The US did bat an eye; Hiroshima, Nagasaki

Ski8799

Active member
The atomic bombings of World War II decimated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and set a horrific precedence of carnage and destruction never before seen. In Hiroshima 80,000 people died in the blast and another 90,000 – 110,000 in the weeks, months and years following due to radiation sickness and complications thereof. The event was not just US history but world history as we had entered the Atomic Age.
The decision to drop the atomic bomb was not one that was reached easily. The ethical necessity to drop the bombs was debated then and continues to be debated now. I understand the difficult decision that President Harry Truman and his staff faced and of course they did research the potential devastation that the bombs would produce. The concept that bringing a decisive and quick end to the war in order to save lives does have merit. It was estimated that the conventional bombing campaign would have produced many more casualties than the two bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced. Now that the war was over in Europe, our military was re-aligning to concentrate the majority of its combat power on Japan, which would have meant full commitment of the US Army Air Corp, tripling the bombing capability and at least doubling the land force capability. The planned invasion of Japan would have produced many more casualties but now add to this the dynamic the fact that 10s of thousands more American military would have been lost. The Japanese had a reputation for deception as their claims of compliance in peace treaties and accords were suspect.
The first location did have great military value; Hiroshima was a supply and logistics hub for the Japanese Army/Navy and their communications and intelligence commands were based there as well. The population of Hiroshima was evacuated by the Japanese government during the later years of the war as the conventional bombing campaign increased; this was another planning consideration. Cities with larger civilian populations were immediately dismissed from the list of possible targets as well as cultural and religious centers, such as Kyoto.
I don’t know if the decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the right decision; it may have saved lives and prevented the devastation of such a horrible war from unnecessarily continuing. It may have even helped to diffuse cold war close calls such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the leaders of the former Soviet Union and the United States replayed horrific images of radiation burns and city leveling in their minds maybe they came to the sobering conclusion that dialogue should have been opened. When an African Liberation Theologist tells me that we dropped bombs and didn’t even bat an eye, I know that he’s full of ****, because I know US history.
 
Lets face it the Germans were working on making the Atom bomb as well. The big fear was that they would stick it on a V2.
 
Imagine what Japan would have done had they had the bombs, or the Nazi's.
It won't change the history a lot:

  1. We can speak about few hand-made bombs, not mass production of them for that time.
  2. Because of large territories of target countries (USA, USSR) and large length of front lines, neither Germans nor Japans could significantly paralyze Soviet or American war industry, and strikes over the front lines could result in small tactical result without chances to influence situation in entire front (literally, blast radius of 15 kt yield nuke is about 3 km - i.e. only 1 division could be totally destroyed and few partially incapacitated.
  3. Both Germany and Japan will face some problems with delivering bombs to target, since at 1944-1945 both of them had lost air superiority. And risk the bomb won't be dropped on the designated area because of hostile air defense fighters was too high.
Well, from points 1 and 2 shows that even in case Germans or Japans could made the nuke, they won't have significant effect from its use. They could only increase the Soviet or American casualties, not win the war with this potential Wunderwaffe.
 
Yeah, my thinking though was just on where they would have dropped here in the States had they had the ability to fly it over here. Wasn't thinking in regards to battlefield use.
 
Yeah, my thinking though was just on where they would have dropped here in the States had they had the ability to fly it over here. Wasn't thinking in regards to battlefield use.
I'd say NYC, just because it's huge, Pittsburgh or Cleveland, which were the main sources of steel, Detroit, a huge production hub, or DC, home to the entire US Government.
 
I wonder if the US would have dropped it on a German city instead (given say Japan was defeated first)? Remember, we did consider the Japanese racially inferior to us in ww2.
 
I wonder if the US would have dropped it on a German city instead (given say Japan was defeated first)? Remember, we did consider the Japanese racially inferior to us in ww2.

Two way street. The Japanese also considered anyone not Japanese to racially inferior to the extent that anyone not Japanese subhuman.
 
Considering Japan's behavior against the Filipinos, Chinese, and Korean whom they considered subhuman, I doubt that they would show any restraint. Don't forget that the Japanese experimented with biological warfare against Chinese populations and allied POWs. This victimology is bizarre since shortly after the war both the German and Japanese militaries admitted they would have used nukes if they had it.
 
Though they did not match the scale of the Russian or German killings, the Japanese were certainly the most vicious in their methods. I don't feel bad at all that we nuked them twice. They would've done the same, and more. Probably would've used biological weapons, which in my opinion are the most terrible type of WMD ever conceived. Indiscriminate, and they keep on killing long after release.

Also, remember the Allied firebombings in Europe killed more people.

