In what way? More against or more for?
Not to muddy the issue, but I always believed that the bombs saved millions of lives, both American and Japanese. And my father was then on a troopship in the Pacific, a young, fresh solider straight from Fort Dix boot camp, bound for Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan.
The bomb saved those men's lives.
I was thinking about that. In general, it could have been due to the extreme abuse that allies suffered that was displayed in the movie, and that it made him/her support the use of nuclear weapons more.
Or it could have been that there is a scene in the movie that he talked about the book, that when they went through the firebombed cities where everything had been reduced to ashes, he saw lots of large, shiny things looming large out of the rubble. They were all over the place, industrial machines that people produced war materials in their homes with. Nobody at that time (except for the people running the war) had any idea the Japanese had distributed war production to that extent.
Or, the viewer might have felt differently in a negative way by seeing the destruction. Even a Hollywoodized version of the destruction can be emotionally disturbing in a way that makes some people think there is NO cause worth fighting for if it results in a 1945 Japan.
ABSOLUTELY no question on that point. My father (USMC) also was in Pacific Theater for a time in 1944-45. He served in Korea and in Nam (adviser 1963-64). On military matters I always considered is opinion more astute than any civilian's. Especially a politician or a pundant of any kind. A manned invasion of the island would have been a long bloodbath of immense scale. American lives had to be a higher priority than Japanese lives in that situation. That's hard, cold reality. Still, there is good reason to believe that the bomb(s) resulted in FEWER Japanese casualties than an invasion would have.
I was so young when the bombs were dropped, therefore really didn’t have a “context” for the necessity of using them.
After reading “Unbroken”, it was crystal clear why we had no other choice. I wish we could have used them sooner.
The Japanese were unbelievably cruel and sadistic. They were far worse than ISIS is today.
If we had invaded Japan, we would have to have killed just about every man, woman, and child in the country. They were preparing to fight using bamboo spears. And our casualties would have been in the hundreds of thousands. Counter-intuitive as it sounds, the bombs saved millions of lives.
We had already established air superiority over Japan. Here's a thought: we should have just saturated Japan with conventional bombing runs. Just bomb them back into the stone age. But not drop the nukes yet.
Then, at the close of the war, when Stalin demanded Russia take possession of Poland, etc, we say "no." Flat out. And when Stalin started massing troops to enslave Poland, etc, then we drop nukes on Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc.
Talk about saving millions of lives. Stalin killed more than Hitler ever dreamed of. And Stalin was our ally.
Not to muddy the issue, but I always believed that the bombs saved millions of lives, both American and Japanese
...absolutely correct...and another way to look at it; let’s say for humanitarian purposes Truman decided not to deploy the two weapons, and the long invasion and certain siege to follow cost hundreds of thousands of Allied lives...when the news of the existence of these bombs were made public, and the fact that Truman declined to use them...would he not be considered a war criminal...?
I read a book once about 2 POWs who were in Japan when the bombs were dropped and the surrender came. They didn’t know much what to do until the allies got there and these 2 guys visited Nagasaki. They were horrified and didn’t think that the devastation was worth their lives.
I asked my FIL who was also a POW in Japan at the time and he said “Hell, yes they should have bombed them.”