re: 72 years ago today, the U.S. dropped 15 kilotons of freedom onto Japan

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We should have went ahead and bombed Moscow while we had the chance.

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-George S. Patton, Gen US A

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The Japanese were ready to surrender on the condition that their emperor was not paraded around as a war criminal. I just don't see the point in killing innocents.

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I guess we will have to agree to disagree that it was that cut and dry. I've read to many accounts of the US preparing for a full scale invasion and after the hell we went through in the South Pacific, I can promise you that wasn't for our health. even in the days and weeks leading to the surrendor the Japanese inner circle almost had a coup on the empower himself to keep fighting. To me that doesn't show me the empire of Japan willing to lay down at all. You realize a plethora of high ranking miliatrary men performed seppuku rather than face the humiliation of surrender ?

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Dresden was the biggest crime against humanity because it served no purpose

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Tap...the...brakes.

Bigger than Auschwitz? Bigger than Nanking? Bigger than the Cultural Revolution in China? Bigger than Stalin's forced collectivization?

Just how many folks do you think were killed by the Allied bombing of Dresden?

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Only after MacArthur came to the conclusion that Hirohito need not be tried for war crimes. The decision to depose Hirohito was up in the air even after we occupied the home islands.


Hirohito got a deal that would never have been offered to Hitler. That was a condition we met.

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You are right. Whatever deal the Japs thought they had, McArthur put the kibosh on Aussie attempts to bring Hirohito to the bar after the war. And he was a complete war criminal, as bad as any of the Japanese.

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May it never have to happen agan

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Shouldn't have happened the 1st time.

They didn't surrender after the first nuke.

Tells you everything you need to know about whether it was warranted.

It took two.

ETA: I regret that it was necessary, I don't feel good about it.

I don't know how accurate this story is, but if it is true it puts some things into perspective: Purple Hearts

If the Allies were forced to invade Japan, casualties would have been enormous on both sides, but more so on the Japanese side. Millions would die not only from combat action, but also from hunger and disease. Every village, town, and city would be like Stalingrad. Not only were civilian lives saved, but infrastructure as well. Do you think Japan would have become the economic powerhouse it has become, as quickly as it did, if the entire country had been razed to the ground?

It showed the Soviets that we were willing to use the bomb and that, for a time at least, we had the upper hand. Nothing pleased Truman more than being able to tell Joseph Stalin to his face at Potsdam that our New Mexico test had been successful. The Soviets were involved in the Pacific war for only a couple of weeks. If the war had dragged on into 1946, the Soviets would have wanted a piece of Japan for occupation duty, which very well could have resulted in a divided communist/capitalist Japan as it was in Korea and Germany.

Truman made the right call, and props to him for it.

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You did not live during that time, so what gives you the right to say people cheered because civilians died. My father was in the Pacific and I can assure you if you knew what fighting the Japanese suicidal soldier was like you might not give a shite about anyone from Japan in those days. Attitudes mellow with age, but as a first year babyboomer, I can tell you there was not a bunch of empathy for those people.

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My grandfather who is 91 years old served in the south pacific. He still has nightmares about what went on there and does not talk about it. Some people fail to realize the decisions made by our leaders at that time determined the future for the rest of humanity. I think things worked out pretty well.

All of you Monday morning quarterback historians should look up the war crimes committed by the Japanese.

Here are a few
1.) 100K civilian deaths in manila 1945.
2.) Forced slave labor in Thailand and Burma 60K deaths
3.)Singapore- Chinese cleansing estimates 30k-100K Chinese killed.

frick the Japanese. They got what they deserved.

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And Trump likes or doesn't like the Japs because the bomb was dropped on them?

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ob·sess
?b'ses/
verb
past tense: obsessed; past participle: obsessed

preoccupy or fill the mind of (someone) continually, intrusively, and to a troubling extent.
"he was obsessed with the theme of death"
synonyms: preoccupy, be uppermost in someone's mind, prey on someone's mind, prey on, possess, haunt, consume, plague, torment, hound, bedevil, beset, take control of, control, take over, have a hold on, rule, eat up, have a grip on, grip More
"being thin is obsessing her"
be fixated on/upon, be preoccupied with, be possessed by, be consumed with/by (thoughts of), have an obsession with;
be infatuated with, be besotted with, be smitten with;
informalhave a thing about/for, be hung up about/on, have it bad for
"he was obsessed with his roommate's sister"
(of a person) be preoccupied with or constantly worrying about something.
"her husband, who is obsessing about the wrong she has done him"

Origin
late Middle English (in the sense ‘haunt, possess,’ referring to an evil spirit): from Latin obsess- ‘besieged,’ from the verb obsidere, from ob- ‘opposite’ + sedere ‘sit.’ The current sense dates from the late 19th century.

Ultimately, the leadership of Japan, and their insistence at absolutely no surrender prior to the bombs, is the cause of their dropping.

The bombings of Tokyo, etc - and Japan was still waging war. If we had left them alone, they would have attacked again.

Also? Japan committed HORRIBLE atrocities in China. They often get overlooked by what Hitler was doing in Europe, but just read up on what Japan did during their occupation there. It's just as freaking bad.