Hiroshima Day

[Beswick Prize Band]

Fantastic documentary on tv last night.

The Japanese were on their knees already, the navy had surrendered and the air force had nothing left but kamikaze. The Japanese had agreed to end the war but the US demanded an 'un-conditional surrender' which they would never do.
Deaths of soldiers was easily avoidable without the need to drop two big fuck off nukes on cities full of civilians.

 

[Beswick Prize Band]

It is very well documented that The High Command of The Japanese issued orders that in the event of an invasion all POW's were to be murdered .
For confirmation I recommend reading "Kill The Prisoners" by Don Wall

 

[Blue Mist]

The evidence says different Misty. They were ready to surrender, read my posts, there is evidence from some high ranking people. The Americans kept them in the war so they could use their bombs in order to cement their place as the worlds leading power and to warn the USSR.

I understand the emotion of the subject, many brave lads suffered appallingly at their hands, but unleashing the devastation that the bombs did does not sit right with me.

PB has it right i suppose in that it did warn us of the dangers and thankfully it hasnt happened since.

But the question remains

Why are this government spending billions on weapons we cannot use?

Do you support the spending of billions on weapons we can not use?

A number of questions to answer so....
I did read your post but I disagree with 'they were ready to surrender.' If they really wanted to they would have been on the phone after the first bomb. Sadly they kept on fighting.
I do accept that the US wanted to show Russia they had the bomb and they were prepared to use it. Russia was the new threat and nobody wanted another war so there was added incentive to use it.
In that context I have no problem with it/them being used, it was sadly the best of many shitty options.
The next bit is trickier. Immediately after the war I could understand why we had the nuclear option. We were a world power and our allies, the US wanted us to have it. Now it is different.
We are not a world power and our relationship with America is very different. If Iran for instance has/gets a nuclear capability would they threaten to use it against us ? I very much doubt it. If they used them against Israel would we fire ours ? If so that is getting into very dangerous terrority for us and the world so my answer is we should not have them. I believe we are contractually obliged to have them as part of a UN ?treaty and if so it is time to review that. Any nuclear war will be fought by proxy. It will not be Russia v America which is why I mention Iran and that is why we are best stepping back. Too many of our lads have died fighting other people's wars.

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

If we can get the Russians on board perhaps its now time to nuke the Taliban, evacuate the civilians and government forces, let the extremists take over then just nuke them.

On a serious note, I bet this has been discussed at high level in the Pentagon and Washington.

 

[inbetween]

Fantastic documentary on tv last night.

The Japanese were on their knees already, the navy had surrendered and the air force had nothing left but kamikaze. The Japanese had agreed to end the war but the US demanded an 'un-conditional surrender' which they would never do.
Deaths of soldiers was easily avoidable without the need to drop two big fuck off nukes on cities full of civilians.

The Japanese may of been on their knees but you forget that they were forced onto their knees by the extremely dangerous naval and air bombing campaigns where many people were dying fighting them. Boots on the ground was going to be inevitable where it was estimated that hundreds of thousands of our troops would be killed. Bare in mind that the Americans and Soviets in particular had just fought and beaten Germany in Europe with many losses.

None of those people deserved to die, they were defending themselves and there was no signal that this was going to end. The allies as a result called for a swift surrender but the Japanese ignored it so they got everything coming to them and it was their own fault.

It makes no sense to apply the moralities and relative safe lives we live today to 70 years ago. If I said to you that Hitler is back and he'll start a war that will kill millions in Europe over the next year in WW3 then would you be arsed if we dropped a nuke on his head that prevented the whole thing?

What about if your family faced certain death in this war, would you drop the nuke then? I'd drop it once, twice, three times, I don't care how many times if only to protect our people first.

