The Nuking of Nagasaki: Even More Immoral and Unnecessary than Hiroshima

[Unkotare]

What would you choose:
1) Vote for Trump, and kill millions of China men, women and children, and made the world much better.
Or
2) Vote for Biden, and allow China to kill millions of men, women and children in the USA, and put out the torch of freedom, and destroy everything good that exists in the world.
...

Neither one of those things is anything like a necessary causal outcome of its predicate.

Ha! And you say, that we are "illogical". Funny.

Who is "we"? How many voices are you hearing in your head?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

What would you choose:
1) Vote for Trump, and kill millions of China men, women and children, and made the world much better.
Or
2) Vote for Biden, and allow China to kill millions of men, women and children in the USA, and put out the torch of freedom, and destroy everything good that exists in the world.
...

Neither one of those things is anything like a necessary causal outcome of its predicate.

Ha! And you say, that we are "illogical". Funny.

Who is "we"? How many voices are you hearing in your head?

You still have not linked to this LIST of surrender offers made to Mac Arthur, you have not linked to ANY offer by the Japanese Government before the Emperor surrendered, offering to surrender. You have not listed what other options we had besides drop the Bombs and or Invade Main land Japan.

 

[Silver Cat]

What would you choose:
1) Vote for Trump, and kill millions of China men, women and children, and made the world much better.
Or
2) Vote for Biden, and allow China to kill millions of men, women and children in the USA, and put out the torch of freedom, and destroy everything good that exists in the world.
...

Neither one of those things is anything like a necessary causal outcome of its predicate.

Ha! And you say, that we are "illogical". Funny.

Who is "we"? How many voices are you hearing in your head?

You still have not linked to this LIST of surrender offers made to Mac Arthur, you have not linked to ANY offer by the Japanese Government before the Emperor surrendered, offering to surrender. You have not listed what other options we had besides drop the Bombs and or Invade Main land Japan.

We could give up Japan to Soviets.
Or start the war against Soviet Union in 1945 to protect Japan and had lost Europe, too.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Here's the thing. At the time, it was just another weapon in a war that saw all sorts of weapons used by all sides... Horror on a level most of us couldn't understand today.

Later on, when Nukes became an existential threat to the species, people asked why we used them, but at the time, there was no question. We were at war, they started it.

It's a wonderful case of applying modern values to people in the past who would have looked at you funny.

It did not have to be a question of whether we used them or not

Did we have to choose targets where 150,000 civilians were killed?
Could a non lethal “demonstration” have yielded the same results?

Drop one in a low populated or strictly military area and let the Japanese evaluate the results. Then tell them we have dozens just like it and would target Tokyo next

We were burning more Japanese civilians than that every night with conventional incendiaries. Japanese civilians were reaping what they sowed to Chinese, Philipino, Burmese, and many other nation’s civilians during the unprovoked war that Japan started in 1936. How many Burmese civilians were starved and worked to death building the “railway of death” trough Burma (If you haven’t heard of it, The movie Bridge Over the River Kwai was very loosely based on it)? My sympathy for Japanese civilians operates in direct ratio to the sympathy they held for the innocent victims of their government. As the old saying goes, “what goes around, comes around”. In WWII non-combatant did much to avoid what we now call collateral damage. Heck the RAF and USAAF killed thousands of FRENCH civilians bombing targets in France during WWII.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Hey. I've read books on the subject. Nagasaki was deemed necessary to convince the Japanese that we had more than one bomb. At the time, the Japanese military establishment was telling everyone that we only had one bomb and that Hiroshima was just something to remember like "Remember the Alamo". They were still dead-set on continuing the war. The primary reason is they couldn't stomach defeat. Defeat to them means suicide. So we had to drop another one to crush their hopes. The result was the end of a war and the end of the bloodshed.

The Japanese were not dead set on continuing the war, In fact, they were seeking peace negotiations through the Swiss and the Soviets.

The real game changer was the USSR entering the war. It opened a whole new front and hundreds of battle hardened divisions, with the potential of Japan itself being partitioned like Germany was.

The other key thing was that the US had dropped it's insistence that Hirohito had to abdicate AFTER the Soviets got into it.

.

