Commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

[Robspur12]

Feel very emotional watching footage, listening to stories and seeing the pictures. Being a father of two listening to stories of children running around screaming "it's hot it's hot" some whose parents who were already dead was particularly harrowing. Worse that their suffering was man made. Hope we never have cause to detonate a nuclear bomb again.

 

[Papercut]

Reading a little into it, am surprised Truman was a Liberal Democrat.

 

[spitshine]

Let's talk about the suffering at the hands of the brutal Japanese forces and those who to this day can never forgive in the Far East....
Or successive British Governments having links with the Japanese yet they never ever showed any remorse or apologised for their actions

 

[P.D.]

I went to Japan last year, quite distressing going to the Hiroshima peace memorial and museum. Has pictures showing the aftermath and the whole city centre more or less is gone, like 2/3 buildings left standing. The museum has burnt out kids tricycles and other toys etc, pretty gruesome.

 

[parklane1]

And the yanks have still not learnt that bombing the brick out of people is not the way to go.

 

[Lost Mango]

Let's talk about the suffering at the hands of the brutal Japanese forces and those who to this day can never forgive in the Far East....
Or successive British Governments having links with the Japanese yet they never ever showed any remorse or apologised for their actions

We could do and should do in a different conversation but the dropping of the bombs had no impact on that.

The atomic bombs did not end the war. The surrender was already being put into action following the carpet bombing by 'conventional' bombs previously. The bombs were dropped either to a) test what they could do and/or b) show Stalin not to mess further in Europe.

As such they are a massive war crime.

 

[LutonSpurs]

The Japanese wanted to surrender, they contacted Sweden and some other countries to discuss it but the Amercians really wanted to test their new toy. They were spent and finished as it was.

Genocide if we will ever see it.

 

[Notmegov]

Not sure its a clear cut as that, The Japanese had as you said started to discuss surrendering but there is know way of knowing if it was going to be a total surrender like the Allies wanted. Whilst any "negotiations" would be going on the Russians would have been racing in from the east (having only just entered the war) the last thing the Western powers wanted was Russia taking a slice of Japan as well. The war would have carried on the casualties would have got even worse than that of Okinawa. Some reports had civilian deaths at 125,000 , Soldiers 110,000 .

Whilst i agree that there was a element of boys and new toy about it, i am not totally convinced there was no need to use it at all and in the end was it any worse than the fire bombing that had gone on before.

 

[Raziel]

Not sure its a clear cut as that, The Japanese had as you said started to discuss surrendering but there is know way of knowing if it was going to be a total surrender like the Allies wanted. Whilst any "negotiations" would be going on the Russians would have been racing in from the east (having only just entered the war) the last thing the Western powers wanted was Russia taking a slice of Japan as well. The war would have carried on the casualties would have got even worse than that of Okinawa. Some reports had civilian deaths at 125,000 , Soldiers 110,000 .

Whilst i agree that there was a element of boys and new toy about it, i am not totally convinced there was no need to use it at all and in the end was it any worse than the fire bombing that had gone on before.

It was actually quite clear cut .. the soldiers saved message is garbage ..

- the sticking point on the Japanese surrender was that they wanted to keep their emperor, something the allies gave them anyway after the bomb
- the bombs killed more Japanese in two days than American soldiers in the entire pacific campaign
- 6 of 7 US generals advised it was unnecessary, and in fact likely unjust

It was political decision made on a combination of send a message to the Russians, needed to use the shiny toy that we spent more money on than any other project in history.

We need to be careful about history revision, the horrible concept of just war, and that bombing saves has unfortunately carried to modern thought process.

 

[Lost Mango]

Not sure its a clear cut as that, The Japanese had as you said started to discuss surrendering but there is know way of knowing if it was going to be a total surrender like the Allies wanted. Whilst any "negotiations" would be going on the Russians would have been racing in from the east (having only just entered the war) the last thing the Western powers wanted was Russia taking a slice of Japan as well. The war would have carried on the casualties would have got even worse than that of Okinawa. Some reports had civilian deaths at 125,000 , Soldiers 110,000 .

Whilst i agree that there was a element of boys and new toy about it, i am not totally convinced there was no need to use it at all and in the end was it any worse than the fire bombing that had gone on before.

Possibly not and that in itself, as with Germans bombing UK cities (& not industrial/war targets) and us flattening Dresden, Russia standing back and letting Warsaw be destroyed (etc) all should be looked at as crimes of war rather than military mitigation.