Hiroshima Remembered.

[KrazyHorse]

Okinawa sucked up a lot of the available Japanese manpower. They were really getting to the bottom of the barrel at that point, and the more women and children with spears you start throwing at the wide-eyes, the higher the kill ratio goes in the US' favour...

[DanS]

Well, even that doesn't make any sense, based on our experience at Okinawa. A 150K-200K number would seem to have been the best case scenario based on our recent experience.

[KrazyHorse]

Dan, the Japanese had thrown a lot of what they had left into Okinawa. They lost 7800 planes, for instance, and God knows how many rifles, artillery pieces, etc. They couldn't keep up, and there's no way to kill hundreds of thousnds of combat troops with bamboo sticks, no matter how many volunteers you get.

[DanS]

I'm gonna have to ask for a cite on this one, Frogger.

[aaglo]

Re: Re: Hiroshima Remembered.

Originally posted by Zkribbler
Truman did the right thing.

... when he died.

[Ethelred]

... when he died.

Eventually. After a many more years as President. And a long time in retirement.

You are thinking of Roosevelt and he wasn't alive when the Bomb was ready to go.

Truman didn't even know about the project untill after Roosevelt died. To most of the men involved it was just another weapon. An effing big one. The idea of thinking of it as a horror weapon came later. Blaming those men is 20-20 hindsight and little else.

Whatever the number of expected casualities in an invasion why should the US take any when it could stop the war with a bomb or two? Tens of thousands of Allies would have died. For certain. Every single POW as I allready mentioned. Japan still had rifles and thats enough to kill tens of thousands more of any invaders at the least.

[aaglo]

AGGRAVATION: Killing tens of thousands of soldiers is worse than killing tens of thousands of civillians?
IMHO poor thinking.

Soldiers are made to be killed - Napoleon (and see what happened to him )

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Frogger
Okinawa sucked up a lot of the available Japanese manpower. They were really getting to the bottom of the barrel at that point, and the more women and children with spears you start throwing at the wide-eyes, the higher the kill ratio goes in the US' favour...

It also was the battle where the U.S. Navy took it's greatest losses in it's history. The closer we moved to Japan the more intense the defenses were and the lower our kill ratio on land and sea became. Remember that while there was some doubt about Japanese dispositions and capabilities, our own casualties were obvious. Okinawa was considered Japanese territory by the Japanese, and the Japanese Army was very successful in dragging the civilian population into the conflict, to the detriment of both the U.S. forces and that civilian population especially. It was a very easy case to make at the time that an invasion of the home islands was going to be full of suicide weapons, fanatical defenses and urban warfare, just like on Okinawa except over a much larger area with much higher population.

If you want to say that the U.S. should have known that the Japanese were ready to fold completely, then you should also acknowledge that if we had foregone the atom bombs and the Japanese had delayed their surrender at all, more Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese etc. would have starved to death while allied transports were tied up with war time traffic rather than switching over to emergency food deliveries. A million Japanese civilians starved to death in the year after the war ended as it was.

[redbaron]

You guys might want to check out

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,769634,00.html

Basically it's an interview between Studs Terkel and Paul Tibbets (pilot of the Enola Gay).

[Ecthy]

So we all agree America was wrong in using the bomb. Wonderful.

[Q Classic]

not necesssarily. i agree that it was wrong, but i also think it was deserved.

[Faeelin]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
So we all agree America was wrong in using the bomb. Wonderful.

What, pray tell, is the right choice?

In a happy world, there wouldn't have been a hiroshima. But there wouldn't have been a rape of nanking, or a holocaust, or a dresden. An invasion of Japan would've left the world with a divided japan, millions more japanese dead, and hundreds of thousands of american casualties.

What would you have done?

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
not necesssarily. i agree that it was wrong, BUT I ALSO THINK IT WAS DESERVED.

You know, having relatives on BOTH f***ing ends (receiving and giving) I find this last part of the statement FULLY INSULTING. I'm mean, I'm freeking raging.

I have family members that were part of the invasion force (Japanese) and family that were dodging the Nihongin's bombs and bullets while they were strafing the streets in Hawaii.

Ok, how about this....why don't I drop an atomic bomb on your ENTIRE families @**, watch them burn, then say "Oh, that sucks.....but hey, you deserved it." HUH?!

I have relatives WHO DIED AT HIROSHIMA because of an American president's decision to drop an atom bomb on a CIVILIAN POPULATION CENTER instead of Tokyo Bay, where the blast could still be seen and no lives would have been lost.

Now, if your thinking that I am against America, you are wrong! I had family members who went to Pearl Harbor to save their comrades lives, but they were military personnel. All my family members I have talked to say that even though the attack was unprovoked, they were military, not civilian. I've seen pictures of CHILDREN baked because of the blast.

Can any of you say that you've had family members hit by an atomic bomb blast?! (I'm sorry, I'm soooo mad right now I could rip apart my damn computer...but I won't) My point is, until you've actually seen or experienced something, don't say it was deserved.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by frankychan

I have relatives WHO DIED AT HIROSHIMA because of an American president's decision to drop an atom bomb on a CIVILIAN POPULATION CENTER instead of Tokyo Bay, where the blast could still be seen and no lives would have been lost.

That is about the worst place to set off an atomic bomb. Splatter all of the area with radioctive water and steam. Thats a great idea. Just how many did you intend to kill by radiation poisoning.

[Frankychan]

Excuse me....OUTSIDE of Tokyo Bay. The explosion alone would have caught the eye of Emperor Hirohito and the military.

BTW, have you seen survivors from a ground-zero detonation? I have in pictures and I'll tell you, when you realize that some of them are family members, you wanna kick someones @**. When you see the survivors skin's blackened and charred, you'll know what I'm talking about.