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

[Rigby5]

67 Japanese cities had already been mostly turned to ashes. As for Tokyo, it was mostly incinerated in March of that same year with over 100,000 dead and a million homeless and they STILL refused to surrender:

The Tokyo Firebombing Was Deadlier Than Hiroshima — So Why Haven't You Heard Of It?

The Americans planned the firebombing of Tokyo — which was then largely made up of wooden structures — for a dry and windy night to ensure maximum destruction.

allthatsinteresting.com

WRONG!
Japan had desperately been TRYING to surrender and we refused to communicate with them directly, and pretended confusion with the surrender attempts through the Soviets.

 

[Rigby5]

My dad fought in that war and he and his peers were DAMNED GLAD they didn't have to experience the hell that waited on those islands.

In no way would anyone have ever tried or needed to invade any island.
Without ships, oil, or food, these islands were death camps where we were murdering tens of thousands.

 

[Rigby5]

I asked for a proposal for surrender by the Japanese Government you have not provided one, as for the Soviet overture we have the intercepts what Japan offered was a ceasefire, return to 41 start lines and no concessions in China.

That simply is a lie.
Japan continually offered complete surrender, with the slight condition that the Emperor not be publicly humiliated, since he held an important religious position.

The exact wording can be found in the "Potsdam Diaries".

 

[Open Bolt]

People really should learn at least a basic level of information about the topics they get worked up about here.

Indeed. If you learned something about this subject you would not present so many falsehoods.

Just being insecure about long-held narratives that they have found comfortable since childhood is not serious discussion.

It is worth correcting your falsehoods regardless of how serious you are.

 

[Open Bolt]

as for the Soviet overture we have the intercepts what Japan offered was a ceasefire, return to 41 start lines and no concessions in China.

That's what Japan planned to offer if given a chance. But note that nothing had progressed far enough for Japan to even talk to the Soviets about their plans. Japan was still trying to arrange for their diplomat to enter the Soviet Union when the Soviets declared war.

 

[Open Bolt]

Totally untrue.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, like ALL urban, civilian cities, were NOT legal military targets for a weapon they KNEW from testing, would destroy whole cities.

Yes they were. Hiroshima was a huge military center with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers, and was the headquarters in charge of repelling our invasion of Japan.

Nagasaki was a major industrial center that built some of Japan's largest warships.

And anyone claiming Japan was refusing to surrender, would have to be a liar.

Not given the fact that Japan was refusing to surrender.

Clearly the US was well aware Japan had been trying to negotiate a surrender for over half a year, and only wanted some response about retaining the emperor.

Japan was doing no such thing, and the US was not suffering from any delusions that they were.

Japan only offered to surrender after both atomic bombs had already been dropped.

Under instructions from the Emperor, Japanese diplomats in Moscow approached the Soviet regime to begin discussing potential terms for a surrender. This contact was opened shortly before Potsdam. The Japanese understood the American demand for an “unconditional surrender” as the end of their imperial system; the goal was to work through Stalin to try preserve the emperor after the surrender.

That is incorrect. Japanese diplomats never even began discussing terms with the Soviets.

Had they done so, however, the terms would not have involved surrender, but rather how to convince the US to end the war in a draw without making Japan surrender.

First, it was known before Potsdam that Japanese hesitation over surrender was motivated primarily by the desire to retain the imperial system.

No such falsehood was "known".

Japanese hesitation over surrender was motivated primarily by a desire to not surrender at all.

Were the Allies to ensure the continuation of the monarchy, Japan might have agreed to terms on a surrender sooner.

Little chance of that, given their intentions to not surrender at all if they could manage it.

In spite of this knowledge, Truman insisted on including the term “unconditional surrender” in the Potsdam Declaration, knowing that the Japanese would reject it.

The Potsdam Proclamation was actually a list of generous surrender terms.

Truman was well aware the Japanese were desperate to surrender, as we had cut off their food from China, and the population was starving to death.

Truman knew no such falsehood. Japan was trying to escape the war without surrendering.

We did not attack the army or navy bases, but instead targeted the population center.

