Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

I'm sure it would have been alot less civilian deaths if we invaded.


My moral opinion? Would you like it if the US got in a war you disagreed with, and the enemy dropped a bomb on you to win? All is not fair in love and war.

 

Of course I wouldn't like it. We didn't intend for the Japanese to like it. You don't understand war what so ever. Do you think Japanese citizens were against fighting us? No, they were all for it. They were just as guilty as the people shooting the guns. They make the weapons, ship them, stimulate the economy meantime. They wernt prisoners, its not like how war is now in Afghanistan. They WANTED to fight us and go to all measures, any measures, to win.

 

That is ridiculous. You can't blame every civilian in a country individually for a war the country is involved in.

In response to all who says "US was just defending", that's bullshit. The US picked sides way ahead off Pearl Harbor, by cutting off trade with the Japanese and supporting their enemies. They were asking for it.

 

I really disagree with you here. If the Japanese mainland was threatened on that scale, one of the first actions that would have to be undertaken by the invaders would be large scale bombing on Tokyo, which would have killed millions.

You are correct in your statement, all is not fair in love and war and that is why the US had to use the atomic bomb.

 

There is no excuse for bombing two crowded citys. It was brutal. The times may have held for it but, the Americans pride themselves as the worlds policemen. Thats police brutality

 

i agree.....

 

The Imperial Japanese Army treated civilians far worse. Nanjing, Hong Kong, Korea, and every other place they occupied was utterly and brutally destroyed and unspeakable atrocities were committed against the locals there. You shouldn't feel like the Japanese Empire didn't really ask for atrocities against their civilians.

 

Behind all this are you asking whether the bombing was 'justified'?

 

Yup. People just don't understand what war is all about.

 

The bombings ended the war very quickly compared to what a land invasion would have done. The US was bombing Japan constantly and was cutting them off. As Tyro said their infrastructure was crumbling, and they were getting weaker. If the war has continued longer the lack of food and constant bombing would have killed many more civilians than the atomic bombs.

Plus as SMR said, as the war went on civilians from other countries were dying and being treated horribly every day. The bombings ultimately saved many innocent lives that would have been lost if not for them.

 

Yea, the Rape of Nanjing and the Bahtan Death Marches are still considered some of the most brutal examples of warcrimes.

I can't say that using the atomic bomb was necessary. Many of the U.S. generals and top officials didn't believe it was needed. Japan was basically defeated by the time the nuclear bombs were dropped.

If any of you remember, the warning we gave them was "a rain of ruin from the sky". How are the Japanese supposed to know this was referring to a nuclear weapon?

The nuclear bombing was, essentially, a warcrime as brutal and savage as the ones the Japan army committed, however the U.S. will always defend it as a necessary action to "protect our democracy".

 

^Agreed.

Still though, way more people would have died if we didn't bomb them. We could have looked for a different solution, but we did what we had to.

 

Planes dropped fliers in the cities...

 

It wasn't to protect our democracy. We had already won the war and everyone knew that, except Japan refused to surrender. A land invasion would have cost many more lives than the atomic bombs did, in military and civilian lives. The US was already fire bombing many targets in Japan which during a very long land offensive would have killed many more civilians than the atomic bombs. The Japanese would have continued their brutal treatment of the civilians of the places they occupied which would also have added to the many people killed in elongating the war.

The atomic bombs were only used for one purpose which was to end the war. It isn't a war crime to bomb a city to end a war and save millions of lives.

 

It's a war crime.
The nuclear bombs killed an outrageous amount of civilians. There is no way we can say we "meant to" only target military combatants. We knew how destructive the nuclear bomb was going to be.

Even if you say that the nuclear bombs were used to end the war, why did we drop a second one?

The US already knew Japan was going to surrender, even before dropping the bombs. They were defeated. A land invasion wasn't even necessary. Their forces had been driven thin by covering their territories in the Pacific.

Let's face it, we decided that American lives were worth more than Japanese lives. It's true, we most likely saved some unnecessary suffering of Filipino PoW's and the Chinese under Japanese control, but we destroyed not one, but two cities to do so. We judged that all the Japanese innocents were worth killing to achieve our objective. The second bomb was a display of American military superiority, nothing more.

 

You need to realize that nothing close to an atomic bomb had ever been heard of in warfare before this time. The Japanese military had no idea.

 

Total war. During WWII none of our bombings were to target just military targets. We destroyed many cities during WWII, and I don't know why these two were any different.

We told them surrender or we will destroy a city. They didn't so we bombed them. We told them surrender or we will do it again. They didn't so we bombed them. Japan was NOT going to surrender because the high level military officials would not allow it. The emperor wanted to surrender to save his civilians but the military wouldn't let him.

Had we not bombed the cities millions on both sides would have died. If you look at the costs of many other island invasions during that campaign you will see that the Japanese would continuing fighting no matter what happened.

They were told the city was going to be destroyed and about 40,000 people left but they didn't really take it seriously. They should have.