Bombing Japan Saved More People Than It Killed.

[Enrathi]

I feel that while dropping the nukes may have been atrocious, it was also necessary. Not even strictly to end the war, but to see the effects of nuclear weapons in action. If we hadn't used the nukes then, imagine if the Cold War had gone hot because no one realized the full repercussions of nuclear war.

Right now we could be living in the Fallout universe playing sci-fi games about a utopian future where nukes were never used.

 

[Liudeius]

Absolutely false, and this is backed up by the WRONG statistics that you give.
About 400,000 total died (you have to take victims who didn't die immediately into account because radiation sticks around), by the US government's own calculations too so it isn't as if Japan was trying to inflate the casualties.

The fact is, invasion of Japan was never an option, they wanted to surrender even before we bombed them.

The only difference between the pre-bombing treaty of surrender and the post bombing treaty of surrender was Japan's emperor.
Pre-bombing, they wanted to surrender, but we insisted their emperor step down. Truman's own advisers told him that the Japanese would rather die than let there emperor step down (who was the human incarnation of god in their eyes), and the reason they didn't surrender was only because we insisted upon it.
Post-bombing, of course the wanted to surrender, we were worse than Al-Qaeda. We killed over 300,000 innocent civilians (about 1:5 to 1:6 were military personnel), ***** about 9/11 now...
What changed that made them surrender? Well it wasn't the bombing, the emperor was still a god to them. WE changed, Devil-Incarnate, sorry, Truman, finally listened to his advisers and we allowed them to keep their emperor when they surrendered.

Yes, you can argue that we "warned" them, but pamphlets raining from the sky aren't necessarily trustworthy, and to evacuate the 9 or so big cities we warned for an indefinite period of time would have been a huge undertaking (where do they go that isn't a big city and yet is able to support the population?) and crippled their economy.

Edit:
Anyone who thinks the Kyûjô Incident means anything to support the bombing, please realize that not only did this fail, it was AFTER the bombs were dropped.

 

[Lilani]

I might be mistaken but i was under the impression that the OPs claim was pretty much accepted by historians and such.

There are a select few who still think the idea of dropping the nukes was cruel and inhumane, and can't stand the idea that the US got away with killing THAT many civilians and come out looking like heroes while Hitler and the rest have become the worlds most hated villains. I think I remember a thread on this not long ago, actually. I think it was something like "How does the US get away with all this?"

 

[Owen Robertson]

We can make war obsolete by creating Gundamn suits guys! 1 rep from whatever countries are at loggerheads go into space and duke it out in a Battle Royale. Broadcast on Pay-per-view worldwide and you have no economy crisis. Ever. Anyone here saying they wouldn't watch that?! My fucking grandmother would watch that shit and she's the most over-the-top Chrisitian of all time.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

its not just soldiers who die in wartime. britain lost civilians in the blitz, and so did germany when we retaliated.
and a soldier who is conscripted is just a civilian with a gun. if the bombs hit naval/army bases then it would just be an attack. killing civilians makes the government realise they cant protect the country.

EDIT: and to answer your question, yes. 1000 afghans killed, but what about the ones displaced, wounded, killed and maimed with the 10 years of war, as well as the victims of the attacks in britain

I advocated neither Germany, nor Britain for it's Civilian head count. I don't consider the Firebombing of Dresden [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II] to be any less immoral than the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That being said, collateral damage is wholly different to purposeful bombing of civilian areas, for the effect of Morale destruction. There will always be civilian casualties in ANY battle. But the purpose of a battle is not to kill civilians. That is an inevitable side-effect.

And about Afghanistan: Dude..... what the fuck? First of all, if you think people aren't maimed, crippled, wounded and displaced by radiation?... You don't even have to bother looking up the long-term effects of the H&N bombings. Just go read up on what happened earlier this year when the Fukoshima malfunctioned and almost melt-down. Now multiply that by........ about 10000000. Give or take.

