(08-07-2015 04:33 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 02:59 PM)JMUDunk Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 12:09 PM)VA49er Wrote:  Sucks as all get out but what was the alternative, an invasion of the Japanese mainland?

Yup, and the plans were already well underway. My Dad would have been part of it.

Absolutely justified. Long run it saved lives overall.

How does killing 200, 000 civilians save lives?

If the only alternative was to invade, it would save that many lives, which is almost certainly more than how many were lost between Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In addition to US soldiers lives and Japanese military forces' lives, we would have been forced to continue bombing in coordination with the invasions and for as long as the war continued, thus continuing the civilian deaths. Many of the civilians were involved in the war industry too. As in, having the equipment in their homes.

And you know the Japanese were going to fight for every inch despite mounting casualties.

(08-07-2015 04:33 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 02:59 PM)JMUDunk Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 12:09 PM)VA49er Wrote:  Sucks as all get out but what was the alternative, an invasion of the Japanese mainland?

Yup, and the plans were already well underway. My Dad would have been part of it.

Absolutely justified. Long run it saved lives overall.

How does killing 200, 000 civilians save lives?

When we invaded the island prefecture of Okinawa a third of the civilian population died either of actions during battle or of suicide. The population of Japan in 1945 was almost 72 million. If a third of them died as on Okinawa you are talking about 24 million.

(08-07-2015 04:33 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 02:59 PM)JMUDunk Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 12:09 PM)VA49er Wrote:  Sucks as all get out but what was the alternative, an invasion of the Japanese mainland?

Yup, and the plans were already well underway. My Dad would have been part of it.

Absolutely justified. Long run it saved lives overall.

How does killing 200, 000 civilians save lives?

When the alternative is much larger.

Lets cut the sh** here, its about WINNING. We dropped the bomb to end the war and WIN. I am sick and tired of leadership that commits US lives and other resources and will not commit to WINNING.

First move in winning the next war we have - is to fire the lawyers. Second move is to shoot/kill anyone who does not obey the first order. The world is too small now and everyone has weapons or soon will that will be able to inflect major damage on mentally weak countries. Today we are mentally weak.

Justified. They wouldn't quit.

Not so much saving lives, more so preventing massive casualties for us and the Soviets. Prolonging the war through conventional invasion of the Japanese home islands would have meant stacking up against an indoctrinated enemy that, when cornered, would either kill themselves en masse or try to take a lot of invaders with them first. Those are deep and dark waters, friends. I heard someone describe it once as potentially "committing genocide to win".

It was the tragic, tainted shade of justified.

(08-07-2015 05:29 PM)CameramanJ Wrote:  Not so much saving lives, more so preventing massive casualties for us and the Soviets. Prolonging the war through conventional invasion of the Japanese home islands would have meant stacking up against an indoctrinated enemy that, when cornered, would either kill themselves en masse or try to take a lot of invaders with them first. Those are deep and dark waters, friends. I heard someone describe it once as potentially "committing genocide to win".

It was the tragic, tainted shade of justified.

If the Soviets invaded we would have had to share territory. Japan would be much different today.

Justified.

They were willing to sacrifice their lives by slamming their planes into our ships. Could you imagine what they would have done if we mounted an invasion of their homeland?

One of the histories I read noted that the Japanese were training women, children and the elderly to charge invaders with sharpened bamboo poles. Now imagine if Japan's children were nearly wiped out? Would the country ever have recovered.

Furthermore, imagine the emotional scars the allied GIs would take home if they were forced to gun down packs of charging children.

(08-07-2015 04:33 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 02:59 PM)JMUDunk Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 12:09 PM)VA49er Wrote:  Sucks as all get out but what was the alternative, an invasion of the Japanese mainland?

Yup, and the plans were already well underway. My Dad would have been part of it.

Absolutely justified. Long run it saved lives overall.

How does killing 200, 000 civilians save lives?

Good grief, don't you purport to actually teach history of some sort? Yet you know next to nothing about it?

One quick nugget- The tiny island of Iwo-Jima, you ever heard of that?

There's a pretty famous statue commemorating it, it's easily googled if you'd like to take a look.

5 weeks to take this little place, probably about the size of a College Campus or so. 25,000 dead. From both sides. Nearly 20k alone of Japanese.