That is incorrect. Hiroshima was a huge military center with tens of thousands of soldiers and was the headquarters in charge of repelling our coming invasion.

Nagasaki was an industrial center with large weapons factories.

The military objectives were not even touched.

That is incorrect. The headquarters was flattened and 20,000 soldiers were killed. The factory that designed and built specialized torpedoes for defeating Pearl Harbor's defenses was smashed.

The Japanese were NOT murdering anyone by then,

The 100,000 or more civilians who were dying every month under the tender mercies of Japanese occupation would beg to differ.

And then there were the two million soldiers and ten thousand kamikazes waiting to pounce on our invasion.

and were more than willing to surrender.

Their steadfast refusal to surrender says otherwise.

 

[Open Bolt]

Yes the nuclear weapons were entire used on Japan in order to experiment with them.

That is incorrect. They were used on Japan in order to force Japan to surrender.

We did one uranium bomb and one plutonium bomb, and were determined to drop them both, no matter what the Japanese did, so we could compare the results.

That is incorrect. We nuked them until they surrendered, then we stopped nuking them.

There was no desire to compare the results between the two bombs.

We did NOT target anything remotely military, but instead the very center of the population.

That is incorrect. Hiroshima was a major military center with tens of thousands of soldiers, and was the headquarters in charge of repelling our coming invasion.

Nagasaki was an industrial center with large weapons factories.

Even the Germans never did anything so crude, and during the London Blitz, NEVER attacked the civilian population centers.

Nonsense.

Madam Currie had died of radiation poisoning in 1934, so scientist and Truman were well aware of radiation dangers,

Not likely that Truman was aware, not that it matters.

In fact, that is the main value of nuclear weapons, as the explosion is not that significant.

Nuclear explosions flatten entire cities. Most people consider that to be significant.

The Demon Core was a spherical 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) subcritical mass of plutonium 89 millimetres (3.5 in) in diameter, manufactured during World War II by the United States nuclear weapon development effort, the Manhattan Project, as a fissile core for an early atomic bomb.
...
The device briefly went supercritical when it was accidentally placed in supercritical configurations during two separate experiments intended to guarantee the core was close to the critical point. The incidents happened at the Los Alamos Laboratory, resulting in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent deaths of scientists Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin. After these incidents the spherical plutonium core was referred to as the "Demon Core".

The United States did not have time travel in 1945. Accidents that occurred after the end of WWII would not have been known to people during the war.

What we did to Japan before WWII amounted to a declaration of war, so we started it, not Japan.

That is incorrect. Embargoes are not acts of war.

Atrocities like Nanking were not justification for anything.

They certainly justify sanctions and an embargo.

First of all Japan took Nanking in 1937 and we did nothing then, and second is that it is illegal to reply to an atrocity with another atrocity against innocent civilians.

We didn't attack civilians. The atomic bombs were dropped on military targets.

 

[Open Bolt]

WRONG!
Japan had desperately been TRYING to surrender and we refused to communicate with them directly, and pretended confusion with the surrender attempts through the Soviets.

That is incorrect. Japan made no attempt to surrender until after both atomic bombs had already been dropped.

In no way would anyone have ever tried or needed to invade any island.
Without ships, oil, or food, these islands were death camps where we were murdering tens of thousands.

Had Japan continued to refuse to surrender, we would have invaded.

I asked for a proposal for surrender by the Japanese Government you have not provided one, as for the Soviet overture we have the intercepts what Japan offered was a ceasefire, return to 41 start lines and no concessions in China.

That simply is a lie.

No it isn't. That was what Japan wanted to do up until August 10.

Japan continually offered complete surrender,

No they didn't. Japan only offered to surrender after both atomic bombs had already been dropped.

with the slight condition that the Emperor not be publicly humiliated, since he held an important religious position.

You are referring to their offer from after both atomic bombs had already been dropped.

The condition was more than slight. They asked that Hirohito retain unlimited dictatorial power as Japan's living deity. We were right to refuse.

 

[Unkotare]

Indeed. If you learned something about this subject ....

