We dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end world war 2.
Some see this as having saved countless lives. We would have invaded Japan, it's said upwards of a million people would have died on both sides had that happened.
Now others say it was a horrible evil act of terrorism, killing countless civilians for no good reason.
What do you think?

CRAP. Zero waffle factor.

Crap, but it was awesome when the U.S. dropped bombs on your moms.



Faiz

placeholder wrote:CRAP. Zero waffle factor.

Explain. How would you have ended the war? Keep in mind they had started it by bombing Pearl Harbor and also the fact they had invaded Alaska at one point in the war.
They were also preparing every Japanese citzen to fight to the death.
How would you have handled it?

I'll give it a NOT CRAP with a WF of 5.

It's done and it was done 60 years ago. We'll never know what it would have been like to invade the Home Islands. We'll never know just how many American lives would have been lost but the estimates were in the millions. Considering the fact that 405,399 Americans had already died in the war (this is for every theater including the Pacific so far) I think it was the right decision at the time. Japan was not going to surrender. They were training their citizens to suicidally throw themselves at the Americans and take as many Americans with them as possible. The war was lost for Japan and they would not come to terms with it.

So...Hiroshima, yes. I know it was a horrible horrible thing but I really think it had to be done even for the cliche of pre-emptively saving American lives.

Now here's my WF.
Nagasaki? No fucking way. I tend to believe the story that we bombed Nagasaki to show the Soviets that we could set off two bombs in such a short timespan and that many higher ups in the American military and Govt. knew that the Soviets would be our main rivals in any future worldwide conflict. Nagasaki was nothing more than pissing on our territory and showing the kids in the neighborhood who had the biggest stick. I could be wrong here but I thought the Japanese were on the way to negotiations after Hiroshima but were dragging their feet about 'unconditional' surrender so that was our official reason for the bombing of Nagasaki.

But again. None of us were alive then. We can only speculate with 60 years of hindsight.

Marsupialized wrote:

placeholder wrote:CRAP. Zero waffle factor.

Explain. How would you have ended the war? Keep in mind they had started it by bombing Pearl Harbor and also the fact they had invaded Alaska at one point in the war.
They were also preparing every Japanese citzen to fight to the death.
How would you have handled it?

I've read plenty about WWII and am well aware of the huge transgressions by the Japanese. I have no idea how I'd have handled it, and I can't imagine having to make that sort of decision. I'd like to think that vaporizing loads of civilians wasn't the only answer. For that reason I just don't think I could have approved dropping atomic bombs, had I been in charge of things.

why would we have had to invade japan? they attacked us in Pearl Harbor, which wasn't even really our homeland, it was somewhere we had imperialized into the US because we thought it suited us. that's crazy to begin with. so they even never attacked us on true US soil. were we afraid they were gonna come take over california? then we should have no problem shifting resources from the then-ended atlantic front to the pacific coast, for our defense.

it makes no sense that we would invade Japan in the first place. and bombing their civilians is horseshit. with a bomb that was built because somebody thought the Nazis were about to make it, when in reality Hitler never got behind the idea fully and completely abandoned the program long before. so we made a bomb to use against the Nazis, and then used it on japanese civilians. such CRAP. supposedly Einstein refused surgery that would've likely given him another 10 years on his life, in part because he was so disgusted with the fact that he was one of the folks who helped convince the US that we needed the bomb for the war against the Nazis, and then we went and used it on japanese civilians. he felt terrible about it. the guy who flew the plane killed himself, right? even the people involved at the time knew right afterward that it was a terrible thing to have done. CRAP CRAP CRAP.

Marsupialized wrote:Post subject: Act:US droping atomic bombs on Japan

droping?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
droping = NOT CRAP

toomanyhelicopters wrote:why would we have had to invade japan? they attacked us in Pearl Harbor, which wasn't even really our homeland, it was somewhere we had imperialized into the US because we thought it suited us. that's crazy to begin with. so they even never attacked us on true US soil. were we afraid they were gonna come take over california? then we should have no problem shifting resources from the then-ended atlantic front to the pacific coast, for our defense.

it makes no sense that we would invade Japan in the first place. and bombing their civilians is horseshit. with a bomb that was built because somebody thought the Nazis were about to make it, when in reality Hitler never got behind the idea fully and completely abandoned the program long before. so we made a bomb to use against the Nazis, and then used it on japanese civilians. such CRAP. supposedly Einstein refused surgery that would've likely given him another 10 years on his life, in part because he was so disgusted with the fact that he was one of the folks who helped convince the US that we needed the bomb for the war against the Nazis, and then we went and used it on japanese civilians. he felt terrible about it. the guy who flew the plane killed himself, right? even the people involved at the time knew right afterward that it was a terrible thing to have done. CRAP CRAP CRAP.

We would have had to invade Japan because they had declared war on us, and we were at war with them. That's how you win a war. They would have kept attacking us and our allies. Their government was a real threat to the US and every country around them, it had to be dismantled. Think of the crimes Japan committed against not just us, think of what they did to Hong Kong. They did attack us on our own soil, they sent balloons to bomb the west coast, not all of them made it but some did and people were killed. They invaded parts of Alaska and people were killed there as well.

toomanyhelicopters wrote: the guy who flew the plane killed himself, right? even the people involved at the time knew right afterward that it was a terrible thing to have done. CRAP CRAP CRAP.

Paul Tibbets, the pilot of Enola Gay is still alive at 90. Apparently he still thinks Truman was correct in ordering the bombing.

Who knew?