IN MEMORY

[UdoKier]

Hiroshima August 6, 1945















http://www.gensuikin.org/english/photo.html

[MadHound]

1. Indeed friend

Going to the memorial ceremony tonight. Not one of America's finest moments, if fact it could very well be our worst.

[still_one]

2. who started the conflict

Japan refused to surrender. There were thousands of men ready to invade, which would have been tremendous casuluties on American soldiers

Remember WWI was a war for our very existence...

[fudge stripe cookays]

3. Ermm...

You DO mean WWII, right?

[AntiCoup2K4]

4. Well, technically it was Prescott Bush and his Union Bank partners

They bankrolled Hitler. Hitler built the Fourth Reich. The Nazi's enlisted Japan's help as "Yellow Aryans" and the rest is history....

[Caution]

5. so instead there were unprecedented

casualties on civilians. It may have been the necessary thing to do (though why not obliterate a smaller target? why drop two?) but it was most definitely not the right thing to do.

This was a sad day in human history and a tragic day that should be remembered.

[RummyTheDummy]

8. They dropped two b/c

Japan didn't surrender after the first one.

[Caution]

15. yeh and they waited an awful long time for that surrender too

heck Japan barely knew what had happened by the time the second one hit.

16 hours passed from the timing of the first bombing before Tokyo had confirmation from the US Govt that we were responsible. Just over two days later the second bomb was dropped. Even after the 2nd bomb was dropped it took six full days for Japan to surrender. Even if there is a justification for the first bombing, I do not see how the 2nd can be justified.

we killed over 120,000 civilians in the span of less than 72 hours (some estimates put the number at greater than 150,000). These numbers do not include those who died from radiation poisoning shortly thereafter or those who died of cancer in the ensuing years. The death toll was over 250,000 for just those two cities. The entire casualty death rate for the US military in WWII was 240,000 over nearly 4 years. It seems to me that less populated areas could have been used for the initial demonstration if it was indeed necessary at all.

The Japanese attacked us, killed thousands of our people and the war was absolutely necessary and needed to be fought with a minimum of US casualties. I still find it very difficult to justify the wholesale slaughter of over two hundred thousand innocent civilians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

[RummyTheDummy]

19. I still believe

More would have died if we would have invaded. Some argue the firebombings killed more on both sides. You also left out the slaughter of millions of chinese by the Japanese, although that's extraneous to this discussion.

I think dropping in a less populated area is a valid point.

Threads like these makes me wonder which wars are worth fighting. I've actually seen people here say we shouldn't have fought Hitler and what we did in Europe was wrong, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised threads like these pop up.

On edit: Your casualty numbers are wrong according to this....

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/List%20of%20World%20War%20II%20casualties%20by%20country

[MadHound]

6. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind friend

It doesn't matter who started it(though there is some pretty solid evidence out there that FDR pulled a LIHOP with regards to Pearl Harbor) What matters is how we decided to end it.

Let us look at the situation we had Japan in. Bent over a barrel with their ass hanging out is a pretty good summary. Japan was surrounded, the US had complete air control, complete control on the water, and we outgunned and outmanned them by wide margins. We could have taken several, less lethal courses of action, and still not put our men in harms way. We could have blockaded them, bombed them with conventional weapons, or how about this one, drop the first bomb out in the Sea of Japan, just as a warning as to what would happen. Instead, we killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, all to prevent Russia from jumping into the Pacific, and then wanting a share of the spoils. We also were able to send a message to Russia, that we had the bomb and were willing to use it. Face it, the WWII alliance with Russia was on it's last legs, and everybody was starting to maneuver for the Cold War.

And Japan didn't refuse to surrender. In fact there were at least seven peace ovetures sent by the Japanese, starting in the fall of '44 with the last one just days before we dropped the first bomb. And the only sticking point, the only thing the Japanese wouldn't budge on is they wanted to keep their emperor as emperor. And guess what, after we dropped the bomb and they surrendered, we gave them that concession. Now then, if we refused their peace overtures on this one point before we dropped the bomb, why did we grant this very same point after we dropped the bomb?

Sorry friend, I don't buy it at all. It was something that we didn't need to do. Instead we let our bloodlust and perceived need to show up the Russians cloud our better judgement, and thousands upon thousands of innocents paid the price.

[RummyTheDummy]

9. Great post

We have former soldiers smearing our presidential nominee. We have a triple amputee drummed out of the senate, morphed into Bin Laden by the rethugs. We have a news media hell bent on keeping the worst president in nearly 70 years (maybe 100) in office.

And then we have someone who calls himself a Democrat savaging one of the best presidents in this nation's history with completely baseless charges right here on DU.

Gotta love it.

[Caution]

16. I see nothing baseless whatsoever in what he says.

Everything in his post is historically accurate. Great men sometimes make great mistakes. No one will ever know what might have happened but everyone knows that we killed a quarter of a million people in those short hours. Necessary or not, it was most definitely not the moral decision.

[Walt Starr]

18. Where does your "quarter of a million people" figure come from?

Citation, please.

[Caution]

20. wikipedia

and just about any text covering this tragedy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

Out of respect for the peron who started the thread and those who died on this day in Japan, I'm going to leave the thread. If you wish to continue discussion let's do it in PM

[Walt Starr]

23. Okay, I'll buy the number

after seeing it includes not just immediate deaths, but all of the deaths in the weeks after.

