Should the A-bomb Have Been Dropped

64 years after the 2 atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima the historical debate continues, and will continue.

Was the dropping of the atomic bombs, necessary?

Here are the first of a series of articles I'll be posting.

But most importantly, it's over to the members.

What's your opinion?

Quote:

Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2009/10/2537.jpg https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif
The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rises 18 km (11 mi, 60,000 ft) into the air from the hypocenter.

The debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki concerns the United States’ atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 August and 9 August 1945, thus ending the Second World War (1939–45). The role of the bombings in achieving the Surrender of Japan (2 September 1945) and the United States’ ethical justification for them remains the subject of scholarly and popular debate. In April 2005, in an overview of recent historiography about this matter, J. Samuel Walker wrote that “the controversy over the use of the bomb seems certain to continue”, noting that “the fundamental issue that has divided scholars over a period of nearly four decades is whether the use of the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the war in the Pacific on terms satisfactory to the United States”.[1]

Link: Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote:

https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif

Question for Discussion: Did the United States
need to drop the atomic bomb on Japan
in order to end World War II?

Reading: Smithsonian editorial (web); Stimson "The
Decision to Drop the Bomb" (web); U.S. Bombing
Survey (web); Alperovitz "More on Atomic Diplomacy"
(web)

Video: The Day after Trinity

https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif

https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif

The Impact of the Atomic Bomb on Japan

Documents Relating to the Development
of the Atomic Bomb and Its use on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Major Effects of the Atomic Bomb

Deaths By The Atom Bomb Compared
To Other Deaths During World War II

The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki

Remembering Nagasaki

A-Bomb WWW Museum
The U.S. Decision to Drop the
Atomic Bomb

World Map (1997)

Pro and Con Arguments on Dropping
the Atomic Bomb

The Decision to Drop the Bomb

The Decision to Drop the Bomb:
Documents

Deaths By The Atom Bomb Compared
To Other Deaths During World War II

American Military Leaders Urge
Truman not to drop the Bomb

Hiroshima: Who Disagreed with the
Atomic Bombing

"THE DECISION TO USE THE ATOMIC
BOMB" GAR ALPEROVITZ AND THE
H-NET DEBATE
The Atomic Bomb and the Nuclear
Arms Race

Fifty Years from Trinity

The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study
Project

50 Facts About U.S. Nuclear Weapons
https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif

https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif

1. The Atomic Bombing of Japan

Truman's Announcement on Hiroshima

Documents Relating to the Development
of the Atomic Bomb and Its use on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Atomic Bomb- Decision

Major Effects of the Atomic Bomb

Deaths By The Atom Bomb Compared
To Other Deaths During World War II

World War II Statistics

The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki

The Costs of the Manhattan Project
2. The U.S. Decision to drop the Bombs

World Map (1997)

World War II Statistics

World War II- Pacific Theater (42K)

Pro and Con Arguments on Dropping
the Atomic Bomb

The Enola Gay Debate

Historians and the Enola Gay Debate

Deaths By The Atom Bomb Compared
To Other Deaths During World War II

The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb

American Military Leaders Urge
Truman not to drop the Bomb

Critical Dates for Understanding
Truman's Decision

The real reason Truman dropped
the Bomb
3. The Atomic Bomb and the Cold War

The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study
Project

The Hidden Costs of our Nuclear Arsenal: $5.5 trillion

Sixteen Nuclear Crises of the Cold War:
Dates and Weapons

Documentation and Diagrams of the Atomic Bomb

50 Facts About U.S. Nuclear Weapons

Link: Debating the American Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb

Where am I going to get my toffees from?

The A Bomb was not dropped to 'save soldiers lives' or hasten the surrender of the stubborn Japs- surrender negotiations were already in progress, and well advanced. Thats just the convenient excuse for public consumption.

The A bomb was dropped to send a message to the belligerent Russki's, to make them fear Allied- specifically US- power, before Stalin started some more land grabbing in Europe. The Cold War was already underway. This has already been established- it is not a hypothesis, or conspiracy theory. There are plenty of accounts from 'I was there' people, senior people.

So no, the Bombing was not justified, morally or militarily- and what a terrible price the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki paid for being human guinea pigs, human 'examples'- and civilians at that. What a lovely precedent, which modern warfare technology and strategy has followed with alacrity. The A bomb seems almost humane now, compared to white phosphorus, cluster bombs and landmines designed to create maximum suffering, and other such exquisites.

