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

[eagle1462010]

The Japanese military was prepared to fight to the death

Let them starve for a few months, see how "ready" they are, then.

The civilian population had been starving for more than a few months already. The "they will never surrender!" nonsense stems from a comic-book level notion of culture that is ignorant of history.

History shows that as of the date the bombs were dropped Japan hadn't surrendered. We were still at War.

Too damned bad Tojo...........

Tojo had already been removed well before the end of the war. If you want to talk about history, maybe you should know something about it.

Perhaps you shouldn't be a teacher when you can't recognize sarcasm directed at you.

My point stands............Japan started the War and got their asses beat..........The Nukes were a part of that ass whooping...........If they didn't want it..........then they should have never started the fight...............Their torture of people and prisoners is the act of BARBARIANS.......................they deserved NO SYMPATHY at the end of the world.

Had we fire bombed those cities instead of the Nukes.................those cities would be just as dead...........

So cry me a river.

 

[mikegriffith1]

It should be noted that not all WW II veterans blindly backed Truman’s decision to nuke Japan, and most of them did not express the barbaric, cruel attitude that some people in this thread have expressed. From 2000 to 2001, a pair of researchers from Ohio State University, Uday Hohan and Leo Maley, interviewed Pacific War veterans on this issue and also searched for previous printed interviews. I quote from their article, “Hiroshima: Military Voices of Dissent,” which is carried on the Ohio State University website:

. . . not all Pacific War veterans applaud the atomic annihilation of two Japanese cities.​

Responding to a journalist's question in 1995 about what he would have done had he been in Truman's shoes, Joseph O'Donnell, a retired marine corps sergeant who served in the Pacific, answered that "we should have went after the military in Japan. They were bad. But to drop a bomb on women and children and the elderly, I draw a line there, and I still hold it."​

Doug Dowd, a Pacific-theater rescue pilot who was slated to take an early part in the invasion of Japan if it had come to that, recently stated that it was clear in the final months of the war that the Japanese "had lost the ability to defend themselves." American planes "met little, and then virtually no resistance," Dowd recalled. He added, "It is well-known [now] that the Japanese were seeking to make a peace agreement well before Hiroshima."​

Or take Ed Everts, a major in the 7th weather squadron of the Army Air Corps. Everts, who received an air medal for surviving a crash at sea during the battle at Iwo Jima, told us that America's use of atomic bombs was "a war crime" for which "our leaders should have been put on trial as were the German and Japanese leaders."​

While the great sacrifice and heroism of veterans should never be forgotten, their often impassioned defense of the bombing of Hiroshima does us all a disservice. It substitutes a simplistic history for a complex set of events. It narrows historical evidence about a White House decision to the question of what soldiers in the Pacific believed. . . . (Hiroshima: Military Voices of Dissent | Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective)​

Hohan and Maley go on to note that Admiral Halsey expressed the view that nuking Japan was unnecessary:

Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, the tough and outspoken commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, which participated in the American offensive against the Japanese home islands in the final months of the war, publicly stated in 1946 that "the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment." The Japanese, he noted, had "put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before" the bomb was used. (Hiroshima: Military Voices of Dissent | Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective)​

Naturally, veterans who believed that Japan would not have surrendered without being nuked and that nuking Japan saved the lives of half a million American soldiers—naturally, those veterans supported Truman’s decision. I used to think the same thing and feel the same way.

But, those veterans who knew a bit more about the subject, i.e., who had learned of Japan’s peace feelers and of her prostrate condition, and who had learned that many senior military officers, including Eisenhower, Leahy, and Nimitz, believed we should not have nuked Japan—those veterans did not support Truman’s decision.

Dr. Leó Szilárd, one of the scientists who worked on the a-bomb project, and the man who first proposed building atomic weapons, put the nuking of Japan into moral perspective in a 1960 interview with U.S. News and World Report:

Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them? (“We Had Adopted an Ethical Standard Common to the Barbarians of the Dark Ages” the Atomic Bombing Of Nagasaki)​

There was a reason that when Truman first told the American people about the nuking of Hiroshima, he falsely claimed that Hiroshima was a “military base,” not just a military target, but a military base. Actually, of course, it was neither. If Hiroshima was a “military base,” or even a “military target,” then so is every American city with a sea port, an airport, and a contingent of military reservists and/or National Guard soldiers. Hiroshima’s port was mined and useless; Hiroshima had no fortifications; the troops there were in garrison and constituted a small fraction of the city’s population; and most of the city’s factories were on the outskirts of the city and were undamaged in the atomic attack because the bomb was dropped over the center of the city. The factories could have been destroyed with conventional bombing without killing over 100,000 civilians.

