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Norton
Social climber
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and all of our Allies (brits, french, Australians) were not going to help us at all
what an astoundingly naive and uninformed supposition, every wonder why they were our "allies"?
go tell that to the British and French who for your information were bombed and invaded by Germany and fought like hell against it, side by side with us, including the Australians who joined us in the Pacific against Japan albeit with their limited resources
wow, gonna finally graduate high school this year?
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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...vaporizing a couple of hundred thousand japs was well worth it if only to end the war asap....
Real nice.... hope you with reflect upon that sentiment when such a device is set off in/over one of our major civilian cities.
Targeted murder of civilians is never 'ok' in my book.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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This record has played before and most all the stuff they told you in elementary school turns out not to be true [ie re: Truman-Japan].
They believe the c. 500,000 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in that campaign. War is hell, which is why people shouldn't start them.
These were not civilians deliberately targeted.
additionally the Japanese military had a decades long track history of perpetrating horrors on civilian ...
The Japs did it, so we are going to also.
-H. True Man
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zBrown
Ice climber
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It remains a complicated argument to this day.
Quick and dirty info here (but still not a bomb).
Supporters of the bombings generally assert that they caused the Japanese surrender, preventing massive casualties on both sides in the planned invasion of Japan: Kyūshū was to be invaded in October 1945 and Honshū five months later. It was thought Japan would not surrender unless there was an overwhelming demonstration of destructive capability.
Those who oppose the bombings argue it was militarily unnecessary,[4] inherently immoral, a war crime, or a form of state terrorism.[5] Critics believe a naval blockade and conventional bombings would have forced Japan to surrender unconditionally.[6]
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Norton.... The British had nothing left after the defeat of the Germans.... they tossed out Winston and were demobilizing troops... not getting more new troops to go beat japan.
Sometimes you make the most ignorant statements...
and to Locker... the people we fought were japs period. ( I can give you some real life descriptions of just what they did to captured people... some of the most horrible stuff you can imagine) after the surrender they became Japanese... you know real people who were not killing people.
seriously... some of you guys get all indignant at the use of words. And I do pick my words... I have a 48 star American Flag at home that was earned by GreatUncle Robert who went down with his ship on Dec 7th...
My Father in law spent 4 years in New Guinea... training native people how kill jap troops and paying the reward for the dried up yellow ears... he could never talk about the sh#t he went through.
on and on...
The nuke was used as it should have been... not as some great big fireworks display over Tokyo harbor, but to KILL as many as possible in the shortest amount of time... glad we had a second one and used it. Because the only thing murdering f*#ks like the japs know is brute force.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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That's some savagely ignorant sh#t right there.
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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These were not civilians deliberately targeted. If you are dropping bombs on cities that have no military significance and you also know that the Germans had already dipped into conscripting teenagers and old men, who do you believe is left in the cites you are fire bombing? As a related note, read Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut. He rightfully questions the fire bombing of Dresden, which he later witnessed as a GI, given the complete absence of any military benefit other than crushing the German people. Again, I'm not condoning the bombing of Japan or Germany, but the death visited upon the Japanese by virtue of the atomic bomb is just a variation on a theme of the horrors that happen daily in war.
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WBraun
climber
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Americans are constantly preaching nonviolence all while simultaneously killing everything in sight all over the planet ......
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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These were not civilians deliberately targeted.
Yes they were. It was called area bombing.
The Area Bombing Directive was a directive from the wartime British Government's Air Ministry to the Royal Air Force which ordered RAF bombers to attack the German industrial workforce and the morale of the German populace through bombing German cities and their civilian inhabitants.
According to Antony Beevor Stalin was prepared to invade western Europe until the Bomb was dropped.
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Norton
Social climber
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guy man
your old relatives are irrelevant to this
you are not them, seriously read some history
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Outside the Asylum
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The conduct of Germany and its allies, and then Japan, towards civilians was barbaric from the time each went to war. Including deliberate, widespread bombing of civilians and enormous general violence towards civilians by both countries, although Germany did more area/civilian bombing. More resources - Japan could never have been a lasting threat.
Two wrongs don't make a right, and waging war on civilians is always wrong. But in a modern industrial war there aren't many innocents. The Allied area bombing in Europe and then Japan was ugly, but necessary.
The Japanese were generally but vaguely warned about the atomic bomb after the first test, but had no specific knowledge of what was going to happen.
Substantial Allied forces were involved in the Pacific war from the start, particularly Chinese, Dutch, British, Australian, Indian, Burmese, and New Zealand. (Of the western allies, New Zealand suffered the highest proportion of military casualties during the war.) Substantial British and Canadian forces were being transferred to the far east in 1945, in preparation for the invasion of Japan.