The official Japanese government wasn’t negotiating. Unconditional surrender was totally unacceptable to them, the out of power’s peace proposals were a return to status quo ante with Japan keeping everything it held on December 5th, 1941, no war crimes trials and if there were to be any disarmament, it would be done by Japanese personnel under the supervision of the existing Japanese government. Does any of that sound acceptable to you?

 

[AZrailwhale]

Pearl Harbor wasn’t necessary either.

True, because FDR should not have provoked Japan to attack us. In the months leading up to Pearl Harbor, the Japanese tried repeatedly to get FDR to lift the crippling sanctions he had imposed on Japan. They offered enormous concessions, including ignoring the Tripartite Treaty. But, FDR, who was ever willing to excuse Soviet atrocities and tyranny, refused to show even half as much flexibility toward anti-communist Japan. Instead of making Japan our ally and letting the Japanese carry out their plan to invade the Soviet Union, FDR, desperate to save the Soviet experiment, provoked Japan to war.

So you do not approve of economic sanctions against nations conquering other nations for exploit of their resources or people. Interesting insight of you.

What of what Japan did to citizens they conquered?

All the Japanese government had to do in 1941 to get the sanctions lifted was to stop their ongoing conquest of China. They could even have kept Korea and Mongolia. Instead, they chose to go to war out of pride.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Whatever labored, embarrassing arguments one can make for the nuking of Hiroshima cannot be made for the nuking of Nagasaki just three days later. From my article "Did We Really Need to Use the Atomic Bomb Against Japan?":

On August 9, 1945, just three days after we nuked Hiroshima, and before Japan’s leaders had sufficient time to process and respond to our nuclear attack on Hiroshima, we dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, which was home to Japan’s largest Christian population. The atomic bombing of Nagasaki was even more inexcusable than the nuking of Hiroshima. . . .​

​

On August 9, we nuked Nagasaki, just three days after Hiroshima, and hours after the Soviets began to maul the Japanese army in Manchuria,, and while Japan’s civilian leaders were understandably absorbed with trying to process what had happened to Hiroshima and with responding to the Soviet attack in Manchuria. Surely Truman and other high officials knew that three days was not enough time for Japan’s government to formulate a formal response to the unprecedented use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and to the Soviet invasion in Manchuria. Even McGeorge Bundy, who helped Henry Stimson write his defense of the atomic bombing of Japan, acknowledged that Truman was too quick to nuke Nagasaki:​

"It is hard to see that much could have been lost if there had been more time between the two bombs. . . . Such a delay would have been relatively easy, and I think right." (https://miketgriffith.com/files/immoraluse.pdf)​

​

The Japanese were not even able to get a scientific team to Hiroshima until August 7, the day after the attack. Meanwhile, Japan's leaders were getting conflicting, fragmentary information about what had happened in Hiroshima. Some Army officials were telling the government that the bombing of Hiroshima was merely a very large conventional bombing raid, and they were suppressing information about the kinds of wounds that had been inflicted. There was no Internet back then, no fax machines, no Skype.

Surely it was obscene for us to nuke Nagasaki just three days, 72 hours, after we had nuked Hiroshima.

it seems (unsurprisingly) that conservatives miss the main point.

it was IMMORAL to nuke a city.

period.

you nuke a military target....like an army or a navy....

NOT a city.


If the point was to get japan to surrender then wouldn't they surrender just as fast if they lost an army to a nuke?

Do you think it was immoral to burn hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians to death? How about starving them to death which was one of two alternatives left if nukes were taken off the table. Would be allowing tens of thousands of American soldiers to be killed and north of a hundred thousand wounded in an invasion of Japan moral? How about if a million or more Japanese civilians were killed resisting the invasion?
Was it moral to allow Japanese army troops to continue slaughtering civilians all over Asia while we waited for them to decide IF they were going to surrender? Was it moral to allow even more allied POWs to be beaten, tortured and starved to death waiting for a surrender?
Some posters here seem to have gotten the idea that war is moral from somewhere. War is immoral, but sometimes Wars have to be fought.

 

[AZrailwhale]

The question is....Did we need to kill 150,000 civilians in order to get Japan to surrender ?