And secondly, the majority of the victims of the War on Terror are US, Nato and Taliban soldiers (admittedly the percentage might be higher for this war because of the Taliban's....tactics.) Again. Big difference between soldiers who are willing to take an IED to the face for their country.....and an Afghani child having her skin peel off from Fallout. And.... you're fine with that?

this is the situation i was given:

EDIT-Here's a test: So do you think the US should have just detonated a low-yield Nuclear warhead over Afghanistan in 2001? You know to slowly kill off the Taliban, and by proxy about a thousand innocent Afghans, through radioactive fallout, instead of losing hundreds of American and NATO troops, and thousands of Islamic extremists, in a decade long War that helped in nearly collapsing the global economy?

i based my decision on 1000 casualties, removing the soldiers, terrorist attacks, extremist retaliations and thats not counting the civilians.

 

[Pyro Paul]

I wouldn't have a problem with it if they bombed military targets.

What disgusts me is that they chose to obliterate 2 primarily civilian hubs.

People argue with me over this point but watching a naval base or airfield being incinerated in the blink of an eye would probably have got the point across to Japan just as much as murdering a couple hundred thousand civilians.

They may have been zealous but people seem content to paint them as suicidal morons.

Hiroshima: major military port, primary embarkation point for men and materials, major industry hub, contained one of the largest weapon depots in japan.

Nagasaki: one of the largest (at the time military) sea port in souther japan, contained many major manufacturing and industrial capability producing munitions and armarments. cheif among these the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works.

the simple fact of the matter is that these places where military targets, but like all primary military targets, communities popped up in the surrounding areas out of convenience.

Pearl Harbor for instance is apart of Honolulu technically.

 

[uzo]

Goddamnit. This is a copy of a thread from yesterday from some dipshit who paid a little too much attention to some retard of a social studies teacher. I would repost my previous comment if I was able to find it but seeing as I'm drunk and at work I've got other things to worry about. (ooooooh yeah)

To summarise::

I lived in Japan for damned near a decade. I know the language down to a cultural level - that is, I don't just know that 'gokiburi' is cockroach; I know WHY it's goddamn cockroach. That's a topic for a different thread though.

The Japanese, a people I have admired from my childhood through to now, are NOT the kind of people who give up without a HELLUVA fight.

You wenches can argue about civilian targets and war crimes as much as you goddamn want, the simple matter is this: THE JAPANESE DON'T SURRENDER. It ain't their goddamn style.

Look at Iwo-to. 20k J-troops vs. 70k US troops. An important thing to remember is at such a late stage of the war, these J-troops were frickin' teenagers. The best J-troops had already died in the Phillipines, New Guinea, and the Solomons vs. US marines and ANZAC diggers. The troops who held Iwo-to were fuckin' high school kids.

They fought, LITERALLY, to the last man. If they survived it was due to random goddamn chance rather than anything else.

Approximately 1% ---- ONE FRICKIN' PERCENT ---- LET ME SAY IT AGAIN ONE FUCKING PERCENT ---- survived the battle. I'll say it again. ONE ..... PERCENT.


ARE YOU WITH ME ?!?!? Are we talking about the same mathematical system here?!


FOR YOU RETARDS WHO CAN'T COUNT I'LL SAY IT ONE MORE TIME.


ONE.

PERCENT.


You goddamn apologetic bastards who run around saying 'oh woe is me boo hoo the bombs were bad' need to goddamn wake up and smell the fallout. I *know* the Japanese. And they would NOT surrender unless you demonstrate ABSOLUTE GODAWFUL BOOK-OF-GENESIS-LEVEL DEVASTATION.

WITHOUT A DOUBT the nukes saved lives. NO FUCKING DOUBT. It prompted political movements within Japan to push for an unconditional surrender, the Emperor HIMSELF announced it ((AGAIN you don't know Japan if you don't know the meaning intrinsic here - this shit had NO precedent)), and the Japanese finally knew they were beat.

