24 Hours After - Hiroshiima

[yuiyoshida]

[PotatoChip]

1. This looks interesting.

Without getting too much into the morality of whether or not we should have dropped the bomb on Hiroshiima, I can't understand why we hit Nagasaki too. It was bad enough killing all of those innocent civilians in one city. But did we really need to do it twice?

I'm no military historian, so I'm not familiar with the rationale. However, it just feels wrong to me on a number of levels. We had more than made our point with the one city, imo ...What a sad and troubling piece of our history...

Bookmarked for later viewing. Thanks for posting.

[longship]

2. I have heard...

That after Hiroshima, Japan thought we had just one A-Bomb. After Nagasaki, they thought we had many of them. In fact, we had just the two at the time.

[HooptieWagon]

4. There were 3 more Fat Mans nearly ready.

Estimates at the time were that the U.S. could have produced plutonium bombs at a rate of one every 3 weeks, under existing production capability. The uranium bomb, as dropped on Hiroshima, was much simpler to make, but refining the uranium was very slow....it would take about a year to build each one.

[longship]

6. Thanks. That appears to be true.

But at the time, there was only the two.

After all, they were hand made gizmos.

[PotatoChip]

5. Hmm... I guess that kind of explains why it was done.

I looked it up and see that there was a 3 day lag between the 2 attacks.

Still, I can't help but wonder if Japan would have surrendered anyway (even if they thought that was our only A-Bomb) if they had been given more of a chance to absorb what had happened.

[HooptieWagon]

7. There was already peace negotiations underway-Potsdam Conference.

Even after the first bomb was dropped, Japan was demanding a conditional surrender...keeping the Chinese territory they still held, no US occupation, and other demands. Only after the second bomb did they drop those demands, and only requested Hirohito remain as Emperor. That was all the US would agree to.
There is no evidence the Japanese would have surrendered without both bombs being dropped. Even after the second, most Generals wanted to keep fighting, and even attempted a coup.

[PotatoChip]

10. Interesting. Thank you.

I must admit that I'm really not as well informed as I should be regarding the 'Pacific Theater' portion of WWII- as opposed to the European front.

This is somewhat ironic considering that my father is a former Navy man who was obsessed with WWII in general, and the Pacific portion of it in particular. I can remember sitting through movies he loved such as Midway, and Tora!Tora!Tora! -as well as many educational documentaries, but retained very little of what I learned... Come to think of it, my dad could be a partial reason as to why. He'd go on and on about important battles and such to the point that our eyes would glaze over. I know that may sound kind of callous, but hey- in our defense, my siblings and I were all just little kids when he began with this stuff, lol.

Anyway, thank you for the information. I still wish there had been some other alternative to our dropping the bomb on innocent civilians in 2 separate cities, though. Couldn't we have continued fighting on in the traditional way until Japan was willing to surrender with no strings attached? Or is that too naive a way of looking at it?

[HooptieWagon]

11. We could have continued a conventional war...

Which would have meant 6-12 months of continual bombing of Japan's cities while an invasion was readied. The firebombing of Tokyo on March 9th and 10 (?) alone caused about 100,000 deaths, iirc. So 6 months of bombing would have caused maybe another 1 million direct civilian casualties? And then maybe another million indirect casualties due to disease and starvation. That's before a single US soldier steps on the beach.
There is another matter that the U.S. soldiers fighting in Europe weren't too enthralled with the idea of being transferred to the Pacific to invade Japan...conservative estimates were 100-250,000 US deaths in an invasion. Suppose Truman had sat on the bomb, and proceeded conventionally, and after 250,000 soldiers die people found out the US had a super-weapon Truman didn't use, and those deaths were unnecessary? Holy crap, Truman would have been raked over the coals. It was a difficult decision to make, compounded by the fact that next to nothing of the effects of an atomic bomb were known in advance, but the decision was probably the correct one under the circumstances.

[Ed Suspicious]

3. What a shameful day for America.

What a horrific day for Japan, and for humanity.

Along with this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

To hell with war.

[Plucketeer]

8. It was a horrific day for this fragile globe

This is why I contend that the human species is the worst that natural selection has produced. We ARE the next mega-trauma for Earth. We're the next "asteroid" that'll reset the life forms that succeed us.

Just watch and listen to Fox this evening. Ten anti-Christs on one stage.

[Ed Suspicious]

9. I've sat through history classes and philosophy classes and poli-sci classes

that try to show me there was some sort of utilitarian advantage to decimating these cities' populations. I remain unconvinced.

[packman]

12. Pearl Harbor was rather shameful, Bataan Death March

Rape of Nanking, Invasion of Poland, Holocaust, Warsaw Ghetto - horrific days for America, Poland, Russia, and all the countries that had to suffer the barbaric ambitions of immoral government. Dresden reaped the winds , London deserves more sympathy. The hell with people who start wars. The hell to the people who support governments that start wars.

[Jack-o-Lantern]

13. +1000...and then some Packman.