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

[MaryL]

Everyone has 20-20 hindsight. Japan shouldn't have invaded China, for that matter, or attacked Pearl harbor, either. What ya gonna do?

You can never justify massacring defenseless civilians.

Japan did it all the time as a matter of policy. The rape of Nanjing. Unit 731.部隊

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Everyone has 20-20 hindsight. Japan shouldn't have invaded China, for that matter, or attacked Pearl harbor, either. What ya gonna do?

You can never justify massacring defenseless civilians.

A) They were not defenseless and B) it wasn't a massacre it was an attack on 2 Legitimate MILITARY Targets. You don't want Civilians killed? Don't plant an army division in their city.

 

[MaryL]

London, Dresden. The fire bombing of Tokyo killed more than Nagasaki. The people that slaughtered innocent civilians (Japan) in China, suddenly NOW are victims because we were trying to stop THEM doing IT? Explain that.

 

[fncceo]

If you take away the emotion from nuclear weapons and evaluate their effectiveness objectively, it could be argued that nuclear weapons are the most effective weapons man has ever discovered.

In World War II, Japan was arguably the most fanatic enemy America has ever faced. Audacious in their belief in their own superiority, morally and in every other way. Fanatical in their ideology. Japan puts ISIS and Al-Qaeda to shame. Japan launched over 5,000 suicide warriors against Allied forces. They were training their civilian women and children to perform suicide attacks against invading foreigners. The will of the Japanese to fight is probably unsurpassed in modern times.

The application of only two, very small, nuclear weapons turned the entire nation into pacifistic capitalists almost overnight. That is certainly a great deal of buck for the bang.

Additionally, just the thought of nuclear weapons was enough to keep war down to manageable levels for the next 70 years.

If that weren't enough, no other weapon in History has spawned it's own genre of cinematic entertainment.

 

[Kilroy2]

Any country will have it hard liners or warmongers and those who disagree with warmongers.

In the end when the victors called for the unconditional surrender or a prompt and utter destruction of Japan if the ultimatum was ignored.

how would anyone respond to such a request

well they argue about it

Still after more than 67 fire bombs that even hit Tokyo and arguably killed more people that the Nukes, it became clear that killing civilians was a factor in a decision to make it a moral argument instead of a knock down brawl out fight between ground troops

But if the emperor who finally took command of the bickering had done so sooner it might have saved some civilian lives, It was his decision to make to end the killing

who in Japan would argue with the Emperor but if the Emperor never brought it up then they can argue among themselves

eventually he had to make a moral decision to save innocent people's lives

then again if the US had been a little less aggressive and allow the Japanese to save face then who knows a peace treaty might have been reached with the killing of immoral act of killing civilians

then the US could save face instead of arguing among themselves as what was the best way to end the war

 

[gipper]

Everyone has 20-20 hindsight. Japan shouldn't have invaded China, for that matter, or attacked Pearl harbor, either. What ya gonna do?

You can never justify massacring defenseless civilians.

Japan did it all the time as a matter of policy. The rape of Nanjing. Unit 731.部隊

Yep and it was entirely unjustified and a war crime. Why would you want to emulate them?

 

[MaryL]

NAGASAKI ? The IMPERIAL JAPANESE pracataly

Everyone has 20-20 hindsight. Japan shouldn't have invaded China, for that matter, or attacked Pearl harbor, either. What ya gonna do?

You can never justify massacring defenseless civilians.

Japan did it all the time as a matter of policy. The rape of Nanjing. Unit 731.部隊

Yep and it was entirely unjustified and a war crime. Why would you want to emulate them?

Fighting war mongers isn't a war crime...Robert Oppenheimer can attest

 

[mikegriffith1]

Everyone has 20-20 hindsight. Japan shouldn't have invaded China, for that matter, or attacked Pearl harbor, either. What ya gonna do?

Japan fought to protect its treaty-granted rights and business interests in China. The Chinese Nationalists started the war by attacking the Japanese quarter of Shanghai with several divisions while the Japanese were making peace offers. And the Japanese only decided to attack Pearl Harbor after FDR had imposed draconian sanctions on them that would have caused the collapse of Japan's economy if Japan did not find other sources of oil and other raw materials--and even then Japan only attacked after FDR had rejected every Japanese peace proposal. FDR provoked Japan to attack so he could save the Soviet Union and have an excuse to enter WW II.