The first foreign reporter in Hiroshima after the bombing btw was one Wilfred Burchett, an Aussie who smuggled his way in through a US blockade. Needless to say, he was discredited and even demonised (Communist!!) by the Allied 'powers that be'- but his on the spot reporting, easily Googled, was both accurate- because he was there, and harrowing.

The Upshot- well of course the USSR developed it's own nuke capacity too, and ASAP, as did the UK, China, France- The founder members of the 'Nuclear club'. For all of it's ills, the 'MAD' scenario did keep the world powers at bay for a long time- they fought their wars through proxies instead, like Korea & VN. Then followed by Israel, India, Pakistan, N Korea. Next followed by....? :mid:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fuzzy Bob

Where am I going to get my toffees from?

A toffee tree

No the Atom bomb should not have been dropped.

In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. It was the first big lie.

"No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin"

said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world," reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.

ITV - John Pilger - The lies of Hiroshima are the lies of today

Quote:

Originally Posted by sabang

The A Bomb was not dropped to 'save soldiers lives' or hasten the surrender of the stubborn Japs- surrender negotiations were already in progress, and well advanced. Thats just the convenient excuse for public consumption.

So no, the Bombing was not justified, morally or militarily-

Wrong again. If the bombs had not been dropped, I would not be here annoying you left-wing moonbat bleeding-heart liberals as me old boy was then a POW of the Japs. Countless more lives would have been lost fighting the Japs on their homeland. End of story...:mid:

human nature.

Yes they should have been dropped, if for no other reason than if they weren't used then, they surely would have been used in anger somewhere else, as it is they where in their infancy of the power development, and later bombs if used would have been far more devastating.

As it happened everybody got so scared, that using them again became almost unthinkable, and that is probably why we haven't had a nuclear-war yet.

And as far as a deserving target at that time, Japan was the best possible place they could have done it, the cruelty and crimes committed by the sons of Bushido is beyond belief, through was it altogether 13 years ? because the Japanese started long before the Germans. They more than match even the worst German war crimes in cruelty.

Sure the Japanese would have surrendered "unconditionally" (remember that was a no negotiable demand from the allies) but at a much later stage after thousands of allied soldiers would have lost their lives, and in principle just 1 life of an allied soldier would have been 1 to many when you could win by only inflicting casualties to a fanatic and cruel enemy.

Lastly the resounding and devastating defeat has taken the taste for war out of the Japanese people completely, for the benefit of the Japanese and the whole world, both the Germans and the Japanese have posed absolutely no threat to their neighbours ever since, and have joined the world community as extremely positive and productive members and are some of the strongest allies of their conquerors today.

If the same recipe had been used in Irak there would have been no insurgency to deal with, wars can only be won by utterly crushing and subduing the entire enemy entity, into such a state that no thought of resistance will ever enter their minds, and you have to remain there in force for decades after, if you are not prepared to do that, don't bother going to war in the first place, stay home and negotiate instead. Korea, Vietnam, Irak and maybe in the future Afghanistan are a testament to that, you cant fight and win a complete total victory half cocked.

:)

I agree with Sabang's comment about the message to the Soviets.

At the same time, I have no sympathy for the Japanese.

If 1 life could saved of the allies (e.g. Boon Mee's father) then I say: drop it.

The Japanese atrocities in Chinese are chilling.

I do know, the Japanese are not the only ones in the world to conduct such atrocities.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Milkman

Was the dropping of the atomic bombs, necessary?

Yes.

If it hadn't been dropped back then, a larger, bigger, more powerful bomb would have been used later. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs not only ended a war, but also taught the world an important lesson about Nuclear Weapons - one that Muslim fanatics are only to excited to unlearn.

No.

It should never have been invented, let alone dropped.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

me old boy was then a POW of the Japs

Military men do think about other military men, and I'm sure a reservation that would have been expressed about dropping the bomb was what if the Nips, in a paroxysm of grief and rage, had turned on their POW's and slaughtered them all? Didn't happen fortunately. In spite of his apparent failure to teach you the political essentials of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' booner, I'm glad thats the case. :)

The US already had a foothold in Japan, in Okinawa, after a bloody battle. The strategy was then to halt the advance and negotiate the unconditional surrender of the Japs- it was already advanced, the only sticking point being the Godlike status of the Emperor- who of course the US insisted be brought down to human status in the eyes of the Japanese people and rightly so. This indeed (nominally) happened but Emperor Hirohito- in whose name all of these atrocities were committed- was never punished for anything, retained his throne, retained his estimated $100 billion fortune-he didn't pay a penny in War reparations, and lived in Imperial splendour until the end of his days. Neither was his Declaration of Surrender exactly a masterpiece of grovelling and acquiescence-

"Indeed, We declared war on America and Britain out of Our sincere desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from Our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandisement.