I was concerned that the number was being presented as the number of people who died immediately.

Personally, I'm glad it was 240,000 Japanese civilians who died rather than the estimated half million U.S. troops that would have died in an invasion.

[RummyTheDummy]

21. Saying FDR LIHOP'ED or MIHOP'ED

Pearl Harbor goes against every example of strategic planning for warfare I've ever studied.

But that's just my opinion.

[MadHound]

22. I've read some fairly authoritive biographies on FDR

Stating that LIHOP/MIHOP was a definite possibility. FDR appartenly was wanting to get into the war against Germany, yet couldn't come out directly and do it, thus he had his aides draw up a seven point plan to force Japan(Germany's ally) into attacking the US. These points included an oil embargo, aggressive moves in the Pacific, shutting down diplomatic ties, etc etc. While the final plan was supposedly destroyed, it is interesting to note that the US under FDR followed every single point, virtually to the letter.

Thus by getting into a war with Japan, we were able to shoehorn ourselves into the war that FDR really wanted to fight, against Germany.

[fudge stripe cookays]

30. It's not baseless.

It's well understood now that FDR wanted to help Churchill well before we jumped in, but couldn't, because our nation was so strongly isolationist after the horrors of WWI.

He needed something big, and was warned well ahead of time that something like that was going to occur (Billy Mitchell was court-martialed for saying it back in 1925!). To be able to help the British with no American backlash to his re-election campaign, he needed Pearl Harbor.

[Walt Starr]

7. I agree

Using the bomb to end the war actually saved lives.

Had an actual invasion been necessary, there would have been many times more civilian casualties than those who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[DrWeird]

13. The Supreme Allied Commander disagrees with you.

So do a few others.

"It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell and was brought about by overwhelming maritime power. "

-WInston Churchill

"It was unnecessary to drop the two atom bombs on Japan in August 1945, and I cannot think it was right to do so .... the dropping of the bombs was a major political blunder and is a prime example of the declining standards of the conduct of modern war. "

-Field Marshal Montgomery

"Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with minimum loss of face.It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. "

-Dwight Eisenhower

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons ... In being the first to use it, we adopted an ethical standard common to the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in this fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. "

-Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, Admiral Leahy


Really, it seems this "the only choice was the Bomb or a million American troops dead" meme is just some bad historical revision dreamt up to try and justify the unjustifiable.

It's like saying 9-11 was justified because it prevented a million Arab troops from dying in a bloody invasion of the US.

[Walt Starr]

17. Please give me the sources for your quotes

Sorry, but I do not believe all of them are legitimate without corroborating evidence.

[DrWeird]

24. The Montgomery quote was from his "History of Warfare."

The Churchill quote was from Volume VI of his History of the Second World War.

(ain't that a bitch)

The original sources of that specific Eisenhower quote I'm not sure of, although he repeated the sentiment in his biography and in the 1962 Newsweek story "Ike on Ike." No original source for the Leahy quote, although it's well known and oft-repeated.

Here's another one for you.

"Certainly prior to 31 December 1945... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." (US Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946.)

[UdoKier]

10. This is a memorial thread. Why are people placing blame/being political?

Do the innocent civilians killed in Hiroshima NOT deserve to be memorialized?

I deliberately avoided any political statements in my post. Please start your own thread if you want to debate the correctness or lack thereof in using the bomb.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

11. ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2168849

[JustJersey]

12. Probably Saved Lives

The firebombing of Tokyo and other cities killed far more Japanese people than the two Atomic bombs did and the Air Force was committed to continue the strategic bombing to "soften up" Japan for the planned invasion.

You also can't ignore the need to save American lives. Would you want to be the one to tell even a single American widow or mother or child that their husband/son/father died because you thought it more important to save lives in the country that started a war with us?

[richp0469]

27. I can't agree more

While Hiroshima or Nagasaki was catastrophic, the use of the bomb was the end of WWII. The invasion of Japan would have cost untolled numbers of lives, on both sides, and with respect to the dead and long suffering of those who lived and died through the blast, it was a course of action so horrific that it more than likely prevented the use of atomic weapons by other nations to this very day.

[GreenPartyVoter]

31. Except that the Japanese were ready to surrender BEFORE we dropped

the bombs.

[wellstone dem]

14. Thanks for the reminder.

And the reminder of the travesty which was clearly unnecessary, the 2nd bomb on Nagasaki.

[Shakespeare]

25. Here, for all those souls....

Peace.

[JohnLocke]

26. I'll second that.

Love your plays, by the way. ;)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

28. Where the blame really lies.

By 1945, the targetting of civilians was accepted practice on all sides. Whether it was the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka, the bombings of Madrid, London, Dresden, Tokyo, Warsaw, or the shooting, hanging, bayoneting, raping, of the citizens of Nanjing, Berlin, Rome, Odessa, Lidice, Warsaw, or the countless other places that civilians, men, women and children were put to death or tortured in the name of "patriotism".

You'd think that we might have learned by now.

[hunter]

29. Here's an original photo from my collection.

It was taken by an American soldier after the war.



Share it as you wish.

Remember the dead, all of them on every side. The vast majority who died did not understand the politics and prejudices that killed them.