Giving thanks for Hiroshima

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 07/30/05 | Andrew Kenny

[Prime Choice]

Where'd you get THAT picture? I want that...

Got it right here:

Sacred Cow Burgers

Lots more where that came from.   :o)

[cvq3842]

Understood! The would have if they could have.

I dare say the US was more circumspect and conflicted than the Japanese were on "going all out." Maybe I'm wrong.

But some of the leftist "the US used nukes" crowd seems to believe that everybody had 'em but the only US used 'em. If they think at all. That's how they sound, though.

I'd rather surrender to the US than to the Japanese in WWII. If I had to.

[Tax-chick]

I'll have to get "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" for Der Prinz. We've had "Dark Sun" for years, and he really likes it.

[Tax-chick]

Charlton Heston was scheduled for the first wave, too, after freezing his gazoogles in the Aleutians for most of the war.

[Mi-kha-el]

So, the History began on that day and there had not been bombings (conventional, though it may be) of cities and villages in Europe. All sides did it. Half of Europe was in ruins. It is a veeeeeeeery weird comment.

[AFPhys]

My Navy dad was training as a Landing Craft driver, expecting to be going ashore during the first wave of the invasion of Japan. I understand the casualty rate for those guys was VERY high -

If it were not for Japan calling it quits before we had to invade, there is a very high probability I would not have been conceived.

I thank God for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[AFPhys]

My dad was a Landing Craft driver - for the first wave - as I said in #46.

[Mi-kha-el]

BTW, Hitler was on fast track towards AB. I am sure he would have used it for fireworks.

[Dan Evans]

He was doing fine until this:

Yet Iran is vilified by the US, and President Bush has just agreed to help India’s nuclear programme. This staggering hypocrisy endangers the world.

We should keep nukes out of the hands of evil regimes. India is not led by an evil regime, Iran is. They issue fatwa's against free people who dare to criticize Islam. They wish to destroy the West.

[Dan Evans]

BUT we don't "give thanks" for those other things, so let's not "give thanks" for Hiroshima.

We should give thank for things that result in a greater good. Starving millions, and slaughtering good people for an evil empire is not a greater good.

[Dan Evans]

I read somewhere that the 3rd atomic bomb was a bluff.

Also, Truman had said he doubted if he had the stomach to drop another bomb. Even if true, things like that should not be said.

[BikerNYC]

No, the Bombs were the last events of the war that cemented the acceptance of civilians as legitimate targets in armed conflict. Yes, all sides treated civilians as legitimate targets (I say exactly that in post 27).

[COEXERJ145]

I read somewhere that the 3rd atomic bomb was a bluff...

There was one more bomb (another Mark-III device) that was being completed at Los Alamos. Tibbets had sent 3 B-29's back to the U.S. to pick it up but the war ended before the bomb was ready.

[elbucko]

I'm no military expert, but I guess it's amazing that poison gas was not used on the battlefield as it had been in WWI. Apparently whatever international agreement held.

In 1940, during WWII, the British were prepared to use poison gas on the invading Germans if they made it to England from Calais. Furthermore, the Brits had sea going barges filled with bunker oil, ships fuel, that they intended to tow out into the channel when the Germans began their invasion, open the fuel valves of these barges and light the channel on fire with the German Army helpless in the water and the flames.

Survival is not only a natural right, it is a natural imperative. It needs no apology, it needs no defense, no matter how brutal. The greatness of Churchill is that he fully understood this and was prepared to be as brutal as necessary, or more.

The peace that the atomic bombs wrought is their own justification.

[COEXERJ145]

"To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, by a few explosions seemed, after all our perils and toils, a miracle of deliverance." -Winston Churchill (Speaking on the use of the Atomic Bomb on Japan.)

[Dan Evans]

I, too, think that the bombs were necessary to prevent further American deaths, but it was the final act of that war that made it acceptable to intentionally target civilians during armed conflict

But it was started long before by Axis powers in Europe.

Today it is acceptable only in retaliation for a nuclear strike. Precision weapons make it possible to avoid civilians in conventional war,

[fish hawk]

Also more Japanese were killed in the fire bombing prior to the A-bombs than from the nukes themselves.

[BikerNYC]

Today it is acceptable only in retaliation for a nuclear strike.

I don't think so. I think it is viewed as acceptable if it is judged that it would help bring an end to whatever armed conflict we are in, nuclear or conventional.

[AFPhys]

"Neutron bombs" that keep "the infrastructure intact and relatively free of radiation" are more myth than truth. More properly called "Enhanced Radiation Weapons", they have only about 3-4 times the radiation as a nuke of similar yield.

A small, 5 kiloton weapon, with "radiation damage" similar to the 20kT Hiroshima weapon, would nevertheless have a huge blast effect. It would be somewhat smaller (at a guess, 80% of the blast radius) but infrastructure WOULD be massively affected.

EHRs also carry some nasty tactical problems for military planners, and for that reason (as far as I know) thoughts of developing and using them are quite far from the US military thoughts.

[Captain Rhino]

My understanding was that the radiation produced by the neutron bomb (enhanced radiation weapon) was lethal to organic life within the irradiated area (unless protected by very thick armor steel/lead shielding or at the bottom of a swimming pool-size (or larger) body of water. However, the effect was not supposed to be long lasting ((days/months vice multiple millennia) and if the weapon was detonated at a sufficient altitude (in order to maximize the radiation coverage), there would be greatly reduced damage to the infrastructure from blast and overpressure.

However, I will defer to your expertise on this matter.