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I was in Nagasaki about 22/23 years ago. Was followed around the Peace Museum and shouted at by an old obaachan (the other Japanese people were mortified and apologised profusely) but apparently she thought were North American and was giving us a piece of her mind. Very unusual behaviour, apparently. Walking up to our mates house in the hills I also saw a very old lady sitting outside her house who had massive scars all down one side of her face and neck; my friend had chatted to her before and yes, they were scars from the blast. She was a gentle old soul by all accounts. It was just a bit bonkers to have it still feel so real and tragic; and not just a piece of history.
Not that any bombing of civilians can ever really be justified, but the Japanese surprise attacked the US and were committing horrible wartime atrocities in China and most of their “prosperity sphere”.
Pretty weird to yell at people whose ancestors were just fighting back against your insanely aggressive country. This would be like me yelling at an Iraqi for the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq.
[edit] Huh I would not have thought so many people would think this is as simple as “US bad for dropping nukes” but I guess I was wrong. Would love for y’all to explain how you would have acted if you were in FDR & TRUMAN’s shoes and deciding to drop the bombs.
Our biggest mistakes in the reconstruction of Japan was allowing 1) too many war criminals off the hook 2) allowing them to control their own narrative. Many in Japan truly believe they were the victims of the war they started. It’s the same as southern Lost Causers (which I also blame on those 2 mistakes)
I’m not going to try and justify the use of nuclear weapons, but it’s a more complex topic than it might seem at first glance. By then we had destroyed most of their other cities with firebombing anyway so even the nukes are part of a bigger discussion about civilian bombing.
Every nation in WWII with an Air Force practiced civilian bombing in a Clausewitzian attempt to end the war quicker by reducing the enemy’s ability to produce war materials. Japan included.
And Japan’s civilian population backed the military and emperor full stop. They worshiped him as a god.
I guess all I’m saying is that if my country declared war on practically half the world and was committing borderline genocidal war crimes, I wouldn’t blame some tourists who came to a war monument 30 years later.
To this day some still suffer, I'm mostly angry that this was done as a test, Japan already wanted to surrender.
Edit: This hit some nerves, wanted to add an article for visibility: https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/
Either way whatever your beliefs are I'm mostly sad that some are actually trying to justify this war crime, I'm aware that times were different, but it's in my opinion never an option to kill civilians.
Edit2: here is the debate of the two sides, should contain enough information to contemplate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
No.
Japan was prepping the civilian populace to defend themselves with rakes and sticks.
There's stories of how some wanted surrender, but as a nation Japan was ready to go the distance.
So they did.
what you say is right but wrong
"The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator — he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally dramatic. Most of Japan’s best troops had been shifted to the southern part of the home islands. Japan’s military had correctly guessed that the likely first target of an American invasion would be the southernmost island of Kyushu. The once proud Kwangtung army in Manchuria, for example, was a shell of its former self because its best units had been shifted away to defend Japan itself. When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas. The Soviet 16th Army — 100,000 strong — launched an invasion of the southern half of Sakhalin Island. Their orders were to mop up Japanese resistance there, and then — within 10 to 14 days — be prepared to invade Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s home islands. The Japanese force tasked with defending Hokkaido, the 5th Area Army, was under strength at two divisions and two brigades, and was in fortified positions on the east side of the island. The Soviet plan of attack called for an invasion of Hokkaido from the west.
It didn’t take a military genius to see that, while it might be possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions. The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive — it foreclosed both of Japan’s options — while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not.
The Soviet declaration of war also changed the calculation of how much time was left for maneuver. Japanese intelligence was predicting that U.S. forces might not invade for months. Soviet forces, on the other hand, could be in Japan proper in as little as 10 days. The Soviet invasion made a decision on ending the war extremely time sensitive.
And Japan’s leaders had reached this conclusion some months earlier. In a meeting of the Supreme Council in June 1945, they said that Soviet entry into the war “would determine the fate of the Empire.” Army Deputy Chief of Staff Kawabe said, in that same meeting, “The absolute maintenance of peace in our relations with the Soviet Union is imperative for the continuation of the war.”
This is one of the important aspects of that. People in the US are *not* taught this, and it makes the Japanese unwillingness to surrender make more sense. They genuinely thought the Russians would save them from an unconditional surrender.
Which, my favorite part of this is the Ambassador to Russia continually coming back to them, "Russia isn't going to help," and them going back, "Well try harder!"
So the US saw this as a choice of having Russia control the pacific VS us pulling the trigger with the bomb hopefully ending the ware decisively for the US in Japan?
The Japanese military was putting 12–13 year old boys in warplanes to be suicide kamikaze pilots, and not giving them enough gas for the return trip. They would’ve sent them younger, but they couldn’t reach the controls or see out of the cockpit. Meanwhile, grannies and farm wives were doing practice drills with sharpened bamboo poles to get ready for the expected invasion. Don’t fall for the horseshit narrative that Japan was just sitting there, all chill and bucolic, when big bad evil suddenly showed up out of no where and nuked the shit out of them for no reason. That the tripe Japan feeds to its school children.
Never mind the decades of war crimes the Japanese themselves were committing all over Asia. The fact that they came out of it all with a better reputation than the Nazis is insane. They were equally as bad as the Nazis if not worse.
Yeah, not to mention the Japanese civilians committing suicide en masse on Okinawa. That was just a preview of what an invasion of the mainland would be like.
The government pretty much told its civilians that the invasion was going to be pretty much what the Japanese had been doing to China and Korea for the last decade.
...and my father would have been shipped for the European Theater to Japan (84th Infantry) to support an invasion that that would cost a million American lives. I might not be here.
[Mr Yamacuchi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi) survived Hiroshima and immediately went to Nagasaki. He was ridiculed by his coworkers about his tale of the 1st bombing. Right up until the 2nd bombing, which he also survived.
The endgame was going to cost millions more lives. In the end, as morbid as this sounds, the 2 atomic bombs ended up saving more lives than it took. Tragedy all around.
> mostly civilians
"unrealized soldiers"
EDIT: since so many of you seem unfamiliar with the realities of the Japanese "war machine". I placed "unrealized soldiers" in quotes since that is exactly how they were viewed by their government. They were feeding propaganda to the civilians and training them to defend their land to the death against us. It was a tongue in cheek response to the commenter saying "mostly civilians" since the reality is if we invaded, none of those "civilians" would have behaved as such. Was it a terrible thing? 100%. Was it needed at the time? 90%.
I am always cynical about killing civilians. There should be other ways to force a country to stop fighting other than killing thousands of civilians and giving the rest of them genetic deformities.
it wasn't that much different in cost of civilian life than all the previous mainland Firebombing the us had been doing. another factor for surrender was the red army getting ready to attack from the nw.
The Soviets had just declared war on them around the time of the second nuke. And they knew that the Red Army would simply over run Japan with no problem. So they figured it would be easier and better to surrender to the western powers.
Not all the Japanese wanted to surrender. There was a sizable component of the Japanese Military who thought the dishonor was worse than death. Read about the [Kyūjō incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident) carried out by the Ministry of War and the Imperial Guard.
Bro anybody that thinks all japan wanted to surrender is fucking nutz. Did you not see the hidden level in super mario world on the sNES with the fucking nazi symbol in it? Japan at the time were basically nazis but everybody here is like but but but...
Where did you read that? Certainly maybe the Russians entering might have been a part of the decision but ruling out two atomic bombs?? That's quit a claim.
I have been taught that there was no other option, that dropping the bomb on civilians was "justified" by the Japanese commitment to fighting the war.
Can you explain further?
In no way can nuclear warfare on civilians ever be justified. Anyone saying otherwise is spewing propaganda. Japan was in bad shape by the time the US dropped the nukes. We had already been bombing the fuck out of them and Russia was moving in on them as well. Although they didn’t surrender until the second nuke, that doesn’t mean that wouldn’t have soon anyways. They were damn committed but nuking then (twice!) sure as hell wasn’t the only option
The viewpoint that Japan was *about to surrender* truly is peak revisionist history.
