please spare a thought for those that died because of the bomb. and hope that never again will a nuclear weapon (or hydrogen weapon for that matter) will ever be used again.

Atomic weapon.

Thought spared.

Moving on.

Hope is slowly dying, unfortunately, I believe it was damaged by the first bomb and has been dying since.

http://nuclearhistory.tripod.com/secondary_pages/injuries.html

My entire argument against dropping the atomic bomb on innocent Japanese civilians.

Senseless destruction of innocent civillians that didn't deserve it. Depressing.

(And yes, I realize the irony)

Prime example of american logic, eh?

:]

it did the job though.

Yeah, only at the cost of well over 360,000 innocent Japenese civillians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

(edit, Hiroshima's anniversery was yesterday the 6th, Nagasaki's on the 9th.)

60 years ago.

[QUOTE=IRG SithLord]60 years ago.[/QUOTE]


What you quoted was in response to "Senseless destruction of innocent civillians," which is obviously directed at the whole Iraq invasion stupidity incident currently developing.

I did wonder why all these people were all of a sudden mentioning hiroshima..

now i know.

although all those civilians...

THAT president must have been a Sith, not Bush...

Except the atomic bombs were intended to kill them. The invasion was not.

[QUOTE=IRG SithLord]Except the atomic bombs were intended to kill them. The invasion was not.[/QUOTE]

We're doing a pretty good job of killing innocent Iraqi's atomic bombs or not.


Why isn't anyone trying to take away OUR WMD's? We're the only country to have used them in a combat situation, and on innocent civillians no less.

It isn't intentional as was the A-bombs.

Besides, it's no excuse for FG to insult an entire population.



Um, no. We're the only ones that have used the atomic bomb.

You're an idiot.

I would say, please nip this debate in the bud, but I suspect it's too late.

I can't believe people are still arguing about something that happened 60 years ago and fully ended a world war. Obviously if it was able to stop the fighting, SOMETHING was right about it.

Sure I feel sorry for the people, but seeing how it saved the 1,000,000 troops that would've invaded Japan and the 3,000,000 projected Japanese deaths, I'm all for it.

Constant American night raids (which would've happeend if we would've invaded) are FAR more deadly than one atomic bomb. Certain night raids in WWII killed 100,000 people.

Oh you mean those bombs hurt people? I had no idea...

I think any destruction of human life is lamentable. You have to wonder if it was worth it though. With the carpet/fire bombing policy during WWII, if we had invaded we would have made the death toll of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like hopefully minimum casualty dreams. Also, no one before knew of the destructive power of an atomic weapon(though they were researching it regardless), and if it weren't known how truly destructive these weapons are, maybe people wouldn't have been so afraid to use nuclear weapons in the Cold War........

/me spares a moment.

I personally believe that it is an issue which transcends numbers. Despite how many people would have died in an invasion, the majority of the deaths which would have occured would have been either soldiers or people who were aware of the situation. I think that its important that one is able to defend for themselves, even if it is really only an illusion. I think that its far more reasonable than simply being annihilated instananeously into oblivion.. then again, thats a distinction i realize most people won't make.

But the other thing is that Germany and Italyhad already surrendered, and I fundamentally see World War II as a war against Germany. Japan's surrender could have been diplomatic, and I've read (albeit in very liberal magazines so i don't know how much stock I put into it) that diplomatic talks were well under discussion when bombs were dropped.

But regardless, no matter what, I don't see what happened in Hiroshima 60 years ago as a sacrifice. Nothing will make me see it as one. It was excessive killing purely as a display of American military might, and I recognize that it ended the war a lot quicker than other methods probably would have.

Not to mention, why should America sacrifice their troops in a ground invasion when Japan is the one who started the war between them in the first place? If atomic bombs saved the most AMERICANS then that is all that matters. Japan SHOULD have known what they were getting themselves into when they launched an unprovoked, offensive attack on the world's largest superpower.

I've never gotten the impression that in 1941 America was 'the world's largest super power'.

Japan's government launched the attack, not Japan's citizens.

Unfotunately in wars as large scale as that, its the citizens that get drafted into the armies and end up doing all the fighting anyway.

