Not only had I been alive then I would have supported the decision, but today it wouldn't hurt my feelings to see some other choice targets nuked.
For God's sake, don't anyone ping 1stFreedom.
NEWS FLASH: Survey shows most Americans don't regret that we won WWII! D'ya think?
I wonder if any enterprising journalist will ask General Paul Tibbetts what he thinks. He's 90 years old.
The Legacy Media is shocked and disheartened that a half
century of government school brainwashing has failed to
create the desired groupthink outcome.
But they'll continue asking every year or so around A-day,
just to check. This is a key question in following the
re-education of America.
Gee..just like 911.....we were blindsided on 7 Dec 1941..
Gee..just like 911.....we were blindsided on 7 Dec 1941..
Most likely killed 200,000 Japanese, and saved the lives of 2 million Japanese (and a bunch of our soldiers, airmen, marines, and sailors).
Trouble with the modern liberal mind is it can't wrap itself all of the way around that idea.
My Dad was a 19 year old Marine, wounded on Okinawa, but healed up at Honolulu. Ready to go back to regular duty.
The bombs definitely saved him and many others from the grip of months (or years) fighting Japanese fanatics on their main islands.
"Even though it was a war, it was a disaster and not something to be proud of with the death toll so high," she said. Gelbart said the United States should have demonstrated the bomb over the ocean to convince Japan to surrender."
This girl is going to be a great liberal dem. What ... I'm speechless....
The US accepts a conditional surrender? Could the Japanese have really stood up against the Russians or Communist Chinese without the American occupation and the protection the American military provided.
A conventional invasion? Not only would an invasion have cost many thousands of American lives but it would have killed many thousands of Japanese, including civilians, sent to stop them. And any occupation without a surrender would have been much messier. See also the next item, which would also come into play.
Waiting? The Russians declared war on the Japanese at roughly the same time that the atomic bombs fell on Japan. The Russians actually took 4 small islands from the Japanese that they still haven't gotten back (a little known fact in the US but a very big deal in Japan -- they still don't have a formal peace accord because of it). Had the war gone on for months or years longer, there should be little doubt that the Russians would have invaded Hokkaido and perhaps other main Japanese islands. That would have left Japan as another country split after the war like Korea, Vietnam, or Germany.
The quick surrender (which took the two bombs to achieve) and largely benevolent American occupation was the best outcome Japan could have hoped for. No scenario would have been as good for Japan, either.
"Even though it was a war, it was a disaster and not something to be proud of with the death toll so high," she said. Gelbart said the United States should have demonstrated the bomb over the ocean to convince Japan to surrender.
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I have heard this one before. Of course, the person who says it usually can't explain why we had to bomb Hiroshima AND Nagasaki. If the Japanese had surrendered after the first bomb, then the argument above might have held water.
It was tragic that the United States had to do it, but it was necessary. Japan wouldn't drop out of the war. Truman had no good choices, and this was the best option available to him.
My dear departed Dad was stationed in the army in the Aleutians just before the end of the war. He had no doubt that the A-bomb spared many of his buddies and perhaps him from a bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland. Since he was right there at the time, I've always deferred to his judgement of the decision.
Anyone with even a slight knowledge of the Pacific campaign would support the A-Bomb.
We demonstrated one on a Japanese city and they still didn't surrender! This is yet another example of why teenaged girls are the stupidest form of life on this planet.
Tibbets is the son of Paul Warfield Tibbets and Enola Gay Tibbets (née Hazard). On February 25, 1937, Paul enlisted as a flying cadet in the Army Air Corps at Fort Thomas, Kentucky. On August 5, 1945 Colonel Paul Tibbets formally named the B-29 Aircraft 44-86292 Enola Gay after his mother (she was named after the heroine, Enola Gay, of a novel her father had liked). On August 6, 1945 the Enola Gay departed with Tibbets at the controls at 2:45 a.m. for Hiroshima, Japan. The atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. local time.
In the '60s he was posted as military attache in India but this posting was rescinded after all political parties in India protested his presence.
In 1959, Col. Tibbets was promoted to Brigadier General. He retired from the U.S. Air Force on August 31, 1966.
Tibbets' grandson, Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets, IV, as of 2005 is a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, flying a B-2 Spirit for the 509th Bomb Wing, the same unit his grandfather served.
Then there's this little nugget, excerpted from Banzai You Bastards!": "No. It was the atomic bomb what saved us. The Japanese had plans for disposal of all the prisoners, with discretion given to the camp commander whether to bury, drown or shoot them. It was planned for the eighteenth of August 1945, but news of the surrender came through on the sixteenth, two days short of being disposed of. I have copies of those documents if you'd like to see them."
Years ago, some newspaper reporter did a story on the Hiroshima anniversary and asked the Thais, Chinese, Malays and all the others who suffered Jap occupation if we should have dropped the bomb. The general consensus was, "Why did you drop only two?"