Should the atomic bombs been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

[Jimmyjames]

You know what? I'm sick of this crap about the U.S. being so evil because we dropped a bomb to ensure the end of the war. How about the Japanese that tortured THOUSANDS of civilians and soldiers? How about the Germans that murdered SIX MILLION Jews?

Think about that, ya bunch of cupcakes.

 

[Spicy meatball]

1. The Japanese soldier deaths were due to them being a fundamentally shitty army. There tanks were crap, their small-arms were WW1-vintage and sparsely dispersed, their artillery was, beyond naval artillery, primitive, and they lost the air war. Once the element of surprise was lost, they were doomed, and they damn well knew it.

2. What would you have done, Spicy? Asked them nicely? Simply bombed them into submission. Embarked on the bloodiest, costliest invasion of the war, an invasion that would have made Barbarossa look like a child kicking over a sandcastle?

Face it. You've got no real alternative.

There always an option to a nuke. The allied and axis soldiers were fighting suffering heavy casualties from both sides. The US had already suffered heavy casualties with Iwo Jima, so I understand the need to turn the tide but an allied operation with the soviets or conventional weaponry would have won the war anyway if not by attrition. Even if the nuke was the only option then why didn't the US just drop one and force japan into negociation. A simple "look what we have and we will use it again" tactic would have worked without dropping a second one 3 days later. What was that about. One nuke was enough and all that was needed a threat to use it again or surrender, not actually use two. That's overkill!

 

[CorkyJester]

hey better to end WW2 with NUKES and lose some lives then losing the world in the cold war THATS why they called it THE COLD WAR, nukes atually prevented the USA and the Solviet Union going to war with each other, you could say the USA helped the world alot more that day, shure its evil but hell you should look at the japanses war crimes (they will make you puke), before calling the USA a war criminal, for thoughs bigots and uneduated out there

 

[CorkyJester]

THE USA DID WAIT FOR A SURRENDER NOTICE FROM JAPAN!!! they never did surrender so the USA dropped a 2ed, then Japan surrenderd, they could of surrenederd anytime they damn wanted to, but it took two bombs so its not overkill

 

[bkdlsf89990]

Holy Hell, this topic is still going?

Then again, it's been going for 64 years.

 

[CorkyJester]

I will take anyone on with this subject, Im an expert at arguing this, but i don't want to spam this question anylonger, message me and i will send you the details and the arguments at corkyjester@gmail.com (bring it, if you dare, come only if you are educated, no simple argument of oh its just horrible, the fact is the USA saved many lives thoughs days)

 

[bkdlsf89990]

I will take anyone on with this subject, Im an expert at arguing this, but i don't want to spam this question anylonger, message me and i will send you the details and the arguments at corkyjester@gmail.com (bring it, if you dare, come only if you are educated, no simple argument of oh its just horrible, the fact is the USA saved many lives thoughs days)

Persistent maybe, but not an expert.

 

[bkdlsf89990]

There always an option to a nuke. The allied and axis soldiers were fighting suffering heavy casualties from both sides. The US had already suffered heavy casualties with Iwo Jima, so I understand the need to turn the tide but an allied operation with the soviets or conventional weaponry would have won the war anyway if not by attrition. Even if the nuke was the only option then why didn't the US just drop one and force japan into negociation. A simple "look what we have and we will use it again" tactic would have worked without dropping a second one 3 days later. What was that about. One nuke was enough and all that was needed a threat to use it again or surrender, not actually use two. That's overkill!

So bombing the shit out the Japanese with Conventional weapons like firebombs is better than dropping the Atom Bomb?

Also, obviously one bomb didn't do it. Your tactic wouldn't and didn't work. Japan had three days to surrender. They didn't do it.


The fact remains that there are things like Dresden and Hiroshima that reveals war for what it truly is. Even for the "good guys". This was a war fought totally by each nation engaged. Total War means mobilizing all national resources towards the destruction of your enemy. In such an environment, the lines between civilian and military targets is blurred. Also war is always brutal and pitiless. Always has been.