 

[BlueMoonAcrossThePond]

It is 76 years since Hiroshima was obliterated. The initial death toll was an estimated 140,000. Many of the survivors contracted cancer because of radiation poisoning and the other side effects wreaked havoc for years. There are many myths about Hiroshima and the use of the A bombs against Japan. Admiral Nimitz the CoC of the US Pacific Fleet said the A Bomb played no decisive part in the defeat of Japan. Churchill wrote "We now had something in our hands which would redress the balance with the Russians", US secretary of State James Byrnes wrote "it was not necessary to use the bomb against Japan" and US General George Marshall said "it was not a military decision to drop the bomb it was rather a political one"

The UK Government plans to increase its upper limit of Nuclear weapons by 40%, we will have 260 nuclear warheads and it is committed to replacing Trident at an estimated cost of £205 Billion . Every one of the UKs nuclear weapons is 8 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The people of the UK are funding a political vanity weapon. The Government are doing this despite the UK being signatories to the UNs non proliferation treaty (TPNW) which has been ratified by 55 states across the world.

Can anyone justify this increase in Nuclear weapons, can anyone even argue the positive in the Government doing this.

There's a bunch of crazies in the Russian chain of command. Some of these idiots purportedly think that Russia should simply start invading Europe and unleash small-scale nuclear weapons to deter retaliation. Their purported thinking is that NATO is weak and has no backbone - and that a small-scale nuclear confrontation would be successful and would likely incur little military retaliation.
===
That the free world has in its possession many nuclear devices - is hopefully a temporary deterrent against nuclear warfare until such time as the world disarms.
===
The other guy is a mean mother fucker and is wielding a goddamn big stick. We'd better be sure that our stick is menacing - and with luck, we might talk the other guy into putting his stick down.

 

[stonerblue]

The Japanese may of been on their knees but you forget that they were forced onto their knees by the extremely dangerous naval and air bombing campaigns where many people were dying fighting them. Boots on the ground was going to be inevitable where it was estimated that hundreds of thousands of our troops would be killed. Bare in mind that the Americans and Soviets in particular had just fought and beaten Germany in Europe with many losses.

None of those people deserved to die, they were defending themselves and there was no signal that this was going to end. The allies as a result called for a swift surrender but the Japanese ignored it so they got everything coming to them and it was their own fault.

It makes no sense to apply the moralities and relative safe lives we live today to 70 years ago. If I said to you that Hitler is back and he'll start a war that will kill millions in Europe over the next year in WW3 then would you be arsed if we dropped a nuke on his head that prevented the whole thing?

What about if your family faced certain death in this war, would you drop the nuke then? I'd drop it once, twice, three times, I don't care how many times if only to protect our people first.

wouldn't a 'nuke on his head' kill millions? And dropped in Germany would probably kill my family anyway.

 

[stonerblue]

The Japanese may of been on their knees but you forget that they were forced onto their knees by the extremely dangerous naval and air bombing campaigns where many people were dying fighting them. Boots on the ground was going to be inevitable where it was estimated that hundreds of thousands of our troops would be killed. Bare in mind that the Americans and Soviets in particular had just fought and beaten Germany in Europe with many losses.

None of those people deserved to die, they were defending themselves and there was no signal that this was going to end. The allies as a result called for a swift surrender but the Japanese ignored it so they got everything coming to them and it was their own fault.

It makes no sense to apply the moralities and relative safe lives we live today to 70 years ago. If I said to you that Hitler is back and he'll start a war that will kill millions in Europe over the next year in WW3 then would you be arsed if we dropped a nuke on his head that prevented the whole thing?

What about if your family faced certain death in this war, would you drop the nuke then? I'd drop it once, twice, three times, I don't care how many times if only to protect our people first.

you carry on making up scenarios in your head to justify the decimation of 100's of thousands of civilians in the name of war. Fucking pathetic.

 

[BlueMoonAcrossThePond]

you carry on making up scenarios in your head to justify the decimation of 100's of thousands of civilians in the name of war. Fucking pathetic.

