The bomb used on japan twice

[1911crazy]

Today is the 67th anniversary of the bomb we used on japan.  Funny i don't see any pics of pearl harbor??   I believe we did the right thing but maybe more were needed.

[yellowtail3]

Today is the 67th anniversary of the bomb we used on japan.  Funny i don't see any pics of pearl harbor?? 

that was in Dec 41, not Aug of 45 - that's why.

I believe we did the right thing but maybe more were needed.

more nukes against the Japanese? Why? Their navy was gone, their air arm destroyed, they couldn't move any freighters, the population were looking at starvation - why kill still more Japanese civilians?

[guzzijohn]

The two nukes brought a quick end to what may have been a more horrible result for all involved in an alternative. That is not in any way to take away the horribleness of the bombs and their results. Thank God they have never been used against mankind since then. Being that it was 67 years ago it does amaze me that more countries have not been able to build the bomb considering the "information age" and computers, thank God.
GuzziJohn

[snapdragon]

Today is the 67th anniversary of the bomb we used on japan.  Funny i don't see any pics of pearl harbor?? 

that was in Dec 41, not Aug of 45 - that's why.

I believe we did the right thing but maybe more were needed.

more nukes against the Japanese? Why? Their navy was gone, their air arm destroyed, they couldn't move any freighters, the population were looking at starvation - why kill still more Japanese civilians?

Many military leaders still wanted to fight on after the bombs and almost got their wish.  Something dramatic and horrible needed to occur to get them to stop.

[Cheesehead]

My Father was home on leave after defeating Nazi Germany. He was told his next assignment was mainland Japan, until we nuked them, twice.

Cheese

[fatercat]

some of the young kids my see them used again, i hope not.

[Cuts Crooked]

[ Why? Their navy was gone, their air arm destroyed, they couldn't move any freighters, the population were looking at starvation

Soooo......yer saying we saved many Japanese lives by using the nukes?

[williamlayton]

Cuts
I really believe we did save many Japanese lives--and the Japanese alos have come to this conclusion.
The intent to save their lives was a consideration bbut there were several more things that prompted the use of these weapons.
While the Russians were our allies, they were not the most trusted allies we had. They had designs of conquest and land grabbing (most of this was due to the paranoia of Stalin) and the US and GB--US mostly-- wanted no interfrrence from ANY other nation in the rebuilding and reform of Japan after war ceased.
The determination--reguardless of how much McArthur wanted the invasion--that the American public would not stand for the number of casualities which would be required to conquer Japan by invasion.
There were objectives which are now known. We wanted to stop Russian intervention (militarily) into Japan and conquering all of Korea. We left SE Asia to the French and British.
I think we saved lives and defused (at least for a time) the expansion desires of the Communist.
Blessings

[Conan The Librarian]

It set a good precedent for using a powerful and dangerous weapon. The japan bombings made an example that nobody wanted to follow, and it helped prevent use of nukes in warfare for a significant number of years.

[SHOOTALL]

Most likely lives were saved on both sides but in war it is better to save the lives of your side first. Wasn't it Patton said it was better to let the other bastard die for his side or something to that tune.........
It like the idea of a clean war    or no torture  or not realizing that if the civilian workers are stopped the supplies of war stop. Any one of the three can/will bring a faster end to war .
As for precedent it showed the world we would use it . Since we have tried to keep others from having it and it has caused us to fight a clean war costing us more in soilders killed , wounded and wealth used to fight. It has caused us to have a war economy which we are having trouble maintaining now.
Even doing the right than can be a bad choice .

[yellowtail3]

[ Why? Their navy was gone, their air arm destroyed, they couldn't move any freighters, the population were looking at starvation

Soooo......yer saying we saved many Japanese lives by using the nukes?

Nooooo... I was sayin' that there was no reason for further attacks on Japan. They were defeated, they had no further ability to wage war, other than desperate defense of their own home ground... and they SURRENDERED.


Perhaps 1911crazy (fitting moniker) will expand on why he thinks two cities incinerated by nuclear weapons wasn't enough?

[snapdragon]

Well, the two were almost not enough to make them stop.  You would have thought that one bomb would have done the trick, but it obviously did not.  We were lucky that the internal struggle among the leaders did not require us to drop more bombs that we did not have.  The emperor finally had to step in and demand that the war stop.  Some folks had even tried to kidnap the emperor so they could keep fighting. He had to go on public radio to convince the soldiers and the people to stop fighting. 

