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Rog wrote:"It's not a proud thing. It was a devastating thing. It's
unfortunate, but it probably saved hundreds of thousands of
American lives and many more Japanese lives." - (2nd Lt.)
Morris Jeppson, 8/7/05.

Jeppson, along with William Parsons, armed the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.

Maybe a "Unfortunate, but necessary" choice should be
added to the poll.

Unfortunate, but necessary would fall into the right decision choice. I think the fact that it was unfortunate goes without saying.

[quote="toomanyhelicopters"]Claude Robert Eatherley...

This man, who was not able to overcome his memory of August 6, 1945, lived in torment because of his terrible task, of which he too was a victim, and also because of the incomprehension of his country, where he continued to be designated as “not responsibleâ€

Marsupialized wrote:

Rog wrote:"It's not a proud thing. It was a devastating thing. It's
unfortunate, but it probably saved hundreds of thousands of
American lives and many more Japanese lives." - (2nd Lt.)
Morris Jeppson, 8/7/05.

Jeppson, along with William Parsons, armed the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.

Maybe a "Unfortunate, but necessary" choice should be
added to the poll.

Unfortunate, but necessary would fall into the right decision choice. I think the fact that it was unfortunate goes without saying.

Pardon my semantics.
How about, " An indefinable point between right and terrible"?
Better?

Something needs to be clarified. There is NO SUCH THING as a Gentleman's war. It's easy in retrospect to argue that another way would have accomplished the goals, but at the time it was the quickest way to expedite the end of the war and save more lives in the process. I respect Japan as a people as well as their culture. Something has to be reiterated though, THEY were the ones who incited war against us ( and by the way Hawaii is American soil, I don't see how anyone could rationalize otherwise. It was already a STATE) and aligned themselves with the Nazi's ie axis of evil bent on world domination. This was no picnic.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor
The Bataan Death March
The Rape of Nan King

Has anyone besides myself here read the extent of the systematic and entirely horrifying form of torture that the Japanese Army instigated against the Allied POW's? Sorry, your not going to find many veterans shedding tears or regret dropping atomic weapons.

I don't buy the idea that every single Japanese citizen was going to fight to the death

Linus,

At least until after WWII and the transformation to a capitalist economy , Japan was a collective society still holding onto the reigns of an ancient, imperialist, feudal system. It was something that had been ingrained in their consciousness for a LONG time, and change wasn't going to come easy.

I'm not voting crap or not crap on this. I can sympathize with both sides, but to use the old adage "war is hell".

Linus Van Pelt wrote:- It's my understanding that the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was the only one of its kind at the time. If you had something that powerful, wouldn't you want to hold it in reserve, see how things panned out? I think I would. Especially if part of dropping the bombs was supposed to send a message to the Soviets.

Er, actually it was the other way around.
It was more powerful than Hiroshima, 21Kt vs. 15Kt. We had a lot of MK-III's (Fat Men) and only one MK-I (Little Boy). We did not however have many plutonium cores for the MK-III's. Only one at the time of detonation. It's my understanding that by the time MK-I was dropped it was already kind of obsolete and the MK-III's were the hot shit.
The second bomb was absolutely used to scare the Reds. It's a lot harder to call the bluff of not having any backup atom bombs after seeing 2 go off.

Having and using one could be seen as a fluke. 2 though. 2 lets them know that you got a stockpile of these things and that they better cool their jets in Europe.

Incidently Nagasaki was the secondary target. a Japanese arsenal was the Primary but bad weather forced them to incenerate a completely different target.

punch_the_lion wrote:Has anyone besides myself here read the extent of the systematic and entirely horrifying form of torture that the Japanese Army instigated against the Allied POW's? Sorry, your not going to find many veterans shedding tears or regret dropping atomic weapons.

Yes, I have. I vote NOT CRAP for both bombs, because it took both to convince the Japanese leaders to surrender. Yes, the bombs killed lots of people (though I recall reading that the number killed by the actual detonation was roughly equivalent to the firebombing and that the subsequent radiation wound up killing the rest) but it ultimately saved more lives and spared Japan from being reduced to dust.

Dropping these bombs is no more an atrocity (as that word relates to military actions) than the attack on Pearl Harbor or the firebombing of Tokyo or anything that's happening right now in Iraq. They are acts of war committed against targets of military importance. Examples of atrocities would be: the Holocaust, the torture of American POWs by the Japanese, the shooting of medics, the 9/11 attacks, etc. The good ol' US has committed its share as well, though none spring to mind at the moment. I don't think anything our military has done since the attempted eradication of the Native Americans would crack the top ten.

War and the loss of life it invariably brings is unspeakably sad but it is a reality of life.

Dan

danmohr wrote:Dropping these bombs is no more an atrocity (as that word relates to military actions) than the attack on Pearl Harbor or the firebombing of Tokyo or anything that's happening right now in Iraq. They are acts of war committed against targets of military importance.

really? i recall hearing that hiroshima and nagasaki were chosen because they were *NOT* military targets, and thus had not been scarred by the firebombing of which you speak. they chose pristine targets that would allow them to assess precisely what damage had been done by the one bomb itself, without having to factor in existing damage done by firebombing. hence civillian targets.

that's pure atrocity right there, if it's true, annhilating civillians so you can evaluate your technology. then again, at that time, "Japs" were probably not really considered fully human to begin with, so...

Pearl Harbor was a purely military target.

this is an interesting discussion,

I recall reading somewhere for a class that the Japanese military was in fact arming civilians for a land invasion. This included women and children, some equipped with handguns. I don't know if they had given them any shelter or a pillbox, or what, but it does seem that they were ready and willing to sacrifice innocent civilians. As mentioned before, this number was estimated to be significantly higher than those who would be killed by the bomb.

I guess not crap on the first, but with an extremely high waffle factor. As in "this waffle factor goes to 11". That event changed the world forever, and not in a good way-

CRAP.

zero

Even if one believes that the first bomb was justified (I don't believe it was), the second one wasn't.

Japan was fucked; they had no fuel were ready to surrender under the right terms. There can be no excuse for murdering tens of thousands of civilians.

i vote crap. if "we" (the WWII allies) wanted to be morally suprerior over nazis we had to act as civilized people. and killing abut 100.000 civilans at one, well two times, it's just what you could expect from the "evil" side. so if someone agree that there were no good or bad during the WWII, and the only thing that is important, is to win war as soon as possible, no matter what - then dropping those bombs was a right thing to do.
someone said above that there is no such a thing as gentelmen's war - i agree, but intentionally killing this amount of civilians does not apply under the "war" file. attacking military targets does. attack on pearl harbor was a war event. D-day was. but bombings of hiroshima, nagasaki, drezno, warsaw were just horrible, unjustifiable acts which should never have happend. CRAP.