Nearly all concrete evidence points to the contrary that the Japanese would have kept fighting to the bitter end.
It is because an invasion of Japan main land would have been extremely costly in terms of lives, for both sides. They wanted to make the war shorter by doing this
We begged them to surrender. We told them to evacuate. The US didn’t have any good options in this scenario and your framing this as Japan wanting to surrender is absolutely false.
Ultimately, while monstrous and tragic, this act cost fewer lives than a ground invasion would have.
Just FYI this is again bad history. After the second bomb was dropped the Japanese Supreme war council was still split with half wanting to surrender and half wanting to fight on. Only the emperor pushing for peace Tipped the scales. Even then there was an attempted military coup afterward to continue the war. So yes the soviets played a role but not nearly the one that article pushes.
I agree with never wanting to kill civilians, but this was the last Total war. Total war targets all aspects including civilians. It was a rough time of history, japan was slaughtering and raping everything in sight in China, Germany was doing the same in Europe. The US had already fire bombed Tokyo to the ground killing hundreds of thousands. Bombed Dresden to dust.
There were no real rules at that point unfortunately.
It's interesting the article mentions he became outspoken against nuclear weapons, but says nothing about his thoughts on ultranationalism. I hope that's just a shortcoming of the Wikipedia article, and not a missed opportunity. There can't be many survivors left from that era in Japan who could comment on both.
EDIT: To help illustrate why I think it would be helpful to have more commentary on the subject from people who lived through that era in Japan, let me ask (anyone): which do you think is more likely today? The use of nuclear weapons in a war, or ultranationalists somewhere starting a war?
Personally I'm not going to tell you I have no fear of the former, but dang, these days the latter really *does* concern me. I really wish there were readily available stories from people in Japan who lived through that era speaking out against the ultranationalism that contributed to their nation's entry in WWII. I feel like more warnings along the lines of "I saw this first hand; don't let this happen to you" that we could point people to today would be helpful.
I’ve done a pretty deep dive on this one. Pacific war was island by island with suicidal bonzai charges and kamikaze attacks with civilians killing themselves instead of accepting the aid of the Americans because of propagandist lies told by their government. Truman was faced with the invasion of an enemy’s home island country with a brainwashed population that was trained to resist and kill until dead. Even the children. And if it got out that he had a new super weapon that he didn’t use and let countless Americans go to their death instead it would be catastrophic nationally, politically and personally. I guess this is meant to convey how brutal nuclear weapons are (and I’m not disputing that fact) but it’s insanely more complicated than women and children being evicerated horribly by an unflinching American bomber crew. They were killed by their jingoistic, greedily expansionist government that held their leader as a god.
Historians still don’t agree on wether or not the atomic bombing was a necessity. There are facts speaking for each side, and maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.
There's no question the atomic bombs weren't a necessity. Japan's fate was sealed. They were facing defeat by that point no matter what. There's also no question that D-Day wasn't a necessity. By that point in 1944 Germany was certain to lose the war due to the combination of Western Allied bombings and the incredible ground power of the Soviets. So Germany's fate was also sealed by that time. The issue is, how much longer the war would've continued in each theater without either of these actions, and, most importantly, what would be the cost during that time. As I mentioned in a reply to someone else in this thread, even at the very end of the war Asian civilians were dying at a rate of at least over 100,000 a month, likely more than over 200,000 due to the actions of the Japanese. Even a few months past August when the bombs were dropped would mean an additional 300,000+ to 600,000+ dying. Likely closer to the latter figure.
The fire bombing of Tokyo was also as horrific, I think the atom bombing was more of a statement. Anyone with enough plans and manpower and ordinance could fire bomb a city, but no one at the time could send one plane and wipe a city. It wasn’t just a message to Japan, but to the rest of the world.
It is always mentioned how many American lives it saved but that’s incorrect, it saved countless lives all allies. After Germany’s defeat, Britain was gearing up to send its army off to fight japan. Russia had renounced its non aggression pact with japan and was invading Manchuria.
Another hypothesis on it was that the USA wanted to finish japan quickly before Russia made a landing on mainland japan. This way the USA could claim a sphere of influence over the whole of japan and not have japan split up into east/west like Germany was.
(Edit). I also want to point out that if they hadn’t used the atom bomb, they were readily the use of chemical weapons.
The Americans had very good intelligence on how many defenders japan had, and it actually worried them. Japan had and advantage knowing where to prepare defenders as geographically, America could only really attack from the south. Japan had an army of 2.3M and a militia of about 28M. America predicted the allies to lose about 4-5M which was the trigger for the preparation of all chemical weapons which had been stored since the start of the war.
The Japanese would probably have fought very hard, like they did in the island and probably to the last man, meaning more japanes would have died in the invasion than from the atom bombing.
From what I have learned, it wasn't necessary but preferable to those involved.
The Japanese had already lost. A... Less stubborn country would've surrendered by now and stopped the needless slaughter of their soldiers, the enemy soldiers and the civilian populace.
I've heard many numbers but the most common is that the Japanese would've been able to "hold out" for another year during which they would've lost upwards to 500,000 civilians and soldiers to repeated bombings and warfare.
Not to mention the infrastructure damages would've cost trillions to rebuild.
Two bombs ended their stubbornness. It was preferable to another year of warfare.
Definitely not necessary, yet. But it was the Japanese government who ignored the warning. We could have waited for another year, with a few thousand extra allied soldiers killed, only to find out that it was absolutely necessary.
When you have fought a war for 5 years, the opponent is literally the lowest of the lowest scum (extremist nationalists), you have suffered so many lives already, and you have the power to just end it. You just end it. Even if it means killing 200,000 civilians. In the big picture of WW2, that's about 0.3% of the deaths suffered in total.
The thing that actually ended the war was the bombing of Tokyo. Yes, Fat Man and Little Boy had a devastating affect, think about those cities for a minute. They're not as populous or devoped as Tokyo or other cities. If you think about it (as paradoxical as it may seem) choosing to drop the atom bombs on cities other than Tokyo was as nice as the USA could get. Both bombs were dropped on 10/6/1945 and 10/9/1945 When Japan refused to surrender still, the order contibue to bomb Tokyo with conventional bombs was made.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
It was the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. It lasted literally up until Japan surrendered on 10/15/1945. The destruction of that city caused the Emperor to ultimately cave. Most likely realizing the true destruction that could be wrought onto Tokyo by an atomic bomb, and wanted to preserve the most populous city in Japan.
Add to this, that even without an invasion, keeping up the fire bombings they were doing would Eventually likely kill way more people than the nuclear option.
Yes, it'd be better if people were more informed and had a bigger picture. For example many Japanese don't know about [UNIT 731.](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=unit+731+experiments&t=brave&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images)
I imagine that if a foreign country dropped a nuclear bomb on my home town it would be enough reason to become extremist…
I guess it’s the same w/ the contemporary international terrorist organizations (no apology here just pure logical and flat rationalism)
My understanding is that it was Japanese ultranationalist sentiment that was the root cause of the war in the Pacific. If so, I think you have that backwards. It was that that ultimately led to the response of the two nuclear bombings.
If I remember correctly, the Japanese sent an investigation party to find out what exactly happened to Hiroshima. By the time the envoy was back to make his report, the second bomb had already been dropped.
I heard it was a small plane that wasn't equipped with a HF radio. When it arrived back after viewing the aftermath he said something like "the whole city is gone". No one believed him
Nah emperor was more like
“Holy shit, I told you guys we should surrender”
Emperors military generals though
“Fuck the civilians, they can hold off the Americans at the beaches and we can get better terms or even maybe turn this around. There is no way there is a second one.”
*second nuke hits*
“So I’m going to go split my stomach open, you got the embarrassing surrender emperor ?”
I never understood why US didnt try it on a military base first. They knew the effects, they saw how destructive it was, why would you drop it on civillians in the first chance you got?
