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Posted: Mar 11 2009 01:53 pm

So this may be a bit touchy I know, but we're all adults and reasonably mature here, and I'm curious (since I'm in a debate about this in another forum). Do you think the dropping of the Atom bombs on Japan to end WWII was justified?

My feeling: yes and no. Yes, in that it was pretty well the only way we could see at the time to prevent a long, painful and bloody invasion. In war, you have the right to be selfish (imho) and to do almost anything in your power to prevent the kind of loss of life that would entail.

HOWEVER

I am still befuddled as to why we dropped it on CIVILIANS. I sometimes hear the argument that we should have dropped it in an entirely unpopulated area, and I think the effectiveness of that would have been pretty well zero given the Japanese will to fight. But we couldn't find some military targets to drop them on? We HAD to let them go in the middle of not one but TWO civilian cities? That smacks of...exactly the kind of things we hated the Germans and Japanese for in that war. Now, the war had to end, I don't think there's a question about that, and that was the quickest way to do it. But civilian cities? REALLY Truman? Confused

What are your thoughts?

Joined: Apr 14 2006 Location: Lake Michigan Posts: 3332

Civilians were a normal target at that point in history, it was part of the Von Clausewitz theory of total war to push your enemy into submission. Both sides were guilty of such horrors. The Nanking massacre comes to mind.

As for the use of the atomic bomb, it saved lives. According to government estimates, the invasion of Japan, Operation Downfall, would have cost millions of Japanese lives, and up to a million American lives, and taken years to accomplish. The Japanese government was training the populace to resist the American invaders, using everything at their disposal, including bamboo spears.

Both of my grandparents served in the Pacific Theatre, and therefore could have died in the invasion. I owe my very existence to the use of the atomic bomb. My maternal grandfather has said on multiple occasions how his unit was preparing for the invasion of Japan before the bombs were used and the unconditional surrender was issued.

There's also the Japanese military mindset. The government was committed to fighting until the bitter end. Even after Hiroshima & Nagasaki some elements of the military tried to continue the fight; and after the emperor recorded the radio announcement of the surrender, some generals tried to steal the tape on the eve of the announcement. The bomb was necessary to convince Emperor Hirohito and enough of his advisors to accept the unconditional surrender.

Posted: Mar 11 2009 02:41 pm

Hmm...

Well, if you look at it from a scientific view, we may not have known that the nuke on Hiroshima would have caused radiation sickness and long-term reconstruction periods. We probably at first just figured it as a ginormous bomb rather than a dirty bomb. At the same time though, the Japanese pretty much never quit, or in other words didn't know how to quit. They didn't surrender after the Hiroshima bomb, and if I remember we did offer them an oppurtunity to surrender(Perhaps twice before the Hiroshima bomb). So in a way, the Japanese could've brought it upon themselves.

On the other hand, as you said we dropped it on civilians, and in our current-day war morals that would be cowardly as civilians are unarmed and not involved. It probably would've been better to drop the bombs on wherever the Japaneses' military or navy was stationed. There is however the counterargument that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would be considered just as bad, but in that conflict the Japanese were there in person and it was against armed military personnel, not civilians.

Overall, I say just let history be history, and destroy all nuclear warheads/hydrogen bombs/dirty bombs/etc. in existence. The only use I can seem for besides killing, is incoming meteor destruction, but nukes really don't take that long in this day and age and scientists have been developing other techniques if such an event happened. So yeah.

Posted: Mar 11 2009 03:01 pm

Ba‘al wrote:

Overall, I say just let history be history, and destroy all nuclear warheads/hydrogen bombs/dirty bombs/etc. in existence. The only use I can seem for besides killing, is incoming meteor destruction, but nukes really don't take that long in this day and age and scientists have been developing other techniques if such an event happened. So yeah.

Its well understood that shooting a meteor with a nuclear missle would turn the meteor from a dangerous impact to like twenty, which would pretty much destroy the world.

That being said, the pratical difficulties of getting all of these nuclear weapons removed sorta saps the viability out of that pie in the sky plan, as desirable as it is.

Posted: Mar 11 2009 03:04 pm

It depends on the size really, and how powerful the blast is in order to make it small enough to get burnt up in Earth's atmosphere.

Posted: Mar 11 2009 03:24 pm

I think it was not only right to do so, but absolutely necessary for the future of mankind. As stated, it ended the war earlier and without the loss of American lives, so for net global population we're doing well.

As for why it was absolutely necessary? At the time, America had the bomb and that was it. Obviously, it was only a matter of time, and likely not much time, before another country got the bomb. Despite testing out in open, barren areas, destruction on this level is something that is unimaginable; you absolutely have to see it to realize the sort of force you're dealing with. (For fuck's sake, the devastation of one of these even has it's own unit of measurement: megadeath) Imagine what would have happened if we WEREN'T the first one to drop a nuclear bomb. Perhaps this is just me, but I really think that if the Russians were the first ones to use nuclear force, they would have fired enough warheads for a total doomsday scenario.

