The fact there isn't a consensus on Hiroshima/Nagasaki is evidence enough for me...

[Drunken Irishman]

Truman made a very difficult, painful decision without the fortune of hindsight. I think the divide here on DU, where most people generally agree with one another on the most major issues, speaks of this. Even 68 years later, there is still question. It's not black and white - it's not something we can all agree was a mistake like with Iraq or even Vietnam. Now imagine you're president and have to make that call ... without the benefit of hindsight. Look how diverse the views on this issue are today and imagine what it was like when he had to approve of the bombings?

That's why we want the most competent, sane and empathetic president making the call. I actually believe, had FDR not died, he would have made the same call. Would he have been right? Was Harry Truman right? We'll never know fully because what could have been without the bomb was never realized. What we got though was an end to the war.

Did that justify dropping the bomb? I can't say - but that doesn't mean it was the wrong decision. Unfortunately, we don't have the ability to know any other outcome than what we experienced and it was horrific - but that doesn't mean the other option wasn't just as bad ... or worse.

[NightWatcher]

1. I can't believe we're still rehashing this, almost 70 years after it happened

[Phillyindy]

4. Know why?

Because deep in our skin we know it was wrong...no matter how hard we try to justify it.

[Drunken Irishman]

5. I don't think that's it.

[branford]

34. Agree or disagree with the bombing, history should always be studied and discussed.

And no, "we" do not know it was wrong. Do not attribute such easy certainty to anyone but yourself.

[iemitsu]

76. Those of us who know how the decision was made

and how both target cities were civilian, not military, know it was wrong.
The bombs ended the war but that was about beating the Soviets to Japan, not about the Millions of Americans, who would be lost in an invasion of the Japanese mainland.
The Soviets had won in Europe and we couldn't let them win in Japan too. Fine, drop the bombs and end the war, but drop them as a demonstration, b;ow up Mt Fugi, but don't drop bombs on innocent people. As an experiment. To see what happens.
That is wrong.

[Art_from_Ark]

80. It was never about "beating the Soviets" to Japan

The Soviets, in fact, were actually invited to participate in the war against Japan, even though they had a non-agression pact with Japan.

"Premier Stalin, insisting that his doctors opposed any long trips, rejected Roosevelt's suggestion to meet at the Mediterranean.[3] He offered, instead, to meet at the Black Sea resort of Yalta, in the Crimea. Each leader had an agenda for the Yalta Conference: Roosevelt wanted Soviet support in the U.S. Pacific War against Japan, specifically invading Japan, as well as Soviet participation in the United Nations; Churchill pressed for free elections and democratic governments in Eastern and Central Europe (specifically Poland); and Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Eastern and Central Europe, an essential aspect of the USSR's national security strategy."

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

One more thing-- the Soviets began their invasion of Japanese territory two days *after* the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan.

[Igel]

44. To the contrary. We simply don't want to think it was right.

If something that heinous can be right, something that contrary to how we perceive ourselves, what else could be right and what else could we justify doing?

It's easier to admit a massive wrong than it is to own up to an equally repugnant right choice that seems to violate our moral code. We like our moral code; it's part of who we are and it's deeply heartfelt.

An acquaintance was distraught recently. She had her dog put down. It had been suffering for years. It was whimpering. It would eventually die, but before it died it would have suffered for at least another 6 months.

Over the course of the day she kept coming back to her decision and justifying it, rehashing it, talking through her reasoning. She didn't like her decision. It didn't sit well.

Deep inside she knew it was the right decision in terms of logic and "formal compassion". But she found the right decision completely at odds with her emotions, which said that death is always wrong, no matter how much pain, suffering--and, in the case of Japan, lives--it saves. She sincerely wanted there to be another way but the vet assured her there was none.


It doesn't help that the entire war has been imbued after the fact with guilt for a racism that was present but wasn't defining. Every decision, every bit of press, is viewed through that particular lens for some people (for whom the Japanese, no doubt, had equally precious ethnic slurs).

