Hiroshima debate?
Corocotta
Active member
My point is that the factories and the 20.000 soldiers located in Hiroshima could have be destroyed with conventional bombs and not with a nuke. Almost all japanesse cities were destroyed with conventional weapons, why not Hiroshima and Nagasaki?. If the US used a nuclear blast was with another intentions: scare Japan army (is it ethical to desintegrate 300.000 civilians just to scare? from my point of view obviously not), show USSR the power of the US , justify the 2 billion dollars investment in the Manhattan proyect and as a revenge from Pearl Harbour.
I made a question a few quotes again but nobody answered: Using an evil weapon to destroy an evil empite wouldn´t make the US also an evil nation? Or may be the crimes of the US has another rate of measure?
I made a question a few quotes again but nobody answered: Using an evil weapon to destroy an evil empite wouldn´t make the US also an evil nation? Or may be the crimes of the US has another rate of measure?
Corocotta said:
sorry dude but you are wrong on this one. the US could have bombed japan till they were back in the stone age...but why prolong it? many more civilians would have died, many more allied troops and japan would've taken alot longer to rebuild.
plus, the bombs the US were using were mostly fire bombs, hardly a freindly alternative. two absolutly devastating blasts and the war was over, not becuase of those two bombs....but becuase of the thought there might be more.
yes the japanese were evectivly beaten before the bombs were dorpped....problem was they didn't know that yet.
Corocotta
Active member
chewie_nz said:
Sorry dude, you are wrong. Since September 1940, under the covername "Magic," U.S. military intelligence had been routinely decrypting the intercepted cable traffic of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. The National Security Agency kept the 'Magic" diplomatic and military summaries classified for many years and did not release the series for 1942 through August 1945 in its entirety until the early 1990s. This summary includes a report on a cable from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to Ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow concerning the emperor's decision to seek Soviet help in ending the war. Not knowing that the Soviets had already made a commitment to its Allies to declare war on Japan, Tokyo fruitlessly pursued this option for several weeks. The "Magic" intercepts from mid-July have figured in Gar Alperovitz's argument that Truman and his advisers recognized that the emperor was ready to capitulate if the Allies showed more flexibility on the demand for unconditional surrender. This point is central to Alperovitz's thesis that top U.S. officials recognized a "two-step logic" that moderating unconditional surrender and a Soviet declaration of war would have been enough to induce Japan's surrender without the use of the bomb.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf
LeEnfield
Active member
Corocotta......You are on about the amount America spent in developing the Atomic bomb, what you fail to mention Hitler had the same idea but was not as far ahead as America, also when the end was in sight for Germany The shipped a large amount of material for use in an Atomic bomb to Japan in a long range submarine. When Germany surrendered all German submarines were instructed to head to wards a port on the surface. This German submarine did just that and much to Americans surprise they had enough radio active material to build another bomb, and it is said that it was this material that helped make the bomb that was dropped in Nagasaki. If this material had reach Japan do you think that they would not have used it against America. Why is it that what the Allies did is always wrong and Germans and Japanese are always right.
Italian Guy
Milforum Hitman
Corocotta said:
They could have been levelled up, yeah, but at a much higher price. Corocotta, you seem to ignore that since WW1 wars involved the civilians as much as the militaries, on both sides. My grandmother used to witness people dying every third day under the US bombings, the Brits were getting used to see Nazi bombs dropped off by the Luftwaffe. Weren't those civilians? Yeah, that was the face of modern war. Japanese and German militaries (as well as US or Britain) relied heavily on the civilian support at home, as far as economy and "keeping the machine going" was concerned. You talk about ethics, while saying that it would have been ethical to you to just destroy Japanese cities with conventional weapons: wouldn't have innocent civilians died in that case? Does the "ethics" you refer to spring out from international agreements or is that what springs out from the heart of men?
On top of that, you sound very attached to some allegedly "secret", "unmentionable" reasons for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I can't see what's secret in there. As it often happens when a Country takes a military option, numerous reasons are at play.
Like there was no single reason for OIF, there was no single reason for the two nukes. There were several, and of course impressing the USSR was one of them. A damn good strategic reason. It wouldn't be long until Moscow got its nuclear weapons developed - what if they had been the first?
The bombs were also dropped in order to end a war that had been going on for years and was bound to cause one more million casualties in terms of allied forces only. It would have been completely nonsense not to use the bombs when all the indicators would have been worse. Hence, "scare the Japanese Army"? Well, if that means induce them to surrender, yeah, that was taken into account, and it bingoed pretty good what ya think? -
Justify the investment, I don't know - I mean that might have played a role, but IMO less important than some may think.
