0th anniversary of VJ Day: Thank the atomic bomb for saving millions of lives

[Jarlaxle]

According to the title of the original post, shouldn't Russia conduct an atomic bombing of a couple of ukrainian cities? Well, to save hundreds of thousands of lives, following the US example? Or "this is completely different" (c)?

Just how STUPID do you have to be to squat and squeeze out that jewel?

 

[Unkotare]

"

HERBERT HOOVER​

"On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs."

- quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

Hoover biographer Richard Norton Smith has written: "Use of the bomb had besmirched America's reputation, he [Hoover] told friends. It ought to have been described in graphic terms before being flung out into the sky over Japan."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 349-350.

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."

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[Unkotare]

Some people here seem to think we used the atomic bombs as an act of revenge on behalf of China.

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[Unkotare]

The Bureaucrats Who Singled Out Hiroshima for Destruction

How committee meetings, memos, and largely arbitrary decisions ushered in the nuclear age

www.theatlantic.com

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[themirrorthief]

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what need was there to nuke Japan...they were already totally whipped, driven back to their homeland with most of their warships and planes destroyed

 

[Weatherman2020]

Military planners estimated that the coming invasion of Japan in 1945-1946 would cost a quarter million Allied lives, plus several million Japanese military and civilian lives.

Instead, the atomic bomb destroyed almost no Allied lives and less than half a million Japanese lives from all causes. Horrific, but far less than the invasion would have taken.

Japanese officials were offering only a stand-down that would leave the pro-war Japanese government intact and in charge - a situation the U.S. rejected for obvious reasons.

BTW, though the two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only two we had on hand at that moment, the U.S. was in gear to produce half a dozen more within a few months, and more later as needed. These would have been used on Japan during the invasion if Japan didn't surrender. Fortunately for all involved, the Japanese realized that the U.S. could completely destroy Japan as a country with virtually no U.S. casualties, with the remains divided between America and Russia (who was also invading), and so saw the wisdom of surrendering.

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70th anniversary of V-J Day Kiss a nuke Hot Air

70th anniversary of V-J Day: Kiss a nuke

by Allan Bourdius
posted at 6:01 pm on August 14, 2015

Seventy years ago today on August 14, 1945, the Japanese Empire announced their surrender to the Allies and the end of World War II. The day (August 15th in Japan) is generally known as “Victory over Japan Day” or “V-J Day”. The official Japanese surrender was signed 19 days later on September 2, 1945, on board the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay.

During the afternoon of this day seventy years ago, joyous Americans took to the streets to celebrate the end of the war. In New York City’s Times Square, a United States Navy sailor grabbed a woman, a “nurse” (she was actually a dental assistant) he didn’t know, and kissed her right in the middle of the street, the moment captured by two different photographers. It is the iconic image of V-J Day and the end of World War II.

Instead of a nurse, it would have been more fitting if he could have kissed a nuclear weapon. The life he later lived was undoubtedly made possible because of them.

Japan’s surrender was expedited by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945). Had Japan not announced their surrender, the United States would have had the next nuclear strike ready for August 19th, and another in September.

Then, still absent Japan’s surrender, Operation Downfall would begin; the invasion of the Japanese home islands in two parts.

November 1, 1945, “X-Day”, was the scheduled date for Operation Olympic, a landing by 14 American Army and Marine divisions in the initial attack on the island of Kyūshū.

Operation Coronet would follow on “Y-Day”, March 1, 1946 – landings directly into the Tokyo plain on the island of Honshū. Twenty-five divisions. Many more would be ready to reinforce them. Many of the Coronet soldiers would have been those retrained and redeployed after defeating Nazi Germany. Victory in Europe wouldn’t have spared them from more fighting to defeat Japan.

All in all, well over two million American servicemen would have taken part in the invasion of Japan. The United States also had plans for the tactical use of nuclear weapons during the attack, anticipating having an additional seven ready bombs on X-Day.

They would have faced a Japanese enemy who correctly predicted where the landings would take place. They would have faced a Japanese enemy who had changed the training for Kamikaze pilots so they would focus on attacking troop transports and landing ships rather than warships.

Estimates of casualties were wide ranging; the Joint Chiefs of Staff predicted in April 1945 that Olympic alone would cost 456,000 casualties, 109,000 of which would be killed or missing in action.

The same study said the entire campaign – Olympic and Coronet – would result in 1,200,000 total casualties, 267,000 killed or missing.

Some of those lives are friends of mine, some still here, some called home of both the American and Japanese sides.

