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I don't recall reading of many Allied attacks on countries they weren't at war with. Care to list them?
How are you defining "at war with"? Is it okay to start an unnecessary war if you serve the other country a declaration? It hinges on that, partially. I have to sign off for the night, but if you clarify the question I will certainly answer it.
When Truman lied to America that Hiroshima was a military base rather than a city full of civilians, people no doubt wanted to believe him. Who would want the shame of belonging to the nation that commits a whole new kind of atrocity.
I doubt the average American would have been terribly concerned. Between Pearl Harbor, dying soldiers, and Japanese treatment of POWs, I suspect sympathy for Japanese civilians was in short supply... Besides, think of it as Karma for what Japan did to civilians all over Asia.
When your factories are within cities to begin with and you don't move them outside the confines of a city (how could you do this anyway) and those factories are the major suppliers of your war machines; wouldn't it seem reasonable to "assume' they're going to be the targets of any bombing campain?
Innocent civilians living near and around the factories they're working in to produce war goods aren't really innocent anyway, are they?
Monday morning quarterbacks have the luxury of sitting in a Starbucks and prosthetalizing about Truman being a war criminal while not being there at the time to read the intel and listen to his briefers talking about how determined the enemie really is.
Had they had the weapon before you, is there any doubt how many of you wouldn't even be here today to spout this crap.
I have no doubt that the bomb saved a lot of lives but I have to wonder if it was appropriate to use it on a largely populated city... could we not have demonstrated the destructive power for the Japanese to see on a remote unpopulated area? I am sure they would of surrender once they saw the destruction wrought by one of these bombs... but hindsight is hindsight... obviously the military and the government wasn't smart back then but it isn't even smart this year... sigh...
Given the fact that the Japanese gov was given I believe 6 opportunities in all to surrender and almost didnt even after the second nuke I am inclined to believe that no they would not have surrendered. Add to this the fact we only had 2 viable nukes to use at the time.
I have no doubt that the bomb saved a lot of lives but I have to wonder if it was appropriate to use it on a largely populated city... could we not have demonstrated the destructive power for the Japanese to see on a remote unpopulated area? I am sure they would of surrender once they saw the destruction wrought by one of these bombs... but hindsight is hindsight... obviously the military and the government wasn't smart back then but it isn't even smart this year... sigh...
So, you didn't watch the Bill Whittle video, AfterBurner...
The U.S. gave ample warning of pending doom
There was no attempt by Japan to surrender between the first and second bomb
Japan was fully committed to 20million citizens (women and children) to defend the country with bombs strapped to their bodies
An invasion of the D-Day type would have taken months and many thousands of U.S. lives, not to mention those 20 million Japanese lives.
Originally broadcast on May 7, 2009, PJTV brings this classic Afterburner out of the vault for the anniversary of atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Jon Stewart gets his facts wrong about America's use of the Atomic bomb in World War 2. Should Harry Truman have been prosecuted as a war criminal? Whittle takes you back to those fateful days and tells you the facts about the history altering decisions to drop two Atomic bombs on Japanese cities.
So, you didn't watch the Bill Whittle video, AfterBurner...
The U.S. gave ample warning of pending doom
There was no attempt by Japan to surrender between the first and second bomb
Japan was fully committed to 20million citizens (women and children) to defend the country with bombs strapped to their bodies
An invasion of the D-Day type would have taken months and many thousands of U.S. lives, not to mention those 20 million Japanese lives.
I think many people opt to either not understand just how fanatical the japanese were at the time.
Mothers threw themselves and their babies off a cliff rather than surrender.
Japanese officers considered surrender the most cowardly of acts.
Kamakasi pilots.Not isolated incidents but squadrens of them.
Hind sight being 20/20 we can say 1 would have been enough or that we could have continued with the fire bombs.
But at the time 1 thing we did know is Japanese soldiers would seldom surrender in mass.
We also know what they did to so many of our soldiers who attempted surrender.
Once again in the day collatoral damage was accpted by all parties in the war.
I will say that a piece that was written for no reason other than to try to form some new opinions among our people with much less than the truth about that time so long ago has told me a lot about some of the people who post here.
Anyone who is here that hasn't seen the PJTV video or is at least as old as I am is talking from less than experience about that time. For instance, Harry Truman has always been my hero for having the guts to make that decision to use those bombs. We were very lucky to have someone like him to finish out that war. I was nearly 13 when that bomb was dropped and lived across the street from one of the men who flew the unassembled bomb to its destination. We were very happy to think that the thing was nearly over because of the number of boys from our tiny town who had had to fight in those Pacific Islands with those fanatic Japanese. I knew one of the men who used those flame throwers to "burn" the Japanese soldiers out of caves and how terrible was that to either assault the caves or burn them out.
Those here who have accepted the story that the US was the bad guys in that war weren't almost 9 the day of Pearl Harbor. I was and I remember some of the worst things of that time and sure as hell Pearl Harbor was one of them.
A poster mentioned Nanking in an earlier post here. I remember so well the picture of the maybe 2 year child Chinese baby sitting among all that rubble crying with no other humans in sight. Yes it became a propaganda tool before war's end but those days in China in 1937 were no nice time.
I think that those of you who are willing to go along with the pacifist who wrote that article need to do a close study of your ancestors to determine if you would be here or not if that war had gone on much longer.
I think trampling on the usual Roosevelt/Truman hagiography is a good thing in itself.
From anything like a neutral moral point of view, the similarities between the Axis and Allies were far greater than the differences.
Perhaps, but there were a few big differences.
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