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I guess you didn't read the second paragraph of my post above. Here it is again,
As far as humane treatment of non-combatants it was not a very good thing because the radiation poisoning and other effects are still being felt by the people of Hiroshima (today) in the manner of deformed births and an extraordinary surge of cancer in the affected area.
Such condition did not and do not exist with the fire bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. Those are questions of immediate deaths resulting from the bombing. Hiroshima on the other hand is still suffering casualties today as a result of the bombing that took place there..
Ah what the heck, we can always use a new post on the atom bomb...
So my comment, apart from the very accurate comments that will follow and that have been mentioned in previous posts about how the planned invasion of Japan would have taken many many many many more Allied and Japansese military and civilian lives than the two atomic bombs have (from both the intitial bombing and later radiation poisoning)...
The concept of total war. In WW2 the economies of almost all nations and most certainly Germany and Japan, was geared towards the advancement of the war efforts. This differed from most other wars previously. Thus it made all military and civilians targets until an unconditional surrender. It wasn't a good thing, but it was just the reality of that terrible war at the time.
As for the radiation - I remember reading that the effects of radiation were not understood or anticipated at the time. Not that it would have made a difference and I would venture to guess that even with the deaths from radiation poisoning it would still be less than the deaths from conventional fire bombing sorties in Germany and Japan.
Death is death. How is death by being exposed to radiation any different that the excruciating, lingering death of third-degree burns?
If several of your close relatives were dying because of a man made cause and you could be next..you still think all death is the same. I have to question your logic here. Is it because Americans dropped the bomb that you feel this? There is an awful lot of misplaced guilt concerning this subject. The bomb was dropped, People 63 years later are still dying from it's effects. Many of those people were not even born when the incident happened. Did you or I drop the bomb? It isn't our responsibility and to feel any guilt isn't either but to deny the facts is just nothing of no value. WTH do you care on an individual level what happened? I certainly don't. Let me ask just to clarify this. Do you think that a Japanese life is worth less than a German one or an Italian one. Sorry to ask but I am getting that feeling here.
because the radiation poisoning and other effects are still being felt by the people of Hiroshima (today) in the manner of deformed births and an extraordinary surge of cancer in the affected area.
..
You got my curiousity up on this fact - exactly how many casualties occured due to radiation poisoning for years after the bombing. Got this from a retired-military website, but it appears to be well documented with reliable sources: How many people died at Hiroshima in August 1945?
"One possible source of confusion is where to stop counting the deaths of survivors. In 1978, the Japanese Reconstruction Survey compiled the times of death for 16,007 people known to have been present in Hiroshima. This survey found that 73.4% had died by 1 November 1945, and that an additional 5.6% had died between then and the October 1950 census. Interestingly, the latter death rate is 1.1% a year--almost exactly the normal mortality rate for the Japanese population."
"Deaths after December 1945 evidently were not very numerous, and they seem to have been adequately accounted for in the 1946 studies. Even the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (cited above) seems to confirm this. The foundation's website concludes that the number of excess deaths among 50,000 survivors who got a severe dose of radiation comes to only a few hundred, and certainly not as many as a thousand."
If several of your close relatives were dying because of a man made cause and you could be next..you still think all death is the same. I have to question your logic here. Is it because Americans dropped the bomb that you feel this? There is an awful lot of misplaced guilt concerning this subject. The bomb was dropped, People 63 years later are still dying from it's effects. Many of those people were not even born when the incident happened. Did you or I drop the bomb? It isn't our responsibility and to feel any guilt isn't either but to deny the facts is just nothing of no value. WTH do you care on an individual level what happened? I certainly don't. Let me ask just to clarify this. Do you think that a Japanese life is worth less than a German one or an Italian one. Sorry to ask but I am getting that feeling here.
I personally don't understand where you are going with this line of discussion...
None of us in support of the atomic boming of Japan feel guilt, rather we feel that it ended the war and saved lives, both Japanes and Allied, both civilian and military. The facts support this.
Germany or Italy? Again I don't understand - the atomic bomb was not ready in time before the war ended with Germany, and Italy surrendered in 1943.
Please note, this is the HISTORY forum, not the nonsense political forum here, people here know their history front and back and we expect responders here to also know it. If you don't - then expect to be brutally owned.
If several of your close relatives were dying because of a man made cause and you could be next..you still think all death is the same. I have to question your logic here. Is it because Americans dropped the bomb that you feel this? There is an awful lot of misplaced guilt concerning this subject. The bomb was dropped, People 63 years later are still dying from it's effects. Many of those people were not even born when the incident happened. Did you or I drop the bomb? It isn't our responsibility and to feel any guilt isn't either but to deny the facts is just nothing of no value. WTH do you care on an individual level what happened? I certainly don't. Let me ask just to clarify this. Do you think that a Japanese life is worth less than a German one or an Italian one. Sorry to ask but I am getting that feeling here.
I want to see a source for your claims of birth defects and cancer rates vastly higher than average to this day.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223
I did. I felt the logic was spurious.
Death is death. How is death by being exposed to radiation any different that the excruciating, lingering death of third-degree burns?
For that matter, little mention is ever made of the millions of Ukrainians Stalin (our supposed ally) intentionally starved to death, a reputedly very difficult death.
For that matter, little mention is ever made of the millions of Ukrainians Stalin (our supposed ally) intentionally starved to death, a reputedly very difficult death.
Whatever the reason was, or however many lives it might have saved in the long run, I still think this is a very sad story and something that will never be OK in my book. I understand all the reasons people will point to as to why this was ultimately a good thing, but to me the bottom line was a whole lot of innocent people died not just in Hiroshima but in Nagasaki as well by a vicious bomb that in my opinion has no business existing. I know a lot of people will also say that if the Japanese discovered this bomb first they would have done the same thing to us, and that might be true, but no matter who created this evil bomb, and no matter who would have ever dropped it first, it's just flat out wrong, sad, and beyond evil to ever put any society through such terror and devastation.
I think Bob Marley sang it best in one of his songs;
"In this age of technological inhumanity,
Scientific atrocity,
Atomic misphilosophy,
Nuclear misenergy:
It's a world that forces lifelong insecurity"
I will definitely say a prayer for Hiroshima today, and for Nagasaki on Saturday.
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