Poll: Was It Wrong To Drop The Atomic Bombs In Japan?

[Doug]

The bombs were a message to the world, yes it is sad about the civilian casulties, but if you're going to start a fight you have to accept that the guy you're picking a fight with is crazy and will not stop until you are completely beaten within an inch of your life. The bombs being dropped probably stopped a lot of other nonsense happening from the Russians during negotiations over Germany as well. It also secured the U.S.'s place as a top world power. And I agree that it did save American lives, which during a war with a country that started the aggression I can fully support. Most importantly without the bombs being dropped, would there be a Godzilla?

Not just American lives - millions of Japanese where not starved to death or thrown into sicidual charges against a US invasion of the Japanese home islands thanks to the atomic bombs.

 

[cheeseasaurusRex]

Why do people always mention that the bomb killed civillians as if Japan didn't kill civillians? It was total war...was acceptable policy back then.

Also throughout the war the Japanese killed anywhere between 8-15 million Chinese Civilians(Rape, Murder, Preventable starvation, chemical weapons, biological experimentation, etc). Along with an estimated 30 million Filipinos, Burmese, Vietnamese, and other Southeast Asian civilians. Those numbers are almost double the reported figures for the Nazi Holocaust.

Japanese troops were just as bad as the Nazis they're not as innocent as people think.
And yet most people probably would approve of using the bomb against Germany

 

[Woodsey]

Where's the "this is so morally grey I can't/won't choose" option?

 

[TheRocketeer]

Did you play Drakengard? Did you PLAY Drakengard?!

I think you know the answer.

 

[Manatee Slayer]

The Japanese are not a hive mind. A common response to this question is "they would never surrender" and even worse, "the citizens were trained to kill US soldiers if they invaded. Even school girls." However, while that element was certainly present, it doesn't represent the entire populace.

I never did say that everyone thought that way, in fact my response above was based on the fact that everyone wanted to keep fighting, but they obviously didn't because they did surrender. So there must have been a lot of people who wanted to sign a surrender, maybe not an unconditional one but at least in some form. In fact, there was a large populous in Japan that did and their main focus was to keep Hirohito as emporer, which happened after the bombs anyway.

I realise this is all hypothetical but I still find it's an interesting point to discuss (it's why Marvel do "What Ifs"). It obvisouly can't be changed, I just wanted people's opinions.

Japanese troops were just as bad as the Nazis they're not as innocent as people think.

No one said they were innocent but the justification of an evil surely can't be "but they did worse stuff".

 

[Cody211282]

For the thousandth time, no it wasn't.

-The Japanese had virtually no Navy or Airforce to speak of.

And yet they still refused to surrender and infact were training a vast number of civilians to fight any American invasion (if their own figures are to be believed, something like 28 million [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Fighting_Corps] - and given the kamikaze, I'm fully willing to believe they would have charged US marines with spears). As such, even with Air and Sea superiority, American casualities would have been high - and even if they weren't, millions of Japanese would have been killed in the fighting; far more than where killed by the nukes themselves.

-The Americans had blockaded Japan, meaning they couldn't get any imported recources, which is nearly everything. lol

True, this includes food, so this option was causing mass starvation agmonst the Japanese population, who where still refusing to surrender. Its highly likely that had the war continued, the Japanese would have starved to dead in their millions rather than surrender. And all the time they where holding out, thousands of POWs where being used as slave labour and worked to dead, millions of Chinese were undergoing the same, and thousands of Chinese women were being used as sex slaves.

-The japanese were terrified by the thought of the Russians coming, due to the fact they had lost to them before and that they would probably take over the country and install communism.

The Russians didn't declare war on the Japanese until after the first atomic bomb was used.

-Many high ranking officials were against the attack saying it was unnesisary and that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway.

I believe they were only willing to accept conditional surrender - the Allies refused to accept conditional surrenders from either Japan or Nazi Germany, partly due to the war crimes they had committed, partly because the Axis forced had to accept that they were defeated, as the Allies didn't want a repeat of this war, like what happened at the end of WW1.

-Winston Churchill in his book ("The World At War") said that the bombs did not play any part in the defeat of Japan.

As great a man as Churchill was, he wasn't the god of all knowledge, and certainly wasn't an expert on what was happening on the pacific front.

-The only reason people think that the bombs won the war in the Pacific is due to American Propagada.

