What's your point of view in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb?

[bazmeistergen]

KichiVerde said:

ORLY? Then it must be real reason for nuking them! I'm sorry I had such awful doubts about the government, it looks like they really cared about all those poor Japanese... -.-

I didn't say they cared about the Japanese, they wanted to end the war and unless the Japanese unconditionally surrendered, they were going to level the country with conventional weaponry, which WOULD have led to more deaths.

On a side point, I'd like to clarify a point I never brought up earlier: while I support the American decision to drop the bomb on HIroshima to put an exclamation point on the war and force an *unconditional* surrender, I definitely question the decision to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki. In my opinion, the first bomb proved the point. A few weeks should have been allowed to pass to give the Japanese time to adjust to the shock of having a city decimated. It seemed superfluous and rather cruel to me. A second city shouldn't have suffered that fate.

True. The second bomb should not have been dropped. The threat of a second bomb following the Hiroshima blast would have been enough to force the surrender. But the Americans were not willing to risk it. They wanted to end the war ASAP before the Russian took more control of Asia.

Once the war ended, the first thing the US Navy did was land in Incheon to keep the Russians from taking all of the Korean Peninsula. Had the Russians been given a few more weeks Korea as a whole would suck right now. But even so I think the war would have ended before then. Once the reports of Japanese losses in Manchuria to the Russians (assault took place directly after Hiroshima bombing) would have been confirmed they would have thrown in the towel. The triple whammy of Hiroshima A-bomb, Manchurian military losses and second possibility of A-bomb would have been enough.

It was all a power play between Russia and the US, and Japan got caught in the middle. The US wanted to end the war and flex their military might. Russia wanted to take advantage of Japan's weakening position to take control of all their North Eastern Asian possessions. But Japan was not the victim. They created that situation themselves.

As for the Hiroshima bomb, it was a must. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a naive liberal or someone who chooses to misinterpret the facts..

I quite agree. Japan was not the victim, but nor was America without responsibility.

Some of the Japanese were victims of course.