Edit: I don't know how you can take someone who calls himself an "African Liberation Theorist" seriously.
 
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Many families of those tortured and murdered in Japanese POW camps or on their infamous death marches, have stated that the Japanese mainland should have been “nuked” till it sank beneath the sea. My own father included.
 
Yes. That was certainly the general opinion when it happened. Relief was prevalent and, at the time, no sympathy. I state this as fact, not opinion.

No doubt attitudes have mellowed over the years, but those were ours at the time.

In the 1980's I hosted a Japanese Catholic priest for a few days, who had lost his family in Nagasaki; wonderful human being, great guy. I treasure the memory.

But that was a different time, a different world.
 
The Germans produced a Submarine called the U234 with a 15.000 mile range and this submarine was sent off to Japan laden with Radar, an stripped down Me262 and pile of German specialist. Also on the Submarine was severl hundred of pound of Radio Active material. Now the Japanese had built three large submarines capable of range of some 30.000 miles and these submarines each carried three aircraft in water tight hangers on their deck. Now that Japanese plan was put this radio active material in side the bombs and drop them on Los Angeles.This would have killed thousands of people and injured far more and made the city usless for years to come. When the war ended the Germans heard that their fellow country men were being rounded up in Japan so surrendered to the Americans. U234 was taken to Portsmouth Harbour in America where the cargo was unloaded and some of the radio active material was used to make Americas second atom bomb. Now they reckon that had the war in Germany gone on for another 11 days Los Angeles would still be glowing in the dark.
The only thing you can say is that you did it to them before they did it to you
 
The Japanese were the most vicious? whilst i am not lining up for a beating with a pick handle i think it would have to be preferable to being given any number of disease cultures and then undergoing vivisection whilst still alive! or being forced to load your fellow human- sometimes still conscious- into crematoria. the Japanese maintained a biological warfare unit in Manchuria throughout its occupation- the Germans had medical experimentation facilities attached to most of their concentration camps not to mention the dedicated 'laboratories' found near Berlin and near Danzig to name the two most famous. The NKVD's favoured mode of execution was to take you for a walk down a long corridor and shoot you in the back of the neck, just below where it attaches to the skull and on an upward trajectory- a shot that is difficult to master but provides a relatively painless death. the source goes on to note that whilst it was a difficult shot to master on the move, with @30000 victims alone in the purge of the army prior to the war they had plenty of chances to practice. It is currently the method of execution favoured by the Chinese.

In an interview Tibbets gave to Reader's Digest to mark the (i think) 40th anniversary of the bomb he stated that the provisional target in Germany for the use of the bomb was in fact Berlin. This seems unlikely to me but if it was an all or nothing weapon at the time it might make sense. if i remember it correctly, one of the designs was initially thought to be impractical (something to do with the refinement of the fissile material) and so its development started significantly later than the other. it wasn't until shortly before the first test that the Project team realised that they would have two bombs available rather than the one advised at the start of the year. there were actually more bombs built but it was considered necessary to keep however many in reserve.

Nagasaki was meant to be the first target- it and the secondary were covered by clouds on the day and the target then became Hiroshima. The targets themselves had been relatively unscathed by conventional bombing as the Americans wanted a clear indication of the damage the nukes would cause. even before the formal surrender of Japan, project scientists were on the ground in both cities.
 
The use of the bombs was absolutely the right decision. It is amazing to me that people today question the choice. People try to say it was unethical or irresponsible but there was really no other choice. At that point we had been at war for three plus years, millions of lives had been lost worldwide and the Japanese were a notoriously difficult enemy to fight. Any opportunity we had to end the war quickly and with out losing another allied life was an absolute no brainier. I feel no regret or sham for my country's use of these weapons and like what others had said, if we had not used them first someone else would have.
 
The Germans produced a Submarine called the U234 with a 15.000 mile range and this submarine was sent off to Japan laden with Radar, an stripped down Me262 and pile of German specialist. Also on the Submarine was severl hundred of pound of Radio Active material. Now the Japanese had built three large submarines capable of range of some 30.000 miles and these submarines each carried three aircraft in water tight hangers on their deck. Now that Japanese plan was put this radio active material in side the bombs and drop them on Los Angeles.This would have killed thousands of people and injured far more and made the city usless for years to come. When the war ended the Germans heard that their fellow country men were being rounded up in Japan so surrendered to the Americans. U234 was taken to Portsmouth Harbour in America where the cargo was unloaded and some of the radio active material was used to make Americas second atom bomb. Now they reckon that had the war in Germany gone on for another 11 days Los Angeles would still be glowing in the dark.
The only thing you can say is that you did it to them before they did it to you

Le - I really rate that post. Salute from me.
 
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