I personally thank Christ that they gave up. I've spent decades studying martial arts, lived in Japan for almost a decade; hell, my wife and son were both born in Osaka. And I know most of that wouldn't happen if Japan had fought to the death.

And they would have.


To. The. Death.

EDIT:

Oohhhhh yeah. BTW, Hiroshima is not a purely civilian target. Any high school history teacher who tells you that is a) bullshitting b) ignorant c) both. Let me put it this way: THE LARGEST BATTLESHIP *IN* *FUCKING* *HISTORY* WAS BUILT IN HIRSOHIMA.

Sure, I'll conceded that downtown Hiroshima was as civilian a target as any other city in the world ... but, as many posters have said, we don't bother to count the godawful fire bombings of Germany (or even other cities in Japan!) -- why? Because you can't back up the argument with facts, only self-interested, self-preserving fears about global nuclear annihilation. You don't give a shit about the poor bastards in Hirsohima, your problem is that any old bastard with a nuke could annihilate YOU and your family.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

-OP snip-

So? If the allies beached Japan, there would've been a horrific war where millions of soldiers would've died.

But that's the thing. Soldiers would've Died. Brave individuals who basically resigned their own lives for the sole purpose of protecting their country's existence. If all the men were dying off, maybe the women and children would've been conscripted. Again they'd become soldiers. Not civilians. Soldiers are supposed to die in Wars. They are ready to die, if that's what it takes.

This in no way, shape or form redeems the United States of killing 246000 innocent men, women and children who weren't soldiers. They hadn't signed their lives off for their country. Killing them is NOT the same thing as decimating an army, however large!

EDIT-Here's a test: So do you think the US should have just detonated a low-yield Nuclear warhead over Afghanistan in 2001? You know to slowly kill off the Taliban, and by proxy about a quarter of the Afghan population, through radioactive fallout, instead of losing hundreds of American and NATO troops, and thousands of Islamic extremists, in a decade long War that helped in nearly collapsing the global economy?

I'm not being smarmy or sarcastic. I also do not intend to offend. I'm just trying to prove a point.

The Japanese were conscripting civilians into the armed forces in preparation for this. Some of them were armed with shovels and spears, since they didn't have enough guns. And that is only conscripts. The Japanese were led by an extremely fanatic military leadership, which filtered down into a hostile attitude amongst their society. Civilians would have fought tooth and nail to the last man in the case of an invasion. There would be collateral damage regardless.

 

[KILGAZOR]

You never purposely kill innocent civilians. You just fucking don't. It's fucking barbaric and I am ashamed of what my country did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why is that so hard for people to understand?

You have that attitude now because of those things that happened. There was less distinction before. Warfare on such a large scale was relatively new.

From what I've seen, Japan lost between 500k and 1m civilians. That's very tragic and sad, but the Soviet Union lost 12 to 14 MILLION. The Dutch East Indies (Indonesia today) lost 3 to 4 million civilians. Poland lost over 5 million. All with no atomic bomb.

People don't seem to understand ultimately the whole war was tragic, but many of the painful lessons learned has made the world a better place since.

Hindsight isn't the only way one should look at history.

All those casualties you listed were the cause of the people that we decided to fight against, because what they were doing was WRONG. Just because we were in a tough situation didn't make it okay to sink to their level. Also, you don't have to wait until you make a mistake to start thinking and realize what you're doing is wrong. We don't arrest murderers for their 2nd offense. No, we expect people to think before they act. Yes, 70 years ago we still didn't really understand basic morality (we were still women and non-whites as inferior people), and neither did we understand the power we held in our hands when it came to our massive military force and the atomic bomb (arguably we still don't know what we're doing with the former, and it took us the Cold War to really understand what we were doing with nukes), but from what I can tell, the OP was trying to justify their actions by today's standards. And yes, we do still have civilian casualties on the opposing side, but that's collateral damage. I'm pretty sure it's against current US foreign policy to go into an enemy nation and start massacring innocents.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

SNIP

The one argument I would make is that the bombs hit civilians rather than military, it's like comparing a military offensive to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Which would be no different than the London Blitz, or the Allied Bombings of Dresden and Hamburg. Dresden's destruction had little to no impact on the Axis military output.

