Posted on 08/23/2018 7:50:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped a uranium-fueled atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, another U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 repeated the attack on Nagasaki, Japan, with an even more powerful plutonium bomb.
Less than a month after the second bombing, Imperial Japan agreed to formally surrender on Sept. 2. That date marked the official end of World War II -- the bloodiest human or natural catastrophe in history, accounting for more than 65 million dead.
Each August, Americans in hindsight ponder the need for, the morality of, and the strategic rationale behind the dropping of the two bombs. Yet President Harry Truman's decision 73 years ago to use the novel, terrifying weapons was not considered particularly controversial, either right before or right after the attacks. Both cities were simply military targets.
Hiroshima was the headquarters of a Japanese army unit, and a key manufacturing center and port. Nagasaki -- a secondary target after clouds and smoke obscured the city of Kokura -- was the site of a huge Mitsubishi munitions plant.
Yet the sheer destructive power of the two bombs -- the 15-kiloton "Little Boy" Hiroshima bomb, and the 21-kiloton "Fat Man" Nagasaki bomb -- ensured catastrophic civilian casualties well beyond soldiers and munitions-plant workers. During the blasts, and long afterward due to radiation showers, perhaps 150,000 Japanese were killed.
Truman wanted to use the bombs to avoid invading the Japanese mainland. The recent battle for Okinawa resulted in an estimated 50,000 American casualties -- the bloodiest of all the American battles of the Pacific War. Truman's military planners warned that invasions of the Japanese mainland to end the war might cost the equivalent of 20 more Okinawa campaigns.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
My father served in the North Atlantic (submariner). My uncle was in Pearl Harbor during the attack. Armchair quarterbacks can blow smoke in somebody else’s direction.
The thought of having to defend the idea is tiresome.
Another problem is that the wrong examples are used to make a case either way. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't even the most lethal attacks of World War II, but their unique status as atomic bomb targets has obscured others like the firebombing of Tokyo.
I'm lazy. I cut and paste the map picture link into a Flickr link instead of typing it out myself.
>>It is the best argument for the importance of a strong economy and manufacturing base in regards to national security.
One of the reasons I have no problem with steel and aluminum tariffs.
That’s neat. My Dad told us the same things.
One of General MacArthur’s first orders was to treat the civilians with courtesy and respect. They were to refer to them as Japanese, not Japs.
The Japanese people and American forces came to have a good relationship. When MacArthur left Japan for the States after being fired, hundreds of thousands of Japanese turned out to bid him farewell.
We didn’t do it out of love for the Japanese, we did it to make sure they wouldn’t flip to support the Soviets. That’s what ultimately saved Hirohito, as well.
That was a big factor. But we also did it out of basic human decency. And it paid off.
We did certainly learn the lesson from WWI when Clemenceau got his pound of flesh from the Germans, yeah, how did that work out?
I had never seen that map before. It really brings home the overwhelming scale of what it would have taken to invade Japan. So many lives would have been lost, so much property destroyed. . . .
You’re right. As you know, among other things, Clemenceau and others’ treatment of the Germans helped bring Hitler to power. We know that story.
We did the right things when we occupied Japan and Germany.
Almost all the German Generals and Field Marshalls under Americans and British custody were release early. Usually it was for “medical” reasons. The Russians were beside themselves when we did that. lol They knew some of the German officers were going to help re-build the German military.
Oh, you mean those same German officers they shook hands with in Poland, September 1939?
The fire bombing of Tokyo is said to have killed at least 100,000
The Marianas B 29 campaign against Japan destroyed all the cities. By August, all that were left unscathed were Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Oh, you mean those same German officers they shook hands with in Poland, September 1939?
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Yes, if they were still alive.
I don’t know what you’re getting at.
Olympic was only supposed to occupy the southern 1/3 of Kyushu and turn it into a huge airfield.
Coronet in 46' would have been the assault on Tokyo.
The Soviets were the wild card. Their invasions on Manchuria and Sakhalin were wildly successful.
My point being the Soviets had no moral ground of superiority, because they helped the Nazis start the war in Europe.
Which is why the Left was so against the bombings, it wasn’t out of love for Japan, it was because it stopped their hero, Uncle Joe, from getting control of Japan.
I understand that.
My point is that the Americans and Germans knew they’d better join up to counter the Soviets.
“... the bloodiest human or natural catastrophe in history, accounting for more than 65 million dead.”
Otherwise, I am a very great fan of VDH - he is a rational and fact-based person who really knows how to write well, and it is good to have him on our side.
“He was 35 years old and had three children———we were running out of young men.
Thank God for the bombs.”
But we were NOT running out of young men. We had roughly 400,000 killed during all of WW2, vs. 26 million in the USSR and similarly (percentage-wise) in other nations. As bad as it was for any family to lose anyone (and a distant cousin of my father’s was killed right near the end in Germany), we suffered a pinprick next to what other nations did. We had PLENTY of young men left.
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