You can never justify massacring defenseless civilians.

A) They were not defenseless

They were practically defenseless. We've covered this ground before. We were bombing Japan at will and losing only 3 out of every 1,000 bombers. That's why the Enola Gay had no fighter escort when it nuked Hiroshima.

and B) it wasn't a massacre it was an attack on 2 Legitimate MILITARY Targets. You don't want Civilians killed? Don't plant an army division in their city.

More of your militarist propaganda. The army unit was on the outskirts of the city and was a garrison HQ unit, with no fortifications. You say you were a Gunnery Sergeant--then you know what a garrison unit is. A garrison unit is a unit that is not in combat status. Furthermore, those troops were mostly reservists and supply troops. If we wanted to bomb the garrison unit, we could have easily done so with conventional bombing and without damaging the city, but the nuke was aimed at the center of the city.

And I notice that neither you nor MaryL addressed the point that three days was far too soon to drop another atomic bomb on Japan, not to mention that we knew that Japan's largest Christian community lived in Nagasaki.

 

[MaryL]

I am not saying any of that, kiddo. Japan attacked US and that ends there, They had unit 731 and Japan pretty much deserved getting their ass kicked.

 

[Unkotare]

..... Japan attacked US and that ends there......

Because that simple notion is all you are prepared to or capable of grasping. The complex reality of history overwhelms the guilt-ridden, the simple-minded, or the irrationally hateful dimwits who can't think beyond what fits on a bottle cap. Trite slogans and never-questioned bumper stickers do NOT amount to any serious study of history.

 

[the other mike]

Anyone defending our nuking of Hiroshima or Nagasaki
has no soul.



Even if we had dropped Little Boy directly on Hitler, it wouldn't have justified killing the 150,000 people around him would it ?

 

[Unkotare]

.....

Even if we had dropped Little Boy directly on Hitler, it wouldn't have justified killing the 150,000 people around him would it ?
...

Thinking about that - and measuring it within a sense of morality - is too difficult for some people so they hide behind "no choice!" "saved lives!" "not my fault!" because it is so much easier than thinking.

 

[mikegriffith1]

.....
Even if we had dropped Little Boy directly on Hitler, it wouldn't have justified killing the 150,000 people around him would it?

Indeed, if we were really so worried about the small garrison HQ unit that was stationed on the outskirts of Hiroshima, we could have easily bombed it with conventional bombers. Furthermore, the nuke was aimed at the center of the city, which is why the army compound suffered minimal damage compared to the city, and why so many of the soldiers there survived.

Hiroshima's harbor was useless for military purposes, since we had mined it. The army unit there had no fortifications because it was a garrison unit whose soldiers were mostly reservists and supply troops.

If that garrison unit made Hiroshima a "military target," then just about every major city in America is a "military target" because every major American city has national guard units and several units of reservists.

Similarly, if the factories in Hiroshima made the city a "military target," then every American city with factories is a "military target." Most of the factories in Hiroshima were on the outskirts of the city. Those factories, like the garrison unit, could have been bombed with conventional bombing, and, again, the nuke was purposely aimed at the city center.

Thinking about that - and measuring it within a sense of morality - is too difficult for some people so they hide behind "no choice!" "saved lives!" "not my fault!" because it is so much easier than thinking.

And they just keep repeating myths that have been soundly debunked in this thread. They rightly complain about the refusal of some Japanese to admit Japan's war crimes, but our "thank God for the atom bomb" folks are just as guilty of obscene denial of war crimes when they argue that Hiroshima was a valid target and that the nuking of Nagasaki was also "necessary."

And let's not forget, as historian John Dower points out, that Truman approved a massive conventional bombing raid on Japan five days after Nagasaki and after we knew Japan was going to surrender:

Even after the Japanese government clearly indicated its intention to surrender, the United States chose to send a massive final bombing mission over Tokyo on August 14, killing and injuring additional thousands of civilians. (History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past, p. 86)
​

A true patriot does not find it necessary to defend war crimes ordered by the corrupt and immoral Truman administration.