[branford]

46. Very insightful.

[Phillyindy]

54. Eloquent but...

...made little sense. Putting a dog down to end his end of life suffering has exactly zero correlation to nuking Civilians in Japan. But I'll give you this, it was probably the greatest justification I've heard yet, although totally convoluted, for dropping nukes on civilians.

[GreenStormCloud]

55. It was a devil's choice.

Kill a few hundred thousand civilians (nukes), or kill millions of civilians (all other plans). War forces ugly choices.

[Bake]

51. i.e., Deep in YOUR skin, you're convinced it was wrong.

For others of us, not so much.

War is hell. Ending it was a good thing.

Bake

[Posteritatis]

8. Rehashing events of worldchanging significance for years? Whatever for? (nt)

[HardTimes99]

12. We should re-hash it every year (every day?) from here to eternity, imho, else

we value human life too cheaply.

[jeff47]

27. Well, folks like to re-open the story

with an incredibly shallow analysis which massively over-states the willingness of the Japanese to surrender.

Some do it because they can pretend to be morally superior without realizing just how many people they would sentence to death.

Some do it because they're trolls. Like your first reply, who called DU a "Democrat website".

[Drunken Irishman]

2. Also should add that I remember talking to my grandfather about the bomb...

He served in the army, stormed the beaches of Normandy, and they were readying for a land invasion. He was grateful, for personal reasons, obviously, when the bomb dropped and the war ended.

I can see that view very well. It's possible he would have died...then there would have been no me.

[quinnox]

3. nah, it was unjustified and unnecessary

Vaporizing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children, is wrong. It is very clear.

[Th1onein]

6. Yep, the bullshit idea that we would have had to invade Japan is a lie.

Our planes were flying over Japan at will. Japan was defeated and had been negotiating a peace for months, when we dropped the first bomb. The whole "we had to do it so we didn't have to invade" is nothing more, nor less, than propaganda.

[quinnox]

7. Indeed

[hack89]

9. You are right - six months of starvation and disease was the way to go. nt

[Th1onein]

13. You're not making sense. Explain your point.

[dsc]

16. that we would have had a naval blockade on Japan

and been bombing them as well, and Japan would have likely waited for at least some amount of time to surrender trying to get better conditions as they knew we didn't want to invade. However long that time was, it would have featured starvation and disease.

[hack89]

17. The Japanese were not ready to surrender

they were negotiating with the Soviets to act as intermediaries with the Americans to get terms less than unconditional surrender. There were no direct negotiations with America. So in August 1945 the Japanese were not on the brink of surrender. They were merely looking for ways to end the war on better terms. There were many in the Japanese government that thought that one more bloody battle was needed to get the Americans to give them better terms.

So with no atomic bombs and no invasion, the Japanese would have continued to hold out. Which means they would have starved during the winter due to our blockade.

[Th1onein]

18. Good grief, where do you get this shit from?

[hack89]

21. Show me where Japan was negotiating with America

if they were looking for peace, surely they would have been talking to the people they were fighting with.

Lets start with that.

[branford]

35. College. Reading. Talking with WWII servicemen.

[jeff47]

26. Which is why they surrendered after the first nuke.

Oh wait......

[hack89]

28. Why are you linking to a Holocaust denial website and author?

The IHR was founded in 1978 by David McCalden (also known as Lewis Brandon), a former member of the British National Front, and Willis Carto, the head of the now-defunct Liberty Lobby. Liberty Lobby was an antisemitic organization best known for publishing The Spotlight, now reorganized as the American Free Press. Dave McCalden left the IHR in 1981. Tom Marcellus became its director, and Carto lost control of it in 1993, in an internal power struggle. Since 1995, the director of the IHR has been Mark Weber,[10] who previously worked with the white supremacist National Alliance. Since taking over, Weber has continued to publish writing on the Holocaust and on World War II and has pushed to broaden the institute's mandate.[11] He has been editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review for nine years.[10] Publication of the Journal ceased in 2002 due to lack of funds[citation needed], and its main form of spreading its message is through its website IHR Update and e-mail list.[12] The website that Weber has built features such articles as "The Jewish Role in the Bolshevik Revolution" and "Israel at 60: A Grim Balance Sheet."[11]

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

You should self delete.

