If you could go back in time and stop one historical event, what would it be?

[Noomi]

Actually, on a serious note, I would take back the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

[Billo_Really]

Yeah, one date with you would take care of that.

Ouch!

 

[westwall]

Actually, on a serious note, I would take back the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hundreds of thousands more would die as a result. There is no doubt the bombs were terrible but there is also no doubt that they saved hundreds of thousands of Japanese and Allied lives. There are tons of records that show how the Japanese were going to fight on the beaches and for every foot of ground. They had tens of thousands of pole bayonets that they were going to give to the civilians.

Madness.

 

[Bfgrn]

Actually, on a serious note, I would take back the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Contemplate how many Americans would not be here today. My dad was a paratrooper in the South Pacific theater. He said they were preparing for an invasion of the Japanese mainland, and had that occurred it would have been a fight to the death. MANY more human beings would have died on both sides if that invasion had occurred.

 

[Bfgrn]

I would stop the assassination of President Kennedy. It was the most devastating event in my 6+ decades. IMO, when future historians write the story of the rise and fall of the United States of America, November 22, 1963 will be the zenith.



When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that he was relieved that the President had died quickly, fearing the destruction of his wit and intellect as the greater evil.
John Kenneth Galbraith

 

[Defiant1]

I would stop Jefferson from changing "property" to "pursuit of happiness".

 

[Bfgrn]

I would stop Jefferson from changing "property" to "pursuit of happiness".

"Republicans care more about property, Democrats care more about people"
Ted Sorensen - President Kennedy's Special Counsel & Adviser, and primary speechwriter

 

[Defiant1]

I would stop Jefferson from changing "property" to "pursuit of happiness".

"Republicans care more about property, Democrats care more about people"
Ted Sorensen - President Kennedy's Special Counsel & Adviser, and primary speechwriter

I consider all 3 to be equally important.

Damn, if you had prevented the Kennedy assassination they wouldn't have sent us home from school that day. I thought you cared about people.

 

[eflatminor]

The inclusion, as written, of the 'commerce' and 'general welfare' clauses in the Constitution.

Thereby avoiding my second choice, Wickard v. Filburn, the 1942 Supreme Court decision that recognized the power of the federal government to regulate economic activity.

 

[Bfgrn]

I would stop Jefferson from changing "property" to "pursuit of happiness".

"Republicans care more about property, Democrats care more about people"
Ted Sorensen - President Kennedy's Special Counsel & Adviser, and primary speechwriter

I consider all 3 to be equally important.

Damn, if you had prevented the Kennedy assassination they wouldn't have sent us home from school that day. I thought you cared about people.

Let's see...sending some snotty nosed kid home from school, or saving the lives of 58,000 sons and daughters...tough call...

 

[strollingbones]

i would go with lenin...preventing his rise to power

i am surprised no one has taken....roe vs wade

 

[Jarlaxle]

Actually, on a serious note, I would take back the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Contemplate how many Americans would not be here today. My dad was a paratrooper in the South Pacific theater. He said they were preparing for an invasion of the Japanese mainland, and had that occurred it would have been a fight to the death. MANY more human beings would have died on both sides if that invasion had occurred.

Forget that: contemplate how many JAPANESE wouldn't be here today!

 

[Bfgrn]

Actually, on a serious note, I would take back the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Contemplate how many Americans would not be here today. My dad was a paratrooper in the South Pacific theater. He said they were preparing for an invasion of the Japanese mainland, and had that occurred it would have been a fight to the death. MANY more human beings would have died on both sides if that invasion had occurred.

Forget that: contemplate how many JAPANESE wouldn't be here today!

We don't live in a vacuum sonny boy.

 

[Jarlaxle]

For me: a Russian expat in Zurich named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov would be tragically killed by a runaway motorcar around 1915...

 

[Jarlaxle]

I would stop Jefferson from changing "property" to "pursuit of happiness".

I might have him simply use BOTH!

 

[Sunshine]

I would prevent the Kennedy assassination. I liked Camelot. His assassination had a profound effect on me as a young person. I remember coming in off the school bus that day to find my mother crying.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Contemplate how many Americans would not be here today. My dad was a paratrooper in the South Pacific theater. He said they were preparing for an invasion of the Japanese mainland, and had that occurred it would have been a fight to the death. MANY more human beings would have died on both sides if that invasion had occurred.

Forget that: contemplate how many JAPANESE wouldn't be here today!

We don't live in a vacuum sonny boy.

If that was intended to make sense, it failed utterly.

 

[Bfgrn]

Forget that: contemplate how many JAPANESE wouldn't be here today!

We don't live in a vacuum sonny boy.

If that was intended to make sense, it failed utterly.

Then you are not very smart.

The first atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, killed roughly 70,000 people immediately. Japan refused to surrender. Perhaps they reasoned that America had only one bomb, and could not make more.

The second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, killed roughly 40,000 to 70,000 people immediately.

Together, the two atomic bombs were responsible for the immediate and over-time deaths of around 140,000 people.

Awed and stunned by this raw power – and perhaps suddenly realizing that the ‘soft’ Americans were actually willing to use such power – the hard-hearted Japanese leaders were forced to unconditionally surrender.

Compare this to the cost in lives for a conventional military invasion of Japan.

In just the Battle of Okinawa alone, the invasion and securing of the tiny islands cost over 90,000 Japanese military deaths, close to 50,000 Allied deaths, and from 75,000 to 140,000 civilians dead or missing.

That’s a total of around 280,000 lives lost to secure just a foothold from which to invade the main Japanese islands.

Okinawa had a pre-invasion population of about 500,000. That means that up to a third of the entire civilian population was killed in the World War II invasion of the islands. Add to that military deaths equal to another one third of Okinawa’s civilian population.

Part of the reason for this was the fanatical bushido code of the soldiers, who encouraged or forced civilians to hold out to the death against the Allies – or even commit mass suicide rather than surrender and ‘lose face’.

And meanwhile in the homeland of Japan, the Shosango and later Ketsugo war policies were being implemented to encourage every single man, woman and child to fight the Allies to the death… Even if they had only bamboo to use as a weapon. (I, Scott, saw footage of such World War II Japanese women undergoing bamboo spear combat drills.)

If the main Japanese islands had been invaded, a bloody massacre far more grueling and drawn out than Okinawa could be expected.

In 1945, Japan as a whole had a population of around 52 million… Roughly 100 times as many people as Okinawa had.

If the Japanese had not been forced to surrender by the atomic bombs, a conventional invasion might have incurred a similar casualty ratio as Okinawa had.

That would be roughly 35 million lives lost, half of those being Japanese civilians forced or propagandized into fighting to the death.

I’m not conjecturing out of thin air here – the official Allied plans for invading Japan if it refused to surrender predicted a cost of 1 million American and 10 million Japanese lives. Even after the two bombs were dropped, the military planners were unsure as to whether the stubborn Japanese leaders would keep on fighting tooth and claw.

 

[Ernie S.]

I would have prevented the importation of slaves to North America.

 

[Granny]

I think I'd have to go with Vietnam and the mindset of the times of our young people. Not only for the unnecessary loss of so many lives, but it is in my mind the era of the beginning of the end of civility and unity in America.