And as far as revenge for Pearl Harbor, how the heck does this idea match with your previously-asserted theory of the "FDR let the Japs attack him"? I mean the two don't match, either one or the other. If Washington had ignored prewarning signs to find an excuse to enter the conflict, what revenge would have been needed then?
To give an answer to your last question, "Using an evil weapon to destroy an evil empite wouldn´t make the US also an evil nation?" well that's not as hard to answer as you think: See, weapons are not good or bad. It's like tech. Depends on what purpose you're seeking to achieve. Evil weapon depends just on the point of view. Given what war is all about, once you're provided a fair and balanced contextualization to the scene, with an eye on the next 50 years after 1945, you may conclude that the use of those two bombs was necessary and saved more lives than it took.
Corocotta
Active member
IG, we will have to agree that using conventional weapons wouldn´t have caused as much suffering as the 2 nukes. People are still daying today from cancer.
In other order of things, did you read the link that I gave to declasiffied pappers that shows japanesse offers to surrender to Russia? Check my last post. Why using a nuke if the "japs" were so close to surrender?
Another question: if the use of the nukes had the porpouse of ending the war, why not using it first with diplomatic intentions? I mean, telling the japs what would happend in caso of non ancoditional surrender.
After the hiroshima blast the japs offer to surrender but their offer was ignored, why?
In other order of things, did you read the link that I gave to declasiffied pappers that shows japanesse offers to surrender to Russia? Check my last post. Why using a nuke if the "japs" were so close to surrender?
Another question: if the use of the nukes had the porpouse of ending the war, why not using it first with diplomatic intentions? I mean, telling the japs what would happend in caso of non ancoditional surrender.
After the hiroshima blast the japs offer to surrender but their offer was ignored, why?
you're just not getting are you?
i think japan got off pretty lightly for it's part in WWII. they did some of the most dispicable things imaginable in every pacific rim country they occupied. i'll be surpirsed if china ever lets the rape of najing go...why should they?
the fact as that japan today continues to teach and assert that it did very little wrong during the war.
while they keep that attitude i find it very hard to show an ounce of pity.
and no matter what your opinion of the US is today, WWII was a different time, and a different place.
i think japan got off pretty lightly for it's part in WWII. they did some of the most dispicable things imaginable in every pacific rim country they occupied. i'll be surpirsed if china ever lets the rape of najing go...why should they?
the fact as that japan today continues to teach and assert that it did very little wrong during the war.
while they keep that attitude i find it very hard to show an ounce of pity.
and no matter what your opinion of the US is today, WWII was a different time, and a different place.
Shadowalker
Active member
Corocotta said:
The emperor had to intervene to make japan surrender as the civilians were willing to surrender which was in the papers but the military wasnt.
If you were told by the President of the USA in 1945 theat they had a bomb, the most powerful bomb in the world making all others seem worthless, using technology not seen before apart from in theoretical physics papers would you believe him, or would you think he was joking?
Italian Guy
Milforum Hitman
He would have called for UN inspections if they had existed, I tell you. Better, he would have made the UN from scratch just to get inspectors come and disarm the US 
Corocotta
Active member
Italian Guy said:He would have called for UN inspections if they had existed, I tell you. Better, he would have made the UN from scratch just to get inspectors come and disarm the US
The UN came into existence on October 24, 1945, after the Charter had been ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council — Republic of China, France, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States — and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.
Italian Guy
Milforum Hitman
Corocotta said:Italian Guy said:He would have called for UN inspections if it had existed, I tell you. Better, he would have made the UN from scratch just to get inspectors come and disarm the US
The UN came into existence on October 24, 1945, after the Charter had been ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council — Republic of China, France, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States — and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.
Exactly. So?
Italian Guy
Milforum Hitman
You're fun, dude. That's why I said: "If it had existed"(=the UN didn't exist yet), and, further on, "he would have made the UN from scratch..."(=the UN wasn't there yet):Italian Guy said:He would have called for UN inspections if they had existed, I tell you. Better, he would have made the UN from scratch just to get inspectors come and disarm the US
Oh the little wise doc teaching me when the UN was born
Corocotta
Active member
Italian Guy said:
Italian Guy said:He would have called for UN inspections if they had existed, I tell you. Better, he would have made the UN from scratch just to get inspectors come and disarm the US
Oh the little wise doc teaching me when the UN was born
The confusion came from the "if they had existed", thought you were talking about the inspectors and not about the UN, but it doesn´t matter, my english is not that good and sometimes I can misunderstood certain expresions.
