Taking the fire bombings to say the A-Bombs weren't 'that' bad... i don't know - that doesn't sound reasonable to me. Maybe the point is that war is war and cruel things happen like bombings with many losses- but would that be fair to leave it be like that?

I'm in no way saying that the A bombs "weren't that bad". I'm pointing out that they were an escalation of force. Seems to me that the IJ Goverment especially their Bushido driven military were content to allow civilians to die in order to save face. Up until the time that the Emporer decided that the country would annilated.

Dropping the A Bombs was not about revenge it was about winning the war and bringing peace to it. Now twice as many people died in the fire bombings than they did by the Atom bombs, so why concentrate of the Atom bombs, or is it becuase they were more spectacular and are far more controversial.
As I have said in other threads the bombs saved countless lives especially those of the Allied POW. Now I had a large number of ex Japanese POWs working for the firm where i was manager and I never saw one whose health held up long enough for them to reach retirement age.

The Japanese had been offered many chances to surrender but they refused them all and hoped that they could inflict enough casualties on the Allied Forces that the Allies would accept terms that would be better for Japan in their eyes.
Do you think then that the bombs should not have been used but we should have stormed the beaches of Japan regardless of costs
You mentioned Germany as well now if the bomb had been ready to use on Germany I think they would have used there as well to bring the war to an end.

Yes i do think the a-bombs were far more cruel (with the long term effects that no one knew about). The point there is not that they were more spectacular but they dropped them without exactly knowing what would happen... what about if the bombs would have erased the entire culture? Dropping such a weapon on an enemy without knowing the exact consequences... and who guaranteed that the Japanese would surrender after it? What i'm saying is that the situation for America must have been worse in some kind, maybe thats where the years of war, the losses and the finances come into play...
i just don't like the idea of coming back to the simple argument which i learned as a kid... but maybe there isn't really more to say about.
Was it really the last possible option?

Try and put your self as a soldier during WW2, think of the carnage at Iwo Jima and the other islands and try and think if they felt hard done by. There were about a million Allied Service Personnel that lived happy use full lives because that bomb was dropped. Also there was nothing to stop Japan surrendering after the first one was dropped. 60 years on from these events it is very easy for people to moralize over these events, BUT YOU WHERE NOT THERE

No the last possible option was an invasion by the allied forces and the high causalties in both allied lives and Japanese lives that would have resulted.
The IJ military was already training civilians to resist and would have persueded them to resist (by force if necessary) any invasion. They were training civilians to be "anti tank mines", "anti boat swimmers etc.

This is the same IJ Military that "persueded" Japanese civilians to jump to their deaths on Saipan and Okinawa (if they didn't decide to do it for the glory of the emperor...then they were shot).

The invasion IMO would have resulted in more Japanese causalties than the bombs as well as allied causalties.

And an invasion would have most probably resulted in a protracted campaign on each of the home islands. I've seen that terrian, alot of it is a defenders dream I wouldn't want to fight there.

So the bombs saved the allied forces from the last possible option.

so you think there were only two options- invading or bombing?
@Le Enfiel: I know what you mean and as a soldier i truly understand your arguments and i would have been the first to say "bomb em please!" but in historical science that may not be sufficent, at least we have to look for other reasons aside from the common marine thought during that time, because there are many examples where politicians didn't care about such aspects...

Originally Posted by ObjSRgtLw

And as for the troops- they faught fiercily because they didn't have an other option. But i don't think that's a very special case- the germans also had the "Total war" (Volkssturm etc.) which was nothing else than suicide as well. And nearly every Soldier says he would die for his country, so what's so special about the Japanese that did only allow A-bombs and didn't allow a diplomatic soution?

I think what made the Japanese soldier so "special" was that while every soldier says he will die for his country almost every Japanese soldier did die for his, the entire Pacific campaign was an example of this and more importantly on the Japanese populated islands they managed to convince the civilian population to do the same.

This is why it was important to bring the Pacific conflict to an end rapidly and the A-Bombs achieved this.

I do think i'm getting a greater picture here, please keep on

Another thing that came up: germany as target for A-bombs, i'd like to hear more about that... some of you guys already mentioned it...

Can one compare the german people to the Japanese in their end-struggle (many germans who refused to fight were killed by their own) or was Japan united in their decission to fight...

Perhaps the better question in all this would have been to ask if a political solution was possible in the Pacific war and oddly enough I think one was, the later part of the Pacific war seems to have been mired in political confusion preventing a solution.

The more I read of Allied military leaders and politicians comments as well as the Japanese political situation the more I believe that had the Allies not had the mess and chaos of post war Europe to deal with the more likely an agreement could have been reached.

(To all the people who are about to jump up at down about me not being there please note this does not remove the fact that I believe the A-Bombing was justified it is purely hypothetical thinking about another possible aspect of the campaign with 60 years of hindsight).

Originally Posted by ObjSRgtLw

Can one compare the german people to the Japanese in their end-struggle (many germans who refused to fight were killed by their own) or was Japan united in their decission to fight...

I don't think so, the war in Europe remained very much a soldiers war right up until the very end and as such German civilians were not really seen as a threat and for the most part could be simply passed by the Japanese civilians were not the same.