[QUOTb]Urchin: So Miko.... where are all your sources from the Army (not Army Air Force) and Marines (not the Navy) who thought dropping the bomb was a bad idea? Look really hard, you might be able to find a couple. My guess is it is a lot easier for a pilot to say...[/b]
None of the people I've cited was a pilot. Each one was a high-level commander or politician who had no prospects of peing pocked with a stick.
In case you are too stupid to understand what they are saying even after reading them, let me rephrease.
None of them said that an invasion was preferable to bombing.
They said that the land invasion was not necessary and neither was the bombing and the blockade would have brought tha same results - or even just accepting Japanese surrender on conditions that US ended up accepting it anyway.
lasersailor184: Btw, Japanese culture at the time was still "Fight until death no matter what." Even after dropping the bombs, there were still japanese fighting us.
WW2 Needed to be ended with 2 atomic bombs.
You make no sense here. FIrst you are saying that they were ready to die "no matter what" and continued after the bombings, then you say the bombs were needed.
Japan was no where even close to surrendering.
Yes. Your word against that of Admiral William D. Leahy, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Admiral William Halsey, Rear Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, former President Herbert Hoover and MacArthur who claimed that Japan was already trying to surrender.
I am not saying you are wrong but you will understand if I do not change my opinion all of a sudden.
BGBMAW: lmfao......a Whole city evaporates......and it takes "several days"...to figure that out?
lmfao...
It took them at least a day to notice the city was off the comms and a couple of days just to re-establish a contact. It took them a few days to come to the conclusion that it was evaporated by a single bomb rather than a regular massive bombing raid. What's so unbelieveble here?
lasersailor184: I say this because I know that many people you quoted had the exact opposite opinion of what you said.
Well, post their opinon and then we may discuss why they said one thing at one time and a different one at another time. Politicians tend to do that and usually for rational reasons. I believe Eisenhower would have had trouble running for president on a platform of repentance for mass-murder atrocities.
crowMAW: But, I would say that while their deaths were terrible, the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have saved all our lives. How many politicians would have been terrified enough of a nuke holocaust to make Mutually Assured Destruction a workable deterrent...
True. But we have survived so far and the thousands of the nukes are still there and being proliferated while fanatics are looking to obtain one.
It is very possible that without UT trying to "intimidate" russia we would have had much fewer of them - and maybe no Cold War at all.
SunTracker: Some Japanese didnt even know they were losing the war until the surrender.
Good point. That's why an opinon of a US general is more valuable than some lowly japanese pilot.
lasersailor184: They dropped the bomb because the deaths of everyone would have neared 1 million people.
One would think that by now you would be able to tell reality from hypotetical fantasies.
The death of 1 million people was as real as the deaths of 10 million americans from Iraqi WMD. Thatw as an excuse - not necessarily a real reason - as the persons I've quotes seem to believe.
NUKE: Yeah poor Japan...
Japan is not an individual. It is a country with a lot of people, just like US. In some discussions it is valid to refer to a country as a single entity, in others it mkes no sense - like in this one.
When we are talking about social dynamics inside a country that brought certain groups to power because of foreign influence, you cannot consider a country as an undivided whole - by definition.
It makes as much sense to talk of Japan in that context as it makes to talk of US when we are discussing the internal political power struggles.
Osama Bin Laden may have hurt US in general but he surely have benefitted a lot of interest groups here.
Yes, by certain time Japan was agressive and had to be confronted. It became aggressive as a direct result of British tariffs on japanese goods.
Those tariffs were legitimate and british war on Japan was also legitimate but since the goal of the tariffs was to somehow increase weafare of the british people, it does not seem like a rational choice.
Even if tariffs did benefit economy - which they do not, it would seem to me that continuing free trade with Japan since 1930 and not having to fight it would be more profitable than have tariffs and than a war. War cost much more than any revanue a tariff can allegedely bring.
The inavitability of the war with Japan - and Germany - was predicted since 20s and early 30s before either became aggressive by the economists and politicians and the general case of trade restrictions triggering wars ws made in 17th century.
If you pretend that history started in 1941 or that the politicians of 1930s were not supposed to know what trade restrictions would treaten, that just shows your level of education.
miko