Vub wrote:
CommieChipmunk wrote:
I'd like to see someone justify vaporizing 100,000 civilians without making a complete ass out of themselves
Just out of curiosity, what do Americans think of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of WW2?
A flash so bright that it could be seen for miles around signaled the instantaneous demise for seventy thousand Japanese civilians on August 6th, 1945 (Kowinski). It was claimed to be the necessary end-all weapon in this long, drawn out war, but its true necessity comes into question when one observes the events and politics working behind the scenes in the days before the bomb was dropped. It is my belief that there was no need to rape our world of its atomic virginity and end the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, as by the time the bomb was dropped, Japan posed no real threat.
Building the atomic bomb was by no means an easy task; it took many years of research, thousands of scientists and billions of dollars. The need for an atomic weapon was first brought to the attention of President Roosevelt before the United States entered the war by Albert Einstein. Einstein and some of his colleges realized the true power that such a bomb would create and were concerned that Germany was trying to produce one (
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors). While President Roosevelt established a committee to overlook the potential of uranium based nuclear weapons, he wasn’t too concerned about it, until December 7th, 1941.
The mood changed when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The atttack not only gave the United States a reason to enter the war, it also gave the government a reason to research a quick way to end it. The Manhattan Project was the name given to the group of scientists who would ultimately develop the bomb. The project consisted of three main building complexes located in Washington, Tennessee and New Mexico. The sites in Washington and Tennessee were used to derive the enriched uranium that would be used in the bombs. These were large, secluded, top-secret communities in which the government invested millions and if the bomb turned out to be a dud, “the Manhattan Project would rank as the most costly industrial failure of all time.” (
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia).
On July 16th, 1945, after years of research, experiments and uranium enrichment, the true power of nuclear fission was realized as a bomb equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT scorched the desert. Word was sent to President Truman, who was in Germany at the Potsdam Conference discussing the best way to end the war with Japan, that the bomb was a success. Immediately, the scientists expressed their remorse and fear for what they had created, and began questioning if it was ethical to use such a weapon against human beings (
www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/atomictest). Having this weapon in his back pocket, President Truman could now negotiate as he pleased, knowing that the end of the war was just a phone call away.
Before the bomb was even tested, it was known that Japan was losing its ability to pose a threat. In the weeks leading up to the attack on Hiroshima, the United States engaged in a campaign of round-the-clock bombing on the city of Tokyo (
www.worldwar2database.com/html/japanbom). Tokyo was a city built primarily of wood and burned easily. The thousands of tons of magnesium, napalm or phosphorus filled munitions dropped from American B-29s wrecked havoc in the city. When dropped in large quantities on any city, this incendiary weaponry created massive firestorms, but when dropped on highly populated areas made out of wood, the devastation was total. The first firestorm created in Tokyo was on March 9th, 1945. This single attack consisted of 334 B-29 bombers, charred 17 square miles and killed a disputed number between 80,000 and 200,000 people (
www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0314-01).
The firestorms resulted as the city began to catch fire, and the incredibly warm air began to rise, resulting in the surrounding cold air being sucked into the fire, carrying people with it. It also deprived the area of oxygen, so incineration came easier to some than to others as they passed out or suffocated before they were engulfed in flames. The rise of heated air mixed with the entrance of cool air created a tornado of fire, with winds that gusted to 150 MPH and the center of this whirl of hell reached over 3000 degrees Celsius (or 5432 degrees Fahrenheit). Even after witnessing hoards of people boiled alive while trying to escape such a storm, the Japanese continued to fight. Stranded on an island, the Japanese could do little damage without transportation (
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tokyo.htm).
The Japanese were a resilient people. Even after the mass destruction occurring on their own soil, they continued to fight. As part of “Operation Ten-Go” on April 6th, 1945, the Japanese launched an attack of 700 kamikaze planes against a US fleet and succeeded in destroying 13 ships. In April, the Japanese Air Force lost 2,280 training planes piloted by 16 year old boys due to kamikaze attacks; effectively depleting their air force (
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWkamikaze.htm).