Sorry Junior, but your ignorance is on you.

 

[there4eyeM]

Criticizing something is hardly denying it. It isn't "leftist" or "rightist" to criticize.
It is difficult to understand the humanity of those harping on how justified incinerating women and children was, or is. Man up and just say you don't care.
There are any number of scenarios for alternative use of the bombs. There are any number of arguments as to what would have been better. No one can deny that there were alternatives. The fact is, not enough thought went into the enormous ramifications of this technology and its use. As stated before, the bombs were used tactically, not strategically, given the place of the U.S. at the time. Just getting some Japanese officials to sit down and formalize the realities on the ground did not change the fact that the war was over and Japan lay supine, defenseless and defeated.
No one here is going to change his mind now; it's all been said. Some don't care about the inhumanity of war, some may misunderstand it. Some of us see the use of the bombs this way as poor use at best and leave the humanitarian aspects apart. The total inability to even admit that any other path was open begs the question of intellectual honesty.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

That simply is a lie.
Japan continually offered complete surrender, with the slight condition that the Emperor not be publicly humiliated, since he held an important religious position.

The exact wording can be found in the "Potsdam Diaries".

The lie is yours we HAVE the intercepts we have the records we know what they said and offered.

 

[Rigby5]

Yes they were. Hiroshima was a huge military center with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers, and was the headquarters in charge of repelling our invasion of Japan.

Nagasaki was a major industrial center that built some of Japan's largest warships.



Not given the fact that Japan was refusing to surrender.



Japan was doing no such thing, and the US was not suffering from any delusions that they were.

Japan only offered to surrender after both atomic bombs had already been dropped.



That is incorrect. Japanese diplomats never even began discussing terms with the Soviets.

Had they done so, however, the terms would not have involved surrender, but rather how to convince the US to end the war in a draw without making Japan surrender.



No such falsehood was "known".

Japanese hesitation over surrender was motivated primarily by a desire to not surrender at all.



Little chance of that, given their intentions to not surrender at all if they could manage it.



The Potsdam Proclamation was actually a list of generous surrender terms.



Truman knew no such falsehood. Japan was trying to escape the war without surrendering.



That is incorrect. Hiroshima was a huge military center with tens of thousands of soldiers and was the headquarters in charge of repelling our coming invasion.

Nagasaki was an industrial center with large weapons factories.



That is incorrect. The headquarters was flattened and 20,000 soldiers were killed. The factory that designed and built specialized torpedoes for defeating Pearl Harbor's defenses was smashed.



The 100,000 or more civilians who were dying every month under the tender mercies of Japanese occupation would beg to differ.

And then there were the two million soldiers and ten thousand kamikazes waiting to pounce on our invasion.



Their steadfast refusal to surrender says otherwise.

Frankly, those responses by you were all deliberate lies.

We know the Japanese were trying to surrender for over half a year, because the Soviets were the only one with an embassy, and were telling us all the details. We did also intercept all the communications, but did not need to.
We already knew that all the Japanese wanted was some sort of assurances for the Emperor, and we could have provided that at any time.
We were the ones who would not let the Japanese surrender, since we wanted to compare the 2 different atomic bombs on real people.

And no, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were NOT at all military or industrial centers.
Otherwise they would already have been destroyed, since our carpet bombing and firestorms had destroyed all the real military and industrial centers.
That is obvious since we did not target any industry or military base with out atomic bombs, but instead selected the population center as ground zero.
And all industrial work had been moved underground, so was not effected at all, nor were any soldier killed.

And the claim the Japanese had "10,000 kamakazi" planes is just ridiculous.
The reality is they had exactly 109 planes left, but almost all of those were commercial, with fewer than half a dozen military planes. And even those had no fuel or pilots. Why do you think we could send in a slow, solitary bomber to drop these atomic bombs, if they had any aircraft interceptors left at all? The entire country of Japan was entirely at our mercy and we knew it perfectly. The actual means of defeating the Japanese was by sinking all their shipping with mines dropped from bombers. They were starving to death, without any defenses left at all, and we were deliberately drawing it out so we could use them as bomb test sites. The claim anyone was dying anymore under Japanese occupation is also a lie. Our deliberate lies about the Japanese are one of the worst war crimes on all history.