We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to our Allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently co-operated with the Empire towards the emancipation of East Asia."

^ Thus you have contained the Japanese myth about WW2, taught in their schools to this day. This is not 'made up' history booner and others- the Bomb was dropped to cow Stalin. What we were all taught at school was the propaganda story.

I certainly understand larvs point about how despised and villified the Japs were- and given the climate of the time, I doubt there was much sympathy on the ground for the people of Hiro and Naga amongst the Allied public- apart from a conscientious minority. And of course, as pointed out above, the horrible reality of the Bomb and it's side effects was deliberately kept from the public for a safe amount of time, except for that pesky Wilfred Burchill- and see what happened to him :rolleyes:. But what a terrible human lottery- why Hiroshima & Nagasaki why not, say, Fukuoka and Sapporo? Were the people there any worse, did they deserve it more? Given that the political capital and Emperors Palace was in Kyoto, why not there- with all of it's fawning courtiers, and senior military advisors? Or Yokohama, with it's big military bases? It was literally a human lottery, and both Hiro and Naga were chosen because of topography- one is flat, the other hilly, and their southern location in the Japanese archipelago, the direction the Yanks were coming from.

So heres a question, admittedly made in the calm light of afterthought and rationality- why didn't they fly a few key Japs & Russki's to the Nevada desert, or Bikini Atoll, and demonstrate the awesome power of the bomb there- "Hey Bud, we've got a few more of these with your name on them"?

Maybe Moscow would've made a good target?

But, if the dropping of bombs on Japanese cities helped curb Russia's ambitions into Europe, think how much longer the war could've continued if the Allies didn't have the bomb? Would Russia have stopped where it did or would it have tried to emancipate all of Europe?

Churchill thought Stalin was after all or most of the Continent and was quite prepared for the continuance of the War, just a new phase.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sabang

Churchill thought Stalin was after all or most of the Continent and was quite prepared for the continuance of the War, just a new phase.

Think of how much misery a bomb that took out Stalin would've prevented.

The question implies that for the first time in history a belligerent in war would have access to a major new weapons system yet refrain from employing it. It's flattering that people assume America under Truman would have shown that kind of moral fortitude, but highly unrealistic. Almost as unrealistic as assuming that a government would be more concerned about civilian deaths than losing power- I refer here to the Japanese government. Neither the Japanese emperor nor the right-wing that dominated Japanese politics for almost the entire post-war period ever asked for forgiveness- neither from other the Asian people who people who suffered tens of millions of casualties, nor from its own people or the Allies. The Japanese imperial government was perfectly willing to sacrifice its own people, first in the cities, then Okinawa, yet somehow people expect the US to show remorse (which given the treatment of the Japanese after the war I think it pretty obviously did, in deeds more than in words).

When I visited Nagasaki a few years ago I regretted that the Americans hadn't shown more restraint, especially in light of the tragic irony that resulted in the bombing of Nagasaki, thanks to the fog bank over the Kokura Arsenal, which was the primary target: Saffo: essays: The Road from Trinity: Still, the primary responsibility lies with the emperor and the militarists who refused to surrender even when it was clear that all hope was lost. Their intransigence and stupidity didn't hit home until Stalin, whom the Japanese in their insane desperation had been begging to intervene on their behalf, invaded Manchuria, declaring war on Japan after Hiroshima (despite Japan having been Hitler's most important collaborator and ally, a fact the Japanese love to forget). Until that time the Japanese high command had been considering moving their base of operations to Manchuria from whence they would conduct the battles for the home islands. In other words, they were prepared to sacrifice the people of Japan as they had the Okinawans. It is a bit rich to suggest that the Americans should have cared more for the Japanese people than did the Japanese emperor and his government- too bad they didn't, but it really does strike me as asking too much.

This conversation brings the following to mind something Golda Meir said to Sadat:
"We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours." Of course, to this day the only regret the Japanese right-wing, by which I mean everyone from the LDP rightward, has about the war is that they lost. This is despite the rather obvious point that the Japanese "economic miracle" (finally squandered by the rightists, naturally- it's what they do) would never have occurred otherwise.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sabang

why didn't they fly a few key Japs & Russki's to the Nevada desert, or Bikini Atoll, and demonstrate the awesome power of the bomb there- "Hey Bud, we've got a few more of these with your name on them"?

