Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Question

do u guys think it was good or bad?

Answer 1

Militarily, it was the only option the Japanese left us. Had we not used nuclear weapons against Japan, the alies would have been forced to invade Japan and this was  an unacceptable option. The numbers of allied military personnel Killed or Wounded would have been astronomical. Further, some historians have predicted that without the use of nuclear weapons, we could have easily have been at war with the Japanese, until 1949. What  other choice did we have?  

Answer 2

It was good in the sense that it helped to end fighting, and it was certainly good for the Americans.

It was bad because it killed many, deformed many generations to come, destroyed the land, and a similar message could have been sent by simply dropping them in an uninhabited field.

I hope that this has helped!!

Hayley. : )

Answer 3

It was good because the damage outweighed the damage japan would have suffered from fighting WWII longer. We needed to do this to force them into a treaty before they kill more of us. Japan was better off anyways because if we kept fighting their economy would have collapsed.

Answer 4

The US had to put it's own people ahead of the enemy.dropping the bomb meant less allied casualties and that's what counted /Don't forget the US did not ask the JApenese to attack Pearl Harbor in the first place  

Answer 5

No one is happy about what happen to Japan but It was necessary to end the war with Japan they would not surrender and America would have had to militarily invade Japan in order to stop the war and Japanese aggression,  there would have been much more death on both sides if we did.

Answer 6

Totally justified, in fact to-day there are few countries in need of a radiation treatment.

Answer 7

It's a non-issue. There was essentially no difference in the bombing of those two cities compared to the bombing of a long list of others, except that those raids only took one plane apiece, where others risked 200 or 300 B-29 crews. If you incinerate the great bulk of a major city and tens of thousands of its citizens, it doesn't matter which kind of bomb you do it with.

The combined total of casualties in those two cities is probably somewhat smaller than the number of Chinese civilians beheaded by Japanese katanas, and is less than 1% of the number of overall Chinese civilian losses, so I don't see how we can be wasting too much sympathy on the Japanese in a war that they started.

Answer 8

          you have to look at both sides of thcountriesc countrys the for the japanese it was not good becuase they were bombed and that was really how the japanese got defeated. so it was not good for the japanese.

      

            for the americans sure there was the feeling of guilt but thats how the americans wone world war 2 in the pacific. in war most of the time one country has luck one doesnt. the russians were feeling good in the russian invasion in late 1945 to the germans who were defeated and not feeling good

    

Answer 9

Uh, bad.

Answer 10

I was 11 years old at the time. A number of my older cousins had just come home from fighting in Europe, and were on leave pending their being shipped to the Pacific for the Japan invasion.

It was expected to be the bloodiest fight in history, with over 100,000 Americans and goodness knows how many Japanese to be killed.

Then the bombs were dropped and the war ended. My cousins were very relieved, and so was I.

Incidentally, the Russians had just entered the war and if they had had the chance to advance they would have held on to a great deal of Mongolia, Korea, and northern Japan. That, too, was cut short, with the Russians holding on to just North Korea, Sakhalin, and some small islands.

Answer 11

It was horrible. No sane human being could call it "good".

But I think it was reasonably justified because it brought a quick end to the war and avoided millions more deaths.  

Answer 12

I wouldn't say that it was good, but necessary.  

We had to drop the bomb because of 2 reasons:

1) We had to stop the war in the Pacific.  The US had undertaken the "island hopping" campaign and the next stop was going to be Japan.  Considering the bloodshed in the Philippines, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, and other crappy islands, the battle for Japan would have cost the lives of millions of soldiers on both sides and civilians on Honshu.  The US had issued several ultimatums to the Japanese government with offers of surrender and had been refused.  The US had been bombing Japan for months with "regular" bombs, defeated them in the China-Burma-India theater (along with the help from the British) and they still would not budge.  The US was left with no choice.  

2) We had to drop the bomb to "flex our muscles" against the Soviets.  Make no mistake, even though they were our allies against the n***s, Stalin had already laid out his plans of conquest himself.  That is why Europe was carved up by the allies BEFORE the end of hostilities in Europe.  Look at what happened at the Yalta conference. With the fighting done in Europe, the Soviets began to turn to the east.  American couldn't afford to let the Soviets carve up the Pacific, as well.  It could have meant an Iron Curtain in Asia and that would have dramatically changed the face of the planet as we know it today.  