 

[Max Lazer]

The two greatest death tolls on U.S soil, after being formed as a country.

Now let's look at the death toll of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Hiroshima's death toll was roughly 60,00 - 80,000.
Nagasaki's death toll was roughly 50,000 people.

Big difference? Yes. Let's delve further into this.

The total American soldier death toll was 416,800, with 1,700 civilian deaths.
The total Japanese soldier death toll was 2,120,000 with 580,000 civilian deaths.

Do you need more quantitative results? Or is that enough?

Does the killing of 2043 American citizens justify the deaths of 580,000 civilian casualties?
Does it justify torturing generations to come with cancer, infertility and excruciating pain?
Does it justify the thousands of families torn apart?
Does it justify the thousands of innocents killed?

Does it?

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Yes

You don't win wars with a "balance" ideology. If the enemy pinpricks you, you sledgehammer them, if for no other reason than to make sure they can't do it again. Wars can't be finished if all each side does is slap each other one at a time until one of them cries, and both are equally determined not to, even if they're slapped to death.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

whats done is done

 

[bkdlsf89990]

whats done is done

But we still like talking about it.

 

[Dragonearl]

The two greatest death tolls on U.S soil, after being formed as a country.

Now let's look at the death toll of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Hiroshima's death toll was roughly 60,00 - 80,000.
Nagasaki's death toll was roughly 50,000 people.

Big difference? Yes. Let's delve further into this.

The total American soldier death toll was 416,800, with 1,700 civilian deaths.
The total Japanese soldier death toll was 2,120,000 with 580,000 civilian deaths.

Do you need more quantitative results? Or is that enough?

Does the killing of 2043 American citizens justify the deaths of 580,000 civilian casualties?
Does it justify torturing generations to come with cancer, infertility and excruciating pain?
Does it justify the thousands of families torn apart?
Does it justify the thousands of innocents killed?

Does it?

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Yes

You don't win wars with a "balance" ideology. If the enemy pinpricks you, you sledgehammer them, if for no other reason than to make sure they can't do it again. Wars can't be finished if all each side does is slap each other one at a time until one of them cries, and both are equally determined not to, even if they're slapped to death.

I agree with you completely. There can be no victory if your just matching your enemy but I think we differ in our ideas about how to out do the enemy. I always maintain that suppressing the enemy by any means is justifiable, after all they are the enemy, but, enemy civilians are not part of the equation. I don't know what Spicy was getting at but to your point about "yes" to the torturing of generations and death of the innocent, well again, I don't agree. My personal view into why I think soldiers should protect enemy civilians:

1) Geneva convention. There are rules about treating non-combatant and prisoners of war and the US knows about this. It has signed the protocol.

2) Fair play costs less lives of your own people. I am opposed to any tactic that does not specifically target military personnel or military structures. Even if a tactic takes out 10 troops by wiping out 100 civilians, it's abhorrent and should be condemned. Dropping a massive bomb on an entire city is nothing short of terrorism to make the enemy bend to our will through fear. In a civilized world such a thing should be considered reprehensible.

 

[Rolling Thunder]

1. The Japanese soldier deaths were due to them being a fundamentally shitty army. There tanks were crap, their small-arms were WW1-vintage and sparsely dispersed, their artillery was, beyond naval artillery, primitive, and they lost the air war. Once the element of surprise was lost, they were doomed, and they damn well knew it.

2. What would you have done, Spicy? Asked them nicely? Simply bombed them into submission. Embarked on the bloodiest, costliest invasion of the war, an invasion that would have made Barbarossa look like a child kicking over a sandcastle?

Face it. You've got no real alternative.

There always an option to a nuke. The allied and axis soldiers were fighting suffering heavy casualties from both sides. The US had already suffered heavy casualties with Iwo Jima, so I understand the need to turn the tide but an allied operation with the soviets or conventional weaponry would have won the war anyway if not by attrition. Even if the nuke was the only option then why didn't the US just drop one and force japan into negociation. A simple "look what we have and we will use it again" tactic would have worked without dropping a second one 3 days later. What was that about. One nuke was enough and all that was needed a threat to use it again or surrender, not actually use two. That's overkill!