The Japanese NEVER refused to surrender, and had done everything in their power to surrender months earlier.

 

[Rigby5]

That is incorrect. Embargoes are not acts of war.

WRONG!
Economic sanctions ARE most definitely illegal war crimes.
It was ratified by the US in the 1906 Geneva Conventions.
Civilian economic warfare is totally illegal.
Economic sanctions are not just acts of war, but criminal.

 

[there4eyeM]

Given what was done, what position to criticize would the U.S. be in if Russia were to use such weapons to 'win' their current 'war'?

 

[Rigby5]

The lie is yours we HAVE the intercepts we have the records we know what they said and offered.

That is wrong because the Japanese has Soviet embassies and talked to Soviets face to face when trying to surrender.
Sure were have intercepts, but it is clear from what Truman wrote in the "Potsdam Diaries", that Stalin told him outright that Japan was desperate to surrender, and Truman told him to play dumb and not respond quickly.
None of the details would have been in "intercepts" and anyone bringing up "intercepts" really has no idea at all what was really going on.

 

[Rigby5]

Given what was done, what position to criticize would the U.S. be in if Russia were to use such weapons to 'win' their current 'war'?

Doesn't matter to the US.
For example, we gave Saddam chemical weapons to use on the Iranians, and then later invaded Iraq on the claim we knew Saddam had illegal chemical weapons.
The US will lie, cheat, steal, and murder whenever we think we can get away with it and make a profit.

 

[there4eyeM]

Doesn't matter to the US.
For example, we gave Saddam chemical weapons to use on the Iranians, and then later invaded Iraq on the claim we knew Saddam had illegal chemical weapons.
The US will lie, cheat, steal, and murder whenever we think we can get away with it and make a profit.

It would be wonderful if this could honestly be denied.

 

[Rigby5]

Nuclear explosions flatten entire cities. Most people consider that to be significant.

Wrong.
The blast radius of the 2 atomic bombs dropped on Japan was less than 3 miles.
So the explosive shock wave is not the main effect.
Most of the people are killed by radiation.

 

[Rigby5]

Had Japan continued to refuse to surrender, we would have invaded.

That is a lie.
The whole "Operation Olympic" was fake, entirely designed to head off criticism for our deliberate war crimes.
Japan was an isolated island, incapable of escape, so essentially was a penal colony, slowly starving to death.
Invasion was totally unnecessary, useless, and never seriously considered.

 

[Open Bolt]

Frankly, those responses by you were all deliberate lies.

Everything that I've said is true.

We know the Japanese were trying to surrender for over half a year, because the Soviets were the only one with an embassy, and were telling us all the details. We did also intercept all the communications, but did not need to.

Fake news. Never happened.

We already knew that all the Japanese wanted was some sort of assurances for the Emperor, and we could have provided that at any time.

We "knew" no such falsehood. What Japan wanted was to end the war in a draw without surrendering.

We were the ones who would not let the Japanese surrender,

We had no control over whether Japan surrendered.

Had we such control, we would have had Japan surrender to us in 1941.

since we wanted to compare the 2 different atomic bombs on real people.

We had no such interest.

And no, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were NOT at all military or industrial centers.

Hiroshima was a huge military center with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers. It was Japan's primary military port, and the port that launched all their invasions of neighboring countries.

Hiroshima had more soldiers than any Japanese city other than Tokyo (which was much much larger). Hiroshima had the highest soldier/civilian ratio of any of Japan's major cities.

Hiroshima was also the headquarters in charge of repelling our coming invasion.

The second atomic bomb was intended for Kokura Arsenal, which was a massive (4100 feet by 2000 feet) factory complex that built all of Japan's light machine guns, heavy machine guns, 20mm antiaircraft guns, and the ammo for all those guns.

Unfortunately due to a lot of bad luck the second atomic bomb was diverted to the secondary target, Nagasaki, which was a shipbuilding town that made some of Japan's largest warships.