 

[mikegriffith1]

By early 1945, Japan’s air defenses were known to be so weak that when Gen. LeMay planned the massive March 9 bombing raid on Tokyo, he ordered that the bombers be stripped of their machine guns to make room for more bombs! Edwin P. Hoyt:

General LeMay called his wing commanders to meet at his Quonset hut headquarters on Guam. He showed them the results of the [February 26] Tokyo firebomb raid. . . . His XXI Bomber Command was going to switch to night raids.​

Moreover, they were going to change their entire tactics. No more high-altitude raids. They would go in low, 5,000 to 6,000 feet, and the crews would be reduced to save weight for more bombs. . . . Japanese anti-aircraft defenses were nothing like the German, LeMay knew from his European Theater experience. He anticipated losses due to flak would be only 5 percent. . . .​

Only two aircraft had been lost to flak to date because the Japanese relied on searchlights and radar, while the German flak batteries were controlled electronically. . . .

What about fighters? Somebody asked.​

That would not be a problem. The Japanese had only two groups of night fighters in all the home islands, LeMay said. “That’s why I’m sending in the B-29s without machine guns or ammunition.” (Hoyt, Inferno: The Fire Bombing of Japan, New York: Madison Books, 2000, Kindle Edition, locs. 231-243)​

Guess how many of the 298 bombers were shot down during the raid? Keep in mind that not only did the bombers have no machine guns, they had no fighter escorts either. So guess how many of the defenseless 298 bombers the Japanese managed to shoot down? 40? 60? 80? Nope. Try 14. That’s right: only 14 of the 298 bombers were shot down, for a loss rate of only 4.7% (Hoyt, loc. 321). And this was in a two-hour raid with the bombers flying at low altitudes over the capital city.

By the way, that bombing raid killed over 100,000 Japanese civilians, wounded another 200,000, and left over a million people homeless.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

War is hell.

 

[P@triot]

Anyone defending our nuking of Hiroshima or Nagasaki
has no soul.



Even if we had dropped Little Boy directly on Hitler, it wouldn't have justified killing the 150,000 people around him would it ?

Anyone denouncing our use of nuclear weapons on Japan is an idiot and an asshole. Period.

 

[P@triot]

Thinking about that - and measuring it within a sense of morality - is too difficult for some people so they hide behind "no choice!" "saved lives!" "not my fault!" because it is so much easier than thinking.

Yeah...because....we all know you are the bastion of thinking around here.

Conservative: “A is the right choice”
Unkotare: “A is but the enemy in a world where B is considered”

Liberal: “B is the right choice”
Unkotare: “B sees the prism through the lense of A”

You’re literally a low quality fortune cookie if a fortune cookie could become an immature online troll. You’ve been on this board for like a decade now, have made thousands and thousands of posts, and have literally yet to add value to even a single thread. Literally. Ever. All you do is take up space.

 

[P@triot]

By the way, that bombing raid killed over 100,000 Japanese civilians, wounded another 200,000, and left over a million people homeless.

By the way, that’s sort of the point of bombing, you imbecile.

 

[P@triot]

Indeed, if we were really so worried about the small garrison HQ unit that was stationed on the outskirts of Hiroshima, we could have easily bombed it with conventional bombers.

Indeed...we could have prolonged the war another 10 years and another 100,000 American lives. But real Americans weren’t down with that. We just want to win the war so we could end it. And we did. Deal with it.

 

[Unkotare]

Thinking about that - and measuring it within a sense of morality - is too difficult for some people so they hide behind "no choice!" "saved lives!" "not my fault!" because it is so much easier than thinking.

Yeah...because....we all know you are the bastion of thinking around here.

Conservative: “A is the right choice”
Unkotare: “A is but the enemy in a world where B is considered”

Liberal: “B is the right choice”
Unkotare: “B sees the prism through the lense of A”

You’re literally a low quality fortune cookie if a fortune cookie could become an immature online troll. You’ve been on this board for like a decade now, have made thousands and thousands of posts, and have literally yet to add value to even a single thread. Literally. Ever. All you do is take up space.

Are you done crying yet?