...Ok... thats option stated as fact - I think dropping two super weapons on the Japanese made it extremely clear to them that, inspite of their 'warrior spirit' and 'devotion to die to protect the Emperor', it simply wouldn't be enough - it showed the Japanese that the US could simply wipe them out with minimum to zero casualities if the Japanese refused to accept the unconditional surrender.

Basically, the atomic bombs, though highly unpleasant, where the best way to end the war with the minimum loss of life, and I'm sick and tired of people acting like the Japanese where wronged - the Japanese who killed millions of Chinese and Pacific islanders, tortured and enslaved millions more Chinese, and thousands of POWs, and where as bad as the Nazi's; just more disorganized in their war crimes.

you sir get a cookie for all that work.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Killing civilians in war is ALWAYS wrong, and despite all of the positive effects it had I will never argue it was a good thing.

Yes killing civilians is wrong, but at the same time it is unavoidable, especially in a nation that was as tightly packed as Japan. Also is it wrong to kill the civilians working in the factories that build the bombs and war machines? I believe we should minimize civilian casualties but until there is no more war sadly they will be killed in the cross fire.

 

[Doug]

Saved a lot of lives, but it's caused a lot of health issues with everyone for years afterwards.
Plus, many of the generals advised against it when it was being decided.

I reckon if you tallied it up now, you'd find that more have been lost to date from two A-Bombs over two days than a land-based invasion of a resource starved country with the Morale of a British Somme soldier in 1916.

Low morale didn't stop Japanese kamikaze pilots from fighting for there country, nor did it stop Japanese soldiers in the field from fighting - if anything, the risk to the home islands seemed to make them fight harder. At the battle of Iwo Jima [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima], for example, all but 200 of the 18,000 garrison fought to the death - even if the US troops shot 9 out of 10 surrendering soldiers, it would still only be 2,000 out of 18,000 troops surrendering at the end of the war, when all hope of victory had faded.

 

[Manatee Slayer]

My post in the earlier thread on this subject contains a link to the intelligence intercept summaries with information that shaped the decisions made by the people on the spot and not privy to decades of additional information, nor time for careful sifting of the mountain of information available for alternate interpretations, that all of us armchair presidents can enjoy while passing judgement on them.

I shall include the pertinant lines again, so perhaps it is more likely you'll try to open the link to those intelligence intercepts, and realize it was one day's worth and a summary, at that:

We should, however, give a fair hearing to the argument that "if the enemy actually carries out a landing, we will concentrate all our strength on a counter-attack and will thus bring about his disillusionment." I understand from your July 17 message ... that the Government and the Military are convinced that we will still be able to give the enemy considerable shock with our war strength.

This was July 22, 1945. Japanese leadership still felt it could fight on just two weeks before the first bomb was dropped.

 

[EMFCRACKSHOT]

Yes, I really do. The Japanese were on their way towards a truce, so it was in no way necessary, and it killed so many people.

It wasn't completely necessary to do it, however, would the Americans have engaged them on land we would have lost many more men to the Japanese armies because at the time those soldiers would not have surrendered until the Emperor had given the final word. The bomb was our way of telling them "we aren't fucking around here"

I don't usually completely disagree with anyone, but I can't understand how you feel that the killing of over a hundred and fifty thousand civilians (alot of them by the after effects of the blasts, which is an absolutely horrid way to die) was justified to save the lives of many less allied soldiers, who would have actually had a chance to survive the war, whereas those hit by the bomb had no idea what was happening, and were civilians.

I understand that you said it wasn't completely necessary, but to justify it by saying it was a necessary message to the japanese emperor (at least that's how I took what you wrote) kinda pisses me off.

The thing is, in land based invasion, the fighting probably would have ended up street to street in Tokyo causing far more civilian casualties. Look at stalingrad or berlin. And the japs would most likely have fought on. I imagine knowing your enemies have a weapon that can wipe out entire cities in an instant is different to having an enemy you can fight on a somewhat equal footing.
An invasion of japan would have resulted in a death toll in the millions. The japanese mainland is extremely difficult to invade. There are really only two places where a seaborne assault could land en masse. Airborne invasion is equally difficult due to the mountainous terrain of japan. The japanese could have had their army positioned to repel a seaborne invasion from either possible location. They had the american invasion plan pretty much sussed. The loss of military lives, both japanese and american, alone would have been far more than those of civilian lives.
And regardless of what a small number of other people have said, japan was not on the verge of surrender.
Okinawa was the first time american troops had taken a significant number of japanese troops prisoner of war, and even then they only took 7000. The rest preferred to fight to the death or commit suicide.
So no, it wasn't wrong to drop the bombs

 

[Doug]

Why do people always mention that the bomb killed civillians as if Japan didn't kill civillians? It was total war...was acceptable policy back then.