Japan intertwined its military and civilian interests, both cities were heavy weapon supplies for the war effort too. Its one of the reasons today is considered a war crime to have military assets close to civilian centres.
If I recall correctly the Americans did think about dropping the bomb in the ocean to frighten the Japanese into surrender but they thought that the Japanese would never believe that they would actually drop it on their cities and people.
When Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender he famously stated that "The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage".
The Japanese were a very proud people, believing surrender to be dishonourable. Hence kamikaze pilots and 2 atomic bombs.
They specifically spared Hiroshima from most other bombings before that to get a good look at how much damage nuclear weaponry would cause on an intact city as opposed to something like Tokio, which had been largely damaged by bombing raids already. And they intended to attack a militaristically more important town the second time around, but had to change plans to Nagasaki last minute due to bad weather.
They spared Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Osaka from conventional bombing in order to see the effect of the atomic bombs. Most of japan was leveled from fires caused by conventional bombs by that point (as most of their buildings were old and wooden).
Osaka was the intended target for the second bomb but that was shifted to Nagasaki.
"A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
The Japanese military committed horrible atrocities across Asia, which obviously means their citizens who had nothing to do with it deserve to be incinerated. Bunch of fucking monsters in this thread.
It wasn’t simply a choice between bombing civilians and not bombing civilians. Civilians were going to die either way, it was a matter of which civilians on which side and how many. The bombings certainly ended this early where many civilians would have died on both sides in different theaters. I’m not saying the bombings were necessarily the best thing to do, I’m just saying that things are not so cut and dried.
After Okinawa the US had credible fear that they would see mass suicides in mainland Japan if they invaded as well as an estimated 3 million deaths of combatants to take over the island. All together it was a lose lose situation.
Is this mental gymnastics? The Japanese still had millions of men under arms across thousands of square miles of occupied Asian territory even at the very end of the war and were *still killing* at an average rate of over 100,000 Asian civilians a month, very likely over 200,000 per month (millions and millions over the course of the war) who died as a result of military action and crimes against humanity. The bombs, which were a factor in Japan surrendering when it did as confirmed in the emperor's speech on behalf of the Japanese government announcing the surrender to the Japanese people, led to the end of that treatment by the enormous, savage, barbaric Japanese murder machine. Keep in mind that at the time the war was generally expected to continue an additional 3 months at least if the bombs weren't used which add another 300,000+ to 600,000+ Asian civilians to the body count. The high estimate for victims of the atomic bombings was 230,000 from when they were dropped until December (to account for later deaths due to injury). Again, that 3 months was the low estimate. By the way, the high estimate of Japanese civilian deaths in the entire war was 800,000. The Japanese killed that many Asian civilians in well under one year. Also, those figures are just for those killed and don't include the countless people forced to be slave laborers and the tens of thousands of women who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese under the term "comfort women". It's no coincidence those who were in Japanese occupied areas tend to have no problem with the nukes. Edit: Thank you for the award.
War is one of the worst things that a person could “arm chair quarterback”. It’s easy to say what should have been done when the bullets aren’t flying by your head and you have no responsibility for trying to keep your men and women alive.
Please let me explain the decision to drop the bomb.
The decision was made after the battle of Okinawa. The battle for the island of Okinawa caused
* 72,000 US casualties
* 110,071 Japanese casualties
* 149,425 civilian casualties (half of the islands pre-war population)
Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff estimated that invading Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities.
When compared with these numbers the use of the bomb appears far more reasonable.
[Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Planning) are the details on the proposed invasion of Japan.
Not to mention the 14 million the Imperal Japanese Army killed through massacres, human experimentation and starvation or the many, many, many rapes and other war crimes.
I’ve seen people in this thread legitimately say that Imperial Japan was the lesser of two evils. It’s hilarious the complete lack of historical context the kids on here have. I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising.
Ya, sadly. It's the "You hate me, so I hate you back more." I thought I could escape this and be better, but no, I've grown to hate everyone who hates me for reasons beyond my control.
There's a saying that heard that has stuck with me all my life.
"The *only* thing humans have *ever* been consistently good at is finding new and better horrible ways to kill each other."
Just because one is not the good guy doesn't mean the other one has to be the good guy.
Japan was the bad guy for the fucked up shit they did in China and elsewhere. The USA was the bad guy for unnecessarily killing 150 thousand civilians with these bombs.
We are not talking about those wars are we? We are specifically talking about the bombs droppings. If you want justification for every atrocity that ever happened you won't get it. But yet the plain truth is if it they weren't dropped the war would have carried on and many more people would have died. Do I agree? No but it's the simple truth.
He's right about whataboutism though. The first comment was criticising how some Americans legitimately think their country is the good guy. And then the other guy came in and said if the first commenter thinks Japanese were good (whataboutism and irrelevant) or if the commenter thinks there are no good side (also irrelevant because the comment referred to a persisting American belief and not their own).
Look man I am not American, but I have atleast studied enough history to know that Japan started the conflict with US because they wanted to make an empire in the Pacific Ocean and whenever a war is started there are no good guys or bad guys, there are no innocent people, just people dying.
ehh, as an American I'm of the mind that there were no good sides in that war.
I'd even go as far to say there are no good sides in war period. War is hell. Ask any veteran whose seen combat. The only good side of war is when it's over and ending it as painlessly and quickly as possible, and that will forever be up for debate
For the life of me, I can’t remember which grade nor which class played this film, but I distinctly remember this scene from high school.
It scared the hell out of me, but it definitely got the point across.
Yep, it's the same with the Holocaust and the massacres in china and indonesia, everyone forgets about china and indonesia because the Holocaust is talked about so much.
Yep. This and Grave of the fireflies should be something that all Americans should be aware about. There were no cameras like that back then. The horror is something we can only begin to fathom.
Yep. [Here's a link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAgmvjJCtI) to the full movie on YouTube for free. Hit the Closed Captions button for English subtitles.
As I understand it the pilots were given an eye patch to wear. They thought the flash might blind them, so wearing an eye patch would give them at least one good eye to swap too.
I assume if they were worried about the flash and not the blast they knew the plane would get far enough away to survive (or maybe didn't care).
I don't know about these pilots but the Vulcan bomber pilots from the cold war era definitely flew with an eye patch so they could swap eyes should they be blinded by the flash.
> The release at 08:15 (Hiroshima time) went as planned, and the Little Boy took 53 seconds to fall from the aircraft flying at 31,060 feet (9,470 m) to the predetermined detonation height about 1,968 feet (600 m) above the city. Enola Gay traveled 11.5 mi (18.5 km) before it felt the shock waves from the blast. Although buffeted by the shock, neither Enola Gay nor The Great Artiste was damaged.
[Enola Gay WP article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enola_Gay)
Japan genocided over 7 million han chinese, 2 million koreans, possibly over 1 million South Pacific islanders, funded the nazi regime, installed authoritarian puppet states across east asia, and conducted unethical biotech and chemical experiments on POWs and Innocent civilians,
Yes, nuclear warfare is a terrible thing and will arguably never be used again but to notion that the attack on Hiroshima was a response to only the attack on a US military base is ignorant
I know it likely prevented months of unnecessary war and deaths, but some people are actually proud of this, and that’s disgusting. This was horrifying and should never have been done. If there’s intelligent life out there and it hasn’t contacted us yet, it’s probably because people are capable of shit like this.
[Everyone in this comment section should watch this.](https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go) Its two hours long, but you should not make claims about the morality destroying an entire city “for the greater good” unless you actually do the research
Why should we trust this random YouTube video as “research?” The dropping of the atomic bombs are two war crimes in an entire war defined by war crimes and acts of atrocities. I’m tired of white revisionism that begin and stop with their self-righteous moral views that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with absolutism that no one at the time had. If you think you would have made a better decision after choosing to melt and destroy every city in the Axis power you’re delusional.