Posted: Mar 11 2009 03:24 pm

Well, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were technically military targets, not "civilian cities", so the Geneva convention was upheld in a technical sense. In any bombing of cities at that time, civilians were bound to get in the way, and were acceptable losses as long as the main target was military, like a factory.

And when you're talking an atomic bomb, there's going to be a hell of a lot of collateral damage, which was the point. The Japanese needed to see that there was no longer any point in resisting because we could (theoretically) wipe out their entire population without even stepping foot on the island. So dropping it in an uninhabited area would have been pointless, as well as impossible in such a densely populated country like Japan.

Dropping the bombs was definitely necessary and the best decision Truman could have made as it prevented what would have been the bloodiest invasion of all time and actually spared millions of Japanese lives seeing as how even women and children were arming up to fight, and would have just been massacred.

Posted: Mar 11 2009 03:47 pm

It's a complicated issue, on one hand it was obviously the right choice at that time but it also ushered in an age of atomic and later nuclear weapons, which I think most people will agree is not the best thing to happen in human history.

They way I look at it is that if we hadn't come up with it some other asshole country would have and we'd have been fucked, so I guess it was a good thing. Confused

it's too bad that we choose to harness the power of the atom for destructive reasons instead of destructive reasons. Sad

UsaSatsui's Youtube Channel · Posted: Mar 11 2009 04:06 pm

I don't think there's anything I could add that hasn't already been said.

I would like to point out, though, that the original target of the bomb was Tokyo. Considering that, Hiroshima was probably a good choice.

I also remember hearing some sort of military reason for choosing at least one of the targets.

Posted: Mar 11 2009 04:11 pm

UsaSatsui wrote:

I also remember hearing some sort of military reason for choosing at least one of the targets.

Wikipedia wrote:

During World War II, the Second Army and Chugoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima, and the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina port. The city also had large depots of military supplies, and was a key center for shipping.

UsaSatsui's Youtube Channel · Posted: Mar 11 2009 05:02 pm

Blackout wrote:

UsaSatsui wrote:

I also remember hearing some sort of military reason for choosing at least one of the targets.

Wikipedia wrote:

During World War II, the Second Army and Chugoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima, and the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina port. The city also had large depots of military supplies, and was a key center for shipping.

That'd be it. Thanks.

Banned Joined: Sep 13 2008 Posts: 3129

SoldierHawk wrote:

So this may be a bit touchy I know, but we're all adults and reasonably mature here,

im 16 and im sure as hell not mature

I do agree with you on the thing you said about where we dropped it.

Just the knowledge that we have that kind of power would probably have the same effect

Posted: Mar 11 2009 05:32 pm

hacker wrote:

SoldierHawk wrote:

So this may be a bit touchy I know, but we're all adults and reasonably mature here,

im 16 and im sure as hell not mature

I do agree with you on the thing you said about where we dropped it.

Just the knowledge that we have that kind of power would probably have the same effect

They knew we had it. We needed to prove we had the balls to use it.

Posted: Mar 11 2009 06:19 pm

I support the dropping of the Bombs 100%. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here.

My grandfather's ship in WWII was going to be part of the first wave of the mainland invasion, which the Navy was expecting a 99% causalty rate from. My mother wasn't born yet, and wouldn't be, until years after my grandfater came back from the war.

Joined: Apr 14 2006 Location: Lake Michigan Posts: 3332

My grandfather was in the Navy too, and of course in the same situation. It would be funny if they served together.

Posted: Mar 11 2009 06:58 pm

You should find out. Razz

Posted: Mar 11 2009 09:53 pm

I guess I'll go with yes even though it is kind of a hard decision. Yes because it brought the war to and end and yes that it shows how much damage these weapons can do. If we didn't use them somebody else would have probably used them. So in a way it was good to actually know the magnitude of damage these bombs could cause and that they have not been used since, at least not to that extent.

Posted: Mar 11 2009 11:40 pm

around 180-200 thousand were killed instead of estimated to be 1,000,000 plus casualties to more on the US side kind of sell it for me. It's horrible what it caused, but the US and Canada as well, would have to squash the massive threat, if they didn't do that, we would have been invaded.

For me, it's more the question "did they have to invade japan", once that is determined, then "why the bomb?" makes a lot more sense.

Posted: Mar 12 2009 01:14 am

I think it needs to be considered that there were many people alive during that time period that had also been around during the first World War as well. Harry Truman himself served in WWI. Its easy to turn a critical eye in this day and age because nobody in the current generation has ever seen a war on that kind of scale, let alone two of them in the same lifetime. Its always easier to judge the actions of others when you are looking in from the outside and also have the benefit of sixty years to analyze the decision. I'm sure the choice to drop the bombs was not one that was taken lightly, and I'm sure the targets were chosen with good reason. I personally think it saved more lives than it took, but I say that fully knowing the "what ifs" in history can never be answered. What I do know is that the decision did end the war, and that is was what it was intended to do.

