Why did we bomb Hiroshima again?

[Jack_Dawson]

I was looking at the pix. I can't quite believe we did that. 140,000 innocent civilians killed by...us? How come we haven't caught more shit for it? Go easy I can't remember that history lesson.

[Chicago Democrat]

1. We are a violent people who lies to ourselves because we are so

ashamed. We creat a fantasy and kill whoever doesnt play along...

Watch this...

http://www.hugi.is/hahradi/bigboxes.php?box_id=51208&f_id=1399

[Jack_Dawson]

7. OMG that Springer stuff is rich

I couldn't stop watching. Guess I'm like the rest of 'em.

[jonnyblitz]

2. to save lives. sort of like fucking for virginity i guess...

:shrug:

[WCGreen]

9. I love that analogy....

[jonnyblitz]

11. kind of crude though...

:P

[WCGreen]

14. Still Good. I am going to use it tonight

[Chicago Democrat]

3. I want DU to help Amy Goodman strip William Laurence of 1946 Pultizer

DU needs to lobby Pulitzer Prize board to strip William Laurence of ill gotten prize. LYING BASTARD!

[jeff30997]

4. The Japanese were ready to surrender but...

Truman and the military nuts wanted to scare Stalin(who already knew about the bomb anyway).

[bertha katzenengel]

13. Really?

The Japanese were ready to surrender? That's news to me. Source?

[moof]

22. here's a link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Opposition_to_use_of_atomic_bombs

That's the start of the opposition to the a-bomb segment. About 4 or 5 paragraphs down there's this.

Japan had been trying to surrender for at least two months, but the US refused by insisting on an unconditional surrender. In fact, while several diplomats favored surrender, the leaders of the Japanese military were committed to fighting a 'Decisive Battle' on Kyushu, hoping that they could negotiate better terms for an armistice afterward — all of which the Americans knew from reading decrypted Japanese communications. The Japanese government never did decide what terms, beyond preservation of an imperial system, they would have accepted to end the war; as late as August 9, the Supreme Council was still split, with the hardliners insisting Japan should demobilize its own forces, no war crimes trials, and no occupation. Only the direct intervention of the Emperor ended the dispute, and even after that a military coup was attempted to prevent the surrender (although it was easily suppressed).

Another criticism is that the U.S. should have waited a short time to gauge the effect of the Soviet Union's entry into the war. The U.S. knew, as Japan did not, that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan three months after V-E Day, on August 8, 1945. The loss of any possibility that the Soviet Union would serve as a neutral mediator for a negotiated peace, coupled with the entry into combat of the Red Army (the largest active army in the world), might have been enough to convince the Japanese military of the need to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (plus some provision for the emperor). Because no U.S. invasion was imminent, it is argued that the U.S. had nothing to lose by waiting several days to see whether the war could be ended without use of the atom bomb.

[Robeson]

5. We did it to show Stalin we had "the Bomb"....

...and we haven't caught more shit, because we still have "the Bomb".

[izzie]

6. To save people being killed. Western people that is

:banghead:

[ulysses]

8. Dresden - 25,000-35,000 deaths.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Bombing-of-Dresden-in-World-War-II#Impact_of_the_attack

Firebombing of Tokyo - 80,000-100,000 deaths. More than at Nagasaki.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200207/rauch

Hiroshima doesn't stand alone in the overall human failings of war.

[WCGreen]

12. You have to put things into perspective.....

Japan and Germany were three four times worse that we were...

Look into what Japan did in Korea and China and Indochina to the country folk....

And fuck what the Nazi's did.......

Did we get out of control and power crazy.... Not as much as you think...

If Stalin had been able to grab a foot hold in Japan, what do you think would have happened if that mad man had a warm water port and access to all those resources.....

Look at what came after WWII... The Marshal plan....

Peace and prosperity in Japan and Germany...

Remember, we had millions of allied causalities in both theatres....

The whole colonial experience coming to an end over night.....

Am I justifying it. A bit but it pains me to see people reaching back and putting decades of knowledge and perspective onto something that was done in a different time a different place and a whole different paradigm....

Not everything that America does is evil and wrong simply because those who now occupy the White House are motivated by greed and power.....

[ulysses]

18. I have a pretty good perspective, thanks.

I'm well aware of crimes on all sides during WWII.

Not everything that America does is evil and wrong simply because those who now occupy the White House are motivated by greed and power.....

No, but not everything America did in the past was right because of that fact either.

With the exception of the end of colonialism - which would surely have ended another way regardless - humanity has little to celebrate about WWII as an overall thing.

[WCGreen]

19. Didn't say everything we did was right in the past......

Just that perspective is due before Judgement is passed

[Quagmire05]

10. i remember reading somewhere

that when Truman's staff were describing the A-Bomb option to him and he wasn't really sure what the bombs were capable of he ordered like 30 of them dropped on Japan, and his Staff was like um, you might want to rethink that one.

[William769]

15. They awoke the sleeping giant.

I have no regrets for what we did. Even if it would have saved one American, but it saved hundres of thousands.

[barb162]

23. same here; I noticed on the news today the Japanese had a

die-in at Hiroshima and I thought why didn't they have the die-in at Nanking, China where the Japs slaughtered about 350,000 Chinese in the late 1930s, besides the millions of Chinese they slaughtered elsewhere in China.

http://www.tribo.org/nanking/background.html
NEW DATA PROVIDES CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE
NEARLY 370,000 CHINESE WERE MURDERED IN NANKING MASSACRE

The Rape of Nanking is an innovative and credible work on modern Chinese history, according to Princeton University history professor Ying-shih Yü, who adds, "It is a solid and original study that maintains all the important standards of modern historiography."

The work draws its main narrative from credible research techniques, including archives in Germany and Japan, records of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and the recollections of survivors of the Nanking massacre.

While the total number of people killed in Nanking and its vicinity during the Nanking Massacre has been the subject of controversy, the evidence presented in The Rape of Nanking should put an end to this debate.

For the second edition of the book, published on December 13, 1997 -- the 60th anniversary of the Rape of Nanking -- the authors carefully reviewed the records of Japanese military units, the puppet municipal government of Nanking established under Japanese occupation, and Chinese and international burial societies. These records conclusively demonstrate that no fewer than 369,366 bodies of Chinese men, women, and children were buried or otherwise "disposed of" by these agencies. The records leave open the possibility that there were in fact many more victims, but the authors eliminated from their tally any reports that might conceivably have been overlapping or unreliable.

[LibMod]

16. Would you have preferred 500,000 more U.S.war dead?

And a million more Japanese soldiers, and up to 3 million innocent Japanese civilians?

I didn't think so.

Not taking Japan and occupying it, after what they'd done to China and the rest of Southeast Asia between 1932 and the end of the war would have been a terrible affront to those who suffered under the Japanese.

Not taking Japan and occupying it, after what they'd done to Pearl Harbor would have been an affront to the servicemen who died there.

Not taking Japan and occupying it, given the unwillingness of Prime Minister/Admiral Tojo to listen to reason, would have meant that he would have stayed in power.

Tojo was so fanatical that it took TWO bombs, not one, to convince him that there was no chance.

Does that ease your mind?

[CanuckAmok]

17. Short answer: practice.

n/t

[prole_for_peace]

20. because we could.

the japanese were on the verge of surrendering but the us still used the excuse it was "saving lives". killing over 100k civilians is ok as long as they aren't americans apparently.

[khashka]

21. We didn't bomb Hiroshima again

We bombed Nagasaki instead.

Khash.