Happy Birthday to a world of unrelenting horror unleashed.

http://www.life.com/image/ugc1064811/in-gallery/46282/never-seen-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

Better there than here.

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Before anyone gets too teary-eyed over what we did to the innocent civilians in those cities you should peruse THIS site for a little insight regarding the Japanese actions towards other peoples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

Bad news all around. The US still has a credibility problem when they try to get other nations to disarm.

I had to do some research a few years ago on the 'Invasion of Japan' that was supposed to take place.

Planners expected 250,000 deaths or injuries the first day and that was on the Allied side alone. One thing that was holding up the invasion was medical facilities at Subic Bay were not finished.

Planners had set aside and/or contracted for supplies that would allow the war to go on until 1951 since they figured it would take that long to win it.

What I thought was really interesting was the Japanese were given an opportunity to surrender after the first bomb was dropped and they included in their reply a word that can be translated as either 'no' or 'I am thinking about it'.

This was not the answer the US was looking for, so second bomb was dropped.

Back when there were still many Vets from that era alive, ones that were supposed to go on the invasion that you could talk to, I can't recall a single one that thought it was the wrong thing to do.

Thanks for posting this to keep thinks in perspective. Talking to some friends about this, and no know really understands. people think A-bomb, and think its the worst thing ever... while it may be the most powerful weapon ever used in war, that doesn't mean its the worst thing ever... and the Japanese Empire was no strangers to unleashing the worst horrors of war.

Its all history now, we need to remember, but also keep in perspective that we, the US, were fighting to end the violence, and after those bombs fell the violence was over, and thank God for that.

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I'm not saying it was either the "right" or "wrong" decision at the time, hindsight is worthless. I'm sure the US leadership saw it as "just another weapon" at the time. I'm just saying that the decision is still having political repercussions today.

Well put.

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How could there not be repercussions, whether the decision to deploy nuclear weapons was right or wrong, there were always going to be consequences. To now debate the virtues of that decision is moot.

Exactly, it is now a "superman can beat up batman" argument.

It's not whether it is credible or not. Who wants to disarm? Disarming is easy. But if I need it for some reason, it might be hard to rearm. The other side isn't going to give you a "Time Out" to rearm.

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What's your point?

1) The Japanese started the war in the Pacific, we did not.
2) The two A-bombs killed about 250K people, half immediately, half from radiation later.
3) Casualtly estimates for the upcoming invasion of Japan were 2M Japanese, 1M American.
4) The Japanese are estimated to have directly caused the deaths of 17M people during WWII through their invasions in southeast asia and the pacific
5) The bomb was coming regardless, perhaps you'd rather the Russians got it first?

If you are embarrased to be a citizen of this country, you are free to leave.

Well right or wrong, VJ day wouldn't be September 2 if we hadn't done it.

History is always written by the victors; we won. Morality is a luxury that we can afford now, in WW2 on all sides it was in short supply.

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War is what they wanted. War is what they got.
OTOH, we could have been nice guys and invaded and suffered untold casualties. Estimates at the time were 250,000-500,000 and higher higher. Mostly US Army and Marines.

"US military opinion was divided on what it would require to induce Japan's surrender and finally bring the war to an end. Gen. George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commanding US forces in the western Pacific, believed an invasion of the Japanese home islands would be necessary.

Gen. H. H. Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, and Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay (whose XXI Bomber Command in the Marianas was pounding Japan relentlessly) believed that B-29 conventional bombing could do the job. The AAF position in June and July, however, was to support Marshall's advocacy of invasion on the basis that a blockade of Honshu required air bases on Kyushu.(13)

Adm. William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff, and Adm. Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations, thought Japan could be defeated without an invasion.(14) When Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, commanding US forces in the central Pacific, joined MacArthur in recommending invasion of Kyushu, however, King agreed.(15)

Truman was aware of the differences among the military leaders but was satisfied that they had been reconciled for consensus with Marshall. Furthermore, Truman respected Marshall deeply and regarded him as the nation's chief strategist, so Marshall's opinion carried particular weight.(16)

The official plan called for an invasion in two stages:


Operation Olympic, to begin Nov. 1, 1945, would be a land invasion of Kyushu, southernmost of the Japanese main islands.

Operation Coronet, planned for March 1, 1946, was an invasion of Honshu, the largest island.

The Joint Chiefs envisioned that the two-stage invasion would involve some five million troops, most of them American.(17) The invasion was to be preceded by a massive aerial bombardment, reaching maximum intensity before troops went ashore on Honshu. One memorandum said that "more bombs will be dropped on Japan than were delivered against Germany during the entire European war."(18)

A June 18 estimate from the military chiefs said that casualties in the first thirty days of the Kyushu invasion could be 31,000. Adm. King estimated 41,000. Adm. Nimitz said 49,000. MacArthur's staff said 50,000. Casualty estimates for Olympic and Coronet combined ranged from 220,000 to 500,000+.(19)

"I asked General Marshall what it would cost in lives to land on the Tokio plain and other places in Japan," Truman said later. "It was his opinion that such an invasion would cost at minimum one quarter of a million casualties, and might cost as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy. The other military and naval men present agreed."(20) "

Truman summed it up simply and effectively:

In his radio address August 9, Truman said the United States had used the atomic bomb "against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans. We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us."(57)

http://www.afa.org/media%5Cenolagay%5Csson3.asp



I saw Col. Tibbets son on tv the other day saying he was upset that after all this time, the US was sending a representative to the memorial service for the first time.

His father bore no regrets:

On the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima, the surviving members of the Enola Gay crew - Gen Tibbets, Theodore J "Dutch" Van Kirk (the navigator) and Morris R Jeppson (weapon test officer) said: "The use of the atomic weapon was a necessary moment in history. We have no regrets".

Gen Tibbets said then: "Thousands of former soldiers and military family members have expressed a particularly touching and personal gratitude suggesting that they might not be alive today had it been necessary to resort to an invasion of the Japanese home islands to end the fighting."

There is no way it was going to end well for the japanese public, at least it ended sooner. The best we can say is that it might have been the lesser evil. I would like to think the US leadership was thinking in those terms when they made the decision.