Hutchy2k1 wrote:

yeah and youd have got them to use some dbz attack?

it seems to me my friend that you are a sad illeterate piece of faeces. DID you not even read my post?

Or are you vewwwy sad you can't wead?

its a waste material that is excreted through the anus.

Gojira wrote:

Does any one think that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed wrongly?

In my opinion yes. The US air force could have easily beat Japan with bombing raids from Eiwagima in B17 bombers. They had to destroy life just for the sake of trying out their weapon. ]=[

Generally this opinion is voiced by people who didn't in fact study World War II. I'm hardly an avid scholar of the war's history but my father is, and I've learned quite a bit about the conflict through him. Based on my own meager understanding, I'm forced to conclude you seem to have none at all.

If nothing else, the premise as you put it forth is flawed on three levels: First, you assume that lesser bombing would have had enough of an effect to shock the people and the emperor out of a dangerous fanatic mindset and actually consider surrender--let alone unconditional surrender. Without unconditional surrender, reforming Japan wouldn't have been feasible, and the twisted militant version of Shinto would have remained intact. Japan's military would probably have been stripped but not gutted, and would have been quickly rebuilt in the absence of strict supervision to prevent just that. This is in effect the mistake that was made with Germany at the end of World War I, and the main reason behind Hitler's rise to power. It's entirely likely we would have faced a third front in the Cold War against Japan, much sooner than China ever emerged as a nuclear power. All kinds of wild speculations are possible from this point, but it's not unlikely that in such a scenario, World War III would have started in the 50s or the early 60s (heck, it almost did anyway) instead of September 2001.

Second, you're advocating one kind of bombing in place of another, as if somehow the types of bombs we had available (somewhat indiscriminate heavy bombs and incendiaries) would have caused few or no civilian deaths. It's likely this approach would have caused at least as much damage and loss of life (and likely more) before bringing about any change in Japan's willingness to fight, without actually bringing the nation to its knees. Japan's cities were highly vulnerable to incendiary attacks, and the bombing of Dresden was quite horrible enough. You're basically talking about protracted horror, rather than punctuated horror. It's a shame 80,000 people (I think that's the number) were killed, but without nukes the tale would have been even worse.

Thirdly, you assume that merely "trying out" the A-bomb was the reason it was dropped. This is simply asinine; it was tested before its use, and more extensively later on. From a testing standpoint, there was no need to drop this bomb on a live target at all. Even if you argued that there was a desire to test its effects on people, you'd again be wrong; Japan was given advance warning that the cities would be attacked, and chose not to evacuate them.

Your argument didn't mention it, but the main reason commonly voiced in support of the bombing is that it was the most expedient way to end the war and prevented massive casualties on both sides. All evidence indicates that the fighting would have indeed been fierce, and neither country would have been happy to lose more men at that point.

I think some people are of the mindset that the US used these weapons just to demonstrate that it had them. But the message it sent to Japan wasn't "Don't mess with us, or we'll nuke the whole world." It was: "We're sick of losing our boys' lives fighting you guys. If you want to keep fighting anyway, now we can inflict casualties without risking our troops at all, so you'd better cut it out." It's unfortunate that it took two bombs for that message to sink in, but there you have it. As my own father put it, the horror of those weapons helped ensure that they were never used again; there are many nuclear nations now, but as yet not one nuclear bomb or missile has been used to attack people since 1945.

You're of course welcome to your opinion, but I implore you to base it on fact--and some reasonable understanding of how war actually works, and the fanatical nature of the enemy we faced at the time.

Lummox JR

It's unfortunate that it took two bombs for that message to sink in, but there you have it.

That's debatable--from what I've read, it was sinking in plenty after the first one. The second one probably actually did help quite a bit in terms of lingering horror value, though.

Isaac Asimov actually had an interesting story that had a theory touching on this. Although it was a fairly inconsequential point in the story, the gist of it was this: The sole reason we did not have a massive atomic war and render ourselves extinct was that atomic weapons were used to end WWII. Had atomic weapons been developed just before or in the middle of such a major war, the theory goes, they would have been used in force, but there was a lull from the end of WWII until anyone was ready for another major war, during which period nuclear weapons had proliferated to the point where everyone realized it was too dangerous to use them (Well, almost everyone, anyway; I've heard that some of JFK's generals actually wanted to start launching during the Cuban missile crisis).

Gojira wrote:

Well to be honest if they wanted to use Atomic Bombs fine. But Hiroshima and Nagasaki and no Military sigificance.

Hiroshima was a very import Military target. in short the aim was to get the message across while takeing the least amout of life and inflicting the most damage. however unknown to some, the bomb that hit Nagasaki was not aiming for it.

Gojira wrote:

What exactly did Hiroshima have that was so important?

A good industrial economy but low population.

Was it the best decision? I don't know, and neither do you. No one knows what would have happened if any other course of action was taken... we only know what happened. Was it an easy decision? It certainly wasn't. It was a decision that Japan put the U.S. in the position of having to make, though...

To bad they didnt have Dasie cutters back then =/