Debate Atomic bombing of Japan in WW2

This could be added on to what i said.
He worded his a little better.

 

Who worded his a little better?

 

What a despicable series of statements. Take a look in the mirror Sir.

 

He has a point, you can't offer your enemies a hand...

If your at war, you bash at your enemies until they collapse, you make them fear you so they don't dare stand up against you.

Would you go and fight a guy, whilst you are beating him will you stop, and tell him to call it a truce. No! He will punch you right in the face the moment you stop... You've got to make sure he is on the floor, and he stays there...

Only in wars though...

 

What? Let's just summarise then. Because Japan were pushing into eastern Asia, that gives America the right to drop nuclear bombs on every single major city, killing millions of innocent civilians and effectively ending Japanese civilisation? Are you kidding me? 'If we let Japan have even a little power who knows the outcome?'

So it follows that in Iraq you guys really should have nuked Baghdad, Basra, Mosul... that's 15,000,000 gone right there... I mean, they might have 'even a little bit of power' otherwise, right?

'Morals should not exist'? Why not torture and rape children to get confessions out of their parents! That's acceptable under the guidelines of zero morals, isn't it?

You are condoning war crimes and genocide.

 

I'm not so sure that's offering the enemy a hand.

Japan's fall was inevitable since the U.S. victory at Midway. It was either "hit Japan with force" or "surround Japan and starve it of food and supplies." We were winning in the Pacific Theater and the Japanese air force had reduced itself to kamikaze pilots.

There's no question: The Japanese needed to be defeated. But that's not the debate. It's whether or not Truman made the right decision in how he went about defeating Japan.

 

Yes, do you think the ****'s cared when they killed millions of innocent Jews, do you think the Americans cared when they dropped the bomb.

Do you know what sound was heard when the bomb was dropped from civilians in Americans... Wooo! That was the sound of celebration as thousands were murdered. Wooo! was the sound when the ****'s were winning the war and slaughtering the innocent. Wooo! was the sound when the Russians won the war, even though they slaughtered thousands of innocent, Wooo! was the sounds, when George Bush declared war on the Taliban.

Wooo! is the noise that the Japanese made when they stopped the advancment of the Americans. Wooo! was the noise when the Vietnamese won the war!

Warfare is warfare, the civilians either flee the country before they are killed, or stay there and either win or lose...

 

Warfare, is warfare, countries build an army for a reason, if their army can't even give there civilians three weeks to leave the country, then it's the countries fault the civilians are dead. Superiority, this is why the people must be brought down the first time and they have to be kept down, we don't live in a peaceful world, everyone should know that.

 

The Americans did not even know about the atomic bomb until it was dropped...

And when they learned about it, most were shocked.

 

i studied this in my ap u.s. history course

i am for the bomb in this situation for two reasons

1. My first reason is that because the alternative strategy would be that the U.S. would have to employ an island hopping strategy in the Pacific, which is (as it's name implies) going from island to island, defeating the japanese as you go. If you look at any map you can easily see this would take a LONG time to bring about success, due to the immense number of islands in the Pacific. This would involve casualties to both U.S. and Japanese forces far greater than the atomic bomb. In addition, this strategy might not even be successful as the japanese were literally fighting to the death. A great example of this is that in their mission at Pearl Harbor, the japanese didn't bring enough fuel for a return trip. They went to fight and die in battle at Pearl Harbor. Going island by island to defeat an unsurrendering enemy is clearly not the optimal strategy.

The bomb dropping sounds horrid because the amount of death vs. time. The bomb resulted in a lot of death in a little time. To us that sounds horrible. When we think of deploying troops instead it's more death than the bomb over a longer period of time. This strategy doesn't seem as bad because the time weakens our perception of just how many troops we are losing.

2. My second reason is that if you notice, after the U.S. dropped the first bomb, which caused immense death and destruction, the japanese still did not surrender. This is crazy to think about. Even if we had done as much damage in the Pacific as the bomb did to the main island of japan, which would have involved more U.S. troop death, the Japanese still wouldn't even have surrendered! It wasn't until we dropped the second bomb that the Japanese finally got the message and promptly ended the destruction.


So in conclusion, the bomb dropping was a last resort, but a necessary result. The alternative would have resulted in far greater death for both sides and it might not even have worked out in the end given the crazed psyche of the japanese. Clearly, the bomb dropping was the best decision to have made at that time.



