The Nuking of Nagasaki: Even More Immoral and Unnecessary than Hiroshima

[P@triot]

Yes it was, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed 80 years ago, professor.

Again...dumb shit...we weren't discussing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were discussing proliferation.

You're so damn dumb, you can't even follow the conversation.

 

[P@triot]

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not bombed in 1980, professor.

Just for context folks, as you can see in post #3,532 here, we were discussing "proliferation". I mentioned that since 1980, there really hasn't been much change in nations with nuclear weapons (just a couple here and there - such as North Korea recently).

Of course, 1980 was 41 years ago. But dumb shit here can't even follow the conversation. He thinks the discussion was still about the bombing when it had morphed into "proliferation"

 

[Unkotare]

Yeah...and "atomic" weapons have not been "proliferated" over the past 40 years, ......

Do you realize that 1945 was NOT 40 years ago, professor?

 

[Unkotare]

Again...dumb shit...we weren't discussing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ....

Yes, we were. Look at the topic of the thread, stupid.

 

[Unkotare]

......We were discussing proliferation.
....

Do you know what that word means, stupid?

 

[P@triot]

Yes, we were. Look at the topic of the thread, stupid.

Bwahahaha!! Because nobody mentions anything outside of the thread topic? You dumb-shits brought up “nuclear proliferation”.

You’re literally too stupid to even follow the conversation

 

[P@triot]

Do you know what that word means, stupid?

Yes, dumb fuck. And it doesn’t mean “Hiroshima” or “Nagasaki”.

 

[P@triot]

Do you realize that 1945 was NOT 40 years ago, professor?

Yeeaahh…I’m just gonna go ahead and direct you back to post #3542 where this was already explained to you once (when it shouldn’t have been as you should just follow the fucking conversation but lack the IQ to do so).

Please ask a trusted adult to read it to you. Then ask them to explain it to you.

I completely understand now why 99.8% of your posts are five word fortune cookie nonsense. Your IQ limits you to that.

 

[Plow Boy]

Yes, we were. Look at the topic of the thread, stupid.

The topic was should the US have nuked Nagasaki only three days after Hiroshima, and you already know my answer was yes. And I am OK with your stance.

I may need to start a new topic and ask if Japan will go nuclear, in the light of a super aggressive China.

Do you think that will happen yourself?

 

[Unkotare]

Bwahahaha!! Because nobody mentions anything outside of the thread topic? You dumb-shits brought up “nuclear proliferation”.

You’re literally too stupid to even follow the conversation

Stay on topic, troll.

 

[Unkotare]

The topic was should the US have nuked Nagasaki only three days after Hiroshima, and you already know my answer was yes. And I am OK with your stance.

I may need to start a new topic and ask if Japan will go nuclear, in the light of a super aggressive China.

Do you think that will happen yourself?

No.

 

[Plow Boy]

No.

OK.

 

[P@triot]

Stay on topic, troll.

Your dumb-ass brought up “nuclear proliferation”

You’re literally too dumb to follow your own conversation

 

[Unkotare]

Your dumb-ass brought up “nuclear proliferation”

No I did not, genius.

 

[Open Bolt]

Whatever labored, embarrassing arguments one can make for the nuking of Hiroshima cannot be made for the nuking of Nagasaki just three days later.

Sure they can. And the arguments are hardly labored or embarrassing.

Japan had not surrendered yet. Therefore we had every right to keep attacking them. And Nagasaki was a military target just like Hiroshima.

True, because FDR should not have provoked Japan to attack us.

Japan shouldn't have provoked us into nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Truman knew weeks before Hiroshima that if he would just assure the Japanese that the emperor would not be deposed, the Japanese would surrender on terms that were acceptable to us. He knew this because we were reading the Japanese diplomatic cables--all of them.

He knew no such thing. The Japanese diplomatic cables provided no such assurances.

He knew that the emperor himself wanted to end the war and that the only snag was the demand for "unconditional surrender."

The fact that Japan could not even come to agreement on how many terms to ask of us was rather a snag.

Many Japan experts, including former Ambassador Grew, told Truman that guaranteeing the emperor's status would lead to an acceptable Japanese surrender.

Mr. Truman got lots of conflicting advice on that matter.

Truman and his inner circle, along with most of the War Department, also knew that Japan was prostrate and beaten, that Japan was virtually defenseless again our air raids, that our naval blockade had cut off most shipping, that Japan's merchant fleet was almost non-existent, that its Navy had been reduced by about 90%, and that for months the Japanese people had been surviving on greatly reduced food rations.

Mr. Truman also knew about Japan's massive buildup of troops to repel our coming invasion.

* By April 1945, if not earlier, Japan posed no threat to us. By that time, Japan had no ability to carry out offensive operations against us.

Japan still had the ability to mount a withering defense when we invaded.

* WEEKS before Hiroshima, we knew--we absolutely knew--from numerous Japanese intercepts and human sources that Japan's civilian leaders, including the emperor, and even many senior military leaders, were willing to surrender if we would just clarify the "unconditional surrender" terms to stipulate that the emperor would not be deposed in such a surrender.

Not terribly relevant considering that these people did not control the government of Japan.

* The events surrounding Japan's surrender offer prove that if we had stipulated weeks earlier that the emperor would not be deposed, the Japanese moderates could have overcome the hardliners and enabled the emperor to order a surrender weeks earlier.

Not really. Japan had no intention of pursuing any alternatives so long as they had hopes of Soviet mediation.

* Truth be told, we ignored the clear evidence that Japan was willing to surrender weeks earlier on acceptable terms because many folks in our government were determined to test the atomic bomb on live targets in Japan. That is the shameful truth.

No, there is nothing true about that. There was no such evidence.

