Posted by Jetson21 on 8/16/2022 2:19:00 PM (view original):
This is not religion but it does involve a lot of morality and fair justice and vengeance and ethics and humanity and racism.

Im talking about Truman giving the Japanese 2 days to surrender before he dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki.

So many people hail Truman but I cannot find justification for the second bomb.
It was anti everything I mentioned in the first paragraph except vengeance and racism.

I would be interested in your opinion.

Isn't the justification for the 2nd that they failed to surrender after the first?

That first bomb (dropped on Hiroshima) was a much smaller bomb and a type which detonates above the target. While certainly devastating, it was only about half as damaging as the 2nd. We'd hoped destroying an entire city and killing roughly 100k people with a single bomb would send a strong enough message. It didn't.

That second bomb was a type which detonates upon impact with the target and killed about twice as many folks.

An ultimatum was given on July 25th, the Japanese government chose to ignore it.
12 days later the first bomb was dropped and
Suzuki reiterated his intention to fight on despite the devastation of that first bomb.
3 days later the 2nd was dropped, even so, it took another week before Japan finally agreed to surrender.

Also remember that it took nearly 3 months and 20K American lives (not to mention at least double that severely injured) to take the tiny island of Okinawa. That battle ended only 1 month before the ultimatum was given.

a hunnert percent

Truman the greatest american humanist commander-in-chief



you gotta spend lives to save lives

strap jesus with a cross

the buck stopped there

Posted by bruceleefan on 8/16/2022 5:00:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Jetson21 on 8/16/2022 2:19:00 PM (view original):
This is not religion but it does involve a lot of morality and fair justice and vengeance and ethics and humanity and racism.

Im talking about Truman giving the Japanese 2 days to surrender before he dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki.

So many people hail Truman but I cannot find justification for the second bomb.
It was anti everything I mentioned in the first paragraph except vengeance and racism.

I would be interested in your opinion.

Isn't the justification for the 2nd that they failed to surrender after the first?

That first bomb (dropped on Hiroshima) was a much smaller bomb and a type which detonates above the target. While certainly devastating, it was only about half as damaging as the 2nd. We'd hoped destroying an entire city and killing roughly 100k people with a single bomb would send a strong enough message. It didn't.

That second bomb was a type which detonates upon impact with the target and killed about twice as many folks.

An ultimatum was given on July 25th, the Japanese government chose to ignore it.
12 days later the first bomb was dropped and
Suzuki reiterated his intention to fight on despite the devastation of that first bomb.
3 days later the 2nd was dropped, even so, it took another week before Japan finally agreed to surrender.

Also remember that it took nearly 3 months and 20K American lives (not to mention at least double that severely injured) to take the tiny island of Okinawa. That battle ended only 1 month before the ultimatum was given.

I do not question the dropping of the first bomb. But to give only 2 days was an intention to drop the second bomb.

In 1945 there was no television or computers
and even trains were a lot slower.
More then 2 days would have been appropriate. I’m not sure that the emperor got a chance to see Hiroshima and consult with his advisors.
5 days instead of 2 could have avoided genocide in Nagasaki.

It is true that the United States wanted Russia to be intimidated and that may have gone into the thinking of giving only 2 days.

I believe that the rush to drop an atomic bomb on the second city was one of the most immoral things that the United States has ever done.
BTW - Nagasaki was not the first choice. The chosen city was to obscured by fog and then they chose Nagasaki.
And ironically Nagasaki was the Japanese city with a significant christian population. Altogether approximately 215,000 people were killed from both bombs and approximately 50,000 out of 110,000 Catholics were killed most in Nagasaki.

It is said that Truman was concerned about suicide bombers but 3 more days would not have been irresponsible.

I think it was a decision that can never be accepted by me.
I should also mention that Truman and millions of Americans had a racist opinion of Asian people and particularly Japanese people. It was a lot easier to drop the bomb on a people considered sub human.

It was just not a proud moment for the USA.
We could have done better.

Posted by bruceleefan on 8/16/2022 5:00:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Jetson21 on 8/16/2022 2:19:00 PM (view original):
This is not religion but it does involve a lot of morality and fair justice and vengeance and ethics and humanity and racism.