Another quick nugget- battle to take Okinawa. A few weeks after the blood bath on Iwo Jima, this one about 2 1/2 months long. Somewhere around 100,000 dead. Yes, taking the island of Okinawa was 100k.

So tell me, teach. You don't think invading the Japanese mainland would have cost more than 200k? It may well have been in the multiple of Millions instead.

Gawd, man, open a history book once in a while.

You're welcome, today's lernin' is over.

(08-07-2015 04:45 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 04:33 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 02:59 PM)JMUDunk Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 12:09 PM)VA49er Wrote:  Sucks as all get out but what was the alternative, an invasion of the Japanese mainland?

Yup, and the plans were already well underway. My Dad would have been part of it.

Absolutely justified. Long run it saved lives overall.

How does killing 200, 000 civilians save lives?

When we invaded the island prefecture of Okinawa a third of the civilian population died either of actions during battle or of suicide. The population of Japan in 1945 was almost 72 million. If a third of them died as on Okinawa you are talking about 24 million.

And there you go. Beat me to it.

(08-07-2015 05:29 PM)CameramanJ Wrote:  Not so much saving lives, more so preventing massive casualties for us and the Soviets. Prolonging the war through conventional invasion of the Japanese home islands would have meant stacking up against an indoctrinated enemy that, when cornered, would either kill themselves en masse or try to take a lot of invaders with them first. Those are deep and dark waters, friends. I heard someone describe it once as potentially "committing genocide to win".

It was the tragic, tainted shade of justified.

Is there a difference here that I'm missing?

My Dad's ship, preparing to go out of San Francisco was told to write home one last time and that most of them, if not all of them, would not return.

(08-07-2015 02:59 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 12:04 PM)QuestionSocratic Wrote:  (Consider this a flashback to the old ESPN board, where this was an annual thread.)

Justified or not?

I vote justified.

Justified? No

Nevessary?

Maybe.

It is never justified to kill innocent people.

Dropping those bombs SAVED lives. A lot of them. American AND Japanese.

Justified.

A while back I read an article that hypothesized that if we didn't drop the bomb and the Japanese refused to surrender, they would've fought until about 1947. That undoubtedly would've cost millions of lives and reallocated enough resources towards the war effort that the Soviets may have gained the upper hand in the post-European war political landscape.

Justified. Also a huge deal to get in there before the Soviets got in on the Pacific theatre.

(08-07-2015 12:09 PM)VA49er Wrote:  Sucks as all get out but what was the alternative, an invasion of the Japanese mainland?

Yes. With far more fatalities than what occurred with Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

My only quibble with Truman's decision is that he might have waited another day or two in order to get a better sense of what Japan's reaction to the first one was going to be. Initial reactions were contradictory/inconclusive. But all-in-all... dropping the bombs was a necessary evil, IMHO

(08-07-2015 07:01 PM)Love and Honor Wrote:  A while back I read an article that hypothesized that if we didn't drop the bomb and the Japanese refused to surrender, they would've fought until about 1947. That undoubtedly would've cost millions of lives and reallocated enough resources towards the war effort that the Soviets may have gained the upper hand in the post-European war political landscape.

The conservative leader William F. Buckley was born in 1925 and wrote at some point later in his life that if such an invasion had been necessary, he probably -- based on rank/experience/location -- would've been in one of the first assault-waves to reach Japanese shores. Buckley also agreed with the "without the atomic bombs, the war would've lasted another two years (1947)" hypothesis.

Justified.

There is no such thing as a politically correct war. Its a question of how bad you want to win. Not going to second guess what that generation of heroes gave to this country and the world. Lasting peace with both Germany and Japan which are both great allies today and the legacy those brave soldiers fought for.

was necessary not only due to the conditions of the war at that point, but it also showed the world how humans can destroy with the push of a button.....it changed warfare moving forward...I would argue the deterring of future wars was the most valuable result by unleashing that power to the world

it's not a coincidence that world wars essentially became obsolete at that point....they are fought differently now....

IMO, it's no different than any other weapon that changed the game of warfare with the exception of exponentially increasing the range of one's destructive power....and that's a pretty large deterrent for a rogue nation that might have eyes on gaining more pieces of pie....

Here's another fact about the non nuclear bombing. In one fire bombing raid on Tokyo in March, almost as many people died as in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were killing untold numbers of Japanese with conventional bombs.

But we needed to use the A-bombs to convince the Emperor to capitulate.