August 6 was Hiroshima day and Aug 9 Nagasaki. One of the worst ever war crime and one of the worst ever genocide.

It was done to stop a ground invasion, which would have been one of the worst things the world has ever seen.

While disgusting, it was understandable in that context.

At no point ever a genocide is justifiable.

It's not justifiable but still understandable

Yeah it was understandable, but really we should never as a species be *bleep* around with weapons that can do THAT to our own planet, retarded.

I went to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Seeing the Enola Gay there made my blood boil. Talked to some Americans about it and they agreed with me, said that there is no way an instrument genocide can be glorified like that

It's not there to be glorified. It's there to be remembered for its important and destructive role. It is a piece of history and a part of a massive turning point (for better or worse) in history and should be remembered as such. Much like the concentration camps memorialized and maintained in Germany, it is kept and displayed as a reminder of just how terrible war and humankind can be.

Betty La Fea wrote:It was done to stop a ground invasion, which would have been one of the worst things the world has ever seen.

While disgusting, it was understandable in that context.

thats what the american's want people to believe.

The notion that a Nuclear bombing is less lethal than a ground invasion...seriously how can people buy that fallacy argument made by pro Americans to justify this horrible act?

They fully knew about the strength of Atomic bomb, they fully knew it was going to wipe out thousands of innocents, they fully knew the atomic radiations was going to ruin lifes of another millions of people in that small island but yet they went on with it and justifies that with absolute bonker theories like ground invasion was going to be more lethal

The ground invasion theories are bunch of BS that the world have only seen used in one war ever and that was this. why?

A) They actually did NOT know about the lasting effects of radiation at that point. What concerns there were were hypothetical. The US had so little idea of radiation's lasting effects and such that in their initial tests (just prior to the actual bombings) they unintentionally exposed both US soldiers and civilian observers (scientists) to direct radiation while observing the tests and civilians to fall-out with the dust blowing in the wind and carrying radiation.

B) The fear of loss of life in the case of ground invasion very much WAS a part of the consideration... but it was concerns about AMERICAN loss of life from the soldiers participating, not civilian/Japanese loss of life. Projections at the time ranged from 200,000 to nearly 500,000 people expected to die in the case of an amphibious invasion of Japan by US and Allied forces (on all sides) and US soldiers would be among the highest contributors to that. As such, the US made the decision to use the weapons to avoid such heavy AMERICAN CASUALTIES. The potential high toll of a "ground invasion" was indeed one of the key factors in the decision to use the nuclear weapons.



Neither of these facts justify what was a gross atrocity in a war of atrocity. Both, though, are part of the actual context that should be recognized.

As for "why" these explanations/factors are brought up about this event and no others, it's really quite simple. This was the only event where such actions were taken that said considerations could apply.

Never before or since has there been a war with such massive amphibious invasions as World War II. Never before did any nation have the power to AVOID such a maneuver with a single (or pair of) action(s) with basically no direct threat to said country's own troops and civilians.

D-Day (Operation Overlord or the invasion of Normandy) is and will likely forever be the largest amphibious invasion ever attempted by mankind. The potential invasion of Japan would have eclipsed that by a sizable margin. US intelligence was unclear as to just how weak Japan's economy was at the time and where the national opinion on the war stood. While some sources suggests Japan was ready to accept a conditional surrender or could be beaten simply by continued efforts to strange incoming supplies (which itself would resulted in massive amounts of death due to starvation as the British blockade of Germany in WWI did) others suggested that Japan as a whole was fully behind the government and war effort and would fit to the individual to resist any attempted invasion or surrender.

The nuclear weapon provided something of a zenith or fulfillment of the concept of "strategic air power" which the US was wholly invested in throughout World War II. It offered a means of delivering a decisive blow at minimal cost (for the US) that would end the war with as little (American) bloodshed as possible from that point onward. They had little understand or concern for lasting side-effects like radiation and in a "total war" (which WWII was considered to be by ALL PARTICIPANT NATIONS) attacking civilian/industrial centers was considered to be a legitimate, if distasteful, option.


