72 years (and 13 hours) ago...

[Dill]

(08-08-2017, 09:26 AM)Au165 Wrote: As for Germany, yes innocent is the correct word to use. Look up things like the Dresden bombing. We flattened a historic city with little to no military value killing 25k innocent civilian people. It wasn't the only time we did it, and in reality we did it because we were simply tired of war and didn't care about civilian casualties at that point late in the war.

As for Japan, I still disagree. They were surrendering we simply didn't want to take it. The bombing survey showed they probably would have surrendered by November which is when we planned for the invasion. If we would have been willing to allow the emperor to be cleared of war crimes, which we ended up letting him be anyways, it would have ended without the use of the weapons. Leahy, Nimitz, Halsey, Arnold, LaMay, MacArthuer, basically every important military figure of the time agreed that either Japanese were ready to surrender, or that it was unnecessary to go that far. Hell even Eisenhower later said that the bombs were unnecessary, a guy who knows the struggles of being a president and a military leader.

War sucks I get it, but we as a country have crossed the line many times in history but have always been in the fortunate position of getting to write our own narrative or cover up for the most part what we did.

Agreed. There was no military necessity for dropping the bombs. Even MacArthur, the guy presumably in charge of any invasion, thought it unnecessary. The Japanese high command had already agreed to surrender if the emperor's status could be guaranteed.

From the Japanese side, an equally serious threat was the impending Soviet invasion. The Soviets had already smashed their land army in Manchukuo and, unlike the US, was poised to invade immediately with a very large and very effective army--much more merciless than the US.  And they would have held whatever territory they took--possibly the whole of Japan, or half like Korea: then North Japan and South Japan problems ever after.

Until the Soviets turned on them, Japan had been sending peace overtures to the US and Britain through Stalin.  The last one got "lost" just before the Soviets invaded Manchukuo.

All the "balance of casualties" arguments--how many Americans and Japanese lives were "saved" by the bomb--arose in the decade after the bombing.

I don't easily fall prey to "both sides do it" arguments. The US was not as bad as Japan or Germany by any stretch. But I am one of those people who thinks that killing innocent Japanese, especially thousands of children, does not balance out the atrocities carried out by their military leaders in other countries.  The bulk of these bomb deaths were especially horrible and lingering, emanating in waves from the blast site--people three miles away dying a few days after the drop, then a week later people five miles away, then people six miles away a month later, dropping in the streets and left to writhe in agony because the few available medical facilities were swamped.