[Dixie Dude]

The pure uranium 235 or 238, I forget or plutonium aren't easy to make.  You have to have centrifuges to seperate the pure stuff from the ore.  Takes time.  The two bombs we dropped were the only two we had.  It would have taken about 6 months to make 2 more.  Based on the death rate and fighting the Japanese did on Okiniowa and Iwo Jima, we estimated loosing 1 million men to take the main islands, not counting Japanese soldiers and civilian deaths.  Plans were for invasion in November 45 after they moved men from Europe to Asia for the invasion.  With the two bombs and Russia invading Manchuria, they came to their senses.
 
Spelling is incorrect, but can't get spell check to work right now.

[yellowtail3]

Well, the two were almost not enough to make them stop.  You would have thought that one bomb would have done the trick, but it obviously did not.  We were lucky that the internal struggle among the leaders did not require us to drop more bombs that we did not have.  The emperor finally had to step in and demand that the war stop.  Some folks had even tried to kidnap the emperor so they could keep fighting. He had to go on public radio to convince the soldiers and the people to stop fighting.

All true.


But even if worst-case had won out - die-hards had won the day, which they did not - Japan was still defeated. They couldn't project power, they couldn't defend their homeland against air attacks, out of fuel and supplies, cities burned down... and they were gonna starve if it stretched much further. I think the US casualty estimates for Olympic & Coronet were overblown, but that's all guesswork now.

[us920669]

Someone made a case once - this was years ago - that there were about 10,000 Chinese dying every day from disease and starvation caused by the war.  So one more week of war and you're pushing six figures.  There is also some opinion that a joint German/Japanese team was working on a bomb in Northern Korea.  True or not I don't know, but there are reasons why our leaders might have suspected as much.  Bottom line, Truman made the right call, horrible as it was.   

[snapdragon]

Well, the two were almost not enough to make them stop.  You would have thought that one bomb would have done the trick, but it obviously did not.  We were lucky that the internal struggle among the leaders did not require us to drop more bombs that we did not have.  The emperor finally had to step in and demand that the war stop.  Some folks had even tried to kidnap the emperor so they could keep fighting. He had to go on public radio to convince the soldiers and the people to stop fighting.

All true.


But even if worst-case had won out - die-hards had won the day, which they did not - Japan was still defeated. They couldn't project power, they couldn't defend their homeland against air attacks, out of fuel and supplies, cities burned down... and they were gonna starve if it stretched much further. I think the US casualty estimates for Olympic & Coronet were overblown, but that's all guesswork now.

There is a big difference between being defeated and surrendering.  As long as they were in uniform they were going to try to kill us.  They still had enough arms to kill a whole bunch of us.  They would have fought to the last soldier and civilian, as they had many times before during the war, taking as many of our boys and girls with them as they could. 

[m-g Willy]

But even if worst-case had won out - die-hards had won the day, which they did not - Japan was still defeated. They couldn't project power, they couldn't defend their homeland against air attacks, out of fuel and supplies, cities burned down... and they were gonna starve if it stretched much further. I think the US casualty estimates for Olympic & Coronet were overblown, but that's all guesswork now.

The US casualty estimates were all over the board.
Depending on how long it would take a invasion to end all fighting.
So estimates went as high as 1million!
So just a question to you,,,,What would you feel a good trade off of American lives would be to go with an invasion instead of dropping the bombs that ended it?
I think that ONE  American life is to much to lose to save any number of enemy lives !

[Curtis]

We killed more Japanese civilians by far with conventional bombs than we did with the two 'nukes.  The destruction just was not as complete and terrifying as the 'nukes.  I think two was the perfect number.  One to show what we could do and another to show it was not a one-time deal.  They had to be wondering just how many we had.
 
Curtis

[SHOOTALL]

consider this , after 9/11 if we had dropped a small nuke  on Tora Bora we would have been blasted by some praised by others . But one thing would most likely happened we would have been feared to the point those wishing to do us harm would have backed away. And out youth , economy and way of life would still be intact .

[guzzijohn]

Quote fro Shootall:
"And out youth , economy and way of life would still be intact ."


If we had dropped any kind of nuke anyplace we would be in much worse economic shape now than we are because there would have been world wide retaliation against the US, at least things like trade sanctions if not even military.
GuzziJohn

[SHOOTALL]

I doubt it , think about it if any country retaliated we could have cut off aid to that country and they would have backed off. You do realize our money is the oil that lets the world spin don't you ?

[Cuts Crooked]

Nooooo... I was sayin' that there was no reason for further attacks on Japan. They were defeated, they had no further ability to wage war, other than desperate defense of their own home ground... and they SURRENDERED.