Is it considered heinous and criminal today? Absolutely, in large part BECAUSE of the strategies employed during WWII and their consequences. At the time, however, it was not a "war crime" and was considered a necessary evil by those making such decisions. That is not to say that it was, in hindsight, necessary or that the decision to use such weapons was acceptable or justifiable.


However, the saying goes that hindsight is 20*20 and nowhere is that more apparent than in the study of such events as this. Context and nuance is an absolute necessity in such discussions as it provides the proper means of analyzing and understanding them without falling into the fallacies or narratives that those with ulterior biases or motives will construct in order to further their own agendas. Failing to gain a full or complete understanding of the event, insomuch as that is possible, can lead to repeating mistakes of the past or making opposite and potentially even worse mistakes in reaction... such as employing weapons like the nuclear bombs due to failures of understanding of previous atrocities (starving of Germany, WWI trench & chemical warfare, Japan's actions in China, etc).

This was cold blooded genocide, They intended to kill mass civilians. There is no way America was that stupid to drop a bomb without knowing the exact details of it lol, I am not buying that bullshit (Personal opinion).

Personal opinion is no excuse for ignoring facts.


This absolutely was an atrocity and, by its very definition, an act of genocide. There is no disputing that. Even that does not give an excuse to disregard facts, though.

I don't have much room for justifying killing innocents.

And not a single person is justifying that in any way whatsoever. That is still completely unrelated to the fact that having a strong opinion does not suddenly allow you to ignore facts that are inconvenient or otherwise do not fit with the conclusion you wish to believe.



Once again (I'm not sure I can make this much more clear so I won't bother after this post):
The.
Nuclear.
Bombing.
Of.
Japan.
In.
World.
War.
Two.
Was.
Absolutely.
A.
Genocidal.
War Crime.

That is not in dispute in any way. That does NOT, however, change the fact that the LONG TERM EFFECTS of the radiation released were not clearly understood or even moderately understood by those who made the decisions to use the weapons. This, in itself, is a disturbing and disgusting fact. That someone would choose to use a weapon without understanding even half of its greater implications and effects is frightening and sickening in equal measure. The fact stands, however, that that was the case. The bombs were dropped without full or even moderate knowledge of the side-effects, particularly the long-term effects, of the radiation that the weapons released.

Thats the thing, America turned out to be as morally bankrupt as the Nazi's were in the end. Im not buying that ''if ground invasion was going to happen more causalities on Japan's civilians was going to happen'' arguments though. While it definitely looks like USA simply took the easiest but the worst decision one could have taken at that time.

The numbers are definitely made after the atomic bombing though so one can take those numbers with pinch of salt.With Japan's most allies defeated already the notion that chance of a japan surrender actually had the best odds...but since USA wanted to make statement and just to minimize their causalities they simply didnt care about the odds. Timing of the bombing definitely doesnt look like it was done to end the horrible war, if they had nuked Germany at the start they may have a point but at the end of the war with all allies defeated nuking Japan? yeah horrible.They have done a horrible act, instead when they goes on and tries to justify that with a 'much lethal ground invasion' it is just act of desperation to mask their moral bankruptcy showed in the end.

No, those numbers weren't. Why won't you read what I actually posted? Those were the estimates that the decision makers considered when they made their decision.

Just because all the world war 2 participating countries were all evil and couldnt differentiate between war and war crimes does not make a war crime recorded as one. A crime is not judged by the offenders but by the rest of the people. A rapist aint gona call himself rapist. What America did was a war crime and it was one of a kind...the only difference is that those countries, all of them were morally shet to acknowledge their war crime and none could have pointed this war crimes towards them since they were too powerful and too much in number.

I thought there was no dissent about the fact that it was a horrible crime?