[tammywammy]

29. You should delete your shit Holocaust denying link

And apologize to the board for posting such crap.

You should be embarrassed.

[Th1onein]

31. I AM embarrassed. I didn't know he was a Holocaust denier.

Or I wouldn't have linked to his crap website.

I thought it was an actual historical journal.

Nevertheless, the Trohan article was real, and the info was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Leahy.

[iemitsu]

77. Negotiating with our allies, the Soviets, who got to Berlin first,

is negotiating for peace. Because the talks were not directly with the US does not mean the Japanese were insincere.
You simply don't know (and neither do I) whether or not the Japanese were ready to surrender, you only know that we were told they were not.
And the Japanese didn't get such bad terms in the surrender deal, they agreed to, with the Americans.
The Emperor's family still lives in the Imperial Palace, their economy and infrastructure were rebuilt (with our aid), and we sponsored their return from defeated enemy to again be the strongest Asian economy after the war.

[hack89]

83. Except the Japanese had a seperate Neutrality Pact with the Soviets

While the Soviets announced in April of 1945 that they were withdrawing from the pact, the Soviet foreign minister confirmed to the Japanese that the pact would still be in effect until 1946.

Secondly, neither the Soviets or the Japanese told the Americans all about it. It was done in complete secrecy.

All we knew is that the Japanese completely ignored the Potsdam declaration instead of taking it as an opportunity to open formal negotiations with the country they were actually fighting.

[zipplewrath]

11. Yes, it is

By definition it is propoganda.

However, discussions about what would/could/should have happened are conjecture, nothing more, nothing less.

In hindsight, and with the benefit of alot of information that was not known at the time (and if known, may not have been believed, not to mention the information that was believed, but wrong) I think a very good case can be made that the US could have isolated and bombed Japan for a good long time in hopes of getting the surrender they wanted, and believed it to be a true offer.

OF course, in waiting, other things may have happened too. The forces that didn't want to surrender could have taken over and expelled anyone else from power. They could have begun various suicide attempts/attacks on (and in) the US and their allies. We could have built MORE atomic bombs and ultimately used them in even larger numbers.

See, that's the problem with this hindsight. You can't assume everything will happen just the way you want it to, or think it should. You have to do the multivariant analysis and there are alot of variables.

But in some ways I think it is good to discuss these things. Because if we don't study our past, we may repeat it.

[Th1onein]

14. I've got news for you, kiddo: The hindsight argument? Bullshit.

We knew that they were defeated. If they had surrendered unconditionally, we would have bombed them anyway (see Cold War).

It's not a matter of hindsight. We did what we wanted to do. We even bombed our own soldiers, who were being held as POWs in Hiroshima, into nuclear smithereens. How nice of us, huh? What a way to repay their service!

[Dreamer Tatum]

15. So why didn't those peacenik Japanese surrender after the first one?

You know, so they could get back to hacksacking and baking banana bread for the Chinese?

Don't bother replying.

[Th1onein]

33. I really don't think they surrendered only because of the bombings.

They were trying to surrender BEFORE the first bomb. We didn't accept their terms until AFTER the second bomb had been dropped.

I think they wanted to surrender BEFORE the first bomb, not because of the bomb (that they knew about already), but because Russia had just declared war against them, too.

[GreenStormCloud]

48. Surrender is not something you attempt, it is something that you do.

All you have to do is radio, "We surrender." That's all it takes.