(Alternative history: Marian ('John') Wayne won the war single-handedly, serving under the bombastic incompetent MacArthur.)
Even the Japanese knew by 1944 that they were going to lose. Their ferocious defence of strategically valueless islands simply convinced Allied leaders as to what would happen in an invasion of the home islands. Given that the Russians were on the verge of invading Manchuria (re Khalkin Gol), and that the US and Britain didn't want the Soviets to have any more influence in the far east than could be avoided, they were going to invade - starving the Japanese out might have taken years.
My uncle was a flying officer on a Lancaster which crashed during training, in April 1945. They probably would have been transferred to the far east, although by summer 1945 there wasn't a lot left to bomb in Japan. Likewise my father had finished his basic training in the army, and was posted on Vancouver Island in summer 1945, and would likely have been in any invasion.
As has been known for millennia, war is hell.
Edit: Of the innumerable counter-factual arguments about the war, one that is not heard is what if the US had finished the atomic bomb by say March 1945? Would they have used it on Berlin, and what would have been the results?
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Norton... again you are wrong.
I read a lot of history... and now that almost 80 years have past the books are getting better more detailed....because all of the classified records are being shown the light of day.
In the Book "Shattered Sword" by Parshall and Tully.... there is a footnote: it is the report, given by the captain of one of the Japanese Cruisers who picked up the crew of one of our shot down dive bombers.... what they did to these men is unspeakable.
And to Mighty Hiker... what you wrote is true, I agree.
The truth I have learned from all my reading is that brutality leads to more brutality and that leads to more... its a cycle that is only broken when people wake up and see all the bloodshed and waste and horror and wish to have the nightmare end.
Just look at what the Iraq army did when they got those ISIS (ISIL) or what ever the F they are called surrendered. They tied the hands together... tossed them off of 3 story buildings.... the lucky ones died from the fall... the unlucky ones... well they got the sh#t kicked out of them for a day or so then a bullet in the stomach....
I can't blame the Iraqui troops.... if you had seen with your eyes what ISIS did to your fellow solders when they surrendered and just what was done to the Women and Children you too would be in a murderous rage.
That Gentlemen is what WAR is... and thats why I go crazy when two bit politicians and civilians want us to go kick some butt someplace... it is not a game, rather a deep dark part of human behavior. One that must be kept in check if we are going to call ourselves civilized.
Good Day.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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by summer 1945 there wasn't a lot left to bomb in Japan.
I would aver that Gen Lemay was just getting warmed up. Remember, the incendiary raids overall made Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like tactical bombing.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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The Area Bombing Directive was a directive from the wartime British Government's Air Ministry to the Royal Air Force
The discussion was about the U.S.
But fair enough, British and Americans fire-bombed Dresden with a resulting 25,000 civilian (disputed) casualties.
A 1953 United States Air Force report defended the operation as the justified bombing of a strategic target, which they noted was a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort.[7] Several researchers have asserted that not all of the communications infrastructure, such as the bridges, was targeted, nor were the extensive industrial areas outside the city centre
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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...and thats why I go crazy when two bit politicians and civilians want us to go kick some butt someplace... it is not a game,
Amen.
"I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell."
 William Tecumseh Sherman
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Gary +1 +1 +1
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Vlad Pricker
Mountain climber
The cliffs of insanitty
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Interesting, about the bomb. Right or wrong. Or somewhere in between.
But we are not pondering that.
We have a man in the White House who knows very little. He sustains himself with false beliefs (some of whom live on this forum).
Trump is not a madman, but he is close to it.
The fact that America has gotten to this point, is very sad and worrying.
The Trump supporters on this forum can cry snowflake, but even by now they must realize, Trump is not sane. By any definition.
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Vlad Pricker
Mountain climber
The cliffs of insanitty
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The sad thing is, those voters searching, wishing, for a way out of the morass of American society, they tied their hopes to Donald Trump.
Many still believe in him. After all of this, they still believe. I can only shed a tear.
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10b4me
Mountain climber
Retired
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That Gentlemen is what WAR is... and thats why I go crazy when two bit politicians and civilians want us to go kick some butt someplace... it is not a game, rather a deep dark part of human behavior. One that must be kept in check if we are going to call ourselves civilized.
+1
And they say that Sec. of Defense, Maddis, is more inclined to talk than fight.
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WBraun
climber
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The Trump supporters on this forum can cry snowflake, but even by now they must realize, Trump is not sane. By any definition.
Yes, Trump IS insane.
And so are YOU ......
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