 

[KILGAZOR]

A lot of you saying that the Japanese wouldn't surrender, but in the end, that's exactly what they did. If we wanted to send a message, I think it would have made a lot more sense to nuke a couple of their military facilities first.

 

[lacktheknack]

Um, you realize that detonating the low-yield nuke sounds like a better idea, right? Maybe it's because I put soldiers on the same level as civilians. Maybe even a bit higher.

OT: I've seen a couple people ditch these forums permanently over this debate, so I'm afraid to contribute much more.

Do you put soldiers and Civilians on the same level?

Or do you just put all Afghans in the same level, regardless of affiliation with the Taliban?

This was American soldiers versus Afghan citizens. Since I'm Canadian, I don't see massive differences between the two.

Obviously, when a group claims it wants to annihilate the West, I don't think of them as equal to unaffiliated citizens. If I did, I'd want us to just leave them all alone.

 

[uzo]

A lot of you saying that the Japanese wouldn't surrender, but in the end, that's exactly what they did. If we wanted to send a message, I think it would have made a lot more sense to nuke a couple of their military facilities first.

I'm sorry. You're wrong. Kudos for giving it a shot though. Let me give you this reference:

"..There are many stories on record of extraordinary heroism being displayed in the harakiri. The case of a young fellow, only twenty years old, of the Choshiu clan, which was told me the other day by an eye-witness, deserves mention as a marvellous instance of determination. Not content with giving himself the one necessary cut, he slashed himself thrice horizontally and twice vertically. Then he stabbed himself in the throat until the dirk protruded on the other side, with its sharp edge to the front; setting his teeth in one supreme effort, he drove the knife forward with both hands through his throat, and fell dead.."


This poor bastard illustrates my point and your inaccuracy far better than I ever could.

And see my post - Hiroshima was the birthplace of the Yamato - the largest battleship in HISTORY. The cannons on that bastard could level cities far more effectively than a nuke. And DO NOT DOUBT FOR A SECOND that the Japanese would have used either the Yamato, or a nuke, if they had had the chance. NO DOUBT.

RE: NEKKIE's comment below: Holy shit. I hope that's irony. That's priceless.

 

[mateushac]

Dropping atomic bombs on civilians is something you don't do, even if it saves more people than actually invading the country.
Atleast those civilians(children aswell) have a choice to fight or surrender.

There you go! I was trying to find the words to say just that. Screw it if the japs would have all joined the fight and gotten killed, at least they would be conscious of the consequences of their choices.
You can't just decide people's fate yourself. Don't tell me you can randomly pick thousands of people, opposed or not to your ideals, and assume they deserve to have their families and traditions shattered forever.

 

[Bobzer77]

I wouldn't have a problem with it if they bombed military targets.

What disgusts me is that they chose to obliterate 2 primarily civilian hubs.

People argue with me over this point but watching a naval base or airfield being incinerated in the blink of an eye would probably have got the point across to Japan just as much as murdering a couple hundred thousand civilians.

They may have been zealous but people seem content to paint them as suicidal morons.

Hiroshima: major military port, primary embarkation point for men and materials, major industry hub, contained one of the largest weapon depots in japan.

Nagasaki: one of the largest (at the time military) sea port in souther japan, contained many major manufacturing and industrial capability producing munitions and armarments. cheif among these the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works.

the simple fact of the matter is that these places where military targets, but like all primary military targets, communities popped up in the surrounding areas out of convenience.

Pearl Harbor for instance is apart of Honolulu technically.

Ok so lets say that there was no other place to bomb other than Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Why bomb both?

More importantly why bomb Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima?

