Posted on 08/06/2015 11:03:58 AM PDT by Biggirl
Seventy years ago, the B-29 Enola Gay, piloted by Paul Tibbets, Jr., dropped an atomic bomb, Little Boy, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The blast and ensuing radiation killed an estimated 150,000 people. Though the devastation from the bombing was astounding, it did not bring American’s war with Japan or World War II to an immediate end. Three days later, the United States dropped another atomic bomb, Fat Man, on Nagasaki, and the Empire of Japan’s leaders finally capitulated.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Well, almost a week later...
Shows that karma works. What goes around comes around. Nagasaki was the city where the torpedo’s used at Pearl Harbor were made.
As with the Civil War and the attack on Fort Sumter, World War I and the attack on American shipping, World War II and the attack on Pearl Harbor . . . the United States is the world’s most deadly nation once provoked.
The U.S. WAS the most deadly nation. It WAS the "arsenal of democracy." No longer, unfortunately.
When Truman told Stalin at Potsdam that we had the bomb — Stalin was not the least bit surprised,
Stalin had spies in FDR’s White House — one of whom may have been FDR’s wife.
Thank you the info.I never heard that fact from the past.
Too bad Truman didn’t tell Stalin to pull every Russian troop back to the original borders of Russia or their troop concentrations would be next. The next 50 years would have been totally different.
Many liberal types have been saying it was a war crime to use the atomic bomb.
Far more died from conventional bombing and conventional weapons during WW II than from the atomic bombs. Are these other deaths OK with liberals then???
“Are these other deaths OK with liberals then???”
-
Trying to talk some out of this viewpoint is an exercise in futility.
I’ve tried it.
.
***Well, almost a week later... ***
I didn’t know till 1968 that the US bombed japan with conventional bombs after the a-bombs were dropped.
The only reason the libs have their panties in a wad is we accomplished with two bombs what would normally been done with 100 planes loaded with twenty thousand pounds each of high explosives.
Had we hit Hiro and Nag with conventional weapons, killed the same number, nothing owuld have been said.
The Left has tried for some years to fix blame on the United States for War Crimes with the Atomic Bomb attacks and to claim that the U.S. had plausible alternatives to convince Japan to surrender without a ground invasion of the Home Islands. That’s all of revisionist nonsense.
While it is possible that the Japanese might have surrendered before the first invasion scheduled for October, 1945, waiting beyond the operational availability of Atomic weapons was not politically feasible. American soldiers in the Philippines were still engaged in active combat operations, POWs were dying at a steady and frightening rate, and airmen were still being shot down and killed. Japanese submarines were still operational and Kamikaze aircraft threatened Navy warships. If the American people had ever discovered that Truman had the ability to attack Japan with Atomic weapons and decided to wait, there would have been a dual hanging on a single gallows: Truman and the Emperor would have both done the rope dance.
Many, many more Japanese would have died across the Japanese islands under the relentless attack of firebombings from the 20th Air Force. The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki spared hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives even it the ground invasion never occurred.
Hundreds of thousands in China and Korea would have been slaughtered by the Soviet as they grabbed up every piece of real estate that they could put their hands on.
The Left love to build and live in fantasy worlds, future, present, and historical. Only in the real world can the Left be wrong.
Peter posted the following on the WWII+70 years thread the other day. Even the Japs realized the bombs were a saving grace.
http://www.mconway.net/page1/page15/files/Shock%20of%20Atomic%20Bomb.pdf
After the war Suzuki recalled: “The atomic bomb provided an additional reason for surrender as well as an extremely favorable opportunity to commence peace talks. I believed such an opportunity could not be afforded by B-29 bombings alone.”
The hitherto vacillating and sphinx-like Suzuki had finally made up his mind. It is important to note that Suzuki did so before he was informed of the Soviet entry into the war early on the following day. Sakomizu also felt that “the army will admit that now that the atomic bomb has come into existence, it precludes war between a nation that possesses the atomic bomb and one that does not.” However, the army was not to be so easily swayed.