(note: I am ignoring the long term effects of the bomb (i.e. radiation) because no one knew of those effects at that time or could have expected them to occur, so that is out of the question).

 

Countries build armies to match their neighbors' armies (kind of a paradox). No country in the world actually wants to fight wars, that's why they seek peaceful negotiations first.

In the case of France in WW2, they were rushed by Germany by their Blitzkrieg strategy. Note how in WW1 Germany had attacked France the same way and they stalemated for 4 years. The French never thought the Germans were going to take Paris.

Imagine if you were an army commander. Can you seriously make the decision to order the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians in order to win a war? It doesn't matter if you are doing this for a "good cause" or what not, because it won't justify anything that you do.

I'm not naive, I know that we can't end war forever. But instead of employing a "kill everyone in the country in order to win the war" strategy, why don't we instead try to destroy their morale, blockade them, or use any number of humane tactics. Just because we don't live in a peaceful world doesn't mean we have to accept life the way it is.

 

So you're saying that Albert Einstein, who worked on the Manhattan Project, knew nothing of radiation?

...

 

Americans did that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

If you don't bring your enemies down they will strike back for revenge, look at WWI and WWII

 

This is crazy. I just did a research paper on this.

In case it isn't quite clear, I grimly and reluctantly stand behind Truman's decision to drop the bomb for various reasons. I agree that it helped save millions of innocent lives; however, it's still definitely a repulsive action. Just a necessary evil.

Below starts my paper.

On August 6th and August 9th, 1945, the United States of America dropped the first two and only atomic warheads ever used in war on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These two acts killed approximately 220,000 people, the majority of these people being civilians. About 75% of the buildings in Hiroshima were either completely destroyed or damaged. In Nagasaki, about a square mile of land was destroyed by the nuclear explosion. In both explosions, not only were people immediately vaporized, heat-blasted to death, or otherwise killed, survivors also started having abnormally high rates of cancer. Two opposing arguments arose, concerning on whether or not using the nuclear weapons on two mainly civilian cities was 'moral'. The main points of disagreement between the two arguments are whether bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to force Japan to surrender, whether or not the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted as war crimes and/or state terrorism against humanity (and whether they should be tried as such), and whether the bombing of Nagasaki was even necessary to end the war after the first bombing of Hiroshima.


The argument against the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki claim that the dropping of the 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' nuclear bombs were unnecessary to end World War II. The Allies were focusing their energies onto Japan, having defeated **** Germany and Fascist Italy. The threat of a massive invasion on the Japanese home islands from the Soviet Union and the USA would have forced the Japanese government to surrender. An ongoing naval blockade, bombing runs, and Japan was already desperately losing, and it would be logical to assume that the threat of an invasion would force a surrender. However, others disagreed. Based off of experiences from the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinowa, the Allies were more aware of the bushido warrior code which advocated 'loyalty and honor until death', and that surrendering was the ultimate humiliation. If anything else, the Battle of Okinawa proved this, when Japanese forces, faced with either surrendering or a complete massacre, chose the latter, and lost nearly 107,000 troops, with only 7,400 troops taken prisoner. In the planned invasion of the Japanese islands, US military strategists estimated projections of over 1,600,000 Allied troops killed or wounded. Adding in Japanese civilian deaths also increased this count by several millions. Civilians were trained to fight to the death rather than surrender. Additionally, the Japanese held over 100,000 Allied POWs. An order was given by the Japanese Military Ministry to execute all of them if an invasion of the homelands ever took place.


Another point that the anti-nuclear side made was that they should have been classified as war crimes. The use of the atomic weaponry on innocent civilians, massacring hundreds of thousands indiscriminately, was in direct violation of many of the most basic fundamental laws in the conduct of war. Many of the scientists who had worked in the Manhattan Project, most notably Albert Einstein and Kenneth Tompkins, were vehemently against the use of it in war. Others point that under technicalities, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nothing more than a power show-off to impress the USSR and cow the Japanese into submission. Furthermore, they claim that by using the nuclear weapons for military use, that they had started “beginning the process of annihilation of the species”. However, the other side of the argument maintains that it was necessary and important for the USA to be conscious of its postwar image as a superpower. For political reasons, Truman thought it necessary to end more than a hundred thousand innocent lives.


