Posted on 08/06/2022 6:45:11 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Reiko Yamada was 11 years old on August 6, 1945, when the US dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Now 88, she is among the few survivors of the horrific attack, which killed around 140,000 people, and is determined to pass on the lessons of history. But Yamada and other survivors fear their voices are not being heard. On the 77th anniversary of the bombing, FRANCE 24 reports on the survivors of the attack.
Bells tolled in Hiroshima on Saturday as the city marked the 77th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing.
Reiko Yamada was 11 years old on August 6, 1945. Her school was just 2.6 kilometres from the epicentre of the attack.
The young girl saw a plane and a flash, then nothing. A tree fell on her, but she survived and found her family. Today, she is determined to keep the painful memories of that fateful day alive.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
I explain it like this:
- firstly, I hate “strategic bombing”...ie bombing cities full of civilians. I think deliberately targeting civilians is awful. Then again, the Axis did it first when they bombed Warsaw and Rotterdam and Shanghai and Nanking and London and Coventry, etc etc. The Allies then retaliated in kind.
- an estimated 10,000 people were dying PER DAY in the Pacific War. They were still dying in large numbers throughout Asia and the Pacific. There was active combat in Indonesia, in Burma, in China, the bombing raids over Japan etc. There was active combat at sea (remember the USS Indianapolis was sunk at the cost of 900 lives after delivering the bomb to Tinian). People were starving to death and dying of disease throughout Asia because of the war. 10,000 per day. Every 2 weeks that that war continued = another Hiroshima worth of death. You can’t just ignore that and act like prolonging the war even as it was would be without massive suffering.
- Operation Downfall was going to cost a vast amount of American casualties and deaths and it was going to cause literally millions of Japanese deaths. The death toll always goes up staggeringly when the fighting gets to somebody’s homeland. HALF of all the Germans who died in WWII died in the last year as they got worn down and as the combat moved to Germany itself. It would’ve been the same for Japan.
- had Operation Downfall not been launched and the Navy’s plan of imposing an airtight naval blockade been adopted - and aside from the roughly 10,000 who were dying every day in the war - an estimated 4-6 Million Japanese were projected to starve to death in the next 6 months. Japan had had the worst rice harvest in 50 years thanks to bad weather and labor shortages, food imports were cut off due to the naval blockade and fishing boats were routinely getting shot to pieces and sunk by the Allies. Japan could not even come close to feeding itself.
So without the two atomic bombs, the death toll of the war would have been far far worse. There is absolutely no question about it.
What do you mean by superior moral position? To demonstrate what morality to whom exactly?
>>I never understood this silly rationale for dropping atomic bombs on civilian populations: “Invading Japan would have cost millions of lives.”
Invading Japan would have cost millions of *American* lives. It’s not our job to minimize enemy casualties; that’s the enemy commanders job.
Also, the public would have demanded it because of a desire for revenge for Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March (The POW camps had been liberated and previous Intel was verified by then!), defense of Manila atrocities etc. Yes, revenge is not a highly moral position, but it was there and was likely part of the calculation.
It would have been much much worse for everyone if the bombs hadn't been dropped or the coup had succeeded. Atomic bomb production was roughly 3 a month. There would have been more atomic bombings to support the landings and the advance inland. With no doctrine of how to advance through radioactive areas (What was known was either highly classified or plain wrong!) thousands of US\Allied troops would have a developed radiation sickness as well as Japanese civilians. Again, the decision made was the best that could be made out of a whole set of much worse decisions.
Always easy a generation or two after the fact to climb up on a self-proclaimed high moral perch look back and condemn. The people who do that weren't there, aren't subject to same pressures and have the bias of historic knowledge.
Lesson number one.
Don’t EVER perform a sneak attack on the United States.
We only had 2 nukes. If we had used one or two for demonstration purposes, we wouldn’t have had any left. It was a gargantuan effort to make them and we could only make 2-4 per month at most. Had the demonstration not worked, had the power of the bomb not suitably horrified the Japanese and convinced them to give up, the war would have lasted longer.
Every day an estimated 10,000 people were dying throughout the Asia/Pacific region due to the war. Every 2 weeks = another Hiroshima worth of death. Therefore the decision was made to make the most shocking and brutal example to them possible to make it all stop. It worked.
At least not openly!
You’re a jackass. Never spent a day in the uniform of Kenya or Canada. Your plan of not invading would guarantee those men never came home. We know now their mass murder was already being arranged. And if not, they would hand remained in slavery.
Not to mention you leave all of Japan in the hands of that regime.
Just go away. You are contributing nothing here.
And oh by the way. How much of Japan would the Soviets have gotten? Remember there was another asian country that was divided after WWII, we all know what happened there.
It’s interesting to see some opinions here. Some take the view, that we should not have used the atomic bomb.
But those who take that view, due to so much destruction and civilian deaths caused by an atomic bomb, are ok with conventional bombings which can cause even more civilians deaths. The firebombings of Tokyo and bombing of Dresden are good examples of that. Those events are apparently ok with those critics of the atomic bomb, because they never protest about those.
We could not win World War II today with our Tranny troops carrying rainbow flags and squirt guns.
Continuing the war would have caused MORE DEATH than ending the war even by the brutal means of using two nukes. A lot of people were dying every day that war continued.
Sitting back and waiting would have resulted in those deaths continuing AND 4-6 million Japanese starving to death in the next 6 months. So no, even sitting back and just blockading and bombing as usual was a more expensive option in terms of the total number of deaths.
True, but they were running out of everything but stubbornness. They couldn't replace planes (not to mention skilled pilots), or ships. Eventually the US could have starved them to their knees but there would have been more outrage thereby, than was heard after the atomic bombs settled matters.
How many Americans today would give a sh!t if the Cubans invaded Puerto Rico?
Well, the discussion here has a lot of revisionist history. That’s what a lot of people do when discussion issues, not just the Hiroshima bombings, but many other issues are discussed in this manner.
Nobody at the time could have known that two would be sufficient. Stop using 20/20 hindsight.
Yes dumb ass. We would have invaded. Troops from Europe were already rotating to the west coast for pacific training. The 8th Air Force and RAF bomber command were prepping to move. Only a simpleton from today would think we would have been content to never defeat Japan.
And Okinawa was a crystal clear demonstration of what the invasion would be like. You are woefully uninformed and very disrespectful to our country from that era.
No more dopamine his for you.Bye
I think it's likely that Truman would have been impeached if the bombs weren't dropped. The sacrifices made by the entire country dictated ending the war as quickly as possible.
Also, the War Department placed an order for over 500,000 Purple Hearts during the planning of the invasion. We are still drawing from that stock today.
“My only regret is we didn’t give them more of a chance to surrender…first.”
HUH? They didn’t even surrender when we dropped the first one! We had to destroy a SECOND city before they surrendered.
How can you even THINK that they would have surrendered if we just asked them to?
Yours is a ridiculous statement.
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