The problem with that statement is you don't define WHEN they surrendered. They surrendered AFTER the bombs were dropped. Their history reveals that they probably would NOT have surrendered unless they were totally and utterly defeated by the direct actions of their enemies.

This was the nature of war at that time too. Wars were fought to be WON! The current fiasco we live with is to fight limited wars with limited objectives......which does not appear to be working very well. Fighting a war until the enemy surrenders or is completely destroyed has fallen out of favor and now we have more enemies than ever before in history. One need only ask themselves one thing about war to understand what has changed......Who is our staunchest ally in the Pacific?

[Sourdough]

If our troops had landed on Japan, it would have been door to door fighting, against men, women, and children.  None would have given up till they were dead.  the human toll would have been devastating for both sides. 

I agree Truman made the right choice. 

[Victor3]

 Interesting to note that during the Korean "UN Police Action," the policemen (US Military) didn't really have much of a "plan B" if push came to shove with the Chinese.
 
 Nukes made such a neat job of it all just a few years prior. And heck, we had new and improved models to try out...

[SHOOTALL]

Nooooo... I was sayin' that there was no reason for further attacks on Japan. They were defeated, they had no further ability to wage war, other than desperate defense of their own home ground... and they SURRENDERED.

The problem with that statement is you don't define WHEN they surrendered. They surrendered AFTER the bombs were dropped. Their history reveals that they probably would NOT have surrendered unless they were totally and utterly defeated by the direct actions of their enemies.

This was the nature of war at that time too. Wars were fought to be WON! The current fiasco we live with is to fight limited wars with limited objectives......which does not appear to be working very well. Fighting a war until the enemy surrenders or is completely destroyed has fallen out of favor and now we have more enemies than ever before in history. One need only ask themselves one thing about war to understand what has changed......Who is our staunchest ally in the Pacific?

good post

[williamlayton]

The Russians were the major reason for the decision to want the war in Japan over as quickly as possible .
Blessings

[Hodr]

Please Google General Curtis Le May, then go to Wiki heading,
Atomic weapons dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the most devastating and costly raids to the Axis in WWII.  In one night, one raid utilising B29s with no defensive weaponry Le May destroyed 16 square miles of Tokyo.  Since 16 sq miles is a little difficult to grasp try 10,250 acres of city destroyed by one raid.  He also staged the same incendiary raids on other cities.  The reply of the japanese was basiclly the US did not have enough bommbers or munitions to quell the indomitable spirit of Japan.  At that time Truman authorised use of nuclear weapons.  This action convinced the Japanese one plane, one bomb, one city.  War over.
 
Hodr

[BBF]

Today is the 67th anniversary of the bomb we used on japan.  Funny i don't see any pics of pearl harbor??   I believe we did the right thing but maybe more were needed.

I don't know where you live or what you watch.
Over the last 30 plus years I have seen more Pearl Harbor clips and movies on TV then just about any other military event followed up by D Day .

[us920669]

It's hard to believe about such a polite people who make such great cars and cameras, but the wartime Japanese were really over-the-top wacky.  Some of them positively loathed cities, also money, electricity, internal combustion - a hundred thousand or so people meant absolutely nothing to them.  Mainly, the bomb got the emperor's attention.
There is also the matter of the invasion.  Hitting Kyushu was technically tricky, considering beach and surf conditions and so forth.  They were planning on sending in 4 million females with sharpened screwdrivers and such.  I wonder if we could have off-loaded enough ammo in time.  They had a first-rate bio-weapons program.  It's almost surprising the never used them on our Pacific bases, or even California.  And that's not everything by a long shot.  Like somebody else once said, thank God for the atom bomb.   

[yellowtail3]

In one night, one raid utilising B29s with no defensive weaponry Le May destroyed 16 square miles of Tokyo.

The really telling part about that is... they went without defensive armament (something the Eight never did over Germany) because the Japanese AF was without fuel, few trained pilots, and mostly poor aircraft.

It's hard to believe about such a polite people who make such great cars and cameras, but the wartime Japanese were really over-the-top wacky.  Some of them positively loathed cities, also money, electricity, internal combustion - a hundred thousand or so people meant absolutely nothing to them.  Mainly, the bomb got the emperor's attention.

The Japans of pre-WW2 was very different than Japan of today. Their manufacturing technique was distinctly 2nd rate, they had much lower literacy/level of education. We had far better human resources than they did, not to mention hugely more industrial/scientific resources. Japan never should have gone to war with the US.


The did fight like hell, though.