 

[eagle1462010]

It should be noted that not all WW II veterans blindly backed Truman’s decision to nuke Japan, and most of them did not express the barbaric, vicious attitude that some people in this thread have expressed

Not all....................my relatives supported the decision................just because some said they wouldn't do it doesn't outweigh those who didn't give a damn. They just wanted to win the War and get the hell home. Not die on some shit hole island in the Pacific...........they didn't care that the nukes were dropped.............

They cared that they could stop fighting and finally go home..........Not about the cities hit by the bomb.

 

[KissMy]

Truman hit Japan much harder with the six-month fire-bombing campaign against 67 Japanese cities that preceded the smaller nuclear attacks on Hiroshima. Truman warned them a Nuclear bombing was coming.

Hiroshima was in most newspaper headlines the next day.

Plus the Nagasaki nuke missed the city, only harming half as many as Hiroshima.

We have much more radioactive contamination here in the USA from building those bombs, than Japan has from US bombing them.

 

[eagle1462010]

 

[eagle1462010]

Story of Marcus McDilda - Kempeitai Torture - WW2 FEPOW

The cruelty of the Japanese soldiers towards Allied POWs is well documented, from the Bataan death march on the Philippines, to the execution of doctors, nurses and patients at the British Alexandra Barracks hospital in Singapore. They believed themselves to be or were led to believe they were ‘Samurai’, a perverted and distorted version of the warrior class of Feudal Japan, and as such considered themselves to be superior to their Allied counterparts, who dishonoured themselves by being defeated in battle and captured alive. This so called “Bushido code” turned a modern military force into a barbaric and xenophobic mass of indoctrinated troops, as bad as, if not worse than the SS-Totenkopfverbände.

One of the men who could testify to this is Marcus McDilda, a United States Army Air Force fighter pilot captured on 8th August 1945, just two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. As reported by US Marine Brigadier General Hagen in War in the Pacific, McDilda was paraded through the city streets of Osaka, bound and blindfolded, while being beaten by the civilian populace in retaliation for the bombing. Bundled into a Kempeitai interrogation room, he continued to be questioned, beaten and tortured.


McDilda survived the Second World War and was liberated from Omori by the 4th US Marine Regiment after the Japanese surrender. However, many of his captured comrades were not so lucky. It is very likely that the lie saved his life, since it was later discovered that 50 USAAF POWs in Osaka, the camp in which he had been held before being transferred for further questioning, had been executed shortly after the broadcast of the Japanese surrender.

 

[eagle1462010]

 

[eagle1462010]

 

[JoeB131]

Responding to a journalist's question in 1995 about what he would have done had he been in Truman's shoes, Joseph O'Donnell, a retired marine corps sergeant who served in the Pacific, answered that "we should have went after the military in Japan. They were bad. But to drop a bomb on women and children and the elderly, I draw a line there, and I still hold it."

Um... Okay, we were dropping a lot more conventional bombs on women and children in Japan. the firebombing of Tokyo (and for that matter, Dresden) killed a lot more people.

The reality... It was just another weapon in a war that had seen a lot of weapons deployed.

The reason why we go through this hand-wringing today is because we've lived for 75 years with the threat of "nuclear annihilation", two words most people in 1945 wouldn't have understood. They just knew the Japanese had attacked us and they were going to pay, dammit.

 

[eagle1462010]

 

[elektra]

It The factories could have been destroyed with conventional bombing without killing over 100,000 civilians.

This comment comes from an, idiot, that quotes a source, let's say, McGeorge Bundy. Begins the OP with the quote. Then after hundreds of comments griffter1 calls his source a lousy liar? Which discredits there own source.

