Whether it was necessary for the United States to drop atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been debated since the bombs were dropped in 1945. The debate has been raging for 70 years and is likely to continue for many years to come.
Watch the following collection of videos and draw your own conclusions. Japan no longer had the military capacity to wage a war of aggression as their air force and navy had been decimated. We had a naval blockade surrounding the island and we could have cut off the supplies they needed to survive as a nation.
When is it morally right to kill someone? Is it right to kill your neighbor if you think he or she is a threat to your family? If your neighbor shows up on your doorstep with weapons and threatens to use them, what should you do?
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Anyone who is not moved by the destruction and loss of human life by the bombs has no heart. But when I see how badly our men where treated by the Japanese, how ruthless they where, and the destruction of Pearl Harbor, something had to get their attention. Thank God those bombs have never been used again, and pray that they never will.
Anybody stupid enough to believe a priest with an English accent about any history, should be a slave. To shorten the second American revolution, and save countless lives New York City and Washington D.C. should be reduced to glass parking lots.
They deserved what they got. And I wish we would stop helping those we have to bomb...Just leave it. No one would help us. No one cared that Americans right and left died to save others. And what about the civil war when we killed each other? I don't remember the north helping the south recover. Do you? So don't feel bad for a muslim that gets blown away when they want to blow us up with themselves. Why did we help Iraq? I don't want Iran to be helped. No one ever helped Israel when they see bombs every day somewhere in the country. Think about this people when you wan to be a goody two shoes. That is what helped make the mid east wars WORSE.
And JESUS said there will always be wars and rumors of wars until HE returns. So get over it. War is HELL. You break things and kill people. That is the way it is when the enemy wants us dead or some other innocent people we are defending.
I understand how easy it is to think at the beginning of the 21st century, if it was necessary to win the war. An invasion of Japan was going to be required. The plans were ready. The stage was set. The planning was in motion. There was no thinking about it or postponing for the American soldier facing participation. He had his orders. He did what he was ordered to do.
There was an element in Japan that wanted to take this fight to the end, whatever that end would be. The American Soldier knew America would win. However, he faced that and knew that he may not be coming home. They were facing house to house, hut to hut warfare, for the first-time in our history. So, can you hypothetically, face these soldiers who were about to die, perhaps, hand to hand, face to face, bayonet to bayonet, and ask if it was not necessary to end the fight immediately?
Japan didn't give us a choice when they attacked us in Pearl Harbor. Now, I am fond of Japan. The people are gracious. But, I feel we did what we needed to do, at the time to finish that carnage. War is evil.
My wife's father was one of the people who actually saw a large part of the millions of tons of arms, ammo and stores hidden the the thousands of caves that honeycombed the main island of Japan. The U.S. military knew that they were there and estimated that we would lose hundreds of thousands of lives taking the island, if we didn't drop the bomb(s). But after the occupation, the U.S. military found that they had severely underestimated how much arms and stores the Japanese had hidden in preparation for a ground assault. They had enough arms and stores to prosecute the defense of the island for at least a year.
Furthermore, it was the Japanese culture to fight to the death. They also had the weapons, ammo, food, and strategic advantage to take a lot of Allied lives before dying. There is no doubt that the Allies would have eventually taken the island, had the bombs not been dropped. But the death toll would have been over a million, on our side alone.
Dropping the bombs did far more than kill a few thousand Japanese. It demoralized the Japanese and made Emperor Hirohito realize the futility of continuing the fight, leading to his order to his troops to surrender. Even so, there was still a coup attempt by army leaders, who would have preferred to see the death of every Japanese soldier and civilian, rather than surrender. This was the Japanese culture. The bombs, as destructive as they were, barely broke that culture. Ultimately, dropping the bombs saved the lives of at least a million of our soldiers and many more Japanese. The only people who debate this fact are peaceniks who believe their own generated propaganda and have never studied the Japanese sociology of the time.
War is bad. But when you are in a war, you must commit to it 100% or you risk losing. Feeling sorry for the enemy is a path to defeat. Also, the first duty of a commander is to protect his troops, if at all possible, at any cost. The bombs saved American lives that would have certainly been lost, had they not been dropped. Therefore, dropping the bombs was not only the right thing, but the necessary thing.
Unfortunately, we'll probably have to do it again, before long, since Obama is allowing Iran to develop an atomic weapon that they will certainly use. When they use their bomb (after Obama is out of office), we will have no choice but to eliminate that threat in the only remaining way possible, with more bombs. But this time, the death toll will be in the millions for the Iranians. Of course, there is one other unlikely possibility. We could eliminate the Iranian air force and ground anti-aircraft installations and then drop a bunch of FAE bombs. Fuel Air Explosive bombs do about 10 times more damage than traditional bombs, per ton of explosive. They kill in three ways - explosive compression, fire, and suffocation and will even kill troops deep inside a cave or sub-basement. A dozen FAEs would not come close to equaling an atomic bomb, but would do a pretty good job of eliminating all life in a large city.
Would it have been more humane to have forced the Japanese to surrender by blockading the Island and starving Japanese people into submission? If we had waited a little longer, would the Russians have invaded Japan?
What does "being humane" have to do with waging war.
War means killing more of the enemy than they kill of you. The bombs did just that and ended the killing that would have gone on for who knows how long?
Would you have preferred our soldiers to have had to go at them one on one with bayonets. How long do you think it would have taken to dig the fanatical little bastards out of their holes?
I was nine when they humanely attacked Pearl and Honolulu. And .....Bataan, the Death March, pick your favorite atrocity...
The Japs started it....we finished it. So be it!
Humane.....my ass!
Jim Bertram
USAF Ret.,
Records show that blockading Japan was discussed and promptly dismissed, since the Japanese people were capable of feeding themselves, even without fuel for tractors and such.
But you do make a point that was very significant in the decision to nuke Japan. The Russians were preparing to invade Japan, at the same time. They were not as concerned with the survivability of their troops as we were with ours. But if Russia had invaded and took Japan, then Japan would be a part of Russia today or at the very least, be recovering from decades of repression, like East Germany.
In my import/export business, I traveled extensively in the Far East and I have spoken with many Japanese people. Interestingly, a lot of the older ones think that Japan is extremely lucky that we dropped the bombs. Their reasoning is that if Russia had invaded, most of their population would have been wiped out, due largely to their "no surrender" culture and if any of their people survived, they would not be in nearly as good a shape as they are in Japan today.
Dropping the bombs may seem like a horrible thing. But war is horrible. Dropping the bombs was the best option, because it ended the war with the least possible loss of life on both sides.
The only thing that I think should have been different, is that Hirohito should have been executed for war crimes against our POWs and if the Japanese government would not accept those terms, then more bombs should have been dropped, till they did accept those terms. Ritual Seppuku of Hirohito would have been acceptable, too.
They couldn't drop more bombs they only had two....
I agree about Hirohito. Apparently our folks felt the he would be more useful alive.
What ethical questions? If you kill them, your kids and grandkids kids won't have to fight their kids and grandkids in the next conflict.
The object is to defeat the enemy, or at least it was until LBJ and McNamara came along with their limited war.
Were you one of those dickheads who spit and threw red crap at me when I came through the SFO airport on my way back from my third fun trip to Southeast Asia dropping napalm on helpless women and kids?
Boy, was it fun looking back over my shoulder, watching them hop around while they danced about in the fire>>>>>>>>>
Jim Bertram
USAF Ret
Ethics,my ass1
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