If the bombing of Hiroshima had been a necessary act of evil against humanity, then the second bombing of Nagasaki seemed almost to be extrapolating the sins of our humanity. Even if the first bombing had been used on Hiroshima, the anti-nuclear side argues, then would that not have been enough impetus to force Japan into surrendering? The bombing of Hiroshima was barely three days old when the United States dropped 'Fat Man' on Nagasaki, killing 80,000 people. Anti-nuclear historians argued that the first bombing had been enough; destroying Nagasaki was about as useful to ending the war as purging the remains of plant growth with fire after they had been sprayed dead with weed killer. However, the opposing argument proposed a different theory. They stated that the US officials had appropriated a second bomb ready to be used because they believed that the Japanese government would attempt to cover up the bombing; they happened to be right. The Japanese would not recognize the Hiroshima bombing to have even happened until Nagasaki was destroyed. The Japanese War Minister refused to acknowledge that the Hiroshima bomb was atomic; however, after the Nagasaki bomb, he went to the cabinet and said, “The Americans appeared to have one hundred atomic bombs. They could drop three per day. The next target might well be Tokyo.”

Oh, goody. So we should be waterboarding 'terrorists', throwing poison gas bombs at the enemy, stab the other soldiers with unnecessarily serrated knives in order to retrieve information, all because of the sake of war? Either you've been playing too much video games that you think that the norm, or you think that the Nazis should have been acquited of the Holocaust in the Nuremberg Trials.

Yeah, it's not like Europe hasn't been doing that exact same thing in pretty much every continent for over a thousand years. Africa, China, French Indochina, British India, Hawaii, Australia, the Americas, etc.

You must be one of those kids who think that the solution for every war is to nuke the other guy. Seriously? Our terms for Japan's surrender originally were unconditional, and they still were when they eventually did. They weren't going to be given any power left; that was the plan.

Not to be racist, but who cares about enslaving 12 million Africans? Now we can have cheap plantation labor and servants. Not to be racist, but who cares about the Native Indian's claims to their own lands? They're filthy uncouth savages, and we're teaching them the way of God over their own belief system, and isn't it only fair that we get some sort of exploitation payment? Not to be racist, but who cares about how many Jews the Nazis killed? They were able to promote 'social Darwinism' by removing the 'inferior race'. Not to be racist, but who cares about how many innocent South Vietnamese peasants we displaced from their homes by 'pacifying' them? We made sure that they weren't hiding any Viet Cong, and they even got to be sent to crowded, infection-hopping refugee camps! What a bargain!

Not to be insulting, but that is a horrible arguement, dumbass.

 

I wrote an essay last semester about roughly the same thing as this topic. The assignment was to focus on the whether the decision was right or wrong, or legal or illegal from a president's point of view, but the ideas are still the same. It is 5 pages, double spaced, so I spoiler tagged it but I posted it up here for you.

I argued in it that the decision was legal, and was the right decision given the information he had at the time and the death before defeat behavior of Japan.

• Kamikazes showed that they did not fear the loss of life on their side.
• Over and over, Japanese military forces demonstrated the refusal to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds, and to inflict massive casualties on Allied forces. A conventional invasion could not ensure a quick surrender.
• Japanese were killing civilians at an increasing pace, so ending the war quickly saved innocent lives outside of Japan.

Spoiler

President Truman Drops the Bomb​

“Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. It is an atomic bomb. We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” (Truman, 1945) These were President Truman’s words to the world after his authorizing the use of the most devastatingly powerful weapon ever built against the city of Hiroshima, Japan. President Truman’s decision has been controversial since even before it was made, but it is widely believed to have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives.

When the bomb was being designed and built, Truman was not even aware of its existence. President Roosevelt had kept the Manhattan Project, the scientific effort to weaponize atomic energy, a secret to everyone not directly involved in the project, including his own vice president. All this secrecy was a necessary tactic taken by Roosevelt because Germany and presumably Japan were at the same time trying to create their own atomic weapons. Shortly after the death of President Roosevelt, Truman took the oath of office and was finally informed of the project, after preparations were already being made to perform the first test. On July 16th, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated in New Mexico, and Truman was made fully aware of the results before he chose to use two of them against the Empire of Japan.

Japan in 1945 was not a country capable of waging an offensive war against the world, as they were when the war began. Allied forces had decimated their air force in the Pacific, and severed their supply lines so much that their navy could not even leave port due to lack of fuel. President Truman, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin issued the Potsdam Declaration to Japan, outlining the terms of their surrender. If Japan did not surrender, the Declaration promised “prompt and utter destruction” to Japan. Yet the Emperor refused to surrender. With the Japanese refusal of the Potsdam Declaration, President Truman needed a way to end the war as quickly as possible, and with the least loss of life possible. He had the options of either a conventional invasion of Japan, with troops on the ground and bombing of cities, or to use his new atomic weapons.

