August 6, 1945.

[GregCentauro]

What's a war crime is what the Japanese were doing to captured POWs.

The most atrocious war crimes were committed by the Andrews Sisters.

 

[alexpnz]

August 16, 2010

This day too, shall live in infamy....I just dropped a Taco Bell bomb the size OF Hiroshima in my toilet! :hatsoff:

 

[maildude]

Operation Downfall. Since the Manhattan Project was kept so secret--even VP Truman was denied knowledge until he became president--the Allied intelligence gave Japan mixed and disinformation, preying on their fears. The Japanese were not only on the brink of defeat, but they were convinced of an American mainland invasion, and possibly a Russian ****** as well. So much so that they taught women, ******** and farmers how to ****** with wooden sticks. Some Japanese ******* even drowned their ******** because of what they were told about the Americans. This continued right up before the Enola Gay dropped its payload, when the American Army Air Corp dropped propaganda pamphlets all over Japan, warning of a "terrible new weapon" that America was about to use. Hirohito and his generals refuted this as more propaganda. Bad decision. The U.S. chose its targets carefully, avoiding major population centers like Tokyo and cultural cities like Kyoto. After the two bombs were dropped, America threatened these same important cities. Soon after Japan surrendered.

 

[Trident1]

August 16, 2010

This day too, shall live in infamy....I just dropped a Taco Bell bomb the size OF Hiroshima in my toilet! :hatsoff:

Well if "it" circled the inside of the toilet once, it's called a Magellan.

 

[georges]

It was the bomb or the invasion of Japan, that would have caused many death on both side, would havec made the war last for a few monthes more and would have been very expensive.

And, the Bomb needed to be tested in war conditions. The fact that it's been "tested" on Japan and caused so many deathes and damages probably avoid it to best tested during the cold war.

correct

 

[ForumModeregulator]

These are good points, and I'm sure they were part of the decision making process. How is keeping China and the USSR at bay a bad thing?

It's hard to judge, when running a country...but certainly I feel there were probably more diplomatic modes of achieving this rather than bombing thousands of people in order to send a message...

Today, we have precision strikes and weaponry but back then it was just drop a nuke on the entire city. Thats pretty fucked up to me.

 

[meesterperfect]

yeah but...........
another big butt for the board.
the japanese were not gonna stop until they either invaded the usa from the west coast or got themselves a nice big bomb too.
thats fact, they were not gonna stop fighting.

so the only other option was to enter japan and fight there.
realize how many soldiers would have died, and civilians?
plus the fact that the japanese weren't very friendly to prisoners.
and what if the usa lost?
now youre talking some serious ******* that would have continued for who knows how long.
they werent at war with other countries, they were massacring other countries, and its almost no doubt they would have eventually succeeded in invading russia at some point considering the pathetic shape they were in after fighting germany.

man, war is hell.

 

[pool_hustler]

so the only other option was to enter japan and fight there.
realize how many soldiers would have died, and civilians?

Yes I agree that was THE deciding factor in opting for the bomb.

but this......

they werent at war with other countries, they were massacring other countries, and its almost no doubt they would have eventually succeeded in invading russia at some point considering the pathetic shape they were in after fighting germany.

No chance. Japan was far too weak at that point to stage any kind of effective offensive.
Their air ***** and navy, for instance, had been completely decimated.
They were in a desperate, strictly defensive, state.

The soviets, on the other hand, were actually gaining strength as the war wore on. Despite their staggering casualty figures they still had an enormous well of manpower to draw from, and their industrial might, much like ours, grew progressively stronger as the war progressed.

 

[PlasmaTwa2]

No chance. Japan was far too weak at that point to stage any kind of effective offensive.
Their air ***** and navy, for instance, had been completely decimated.
They were in a desperate, strictly defensive, state.

The soviets, on the other hand, were actually gaining strength as the war wore on. Despite their staggering casualty figures they still had an enormous well of manpower to draw from, and their industrial might, much like ours, grew progressively stronger as the war progressed.

Actually, the Soviet Union was kicking Japan's ass in China during the time you guy's dropped the bomb. They utterly destroyed the Kwantung Army, which was Japan's main fighting *****. So bad, in fact, that it is regarded along with the bombs as an event that ended the war.

 

[pool_hustler]

Actually, the Soviet Union was kicking Japan's ass in China during the time you guy's dropped the bomb. They utterly destroyed the Kwantung Army, which was Japan's main fighting *****. So bad, in fact, that it is regarded along with the bombs as an event that ended the war.

Yes, all the more reason why there is no basis for the claim (in post 47) that Japan would have succeeded in invading Russia had the war dragged on.