Teller suggested dropping the bomb in Tokyo Bay by way of demonstration. The thing is, I don't think they were absolutely sure what would happen until they actually used the thing on Hiroshima. In hindsight they might at least have tried. I suppose all we can be happy about is that contrary to the wishes of Curtis LeMay and the other right-wing loonies in the US high command they didn't drop it on Kyoto*, which would have constituted an absolutely perfect test site, in the most perverse possible sense of "perfect."

*Personally I hate Kyoto, but that's beside the point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

Maybe Moscow would've made a good target?

But, if the dropping of bombs on Japanese cities helped curb Russia's ambitions into Europe, think how much longer the war could've continued if the Allies didn't have the bomb? Would Russia have stopped where it did or would it have tried to emancipate all of Europe?

Valid point, IMO.

Also, this might be a topic for another thread, even though it's hypothetical.

Should the UK have declared war on Germany? Should the US have aided the Soviets? The US gave them 8,000 airplanes.....

For another time, though.

I agree completely with robuzo's well reasoned post. Well put.

Quote:

Wrong again. If the bombs had not been dropped, I would not be here annoying you left-wing moonbat bleeding-heart liberals as me old boy was then a POW of the Japs. Countless more lives would have been lost fighting the Japs on their homeland. End of story...:mid:

composing my response to op - then realised you'd said it for me; dad missed combat in the Pacific war instead became part of the occupation force, spending two years in Japan before returning to start our family of seven (those were the days); yes I have a bias in this respect (I like being alive, though they should have stopped at five kids) mum was from one of many Polish families/people who made it to safer shores -Oz and NZ. As you said - end of story!

Quote:

Originally Posted by genghis61

Quote:

Wrong again. If the bombs had not been dropped, I would not be here annoying you left-wing moonbat bleeding-heart liberals as me old boy was then a POW of the Japs. Countless more lives would have been lost fighting the Japs on their homeland. End of story...:mid:

composing my response to op - then realised you'd said it for me; dad missed combat in the Pacific war instead became part of the occupation force, spending two years in Japan before returning to start our family of seven (those were the days); yes I have a bias in this respect (I like being alive, though they should have stopped at five kids) mum was from one of many Polish families/people who made it to safer shores -Oz and NZ. As you said - end of story!

That assumes that an invasion of Japan was inevitable (as opposed to being planned). Actually, a total blockade and unrelenting and virtually unopposed ongoing air campaign (which had already killed more people in Tokyo alone than did the A-bombs) could have gone on until capitulation. Japan was nearly out of fuel, food, and materials as it was, and wasn't likely to regroup even if the high command had fled to Manchuria- and doing so probably wouldn't have done much for morale at home. People always bring up projected casualties in the event of an invasion of Kyushu, but why the rush to invade? Unless, of course, the Soviets planned to invade Hokkaido and lay claim to it the way they did to Eastern Europe and East Germany, in which case the only thing stopping them would have been a large standing Allied army. Then again, the Soviets themselves were pretty well exhausted, and probably were under no illusions about their ability to conduct a distant (from Moscow) land war in Asia with an American army at full strength and likely able to draw upon existing Japanese military power to fight them. If the Sovs had thought they could pull off taking Hokkaido I doubt that the Japanese capitulation to the US/Britain would have stopped them. Stalin pretty much did whatever he thought he could get away with.

Pffft. Necessary. Hirohito would not have surrended elsewise.

It was a matter of military/political expediency and nothing more.

Targeting and killing civilians in order to gain a military/political objective is called terrorism today.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Panda

It was a matter of military/political expediency and nothing more.

Targeting and killing civilians in order to gain a military/political objective is called terrorism today.

The targets were military. The Japs put the factories in amongst the civilian areas. And, quite frankly, the Japs used civilians for human shields. Especially in Okinawa.

A commonly bandied myth is that the A-bombs saved the lives of 500,000 American soldiers:-

the rationale for the atomic bombings has come to rest on a single colossal fabrication, which has gained surprising currency: that they were necessary in order to save a half-million or more American lives. These, supposedly, are the lives that would have been lost in the planned invasion of Kyushu in December, then in the all-out invasion of Honshu the next year, if that was needed. But the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost. The ridiculously inflated figure of a half-million for the potential death toll – nearly twice the total of U.S. dead in all theaters in the Second World War – is now routinely repeated in high-school and college textbooks and bandied about by ignorant commentators. Unsurprisingly, the prize for sheer fatuousness on this score goes to President George H.W. Bush, who claimed in 1991 that dropping the bomb "spared millions of American lives.

