Dropping the bomb

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/ ^ | Thursday, March 12, 2015 | Steve Hays

[daniel1212]

Other interesting posts today: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/

[Pelham]

Paul Fussel’s famous essay “Thank God for the Atom Bomb”:

https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/undervisningsmateriale/Fussel%20-%20thank%20god%20for%20the%20atom%20bomb.pdf

[2ndDivisionVet]

My late father was in the battle for Okinawa at the time.

[Pelham]

There was at least one very high ranking officer who opposed using the atomic bomb, Fleet Admiral William Leahy.

Most Americans have never heard of him but he was the highest ranking American military officer of WWII, and FDR’s Chief of Staff.

http://www.doug-long.com/leahy.htm

[colorado tanker]

The bombs saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Given what happened on Okinawa, we know they also saved millions of Japanese lives. I have corresponded with FReepers who believe their fathers would not have come home from WWII had the bombs not been dropped.

The hate America crowd does not have a leg to stand on in this argument.

The Japanese, who never came to terms with their war crimes as the Germans did, use the bombs to try to guilt the U.S. and play the victim. The fact is, they only have themselves and their brutal aggression to blame.

[Maine Mariner]

The author brings up a a very good point; suppose we did not use nuclear weapons and the war went on for another year.
How many people living the hundreds of slave labor camps would have died? I am sure it would have been hundreds of thousands.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

I don’t care.

And if we nuke ISIS or Mecca, I don’t care about that either.

You start it. We finish it.

[Maine Mariner]

The author brings up a a very good point; suppose we did not use nuclear weapons and the war went on for another year.
How many people living the hundreds of slave labor camps would have died? I am sure it would have been hundreds of thousands.

[Pelham]

My father was in Patch’s 7th Army in Europe. They were waiting to see when they would be shipped out to the Pacific to join in the invasion of Japan.

[daniel1212]

Ping

[kaehurowing]

As someone whose family (as civilians) lived through Pearl Harbor, this one has always been a no-brainer for me. They weren’t hurt but some of their neighbors were killed.

[kaehurowing]

http://saturdaybriefing.outrigger.com/featured-post/pearl-harbor-attack-killed-a-lot-of-civilians-too/

[daniel1212]

The Japanese, who never came to terms with their war crimes as the Germans did, use the bombs to try to guilt the U.S. and play the victim. The fact is, they only have themselves and their brutal aggression to blame.

They were militaristic indeed, while the liberal's accusations make any from the Japanese look mild. In the liberal mind man is basically good, not fallen, and thus everything from spanking to wars can never be just.

Thus manifestations of the sinful nature of man as seen with ISIs does not compute, as they imagine that without Biblical morality and its precepts which they abhor, then man would be as they imagine. Esp. with the likes of Reagan gone.

[daniel1212]

Most Americans have never heard of him but he was the highest ranking American military officer of WWII, and FDR’s Chief of Staff.

Never heard of him indeed.

[RedHeeler]

Were you ever stationed in FRG? You are wrong about Germans coming to understand their War Crimes. You are absolutely wrong. You, could not be more wrong, ever.

[daniel1212]

My late father was in the battle for Okinawa at the time.

Now honored for his service.

[ealgeone]

The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor....we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

If you can't finish a war don't start one.

WWII....the last time we fought like we should until Desert Storm.

[ConorMacNessa]

I received my Purple Heart in August, 1969. I received it from the hands of my Father, a career naval officer who enlisted before his 18th birthday in February, 1945. The Purple Heart that my Father pinned on me in 1969 was one of approximately one million Purple Heart Medals cast in 1945 in anticipation of that number of casualties to be sustained in the American Invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.

My Father was in Radioman "A" School in Spring 1945, and later awaiting deployment to the Pacific.

August 1945, the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing thousand of Japanese and saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen, among them, my Father.

My Father lived on to serve in Korea on the USS Borie - DD-704, in peacetime, and later, with boots on the ground in Vietnam.

Also important to me, selfish though I may be, is that he also lived on to engender me.

If you are among the men and women who were wounded in our wars since 1945 - whether in Korea, Vietnam, or more recently, if you have a Purple Heart Medal in a black leatherette case - the WWII style of case - you have one of the medals that were cast back in 1945.

I wish no harm to any man, woman or child, but if I had been Harry S Truman in August 1945, I would also have aithorized those bombings.

"I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life.
I am prepared to give my life in their defense."

[Advil000]

Yes, there are things that revisionists completely ignore.

One of them is that whether we used the bomb during that war or not, the bomb was going to be developed. There was no mythical option C where the world never developed the bomb.

We can play what if forever, but the long term effects of using the bomb during WWII may have also kept us from it during the cold war. We ALL had the pictures and data showing what would happen. If the bomb had not been used in war against Japan, would the USA and the Soviet Union have had to actually engage each other with them before we understood the concept of MAD?

Just imagine if neither of our nations had any real use examples to draw from during the really scary moments of the cold war?

Or imagine yet another scenario. We never use the bomb, but China or Russia or Germany did first during some other conflict soon after.

How much different would history have been? For the better? Hard to imagine how it could have been better.

Because as I started out saying, the bomb was going to be developed during those years whether we used it or not.

It’s sobering and disturbing to contemplate all the other ways history could have played out.

[daniel1212]

The author brings up a a very good point; suppose we did not use nuclear weapons and the war went on for another year. How many people living the hundreds of slave labor camps would have died? I am sure it would have been hundreds of thousands.

And then the liberals would blame therm for that, as they did not have George Bush, and or global warming.