 

[ForumModeregulator]

I just don't understand it...I know we needed to "show them our power and superiority" with the bomb, wouldn't a video of the bomb going off be enough (something similar to that) ? And in this case, what was the justification for the 2nd atomic bomb on Nagasaki? Certainly ONE atomic bomb is enough wasnt it? The biggest issue I have is that most of the 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki ****** were CIVILIANS...Since when in War are civilians rational military targets?

I dont buy the whole, Japan and the US were going to lose MILLIONS of casualties in war, unless the bombings occurred. We were already bombing the crap out of Japan, and casualties would have been because WE were blowing **** up on their island. they were defending their land. The thought of Japanese as "savages" was the EXACT rhetoric that was used back in the day when black people were still just "N-words"...It was war propaganda of a race of people who lived across the world...and buying into the notion that they were any better or worse than us is pretty narrow minded.

 

[PlasmaTwa2]

Yes, all the more reason why there is no basis for the claim (in post 47) that Japan would have succeeded in invading Russia had the war dragged on.

Yeah, I have no idea how anyone could make that claim. Japan could barely hold off the States as is; there is no way they could have struck out against the Soviets, especially considering that in little over a week the Soviets destroyed the army that took over China.

Plus, the Japanese already tried fighting the USSR in 1939. They failed

I just don't understand it...I know we needed to "show them our power and superiority" with the bomb, wouldn't a video of the bomb going off be enough (something similar to that) ? And in this case, what was the justification for the 2nd atomic bomb on Nagasaki? Certainly ONE atomic bomb is enough wasnt it? The biggest issue I have is that most of the 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki ****** were CIVILIANS...Since when in War are civilians rational military targets?

I dont buy the whole, Japan and the US were going to lose MILLIONS of casualties in war, unless the bombings occurred. We were already bombing the crap out of Japan, and casualties would have been because WE were blowing **** up on their island. they were defending their land. The thought of Japanese as "savages" was the EXACT rhetoric that was used back in the day when black people were still just "N-words"...It was war propaganda of a race of people who lived across the world...and buying into the notion that they were any better or worse than us is pretty narrow minded.

Most likely, the reason for the second bomb was to give the Japanese the idea that the US could deploy several of the bombs in short time if they didn't surrender. While the States only had the two, they needed to have the Japanese believe that the US was capable of completely destroying the country in a rain of A-bombs. The Japanese wouldn't have surrendered if the Americans had dropped a single bomb. It was a mixture of the bombings and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that did them in.

Trust me, there would have been millions of casualties if the US tried to invade Japan. You have to understand the mindset of Japan during WWII; surrendering was the most dishonourable thing you could do. Most Japanese citizens would rather commit suicide than surrender to the Americans. Japanese citizens were taught that, if the Americans invaded, the best thing they could do was take a couple of Americans out with them. To put it simply, the Americans would not only be fighting the Japanese military in an invasion; they would be fighting an entire civilian population that was Hell bent on victory at any cost.

 

[ForumModeregulator]

Yeah, I have no idea how anyone could make that claim. Japan could barely hold off the States as is; there is no way they could have struck out against the Soviets, especially considering that in little over a week the Soviets destroyed the army that took over China.

Plus, the Japanese already tried fighting the USSR in 1939. They failed.

Absolutely. In the end, I would still say the atomic bombings were placed to, appease public revenge for Pearl Harbor, quickly end the war and threat of Japan (albeit a very small one), and most importantly to hold Russia at bay and to establish supremacy in the post-war era.

 

[pool_hustler]

The biggest issue I have is that most of the 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki ****** were CIVILIANS...Since when in War are civilians rational military targets?

Total war is a war limitless in its scope in which a belligerent engages in the mobilization of all their available resources, in order to render beyond use their rival's capacity for resistance.
The practice of total war has been in use for centuries, but it was only in the middle to late 19th century that total war was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, there is less and sometimes no differentiation between combatants and non-combatants (civilians) than in other conflicts, as nearly every human resource, civilians and soldiers alike, can be considered to be part of the belligerent effort.

(from wiki)

Our very own American Civil War was a good example of total war.

The thought of Japanese as "savages" was the EXACT rhetoric that was used back in the day when black people were still just "N-words"...It was war propaganda of a race of people who lived across the world...and buying into the notion that they were any better or worse than us is pretty narrow minded.

You've got to be kidding?
I mean yes you're right that the savagery of the Imperial Japanese Empire was used for propaganda purposes, but it was propaganda based in fact. To wit:

R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military ******** from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture." According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were ******, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 millions in the course of the war.

Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese ****** to "**** All, Burn All, and Loot All."

And the barbaric butcher's bill goes on and on from there...... read more here

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.....as well as from innumerable other sources reporting the same.

 

[Mayhem]

It's hard to judge, when running a country...but certainly I feel there were probably more diplomatic modes of achieving this rather than bombing thousands of people in order to send a message...

Today, we have precision strikes and weaponry but back then it was just drop a nuke on the entire city. Thats pretty fucked up to me.

I just don't understand it...I know we needed to "show them our power and superiority" with the bomb, wouldn't a video of the bomb going off be enough (something similar to that) ? And in this case, what was the justification for the 2nd atomic bomb on Nagasaki? Certainly ONE atomic bomb is enough wasnt it? The biggest issue I have is that most of the 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki ****** were CIVILIANS...Since when in War are civilians rational military targets?

I dont buy the whole, Japan and the US were going to lose MILLIONS of casualties in war, unless the bombings occurred. We were already bombing the crap out of Japan, and casualties would have been because WE were blowing **** up on their island. they were defending their land. The thought of Japanese as "savages" was the EXACT rhetoric that was used back in the day when black people were still just "N-words"...It was war propaganda of a race of people who lived across the world...and buying into the notion that they were any better or worse than us is pretty narrow minded.

I say this with respect, but you really need to study history. Demonstrating to the USSR and the world as a whole that we now had this technology was not a valid reason in itself to drop the bombs, but it was an added incentive to do it. I don't know how old you are, but the Cold War was fucked up enough, just in how it panned out. Without this clear demonstration, no one can say how worse it would have been, but it would have been much worse (and probably not quite as "Cold").

If you are sceptical about the projected losses in the event of an invasion of the Japanese homeland, study Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Kamikaze campaign, etc. They knew they were going to lose, they stood their ground and tried to **** as many of us as possible anyway. That's how they think and I personally admire them for it.

Bombing in itself has never won a war and it never will. Until a pair of boots and a rifle is standing on a piece of ground, the ground still belongs to the enemy. We are still learning this to this day. The Japanese were willing to sacrifice their own populace to fight us off. And there are many instances of civilians committing suicide, rather than surrender to the US, many of whom were told that they would be treated ********. So, propaganda works both ways.

Again, if you are merely asking these questions here, rather than reading what the experts have to say, you are not getting the answers you desire.

 

[ForumModeregulator]

Yeah, I have no idea how anyone could make that claim. Japan could barely hold off the States as is; there is no way they could have struck out against the Soviets, especially considering that in little over a week the Soviets destroyed the army that took over China.

Plus, the Japanese already tried fighting the USSR in 1939. They failed



Most likely, the reason for the second bomb was to give the Japanese the idea that the US could deploy several of the bombs in short time if they didn't surrender. While the States only had the two, they needed to have the Japanese believe that the US was capable of completely destroying the country in a rain of A-bombs. The Japanese wouldn't have surrendered if the Americans had dropped a single bomb. It was a mixture of the bombings and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that did them in.

Trust me, there would have been millions of casualties if the US tried to invade Japan. You have to understand the mindset of Japan during WWII; surrendering was the most dishonourable thing you could do. Most Japanese citizens would rather commit suicide than surrender to the Americans. Japanese citizens were taught that, if the Americans invaded, the best thing they could do was take a couple of Americans out with them. To put it simply, the Americans would not only be fighting the Japanese military in an invasion; they would be fighting an entire civilian population that was Hell bent on victory at any cost.

Surrendering in ANY way is a cowardly act in EVERY country. To me it sounds as if the Japanese had the same mental attitude of victory shared by any person who wants to win a war...Can you blame the population for wanting to victoriously defend their nation? God only knows what they were taught Americans were like at the time...Victory at any cost sounds like a real kick ass way of trying to win a war...If they had been taught to just surrender and give up their lands if we invaded...what kind of results would that yield?

 

[ForumModeregulator]

Total war is a war limitless in its scope in which a belligerent engages in the mobilization of all their available resources, in order to render beyond use their rival's capacity for resistance.
The practice of total war has been in use for centuries, but it was only in the middle to late 19th century that total war was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, there is less and sometimes no differentiation between combatants and non-combatants (civilians) than in other conflicts, as nearly every human resource, civilians and soldiers alike, can be considered to be part of the belligerent effort.

(from wiki)

Our very own American Civil War was a good example of total war.



You've got to be kidding?
I mean yes you're right that the savagery of the Imperial Japanese Empire was used for propaganda purposes, but it was propaganda based in fact. To wit:

R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military ******** from nearly 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most likely 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. "This democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy, military expediency and custom, and national culture." According to Rummel, in China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 3.9 million Chinese were ******, mostly civilians, as a direct result of the Japanese operations and 10.2 millions in the course of the war.

Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese ****** to "**** All, Burn All, and Loot All."

And the barbaric butcher's bill goes on and on from there...... read more here

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.....as well as from innumerable other sources reporting the same.

Ok, but in the context of events, was the atomic bombings carried out by the US any less "savage"? That is the point. In war, yes the Japanese did some really bad ****. But hellllllo???? You give me a wiki article, I will GIVE YOU ONE...

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[pool_hustler]

Ok, but in the context of events, was the atomic bombings carried out by the US any less "savage"? That is the point. In war, yes the Japanese did some really bad ****. But hellllllo???? You give me a wiki article, I will GIVE YOU ONE...

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There will always be atrocities committed by both sides in war, nobody would logically deny that. But you're talking about a gigantic mountain as opposed to a molehill in the case of Japan's vs U.S. atrocities.

The bombs ****** 2 to 3 hundred thousand while saving 2 to 3 million that would have perished as part of a land offensive. Choosing the course of action that will produce the least loss of life doesn't qualify as savagery.

 

[ForumModeregulator]

I say this with respect, but you really need to study history. Demonstrating to the USSR and the world as a whole that we now had this technology was not a valid reason in itself to drop the bombs, but it was an added incentive to do it. I don't know how old you are, but the Cold War was fucked up enough, just in how it panned out. Without this clear demonstration, no one can say how worse it would have been, but it would have been much worse (and probably not quite as "Cold").

If you are sceptical about the projected losses in the event of an invasion of the Japanese homeland, study Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Kamikaze campaign, etc. They knew they were going to lose, they stood their ground and tried to **** as many of us as possible anyway. That's how they think and I personally admire them for it.

Bombing in itself has never won a war and it never will. Until a pair of boots and a rifle is standing on a piece of ground, the ground still belongs to the enemy. We are still learning this to this day. The Japanese were willing to sacrifice their own populace to fight us off. And there are many instances of civilians committing suicide, rather than surrender to the US, many of whom were told that they would be treated ********. So, propaganda works both ways.

Again, if you are merely asking these questions here, rather than reading what the experts have to say, you are not getting the answers you desire.

I'll study history if you agree to brush up on your critical reading skills...
I didnt say ANYTHING about demonstrating technology to the Soviets...I said that "US President Truman made a conscious and calculated decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan in order to intimidate the Soviet Union and ***** the Russians to accept American leadership and domination of the post-war world." This has several implications.

What I was telling you, is that a move such as possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable. President Truman wanted to end the war before the Russians could enter the war against Japan in Asia. Truman didn't want Russia to play a major role in determining the post-war peace in Asia. James Byrnes, National Security Advisor, advised Truman that a combat display of the weapon might be used to bully Russia into **********, and the the bomb "might well put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war." In other words, to ensure that the Americans had an advantage in the US-Soviet scramble to grab China, a quarter of a million Japanese, mostly women and ********, had to die.

Truman took full and sole responsibility of the decision. So to me, it sounds like he did it more for political justifications. NOT MILITARY (invasion and millions of deaths is bullshit fed to the public). When General Marshall dispatched Truman's order to drop the atomic bomb, Marshall already believed that Japan had lost the war. Shortly before he died, Marshall told an interviewer that the atomic bomb had precipitated the surrender only "by months." In fact official internal military interviews, diaries and other private as well as public materials, literally every top U.S. military leader involved subsequently stated that the use of the bomb was not dictated by military necessity.

 

[Mayhem]

What I was telling you, is that a move such as possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable. President Truman wanted to end the war before the Russians could enter the war against Japan in Asia. Truman didn't want Russia to play a major role in determining the post-war peace in Asia. James Byrnes, National Security Advisor, advised Truman that a combat display of the weapon might be used to bully Russia into **********, and the the bomb "might well put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war." In other words, to ensure that the Americans had an advantage in the US-Soviet scramble to grab China, a quarter of a million Japanese, mostly women and ********, had to die.

There's nothing wrong with my critical reading skills and I was trying to address this very question in my response. I am trying to explain that the primary reason was to bring a quick end to a war that the other side started, without further loss of life to Americans, and without completely wiping out the Japanese culture. The reasons you give above were only part of the reasoning. They were an important and valid part of the reasoning, but not the primary reason.

What difference does a quarter of a million make, if that many were going to die anyway? It may have been a different quarter million, but the civilian populace was going to get axed regardless of strategy. Would losing ten to fifty thousand Americans along with them make you feel better?