The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur. The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s own chief of staff, was typical:

the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

Incidentally:-

Today, self-styled conservatives slander as "anti-American" anyone who is in the least troubled by Truman’s massacre of so many tens of thousands of Japanese innocents from the air. This shows as well as anything the difference between today’s "conservatives" and those who once deserved the name.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Ralph Raico

The bleeding heart peacenik Eisenhower had serious misgivings about it, too:
Hiroshima: Quotes
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

Quote:

Originally Posted by Don Juan

No.

It should never have been invented, let alone dropped.

Why ? The atomic terror balance actually gifted us the longest peaceful period in history.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Quote:

Originally Posted by Panda

It was a matter of military/political expediency and nothing more.

Targeting and killing civilians in order to gain a military/political objective is called terrorism today.

The targets were military. The Japs put the factories in amongst the civilian areas. And, quite frankly, the Japs used civilians for human shields. Especially in Okinawa.

This is utter nonsense Jet, the USA showed no qualms in bombing civilians (when Tokyo was attacked with firebombs there were more casualties than in Hiroshima), so how could Japanese army think to use them as a shield ? :confused:

Quote:

Originally Posted by wefearourdespot

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Quote:

Originally Posted by Panda

It was a matter of military/political expediency and nothing more.

Targeting and killing civilians in order to gain a military/political objective is called terrorism today.

The targets were military. The Japs put the factories in amongst the civilian areas. And, quite frankly, the Japs used civilians for human shields. Especially in Okinawa.

This is utter nonsense Jet, the USA showed no qualms in bombing civilians (when Tokyo was attacked with firebombs there were more casualties than in Hiroshima), so how could Japanese army think to use them as a shield ? :confused:

True. The Firebombings caused more civilian deaths.

Houses in Japan then, were made of wood. The firebombings was very destructive, and effective.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Milkman

True. The Firebombings caused more civilian deaths.

Houses in Japan then, were made of wood. The firebombings was very destructive, and effective.

I'm not sure they were all that effective in slowing down the war effort. Still, it is important to bear in mind when considering the bombing of civilian neighborhoods in Japan during the war that many Japanese neighborhoods, especially the downtown shitamachi area of Tokyo as well as other cities at that time had small factories interspersed among the houses. This was true to a surprising extent even very recently. There was therefore a certain logic to bombing civilian neighborhoods, although again in hindsight the extent to which that slowed the Japanese war effort is debatable at best.

I think a look at the firebombings, not to mention terrible civilian casualties on Okinawa, shows that discussions of the atom bomb are in a way tangential to the main point, which I see as being whether or not it is acceptable during war to disregard or actually target civilians. The Japanese killed vast numbers of civilians in China and the Philippines (the Rape of Manila somehow always gets forgotten) and certainly tried to target civilians in China with unconventional weapons, namely biological agents, and were planning to try to use them against the US by launching attacks from submarine aircraft carriers as I pointed out on a similar thread a while back. Luckily for them they never managed to drop plague and typhoid on LA or SanFran, although they did target the northwest forests of the US and Canada with thousands of incendiary balloons, in one case killing some picnicking kids and their teacher. The use of bioweapons has been specifically noted as a war crime, although the doctors involved in the making of such weapons as well as testing them on live POWs (Russian, Chinese, American) were protected from prosecution after the war by the Americans, who wanted their technical expertise. Anyway, I don't think the question is whether it is worse to die in a firebombing, A-bombing, or from human-instigated plague*- these are all rather indiscriminate killers of civilians.

By the way, an excellent true story of growing up during and after the war in Kobe, which was also leveled by firebombs, is found in "A Boy Called H" by Senoh Kappa. Highly recommended, although I haven't looked closely at the translation, which is probably OK. One of the best coming of age stories I've ever read. A Boy Called H Summary & Study Guide - Kappa Senoh - eNotes.com

*Must admit, as soon as I typed that I couldn't help wondering what the fuck is wrong with people. . .

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jet Gorgon

Pffft. Necessary. Hirohito would not have surrended elsewise.

Jet, Hiroito wanted to surrender since many months before.
It was the military who ruled the country and could not accept defeat.
You can just say that the atomic bombs helped him in finally overruling the military's resistance and declare surrender (many military officials committed suicide to avoid what in their mind was an unbearable shame)