Japanese military forces held to a strict moral code of death before defeat. The US Navy had dealt with devastating kamikaze attacks by Japanese pilots unafraid of death for the duration of the Pacific war, and in some situations Japanese armed forces would fight to the last man rather than surrender. In the battle of Okinawa alone, over 200,000 people were killed on both sides, including civilian casualties and suicides. Time and time again, the Japanese had proven their ability to inflict devastating losses on their attackers, even in a losing battle. It is reasonable to assume that the Japanese military fighting on its home soil would have been even less likely to surrender, and even more prone to suicide attacks than fighting away from home. Thus, Truman’s advisors advised him that the prospect of invading and occupying Japan would have meant hundreds of thousands of American casualties, an unacceptable option to Truman. Truman needed a swift and relatively efficient end to the war, which the atomic bomb presented him.

Prior to the bombing, Hiroshima had been virtually untouched by conventional bombing, despite being a significant industrial and military location. This was because it was on a short list of potential targets for an atomic attack, should one be called for. The bomb’s designers as well as the military leaders wanted to know exactly what the weapon was capable of in a city. Then, on August 6, 1945, the first military use of an atomic bomb took place over Hiroshima, Japan. The city was virtually destroyed. Estimates range from 100,000 to 200,000 people killed by the explosion and effects of radiation. About ninety percent of the city was damaged or destroyed by the bomb and the fires of the aftermath.

After dropping the bomb on Japan, Truman once again asked for the complete surrender of Japan. Bombers dropped leaflets on other Japanese cities, stating that without surrender “we shall employ this bomb and all out other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war” (Leaflet AB-11, 1945). Japan would not surrender, and many did not even believe the reports of what happened to Hiroshima. Truman did not expect one atomic attack to provoke the surrender of Japan, however, so plans were already underway for a second bomb.

The city of Nagasaki became the second and final city to fall victim to nuclear war on August 9th, 1945. Like Hiroshima, it had been almost untouched by conventional bombing. Fortunately for the city, it was on somewhat hilly terrain, so a much higher portion of it survived. About 70,000 people were killed in the bombing of Nagasaki, but as with Hiroshima, the radioactive fallout and injuries leftover after the initial blast were killing people for years to come.

Just one day after the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government entered surrender negotiations. In response, and demonstrating his good judgment in handling the crisis, President Truman issued an order immediately halting atomic warfare against Japan. Without that order, another bomb could have been dropped as soon as August 17th. The formal surrender ceremony took place September 2nd, 1945. Japanese General Anami Korechika took his own life rather than live having surrendered the war, adding a final exclamation point to the idea that the Japanese would have fought a hopeless war to the death before surrender had the atomic bomb not been used.

The single most controversial issue with the atomic bombings is the number of civilians killed, because neither city was a strictly military location. The League of Nations had established, international laws forbidding the targeting of civilian populations with bombing attacks. However, this restriction had been abandoned by both sides of the war years prior. Germany and Japan had both bombed civilian population centers extensively, as had Allied forces in response. Truman’s bombing of a civilian population was a tragedy, but it was not without precedent. Additionally, thousands of civilians in Japanese-conquered areas were dying every day. Any delay in ending the war meant further deaths in nations that had commit no aggression. In the end, the use of the bomb was justified by the precedents set in the war, and by Japanese treatment of enemy civilians.

President Truman’s decision to use the atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in response to the Japanese refusal to surrender was a military decision fully within the power of the Commander in Chief of the military. Because we were in a time of war against a nation that refused to surrender even when threatened by the Allied powers, executive power alone was enough to give the order. While there were many critics, none have raised the argument that President Truman had stepped outside of his legal bounds by giving the order. In fact, by giving the order, Truman expanded the role of the president into being the only person in the United States capable of launching a nuclear war.

The first and so far only use of atomic bombs in war was one of the defining moments in 20th century history. It served as a powerful warning to anyone who might think to use nuclear weapons in the future, especially the cold war. The exact number of lives lost will never be known, because radioactive fallout was taking lives for decades following the actual bomb, but in turn the bombing prevented what would have been staggering losses for Allied forces. President Truman faced an incredibly difficult and uncertain decision when he chose to employ atomic bombs in warfare, but history has shown that his reasoning was sound and that his doing so saved far more lives than it cost.
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Bibliography​

1. Dietrich, Bill. "Bomb History Still Bears Bitterness." The Seattle Times 9 July 1995: Business.
2. Frank, Richard B.. "Why Truman Dropped the Bomb." The Weekly Standard 8 Aug. 2005, 044.