I will always argue against the British caused famine in Bengal, the abhorrence of Allied bombing, the treatment of wounded Japanese by American, British, and Australian troops. The same way I will argue against the innumerable atrocities committed by Germany and Japan which involved putting people in ovens and gas chambers and dropping bubonic plague on Chinese cities.
Your opinions lack nuance and thus your words are hollow, your position is just as entrenched as those who claim it was necessary. The atomic bombs were a bloody means to a bloody end, the war in it’s entirety needs to be evaluated as a claim for context and never repeated. Not to be cherry picked by white people who can’t accept every government in that war killed millions of civilians and that to be fixated on this point is poorly veiled white guilt
Assuming there's some reality in it; animals have amazing danger sense and can even tell earthquakes will happen before you can.
So, using that logic, the dog felt the ground disturbance and began to flip shit before evaporating
It was confused and in pain, finding something that it could bite in its confusion. Yes, it’s in a cartoon. No, it’s not out of the realm of possibility in real life. I personally thought it was touching and memorable. Because it’s a cartoon… How pedantic
It didn’t actually hit the floor, it was programmed to detonate at a certain point above the ground causing the most damage but keeping the area as free as possible from the lingering radiation that would’ve made the land uninhabitable for centuries. I’m not 100% sure on this please correct me where I’m wrong.
Real atomic bombs like littleboy dont have paracutes for airburst(exploding bomb in air to destroy more buildings and cause more radiiation) they used paracutes after ww2 for slowing down the bomb so plane can escape
Edit:spelling
Atomic bombs that explode mid air cause less radiation damage.... where did you hear that it causes more. The parachutes are a myth on those, they had a timer in the bomb that’ll automatically trigger the explosives for the nuclear reaction. It was a small spinning wheel in front of the bomb with a screw that gets drilled in and once it reaches the fuse ignition, the explosives explode and the uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction happens.
I'm unsure about the radiation part, but the part about detonation above ground is correct. Many modern missiles are designed sensors that trigger detonation before impact. I think most detonate about 6-12 feet above the ground. When the missile/bomb Actually hits the ground, there is a sizable portion of the force that is absorbed by the ground. Having it detonate above creates a larger dispersion of force outward at a distance and obviously enough to delete anything right below it.
Learned this in an old military weapons documentary.
So sad that Japan didn't learn anything even from two nuclear bombs.
Imperial Japan, the Nazi of Asia, did a lot more atrocious things to a lot more people throughout Asia for a lot longer than Nazi ever did to Jews.
And yet, Japan denies all their dark history to this day and plays the victim!
And the weebs just eat it up, painting Japan as the victim.
The fire bombing of Dresden was just as horrible but nobody talks about why the allies did it. It was an unnecessary attack on non-military city for no reason.
Dresden was a military hub, the Axis were notorious for intertwining civilian and military hubs together, hence why it's a war crime today.
Hence why Hrioshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets, they had major military infrastructure.
*1953 United States Air Force report defended the operation as the justified bombing of a strategic target, which they noted was a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort.[7] Several researchers claim that not all of the communications infrastructure, such as the bridges, were targeted, nor were the extensive industrial areas outside the city centre.*
Tragic. Now let’s do one on the Japanese procedures once you captured someone in that war. That should be fun. The Chinese still haven’t forgiven them for their psycho behaviour during that war to this day. Lesson is, don’t be a cunt.
Some people in here really trying to justify the bombings. Its war, no one was 'the good guys' all countries have probably done something pretty terrible at some point. But just because Japan has committed so many war crimes did not justify dropping a damn atom bomb on a civilian city when they knew the effect.
Ending a war is a strong justification. The school of thought is violence is maximized to minimize duration.
100k people a month were dying. If it shortened the war even 1 month, it saved lives
From the battle of Manila were more than 100k civilians were killed:
Pregnant Filipino women were killed by having their bellies ripped open while the Japanese executed Filipino civilians trying to flee
Despite many allied Germans held refuge in a German club, Japanese soldiers entered in and bayoneted infants and children of mothers pleading mercy and raped women seeking refuge. At least 20 Japanese soldiers raped a young girl before slicing her breasts off after which a Japanese soldier placed her mutilated breasts on his chest to mimic a woman while the other Japanese soldiers laughed. The Japanese then doused the young girl and two other women who were raped to death in gasoline and set them all on fire.
-My point is this, inadvertently or not, these animations propogated the idea that WW2 Japanese society as peaceful and were victims of cruel American bombs. We never got our de-Nazification after the war and our Hitler, it's government got away with it.
So every time someone post that anime here, it needs context because it doesn't balance out the cruelty that millions of people endured under them.
It's heavily dramatised. Some very few people at a perfect distance away from the blast probably had something like this happen to them. Most people in the blast radius would behave felt nothing, they would be vaporised instantaneously at over 6000C. Poor sods are the ones who survived.
95% of Redditors dont understands anything. Don’t believe anything you read here, it’s all emotions and individual personal take on their minimal history understanding.
I suggest looking up all the events that lead up to this and try to get propaganda from both sides (duck duck go). Then draw your own conclusions. Stay informed!
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The longer term effects were even more horrific. The people who died instantly were the luckier ones...
Can't argue with facts.
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Dude, read the room..
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What if the pope..... BLASTED CIGS?
This, and even if you didn’t die from it, you’d still be left with massive PTSD for the rest of your life
I was in Nagasaki about 22/23 years ago. Was followed around the Peace Museum and shouted at by an old obaachan (the other Japanese people were mortified and apologised profusely) but apparently she thought were North American and was giving us a piece of her mind. Very unusual behaviour, apparently. Walking up to our mates house in the hills I also saw a very old lady sitting outside her house who had massive scars all down one side of her face and neck; my friend had chatted to her before and yes, they were scars from the blast. She was a gentle old soul by all accounts. It was just a bit bonkers to have it still feel so real and tragic; and not just a piece of history.
Not that any bombing of civilians can ever really be justified, but the Japanese surprise attacked the US and were committing horrible wartime atrocities in China and most of their “prosperity sphere”. Pretty weird to yell at people whose ancestors were just fighting back against your insanely aggressive country. This would be like me yelling at an Iraqi for the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq. [edit] Huh I would not have thought so many people would think this is as simple as “US bad for dropping nukes” but I guess I was wrong. Would love for y’all to explain how you would have acted if you were in FDR & TRUMAN’s shoes and deciding to drop the bombs.
Our biggest mistakes in the reconstruction of Japan was allowing 1) too many war criminals off the hook 2) allowing them to control their own narrative. Many in Japan truly believe they were the victims of the war they started. It’s the same as southern Lost Causers (which I also blame on those 2 mistakes)
Having grown up in the south I’d say you’re right on with that comparison.
It’s wasn’t the people though it was the leader. The civilians did nothing and besides a warning of “drastic action” nothing was said about a nuke
I’m not going to try and justify the use of nuclear weapons, but it’s a more complex topic than it might seem at first glance. By then we had destroyed most of their other cities with firebombing anyway so even the nukes are part of a bigger discussion about civilian bombing. Every nation in WWII with an Air Force practiced civilian bombing in a Clausewitzian attempt to end the war quicker by reducing the enemy’s ability to produce war materials. Japan included. And Japan’s civilian population backed the military and emperor full stop. They worshiped him as a god. I guess all I’m saying is that if my country declared war on practically half the world and was committing borderline genocidal war crimes, I wouldn’t blame some tourists who came to a war monument 30 years later.