What Japan was trying was to get an armistice, not surrender. An armistice would have stopped the shooting, left their gov't intact, not required disarmament, no occupation, no war crimes trials, and left them free to rearm and try again in twenty years.

Nor did they know about the first bomb. Japan didn't have espionage agents in the U.S.

[zipplewrath]

19. How do you know

How do you know, what all the leaders knew, believe, or worst believed but was not true? How do you know who they trusted? There was no hotline between our forces and theirs. There were no satellites, there was no internet, there weren't even phone lines between them and us. In the end, the vote to surrender was 3-3. How do you know at any moment that there was a majority ready for surrender? And how do you know that a sufficient number of people with us knew at the same time that they were ready for peace?

There were multiple motivations for dropping the bombs. How do you know which motivation was the dominant one for those actually authorized to make the decision? How do you know who was the most influential with Truman?

You're projecting based upon your own biases and presumptions, not to mention more knowledge of what was, and was not true, than anyone in our government at the time.

[geek tragedy]

20. Why did they wait until after the 2nd nuke? Why was there a nearly successful coup

against Hirohito (virtually unthinkable in Japanese culture) because he was talking surrender after the first?

[LanternWaste]

30. try not to link to another holocaust-denial site...

Valid, peer-reviewed link illustrating American POWs were located in Hiroshima AND that the Truman administration was aware of this. will be forthcoming, yes?

(Additionally, please do not to link to another holocaust-denial site... it erodes any credibility you may pretend to posses, and is not a peer-reviewed historical source)

[Dreamer Tatum]

38. This is the person who swore to us after Hurricane Ike that thousands were dead. nt

[hunter]

10. Estimates were that all major cities would have been fire bombed by January 1946.

The firebombs we were dropping on flammable Japanese cities without much resistance were as deadly as nuclear bombs.

Had a second set of nuclear bombings been called for, the U.S. was quickly running out of fixed targets.

[nomorenomore08]

24. So the atomic bombing could have turned out to be the lesser evil? As in fewer casualties?

nt

[jeff47]

25. Yes. Estimates of casualties from an invasion were about 1M allied troops,

and 10-50M Japanese over the 2 years it would take to conquer the home islands. For scale, the previous census in Japan came up with a population of 78M.

The wide number on the Japanese side is we didn't know what the civilian population would do - for example, the Japanese civilians on Okinawa generally did not surrender to allied troops. Virtually all of them fought or committed suicide.

[moondust]

23. Probably more consensus on Main Street 68 years ago.

And not likely too generous.

Perhaps closer to "incinerate the place."

Which may have influenced the decision made by the politicians despite the misgivings of some generals.

[branford]

36. I find the opinions of American citizens in 1945 very important.

[Logical]

39. I 100% agree. It is easy for us to 2nd guess it now. We did not live it. n-t

[GreenStormCloud]

32. The invasion would have become a genocide.

The Japanese would NOT have surrendered. The revisionists here are full of it. The Japanese didn't surrender anywhere in the Pacific, except for isolated individuals. On Saipan and Okinawa civilians committed suicide rather than allow themselves to be captured. The Japanese gov't was training all civilians to fight Americans with bamboo spears.

Lots of folks here who know nothing of war probably laugh at the image of a civilian with a spear charging an American GI. But the reality is that if the GI doesn't shoot that civilian, he will be skewered. It would not have taken very long until all the GIs and Marines came to view any Japanese, regardless of sex or age, as a deadly enemy - to be killed on sight. Because war isn't about nice rules, it is about staying alive a few more minutes, hoping to somehow survive it all.

We would have advanced across the islands, killing everyone we saw, and taking severe casualties ourselves.

The Japanese generals believed that we didn't have the national will to absorb the massive casualties that we would have taken. Their Army was NOT defeated. They had lots of troops on the home islands with plenty of ammo. They still had thousands of airplanes that they had been saving for the final battle.