Irrelevant. In my mind it would have been acceptable to nuke every moderate or larger sized city in Japan as punishment for Pearl Harbor and their atrocities.

yes

that is your opinion


because you are a conservative

you have no empathy and you demand total destruction as payback....

you don't care that the people you are slaughtering are really no different than you.

they didn't start the war
they probably didn't want the war
and if they supported it they did so out of patriotic duty the way you would

you prove ignorant of the subject-----they had NO navy

The Japanese still had a navy, they just had very little fuel for it.

 

[Unkotare]

...
The official Japanese government wasn’t negotiating. Unconditional surrender was totally unacceptable to them, ...

Chicago Tribune History

Historical News and Comment Chicago Tribune History Michael A. Hoffman II Perhaps the most telling aspect of World War Two historical orthodoxy is its one-dimensional view of war criminals; by current definition these are the losers of a war. The winners decide the degree of the losers’...

www.ihr.org

http://wyso.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/9/0/22903824/trohan_article.pdf

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf

 

[AZrailwhale]

It would have made Fallujah look like a playground.

Says who? These figures that came out saying, "Millions of Casualties" didn't come out until the war and the government had to justify why it vaporized hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Then why did it take Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada and Desert Storm to finally use up the stock of Purple Hearts Built up for the invasion of Japan!

 

[AZrailwhale]

.......INVASION was the only other option. ....

No, it was not.

Oh I couldn't help but notice that you haven't listed any other options so I have to ask What in the world do you think the other choices were?

The Japanese military was already decimated by 1945. Tokkotai attacks increased in direct proportion to the rapid decline in trained, skilled pilots like the ones the air force had at the outset of the war. The population had become disgruntled and was facing mass starvation. This whole "not one person in the whole country would ever surrender!" is childishly simplistic comic book nonsense and demonstrates a cultural ignorance that is only relied upon to support a preconceived narrative. A naval blockade of Honshu would have forced the surrender that elements within the government had been trying to negotiate since long before.

You imply but don't say what your option is. You know it's nonsense. Go ahead and say it--------you think the US should have not invaded or gone after the evil Japanese in a land battle---allowing them to continue to kill our captured soldiers and cut open the bellies of pregnant chinese women among other things. You think we should have jut stopped there, which btw would have allowed the Japanese to regroup under their IMPERIALIST leader would have certainly attacked again and again and again if he wasn't completely defeated and brought to his knees.

You have no clue about that time and place. The Japanese at that time saw their evil emperor as a GOD------and they weren't disillusioned with their god...hence why when he called for volunteers to kill themselves----he had no problem getting them. You think the kamikazi were the only suiciders for the japanese? These idiots took suicide to a level that you obviously can't even phantom..........They were an emperor as god worshipping cult that saw nothing but good in killing themselves to hurt their god's enemies.


I realize that the Japanese government now is desperate to rewrite history as all the lib socialist globalists and in fact have been trying to rewrite and hide facts for decades now, but this doesn't change the truth. The evil emperor and his army gave standing orders for the people of japan especially the barrier islands to kill themselves killing the allies----mass suicide called SHUDAN JIKETSU (which you should look up) was ordered and the japanese military enforced....

Or the yanks could have just blocked all the ports. They could have supplied massive food and medical drugs & equiptment even, or put it on offer, and just waited. If the Japs continued to hold out with their people starving that would not have been the yanks fault.Then it would have just been a matter of time.
All Jap resources were spent, so there is no way they could just keep mounting any meaningful attacks. Had the US taken this course of action far, from condemnation, history would be applauding you.

Most of the IJA was in China and was still actively fighting and not particularly short of supplies.

 

[AZrailwhale]

.......INVASION was the only other option. ....

No, it was not.

Oh I couldn't help but notice that you haven't listed any other options so I have to ask What in the world do you think the other choices were?

There were three options to force Japan to surrender unconditionally. First: nukes. Second: Invasion. Third: blockade and starvation. Of the three nukes were the most humane and resulted in the least loss of life.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

My sympathy for Japanese civilians operates in direct ratio to the sympathy they held for the innocent victims of their government.

Easy to say, when you can shoot them like fish in a barrel and they can't do much in retaliation.

 

[9thIDdoc]

Sorry, Japan had that and more coming and it would have been a crime to spend more American lives needlessly.

 

[9thIDdoc]

My sympathy for Japanese civilians operates in direct ratio to the sympathy they held for the innocent victims of their government.