Then the griffter1 links to a "Scholar", who can not get the simple right, like the page number in the book he is supposedly using, this gross error repeatedly made? Griffter1 calls that scholarly work?

Now the griffter1 claims factories can be destroyed with conventional bombing. This shows the very deep ignorance and lack of understanding griffter1 has in regards to conventional bombs in WW II.

The Krupp factories in Germany were always quickly manufacturing after being bombed. Why is that. How is it thee most significant bombing of the war never prevented the Krupp factories from operating?

 

[eagle1462010]

'Would I drop the atomic bomb again? Yes, I would'


You always knew people would be very seriously hurt'
It would be wrong to hold Van Kirk, now 89, in any sense responsible for the extreme human suffering that the bomb caused. As Harry Truman, the president who ordered the dropping of the bomb, told Tibbets when they met in 1948: "I'm the guy who sent you. If anybody gives you a hard time about it, refer them to me."

"Nothing. It was just a trip to Japan, that's all."

I can't believe that, I say. Nagasaki had just been entirely flattened by a nuclear explosion.

"Yes, we saw a city that was completely levelled. All you saw was plain, flat, level ground."

That must have been a powerful sight, I say.

"There was not much difference between an atomic bomb and a conventional bomb. The difference was in the area that it covered."

Did he see the shadows of people who had been burned to dust on the walls and pavements?

"Yes, you saw that."

And wasn't that shocking?

"It was shocking as you wondered how the heat of that bomb had done something like that. But you were immune to it because they told you during your training that would happen."

Have you ever allowed yourself to read accounts of what it was like to be at the receiving end of the bomb?

"Yes."

And what was your reaction?

"An information reaction."

Did he ever wish he had never taken part in the Enola Gay's atomic mission?

"No, I was proud to be on the Enola Gay. The war ended on 14 August. I don't know when it would have ended if we had not dropped the atomic bombs."

Would you do it again?

"Under the same circumstances – and I realise you can never have them exactly again – yes, I would do it again."

 

[eagle1462010]

 

[Unkotare]

The Japanese military was prepared to fight to the death

Let them starve for a few months, see how "ready" they are, then.

The civilian population had been starving for more than a few months already. The "they will never surrender!" nonsense stems from a comic-book level notion of culture that is ignorant of history.

History shows that as of the date the bombs were dropped Japan hadn't surrendered. We were still at War.

Too damned bad Tojo...........

Tojo had already been removed well before the end of the war. If you want to talk about history, maybe you should know something about it.

Perhaps you shouldn't be a teacher when you can't recognize sarcasm directed at you.

My point stands............Japan started the War and got their asses beat..........The Nukes were a part of that ass whooping...........If they didn't want it..........then they should have never started the fight...............Their torture of people and prisoners is the act of BARBARIANS.......................they deserved NO SYMPATHY at the end of the world.

Had we fire bombed those cities instead of the Nukes.................those cities would be just as dead...........

So cry me a river.

Have you read ANY of the other posts on this thread?

 

[eagle1462010]

Let them starve for a few months, see how "ready" they are, then.

The civilian population had been starving for more than a few months already. The "they will never surrender!" nonsense stems from a comic-book level notion of culture that is ignorant of history.

History shows that as of the date the bombs were dropped Japan hadn't surrendered. We were still at War.

Too damned bad Tojo...........

Tojo had already been removed well before the end of the war. If you want to talk about history, maybe you should know something about it.

Perhaps you shouldn't be a teacher when you can't recognize sarcasm directed at you.

My point stands............Japan started the War and got their asses beat..........The Nukes were a part of that ass whooping...........If they didn't want it..........then they should have never started the fight...............Their torture of people and prisoners is the act of BARBARIANS.......................they deserved NO SYMPATHY at the end of the world.

Had we fire bombed those cities instead of the Nukes.................those cities would be just as dead...........

So cry me a river.

Have you read ANY of the other posts on this thread?

yes.......................but not all.

And it is an attempt to condemn the actions of a different mindset from a different generation ..........aka different era.

The decision was made based on the morality of the past not today.........as we attempt to judge the actions of that time based on our era's perception of that time..................