Their battle plan for the fleet was continual kamikaze attacks to keep the fleet at battle stations around the clock until after a few days fatigue was badly draining the sailors' efficiency. Then they were planning to launch a massive kamikaze attack.

With such fierce fighting, the nukes would have gotten used anyway. Hiroshima and Nagasaki and any remaining cities would have been firebombed to ashes. The blockade would have caused massive starvation and disease among the civilians with a very high death rate among the very young and the old. Millions would have been homeless in the coming winter, and died of exposure.

Total Japanese deaths would have been several million.

They hoped to inflict enough casualties on us to make us give them an armistice and call it a victory. Such a deal would have left their gov't intact to rebuild, rearm, and try again in twenty years.

[joshcryer]

41. Japanese Empire:

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

If one is going to make an informed opinion on your comments they should start here.

[upaloopa]

37. This an annual food fight here. My guess is that some people can't wait

for August to take part in this .

[branford]

40. It's just a warm-up for Thanksgiving . . .

[Ohio Joe]

42. consensus... On DU... Our Hosts can't come to a consensus on the meaning of the word

heh, consensus , that's funny

[Igel]

45. It's changed its meaning recently.

When I was in college a consensus meant "100%".

But that's exclusionary. It leaves people out.

It's also unrealistic. If you want to do something and say you want a consensus, that one holdout can gut your plans. Can't have that. You may have *wanted* 100% buy-in, but when push comes to shove what you really want is your plan implemented. Okay, I see only 23% object, that's close enough to 100% for me to say it's a 'consensus'!"

Codswallop. And not just the swallop from one cod, mind you, but from whole herds of cod.

[branford]

47. Codswallup, indeed.

And balderdash, bunkum, claptrap, hogwash (the whole hog!), hokum, malarkey, poppycock, and twaddle, too.

Thanks, I needed the laugh today!

[jimlup]

43. I disagree...

I subscribe to the little boy on a run away sled hypothesis.

Had he been more a morally thoughtful leader he could have chosen a different course.

[felix_numinous]

49. I always wondered if the US shared data

about the Trinity nuclear test (20 megatons) with the Japanese as a deterrent, would they still have surrendered? Trinity test was in July 1945, and Japan was bombed in August 1945...

It would have been a 'warning shot'- instead of so much loss of life...it seems to me there was a push to use it on people.

I know there is a lot of speculation on this sensitive subject, and points of view change over time . I think Americans were feeling pretty invincible after these explosions--but the rhetorical question remains -- what is abuse of power? I think we are still grappling with this today!!

With NSA holding their secrets over us now, we have to decide where to draw the line. And *holy shit* with Japan now dealing with Fukishima--what can the world learn from this??


Peace~~~Felix

[jeff47]

53. If that would have worked, then only Hiroshima would have been nuked.

The theory about such a demonstration is that the fear of the US using such a weapon against their cities would have led the Japanese to surrender.

If that was true, why didn't the Japanese surrender after Hiroshima? If the threat of us nuking their cities was going to be enough to make them surrender, how come actually nuking a city wasn't enough?

[GreenStormCloud]

56. You are using logic. That isn't fair. N/T

[telclaven]

62. 20...MEGATONS!?!?!?!

Reading comprehension and science are your friends. Trinity was not a fission-fusion-fission explosion (aka, hydrogen bomb).

[Codeine]

74. Top Tip; A kiloton is not the same as a megaton.

Seriously, not even close. Not even in the same ZIP code.

[Vattel]

50. It's pretty black and white if you know the history and don't like mass murder.

[GreenStormCloud]

57. So you would have chosen to kill millions of civilians instead of a few hundred thousand.

And you would have killed them by starvation. That doesn't sound very humane to me.

[Vattel]

58. No I would have tried to negotiate a settlement.

The Japanese knew they had lost but hoped for better terms than unconditional surrender. What could have been achieved in negotiations will never be known because we didn't even try.