 

[2aguy]

what need was there to nuke Japan...they were already totally whipped, driven back to their homeland with most of their warships and planes destroyed

No...they were not.....they planned on defending against any invasion, and it would have cost lots of American lives.

 

[M14 Shooter]

what need was there to nuke Japan...they were already totally whipped, driven back to their homeland with most of their warships and planes destroyed

And yet, they had the full intention to defend the home islands with every man, woman, and child they could muster.

Nuking Japan saved lives on both sides.

 

[Weatherman2020]

what need was there to nuke Japan...they were already totally whipped, driven back to their homeland with most of their warships and planes destroyed

How’d it go on Okinawa?

 

[2aguy]

Here is some truth about this....

Truman wanted to use the bombs to avoid invading the Japanese mainland. The recent battle for Okinawa resulted in an estimated 50,000 American casualties—the bloodiest of all the American battles of the Pacific War. Truman’s military planners warned that invasions of the Japanese mainland to end the war might cost the equivalent of 20 more Okinawa campaigns.

Japan’s leaders swore that they would fight to the bitter end, bragging of their planned sacrifice as the “Glorious Death of One Hundred Million.” They planned to draw on 10,000 suicide planes and 10 million soldiers, militiamen, and irregulars.

Truman also had other worries.

The Soviet Union had done nothing during the war to harm Japan following its cynical 1941 non-aggression pact with the Japanese. But in August 1945, the Soviets were opportunistically preparing to invade a reeling Japanese empire in hopes of stripping Japan of its colonies in China, the Pacific, and Korea. After Josef Stalin’s recent Russian occupation of Eastern Europe, the idea of a Soviet Russia replacing Imperial Japan seemed not much better to Truman.

Thousands of Allied prisoners, as well as civilians in Japanese-occupied China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, were dying each day the war dragged on. More than 1 million Japanese soldiers abroad were still brutally killing the innocent.

There were still other less publicized considerations. The incendiary B-29 bombing campaign from the distant Mariana Islands had already killed far more Japanese than would the two atomic bombs.

With new airfields on Okinawa, Gen. Curtis LeMay envisioned a far greater force of four-engine bombers to be sent on daily missions against Japan. LeMay would have had at his disposal nearly 10,000 four-engine bombers, including B-29s, along with transfers of idle B-24s, B-17s, and British Lancaster bombers after the surrender of Germany three months earlier.

The Bombs of August › American Greatness

On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped a uranium-fueled atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, another U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 repeated the attack on Nagasaki, Japan…

amgreatness.com

 

[Ringo]

The Soviet Union had done nothing during the war to harm Japan following its cynical 1941 non-aggression pact with the Japanese. But in August 1945, the Soviets were opportunistically preparing to invade a reeling Japanese empire in hopes of stripping Japan of its colonies in China, the Pacific, and Korea.

Goebbels would be envious of this shit.

 

[M14 Shooter]

Someone here hates reality

 

[2aguy]

Goebbels would be envious of this shit.

Goebells was a mass murdering socialist.....who sold lies. Hanson is telling the truth.....and why do you morons defend Japan, they were just as bad as the nazis in their slaughter of the innocent...you guys never tell us we shouldn't have bombed German cities......where they also had civilians.

 

[M14 Shooter]

Goebbels would be envious of this shit.

What do you think this means?

 

[Ringo]

.and why do you morons defend Japan, they were just as bad as the nazis in their slaughter of the innocent...you guys never tell us we shouldn't have bombed German cities......where they also had civilians.

You know, Germany was accused of being a very bad guy for using poison gas in World War I. The U.S. was even worse than Kaiser's Germany when it came to the use of new means of mass destruction.

 

[2aguy]

You know, Germany was accused of being a very bad guy for using poison gas in World War I. The U.S. was even worse than Kaiser's Germany when it came to the use of new means of mass destruction.

Fuck you......the socialists in Germany were monsters who slaughtered 15-20 million innocent men, women and children across Europe.....your sympathy for those monsters is truly amazing...

 

[Ringo]

What do you think this means?

The U.S. today is the Evil Empire. There is simply no one to say it loudly on the international arena.

 

[Ringo]

Fuck you......the socialists in Germany were monsters who slaughtered 15-20 million innocent men

Nazis are "socialists"? You're an idiot and a scumbag.

 

[M14 Shooter]

The U.S. was even worse than Kaiser's Germany when it came to the use of new means of mass destruction.

 

[Unkotare]

The U.S. today is the Evil Empire. There is simply no one to say it loudly on the international arena.

So YOU mewl your stupid, impotent nonsense on the internet. What a fucking hero.