The Japanese were brutal..............they were creating biological and chemical weapons.........torturing and executing prisoners of War........Starving them to death...............In China they played a game of who can kill 100 with a sword........later tried and convicted of War Crimes for it.............and executed.............

They were executing POW's days after the nukes were dropped in Japan..............and I just put that information into the thread...................What I posted helped figure in why the dropped the bomb.............to end the War.........and stop the killing in the region.................

The decision to drop the bombs ended the War in a matter of days..................which was why they were dropped to begin with................Your shouting how evil it was doesn't change that conclusion..............nor the morality of how evil we were for doing so...........

My point stands...............end of equation.

 

[Unkotare]

The civilian population had been starving for more than a few months already. The "they will never surrender!" nonsense stems from a comic-book level notion of culture that is ignorant of history.

History shows that as of the date the bombs were dropped Japan hadn't surrendered. We were still at War.

Too damned bad Tojo...........

Tojo had already been removed well before the end of the war. If you want to talk about history, maybe you should know something about it.

Perhaps you shouldn't be a teacher when you can't recognize sarcasm directed at you.

My point stands............Japan started the War and got their asses beat..........The Nukes were a part of that ass whooping...........If they didn't want it..........then they should have never started the fight...............Their torture of people and prisoners is the act of BARBARIANS.......................they deserved NO SYMPATHY at the end of the world.

Had we fire bombed those cities instead of the Nukes.................those cities would be just as dead...........

So cry me a river.

Have you read ANY of the other posts on this thread?

yes.......................but not all.......

Then go do your work before making an ass of yourself.

 

[eagle1462010]

History shows that as of the date the bombs were dropped Japan hadn't surrendered. We were still at War.

Too damned bad Tojo...........

Tojo had already been removed well before the end of the war. If you want to talk about history, maybe you should know something about it.

Perhaps you shouldn't be a teacher when you can't recognize sarcasm directed at you.

My point stands............Japan started the War and got their asses beat..........The Nukes were a part of that ass whooping...........If they didn't want it..........then they should have never started the fight...............Their torture of people and prisoners is the act of BARBARIANS.......................they deserved NO SYMPATHY at the end of the world.

Had we fire bombed those cities instead of the Nukes.................those cities would be just as dead...........

So cry me a river.

Have you read ANY of the other posts on this thread?

yes.......................but not all.......

Then go do your work before making an ass of yourself.

Who da fck are you to demand a dang thing from me................You may be a teacher but you sure as hell aren't mine..............

Your outrage over history is noted and discarded....................the decision was made and it ended the War quickly.............and I agree with it now just as many did back then.

This thread doesn't show the brutality of the Japanese during the War that helped cause the decision to be made............doesn't show the mass execution of prisoners at the end of the War.............the skeleton's of starved POW's at the end of the War now does it..............

Wars aren't MORAL.............they ARE THE SANCTIONED MURDER of each other when all discussion is over...................No reason to say it differently.........it's the way it is.

 

[Unkotare]

...
And it is an attempt to condemn the actions of a different mindset from a different generation ..........aka different era........

Many of America's military leaders of that generation, that era, that day saw the use of the atomic bombs on civilians of a defeated enemy as unnecessary and morally problematic.

 

[Unkotare]

Tojo had already been removed well before the end of the war. If you want to talk about history, maybe you should know something about it.

Perhaps you shouldn't be a teacher when you can't recognize sarcasm directed at you.

My point stands............Japan started the War and got their asses beat..........The Nukes were a part of that ass whooping...........If they didn't want it..........then they should have never started the fight...............Their torture of people and prisoners is the act of BARBARIANS.......................they deserved NO SYMPATHY at the end of the world.

Had we fire bombed those cities instead of the Nukes.................those cities would be just as dead...........

So cry me a river.

Have you read ANY of the other posts on this thread?

yes.......................but not all.......

Then go do your work before making an ass of yourself.

Who da fck are you to demand a dang thing from me......................

In other words, you're happy being ignorant - you need to remain ignorant - because it allows you to wallow comfortably in your emotions. So much easier than thinking.

 

[Unkotare]

....

The Japanese were brutal....................

Make up your mind. Were the atomic bombs used to incinerate hundreds of thousands of civilians as an act of revenge, or in order to end the war?