1. Harper, Stephen. Miracle of Deliverance: The Case for the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Braircliff Manor, N. Y.: Stein And Day, New York, 1986.
2. Takaki, Ronald. Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996.

1. "Tale of Two Cites: Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Atomic Archive. 16 Nov. 2008 <http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/twocities/index.shtml>.
2. "The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb Online Research File." Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. 15 Nov. 2008 <http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/index.php?action=documentary>.
3. "The Presidential Timeline." The Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century. 17 Nov. 2008 <http://www.presidentialtimeline.org/timeline/bin>.

PS. My teacher had us submit this to an anti-plagarism website, so it is now in their database, and I would advise you not to copy-paste any of it. The topic focuses on Truman more than it sounds like your essay does too, so it probably won't fit anyway.

If you wanna use my bibliography though, feel free to copy the sources.




Edit: I completely ignored the economic aspects of the decision, because my teacher was a feminist hippie and I am almost positive I would have failed if I had tried to argue that saving incredibly huge amounts of money was worth the relative loss of life in the atomic bombing versus an invasion. There are sources out there that attempt to put a price on what the A-bomb cost in dollars, and estimate what an invasion would have cost in dollars. The difference in just that is pretty huge, and the loss of life probable in each scenario was at best equal, at worst the A-bomb killed less than invasion would have. If you think your teacher is more pragmatic(or racist) than mine was, you can attempt to make the argument that the US couldn't afford an invasion, and the atomic bomb was necessary to give us the economic success we've seen since the Depression.

 

So you are saying we should win wars at whatever the cost? Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you just sided with RacoonSniper 13 on this view.

EDIT: actually Ladnil, dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have saved a lot of people. About 220,000 people died from the bombs in those two cities whereas experts have analyzed that the casualties for an invasion of Japan would exceed 5 million on both sides.

 

Since Japan ordered all of its citizens to fight to the end [even children and women] this resulted in all of Japan becoming militarized and that means there were NO CIVILIANS in Japan at the time. The Dropping of the bombs was necessary to beat a arrogant and very confident enemy willing to fight to the end. Us dropping the bombs broke their will to fight such power and this resulted the citizens uprising and forcing their leader to surrender. It was surrender or total annillation , they made the right decision on both sides.

 

Yea, that's what I said. Even the lowest estimate of what an invasion would cost in lives, compared to the higher estimations of what the A-bomb cost in the initial blast plus deaths from radiation shows that the bombs were probably the better choice from that perspective.

People who are arguing that killing all those people was immoral simply ignore or are not aware of the reality of the situation.

 

The USA would have fought a long costly war in Honshu and the other main islands of Nihon. Yes, I am using the Japanese names because I am half Japanese.

I believe that the USA dropping the bomb on the cities was necessary. The Japanese military forces were in control of the nation, not the Emperor who was only a puppet leader. Propaganda was spread saying he was divine and people believed that dying for him would be a honorable thing to do, in search of Japanese "Wa" or harmony, but it means so much more than that. The nation was falling into a standstill.

While some feel that dropping two bombs is a little over the top, the Americans did not wish to go through the war, alongside Russia in Japan. America knew it would be a bloodier war than those in the Pacific Islands, because they would be defending their homes. Japanese leaders would order all citizens to rise up and fight to the last drop of blood. Also, as America expected to find an enemy in Communism, they did not want the possibility of Russia establishing spy bases in Japan.

As P3P5I said the bombs caused far less casualties on both the Japanese and Allied side. Truman knew that he would be risking thousands of American lives in the war, but the bombs offered a cleaner solution. There is also a possibility that the ferociousness of WW2 era Japanese on the field of battle-their own homes-that they could stack up such casualties that the Americans may have had to arrange a conditional, not unconditional surrender.

Also, completely annihilating enemies is not the vogue. Throughout history there have been very few total destruction on the field of battle and of the citizens. This is because the conquerors would often want to use those countries resources. @XxHG Br K1ngxX In war there is no getting back, you simply want to win the war. War is just war, there is no revenge, rarely any truth, and the fastest way to end the war is typically considered the best one. (Of course weighing all other courses of action
).