At Nagasaki, the second atomic bomb destroyed the torpedo factory that had made the specialized torpedoes designed for defeating Pearl Harbor's natural defenses.

Otherwise they would already have been destroyed, since our carpet bombing and firestorms had destroyed all the real military and industrial centers.

Hiroshima was chosen as an atomic target early in the bombing campaign when only a handful of cities had been destroyed. Thereafter it was off limits to conventional bombing.

Nagasaki had a natural immunity to conventional bombing because it was hard to locate on the radar that was used to guide our massive nighttime incendiary raids.

That is obvious since we did not target any industry or military base with out atomic bombs, but instead selected the population center as ground zero.

Circular logic is bad logic.

We did target military bases and weapons factories.

And all industrial work had been moved underground, so was not effected at all, nor were any soldier killed.

The destruction of the torpedo factory was quite thorough. The destruction of the military headquarters was as well.

20,000 Japanese soldiers were killed at Hiroshima.

And the claim the Japanese had "10,000 kamakazi" planes is just ridiculous.

Not given that actual fact that Japan had ten thousand kamikazes waiting to pounce on our invasion.

The reality is they had exactly 109 planes left, but almost all of those were commercial, with fewer than half a dozen military planes.

No reality there. Japan had ten thousand kamikazes ready to pounce on our invading forces.

And even those had no fuel or pilots.

The ten thousand kamikaze planes had enough fuel for a single one-way flight. They were training people to pilot them and target troop transports.

Why do you think we could send in a slow, solitary bomber to drop these atomic bombs, if they had any aircraft interceptors left at all?

The state of their interceptor fleet is no reflection on the ten thousand kamikazes that they had waiting for us.

The entire country of Japan was entirely at our mercy and we knew it perfectly.

Actually we knew about the two million soldiers they had waiting to repel our invasion.

The actual means of defeating the Japanese was by sinking all their shipping with mines dropped from bombers. They were starving to death, without any defenses left at all,

If that is what defeated them, it's funny how they didn't surrender.

we were deliberately drawing it out so we could use them as bomb test sites.

We were not the ones who were drawing it out. We had no control over Japan's refusal to surrender.

The claim anyone was dying anymore under Japanese occupation is also a lie.

Your holocaust denial is repugnant and despicable.

A minimum of 100,000 people every month were dying under Japanese occupation.

Our deliberate lies about the Japanese are one of the worst war crimes on all history.

No such lies.

And you might want to consider some of the various genocides before you start loosely throwing around accusations about the worst war crimes in history.

The Japanese NEVER refused to surrender,

Yes they did. Their first surrender offer came only after both atomic bombs had already been dropped.

and had done everything in their power to surrender months earlier.

Fake news. Never happened.

WRONG!
Economic sanctions ARE most definitely illegal war crimes.
It was ratified by the US in the 1906 Geneva Conventions.
Civilian economic warfare is totally illegal.
Economic sanctions are not just acts of war, but criminal.

That is preposterous nonsense.

If economic sanctions were war crimes, we could have lawfully reacted to the 1970s oil embargoes by invading the Middle East and taking their oil by force.

Nuclear explosions flatten entire cities. Most people consider that to be significant.

Wrong.

This is silly. The ability to flatten an entire city is one of the most notable properties of a nuclear explosion.

The blast radius of the 2 atomic bombs dropped on Japan was less than 3 miles.

That was a lot farther than the lethal radiation extended.

So the explosive shock wave is not the main effect.

That is incorrect. Explosive shock is the main effect.

Most of the people are killed by radiation.

I've never seen a breakdown of radiation deaths versus non-radiation deaths.

Had Japan continued to refuse to surrender, we would have invaded.

That is a lie.
The whole "Operation Olympic" was fake, entirely designed to head off criticism for our deliberate war crimes.
Japan was an isolated island, incapable of escape, so essentially was a penal colony, slowly starving to death.
Invasion was totally unnecessary, useless, and never seriously considered.

That is incorrect. We were planning to invade in a few months if Japan had kept refusing to surrender.