Im talking about Truman giving the Japanese 2 days to surrender before he dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki.

So many people hail Truman but I cannot find justification for the second bomb.
It was anti everything I mentioned in the first paragraph except vengeance and racism.

I would be interested in your opinion.

Isn't the justification for the 2nd that they failed to surrender after the first?

That first bomb (dropped on Hiroshima) was a much smaller bomb and a type which detonates above the target. While certainly devastating, it was only about half as damaging as the 2nd. We'd hoped destroying an entire city and killing roughly 100k people with a single bomb would send a strong enough message. It didn't.

That second bomb was a type which detonates upon impact with the target and killed about twice as many folks.

An ultimatum was given on July 25th, the Japanese government chose to ignore it.
12 days later the first bomb was dropped and
Suzuki reiterated his intention to fight on despite the devastation of that first bomb.
3 days later the 2nd was dropped, even so, it took another week before Japan finally agreed to surrender.

Also remember that it took nearly 3 months and 20K American lives (not to mention at least double that severely injured) to take the tiny island of Okinawa. That battle ended only 1 month before the ultimatum was given.

There was no justification for sending the bombs on Japanese cities. They just needed to know the bombs existed and worked. The government did NOT need to kill the tens of thousands of innocent people.

Moreover, the Japenese government was willing to surrender if the US agreed not to depose the emperor. They wanted to avoid an unconditional surrender but were willing to end the war.

The question wasn't nukes or invasion. The question was whether to target civilian populations, which we totally didn't need to.

Theres a really good video i watched on the subject that throughly changed my mind on this issue. I can link it if you want

Dino is absolutely correct that racism was a factor in the decision making of the us government. They didn't view Japanese lives as equivalent to ours and that's reflected in the documents of people discussing where they would drop the bombs.

I believe one target was dropped because a general had vacationed there before. The goal was to create a massive spectacle, including killing as many as possible

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go

Video in question. Super informative

What would you have done?

Posted by tangplay on 8/16/2022 6:46:00 PM (view original):
Dino is absolutely correct that racism was a factor in the decision making of the us government. They didn't view Japanese lives as equivalent to ours and that's reflected in the documents of people discussing where they would drop the bombs.

I believe one target was dropped because a general had vacationed there before. The goal was to create a massive spectacle, including killing as many as possible

Thank you.

Posted by DougOut on 8/16/2022 7:49:00 PM (view original):
What would you have done?

Give it 7 days after Hiroshima if suicide bombers had not stopped
and drop it on day 8 after Hiroshima

Posted by DougOut on 8/16/2022 7:49:00 PM (view original):
What would you have done?

First and foremost, I would have actually negotiated with the Japanese to accept their conditional surrender
If that fails, I would have made a public demonstration of the nuclear bomb to show Japan openly that we had it, and if that fails, would have chosen a place on the mainland to drop the 2nd bomb that reduces casualties as much as possible.

I would never have chosen to drop the bombs on two large population centers.

Posted by tangplay on 8/16/2022 8:51:00 PM (view original):

Posted by DougOut on 8/16/2022 7:49:00 PM (view original):
What would you have done?

First and foremost, I would have actually negotiated with the Japanese to accept their conditional surrender
If that fails, I would have made a public demonstration of the nuclear bomb to show Japan openly that we had it, and if that fails, would have chosen a place on the mainland to drop the 2nd bomb that reduces casualties as much as possible.

I would never have chosen to drop the bombs on two large population centers.

The times were a little different. America did not get Pearl Harbor out of their mind and the kamakszie missions created hatred.
Pearl Harbor was like 9-11.
They started the war and there was a thirst for revenge.

Ill have to do some research as to whether there was a legitimate attempt to negotiate.
The suicide missions were very central to demanding unconditional surrender. They would fly into ships and cause incredible damage and death.

Also the emperor was not running a democracy. He had to be involved in everything and he was treated as a deity.

This is interesting conversation.

You should watch the video I linked

bushido

Truman did the right and mighty thing

I thought so too until I learned more about it

this is a religion discussion

the japanese were military zealots

it took the two measured demonstrations to convince them of the error of their gods

go Harry S