You just pointed out my argument, for Overkill=Overwhelming force. An allied operation with Stalin would have just given him another bargaining chip to strengthen the Warsaw Pact, and thus strengthen Stalino-communist barbarism and it's hold over the world.

You're forgetting one, very important thing- human beings aren't rational. The Japanese were so commited to a fight-to-the-end that I doubt that a conventional assault would have simply commited the Americans, and the Commonwealth, to a bloody, horrific slog from one end of Japan to the other. As for simply waiting them out- firstly, the deaths by starvation would have killed far more than any atom bomb, and secondly, it wouldn't have worked until virtually all the populace was dead.

 

[Zeke the Freak]

disregard this

 

[bkdlsf89990]

If you want numbers, I can give you numbers.

9/11. The death toll was 2,752 - 2,973, depending on which number you use.
Pearl Harbor. The death toll was 2403. 68 were civilians.

The two greatest death tolls on U.S soil, after being formed as a country.

Now let's look at the death toll of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Hiroshima's death toll was roughly 60,00 - 80,000.
Nagasaki's death toll was roughly 50,000 people.

Big difference? Yes. Let's delve further into this.

The total American soldier death toll was 416,800, with 1,700 civilian deaths.
The total Japanese soldier death toll was 2,120,000 with 580,000 civilian deaths.

Do you need more quantitative results? Or is that enough?

Does the killing of 2043 American citizens justify the deaths of 580,000 civilian casualties?
Does it justify torturing generations to come with cancer, infertility and excruciating pain?
Does it justify the thousands of families torn apart?
Does it justify the thousands of innocents killed?

Does it?
I see no reason why it should have happened and hope it will never happen again.

Aw, that just tugs at me heartstrings. Where's my violin?

For one thing, you seem to have skipped the Civil War altogether. More Americans died in that war than died in WWII. (We were fighting ourselves, to be fair.)

Another, your counted Japanese casualties included the 4 years of continual war before they even attacked the United States.

Second, yes. Yes it does.

Also, I'd like to know what "innocent" means to you. How about all those innocent families torn apart by the Japanese? The terror they wrecked across East Asia was pure horror. They were no better than the Germans in their ideas of racial superiority. The Chinese were thought to be subhuman and inferior. If we killed tens of thousands, the Japanese plundered, murdered and raped hundreds of thousands across China and Southeast Asia.



If you want to play the number game we can do that. China lost 3,800,000 soldiers and 16,200,000. That's 16 fucking million civilian (innocent, you'd call it) deaths on Japanese hands. Another 4 million military deaths on top of it, and you weep over 580,000?

Then there's another million in French Indochina. Another 250,000 in Burma. Another 1,000,000 in Indonesia. Starting to add up isn't it? We're just getting started.

Another 100,000 in Malaya. 147,000 in the Philippines. 50,000 in Singapore. Get the picture?

If not I could add the 57,000 in Micronesia.

Not yet? Let's add the 378,000 in Korea. Also 55,000 in Portuguese Timor.

So tell me, does that justify it? Does it?

What I want you to do is to imagine the entire current population of Finland. 100%. Don't ask why just do it. Got those people firmly fixed in your mind? Good. Now imagine them all dropping over dead with horrible wounds. The entire country just died. Horrible isn't it?

Now imagine that four more times. Congratulations. That's what Japan did to East Asia.

The death brought by the United States to Japan was a drop in the blood bucket compared to the jugular wound the Japanese inflicted on East Asia. And let's not forget the torture and "medical" experiments.

 

[Skyfall]

Those who win wars tend to write history.

Those who write history in a less than sincere fashion tend to resort to force to uphold their manufactured "truths".