Answer 13

I like Bob's answer. It wasn't a good thing, but it was justified. Ultimately less people on both sides of the conflict died because of it. The effects of the radiation were (and still are) terrible, but no one at the time knew that would happen; nuclear energy was still a very new and poorly understood phenomenon. It's unfortunate that such a step was necessary to end the war, but the Japanese were fanatical and even civilians were willing to fight to the death to prevent an American landing on the Japanese mainland.  

Answer 14

When you think about how the Japanese flew out of the rising sun to bomb and kill Americans at Pearl Harbor, and destroy American property. Bombing two cities in Japan is not a bad thing. The bad thing is that they stopped at only two cities. If it were me, what is now Japan would be a crater in the bottom of the Sea of Japan. Instead we now have the Japanese ruining the economy of my country, that they hated so much. Just who do you think won World War II, in the Pacific theater of operations? Who do you think won the war, those that dropped the bombs, or those that caught them.

Answer 15

bcptm, your analysis, as usual, hits the bullseye dead on.  I'm sure you've seen these before but here's a few quotes from those who should have known:

"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.

"In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives." Dwight D. Eisenhower.

"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 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." The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, July 1, 1946.

"In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity,

no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish,

the physicists have known sin"

J. Robert Oppenheimer

How is it, do you suppose, that the foolishness of the myth that the bombs were militarily necessary or useful or actually served some purpose in ending a war that had already been won still persists?  Is it ignorance or do people just not want to accept the horrible truth?   I suppose it is akin to the same kind of bombastic rhetoric that caused more than 90% of the population to believe that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were moral or justified - or, worse still - that either could be won.  Oh, well.  When people refuse to educate themselves and to learn and to think for themselves, the demagogues will continue to preach the lies.  



Killing for peace is a wonderful thing, as long as we're pulling the trigger and not in front of the barrel, I guess.  Keep up the good work. Even if no one wants to hear the truth, it should be spoken.

Answer 16

It was necessary at the time, and as you can see, whalers want it again.

Answer 17

~One of the biggest, and most inaccurate, myths in American history is that the bombs ended the war and/or saved lives.  The facts speak for themselves.  There is no way that anyone with any knowledge of the facts can 'justify' Little Boy.  It is axiomatic that Fat Man was even less justifiable and far more immoral, to the point of being criminal.

I will defer to the wisdom of Dwight Eisenhower, Chester Nimitz, Douglas MacArthur and Chief of Staff Adm Wm Leahy on this one, as well as others in equally high positions of power, with access to the best available intelligence and information upon which to make a rational decision.  Each of them recommended that the bombs not be dropped because they were not necessary to end the war and they would not save American (or Japanese) lives. [Ike was particularly concerned about the Anti-American sentiments that would be spawned around the world, even amongst our allies, if such heinous weapons were used and in those fears he was absolutely right.] The US Strategic Bombing Survey, a commission set up by the Pentagon and Congress to assess the war effort, concurred in 1946 that neither bomb expedited the end of the war.

In the three months leading up to Little Boy and Fat Man, the US was virtually uncontested over Japanese skies.  Sixty-six cities were destroyed by fire-bombs and conventional weapons.  More than one million Japanese civilians were killed in those attacks and the damage was far more extensive than that done by the nukes (except the conventional weapons did not cause genetic defects in later generation and did not result in scores, if not hundreds, of thousand of cancer and other bomb related deaths in the decades after the war.  Curtis Lemay acknowledge the if the US lost the war, he would have been tried for war crimes for his part in the massive bombing of non-strategic civilian targets.  

The Tojo cabinet had fallen after Saipan.  The peace movement in Japan was gaining more and more support by the day.  At least a dozen peace feelers had been sent to the US by various Japanese diplomats, military leaders and government officials from January, 1945, on, out of Sweden, Switzerland and Moscow.  MacArthur recommended negotiating, possibly with a cease-fire in place.  Cordell Hull and Henry Stimson convinced Harry Truman that negotiating would cost him votes.  The peace overtures were ignored and labeled "insincere" so as to justify the slaughter.