Easy to say, when you can shoot them like fish in a barrel and they can't do much in retaliation.

Exactly like they did to us at Pearl Harbor except that they weren't provoked and we were.

 

[harmonica]

The question is....Did we need to kill 150,000 civilians in order to get Japan to surrender ?

Irrelevant. In my mind it would have been acceptable to nuke every moderate or larger sized city in Japan as punishment for Pearl Harbor and their atrocities.

yes

that is your opinion


because you are a conservative

you have no empathy and you demand total destruction as payback....

you don't care that the people you are slaughtering are really no different than you.

they didn't start the war
they probably didn't want the war
and if they supported it they did so out of patriotic duty the way you would

you prove ignorant of the subject-----they had NO navy

The Japanese still had a navy, they just had very little fuel for it.

boy-- right off the bat prove you don't know shit-

 

[Unkotare]

.......INVASION was the only other option. ....

No, it was not.

Oh I couldn't help but notice that you haven't listed any other options so I have to ask What in the world do you think the other choices were?

The Japanese military was already decimated by 1945. Tokkotai attacks increased in direct proportion to the rapid decline in trained, skilled pilots like the ones the air force had at the outset of the war. The population had become disgruntled and was facing mass starvation. This whole "not one person in the whole country would ever surrender!" is childishly simplistic comic book nonsense and demonstrates a cultural ignorance that is only relied upon to support a preconceived narrative. A naval blockade of Honshu would have forced the surrender that elements within the government had been trying to negotiate since long before.

You imply but don't say what your option is. You know it's nonsense. Go ahead and say it--------you think the US should have not invaded or gone after the evil Japanese in a land battle---allowing them to continue to kill our captured soldiers and cut open the bellies of pregnant chinese women among other things. You think we should have jut stopped there, which btw would have allowed the Japanese to regroup under their IMPERIALIST leader would have certainly attacked again and again and again if he wasn't completely defeated and brought to his knees.

You have no clue about that time and place. The Japanese at that time saw their evil emperor as a GOD------and they weren't disillusioned with their god...hence why when he called for volunteers to kill themselves----he had no problem getting them. You think the kamikazi were the only suiciders for the japanese? These idiots took suicide to a level that you obviously can't even phantom..........They were an emperor as god worshipping cult that saw nothing but good in killing themselves to hurt their god's enemies.


I realize that the Japanese government now is desperate to rewrite history as all the lib socialist globalists and in fact have been trying to rewrite and hide facts for decades now, but this doesn't change the truth. The evil emperor and his army gave standing orders for the people of japan especially the barrier islands to kill themselves killing the allies----mass suicide called SHUDAN JIKETSU (which you should look up) was ordered and the japanese military enforced....

Or the yanks could have just blocked all the ports. They could have supplied massive food and medical drugs & equiptment even, or put it on offer, and just waited. If the Japs continued to hold out with their people starving that would not have been the yanks fault.Then it would have just been a matter of time.
All Jap resources were spent, so there is no way they could just keep mounting any meaningful attacks. Had the US taken this course of action far, from condemnation, history would be applauding you.

Most of the IJA was in China and was still actively fighting and not particularly short of supplies.

Have you ever studied history at all?

 

[Unkotare]

.......INVASION was the only other option. ....

No, it was not.

Oh I couldn't help but notice that you haven't listed any other options so I have to ask What in the world do you think the other choices were?

There were three options to force Japan to surrender unconditionally. .....

There were many more than just three options.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

...
The official Japanese government wasn’t negotiating. Unconditional surrender was totally unacceptable to them, ...

Chicago Tribune History

Historical News and Comment Chicago Tribune History Michael A. Hoffman II Perhaps the most telling aspect of World War Two historical orthodoxy is its one-dimensional view of war criminals; by current definition these are the losers of a war. The winners decide the degree of the losers’...

www.ihr.org

http://wyso.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/9/0/22903824/trohan_article.pdf

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf

That link goes no where. it does not link to any official site or any official document.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

.......INVASION was the only other option. ....

No, it was not.

Oh I couldn't help but notice that you haven't listed any other options so I have to ask What in the world do you think the other choices were?

There were three options to force Japan to surrender unconditionally. .....

There were many more than just three options.

List them, you keep claiming there were more, LIST them.