That wasn't even enough time for them to comprehend what happened. I can't imagine that Japan wouldn't have surrendered after seeing one of their major cities destroyed in seconds.

What was the point of the other 80,000 lives (not including the people still suffering effects today)

 

[Pyro Paul]

The fact is, invasion of Japan was never an option, they wanted to surrender even before we bombed them.

The only difference between the pre-bombing treaty of surrender and the post bombing treaty of surrender was Japan's emperor.
Pre-bombing, they wanted to surrender, but we insisted their emperor step down. Truman's own advisers told him that the Japanese would rather die than let there emperor step down (who was the human incarnation of god in their eyes), and the reason they didn't surrender was only because we insisted upon it.
Post-bombing, of course the wanted to surrender, we were worse than Al-Qaeda. We killed over 300,000 innocent civilians (about 1:5 to 1:6 were military personnel), ***** about 9/11 now...
What changed that made them surrender? Well it wasn't the bombing, the emperor was still a god to them. WE changed, Devil-Incarnate, sorry, Truman, finally listened to his advisers and we allowed them to keep their emperor when they surrendered.

Yes, you can argue that we "warned" them, but pamphlets raining from the sky aren't necessarily trustworthy, and to evacuate the 9 or so big cities we warned for an indefinite period of time would have been a huge undertaking (where do they go that isn't a big city and yet is able to support the population?) and crippled their economy.

and what proof do you have of that?

Just look at the Kyûjô Incident where the military mounted a coup d'état in an attempt to stop the surrender. even to the point of invading the Imperial Palace and imprisoning the Emperor so that he could not give the surrender order.

for a nation that 'wanted to surrender' they went to great lengths to try and prevent it...

 

[uzo]

More importantly why bomb Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima?

That wasn't even enough time for them to comprehend what happened. I can't imagine that Japan wouldn't have surrendered after seeing one of their major cities destroyed in seconds.

What was the point of the other 80,000 lives (not including the people still suffering effects today)

Shits and giggles? *sigh*

How very noble of you to protect those 80k. The *3000k* odd who would have died without the bombs thank you, too.

I'm sure this 3 million or so would have been glad to die, either as part of a mass suicide when Allied troops walk into town (look at the devastation of Okinawa), or as a (lightly) armed resistance charging tanks with pieces of bamboo and sharply pointed chopsticks plus strongly worded opinions.

In short: don't be fucking stupid.

 

[gdv358]

One thing I remember during what I refer to as one of my "history binges" is that the Japanese at the time were looking for an excuse to surrender but their higher ups in the military were refusing because they didn't want to lose face. The bombs gave them an "out" that they'd been hoping to find (particularly the emperor, who'd been wanting to end the war but was having a hard time getting the military to let him do it). Horrible as it was, it quickly gave them the ability to end the war they'd been wanting to escape.

Though, it almost went the opposite direction. During the planning stages for the bombings they were planning to hit Kyoto as well. Had that happened, the people on the Japanese side who had been pushing for an end to the war would have been killed (the emperor chief amongst them) resulting in the Japanese being reinvigorated in a way that would have resulted in probably the bloodiest engagement of the entire war.

Remember, at the time, the emperor was a figure-head of almost unparalleled importance. In fact, the concept we currently know as "Bushido" was a philosophy mostly ignored in Japan until it became an important tactic for them to motivate the population to fight to the death for the sake of their master. This was also the time when they reinforced a belief called Arahitogami: the concept that the emperor was a god descended from Amaterasu. If America killed the emperor, they would have killed their god...and that's never a good way to get a local population to accept defeat. Not to mention, the military in Japan were so dedicated to the war that they tried to overthrow the emperor for trying to end it. So if the emperor were gone they would have been unstoppable and the people would have been right there with them.

Luckily, one of the higher ups on the American side (Henry L. Stimson) had Kyoto removed from consideration. Why? Because he'd spent his honeymoon there and he didn't want to see the place leveled.

Dumb luck: friend of mankind.