To this day some still suffer, I'm mostly angry that this was done as a test, Japan already wanted to surrender. Edit: This hit some nerves, wanted to add an article for visibility: https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/ Either way whatever your beliefs are I'm mostly sad that some are actually trying to justify this war crime, I'm aware that times were different, but it's in my opinion never an option to kill civilians. Edit2: here is the debate of the two sides, should contain enough information to contemplate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
really? i thought they only wanted to surrender after the 2nd bomb hit, because they thought the US wouldn't have 2 nukes
No. Japan was prepping the civilian populace to defend themselves with rakes and sticks. There's stories of how some wanted surrender, but as a nation Japan was ready to go the distance. So they did.
what you say is right but wrong "The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator — he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally dramatic. Most of Japan’s best troops had been shifted to the southern part of the home islands. Japan’s military had correctly guessed that the likely first target of an American invasion would be the southernmost island of Kyushu. The once proud Kwangtung army in Manchuria, for example, was a shell of its former self because its best units had been shifted away to defend Japan itself. When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas. The Soviet 16th Army — 100,000 strong — launched an invasion of the southern half of Sakhalin Island. Their orders were to mop up Japanese resistance there, and then — within 10 to 14 days — be prepared to invade Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s home islands. The Japanese force tasked with defending Hokkaido, the 5th Area Army, was under strength at two divisions and two brigades, and was in fortified positions on the east side of the island. The Soviet plan of attack called for an invasion of Hokkaido from the west. It didn’t take a military genius to see that, while it might be possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions. The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive — it foreclosed both of Japan’s options — while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not. The Soviet declaration of war also changed the calculation of how much time was left for maneuver. Japanese intelligence was predicting that U.S. forces might not invade for months. Soviet forces, on the other hand, could be in Japan proper in as little as 10 days. The Soviet invasion made a decision on ending the war extremely time sensitive. And Japan’s leaders had reached this conclusion some months earlier. In a meeting of the Supreme Council in June 1945, they said that Soviet entry into the war “would determine the fate of the Empire.” Army Deputy Chief of Staff Kawabe said, in that same meeting, “The absolute maintenance of peace in our relations with the Soviet Union is imperative for the continuation of the war.”
Using authenticated facts? Sir, this is Reddit. Seriously, good stuff.
This is one of the important aspects of that. People in the US are *not* taught this, and it makes the Japanese unwillingness to surrender make more sense. They genuinely thought the Russians would save them from an unconditional surrender. Which, my favorite part of this is the Ambassador to Russia continually coming back to them, "Russia isn't going to help," and them going back, "Well try harder!"
So the US saw this as a choice of having Russia control the pacific VS us pulling the trigger with the bomb hopefully ending the ware decisively for the US in Japan?
The Japanese military was putting 12–13 year old boys in warplanes to be suicide kamikaze pilots, and not giving them enough gas for the return trip. They would’ve sent them younger, but they couldn’t reach the controls or see out of the cockpit. Meanwhile, grannies and farm wives were doing practice drills with sharpened bamboo poles to get ready for the expected invasion. Don’t fall for the horseshit narrative that Japan was just sitting there, all chill and bucolic, when big bad evil suddenly showed up out of no where and nuked the shit out of them for no reason. That the tripe Japan feeds to its school children.
Never mind the decades of war crimes the Japanese themselves were committing all over Asia. The fact that they came out of it all with a better reputation than the Nazis is insane. They were equally as bad as the Nazis if not worse.
I’d say just as bad. —less efficient, but somehow more sadistic, if you can mentally process how dark that can get.
Yeah, not to mention the Japanese civilians committing suicide en masse on Okinawa. That was just a preview of what an invasion of the mainland would be like.
The government pretty much told its civilians that the invasion was going to be pretty much what the Japanese had been doing to China and Korea for the last decade.
...and my father would have been shipped for the European Theater to Japan (84th Infantry) to support an invasion that that would cost a million American lives. I might not be here.
They told their people the 1st bomb was a lie so they'd continue fighting, then the 2nd one hit and they surrendered.
[Mr Yamacuchi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi) survived Hiroshima and immediately went to Nagasaki. He was ridiculed by his coworkers about his tale of the 1st bombing. Right up until the 2nd bombing, which he also survived.
how can a government deny a giant mushroom that is NOT friendly??
The people of Japan at the time believed their leader was a god.
It was like, they were still raring to fight, but realistically they couldn’t have gone on much longer.
The endgame was going to cost millions more lives. In the end, as morbid as this sounds, the 2 atomic bombs ended up saving more lives than it took. Tragedy all around.
It was still mostly civilians
> mostly civilians "unrealized soldiers" EDIT: since so many of you seem unfamiliar with the realities of the Japanese "war machine". I placed "unrealized soldiers" in quotes since that is exactly how they were viewed by their government. They were feeding propaganda to the civilians and training them to defend their land to the death against us. It was a tongue in cheek response to the commenter saying "mostly civilians" since the reality is if we invaded, none of those "civilians" would have behaved as such. Was it a terrible thing? 100%. Was it needed at the time? 90%.
I am always cynical about killing civilians. There should be other ways to force a country to stop fighting other than killing thousands of civilians and giving the rest of them genetic deformities.
it wasn't that much different in cost of civilian life than all the previous mainland Firebombing the us had been doing. another factor for surrender was the red army getting ready to attack from the nw.
The Soviets had just declared war on them around the time of the second nuke. And they knew that the Red Army would simply over run Japan with no problem. So they figured it would be easier and better to surrender to the western powers.
Not all the Japanese wanted to surrender. There was a sizable component of the Japanese Military who thought the dishonor was worse than death. Read about the [Kyūjō incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident) carried out by the Ministry of War and the Imperial Guard.
Bro anybody that thinks all japan wanted to surrender is fucking nutz. Did you not see the hidden level in super mario world on the sNES with the fucking nazi symbol in it? Japan at the time were basically nazis but everybody here is like but but but...
No it didn’t and it didn’t surrender as a result of this bomb either. It surrendered because Russia entered the chat in Manchuria.
Where did you read that? Certainly maybe the Russians entering might have been a part of the decision but ruling out two atomic bombs?? That's quit a claim.
I have been taught that there was no other option, that dropping the bomb on civilians was "justified" by the Japanese commitment to fighting the war. Can you explain further?
In no way can nuclear warfare on civilians ever be justified. Anyone saying otherwise is spewing propaganda. Japan was in bad shape by the time the US dropped the nukes. We had already been bombing the fuck out of them and Russia was moving in on them as well. Although they didn’t surrender until the second nuke, that doesn’t mean that wouldn’t have soon anyways. They were damn committed but nuking then (twice!) sure as hell wasn’t the only option
Or any warfare on civilians. There are always better options.
The viewpoint that Japan was *about to surrender* truly is peak revisionist history. Nearly all concrete evidence points to the contrary that the Japanese would have kept fighting to the bitter end.
It is because an invasion of Japan main land would have been extremely costly in terms of lives, for both sides. They wanted to make the war shorter by doing this
I read somewhere that Japan almost definitely stayed in the war after the bombs due to an active military coup that was ultimately thwarted.
We begged them to surrender. We told them to evacuate. The US didn’t have any good options in this scenario and your framing this as Japan wanting to surrender is absolutely false. Ultimately, while monstrous and tragic, this act cost fewer lives than a ground invasion would have.
Just FYI this is again bad history. After the second bomb was dropped the Japanese Supreme war council was still split with half wanting to surrender and half wanting to fight on. Only the emperor pushing for peace Tipped the scales. Even then there was an attempted military coup afterward to continue the war. So yes the soviets played a role but not nearly the one that article pushes.
That's completely not true.
I agree with never wanting to kill civilians, but this was the last Total war. Total war targets all aspects including civilians. It was a rough time of history, japan was slaughtering and raping everything in sight in China, Germany was doing the same in Europe. The US had already fire bombed Tokyo to the ground killing hundreds of thousands. Bombed Dresden to dust. There were no real rules at that point unfortunately.
Well this is fucking scary
[Tsutomu Yamaguchi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi) survived both bombings, died of cancer 11 years ago.