[GreenStormCloud]

59. We know what they wanted.

Their gov't to stay intact. No occupation. If you had given in to those demands, we would have fought them again in 20 years. Their gov't was just as evil as the Nazis.

[Vattel]

60. your speculation is hardly worth slaughtering tens of thousands.

[GreenStormCloud]

64. Not speculation. History.

I suppose you don't know what kind of gov't Japan had back then.

[Vattel]

66. Predicting what would have happened if we did not dismantle Japan's govt is speculative.

I don't believe in murdering tens of thousands for the sake of speculative benefits. Call me crazy.

[GreenStormCloud]

71. How do you feel about all the Germans we killed by bombing to get rid of Hitler? N/T

[hack89]

63. The Japanese killed nearly 10 million innocents from 1937 to 1945

in the countries they invaded and occupied. That was reason enough to end the war as quickly as possible.

[Vattel]

67. Demanding unconditional surrender is hardly a path to ending the war quickly.

[hack89]

68. Considering the Japanese wanted to retain overseas possessions

their military, and demanded no occupation forces and no war crime tribunals, demanding unconditional surrender was perfectly reasonable.

Read the Potsdam Declaration - it was not as severe as you would think.

[Vattel]

69. half the supreme war council were willing to surrender with

only the assurance that the Emperor would not be eliminated. We can't know what might have been negotiated because, bent on our murderous demand for unconditional surrender, we didn't try.

[hack89]

70. The Japanese had an opportunity to respond to the Potsdam declaration

they chose to ignore it. If they were really interested in negotiations, that would have been a good time to speak up, don't you think?

If they were serious, they would have sent a direct message to the US instead of trying convince the Soviets to mediate a better deal.

[Vattel]

72. Wow. Impossible terms and they still sought mediation.

I know, they were insane and wanted to continue fighting a war they could not possibly win.

[hack89]

73. No - they completely misjudged the Soviets

and thought that their erstwhile allies could get them a better deal.

Why didn't they formally respond to the Potsdam declaration? Indicate to the Americans that they wanted to end the war but were not satisfied with the terms? Instead they ignored the declaration and attempted a backdoor Hail Mary with the Soviets.

[Vattel]

75. I am not sure what your point is.

The Japanese wanted to end the war. Of course, they wanted to end the war on terms as favorable as possible to Japan. The Potsdam Declaration was not an attempt to propose terms that the Japanese might accept. It even suggested that their Emperor would be dethroned. (It called for the elimination "for all time [of] the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.&quot

When the alternative is mass murder, you at least try negotiations. Minimum decency requires that. The US failed to meet the standard of minimum decency in the closing months of WWII. They chose mass murder.

[hack89]

81. They did not open direct negotiations with the people they were fighting with

they did not give the Americans any strong indication they wanted to negotiate . Instead they tried secret negotiations with their allies the Soviets (remember the Japanese and Soviets still had a neutrality pact still in effect.)

As for "mass murder" - in the context of WWII, the atomic bombing did not represent a new threshold in violence. They were not even the deadliest bombing raids against Japan.

The Japanese killed nearly 10 million innocent civilians from 1937 to 1945 in the counties they invaded and occupied. That slaughter continued up the the very end. Demanding unconditional surrender was very appropriate, just like demanding unconditional surrender from the Nazis was appropriate. Such evil had to be completely eradicated.

[oneshooter]

82. Don't forget that they worked to death(murdered) 40% of the captured POW's.

[Vattel]

85. which is yet another reason why we should have negotiated with them earlier.

[hack89]

86. When they ignored the Potsdam declaration

what were we to do? Beg them to talk to us?

The simple fact is that until the spring of 1945 the Japanese were no where near military defeat - we had no leverage to demand that they disarm and leave the countries they occupied. The battle of Okinawa demonstrated just how potent the Japaneses military still was.

