teach you in school.

[DJ117]

I do have to add one thing though, i can see one positive outcome of it, that can be traced up to today, and it's how adamantly the japanese have become against any form of war and nuclear weapons. That's something i respect alot.

You are stuck in a world of Japanese manga. The Japanese have been rearming to step up against the Chinese aggression. The atom bombs did not stop them from building nuclear reactors. One of them nearly exploded a few years ago.

[Aeula]

It's probably what prevented the cold war from escalating. The threat of what america did to Japan happening again was enough to stop that war from getting any worse.

It (A nuke being dropped on a populated area) was bound to happen eventually anyway, it just worked out better this way.

[Gulharum]

What you have to realize is that WWII was unlike nearly any other war in anything like the last millenium or so. It was a state of what they call "total war", where the war isn't about nation-states trying to resolve political differences. Most wars, including most of the post WWII actions (save perhaps Vietnam) are like geopolitical games, in a sense, like an MMA match; you're fighting, but there are rules, and things you just don't do, like attacking civilian populations. In total war, the gloves are off, and pretty much anything goes, because if you don't exterminate them, they'll exterminate you. Both sides of the war committed large-scale atrocities, during WWII. Because that was the only way to prevent yourself from being annihalated. It's difficult to really understand that kind of setting, because again, we really haven't seen it since, and none of the wars we've been in in living memory even come close.

Again a good point that perspective of the war's context is needed to really understand it. I guess my central beef with the bombings would be large-scale wars happening at all, because like you said, those wars are all-out, "gloves-off" slaughter fests; and I just think it's ridiculous that humans would ever get in a conflict of that scale. Of all the tough problems we have to address (climate change, treatments/cures for "incurable" diseases and conditions, poverty, etc.) I think peace should be fairly simple. Problems that should be solvable through discussions and non-violent measures are instead "solved" by slaughter; it's just irrational to me. And to have so many people harmed that weren't directly involved in the conflict that caused the war may foreshadow what could happen if another war of that scale broke out, which frightens me a bit. Mostly because I don't personally have any problems with the citizens of any country and I know that if the bureaucrats of our country and other countries experienced a conflict severe enough, what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki could happen to my own city (and yours). If only people were more open-minded, we wouldn't need to worry about getting nuked. Selfishness surely plays a role too, as many people don't truly care about the welfare enough of people in other countries to "ban" large-scale wars (as if that were possible).

[Celista]

Was nuking Japan necessary?

No. It was a heavy-handed expression of American might that was designed to send a message. It was undoubtedly unnecessary.

[Daymanmb]

Well once we saw how destructive nuclear weapons are as well as once others acquired them, going to war with said others was basically asking for mutual destruction. So not really surprising at all that they have not been used again.

And there it is ladies and gentlemen. They could have easily displayed that power as a threat, alternatively first.

[Paklaaji]

There are those who are confident that the Japanese would have surrendered without the bombing of Hiroshima. But they did not surrender because of the Tokyo bombing. Submarine warfare — not just bombing — had crippled Japan's industry, but this had been the case for many months. And the example of Okinawa, with its kamikaze attacks and civilian resistance to the death, was sobering. You and I may know what was coming, but President Harry S. Truman did not have the luxury.

There are two defenses from a military perspective, then, of the American bombing. One is that no one at the time could be certain of what the Japanese were going to do because a reading of the record shows that even after Hiroshima, even the Japanese didn't know what they were going to do. Second, a doctrine and reality of war was unfolding — a process that began hundreds of years earlier. But those who would challenge these defenses are compelled to explain how they would have dealt with monstrous regimes like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

The focus on Hiroshima is morally justifiable only in the context of condemning several centuries of military development. It can be condemned, but I don't know what difference it makes. The logic of the musket played itself out ineluctably to Hiroshima. But the core reality that played out was this: Over time, the distinction between military and civilian became untenable. War fighting began in the factory and ended with the soldier at the front. The soldier was a capillary. The arteries of war were in the city.

There is a tendency in our time to demand that someone do something about evil. There is a willful denial of the truth that anything that is done requires actions that are evil. The moral lesson of Hiroshima is twofold. The first is that military doctrine, like other things, is ruthlessly logical. The second is that in confronting Germany and Japan, moral purity was impossible, save for the end being pursued, which was destroying the prior evil. President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood the logic of strategy and the logic of morality, in my opinion. For him, choices were shaped by military doctrine and the nature of the evil he faced. Truman had even less choice.

Hiroshima was an act that flowed logically from history, and we cannot in retrospect claim to know what the Japanese would or would not have done. However, I think that had I been there, knowing what was known then — or even what is known now — I would have been trapped in a logic that ultimately justified itself: Japan surrendered, and Asia was saved from a great evil.

Source.

Have a nice day.

[Mueller Greyhound]

In my opinion, yes it was necessary. During the World War 2, it was the Japan who launched the first strike on United States, effectively pulling U.S into a two-side war fronts, one in Europe across Pacific Ocean and other across Atlantic Ocean. Knowing that Japan attacked U.S and the only way to put it to end is dropping a nuke on their land to let them know they can't fuck with U.S. While it is arguably the best thing that U.S ever done military by putting the war to end quickly to prevent countless of unnecessary deaths and teaching Japan the biggest lesson of all the time.

[Daymanmb]

Source.

Have a nice day.

Youre bolded part is trying desperately to justify bombing civilians. Without a military, what good are weapons?

[DJ117]

All these hippies in this thread proclaiming the bombs were unnecessary, should be the first marines to storm the beaches of the Japanese mainland.

I bet you they would all cry and ask for the atom bombs to drop after all. World War 2 was total war.

The Japanese High Command would NOT have surrendered as the hippies proclaim. The Japanese High Command expected the Allies to offer acceptable peace terms due to the feared Allies losses for an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Japanese civilians were being prepared for the invasion for f sake. Children, women and old people were drilled and expected to die for the Emperor. Samurai do not surrender. Japanese do not surrender.

[Eliseus]

I wish there was a middle ground choice. I don't think it is so cut and dry. We were at war and it ended. So many people died from that though. So many more lives would of been lost though if it didn't happen. So I just didn't choose yes or no.