Italian Guy
Milforum Hitman
Corocotta said:Italian Guy said:
Italian Guy said:He would have called for UN inspections if they had existed, I tell you. Better, he would have made the UN from scratch just to get inspectors come and disarm the US
Oh the little wise doc teaching me when the UN was born
The confusion came from the "if they had existed", thought you were talking about the inspectors and not about the UN, but it doesn´t matter, my english is not that good and sometimes I can misunderstood certain expresions.
No prob man.
LeEnfield
Active member
Corocotta........You seem to be suggesting that conventional bombs are okay, yet on one bombing raid Tokyo suffered 100,000 killed about the same number that killed in Hiroshima. So it is okay for them to killed in fire storm brought about by conventional bombing, your logic escapes me. Also you asked why they did not use conventional bombs to take out these Cities well one of the problem the American bombers were dropping bombs faster than they could be delivered. You are also going on about people still dying from cancers from this bombing, well it seems to me that some 60 years on the people would be dying any way. Yet as I have said in earlier posts former POW are dying from the mistreatment handed out to the by Japanese, so whats the difference except that you wear a CND badge
Lord Londonderry
Banned
Yes, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were deliberately left off LeMay's firebombing program.
Read "Torch to the Enemy".
Read "Torch to the Enemy".
Something that's often overlooked............
is that the Russians would have invaded Japan before the U.S. if the bombs weren't dropped.
The Russians had already captured the Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, had the war continued, the Soviets would have been able to invade Hokkaido well before the American invasion of Kyushu.
And seeing that the Japanese only had 5 divisions on Hokkaido, and the Allies had scheduled the invasion of Honshu for the spring of 1946, there's every chance the Soviets would have invaded Honshu as well.
So the reasons for dropping the bombs, I believe, was political more then anything else. Truman wanted to show the Soviets that although they had the most powerful army in the world, America had the bomb, he wanted political leverage in dealing with Stalin.
Plus, even more importantly, stop the Russians from occupying any of Japan.
The Japanese were desperate to end the war from July. The Japanese doves had been working to end the war on the condition of retention of the throne, which was the sticking point, and which was given later anyway.
The first bomb was dropped, and the Japanese still hesitated, when the Soviets entered the war, that was the straw that broke them.
Historian and former American Naval officer Martin Sherwin said the war most probably have ended in July if the Americans agreed to the retention of the Emperor.
"The choice in the summer of 1945 was not between a conventional invasion or a nuclear war. It was a choice between various forms of diplomacy and warfare."
The sticking point was unconditional surrender'
If the guarantee of the Emperor was given, the war would have been over.
Just imagine if that guarantee was given earlier, no bombs dropped, no Russian attack in Manchuria, no Communist North Korea, meaning no Korean war, and the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives.
is that the Russians would have invaded Japan before the U.S. if the bombs weren't dropped.
The Russians had already captured the Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, had the war continued, the Soviets would have been able to invade Hokkaido well before the American invasion of Kyushu.
And seeing that the Japanese only had 5 divisions on Hokkaido, and the Allies had scheduled the invasion of Honshu for the spring of 1946, there's every chance the Soviets would have invaded Honshu as well.
So the reasons for dropping the bombs, I believe, was political more then anything else. Truman wanted to show the Soviets that although they had the most powerful army in the world, America had the bomb, he wanted political leverage in dealing with Stalin.
Plus, even more importantly, stop the Russians from occupying any of Japan.
The Japanese were desperate to end the war from July. The Japanese doves had been working to end the war on the condition of retention of the throne, which was the sticking point, and which was given later anyway.
The first bomb was dropped, and the Japanese still hesitated, when the Soviets entered the war, that was the straw that broke them.
Historian and former American Naval officer Martin Sherwin said the war most probably have ended in July if the Americans agreed to the retention of the Emperor.
"The choice in the summer of 1945 was not between a conventional invasion or a nuclear war. It was a choice between various forms of diplomacy and warfare."
The sticking point was unconditional surrender'
If the guarantee of the Emperor was given, the war would have been over.
Just imagine if that guarantee was given earlier, no bombs dropped, no Russian attack in Manchuria, no Communist North Korea, meaning no Korean war, and the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives.