Hiroshima

[bigsky]

http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/undervisningsmateriale/Fussel%20-%20thank%20god%20for%20the%20atom%20bomb.pdf

A different POV from all the revisionist New York Times/Washington Post articles today. An essay written in 1981 that puts the bomb decision in context. It is long.

[Doc]

If it was written in 1981 as dated then it wasn't on the forty-second anniversary as the article notes. I'm not a math major but I do know that "the bomb" was dropped in 1945 meaning 42 years later would be 1987.

[Darrell KSR]

Weird.

Typo on the "1?"

Too long for me to read now, but maybe at lunch. Thanks for the link.

[dan_bgblue]

A very sobering read for sure, and one that deserves to be read by many who will not take the time.

Thanks very much for the link

[Doc]

Weird.

Typo on the "1?"

Too long for me to read now, but maybe at lunch. Thanks for the link.


http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTY2MTk1NTMxNF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMjcxMDUyMQ@@._ V1_SY317_CR5,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

[suncat05]

Didn't Chernobyl happen in either 1985-1986? IIRC correctly that was the time frame that it happened in, and the reason I recall it was because I was stationed in Germany at that time period while I was in the Army. And there was a lot of concern from the "environmentalists" about supposed nuclear radiation fallout drifting in the air currents over Europe & the Atlantic Ocean towards the United States.
So, I'm thinking the "1" was a misprint that was actually supposed to be a 7, as in printed in 1987. How else could you speak about Chernobyl in 1981 when it not yet happened?

[suncat05]

And after reading that, I have come to realize why we are in the mess we are in now with groups like Al-Qaeda & ISIS.
We're being led by intellectuals that don't have a clue about what it takes to defeat such a savage and cruel enemy.
Since 09-11-2001 I have said time & again that we need to kill every enemy of ours that we can engage. They came here once, and they'll do it again. Like they're doing right now in incidents like Ft. Hood, TX. & Maryland, & Tennessee, and other places in our country. They're already here and ready to fight, albeit if to just inflict caused harm to the tune of "death by a thousand cuts". And yet our current leadership (if you can truly call it that?) thinks abdicating our ability to self defense from Iran or any other enemy is the right thing g to do? No, I think not! Not from my view of the fray.

[KSRBEvans]

I just watched a PBS special on the history of the atomic age from 1938 to present. One thing that's conveniently forgotten (or rationalized away) by some is that the Japanese were never going to surrender--and the biggest proof of that is that they didn't surrender even after the US detonated the 1st bomb! Even after the 2nd bomb, there was a great deal of debate among the Japanese high council as to whether to surrender, and there was even something of an attempted palace coup (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Attempted_military_coup_d.27.C3 .A9tat_.28August_12.E2.80.9315.29) in an attempt to stop it. All this in the aftermath of 2 atomic detonations.

If they were still so strongly opposed to surrender after Hiroshima, there was no way they were surrendering to a conventional force. Basically, you have to be OK with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of additional Amercian casualties in a Japanese invasion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Estimated_casualties) to justify not using the Bomb.

[bigsky]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/thank-god-for-the-atom-bomb-1438642925 From Wall Street Journal citing the article

The article was originally published in 1981 and then revised and amplified later in the decade.

Thanks for reading; I, too, think its a comment on today's "peace in our time" Neville Chamberlain leadership and attitudes.

[suncat05]

Clearly President Truman was not alright with that many more American lives lost, and I have to believe that he didn't want to kill any more Japanese than necessary to make Japan capitulate.
As brutal as it turned out to be, he made the correct choice for everyone on both sides.
Now we have an American president that I firmly believe wants to see a nuclear weapon used against us. JMHO. He believes that we need to be punished for our entrepreneurship, our leadership, our individualism, our ability to solve problems, our ability to lead when others can't or won't, and our desire to always be first.

And the deal with the mullahs in Iran is the proof.

[jazyd]

In war you do what you must do to win, not tie, not second place but win. Truman did what was correct, win the war, save American lives.

And no Japa was not going to surrender, how long did some of the soldiers hold out on some of the islands? Not in their makeup.

Just WIN baby.

[CitizenBBN]

I just watched a PBS special on the history of the atomic age from 1938 to present. One thing that's conveniently forgotten (or rationalized away) by some is that the Japanese were never going to surrender--and the biggest proof of that is that they didn't surrender even after the US detonated the 1st bomb! Even after the 2nd bomb, there was a great deal of debate among the Japanese high council as to whether to surrender, and there was even something of an attempted palace coup (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Attempted_military_coup_d.27.C3 .A9tat_.28August_12.E2.80.9315.29) in an attempt to stop it. All this in the aftermath of 2 atomic detonations.

If they were still so strongly opposed to surrender after Hiroshima, there was no way they were surrendering to a conventional force. Basically, you have to be OK with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of additional Amercian casualties in a Japanese invasion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Estimated_casualties) to justify not using the Bomb.

exactly.

Anyone who thinks we didn't have to use the bomb to end the war with japan is dreaming, and a poor student of history.

The one irrefutable piece of empirical evidence that proves it: we dropped a bomb, wiped a city full of Japanese civilians off the map, and they didn't surrender. Didn't even blink.

So all those 'we could have dropped them on some uninhabited island and scared them to it' is clearly wrong, b/c dropping one on a city didn't work. It took two, and the only reason that worked is b/c they were afraid we had more and/or would make and drop more.

The decision saved probably a million American lives, and no doubt several million more Japanese lives that would have been lost in a long protracted conventional invasion.

It's not even close, and it's very telling that the father of dumbass economics, John Kenneth Galbraith, was also one of the people saying we didn't have to drop the bomb. In his view Japan was going to surrender within weeks. Are you kidding me? They were arming and training kids and women, digging in to fight to the bitter end.

The dropping of the bomb was the best way to end the war and save as many lives on both sides as possible. It was no doubt a tough decision, but we were in a war where TENS OF MILLIONS of innocent civilians had already been killed, and all sides had been giving orders that killed civilians for years, a necessary reality of that kind of war. The lives lost in Hiroshima and Nagasake were tragic, but it saved the tragic loss of more than 10 times that many lives (the bomb killed 200,000, horrible but a pittance compared to the total of 50 to 80 MILLION dead worldwide in WWII).

Oh, and just to note, the estimate of civilians killed by the Japanese as high as 20 million depending on how you categorize things. The Japanese regime of that era was vicious and ruthless, and not about to just fold up their tents.

[ShoesSwayedBlue]

"Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present". That line perfectly illustrates what any sane, fair person should think about when looking at history and why no one can blame the US in any way for dropping the bomb. Any means obtainable to end the war an dour misery would have been welcome.

My point on this has always been that dropping the bombs saved Japanese culture. If the US had invaded, the savagery and hate would have been unimaginable. We would have changed the very ecology of the islands as there would have been no arable land we had not burned to cinder before it was done. At least a fifth of the population, and probably 90% of the men of working age, would have been dead. No infrastructure would have been left. Their civilization would have simply vanished. We would have had to round them up like the Indians and put them into reservations. It would have been close to genocide, and IMO as near to justifiable as that horror could get.

Anyone of Japanese descent or who admires in any way their history and culture should be thankful that we ended their insanity of an unobtainable empire without wiping them from the pages of history.

[KeithKSR]

I'm glad the bomb was dropped. My late father-in-law was on a ship in Tokyo Bay awaiting the order to launch an invasion when the bombs were dropped. They were not going to surrender without dropping the bombs, untold numbers of Americans would have died had they chose to invade Japan instead of using the bombs.