Also throughout the war the Japanese killed anywhere between 8-15 million Chinese Civilians(Rape, Murder, Preventable starvation, chemical weapons, biological experimentation, etc). Along with an estimated 30 million Filipinos, Burmese, Vietnamese, and other Southeast Asian civilians. Those numbers are almost double the reported figures for the Nazi Holocaust.

Japanese troops were just as bad as the Nazis they're not as innocent as people think.
And yet most people probably would approve of using the bomb against Germany

Very true, and I posted to that effect, heh.

Spoiler: Space saver

For the thousandth time, no it wasn't.

-The Japanese had virtually no Navy or Airforce to speak of.

And yet they still refused to surrender and infact were training a vast number of civilians to fight any American invasion (if their own figures are to be believed, something like 28 million [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Fighting_Corps] - and given the kamikaze, I'm fully willing to believe they would have charged US marines with spears). As such, even with Air and Sea superiority, American casualities would have been high - and even if they weren't, millions of Japanese would have been killed in the fighting; far more than where killed by the nukes themselves.

-The Americans had blockaded Japan, meaning they couldn't get any imported recources, which is nearly everything. lol

True, this includes food, so this option was causing mass starvation agmonst the Japanese population, who where still refusing to surrender. Its highly likely that had the war continued, the Japanese would have starved to dead in their millions rather than surrender. And all the time they where holding out, thousands of POWs where being used as slave labour and worked to dead, millions of Chinese were undergoing the same, and thousands of Chinese women were being used as sex slaves.

-The japanese were terrified by the thought of the Russians coming, due to the fact they had lost to them before and that they would probably take over the country and install communism.

The Russians didn't declare war on the Japanese until after the first atomic bomb was used.

-Many high ranking officials were against the attack saying it was unnesisary and that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway.

I believe they were only willing to accept conditional surrender - the Allies refused to accept conditional surrenders from either Japan or Nazi Germany, partly due to the war crimes they had committed, partly because the Axis forced had to accept that they were defeated, as the Allies didn't want a repeat of this war, like what happened at the end of WW1.

-Winston Churchill in his book ("The World At War") said that the bombs did not play any part in the defeat of Japan.

As great a man as Churchill was, he wasn't the god of all knowledge, and certainly wasn't an expert on what was happening on the pacific front.

-The only reason people think that the bombs won the war in the Pacific is due to American Propagada.

...Ok... thats option stated as fact - I think dropping two super weapons on the Japanese made it extremely clear to them that, inspite of their 'warrior spirit' and 'devotion to die to protect the Emperor', it simply wouldn't be enough - it showed the Japanese that the US could simply wipe them out with minimum to zero casualities if the Japanese refused to accept the unconditional surrender.

Basically, the atomic bombs, though highly unpleasant, where the best way to end the war with the minimum loss of life, and I'm sick and tired of people acting like the Japanese where wronged - the Japanese who killed millions of Chinese and Pacific islanders, tortured and enslaved millions more Chinese, and thousands of POWs, and where as bad as the Nazi's; just more disorganized in their war crimes.

you sir get a cookie for all that work.

oooh, cookie!

 

[JokerCrowe]

Well... it's a tough question. I mean it ended the war... but... I honestly don't know. Maybe things would be completely different if it hadn't been done. Maybe america had dropped the nukes on Russia instead...
it's very easy to say "maybe, but let me put it this way: if I could go back in time I personally would stop them, if I had the power. And I don't support the fact that maaaaaany civilians were killed (I say many because I'm not sure if it's thousand or tens of thousands or hundereds of thousands). That being said, that is what happened, and since you can't go back in time, and since dropping the bomb made the reality we live in now. I would say it was morally wrong to do it, but I'm glad it happened. Who knows what might have happened if we didn't. Maybe Nuclear War against Russia.

 

[Mucinex-D]

Before you vote, I would just like to say that this question has been in my mind for a hiwle now and I have done some (albeit not a lot) of research, so I would be interested in hearing others people's opinions, hopefully based on facts.

So far, I have come to the conclusion that they shouldn't have been, and from reading different sources seem to think that the Americans did it to...prove a point or maybe revenge...that's all I have really.

Here are some of the things I have learner recently:

-The Japanese had virtually no Navy or Airforce to speak of.