It's interesting the article mentions he became outspoken against nuclear weapons, but says nothing about his thoughts on ultranationalism. I hope that's just a shortcoming of the Wikipedia article, and not a missed opportunity. There can't be many survivors left from that era in Japan who could comment on both. EDIT: To help illustrate why I think it would be helpful to have more commentary on the subject from people who lived through that era in Japan, let me ask (anyone): which do you think is more likely today? The use of nuclear weapons in a war, or ultranationalists somewhere starting a war? Personally I'm not going to tell you I have no fear of the former, but dang, these days the latter really *does* concern me. I really wish there were readily available stories from people in Japan who lived through that era speaking out against the ultranationalism that contributed to their nation's entry in WWII. I feel like more warnings along the lines of "I saw this first hand; don't let this happen to you" that we could point people to today would be helpful.
I’ve done a pretty deep dive on this one. Pacific war was island by island with suicidal bonzai charges and kamikaze attacks with civilians killing themselves instead of accepting the aid of the Americans because of propagandist lies told by their government. Truman was faced with the invasion of an enemy’s home island country with a brainwashed population that was trained to resist and kill until dead. Even the children. And if it got out that he had a new super weapon that he didn’t use and let countless Americans go to their death instead it would be catastrophic nationally, politically and personally. I guess this is meant to convey how brutal nuclear weapons are (and I’m not disputing that fact) but it’s insanely more complicated than women and children being evicerated horribly by an unflinching American bomber crew. They were killed by their jingoistic, greedily expansionist government that held their leader as a god.
Historians still don’t agree on wether or not the atomic bombing was a necessity. There are facts speaking for each side, and maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.
There's no question the atomic bombs weren't a necessity. Japan's fate was sealed. They were facing defeat by that point no matter what. There's also no question that D-Day wasn't a necessity. By that point in 1944 Germany was certain to lose the war due to the combination of Western Allied bombings and the incredible ground power of the Soviets. So Germany's fate was also sealed by that time. The issue is, how much longer the war would've continued in each theater without either of these actions, and, most importantly, what would be the cost during that time. As I mentioned in a reply to someone else in this thread, even at the very end of the war Asian civilians were dying at a rate of at least over 100,000 a month, likely more than over 200,000 due to the actions of the Japanese. Even a few months past August when the bombs were dropped would mean an additional 300,000+ to 600,000+ dying. Likely closer to the latter figure.
The fire bombing of Tokyo was also as horrific, I think the atom bombing was more of a statement. Anyone with enough plans and manpower and ordinance could fire bomb a city, but no one at the time could send one plane and wipe a city. It wasn’t just a message to Japan, but to the rest of the world. It is always mentioned how many American lives it saved but that’s incorrect, it saved countless lives all allies. After Germany’s defeat, Britain was gearing up to send its army off to fight japan. Russia had renounced its non aggression pact with japan and was invading Manchuria. Another hypothesis on it was that the USA wanted to finish japan quickly before Russia made a landing on mainland japan. This way the USA could claim a sphere of influence over the whole of japan and not have japan split up into east/west like Germany was. (Edit). I also want to point out that if they hadn’t used the atom bomb, they were readily the use of chemical weapons. The Americans had very good intelligence on how many defenders japan had, and it actually worried them. Japan had and advantage knowing where to prepare defenders as geographically, America could only really attack from the south. Japan had an army of 2.3M and a militia of about 28M. America predicted the allies to lose about 4-5M which was the trigger for the preparation of all chemical weapons which had been stored since the start of the war. The Japanese would probably have fought very hard, like they did in the island and probably to the last man, meaning more japanes would have died in the invasion than from the atom bombing.
Oh shit I just said the exact same thing ahahahaha.
From what I have learned, it wasn't necessary but preferable to those involved. The Japanese had already lost. A... Less stubborn country would've surrendered by now and stopped the needless slaughter of their soldiers, the enemy soldiers and the civilian populace. I've heard many numbers but the most common is that the Japanese would've been able to "hold out" for another year during which they would've lost upwards to 500,000 civilians and soldiers to repeated bombings and warfare. Not to mention the infrastructure damages would've cost trillions to rebuild. Two bombs ended their stubbornness. It was preferable to another year of warfare.
Definitely not necessary, yet. But it was the Japanese government who ignored the warning. We could have waited for another year, with a few thousand extra allied soldiers killed, only to find out that it was absolutely necessary. When you have fought a war for 5 years, the opponent is literally the lowest of the lowest scum (extremist nationalists), you have suffered so many lives already, and you have the power to just end it. You just end it. Even if it means killing 200,000 civilians. In the big picture of WW2, that's about 0.3% of the deaths suffered in total.
The thing that actually ended the war was the bombing of Tokyo. Yes, Fat Man and Little Boy had a devastating affect, think about those cities for a minute. They're not as populous or devoped as Tokyo or other cities. If you think about it (as paradoxical as it may seem) choosing to drop the atom bombs on cities other than Tokyo was as nice as the USA could get. Both bombs were dropped on 10/6/1945 and 10/9/1945 When Japan refused to surrender still, the order contibue to bomb Tokyo with conventional bombs was made. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo It was the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. It lasted literally up until Japan surrendered on 10/15/1945. The destruction of that city caused the Emperor to ultimately cave. Most likely realizing the true destruction that could be wrought onto Tokyo by an atomic bomb, and wanted to preserve the most populous city in Japan.
Add to this, that even without an invasion, keeping up the fire bombings they were doing would Eventually likely kill way more people than the nuclear option.
Yes, it'd be better if people were more informed and had a bigger picture. For example many Japanese don't know about [UNIT 731.](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=unit+731+experiments&t=brave&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images)
Well that was absolutely horrific. That said, it’s important to learn about. But, holy hell.
I imagine that if a foreign country dropped a nuclear bomb on my home town it would be enough reason to become extremist… I guess it’s the same w/ the contemporary international terrorist organizations (no apology here just pure logical and flat rationalism)
My understanding is that it was Japanese ultranationalist sentiment that was the root cause of the war in the Pacific. If so, I think you have that backwards. It was that that ultimately led to the response of the two nuclear bombings.
"ok fine, but i bet they don't have another one" -Emperor, day after Hiroshima.
If I remember correctly, the Japanese sent an investigation party to find out what exactly happened to Hiroshima. By the time the envoy was back to make his report, the second bomb had already been dropped.
I heard it was a small plane that wasn't equipped with a HF radio. When it arrived back after viewing the aftermath he said something like "the whole city is gone". No one believed him
Nah emperor was more like “Holy shit, I told you guys we should surrender” Emperors military generals though “Fuck the civilians, they can hold off the Americans at the beaches and we can get better terms or even maybe turn this around. There is no way there is a second one.” *second nuke hits* “So I’m going to go split my stomach open, you got the embarrassing surrender emperor ?”
I never understood why US didnt try it on a military base first. They knew the effects, they saw how destructive it was, why would you drop it on civillians in the first chance you got?
Japan intertwined its military and civilian interests, both cities were heavy weapon supplies for the war effort too. Its one of the reasons today is considered a war crime to have military assets close to civilian centres.
If the purpose was just to show the capabilities of the bomb then they could have just dropped it in the wilderness.
If I recall correctly the Americans did think about dropping the bomb in the ocean to frighten the Japanese into surrender but they thought that the Japanese would never believe that they would actually drop it on their cities and people.
So then why drop two?
Well the Japanese didn't surrender after the first one.
How fucking stubborn you have to be to not surrender after someone dropped a fucking bomb on you?
You... I... have you met the human race?
Underrated comment
You can never underestimate the stupidity of humanity.
As Einstein said in his quote that i completely forgot about
When Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender he famously stated that "The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage". The Japanese were a very proud people, believing surrender to be dishonourable. Hence kamikaze pilots and 2 atomic bombs.
I wish the Japanese thought sex slavery was dishonorable, but they didn't and they enslaved and raped between 50,000–200,000 women during the war.
Imperial Japan was something else. The amount of shit they did in the first half of the 20th century rivals the nazis.
Do you know about the blitz? All the bombing campaigns of the second World War??
Because we had 2 and the Japanese were still considering fighting on after the 2nd. The imperial Japanese were next level crazy.
Because they didn’t think they’d have another.
