BF2S Forums Should the US have dropped the bombs on Japan?

NooBesT wrote:

Why two bombs?

Because the Japanese were so determined that they did not surrender after the first.

The Japanese had plenty of warning, you think they didn't know the US had a big ****ing bomb after the US tested Trinity?  Any thought of dropping it in a relatively uninhabited area would be showing the Japanese something they already knew.  As the OP mentioned the Japanese would have fought down to the last man, women, and child.  The Japanese people were told that the Americans would torture them if they were caught, so many preferred to commit suicide which is deeply ingrained in their culture and viewed as acceptable. 

In fact, when the Emperor decided to surrender, a group of generals made a power play to try and kill the Emperor and seize the government and keep fighting.  This is after not one but two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese Main islands and the firebombing of all the major cities in Japan.  The US had a couple more implosion type A-bombs and if after 3 days of Nagasaki they got no surrender they would be ready to place a third bomb on Tokyo.  So as you can see things could have gotten a lot worse.

Any siege or peace agreement that could have been signed without the bombs, would require the Soviets who the Japanese were more comfortable to surrender to.  As we all know the Soviets have a habit of not leaving a country once they entered and turning the government communist.  The US already had to deal with Eastern Europe being lost, and China wasn't looking good for the Nationalists.  By dropping the bombs they were able to achieve unconditional surrender without the Soviets and they sent a message to the USSR that we had a big bomb and we weren't afraid to use it. I do agree there was a kind of revenge factor of "They attacked Pearl Harbor, we're gonna make them hurt too." This is the normal not in my backyard mentality, which is pretty much unavoidable with a company as nationalistic as the US.

I do not mean to minimize the significance of all the victims though.  Many people lost their lives, and those who did survive lost loved ones, their belongings, their lively hood, and had their health negatively affected.  The Bomb killed tens of thousands of people instantly, even more died in the ensuing fires which turned most of the town into a raging inferno, still more were killed by the fallout and radiation sickness.  I believe by reading the book Hiroshima one is able to understand how greatly the people of Hiroshima (and indirectly Nagasaki) were affected by this cataclysmic event.  Even when I consider the victim's stories I still think it was necessary to drop the "Little Boy" on Hiroshima and since this didn't seem to have enough of an effect on the government, the dropping of the "Fat Man" on Nagasaki was also necessary.  Although I do concede that It may not have been completely necessary as the "Little Boy" may have been enough if enough time was given, but the "Fat Man" precipitated the unconditional surrender of Japan. 

Note:
*The "Little Boy" was the codename of the gun barrel typed nuclear device utilizing which utilized Uranium 235
*The "Fat Man" was the codename of the implosion type nuclear device which used Plutonium.

Well Basically to sum up the wall of text, the bombs were necessary and Japan had plenty of warning and chose to ignore it.

jsnipy wrote:

Of course not, the USA is evil and every other country has always made the best decisions in war.

The typical argument from that follows like:

"The US should never have imposed the embargo on Japan depriving the country of oil, steel and other resources"

"The Japanese should never have invaded China"

"Why, every other country was in China at the time. France, England, US, Holland..."

Macbeth wrote:

AussieReaper wrote:

jsnipy wrote:

Of course not, the USA is evil and every other country has always made the best decisions in war.

The typical argument from that follows like:

"The US should never have imposed the embargo on Japan depriving the country of oil, steel and other resources"

"The Japanese should never have invaded China"

"Why, every other country was in China at the time. France, England, US, Holland..."

I have a strange feeling France, England, US, Holland and the others weren't committing genocide on the Chinese at the time.

inorite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

AussieReaper wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

AussieReaper wrote:

The typical argument from that follows like:

"The US should never have imposed the embargo on Japan depriving the country of oil, steel and other resources"

"The Japanese should never have invaded China"

"Why, every other country was in China at the time. France, England, US, Holland..."

I have a strange feeling France, England, US, Holland and the others weren't committing genocide on the Chinese at the time.

Nah, they'd never do that.

Have you ever heard of the Opium wars? http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3024/sarcasm.gif

pwnt

essentially it sounds like man should have never existed

Last edited by jsnipy (2009-12-04 20:20:02)

AussieReaper wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

AussieReaper wrote:

The typical argument from that follows like:

"The US should never have imposed the embargo on Japan depriving the country of oil, steel and other resources"

"The Japanese should never have invaded China"

"Why, every other country was in China at the time. France, England, US, Holland..."

I have a strange feeling France, England, US, Holland and the others weren't committing genocide on the Chinese at the time.

Nah, they'd never do that.

Have you ever heard of the Opium wars? http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3024/sarcasm.gif

A few thousand soldiers dying in the middle of a war does not equal several hundred thousand civilians killed during an occupation.
Hell the Japanese raped more women in a shorter amount of time than the overall amount of people of died during the Opium wars.

If you can't see the difference between a soldier getting killed on a battlefield while fighting and a woman getting dragged out of her home raped and getting a sword shoved through her while her family watched then I don't know what to tell you.

Macbeth wrote:

If you can't see the difference between a soldier getting killed on a battlefield while fighting and a woman getting dragged out of her home raped and getting a sword shoved through her while her family watched then I don't know what to tell you.

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"

There's many accounts of US submarine captains who ordered their men to machine gun the survivors of a sunken vessel.

You can't tell me that the above war crime(s) is no worse than a Japanese war crime. A war crime is a war crime. All are terrible.

AussieReaper wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

If you can't see the difference between a soldier getting killed on a battlefield while fighting and a woman getting dragged out of her home raped and getting a sword shoved through her while her family watched then I don't know what to tell you.

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"

There's many accounts of US submarine captains who ordered their men to machine gun the survivors of a sunken vessel.

You can't tell me that the above war crime(s) is no worse than a Japanese war crime. A war crime is a war crime. All are terrible.

One is a war crime the other is a genocide on innocent civilians. One is killing soldiers the other is killing people who were not a threat at all.

You're equating killing soldiers who just tried to kill you to killing some poor Chinese folk who just happened to make the mistake of being Chinese.







Scope, cause, and means are important things to consider when talking about genocide.

AussieReaper wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

One is a war crime the other is a genocide on innocent civilians. One is killing soldiers the other is killing people who were not a threat at all.

And the population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not innocent civilians?

Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki = ending the war quickly and not killing many more people and destroying the lands of Japan during a land invasion.

If you guys want to complain about unnecessary war action talk about Dresden.

Hmmm.... horrible as this seems, better 100 thousand in two cities than 10 million across an entire country.