75 years ago today (Hiroshima bomb)

[mosssideblue]

Shameful that it was used.

Shameful that it had to be used. Japan were hell bent on further killing.

It's use then maybe the reason there has been no subsequent World wars.

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

I think the moral quandary about this is getting stronger as the ww2 generation pass and to some extent the memory of Japanese brutality towards pow's fades. It certainly was part experiment. Part show of force to the Russians, but also ended the war earlier. I suspect this (vj75) will be the last big anniversary we 'celebrate' as by vj85 the ww2 generation will have gone so we can start feeling ashamed and pretending we are better than them.

 

[Northernstorirs]

I went to visit Hiroshima Peace park a couple of years a go which was harrowing. The Japanese government send a letter each month/week/ day (can't remember which) asking the US Government to disarm their nuclear weapons.

The bomb acted as a miniature sun in the sky just above Hiroshima. Let's hope a weapon like this is never used again.

 

[Northernstorirs]

Shameful that it had to be used. Japan were hell bent on further killing.

It's use then maybe the reason there has been no subsequent World wars.

It was a horrid means to an end, the Japanese wouldn't surrender despite the Russians now joining the fight in the Pacific. An invasion of Japanese mainlands had to be avoided otherwise we'd have seen a death toll of allied forces which would exceed that of the deaths from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

It was a horrid means to an end, the Japanese wouldn't surrender despite the Russians now joining the fight in the Pacific. An invasion of Japanese mainlands had to be avoided otherwise we'd have seen a death toll of allied forces which would exceed that of the deaths from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Yes very much a least worst rather than best option.

 

[urban genie]

You can argue the necessity or moraloty of this and whether it was right.

Whay tou cannot argue is that if any message was needed the Japanese got it and Nagasaki 3 days later was a war crime

 

[dickie davies]

It was a horrid means to an end, the Japanese wouldn't surrender despite the Russians now joining the fight in the Pacific. An invasion of Japanese mainlands had to be avoided otherwise we'd have seen a death toll of allied forces which would exceed that of the deaths from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It wouldn't have only been the lives of the allied forces
For example Japan had enlisted and trained schoolchildren as suicide bombers
The regime was utterly fanatical

 

[NeilYoungIsBack]

The decision was taken after the Battle of Okinawa, the first invasion of Japanese home territory.

That battle cost the Allies over 14,000 dead, mainly US of course. But the Japanese losses were staggering. Over 77,000 military personnel and nearly 150,000 civilians, which was around 50% of the population. A lot of those were suicides.

The estimates cost of a physical invasion of the main islands was (if I recall correctly) over 3 million deaths, mostly Japanese of course.

One alternative would have been a continuation of the Starvation Plan plus the conventional bombing campaign, which would have also resulted in large numbers of civilian deaths. Meanwhile, Allied casualties would have continued to mount in SE Asia, etc.

Basically, there was no easy option given the Japanese code of no surrender.

 

[dickie davies]

You can argue the necessity or moraloty of this and whether it was right.

Whay tou cannot argue is that if any message was needed the Japanese got it and Nagasaki 3 days later was a war crime

I watched a documentary on the bombing of Japan a few weeks ago
The Japanese weren't going to surrender after Hiroshima. It took a second bomb and even then some in the Japanese armed forces wanted to continue

 

[flook]

You can argue the necessity or moraloty of this and whether it was right.

Whay tou cannot argue is that if any message was needed the Japanese got it and Nagasaki 3 days later was a war crime

My knowledge of this element of WW2 history is sadly lacking, I'd always assumed that the Nagasaki bomb was because the Japanese hadn't got the message of the Hiroshima bomb? From reading below it seems that there wasn't a unanimous decision to surrender even after the Nagasaki bomb, with the war cabinet divided, it needed the emperor to make the decision.

As someone said above, a least worse option, but I believe the enduring shock has helped maintain the lack of nuclear war in the following years

From https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/surrender.htm

Following the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 (left), the Japanese government met to consider what to do next. The emperor had been urging since June that Japan find some way to end the war, but the Japanese Minister of War and the heads of both the Army and the Navy held to their position that Japan should wait and see if arbitration via the Soviet Union might still produce something less than a surrender. Military leaders also hoped that if they could hold out until the ground invasion of Japan began, they would be able to inflict so many casualties on the Allies that Japan still might win some sort of negotiated settlement. Next came the virtually simultaneous arrival of news of the Soviet declaration of war on Japan of August 8, 1945, and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki of the following day. Another Imperial Council was held the night of August 9-10, and this time the vote on surrender was a tie, 3-to-3. For the first time in a generation, the emperor (right) stepped forward from his normally ceremonial-only role and personally broke the tie, ordering Japan to surrender. On August 10, 1945, Japan offered to surrender to the Allies, the only condition being that the emperor be allowed to remain the nominal head of state.