[Vattel]

88. We should never have issued the Potsdam Declaration!

I agree that it would have been odd to issue the Potsdam Declaration and then seek to negotiate. The basic problem is that because our objective was to secure unconditional surrender and to commit mass murder, if necessary, to achieve it, we issued the Declaration. I also agree that until the Spring of 1945 the Japanese situation wasn't obviously completely hopeless. Nevertheless, the point remains that we chose unconditional surrender as our objective and mass murder as the means to achieving it. Instead of issuing the Potsdam Declaration, we could have sought to end the war through negotiations. For someone that takes rights seriously, that would obviously have been the right thing to do. And even a utilitarian like yourself should recognize that no serious cost benefit analysis would have recommended doing what we did. Worries about what the Japanese might have done in the future had they been allowed to keep their government do not justify sacrificing the lives of tens of thousands by fire bombing or nuking every major city in Japan. It would have been much better, for example, to seek a settlement under which the territories occupied by Japan would have been liberated, POWs freed, but Japan would not have been occupied. Containment is not always bad. It is good if the alternative is mass murder.

[hack89]

89. It would have been political sucide for Roosevelt or Churchill

to demand anything other than unconditional surrender. Just like unconditional surrender was the only acceptable term for the Nazis.

[Vattel]

90. Good point.

And that puts the blame for what we did on those who would have had Truman's hide had he been easier on the Japanese.

[hack89]

91. Why is it so important to you that the blame lay solely on America?

Last edited Sun Aug 11, 2013, 09:25 AM - Edit history (1)

of the tens of millions of people that died in WWII, why are the deaths of these 200,000 that more important?

That's what I will never understand about this annual fight. It was another horrific event in a war filled with horrific events. And yet people want to put this on a separate moral plane.

In any case, thanks for the interesting discussion. I am sure we (meaning DU) will pick up where we left next year.

[Vattel]

92. Thank you for the discussion.

Personally, I don't draw much of a distinction between the conventional population bombing we did in WWII and the bombing of H and N. I certainly don't blame only America for anything that happened in WWII. To be frank, the Japanese government could scarcely have been more murderous and cruel than it was during WWII. The US government was awful, in my opinion, but practically angelic compared to the Japanese government.

[Vattel]

84. The fact that the Japanese did not open

direct negotiations with us does not mean that we should not have sought to open direct negotiations with them. Because they were slaughtering innocent people in occupied territories, we should have been prepared to demand that they withdraw from those territories. The historical record indicates that that demand would not have been a stumbling block.

[Niceguy1]

52. funny how decades after the fact

Every day people think they could have made better decisons than the great men of the time.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

61. Right

I do know Harry Truman didn't have sixty eight years to think about his decision.

[duffyduff]

65. Truman made the right decision

If the vast majority of posters who are too young to remember this event were alive then, they would have agreed with him.

I fucking HATE revisionists.

[bravenak]

78. It means we should never do it again.

Babes at the breast vaporized. We humans are sick. No other animals do the things we do.

[mick063]

79. Google firebombing in WWII.

It might change one's perspective.

[The Second Stone]

87. War is utter hell to civilians and the combatants

But let's remember, the conventional bombing of Tokyo killed a lot more. It looked like we were going to have to do that over and over and over and over. The invasions of Saipan and Okinawa made it clear that we would be machine gunning down millions of civilians attacking with shovels, pitchforks and sticks. And our causalities were estimated at 1 million wounded and dead. The atomic bomb victims were killed, the same as with any other weapon. The horror of the weapon resonates today. It makes us all recoil in the way that Tokyo, Saipan and Okinawa don't, even though more were killed and more brutally. The question isn't whether the atomic bombs were justified, it is whether our war aims and methods in general were justified. The dead are just as dead, but more quickly for the vast majority of atom bomb victims, it is the horror and terror that the living live with over atomic bombing as opposed to, say, fire bombing.

Is there room to disagree? I suppose so. But we can't disagree on the fact that it actually happened and there were and still are consequences.