-The Americans had blockaded Japan, meaning they couldn't get any imported recources, which is nearly everything. lol

-The japanese were terrified by the thought of the Russians coming, due to the fact they had lost to them before and that they would probably take over the country and install communism.

-Many high ranking officials were against the attack saying it was unnesisary and that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway.

-Winston Churchill in his book ("The World At War") said that the bombs did not play any part in the defeat of Japan.

-The only reason people think that the bombs won the war in the Pacific is due to American Propagada.

Now, I'm not trying to force your vote by saying these things, I would like some insight into your thoughts not just on the bombing but the points I have listen above.

Happy Posting. :-D

Actually the Japanese had beaten the Russians in the Japo-russo war (or whatever it's called) pretty badly if I remember correctly.

1. The Japanese culture saw surrender as weak and they were not even close to surrendering.
2. The war in the pacific was largely won by the time the bombs were dropped this is true. But Japan itself had not surrendered yet.
3. They only had little air force left due to their Kamikaze attacks. They wasted hundreds of their planes doing these.

Even if we did do it to "prove a point", that doesn't mean the point didn't have to be made. The point being that we could, and would, destroy them without having to send in any ground troops. To your statement that they were ready to surrender think of this. After we dropped the first nuke we delivered an ultimatum for them to surrender... they didn't. Only after the second was dropped did they surrender. Do you think they would have surrendered if dropping a nuke on them couldn't make them do it?

I would like some sources for many of the claims you have made, such as the high ranking officers saying they were ready to surrender.

 

[EMFCRACKSHOT]

Two, wouldn't you change your mind after two bombs leveled two cities, and killed loads of people. I know that if someone dropped two A-Bombs on my country, I'd have the treaty written real fuckin' quick.

If my belief was to fight until the last man...probably not...

This is one thing I like to point out. The Japanese are not a hive mind. A common response to this question is "they would never surrender" and even worse, "the citizens were trained to kill US soldiers if they invaded. Even school girls." However, while that element was certainly present, it doesn't represent the entire populace.

I believe it was the island of Saipan where thousands of japanese civilians jumped off a cliff rather than face American occupation. It may not have been the mindset of the entire population, but i thin an incident like this shows that many japanese were unwilling to submit to the americans

 

[fenrizz]

-The Japanese would never surrender (their beliefs at the time prohibited such a thing), necessitating a drawn-out and destructive conflict between them and the United States before the war could end.

-The bombs certainly did end the war in the Pacific. Whether or not it could have been won without them is debatable (and difficult to prove either way), but leveling a city with a single explosion sends a pretty strong message.

-The Japanese had enough of an air force to get to Pearl Harbor and do a lot of damage.

I'm not saying we should use nuclear weapons ever again, but if you add up the death toll and compare it to what would have resulted from a drawn-out war with Japan, the bombs probably killed fewer people.

All this is true, and I'm inclined to agree.
But I still think it's horrible to drop an atomic bomb on people, civilians no less.
Today this would have been a war crime.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Two, wouldn't you change your mind after two bombs leveled two cities, and killed loads of people. I know that if someone dropped two A-Bombs on my country, I'd have the treaty written real fuckin' quick.

If my belief was to fight until the last man...probably not...

This is one thing I like to point out. The Japanese are not a hive mind. A common response to this question is "they would never surrender" and even worse, "the citizens were trained to kill US soldiers if they invaded. Even school girls." However, while that element was certainly present, it doesn't represent the entire populace.

I believe it was the island of Saipan where thousands of japanese civilians jumped off a cliff rather than face American occupation. It may not have been the mindset of the entire population, but i thin an incident like this shows that many japanese were unwilling to submit to the americans

But they didn't attack the Americans either. That's the only point I make.

 

[LiftYourSkinnyFists]

It was over 40 years ago and in all honesty was it wrong to drop bombs on pearl harbor?

 

[Manatee Slayer]

I would like some sources for many of the claims you have made, such as the high ranking officers saying they were ready to surrender.

http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/atomicdec.htm

Sorry, but this is all I had time to look for.

As I said before guys I just wanted people's opinions. I am sorry if this thread has been made before and it sounds like it has...lots of time. My apologies.

 

[maninahat]

I'll say that dropping bombs in any circumstance is the wrong thing to do, but it was less of a wrong thing to do than the alternative. Nuking Japan was the lesser of two evils, the greater evil being an all out invasion. The invasion would have killed millions more people.

I don't know where the OP gets his infomation from, but it appears to be fairly one sided. The OP could have tried to make the case for dropping the bombs too, thus showing he/she had considered both sides of the argument.