a) They were leaving Hiroshima for the atomic bomb. A dick move, but it was still necessary. The purpose of the bomb was to show the Japanese what they could do and to get them to surrender. Thus, bombing an already bombed city would be beating a dead horse.

b) Where does it say that? Please show! But yes, they may have been talking about surrendering, but does it mean they were immediately going to do so? Nope.

c) Those are part of the reasons why an invasion of Japan would've been waay worse. Millions of people dead, plus Japan being divided between communists and capitalists. Int he long run that outcome was way worse.

I mean, look at Japan right now. They're doing relatively well-off dontcha think?

Ideally, you kill nobody.

But if you have a choice between killing 300,000 and killing over a million, you choose the lower number. Whether they are civilians or soldiers isn't really relevant.

That's assuming that there was that choice in the first place, of course.

Perhaps the decision-makers (subconsciously) didn't care about the Japanese overtures for peace (which were significant) because they had already in their minds decided that the Japanese weren't serious - probably because (subconsciously) they wanted to use the bomb - after all, they had just invested a lot of money in it and had several 'good' reasons to use them. The orthodox/revisionist/post-revisionist debate over this is quite interesting, but it is clearly more complex than just saying they did it to save lives.

Hmm OK, I agree with you there. I thought you were making a point, which you apparently weren't.

So if you had to choose between two actions. Klling 50.000 Chlldren/women/innocents or 100.000 soldiers you would choose the 50.000?

The only way you are saying this is because you know the endresult...For the same sake Japan would not have surrendered and the Japanese soldiers would fight even harder and braver..and maybe 10 bombs would have been dropped..

"Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group."

Hiroshima and Nagasaki was deliberate systematic destruction of an ethnic or racial group. They were killed because they were Japanese...

sorry. it´s kind of difficult to explain myself. english is not my first language

With the logic of retaliating for Japanese crimes, they should have been the Chinese to bomb Japan. And applying the same principle, Native American survivors of the most decimated tribes would be justified to bomb some middle sized US towns. Southern French could bomb Northern France to retaliate for the Albigean Crusade. Eastern Europe and Western and Central Asia could gang together and destroy Mongolia to take vengeance for Genghis Khan. And why not dropping the bomb on Berlin at the end of WW II, just to be sure to kill Hitler and his buddies? OTOH the Polish could have considered bombing Moskow, as the original criminal deal between Hitler and Stalin to share Europe caused the start of WW II at their expenses, and they kept on paying even after the war, oppressd by URSS.

I agree but the bombs definitely had the purpose the persuade the Japanese in surrendering. They couldn't have known Japan would surrender after the atomic bomb, but because they did I believe it was indeed the right decision. I can't imagine how hard it was to make this decision, I don't think I could have done it.

a) I'm aware they left the city untouched so they could measure the power of the bomb. My point is if the place was *such* an important base they would have destroyed it earlier.

b) I'll get back to you when I've got proper sources (rather than the internet) I have some decent revisionist accounts at work - Perhaps Lafeber will have some direct references.

c) End doesn't justify the means. An invasion would have killed more people. I'm doubting it was an invasion that was necessary, however. The policy-makers, of course, had different ideas and didn't take Japanese overtures seriously. Why would they? They knew what they had up there sleeves and wanted the type of surrender that only hyper-annihilation could give them.