Not to mention taking Japan would've been a lot like any other Asian country--lots of geurrilla warfare. So, although not all Japanese citizens were willing to fight, it would've been enough to be harrowing and create quite the resistance.

[QUOTE=Kieran Horn] Also, no one before knew of the destructive power of an atomic weapon(though they were researching it regardless)...[/QUOTE]

Even though they detonated one in the desert before Hiroshima and saw it's power first-hand?

They didn't know very well how it would work in a city. Read up on it. They had guesses, but the guesses were wildly off.

A desert isn't exactly a prime test ground for the extensiveness of damage in a city.

I love how horrible it is that we killed tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, but no one really cares that we killed hundreds of thousands of American Indians.

That's really quaint.

[QUOTE=IRG SithLord]Even though they detonated one in the desert before Hiroshima and saw it's power first-hand?[/QUOTE]
Pretty much. They could see the cause of such destruction, but not the effect. They could only imagine.

Basically, this was why the A-bombs were used:
1) Revenge for Pearl Harbor and the war in general
2) Justification for spending all that time and money on the project.
3) To force the Japanese to surrender and not have to do a long and bloody invasion of the main island.
4) To show the Soviets(who we were becoming increasingly paranoid with and visa versa) that we would not be scared to use our big weapons if need be.
5) To force a surrender of Japan before the Soviets could discreetly take Chinese territory from Japan and keep it for themselves as well as to prevent them from invading Japan itself, which they were gearing up for.

this is what certain people, much more knowledgeable than any of us, have said:

"In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act? During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment, was I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."
- Eisenhower, Dwight D. The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-56. Garden City: Doubleday

MacArthur believed the dropping of the bombs to be "completely unnecessary from a military point of view." The same opinion was expressed by Fleet Admiral William Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), General Carl Spaatz (commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific), and Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials); Major General Curtis LeMay; and Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.

Do you know the meaning of geurrilla warfare? Do you know why we pulled out of North Korea and Vietnam?

[QUOTE=Kieran Horn]Pretty much. They could see the cause of such destruction, but not the effect. They could only imagine.[/quote]

And they could imagine quite a bit. The journalist assigned to the project (his writings were classified until the dropping of the bomb), William Laurence described Trinity as "a grand finale of a mighty symphony of the elements, fascinating and terrifying, uplifting and crushing, ominous, full of great promise and great forebodings."

General Thomas Farrell wrote of Trinity:



Robert Oppenheimer's response to Trinity was to say " the world would not be the same." Indeed, he even admitted later that the Trinity explosion made him rethink the possibility of a demonstration which he initially ruled out. The Americans working on the project always had the fear that the bomb would be a failure, but Trinity caused a surge of confidence.

I don't think it's insignificant at all that they saw the "cause" even though the effect was left to the imagination.

Very true.



Not long, but it's not like they would lie down and surrender if American troops invaded the mainland. They no longer had the power to wage war externally, but they were coiled up like a rattlesnake ready to strike, trust me.



I would agree. But realize that even more died in the conventional bombing that went on all over Europe. You do realize that half a million European civilians died from conventional bombing and firebombing, right? The atomic bombs killed roughly a quarter million.

I think it's time to move on folks.

They're a tiny freaking island, without the natural resources required to keep a war machine going.

How long do you really think they were going to keep it up with all their allies defeated?



An attack on innocent civillians, especially one that is ON PURPOSE, with such a violent weapon is just too screwed up. End of discussion.



AND DUDE, don't even get me started on the genocide America commited against Natives.

A bunch of people attempting to carry on with everyday life didn't deserve to have an atomic weapon dropped on them.

Yes, ReT, move on and let's focus on all of the atrocities being inflicted on "good" people these days as opposed to noticing the hypocracy inherant in it all. We're allowed to kill mass amounts of people, perform mass genocide, rebel against our parent country, and whatever the hell else we can do in the name of the insuffrable buzzword "freedom."

Give me a break.

Check the timestamp on the first message.



True, but they controlled a huuuge amount of land, resources, etc. that weren't on the mainland a la invaded and controlled territories.