 

[Open Bolt]

It did not have to be a question of whether we used them or not
Did we have to choose targets where 150,000 civilians were killed?
Could a non lethal “demonstration” have yielded the same results?
Drop one in a low populated or strictly military area and let the Japanese evaluate the results. Then tell them we have dozens just like it and would target Tokyo next

We chose to destroy targets with military value.

We had other options than giving Japan two days to decide and killing 150,000 civilians

Sure. We could have nuked three Japanese targets in one single day.

Once we had the bomb, we did not need to sacrifice any more lives. We drop a bomb and then step back and pressure Japan to surrender or face an escalation
Our ground troops were no longer involved

If Japan had kept refusing to surrender despite the atomic bombs, our troops would have gone ahead with the invasion.

I have already said a mainland invasion was unnecessary once we had the bomb.

It would have been necessary had Japan still kept refusing to surrender despite us nuking them.

Why would we endure an invasion if we already had the a bomb

Because if Japan had kept refusing to surrender despite us nuking them, invasion was the way to force their surrender.

What would have happened if we didn’t kill 150,000 civilians?

It could have turned out many different ways. One possible alternative is ten million Japanese civilians starving to death followed by the horrific slaughter of American soldiers on Japanese beaches. Another possible alternative is Japan surrendering anyway on the same schedule even without the atomic bombs.

It's impossible to know how an alternative history will turn out. The people in charge did the best they could with what they had at the time.

Was two bombs on densely populated civilian cities the only option to get them to realize the war was lost?

Hardly civilian cities. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets.

There were plenty of targets
We could have chose a military target on a remote island. Completely obliterated it and documented the results.

We chose targets that would do military damage.

Allow Japan to evaluate what had happened and give them thirty days to unconditionally surrender.

If we did that, today you'd be complaining that we didn't give them thirty one days.

If we gave them thirty one days, today you'd be complaining that we didn't give them thirty two.

Terms are....next one hits Tokyo

Killing the Emperor would not have been conducive to achieving surrender.

 

[Open Bolt]

Actually Truman's own cabinet publicly stated the bomb would put us on par with the German genocide at the time,

No they didn't.

and the dept of defense stifled all Truman's top generals , insisting all comments be vetted first

That sounds reasonable considering the war.

Further, the 'it would have saved millions' canard started out far less in #'s, grew due to historic revisionists who supported Truman , as opposed to all his generals

No canard and no revision. Those figures came from actual casualty estimates.

nope
they knew they were done, and were negotiating

That would have been a neat trick considering that there were no negotiations.

 

[Zincwarrior]

Whatever labored, embarrassing arguments one can make for the nuking of Hiroshima cannot be made for the nuking of Nagasaki just three days later. From my article "Did We Really Need to Use the Atomic Bomb Against Japan?":

On August 9, 1945, just three days after we nuked Hiroshima, and before Japan’s leaders had sufficient time to process and respond to our nuclear attack on Hiroshima, we dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, which was home to Japan’s largest Christian population. The atomic bombing of Nagasaki was even more inexcusable than the nuking of Hiroshima. . . .​

​

On August 9, we nuked Nagasaki, just three days after Hiroshima, and hours after the Soviets began to maul the Japanese army in Manchuria,, and while Japan’s civilian leaders were understandably absorbed with trying to process what had happened to Hiroshima and with responding to the Soviet attack in Manchuria. Surely Truman and other high officials knew that three days was not enough time for Japan’s government to formulate a formal response to the unprecedented use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and to the Soviet invasion in Manchuria. Even McGeorge Bundy, who helped Henry Stimson write his defense of the atomic bombing of Japan, acknowledged that Truman was too quick to nuke Nagasaki:​

"It is hard to see that much could have been lost if there had been more time between the two bombs. . . . Such a delay would have been relatively easy, and I think right." (https://miketgriffith.com/files/immoraluse.pdf)​

​

The Japanese were not even able to get a scientific team to Hiroshima until August 7, the day after the attack. Meanwhile, Japan's leaders were getting conflicting, fragmentary information about what had happened in Hiroshima. Some Army officials were telling the government that the bombing of Hiroshima was merely a very large conventional bombing raid, and they were suppressing information about the kinds of wounds that had been inflicted. There was no Internet back then, no fax machines, no Skype.

Surely it was obscene for us to nuke Nagasaki just three days, 72 hours, after we had nuked Hiroshima.

In the words of the immortal bard: go fuck yourself. Japan literally had a failed coup to stop the surrender. It took multiple bombs and the obliteration of japanese forces in Manchuria, to get them to surrender. Hirohito even said it in his speech to the people.

 

[Open Bolt]

The Japanese were not dead set on continuing the war, In fact, they were seeking peace negotiations through the Swiss and the Soviets.

Well, through the Soviets at least.

The Japanese were seeking peace negotiations from Potsdam onward. The sticking point in the negotiations was the status of the Emperor. The Japanese felt that if he was tried as a war criminal, their society would fall apart.

There were no negotiations. Therefore there was no sticking point in the negotiations.

The fact that 100 new battled hardened divisions of Rape-y Soviets just showed up on their western flank did.

It was more that the Soviet declaration of war meant that Japan's "mediation gambit" was not going to work.

Japan had already decided to try to escape the war when we overran Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Most of the hard-core divisions were deployed in China or had been lost in the Pacific. What they had left in Japan were the reserves, not well armed, not well trained.

True, but given the scale of the invasion and the scale of the defense, there was still potential for a lot of damage to be done in an invasion.

 

[Open Bolt]

Truman wanted to test to see which was more lethal: uranium bomb at ground level (Hiroshima) or plutonium bomb as an air burst (Nagasaki)

Nonsense.