Posted on 09/02/2026 10:54:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Seventy-five years ago this week, President Harry S. Truman exulted when he heard the first report that the atomic bomb he had ordered dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, by a B-29 bomber, had exploded as planned and on target, most likely devastating most of the large city.
Truman was on the ocean, returning to Washington from the Potsdam Conference in Germany, where he had secured Joseph Stalin's promise to declare war on Japan around August 10. An article in the press the day after the first atomic attack depicted Truman, his voice "tense with excitement," personally informing his shipmates about the atomic attack. "The experiment," he announced, "has been an overwhelming success."
Missing from this account was Truman's burst of triumphalism when the news of the bombing first reached the ship: "This is the greatest thing in history!"
Truman's official announcement, released while he was still at sea, again showed pride in America's achievement. The atomic bomb, he declared, represented "a harnessing of the basic power of the universe." America had "won the greatest scientific gamble in history." And Japan had now been repaid for Pearl Harbor "manyfold."
From that moment on, Truman rarely (some would say, never) looked back from a different angle, inevitably responding to questions about ordering two bombs dropped over Japan—from the media or in sometimes hostile letters to him at the White House—by affirming that decision, or even with what we would now call "doubling down."
He said he "didn't have any doubt" about the wisdom of the decision—unlike those he pictured as "eggheads" or "Monday morning quarterbacks."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
That post was about George W.
And what kind of idiot thinks a fighter pilot is a draft dodger, you sound like quite the soy boy trying too hard.
The argument for the Bomb relies on two suppositions: 1. Our demand for unconditional surrender was morally justified. 2. An invasion of Japan was militarily necessary. Take away even one of the two, and it's just another act of barbarism in a war with many other acts of barbarism. [...] I would argue that neither one of them was met.Thank you for (finally and explicitly) listing your points! That makes it so much easier to refute your argument!
What moral right did we have to insist that Japan agree to stop fighting so that we could impose our terms on the country?
If we had not dropped the two atomic bombs, the war would have dragged on for months if not years. The resultant human toll would have been enormous: Allied populaces numbering in the millions (in, e.g., China) would have continued languishing under Japan's iron rule. Not to mention the millions of Japanese who would have most surely starved to death if we had refrained from implementing "Operation Downfall" and instead restricted ourselves to "merely" blockading the Japanese islands. And, as already been explained in previous posts by other FReepers, the other alternative - "Operation Downfall" - would have likewise exacted an enormous toll in human lives - on both sides.
Thus, the dropping of the A-Bomb was the most humanitarian act conceivable, under the circumstances.
Regards,
Except we were not demanding unconditional surrender.
We made several offers including ones that would have allowed the Emperor to remain in charge of Japan. Which was what sort of happened anyway.
Japan turned all of them down because they thought they could outlast us.
2. An invasion of Japan was militarily necessary.
The Japanese made it so because they would not surrender.
Please reread my comment:
Where did I mention George H.W. Bush...
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I was referring to the draft dodger George Bush...
H.W. wasn’t a fighter pilot, George W. was.
Why do you keep bringing up H.W.?
So we've been taught misinformation since 1945?
(Where could you have possibly gone to school?)
You would make this statement on a thread about Harry Truman and the Bomb?
"Statement by the President Calling for Unconditional Surrender of Japan": www.trumanlibrary.gov
For the same reason, I keep throwing a spinnerbait around a piling until I get a careless bass to bite...
Why would he regret saving tens of thousands of American lives, and hundreds of thousands of civilian Japanese lives?
Your ignorance has been on full display.
"...Upon graduation from Phillips Academy, Andover, he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve. He served from 1942 to 1944 as a torpedo bomber pilot on aircraft carriers in the Pacific during World War II, flying some 58 combat missions; he was shot down by the Japanese in 1944. For his service he won the Distinguished Flying Cross. In January 1945 he married Barbara Pierce (Barbara Bush).
I had the privilege of considering him an acquaintance...
You keep going on about HW when your post and our conversation is about George W. Bush, the son of HW, why is that?
I've made the point (in this thread and in others here) that the annual discussion of the Bombs is a sideshow; we were dumping napalm on Japanese cities for months prior to unleashing the two Bombs on the country.
The discussion about the Bombs always ignores this, however; the debate is always framed as a one-off decision of heading into a moral gray area (at best) in order to save as many lives as possible. And the argument always collapses to the intellectual level usually found in any online conversation: If you support the Bombs, it's because you like murdering babies. If you oppose them, it's because you hate America.