Truman decided to drop the bomb on civilian targets because he believed that if he dropped the bomb, say in the ocean to destroy Japanese naval vessels - that such action might be viewed by Japanese leadership as confirmation that the US would never deploy atomic weaponry against civilians and thus the war would carry on.
===
For me - personally - I don't follow this logic. Worst case, the USA drops the bomb on some naval vessels or perhaps a military installation - and the Japanese don't surrender. And we do this once and twice more and a third time.

If still, Japan refuses to surrender and the only remaining options are to either invade Japan or to drop the bomb on civilian targets - maybe the later choice would lead to less death.

I suppose that a big issue in Truman's decision was the availability of bombs. It took a huge amount of money and resources to develop the A-Bomb - I'm fairly certain that we did not have a stock of bombs on hand. So it's very possible that Truman - looking at a limited bomb inventory - decided to simply bomb civilian targets - that course of action being the most likely to bring a swift conclusion to the war.
===
That Truman ultimately decided to drop 2 atomic bombs on Japanese cities is horrific. Were I president, I'd have certainly dropped the first bomb on a military target - and would have threatened escalation to see how that played out.

At the same time, the Japanese opposition were unfathomable to the US - suicide Japanese airplane dives into American naval vessels - perhaps Truman thought that the only way to convince the Emperor to surrender was to demonstrate the willingness to kill every single Japanese citizen.
===
I do not at all envy Truman's position - but at the same time, it must have been abundantly clear that should nuclear weapons not be deployed, the US would have had to invade Japan - and that surrender, would likely never occur - every single Japanese military figure might have had to have been killed - one by one - at huge cost of American lives and likely of Japanese civilian collateral damage.

 

[inbetween]

Truman decided to drop the bomb on civilian targets because he believed that if he dropped the bomb, say in the ocean to destroy Japanese naval vessels - that such action might be viewed by Japanese leadership as confirmation that the US would never deploy atomic weaponry against civilians and thus the war would carry on.
===
For me - personally - I don't follow this logic. Worst case, the USA drops the bomb on some naval vessels or perhaps a military installation - and the Japanese don't surrender. And we do this once and twice more and a third time.

If still, Japan refuses to surrender and the only remaining options are to either invade Japan or to drop the bomb on civilian targets - maybe the later choice would lead to less death.

I suppose that a big issue in Truman's decision was the availability of bombs. It took a huge amount of money and resources to develop the A-Bomb - I'm fairly certain that we did not have a stock of bombs on hand. So it's very possible that Truman - looking at a limited bomb inventory - decided to simply bomb civilian targets - that course of action being the most likely to bring a swift conclusion to the war.
===
That Truman ultimately decided to drop 2 atomic bombs on Japanese cities is horrific. Were I president, I'd have certainly dropped the first bomb on a military target - and would have threatened escalation to see how that played out.

At the same time, the Japanese opposition were unfathomable to the US - suicide Japanese airplane dives into American naval vessels - perhaps Truman thought that the only way to convince the Emperor to surrender was to demonstrate the willingness to kill every single Japanese citizen.
===
I do not at all envy Truman's position - but at the same time, it must have been abundantly clear that should nuclear weapons not be deployed, the US would have had to invade Japan - and that surrender, would likely never occur - every single Japanese military figure might have had to have been killed - one by one - at huge cost of American lives and likely of Japanese civilian collateral damage.

This is exactly the point and it's an extremely difficult question which we cannot answer today. It's very different today because we cannot imagine or comprehend that a whole country was at total war with others. When we say that it means that even the civilian base was working and fighting against us.

The US often targeted the civilian military machine which was producing air defences, tanks and planes to fight us. Japan was not a country just going about it's way of life and the evil west came and dropped a nuke on them.

There was no pacification or diplomacy route, that ship sailed with Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor, declaration of war and countless war crimes. It isn't our fault that they took that route, it isn't our fault that the only way to defeat them was to limit our own suffering by amplifying theirs.

The Japanese at that time were horrendous and as much as any civilian deaths are terrible they unfortunately got everything they had coming to them.