62nd anniversary of Hiroshima

The fight was still going on on mainland Asia if I'm not mistaken. So not like what your saying, but if your going to bring up the "Baby killing" as your main arguement then it could be argued that the bomb only stopped them from killing babies of parents who never even wanted apart of the war. People's who's government wasn't even the AGREESOR.

Originally posted by Bulldog So let me get this straight, you think throwing an atomic bomb on two cities, killing 150,000 civillians and many more injuries and health problems for years to come is "civillised"?   It seems your idea of being "civillised" is seriously warped, anything the side you support is humanitarian and civillised be that dropping nukes, wiping out cities, targettin civillian populations... The actions may have been necessary to win the war but it definately was uncivillised barbarism.

It was war. Japan chose war, the Allies were forced into it. If you enter into war, you put the welfare of your people at risk, the only way to ensure their safety is to gain military primacy and win. Japan failed to do that, and so the Allies had both the right and the capacity to inflict a relatively small amount of civilian damage (yes, 150,000 is small compared to tens of millions) to end the worst war in human history.

Why does no one object to the firebombing of Tokyo which killed even more people? Does a mushroom cloud really change things? Bombing civilians in warfare isn't an aberration, it is the norm. Virtually every participant did it and suffered from it in that war. War is itself uncivilised and cruel, not necessarily the participants who must adjust themselves to it, so we can all thank the Japanese for so cruelly changing the game.

I never claimed every action of the Allies was good, only the they were qualitatively better than those of the Axis. And they were. The Axis began the war, killed the most people, and killed in the crueller and more macabre ways.

So to answer your question, yes war is bad. But we knew that already. So to place Hiroshima and Nagasaki as somewhere over and above other actions in that war is flawed. The bombings were simply a novel and efficient way of doing what conventional bombing was already achieving, except at much less risk and cost to US airforce servicemen.

Originally posted by Bulldog There are alot of people and groups who say the same about the U.S.

Then it is great that most of the world disagrees with them and disagrees with the use of violence against the US at home. Back in WWII, however, virtually the entire planet was quite happy for Japan to receive liberal punishment. That's saying something.

Originally posted by Bulldog So by your logic, to protect their "civillised" way of life and for the benefit of humanity they can drop nukes on America, attack civillian targets, bomb cities and create a state of fear.   Then I guess you must support Iran's nucleur ambitions, terrorist organistions against the U.S, Iraqi resistance fighters, North Korea's nucleur ambitions.

I don't support nuclear proliferation, especially to small and scared nations, as those nations are the most likely to use them. If I had my way no one would have nukes, and if I couldn't have that then it would only be the three most powerful. As for the Iraqi resistance, I certainly can't blame them for trying to defend hearth and home. As for terrorist organisations, no I don't support organisations who are trying to engineer a return to the middle ages, much as I like to study that period of history it was an awful time to be alive.

And as I said before, most of the world opposes the use of violence against the US at home. So if a deranged fringe group has some extreme opinion, that doesn't make it valid. When most of the world holds an opinion, then we should start paying attention.

When 9/11 happened the world poured out its grief to the USA. When Hiroshima and Nagasaki turned to charcoal, the world at large had little sympathy. It was the attack to end an awful war, and no more destructive than many others attacks in that war. It is just used as a dramatic pin-up today by anyone who wants to potray the US as some sort of monster because they have some other axe to grind, and in WWII she was regarded as exactly the opposite by virtually the whole globe.

I can say what Japan get is what come arounds goes arounds ,they get this bomb because the act of the goverments on Korea ,China and south east asian,this is part of Karma  .

Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tagets of an enemy country. Nanking was a surrenderd city. Thats why the latter was not justified.

Originally posted by Leonidas The military gains are questionable, for that particular option. .

'Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?' Le� Szil�rd

something i dont get is why the americans used the excuse "we prevented more civilians dying by trowing a atomic bomb". If this can be a excuse for it, then they should also trow another one above bagdad to prevent civilian killings...

I had heard they where planning to trow one into vietnam, but it didnt happend because of some factors.

With such cheap excuses they cover their atrocities up.

USA said they wouldn't accept an unconditional surrender - but they did! japan said we want to keep our emperor and voila, they have kept it. why?

japan after the meiji restauration created an imerpialist empire similar to western european powers at the time, first annexing Korea and later Manchuria, eventually staging war with China. those were hard fought gains over the years but the Red Arym destroyed the Kwantung Army in a matter of weeks, taking away for that the japanese needed years to built up, e.g. the industry in Manchukuo. a much celebrated event of the pacific war was the raising of the flag on mt. suribachi which was considdered Japanese soil. well, Red Army sodliers also already occupied Sachalin and Kuriles islands and were already on the jump to Hokkaido.

one thing that makes the Red Army unresistable is its indifference to the loss of human lifes, if you studied the Eastern Front you'll know. on the eastern frotn another itnerstign thing happened. German untis were defeated by Soviet Forces and surrednered....to the Allies! why did they do that? of course because they didn't wanted to end up in Siberian Gulags but in warm and comfortable Allied PoW camps. but everyoen agrees correctly it was the Red Army who brought about the downfall of the 3. Reich.

so now back to Japan and the Emperor. as we all know the US was still calculating possible victims in a possible invasion of Japan while the Red Army ivnasion was basically already udnerway. so, by now Japan has already lost everyhting they gained after the Meiji restauration and now they were going to lose something that brought about this raise to power at all - their emperor! as we all know Emperors in Peoples Republics don't have a considderable lifespan. so the Japanese did what every smart Wehrmacht soldier in europe did, they escaped the Communist thread by surrendering to the allies! and voila, they keep the emperor. mission accomplished.


in relation to the topic. as we all know the Red Army is pretty indifferent to the loss of their own soldiers lives which was the primary argument of the US for the bombs. well, the bombs were a clear signal to the Soviets that the US was goign to claim their prize by all means necessary as it was probably expected that the Red Army would still invade the Japanese mainland despite its surrender to the Allies and install a pro-Soviet regime. afterall US troops occupied southern Korea well after the Japanese capitulation.... to prevent it falling to the Red Army.

if we look at the events the battle for Japan was in fact not the last battle of ww2 but the first battle of the Cold War.

Justinian, whether the bomb had been dropped or not, your grand father would have not gone ashore, by 1946 as I said it was clear the Japanese were finished. Howevere it was still the right decision since the US did not have that knowledge in 45.