Posted on 05/04/2018 9:37:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In the decades immediately following World War II, American public opinion generally supported President Truman's historic decision to unleash nuclear weapons on Japan. Everyone accepted that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an unfortunate necessity brought on by the unwillingness of Japan to surrender. Those two bombs, which killed over 140,000 civilians, were viewed as a way to avoid the obscene costs in men and materiel associated with invading the Japanese homeland.
Nowadays, many question whether those bombs were necessary. Given that they killed almost exclusively civilians and that the second of the two was dropped only two days after the first, many people have concluded that the attack was immoral. Today, the typical American is likely to react to the words "Hiroshima" and "Nagasaki" with a vague sense that our country did something wrong.
But the nuking of Japan was a moral act: war is hell for those who do the actual fighting, so those two bombs put an end to their suffering. This was true for the soldiers on both sides (even a Japanese soldier must have felt relieved to know he was going to survive unscathed). A purely theoretical model for explaining why dropping nukes was bad appeals only to those who have no skin in the game.
The Japanese war had already killed millions, most of whom were civilians. The two nukes killed 140,000. Do the math. It is a distasteful application of arithmetic, but it is an application that soldiers have to do all the time in their struggle to win a war.
For those who favor elegant ideas over ugly realism, I strongly recommend as a corrective the work of an ordinary Marine who, in 1981, published a book narrating his experience as a hand-to-hand combat soldier in the Pacific theater
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Save at least 1 American life at the expense of 140000 enemy lives. I know which one i choose.
Ask any mom or dad that had a son in the service and I bet they choose to save 1 American too.
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It is one of the absurdities of modern Political Leftism. They want to argue that it was some how immoral to use the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs. That we could of Besieged the Japanese.
That utter nonsense. The infrastructure of the Japanese islands was breaking down. Japan could not feed itself and dended on food imports. Instead of killing Japanese Civilians in the tens of thousands. The Leftist Siege would of killing millions from disease, starvation and malnutrition. EVEN then there is NO indication that would of broke the Japanese will. Japanese soldiers hung on various pacific islands for decades after WW 2 ended. Even after the bombs dropped die hard militarists tried to stop the Emperor from surrendering.
Then their is the question. What response would the Japanese been to an invasion and occupation. Ehat do you suppose a Japanese Insurgency would of done? Also, who knows if the Japanese would of survived as a people? The Civilian and Military casualties on Siapan and Okinawa were horrific.
Given the intensifying tempo of suicide attacks,the fire power brought down on the Japanese Home Island prior to and during an Invasion would of killed tens of thousands if not millions of civilians as well as military forces.
Hindsight is always 20/20.
I wonder how many Japanese would have died if we merely had blockaded them until they surrendered?
Not mentioned is the estimate that at least 1,000,000 US troops would be killed in the invasion of Japan as the entire populous of Japan would have fought to the death.
Not mentioned is the discovery after the war of secret Japanese jets, rockets and missiles stored in preparation for the believed invasion.
With this latter addition, the cost in US troops, aircraft and ships would have steeply risen, and perhaps have ended in defeat for the US.
The 140,000 dead were scarified to save the lives of millions on both sides.
scarified=sacrificed
There was some compassion in their disposition, thpugh our strong propaganda had caused most of the American people to hate the Japanese.
Number one, there's no need to rationalize it or appear to -- it was a war, the use of the Bombs shortened the war, and it killed people in the process. It didn't kill them "too dead" or anything else. The FACT that it took not ONE, but TWO such bombs to convince them to surrender should be sufficient argument for any reasonable person. For the unreasonble, they can go be fruitful and multiply, but not in those words. Thanks SeekAndFind.
A few years ago, liberal “comedian/satirist” Jon Stewart said we should have dropped an atomic bomb offshore, to show the Japanese the power of the bomb. And then tell them if they didn’t surrender, then we would use the bomb on them.
Lots of speculation and “what if” there. Would Japan really have surrendered just by us revealing we had that bomb? Would they have thought we were bluffing? Who knows if the Jon Stewart scenario would have played out that way? It’s easy to say with 70 years of hindsight that we should have it next something different.
A siege with continued firebombing would have done the trick. The results would have been more Japanese casualties than the nuking itself. There was no pretty ending to the War in the Pacific to be had. As retribution for the Pearl Harbor attack, none should have been expected.
More civilians were killed at Nanking. Ask the Chinese if bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary.
This isn’t even worth debating
its like arguing with the crazy guy on the street corner downtown.
The Navy Plan was a blockade. How many MILLION Japanese civilians would have died had that option been adopted. Heck there were already reports that some Japanese were subsisting on grass and tree bark.
Regarding Peleliu, I watched Ollie’s “War Stories” on this battle last weekend.
Gruesome!
I was a Nuke Weapons Specialist during Nam, so I spent my time stateside.
My mentor later in my aerospace career, was a veteran pilot from the Korean War.
He provided some perspective:
“Have you ever seen someone die from .50 cal fire, grenade shrapnel, flame thrower, or a conventional bomb?”
“None of war is pretty.”
We had only 2 atomic bombs. Had the Japanese known that, they would not have surrendered when they did. Fortunately two were sufficient.
Japan did not surrender after the first bomb hit them.
It took a second bomb for them to surrender.
We already have the answer to Stewart’s bluff idea. He is a freaking idiot as well as anyone else who thinks that is what we should have done.
He also ignores the fact we only had two ready to go at that time.
We dropped the bomb on cities and it was only the Emperors will, and some quick action by his staff, that prevented the Militarists from stopping the surrender broadcast and continuing the war.
That fact proves the idiocy of Stewart and the rest of the “what if” clown posses fantasies
Ah...see the linked video...Bill Whittle specifically addresses that dummy...
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