BOCKSCAR
We salute you!
The author makes many good points
It's just sad that we need to go through these gyrations every year to answer the revisionists. The decision was made based on the cirumatsances and intelligence available at the time.
Only a liberal can second guess things for 60 years and try to "wish" the upleasantness away
Also, if they were really ready to surrender there wouldn't have had to be a second bomb. Isn't that obvious?
I teach a course called "Technology and the Culture of War" at the U. of Dayton, and when we get to the a-bomb, there are several things I have the students read. However, one of the comments I make is that while the Nagasaki bomb is often viewed as the "more immoral" of the two ("they were going to surrender anyway"), I point out that had Japan not surrendered after the Hiroshima bomb---and we still had to invade---that would have been the most immoral thing at all. We should have dropped them as fast and furious as we could until they unconditionally surrendered.
Yes, of course it was.
Yes.
As long as we're doing body-count mathematics, this alone justifies the use of the A-Bomb. If the US had invaded, every civilian would have been expected to meet the Marines with a sharpened piece of bamboo, or a shovel, or some other improvised implement. And the Marines would have gunned them down. By the millions.
Look at what happened in Saipan, where the Japanese civilians threw themselves into the sea rather than be captured by the Americans. How much more irrational would the response be to an invasion of the Home Islands?
Yes, it was necessary. As the author pointed out, the best explanantion for the Japenese military to surrender was to save their own hides. They sure had lots of troops go to their death defending their bid to take over the world.
I seen on TV the other day where they asked some 18 year old Japenese student why the US nuked Japan. He said it was for revenge and because we were being racists. What a short sighted idiot. We nuked them because they wouldn't surrender.
Yes.
No qualifications!
Yes!
If for only one reason ... The Battle of Okinawa
" Battle of Okinawa [1st April to 22nd June 1945]
Okinawa was the largest amphibious invasion of the Pacific campaign and the last major campaign of the Pacific War. More ships were used, more troops put ashore, more supplies transported, more bombs dropped, more naval guns fired against shore targets than any other operation in the Pacific. More people died during the Battle of Okinawa than all those killed during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Casualties totaled more than 38,000 Americans wounded and 12,000 killed or missing, more than 107,000 Japanese and Okinawan conscripts killed, and perhaps 100,000 Okinawan civilians who perished in the battle.
The battle of Okinawa proved to be the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War. Thirty-four allied ships and craft of all types had been sunk, mostly by kamikazes, and 368 ships and craft damaged.
The fleet had lost 763 aircraft. Total American casualties in the operation numbered over 12,000 killed [including nearly 5,000 Navy dead and almost 8,000 Marine and Army dead] and 36,000 wounded.
Navy casualties were tremendous, with a ratio of one killed for one wounded as compared to a one to five ratio for the Marine Corps. Combat stress also caused large numbers of psychiatric casualties, a terrible hemorrhage of front-line strength. There were more than 26,000 non-battle casualties.
In the battle of Okinawa, the rate of combat losses due to battle stress, expressed as a percentage of those caused by combat wounds, was 48% [in the Korean War the overall rate was about 20-25%, and in the Yom Kippur War it was about 30%].
American losses at Okinawa were so heavy as to illicite Congressional calls for an investigation into the conduct of the military commanders. Not surprisingly, the cost of this battle, in terms of lives, time, and material, weighed heavily in the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan just six weeks later.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/okinawa-battle.htm
do these idiots ever stop and consider how many lives were saved in the end as a result of these bombs?
Yes and maybe we need to fire one up now.
It was either do something drastic, or they would have killed far more of our troops and the war was expected to last at least three years longer.
Our enemies would do that and worse to us in a heartbeat if they got military advantage.
Thet doesn't change the fact that I am so sorry for the terrible loss in such a horrible way of the innocent lives that were lost and the terrible trials of those who survived.
We were humane with the survivors and tried to help them as best we could within our means. What country would have done the same for us had the circumstances been reversed?
Q: Was Using the A-Bomb Justified?
A: Yes.
Absolutely, positively, without a doubt, YES, YES, YES, period.
Yep, they wanted to kill us, we killed them first.
BOCKSCAR
We salute you!
Therefore, use of the atom bomb prevented the necessity of genocide and cannot possibly have been racist.
So9