The moral dilemma had already been decided: Japanese non-combatants were considered legitimate targets for the US military long before the Bombs were even invented. (That was the real crime, my friend.)
"If war with the Japanese does come, we'll fight mercilessly," General George C. Marshall told news reporters in an off-the-record briefing on November 15, 1941, three weeks before Pearl Harbor. "Flying Fortresses will be dispatched immediately to set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There won't be any hesitation about bombing civilians—it will be all-out." - www.smithsonianmag.com
By 1943, in the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, the US Army Air Corps was dropping incendiaries on mock-ups of Japanese homes (no, not factories, not railyards, not munitions depots, not ships, but homes). The decision to target population centers having been made, the next step was to go about planning it and carrying it out.
(The important thing, of course, was to remember to keep focusing the subject of the two Bombs without ever mentioning the fact that the casualty rates from the Bombs were almost incidental to the civilian losses from the M69 incendiary bombs that were being used in the months prior to August 1945. Make it a discussion about lives saved; after all, we're the Good Guys.)
Captain Walker: I've made the point (in this thread and in others here) that the annual discussion of the Bombs is a sideshow; we were dumping napalm on Japanese cities for months prior to unleashing the two Bombs on the country.
You are deflecting!
Answer the question: Was or was not the dropping of the A-Bomb(s) the most-humanitarian act (to end the war - incl. in China - quickly) conceivable, under the circumstances?
Your previous comments suggest that you think that a naval blockade would have been more effective - i.e., would have resulted in a net lesser loss of human life. But now you are focussing on fire-bombing (What? As an alternative to the A-Bomb?! Or as a supplement to a naval blockade?! In any event: I am perfectly willing to weigh the relative benefit of dropping A-Bombs versus any other military method or combination of methods you care to mention.)
Defend your position! Demonstrate your logic! Explain how a naval blockade would have resulted in fewer deaths!
Captain Walker: Japanese non-combatants were considered legitimate targets for the US military long before the Bombs were even invented. (That was the real crime, my friend.)
In view of the demonstrable monstrousness of the Japanese Empire and its absolute refusal to recognize any standards of decency or humanity in waging its war of aggression in the Pacific and Eastern Asia - I remind you that the infamous Rape of Nanking, lasting from Dec. 1937 till March 1938, i.e., occurred long before the Einstein–Szilard letter had even been conceived - there was no "moral dilemma" on America's side, once hostilities erupted.
Captain Walker: Make it a discussion about lives saved; after all, we're the Good Guys.
Indeed, we (the U.S.A.) were the "Good Guys." And the dropping of the two atomic bombs was the optimal solution to saving lives.
If you dispute that, I'm willing to listen to your counter-arguments.
Regards,
LOL- i made the same exact point, we firebombed the Japs, and Tokyo, well before the atom bombs were dropped, and they refused to surrender- he’s not deflecting- he is stating a fact...
I don’t know what he said about a naval blockade, nor do i care, but it was in fact a blockade, or more to the point an oil embargo, that prompted the Japs to attack in the first place...
And yes- fewer people died as a result in the dropping of A-bombs then would have perished in the inevitable- a full out assault on the Jap mainland...
It is a deflection - insofar as said fact does not directly answer the central question here: "Was there a quicker / more-compassionate way to end the war than dropping the A-Bomb?"
In fact - as an aside - I might note that, quite apparently, fire-bombing the hell out of Japanese cities didn't force the Japanese to capitulate. Continuing to drop conventional bombs on Japan might have eventually done the trick - but dropping the A-Bombs demonstrably did!
Captain Walker suggests that a naval blockade would have been more effective than our conventional bombing missions - but a naval blockade of Japan was already in force, so I don't know what he is expecting.
While it's quite likely that a continued naval blockade and continued fire-bombing of Japan would have eventually forced them to capitulate, the war might very well have dragged on until 1946 or 1947.
So I frankly confess that I don't know what Captain Walker says we should have done instead of dropping the A-Bombs to end the war early. Or is he saying that he would have been perfectly fine with the war continuing for months or even years - while Allied POWs languished in Japanese death camps, and the Japanese people themselves starved? And while Japanese scientists perfected their anthrax bombs? (See Unit 731.)
Regards,
Thank you Herr Busek for your East German replies.
You are confused. I am on the side which supports the dropping of the A-Bombs on Japan.
Regards,
I visited East Germany only once, briefly, approx. 40 years ago - as a tourist. So I don't think that I'm really qualified to provide any "East German" insights.
Regards,
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