Red just posted the reasoning among the US military and government why they employed the nuclear bombs. For them it was "less loss of US citizens = good" and "loss of Japanese citizens = okay, can't be helped".

How horrible this really turned out in the end was only to be seen after the bombing. It is always easy to say "they should have known", but in fact they didn't.

Did you know that in the experiments while building the bombs, the scientists virtually stood around the plutonium cores while trying to figure out how much plutonium they'd need? They totally didn't realize the real extent of the effects of radioactivity.

That's how carelessly they worked at that time: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/19/magazine/america-s-radiation-victims-the-hidden-files.html

Mind you - the above was in 1946, *after* the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Again, this does not make things better, but one needs to take the historic environment into account.

(Sadly the systematic bombing of civilian targets has always been a viable option during WWII - either London by the Nazis or Dresden and a couple of other German cities by the allies - as a matter of fact there they first bombed the towns with explosives and then sent incendiary bombs down that could then set the houses to fire as the roofs were damaged and the firebombs would land inside the houses so that the amount of destruction was maximized. These bombings were mainly undertaken to demoralize the public, so it was not about military targets at all. The number of civilian victims during these raids was unprecedented, too.)

the fallout from the fukushima and Chernobyl disarsters is far greater than the fallout from the nukes dropped on japan. so even when people are not using nuclear energy to blow stuff up they still cant be trusted with it. we should get rid of all nuclear material on earth and stop produceing any more of it. the sun puts out more energy per second than mankind has used in its history. so we don't need it.

Sometimes I think that if the nazis won this would be remembered as the Holocaust is now.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Sometimes I think that if the nazis won this would be remembered as the Holocaust is now.

tbh ww2 was the holocaust.

Why is it that whenever Nagasaki and Hiroshima are brought up that I have to remind people that the fire-bombings of Tokyo inflicted far more suffering?

Adit you dismissing the effects of a land invasion of Japan shows a complete lack of understanding of Japan's culture. This is a nation that when you disgrace yourself you disembowel yourself and get your best friend to behead you. A Nation which employed human cruise missiles. A nation whose soldiers abroad refused to believe surrendered.

A land invasion of Japan would have been true genocide.

This thread completely glosses over the fact that most objections are made with a post WWII mindset. Prior to WWII, most everybody was going for maximum enemy casualties in all war-like confrontations, so dropping a nuke fits the mind set of the era just as well as firebombing residential areas, massacring soldiers instead of taking them as PoWs etc etc;
So I really wouldn't take the nuclear bombs as evidence of any current "moral bankruptcy". Only in the aftermath of WWII did most nations even start to think about enemy casualties in a modern sense.

So of course it was a war crime. The entirety of WWII was full of war crimes. Hell, even the French and the Polish, mostly thought of as victims of the conflict, committed the odd atrocity or massacre when given the chance. People are assholes, especially when operating as a group. And there were little to no societal restrictions on violence against perceived outsiders back in the day.

And while we tell each other now that England and America entered the war to stop fascism, they were probably more interested in preventing Germany from rising to super power status, as prior to WWII they too didn't give a shit about protecting minorities, and were probably more concerned with communism than fascism as a threat.

I think that the US, at least, was quite concerned by both communism AND fascism in the years leading up to the nation's involvement in WWII.  This concern though was not bred so much from desire to protect the downtrodden, but over concern for their own ability to recover from the Great Depression and return to pre-Crash economic practices, which required a free international market.  Both communism and fascism stood as direct threats to the US's economic interests of reestablishing and growing said international free market.  

Even that, and attacks on friendly nations, was really only enough to get the US indirectly involved in the war effort though (lend-lease, US volunteer forces not *technically* affiliated with the US military, etc), and it was not until Japan's own attack on the US and Germany's subsequent declaration of war against the US, that the United States fully and directly became involved in the conflict militarily.

While you're right on the details, my larger point was that political idealism probably didn't play a role in any decision before 1945; WWII was this large wake-up call that made modern mindsets happen.