- - -

Now we are attempting to "quantify" the unquantifiable. The reason why absolute quantification lies in the realm of impossibility is simple enough to grasp. When figures are delivered for consumption they are revised and interpreted to suit political interests and agendas. There also tends to be inaccurate information and missing records. How do media reports of current events end up varying wildly from hundreds to tens of thousands to several thousands? Why do simultaneous broadcasts differ widely?

How can one sort through a mess of carnage and sort through the bodies to tell just how many "died"? What are the possible benefits of gross over or under-estimation?

Let us take a look at the average suicide fighter. Let us in particular look at the difference between a fighter with a gun and a fighter with a bomb strapped around the waist. Let us suppose that both fighters are pissed off at the same warlord who indirectly had their lands confiscated, their houses demolished and whose soldiers killed a number of their less cooperative relatives and friends. In other words they both want to make somebody pay.

So they each plot their revenge and both decide that attacking an official location such as a land requisitions department would be the way to go about it.

Both chose a similar target but while the gunman can directly choose who dies, or rather, who to spare, the bomber does not, and this problem is denied by that person until its there is no turning back and the guy goes boom. In going boom that person would have killed some civil servants, perhaps a couple of security personnel, and perhaps a civilian mother and child there in a vane attempt to protest a requisition. The bomb does not care about selection - it just follows the rules of physics and spreads carnage within range.

The gunman has to make a conscious decision to pull the trigger, and this normally means that every killing has 'some' degree of reason behind it, no matter how subdued. Does this mean that the gunner is more 'guilty' than the bomber? Both yes and no, certainly so if the gun is shot indiscriminately. However a gunsman does retain the choice of who to spare. The closest to this that a bomber has is to choose to detonate himself some place else.

- - -

Now lets tie this in with the WWII discussion.

A bullet is a directed potentially lethal force and kills directionally. A single bullet or shell can maim or kill a number of individuals in its path if conditions are right (or wrong). Its directionality and the conscious decision behind it is what makes it easier to swallow. There is no such thing as an ethical weapon, though it would be fair to say that the only truly honorable mode of combat is face-to-face within a 12 foot space.

On the other end of the (relative) ethical spectrum is the land mine and other such booby traps. There is a reason why their condemnation is escalating in these times as, unlike a bullet (or any other form of directed system), a land mine detonates regardless of who or what sets it off. The only way that they could be worse was if they were more destructive over a longer range and actively sought out indiscriminate targets to kill.

A bomb can be directed or not, Regardless of whether it is directed or not it exerts an area of effect. In the case of nuclear weapons that effect is not only over space but also over time as it takes years for the effects to subside and therefore future generations are impacted negatively.

But to drive the point home, a bomb's area of effect can determine its suitability for a task in the same way that the nature of a tool can determine its suitability for medical procedures. The two bombs in this case were similar to gauging huge chunks to get rid of a surface tumour, causing tremendous "colateral damage" in the process.

The germans did use overkill in WWII mind you - the Allies just did it better.

I'm sorry, this comment right here shows that you have unreasonable bias against the Allied forces in WWII. There is absolutely no way this statement can be made with any form of objective reasoning.

The Axis killed 2.57 civilians for every 1 soldier they killed.
The Allies killed 0.50 civilians for every 1 soldier they killed.

 

[Skyfall]

whats done is done

But we still like talking about it.

We still talk about it because 63 years later it is still relavent. The US and Russia has enough nukes to fragment this rock we live on god knows how many times over. What worries me are the people that say using them is fine to cut corners in warfare. Now this principle is fine on paper to argue that Yes, nuking Japan saved many lives and ended the war. In reality people, I hope you all realize, that if there is another world war, where everyone is mucking in again and one nation make a push with a 1 nuke. There will be a retaliation with 2 nukes. Then we would strike back with 20 and they would return with 40. In the middle civilians will die and we will radiate this planet for ever.

 

[Zeke the Freak]

disregard this

 

[Spicy meatball]

If you want numbers, I can give you numbers.

