re: The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Animated

It was a horrific war crime. But so was Dresden, so was all of the other fire bombing we were doing on the Japanese, so was all of the bombing of civilians Japan was doing in Asia at the time, Germany's well documented crimes, etc...

There was a lot of air bombing of completely innocent civilians going on at the time. Completely insane and immoral but everyone was doing it.

So, who knows what to make of any of it.

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More than 200,000 dead and thousands more wounded. Vast majority are civilians. We wouldn’t do this today.
I’m a proud American, but I don’t think dropping the bombs was morally justified.

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Are you serious?

The threat of nuclear war has loomed over our heads since the Russians got the bomb in 1949. If the chips were down, we most certainly would do that today.

War itself is an immoral act. And it's easy to say almost 80 years later that we weren't justified bombing civilians. However, you or I weren't alive back then. Think of what the average American was going through. The country had been at war for almost four years. Over 400,000 American servicemen had been killed and more than 70 million had been killed worldwide since Germany invaded Poland back in 1939. Numbers like that are absolutely incomprehensible to the human mind. We see those figures and just think statistics but for those living in 1945 they were more than just statistic, they were real because they were living through it.

What do you do when you are faced with such staggering figures in real time after so many years of war? You do your best to end the war as quick and as painless as possible. The United States in July 1945 had three separate options.

1. Invade the home islands
2. Blockade the home islands
3. Drop the bomb on the home islands

Each option would mean dead civilians. An invasion of the home islands would have been the worst case scenario for Japan's civilian population as they were being mobilized to fight invading Allied servicemen. Blockading the home islands meant potential starvation for tens of thousands of Japanese civilians who were already suffering from malnutrition. That leaves the third and final option, drop the bomb and hope the psychological damage is such that the Japanese agree to surrender.

We chose option three. We can argue the morality of laying waste to an entire city filled with civilians, but in that debate we must remember that the civilian populations for ALL major warring parties had been mobilized to build weapons of war in factories in every major city in the world. These civilians were creating the weapons that would eventually kill military personnel on the battlefield. If you were an American mother of boys of fighting age in 1945, would you have had any sympathy for the Japanese citizenry when you know they were creating weapons in their factories to kill their sons? I think not.

"War itself is an immoral act"
-RollTide1987

This is not correct. Not all war is immoral. There are just wars.

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An attack on a military target. ?

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Before a declaration of war.

Rape of Nanking?

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Just wars still result in immoral acts.

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Nope. This does not have to be the case.

Robert Oppenheimer and team invented atomic bomb, Japanese invented used panties vending machines

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A war crime.

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Frick you you commie piece of shite. My grandfather fought against the Japanese in the Pacific and some of the shite he saw done to American soldiers were as you say "war crimes". THEY brought us into the war. My grandfather luckily came home unlike some of his buddies. Get the hell out of America if you hate it so much you shitstain. I'm tired of dealing with America hating fricks like you. Y'all are going to push people to their limits with this shite.

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France won WWI on the battlefield and Russia won WWII

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I love destroying ignorance. The war in the east was one of mobility and maneuver over vast distances. Without mobility, the Red Army loses. Now, what you were ignorant of:

1. TWO THIRDS of all Red Army trucks were US made.

2. The US alone made up ALL of the 1941-42 Soviet tank losses - which were catastrophic - THREE X over. How catastrophic? The Soviets lost 58% of all of their vehicles in that first year. It was suppressed by Soviet propaganda, but the elite Guards armor that led the advance into Berlin used Shermans, and considered them more survivable than the vaunted T-34. Statistics bear this out - crew survival rate when a T-34 was hit was less than 20%. Survival rates of late model Sherman crews were nearly 80%. A T-34 is danged hard to get in and out of.

3. The US shipped Russia over 15,000 aircraft, including the favorite mount of some of their top aces, the P-39/63 Airacobra.

4. The Soviets were famously incapable of refining high octane fuel for aircraft and much of the gear we shipped them. We gave them ALL of their high octane avgas during the war. Overall, we supplied them with 2.7 million tons of fuel, oil, and petroleum products.

5. In the first years of the war, the USSR was only able to produce 446 locomotives and 1000 rail cars. This is how tanks, troops, and artillery were moved long distances. The US supplied them 1,900 locomotives and over 11,000 rail cars.

6. The Red Army marched in US-made boots. We supplied them 15 million pairs for their 24 million man army.

I'm not even half done, but your cloud of ignorance should be burned away now. The Soviets didn't win jack without us. They would not have survived the war as a nation. US industry won WWII, period.

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Yep, there was no need to drop it other than as a show of force to Russia. Japan didn’t even surrender as a result of the bombs, it surrendered to the US after Russia invaded to avoid succumbing to Soviet rule


my understanding of the japanese surrender is way different than yours. yes, russia declaring was a factor but a minor one. it was the Emporor (sp) that decided to surrender and the a bombs was his breaking point. most of the top brass and young officers in their army did not want to surrender. only their god (emporor) could get away with surrender.

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ot to mention the fact that in the lead up to Hiroshima, the US intentionally gave peace terms it knew Japan could never accept.


these terms you speak of were decided at the Pottsdam conference between churchil, stalin and roosevelt. unconditional surrender was the only peace terms the allies were going to accept from both germany and japan. and that decision was way before the a bomb was dropped; in fact the bomb wasn't even ready and churchill nor stalin knew about it.

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Coldcushcush has it right. The Soviets had a lot of territory to cover in China and Korea before they would ever get to the Home Islands. The Emperor's decision to surrender was driven by damage assessment reports from the first bomb. The decision making process was too slow, in part due to internal resistance to surrender. Even after Hirohito had made the commitment to surrender, and had even recorded the speech announcing it to the nation, there was a coup attempt by the Japanese military to prevent the surrender. One of the Emperor's butlers sneaked out with the taped speech after the military seized the palace, and saw to it that the speech was played on national radio. Only once the coup plotters heard that did they give up and kill themselves.

At war's end, Japan was found to have thousands of aircraft and uncounted munitions squirreled away in caves around the nation. In particular, they had over 1000 of the highly effective Ohka human-guided rocket-propelled missiles, two of which had been used in combat, sinking one ship outright and narrowly missing the other thanks to an insanely lucky shot by an AA gunner on a tiny aircraft approaching at 500 MPH.

An invasion would have been a bloodbath. Even worse had things gone on long enough for the Red Army to get to the islands. They were known for barbarity to civilians, friend and foe alike.

to get this thread on track maybe a bit... I will draw your attention to the Old is Best YouTube page... particularly their WW2 Radio News playlist

lots of interesting radio news clips in there... including the reports of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the first reports of the D-Day invasion, breaking news of the death of Hitler, Truman accepting Germany's surrender, the White House announcing the use of the atomic bombs, & Japan's surrender

ETA: I've been drawn to the D-Day news reports... esp. as the journalists try to describe where things are supposedly happening and being like "if you're looking at your map..." like giving coordinates for people at home tracking a hurricane during hurricane season