At one point the Japanese had the third largest navy in the world: 10 aircraft carriers, 100 destroyers, 18 heavy cruisers and 18 light cruisers (
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pha), but after June 1942 and their loss at Midway, the Japanese navy was also destroyed. Without planes or ships, the Japanese posed little immediate threat and a significant amount of time would be needed to rebuild.
The only Japanese military forces that remained strong and actually grew in size were the armed forces. In 1945, there were five and a half million soldiers in the army deployed throughout Asia, but the army, like the navy and air force, lacked supplies and due to lack of transportation, they couldn’t attack.
The Japanese were a people of proud ignorance and many believed that they would continue to fight until there wasn’t an able-bodied human being left to fight. After seeing their cities destroyed, their people turned into a blackened ash, their military blasted back to the Stone Age and the realization that after Germany was destroyed, the Allies would turn full force on them; Japanese officials realized that it was time to admit defeat. The Americans had already cracked the codes encrypting Japanese messages and knew that the Japanese were trying to surrender on their own terms; even the emperor himself was communicating with Soviet Union expressing his wish to have them help in his surrender. In fact, it was kept secret from the public for many months after the final surrender, that Japanese leaders had actually given “five separate surrender overtures” to American officials that were nearly identical to the final terms accepted by the Allies (
http://mediafilter.org/caq/Caq53.hiroshima.html).
At this point in time, Japan posed absolutely no threat and had a genuine wish to surrender, however there was a significant obstacle in their way and the Americans knew it. The Japanese would not submit to an unconditional surrender because it would disturb a Japanese tradition 2,600 thousand years old. By surrendering unconditionally, the emperor, an heir to a 2,600 year old dynasty and a man viewed to be a living god by his people would lose his power. “America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.” (
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html).
Unfortunately, that same logic was applied on August 6, 1945 when President Truman ordered the Enola Gay to drop the first atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on Hiroshima with the hope that it would end the war and save thousands of lives. A war crime in-and-of-itself, Little Boy detonated 1,900 feet above a church in Hiroshima, killing roughly seventy thousand civilians in an instant, injuring another seventy thousand, and leaving the survivors to deal with the after effects of radiation poisoning (
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia).
Drunk with power, little thought was given as the US airships continued to pour bombs on the heads of helpless Japanese civilians for another two days. Then on August 9th Fat Man, the second Atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. “At 11 o'clock in the morning of August 9, Prime Minister Kintaro Suzuki addressed the Japanese Cabinet: Under the present circumstances I have concluded that our only alternative is to accept the Potsdam Proclamation and terminate the war. Moments later, the second bomb fell on Nagasaki. Some hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians died in the two attacks; many more suffered terrible injury and permanent genetic damage. After the war, His Majesty the Emperor still sat on his throne, and the gentlemen who ran the United States had absolutely no problem with this. They never had.” (
http://mediafilter.org/caq/).
The suggestion made by the previous quote is truly disturbing, but not terribly farfetched. It seems that the true purpose of the bombings of these civilian populated cities was not only to put an end to the war, but it also to give America a chance to flex its newly obtained hegemonic muscles; a chance to show the rest of the world its new toy. General Dwight Eisenhower said in this quote, "Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary. ... I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face. The secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions." (
http://mediafilter.org/caq/).
By the time the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan posed no viable threat to any of the allied forces and there was a significant amount of evidence at the time that they were trying to negotiate their surrender. Had the Americans given diplomacy more time, it is my belief that no atomic weapon would have been needed. Had diplomacy not worked out, a demonstration of the atomic bomb in a non-populated area would have certainly given the Japanese government reason to surrender. "The discovery of nuclear chain reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than did the discovery of matches. We only must do everything in our power to safeguard against its abuse. Only a supranational organization, equipped with a sufficiently strong executive power, can protect us." (Einstein)
That's what I think