Title: Title: Title: Title Joined: Sep 18 2008 Posts: 258

Dr. Jeebus wrote:

I think it was not only right to do so, but absolutely necessary for the future of mankind. As stated, it ended the war earlier and without the loss of American lives, so for net global population we're doing well.

As for why it was absolutely necessary? At the time, America had the bomb and that was it. Obviously, it was only a matter of time, and likely not much time, before another country got the bomb. Despite testing out in open, barren areas, destruction on this level is something that is unimaginable; you absolutely have to see it to realize the sort of force you're dealing with. (For fuck's sake, the devastation of one of these even has it's own unit of measurement: megadeath) Imagine what would have happened if we WEREN'T the first one to drop a nuclear bomb. Perhaps this is just me, but I really think that if the Russians were the first ones to use nuclear force, they would have fired enough warheads for a total doomsday scenario.

Basically, this. If we didn't drop the bombs when we did - inevitably they would have been dropped at a later point in history which most likely would have been substantially worse.

Joined: Apr 09 2008 Location: Pennsylvania Posts: 3112

For me, it's a reluctant "yes." Projected casualties for a mainland invasion were way beyond what the atom bomb did, but I have to wonder why we dropped it on a densely-populated city. Why not visibly offshore, or on a military target such as an isolated airbase or fort. I guess they just wanted to make sure that everybody saw it, but you still have to wonder why we put ourselves in the anti-civilian-killing elite, but still pull that off "because we have no other choice."

Posted: Mar 13 2009 01:27 am

The scientists involved in the Manhatten Project wanted it to be dropped off shore as a display of potential power to intimidate the Japanese. It's definately a tough choice, but I think the A-Bomb was the right thing to do, especially since in heindsight they were not far behind us on the development of their own nuclear bomb, and I gurantee they would have had no qualms with using it on us. I'm sure there were mixed motives behind it. One is saving lives in the long run by ending the war expediantly and the other not so morally just reason was to test the effects on human subjects. I think the most wicked thing we did was pardon the members of unit 738 in exchange for scientific data, however.

Posted: Mar 13 2009 01:36 am

Burt Reynolds wrote:

The scientists involved in the Manhatten Project wanted it to be dropped off shore as a display of potential power to intimidate the Japanese. It's definately a tough choice, but I think the A-Bomb was the right thing to do, especially since in heindsight they were not far behind us on the development of their own nuclear bomb, and I gurantee they would have had no qualms with using it on us. I'm sure there were mixed motives behind it. One is saving lives in the long run by ending the war expediantly and the other not so morally just reason was to test the effects on human subjects. I think the most wicked thing we did was pardon the members of unit 738 in exchange for scientific data, however.

Did you mean 731? Or is there another group I'm unaware of?

Posted: Mar 13 2009 08:51 am

Greg the White wrote:

For me, it's a reluctant "yes." Projected casualties for a mainland invasion were way beyond what the atom bomb did, but I have to wonder why we dropped it on a densely-populated city. Why not visibly offshore, or on a military target such as an isolated airbase or fort. I guess they just wanted to make sure that everybody saw it, but you still have to wonder why we put ourselves in the anti-civilian-killing elite, but still pull that off "because we have no other choice."

Well, there was no such thing as an isolated airbase or fort in Japan. It's such a tiny island, and most of it is mountainous, that every inch of it is densely populated. And again, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were military cities in a technical sense. It's as if Japan had dropped a nuke on Detroit. Sure, a bunch of civilians got killed, but it was also a city completely dedicated to the manufacture of airplanes, tanks, and engines, so was technically a strategic, military target.

Also, offshore wouldn't have worked either, and Truman knew that. The US only had two bombs to use at that time, not the thousands we have today. Just two; Fatman and Little Boy. So they couldn't be wasted in trying to send a message that Japan wouldn't have responded to anyway. Japan was dedicated to fighting to the absolute end if they had to, and even having had two cities nuked, and being fed false information that the US had more nukes to use, they only barely surrendered when they did. It took a direct order from the Emperor himself to demand that the military surrender, who weren't going to, even after the second bomb.

Posted: Mar 13 2009 12:05 pm

Greg the White wrote:

For me, it's a reluctant "yes." Projected casualties for a mainland invasion were way beyond what the atom bomb did, but I have to wonder why we dropped it on a densely-populated city. Why not visibly offshore, or on a military target such as an isolated airbase or fort. I guess they just wanted to make sure that everybody saw it, but you still have to wonder why we put ourselves in the anti-civilian-killing elite, but still pull that off "because we have no other choice."

That makes a lot of sense, actually. I've never heard it explained in those terms before. Still sucks we had to do it of course (although I'm still convinced it was necessary), but now the choice of target makes a lot more sense.