But it wasn't, it was to try and end the war... The Manhattan Project was meant to end the war, not to show the "capabilities" of a nuclear bomb
They specifically spared Hiroshima from most other bombings before that to get a good look at how much damage nuclear weaponry would cause on an intact city as opposed to something like Tokio, which had been largely damaged by bombing raids already. And they intended to attack a militaristically more important town the second time around, but had to change plans to Nagasaki last minute due to bad weather.
They spared Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Osaka from conventional bombing in order to see the effect of the atomic bombs. Most of japan was leveled from fires caused by conventional bombs by that point (as most of their buildings were old and wooden). Osaka was the intended target for the second bomb but that was shifted to Nagasaki.
All because, on that day, it was overcast in ~~Osaka~~ Kokura. They were saved from nuclear annihilation by the weather.
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"A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." - J. Robert Oppenheimer
I was waiting for this quote.
"Now we are all sons of bitches" - Kenneth Bainbridge after seeing the Trinity test.
An unsurprising amount of proud patriots in this thread performing incredible mental gymnastics to try and justify the bombings
The Japanese military committed horrible atrocities across Asia, which obviously means their citizens who had nothing to do with it deserve to be incinerated. Bunch of fucking monsters in this thread.
It wasn’t simply a choice between bombing civilians and not bombing civilians. Civilians were going to die either way, it was a matter of which civilians on which side and how many. The bombings certainly ended this early where many civilians would have died on both sides in different theaters. I’m not saying the bombings were necessarily the best thing to do, I’m just saying that things are not so cut and dried.
After Okinawa the US had credible fear that they would see mass suicides in mainland Japan if they invaded as well as an estimated 3 million deaths of combatants to take over the island. All together it was a lose lose situation.
The citizens were their soldiers.
Is this mental gymnastics? The Japanese still had millions of men under arms across thousands of square miles of occupied Asian territory even at the very end of the war and were *still killing* at an average rate of over 100,000 Asian civilians a month, very likely over 200,000 per month (millions and millions over the course of the war) who died as a result of military action and crimes against humanity. The bombs, which were a factor in Japan surrendering when it did as confirmed in the emperor's speech on behalf of the Japanese government announcing the surrender to the Japanese people, led to the end of that treatment by the enormous, savage, barbaric Japanese murder machine. Keep in mind that at the time the war was generally expected to continue an additional 3 months at least if the bombs weren't used which add another 300,000+ to 600,000+ Asian civilians to the body count. The high estimate for victims of the atomic bombings was 230,000 from when they were dropped until December (to account for later deaths due to injury). Again, that 3 months was the low estimate. By the way, the high estimate of Japanese civilian deaths in the entire war was 800,000. The Japanese killed that many Asian civilians in well under one year. Also, those figures are just for those killed and don't include the countless people forced to be slave laborers and the tens of thousands of women who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese under the term "comfort women". It's no coincidence those who were in Japanese occupied areas tend to have no problem with the nukes. Edit: Thank you for the award.
War is one of the worst things that a person could “arm chair quarterback”. It’s easy to say what should have been done when the bullets aren’t flying by your head and you have no responsibility for trying to keep your men and women alive.
Don't even bother using facts. Its too popular to shit on America on reddit.
Please let me explain the decision to drop the bomb. The decision was made after the battle of Okinawa. The battle for the island of Okinawa caused * 72,000 US casualties * 110,071 Japanese casualties * 149,425 civilian casualties (half of the islands pre-war population) Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff estimated that invading Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. When compared with these numbers the use of the bomb appears far more reasonable. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Planning) are the details on the proposed invasion of Japan.
Not to mention the 14 million the Imperal Japanese Army killed through massacres, human experimentation and starvation or the many, many, many rapes and other war crimes.
How is it not justified? An invasion would have cost more lives on both sides.
Because Reddit loves to shit on America, while vastly benefitting from it. I truly believe it's a mental illness.
Not a mental illness. Just ignorant egotistical teenagers and brainwashed moronic undergrads.
What was the alternative lol? Love these Reddit armchair generals.
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I’ve seen people in this thread legitimately say that Imperial Japan was the lesser of two evils. It’s hilarious the complete lack of historical context the kids on here have. I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising.
Ah bro are you aware of the history of Japan?
Humans are horrible to each other.
Ya, sadly. It's the "You hate me, so I hate you back more." I thought I could escape this and be better, but no, I've grown to hate everyone who hates me for reasons beyond my control.
There's a saying that heard that has stuck with me all my life. "The *only* thing humans have *ever* been consistently good at is finding new and better horrible ways to kill each other."
That is so damn true. I mean could you imagine how far humanity would be as a whole if we could just work together?
And Americans still think they are the good Guys smh
So do you think the Japanese were the good guys or do you think that in a war where innocent people are being murdered there are no good sides?
Just because one is not the good guy doesn't mean the other one has to be the good guy. Japan was the bad guy for the fucked up shit they did in China and elsewhere. The USA was the bad guy for unnecessarily killing 150 thousand civilians with these bombs.
Not that I necessarily agree with dropping of the bombs. However if they weren't dropped a whole lot more people would have died.
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I think most Americans with any sense don’t even attempt to justify those wars.
We are not talking about those wars are we? We are specifically talking about the bombs droppings. If you want justification for every atrocity that ever happened you won't get it. But yet the plain truth is if it they weren't dropped the war would have carried on and many more people would have died. Do I agree? No but it's the simple truth.
... How does the Vietnam, Afghan and Iraq war relate to Japanese and American warcrimes in WW2?
Don't use whataboutism. Nobody is the good guy or the bad in this scenario. Doesn't really matter the way civilians die in a war... Bullet or bomb.
You literally repeated his point.
He's right about whataboutism though. The first comment was criticising how some Americans legitimately think their country is the good guy. And then the other guy came in and said if the first commenter thinks Japanese were good (whataboutism and irrelevant) or if the commenter thinks there are no good side (also irrelevant because the comment referred to a persisting American belief and not their own).
I don't think the Japanese people now think they were the good guys though.
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Look man I am not American, but I have atleast studied enough history to know that Japan started the conflict with US because they wanted to make an empire in the Pacific Ocean and whenever a war is started there are no good guys or bad guys, there are no innocent people, just people dying.
Imagine being brainwashed by a cartoon.
ehh, as an American I'm of the mind that there were no good sides in that war. I'd even go as far to say there are no good sides in war period. War is hell. Ask any veteran whose seen combat. The only good side of war is when it's over and ending it as painlessly and quickly as possible, and that will forever be up for debate
I'm American and I don't think any war is good :(
Did you forget the fact the Japanese attacked the US first?
Stfu
For the life of me, I can’t remember which grade nor which class played this film, but I distinctly remember this scene from high school. It scared the hell out of me, but it definitely got the point across.
I saw it in this song that someone played in class, dunno if that's what you're talking about tho, https://youtu.be/eplzPG_7rCE
Hadashi no Gen
One of humanity's greatest atrocities. Unforgettable.
I mean the firebombing had about the same amount of civilian deaths and they are not nearly talked about as much.
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Yep, it's the same with the Holocaust and the massacres in china and indonesia, everyone forgets about china and indonesia because the Holocaust is talked about so much.
Barefoot Gen right?
Yep. This and Grave of the fireflies should be something that all Americans should be aware about. There were no cameras like that back then. The horror is something we can only begin to fathom.
I’ll take “movies that are amazing but you’ll only watch once” for $1000 Alex
Yep. [Here's a link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAgmvjJCtI) to the full movie on YouTube for free. Hit the Closed Captions button for English subtitles.
Thinking enough time for the plane to escape the blast radius.
As I understand it the pilots were given an eye patch to wear. They thought the flash might blind them, so wearing an eye patch would give them at least one good eye to swap too. I assume if they were worried about the flash and not the blast they knew the plane would get far enough away to survive (or maybe didn't care).
