[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.

[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.

[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.

[El Cid]

It was good for Japan also.
If the war had dragged on a bit longer, the Soviet Union would have carved up Japan even more than they did. As it was the Soviets still annexed part of Japan's northern island. Had the war lasted longer, Japan would've probably shared the same fate as Korea - where the Northern half got swallowed up by Communist mad men.

[Oliver Boliver Butt]

Interesting article. My late father also served as a staff sergeant in the South Pacific and was stationed on Tinian at the time the bombs were brought there before their final delivery to Hirohito. He said the bombs were under constant guard and it was clear they were possible game changers. He also said he likely would not have made it home had we not used them.

John Wheeler’s lament that the bombs weren’t developed and used sooner is right on the money and similar tactics would have saved many lives in the wars since WWII...and those yet to come.

[RWB Patriot]

Japan and Germany lost any and all claims to the right to be free from force the minute they initiated force against other nations outside of rational self-defense. And by doing so, they put their own civilian populations in danger and are thus responsible for everything that happened to them.

It’s as simple as that.

[cpdiii]

The nation that should be most thankful for the atomic bomb is Japan.

Before we dropped the bomb we had total mastery of the sea around Japan, and the air above Japan. Before we invaded we would have bombed each and every city, industrial complexes, electrical grid, and everything it takes to be a functioning society. Millions would die from our bombing, even more millions would have died of disease and starvation.

We would have lost many good men in an invasion. Their brothers in arms would have done the same thing they did when they captured Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa etc. The bomb saved several hundred thousand American lives. The bomb saved millions of Japanese lives.

The part of revisionist history that really pisses me off is the mime where they say, “We should have demonstrated to the Japanese what the bomb would do before we dropped it on them.” We did demonstrate it a Hiroshima and they did not surrender. We demonstrated it again at Nagasaki and they did surrender. They realized that we had the means and will to erase the Japanese nation, culture and people from the face of the earth. We only had two bombs that were ready and we used them. There were many other bombs in the making. We would have been able to drop a new one every few weeks after a hiatus of a few months. We had the means to destroy them completely

Oddly enough the Emperor demanded of the Japanese War Lords, Tojo etc. that they surrender. He was nothing but a figure head with no power but the respect of the people. Prior to the dropping of the bomb, the war lords would have ignored him or worse. After the dropping of the bomb, it gave the a “face saving exit” to stop the war and they did.

My dad was in the Pacific in WWII. If it were not for the bomb, I might not even be here typing these words.

[packrat35]

Drop The Bomb On Me

[Kickass Conservative]

How many were killed Fire Bombing Tokyo and Dresden?

Dead is dead, no matter how they were killed.

Those two Democrats, FDR and Truman really hated the Japs. FDR imprisons Japanese American Citizens and Truman Nukes Japanese Nationals.

[rmh47]

In early 1945 the United States government contracted for and in mid-year took possession of 490,000 Purple Heart medals in anticipation of the invasion of Japan. As you probably know, the medal is awarded to any serviceman (or woman) who is wounded in action, and that obviously includes those who receive fatal injuries. Half a million Purple Hearts and absolutely no one thought that was all that would be needed. It was considered to be the only the first installment.

So many were made that no more were needed to be made until the first Gulf War, and even then the only reason they had to make more (they bought another 9,000) was because the government had lost track of where they were stored and couldn't find them.

There was a point in between when the government had them cleaned and re-ribboned because of their age.

[gaijin]

95% of Americans don’t know the real decision chain that really pushed the USA to drop the bomb, and here is the short version:

The Potsdam Declaration involved Churchill, FDR and Stalin, and part of the agreement required that after Hitler defeat within some increment of time the Soviets would aid in the fall of Japan.

The allies could see there was an on-going Soviet land-grab in Eastern Europe —that Stalin almost certainly would not simply leave after Hitler’s final defeat. They realized that heavy Soviet aid in the fall of Japan would likely result in a divided Japan —an Eastern version of what befell Germany, with a half-century division of the whole country, a Berlin airlift, etc., etc.

In other words, a Japanese version EXACTLY what we see to this day in the divided Koreas:

An accelerated US victory would provide a much greater chance of totally excluding Stalin from Japan, which is how it played out (aside from the loss of Sakalin and some minor islands immediately north of Hokkaido).

There were military and moral questions that came into play in the Atomic Bombings, but in the end the most compelling factors came from international POLITICS.

You’re probably never going to read this again.