All reliable evidence belies the myth that Japanese civilians would have met the invaders on the beaches with pitchforks and clubs.  According to the Bombing Survey, based on extensive post-war interviews with Japanese troops, officers, civilians and government officials, more than 60% of the population, in and out of uniform, wanted an end to the war in the spring of '45.  After Saipan, especially, the peace movement was growing exponentially.  The uncontested aerial attacks had taken her from her knees and left her prostate.  

Japan could not have contested Operation Downfall (the planned invasion of Japan).  She had no navy left.  All her remaining warships had been decommissioned and were rusting at anchor.  She had planes, but no trained pilots (thus the Kamikaze tactics - one doesn't need much training for a single flight - one doesn't even have to learn how to land the plane).  The best troops were long since dead.  The remaining seasoned troops were still fighting in Indochina and China.  Stalin kept the promise he made at Yalta and declared war on Japan 90 days after Berlin fell.  The Red Army was plowing through Manchuria with the same furor and success as they employed against the Wehrmacht.  The Red Army won the war in Europe with very little help from the Western Allies and Japan was no match for them.

The embargo was working.  Japan has never had the resources to feed her people from the home islands.  Allied ships had not only cut off the importation of food but had terminated Japanese fishing.  The people were starving and slowing dying of malnutrition.  Downfall itself would have been unnecessary so the bombs certainly were not.

Finally, if the bombs were intended to soften the way for the invasion, they would have been dropped on military targets, on troop concentrations or someplace within a few hundred miles of the planned invasion sites.  That was not their purpose.  We had spent all that time and money to develop our new toys and we wanted to test them in live-fire experiments.  Hiroshima was off limits to Lemay's bombers during the air attacks.  We wanted a virgin target to better asses the damage.  Hiroshima was thus spared, to be used as a lab rat.  The fact that a few thousand US citizens who had been trapped in Japan (mostly students) were living in and around Hiroshima was of no consequence and neither were the US and British prisoners of war who were being held outside the city.  They were fried along with the Japanese old men, women and children.  They were deemed 'unfortunate collateral damage.  By comparison, and by design, the Japanese killed fewer than 100 civilians at Pearl.   Nagasaki had been slightly hit previously.  Nagasaki was not the primary target for Fat Man, Kokuru was.  However, Sweeney had to divert Bockscar to the secondary target because clouds would have prevented him from taking pictures of the damage.  In fact, the second bomb was scheduled to dropped on August 13, but bad weather was forecast for the 13th so it was moved up to the 9th.  Because the weapons were of different design ( Little Boy was a uranium gun-type device, Fat Man was a  plutonium implosion weapon) we wanted to test both.  Since surrender had been imminent before Little Boy, we had to speed up, rather than delay, Fat Man.

The first stage of Downfall was scheduled for November.  The next 9 nukes were scheduled weekly, starting August 6.  Most of the brass suggested that the weapons be held in reserve until they would have some positive impact on the planned invasion, or at least that they be dropped on military targets.  Their advice was not heeded.  The object lesson was far more important than helping the troops.  Hull and Stimson wanted their pound of flesh.  They knew, also, who we would be up against in the next war.  We wanted to show China and the USSR that we not only had the weapons but we were barbaric enough to use them.

The Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that Japan would have surrendered by November (before Downfall was scheduled to begin - the  invasion of the main islands wasn't anticipated until the spring of '46), and certainly not later than December 1st, even without the Soviet declaration of war, even without the nukes and even with an invasion of the home islands.  I will defer to the experts as to the military uselessness of the incinerations of a quarter million non-combatants who had the misfortune to be living in  militarily insignificant cities.  

The moral aspects of the question, the 'good' or 'bad' of it, are even more self-evident.  Truman should have been tried as a war criminal (but the winners never seem to stand trial, do they?).  Suffice it to say that those who had the best information at the time and those who analyzed it for our own government immediately after the fact concluded that neither boom was necessary and neither was very instrumental in ending the war.  

It would have been a lot easier, and morally justifiable, to take action on any of the numerous peace offers the Japanese had floated or to have assisted in any of the half dozen or so coup attempts that were organized against the Japanese Cabinet between November '44 and August '45.  So it goes.

To those who "justify" it by Pearl, I suggest you check into the provocations that backed Japan into such a tight corner they had no recourse but to attack.  (The attack was hoped to bring a truce, not a war they agreed they couldn't win.)  Pay particular attention to our allies of the day, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh and what we did to them after the war.

Answer 18

it is really bad especially for japanese, but we cannot change the history