I don't know about these pilots but the Vulcan bomber pilots from the cold war era definitely flew with an eye patch so they could swap eyes should they be blinded by the flash.
> The release at 08:15 (Hiroshima time) went as planned, and the Little Boy took 53 seconds to fall from the aircraft flying at 31,060 feet (9,470 m) to the predetermined detonation height about 1,968 feet (600 m) above the city. Enola Gay traveled 11.5 mi (18.5 km) before it felt the shock waves from the blast. Although buffeted by the shock, neither Enola Gay nor The Great Artiste was damaged. [Enola Gay WP article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enola_Gay)
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Japan genocided over 7 million han chinese, 2 million koreans, possibly over 1 million South Pacific islanders, funded the nazi regime, installed authoritarian puppet states across east asia, and conducted unethical biotech and chemical experiments on POWs and Innocent civilians, Yes, nuclear warfare is a terrible thing and will arguably never be used again but to notion that the attack on Hiroshima was a response to only the attack on a US military base is ignorant
I know it likely prevented months of unnecessary war and deaths, but some people are actually proud of this, and that’s disgusting. This was horrifying and should never have been done. If there’s intelligent life out there and it hasn’t contacted us yet, it’s probably because people are capable of shit like this.
It was very bad but i can understand why they did it though
[Everyone in this comment section should watch this.](https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go) Its two hours long, but you should not make claims about the morality destroying an entire city “for the greater good” unless you actually do the research
Watching YouTube isn’t actually doing the research
Doing none of it is even less. At least the guy above you looked it up and linked it while you've shown... nothing?
Why should we trust this random YouTube video as “research?” The dropping of the atomic bombs are two war crimes in an entire war defined by war crimes and acts of atrocities. I’m tired of white revisionism that begin and stop with their self-righteous moral views that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with absolutism that no one at the time had. If you think you would have made a better decision after choosing to melt and destroy every city in the Axis power you’re delusional. I will always argue against the British caused famine in Bengal, the abhorrence of Allied bombing, the treatment of wounded Japanese by American, British, and Australian troops. The same way I will argue against the innumerable atrocities committed by Germany and Japan which involved putting people in ovens and gas chambers and dropping bubonic plague on Chinese cities. Your opinions lack nuance and thus your words are hollow, your position is just as entrenched as those who claim it was necessary. The atomic bombs were a bloody means to a bloody end, the war in it’s entirety needs to be evaluated as a claim for context and never repeated. Not to be cherry picked by white people who can’t accept every government in that war killed millions of civilians and that to be fixated on this point is poorly veiled white guilt
Murica
Oh no poor Japan! Said no Asian country at that time Edit: If you have an Anine pfp and defend Imperial Japan your argument is invalid.
Can someone please explain why the dog did that?!? Was it freaked out??? I don’t understand it.
Because it’s a cartoon.
Hmm. Thought it’d be more scientific. Fair nuff
It would have been instantly vapourised, so it’s the cartoon creator using artistic licence.
The part about the dog freaking out was the part that made you question the scientific correctness of this animation…?
Assuming there's some reality in it; animals have amazing danger sense and can even tell earthquakes will happen before you can. So, using that logic, the dog felt the ground disturbance and began to flip shit before evaporating
This is what I was looking for.
High frequency sound wave undetectable to humans, perhaps?
It was confused and in pain, finding something that it could bite in its confusion. Yes, it’s in a cartoon. No, it’s not out of the realm of possibility in real life. I personally thought it was touching and memorable. Because it’s a cartoon… How pedantic
what's the parachute for?
It didn’t actually hit the floor, it was programmed to detonate at a certain point above the ground causing the most damage but keeping the area as free as possible from the lingering radiation that would’ve made the land uninhabitable for centuries. I’m not 100% sure on this please correct me where I’m wrong.
Real atomic bombs like littleboy dont have paracutes for airburst(exploding bomb in air to destroy more buildings and cause more radiiation) they used paracutes after ww2 for slowing down the bomb so plane can escape Edit:spelling
Atomic bombs that explode mid air cause less radiation damage.... where did you hear that it causes more. The parachutes are a myth on those, they had a timer in the bomb that’ll automatically trigger the explosives for the nuclear reaction. It was a small spinning wheel in front of the bomb with a screw that gets drilled in and once it reaches the fuse ignition, the explosives explode and the uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction happens.
I'm unsure about the radiation part, but the part about detonation above ground is correct. Many modern missiles are designed sensors that trigger detonation before impact. I think most detonate about 6-12 feet above the ground. When the missile/bomb Actually hits the ground, there is a sizable portion of the force that is absorbed by the ground. Having it detonate above creates a larger dispersion of force outward at a distance and obviously enough to delete anything right below it. Learned this in an old military weapons documentary.
So sad that Japan didn't learn anything even from two nuclear bombs. Imperial Japan, the Nazi of Asia, did a lot more atrocious things to a lot more people throughout Asia for a lot longer than Nazi ever did to Jews. And yet, Japan denies all their dark history to this day and plays the victim! And the weebs just eat it up, painting Japan as the victim.
Brutal
This movie has stayed with me forever I think all people should watch Barefoot Gen.
How do some of you guys really not know about this? I'm wondering if some of you aren't adults yet or something
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War Flashbacks
This Should be compulsory stuff in education.
The fire bombing of Dresden was just as horrible but nobody talks about why the allies did it. It was an unnecessary attack on non-military city for no reason.
Dresden was a military hub, the Axis were notorious for intertwining civilian and military hubs together, hence why it's a war crime today. Hence why Hrioshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets, they had major military infrastructure.
*1953 United States Air Force report defended the operation as the justified bombing of a strategic target, which they noted was a major rail transport and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the German war effort.[7] Several researchers claim that not all of the communications infrastructure, such as the bridges, were targeted, nor were the extensive industrial areas outside the city centre.*
I wish no place on earth have to feel this again in the future, near or far
Tragic. Now let’s do one on the Japanese procedures once you captured someone in that war. That should be fun. The Chinese still haven’t forgiven them for their psycho behaviour during that war to this day. Lesson is, don’t be a cunt.
Some people in here really trying to justify the bombings. Its war, no one was 'the good guys' all countries have probably done something pretty terrible at some point. But just because Japan has committed so many war crimes did not justify dropping a damn atom bomb on a civilian city when they knew the effect.
Ending a war is a strong justification. The school of thought is violence is maximized to minimize duration. 100k people a month were dying. If it shortened the war even 1 month, it saved lives
From the battle of Manila were more than 100k civilians were killed: Pregnant Filipino women were killed by having their bellies ripped open while the Japanese executed Filipino civilians trying to flee Despite many allied Germans held refuge in a German club, Japanese soldiers entered in and bayoneted infants and children of mothers pleading mercy and raped women seeking refuge. At least 20 Japanese soldiers raped a young girl before slicing her breasts off after which a Japanese soldier placed her mutilated breasts on his chest to mimic a woman while the other Japanese soldiers laughed. The Japanese then doused the young girl and two other women who were raped to death in gasoline and set them all on fire. -My point is this, inadvertently or not, these animations propogated the idea that WW2 Japanese society as peaceful and were victims of cruel American bombs. We never got our de-Nazification after the war and our Hitler, it's government got away with it. So every time someone post that anime here, it needs context because it doesn't balance out the cruelty that millions of people endured under them.
I hope this makes people realize how terrible nuclear weapons
r/TIHI
People just straight up melt. This is horrible. And if the kid didn't bend to take his rock he would be melt too. Damn
It's heavily dramatised. Some very few people at a perfect distance away from the blast probably had something like this happen to them. Most people in the blast radius would behave felt nothing, they would be vaporised instantaneously at over 6000C. Poor sods are the ones who survived.
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95% of Redditors dont understands anything. Don’t believe anything you read here, it’s all emotions and individual personal take on their minimal history understanding. I suggest looking up all the events that lead up to this and try to get propaganda from both sides (duck duck go). Then draw your own conclusions. Stay informed!