I know this is really dumb and off topic, but whoaaaa, you can say the Japanese names. Obviously you're uber-cool. lol don't mind me i'm dopey off of a caffeine crash. QFT. Which is why it's such a good thing that the Soviet Union never had any 'Northern Japan' to our 'Southern Japan' like we did with North/South Korea, North/South Vietnam, East/West Germany, etc. It completely tore up the countries' economy and government. Dow....if anything, don't turn that in. It needs to be changed, heavily. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have heard or seen anything. It happened nearly instantly. Unless you lived on the far outskirts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when it happened, you most likely would have just been completely vaporized in a single moment. It was an incredible amount of energy released very, very quickly. Most teachers I've had hate it when I use first person terms inside of my essays. You probably should remove them. You're claiming that everyone supporting the bombing were self-righteous in doing so. It wasn't out of revenge; the US needed a way to end the war with minimal collatarol damage. Even though the Japanese had commited so many war-time atrocities that a **** officer actually appealled to Hitler in order to stop the Japanese from the Rape of Nanking, among other things, it wasn't out of revenge. Revenge is done hot-headed and without thinking of the consequences. It was done cold and calculating. We might not have predicted exactly what would have happened, but we were trying to prevent a much worse future. If anything should disgust you, it's that we had to decide to kill several hundred thousand civilians in order to save the lives of millions of our soldiers and millions of their soldiers and civilians. And I wouldn't be so hasty to bring in the Biblical arguement. I'm sure not many Americans fully realized the full-scale force of the nuclear warhead until reports came back about Hiroshima/Nagasaki. In that case, then yes, launch a full-scale invasion on every single major city! I'm sure that'd be much more peaceful. It's not the most morally-white solution ever, but the alternatives were much worse; USSR was already threatening an invasion of Japan as well as the USA, and even then, Japan wasn't willing to back down. The nukes were like 9/11 to minor bombings of US troops in Yemen. It scared Japan into surrendering; if we had gone the slower, more subtle route, it would only end more lives and prolong the war. Yes, it was disgusting and repugnant; I'm not condoning it. I'm simply saying that it was better than any alternatives (unless we did the bat bombs!). WWII wasn't a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, where everything is completely absolute (win/lose/tie). It's more like chess. Chess in which your pieces are only given to you based off of the public support and morale, whereas the enemy's pieces were given to them regardless. The government was devestatingly effecient at manipulating the public opinion. They could have shrugged off a full-on invasion of Japan as a minor setback, and cry for their citizens to fight and win. The Japanese saw only winning and losing. The US viewed winning in securing global democracy and freedom. Surrendering wouldn't have even been an option for the leaders unless some event that completely shattered any way for the military to hide their flaws from the public. And that, unfortunately, was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both nukes were necessary. The first one showed how destructive they were. The second demonstrated our supply. As I cited above, at first the War Minister wouldn't even recognize the fact that they had been nuked. After Nagasaki, he said "The Americans appeared to have one hundred atomic bombs. They could drop three per day. The next target might well be Tokyo.” As for the whole 3-day surrender treaty being too short? The Japanese immediately rejected it upon reading it.
Um, Nemi it looks like my name is on all of your quotes. Why is that, I was not the one posting those messages.
Just a little change here. I don't remember the USSR threatening an invasion of the U.S. Rather the U.S. and the Soviet Union had made a pact that after a certain amount of time after the surrender of Germany would the Soviet Union invade Japan.
We dropped the bomb so Japan would stop fighting. The war would have continued. They were going to fight to the death. They willingly flew planes into our ships. We did what was necessary to save US lives which was to kill Japanese. The bomb was self defense.
Accoring to some sources I have read, the Japanese were ready to surrender before the Atomic Bombs were dropped. I believe that it was wrong, because I believe that if my above point is the case then the U.S were using it as a way to scare others, showing opponents that they had power, and I see no reason why any one persons (I know more than one person was killed) life should be ended just to scare other countries.
When someone pulls a gun on you and you punch them in the face, that is self-defense. Dropping an atomic bomb on a city filled to the brim with civilians, cute Asian kids and newborn puppies... not so much.
They weren't threatening to invade so much as actually invading territories such as Manchuria. They were closing in on Japan, fast.
Its a regular Global Studies class in 9th grade. My guidance counselor picked all of my classes for me because they lost my applicaiton. Sucks. I was supposed to be in AP Also, I wanted to use the points about religion to really get to the people reading it, because I know the majority of people are christian. I usualy say something about religion in all of my papers, and he never minds
Also surpise attacking pearl harbor when we didnt want to fight was wrong also. Karma's a ***** and we got our revenge ten fold. At this time in Japan there were NO CIVILAINS as the japanese were brain washed into believing the emporer was a god and they choose to fight to the last for their homes. Thats what it came down too and I belive it was the right decision at the time.
Yeah, see, what happened was more like they sucker punched us, and we shot them in the face. With a shotgun. A double-barreled sawed-off shogtun. It wasn't exactly unprovoked. We had cut off trade with them, and they felt threatened. We were alredy supporting the Allies much more than we had ever supported the Axis Powers; they were making a pre-empetive strike on us. However, the only thing that they accomplished was to give the US a reason to enter WWII in an acceptable reason that would appeal to the public, rather than "Axis Powers are bad".
Well they didn't leave us many options. The Japanese were sick sick people during war. I mean, dude, if you were a pow in Japan... jesus. The people killed by the bomb were a loss that didn't have to be lost. The Japanese government forced it upon us. They're own government forced us to kill them. There was no right or wrong. They backed us into a corner. It was either kill, or be killed.
That's like saying, "This robber didn't leave me with very many options because he's metaphorically backed me in a corner, even though I have a gun pointed to his head. So I'm going to go kill his grandma, because this is the only way he'll can repay me of the things he took from me."
i believe that it was wrong, but neccessary at the same time, war calls for desperate measures, plus, if we didn't do it, they couldve done it to us.
Show me one scrap of evidence that is was necessary. The Japanese Empire was ready to buckle. They were fanatics, but they weren't stupid. We had two options, slow the war machine for diplomacy and begin mopping up Japan or slaughter as many as we could to force a surrender. The second was the safest of the two but it doesn't do much for the moral credibility for the U.S. or it's leaders.
Based on the Leahy/Marshall Estimate, the casualties would exceed one million, not counting the Japanese casualties (note:there were no formal numbers on this matter). The official transcript of operation downfall can be found here. The casualties for the Japanese in the atomic bombings were about 220,000. Based on these estimates, we did save lives by taking them.
Where have you read that the Japanese had the capability for nuclear weapons. It isn't so much the lost lives that everyone is against, it is more the feeling that they had no hope. If the Americans didn't attack Japan and simply forced a conditional surrender Japan may have grown to an even larger world power, maybe to rival America. And we all know America can't have that can we? [size-2]don't flame me for that[/size]
I consider the bombings being next to that of revenge for pearl harbour, however if an A-bomb wasn't used who's to say after the fall of Berlin Japan would have just continued where they left off? It is questions whether something was or not that will always be asked, often never ending in a definate answer