The torpedoes used at Pearl Harbor had wooden fins attached at the tail. This adapted them for use in shallow water.
By contrast, US torpedoes were ineffective pieces of crap for over a year after we entered the war.
My Dad was infantry, from D-Day to V-E Day. His division was preparing to ship out for the Pacific theater when the news came that Japan had surrendered following the A-bombings. Dad said his soldiers went wild with joy.
I’m here because those A-bombs were dropped. Bottom line.
In the 1950’s when I was in grade school Dad was stationed in Japan. I remember what a peaceful, friendly people the Japanese were. Knew that Germany was our enemy in WWII but that was it. Didn’t even learn about Pearl Harbor until later. We played baseball with Japanese kids & studied their language & culture.
It has always amazed me how Japan society went from suicidal last stand mentality before Hiroshima to universal acceptance of surrender & American occupation. Was the Emperor’s word that powerful? When he said the war had gone badly & the people must now accept American rule?
When MacArthur arrived in Japan he knew he was safe. Some joke that when MacArthur took away their divine emperor, he gave the Japanese another one - himself.
Seventy years ago today - one of those sea change events in world history.
The sides flipped about 30 years ago when the old conservatives started dying off and the neocons and baby boomers came of age. It is not "liberal" to question the bombing of undefended civilians.
That's a deliberate, straight-out repudiation of God. The notion that good ends justify evil means is a moral theory condemned ever since St. Paul wrote Romans 3:7-8:
"But if through my falsehood God's truthfulness abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just."
Some people say it depends on whether they thought the Japanese were on the verge of surrendering before August 6, 1945 --- or not. I would not be the one to make the call on that, because I haven't got the military experience and expertise.
But some people DO have that kind of expertise. Historians record that most of America's WWII military leadership thought Japan was already n the verge of collapse before the atom bombs were used:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3321050/posts
"Six of the seven five-star generals and admirals of that time believed that there was no reason to use them, that the Japanese were already defeated, knew it, and were likely to surrender before any American invasion could be launched. Several, like Admiral William Leahy and General Dwight Eisenhower, also had moral objections to the weapon. Leahy considered the atomic bombing of Japan “barbarous” and a violation of 'every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.'"
I don't think these American military leaders were pinkos, pacifists or fools.
But the real problem isn't not that the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings were strategically unnecessary. The real problem is that, in terms of an ethic of killing, there is a difference between targeting soldiers/combatants/military assets, and civilians/noncombatants/civilian values.
Most people in the world today at least profess to recognize this distinction (except for ISIS and their ilk).
It's hard to put it any clearer than this:
"Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and humankind itself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation." (Gaudium et Spes, para. 80, 1962)
Utterly crushing the Japanese military/political machine would have been justice. Incinerating civilians with a deliberately indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction, was murder. That should be clear when you consider that General Douglas MacArthur and his staff wrongly succeeded in exonerating Emperor Hirohito and all members of the imperial family from criminal prosecutions.
Thus in the end, 250,000 civilians were killed, and the Emperor Hirohito was not.
Intentionally killing one single innocent person, or indiscriminately killing 250,000 persons, is murder. "Nukes or "incendiaries" doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether they were killed with a bomb, abortion, or a baseball bat.
The atomic bombs, cruel as they were, saved lives. Japanese lives. Millions of them.
Japan was going to run out of food in about 90 days, assuming the means of distributing it were not disrupted earlier, which was likely. As many as 20,000,000 would not have made it through the winter.
Thank God we had a President that put the lives of Americans first. Thank YOU President Harry S. Truman for having the guts and the foresight to save Thousands of GI lives and make the Japanese who attacked the USA 4 years earlier .........Surrender.
Can you imagine what would happen if there was a President like our current day President in office, in 1945?
It’s too much for any American to even imagine what the outcome would have been. However, when Iran starts launching their Nukes .........then we’ll all see what a total disaster this current administration has/is been to the entire free world!
At the time Truman was expressing his inner
Obama so he wasn’t about to rattle an A-bomb
under the nose of Uncle Joe.
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