9/11. The death toll was 2,752 - 2,973, depending on which number you use.
Pearl Harbor. The death toll was 2403. 68 were civilians.

The two greatest death tolls on U.S soil, after being formed as a country.

Now let's look at the death toll of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Hiroshima's death toll was roughly 60,00 - 80,000.
Nagasaki's death toll was roughly 50,000 people.

Big difference? Yes. Let's delve further into this.

The total American soldier death toll was 416,800, with 1,700 civilian deaths.
The total Japanese soldier death toll was 2,120,000 with 580,000 civilian deaths.

Do you need more quantitative results? Or is that enough?

Does the killing of 2043 American citizens justify the deaths of 580,000 civilian casualties?
Does it justify torturing generations to come with cancer, infertility and excruciating pain?
Does it justify the thousands of families torn apart?
Does it justify the thousands of innocents killed?

Does it?
I see no reason why it should have happened and hope it will never happen again.

Aw, that just tugs at me heartstrings. Where's my violin?

For one thing, you seem to have skipped the Civil War altogether. More Americans died in that war than died in WWII. (We were fighting ourselves, to be fair.)

Another, your counted Japanese casualties included the 4 years of continual war before they even attacked the United States.

Second, yes. Yes it does.

Also, I'd like to know what "innocent" means to you. How about all those innocent families torn apart by the Japanese? The terror they wrecked across East Asia was pure horror. They were no better than the Germans in their ideas of racial superiority. The Chinese were thought to be subhuman and inferior. If we killed tens of thousands, the Japanese plundered, murdered and raped hundreds of thousands across China and Southeast Asia.



If you want to play the number game we can do that. China lost 3,800,000 soldiers and 16,200,000. That's 16 fucking million civilian (innocent, you'd call it) deaths on Japanese hands. Another 4 million military deaths on top of it, and you weep over 580,000?

Then there's another million in French Indochina. Another 250,000 in Burma. Another 1,000,000 in Indonesia. Starting to add up isn't it? We're just getting started.

Another 100,000 in Malaya. 147,000 in the Philippines. 50,000 in Singapore. Get the picture?

If not I could add the 57,000 in Micronesia.

Not yet? Let's add the 378,000 in Korea. Also 55,000 in Portuguese Timor.

So tell me, does that justify it? Does it?

What I want you to do is to imagine the entire current population of Finland. 100%. Don't ask why just do it. Got those people firmly fixed in your mind? Good. Now imagine them all dropping over dead with horrible wounds. The entire country just died. Horrible isn't it?

Now imagine that four more times. Congratulations. That's what Japan did to East Asia.

The death brought by the United States to Japan was a drop in the blood bucket compared to the jugular wound the Japanese inflicted on East Asia. And let's not forget the torture and "medical" experiments.

Your inadvertently making the same point I did. You are using the argument I made but on a global scale. I was using your very argument for the Japanese people. This is not, I repeat, NOT about who is right and wrong in the war and on the battlefield. I am well aware of the atrocities committed by the Axis powers but this isn't a discussion about who killed who the most. This is about the 2 bombs that were dropped 3 days apart on two civilian cities. The targeting of civilians is a shame and a crime, no matter who does it. Japan was wrong to do it in China and America was wrong to do it to Japan. You almost made it sound like Japan deserved the nukes, no one deserves to have a nuke shoved in their backyard. Its a WMD for a reason, the same reason countries go to war to disband it, ironically because it is lethal and it kills civilians.

So if this was a thread about was Japan right for its atrocities I would have said no. They were unjustified in killing civilians and because this isn't about what happened in Malaysia and other places but in Japan I will hold to my comments. So you can play with your heartstrings all you want but what was committed that day was an act of terror.

And yes, the axis have done the same too, reaching similar if not higher death tolls and I disagree with that as well. But this isn't a death toll competition. Simply if the nuking is justifiable or not. I say no!.

 

[Spicy meatball]

disregard this

If you are going to post please make it something constructive to the OP. "Disregard this" is hardly constructive.