Magefeanor said:
Not messed up at all... The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings saved countless of lives, 9/11(or 11/9 where I live
) just lead to more people being killed. So the bombings were justified to an extent, the plane crashes were not.
Random fact: The purple hearts given out were all made for the possible invasion of Japan. They haven't made new purple hearts in over 60 years!
This is bunk, spread by high school history teachers not worth their pay.
Japan had been talking about surrender for weeks before the bombings, talking to Russia to act as a mediator. And the atomic bombings only killed a max of 80,000 in Nagasaki and between 90,000 and 166,000 in Hiroshima. A firebombing(which we had been doing repeatedly on multiple cities during later period of the war) killed a full 125,000 people in one instance alone; Far more than Nagasaki and comparable to Hiroshima. Excessively powerful bomb attacks was absolutely nothing new.
And if you want to talk about the horror of those weapons, firebombs created tornado's of flame with hurricane winds charring those outside to ash and slowly burning those who sought cover to death. The smoke was so thick it was able to penetrate air raid bunkers suffocating those inside. Mothers and fathers dashed their children's heads against walls to spare them the agony of being roasted alive. These were every bit as horrific if not more so.
A full 67% of Hiroshima's buildings, transportation systems, and urban structures were destroyed by the atomic bombs. 40% of Nagasaki was destroyed. Firebombs by comparison destroyed 99% of all structures in Toyama. 51% of Tokyo(a city the size of New York.) 81% of Fukuyama. Across the board firebombs destroyed just as much or more. And Japan had been suffering these bomb attacks on city after city for months; and you think that the nukes really effected their decision more so than the even more destructive bombings already occurring?
If anything forced Japan to surrender it was Russia. Say what you want about the war in the Pacific, but the War in Europe was a slugging match between Russia and Germany. And Russia was well on their way to crushing the Germans before the US even hit the beaches in France(And we weren't even the bulk of the invasion in Normandy. There were more British soldiers than US. Our Lend Lease program certainly helped but it was something on the order of 4-7% of all materials, mainly food and clothes. You can definitely argue that even a 4% boost, is a huge deal in a war that heavily contested.
But you can't argue that Russia was a military juggernaut on a level that the US was just not. You can't argue that they inflicted over 80% of all casualties on Germany(a nation far more powerful than Japan at the time, which for comparison spent most of the war just stalling our attacks by making us spend a long time taking every island.) Even if we assume that every single Japanese casualty was inflicted by the US(which would be false, the Chinese Nationalists, Chinese Communists, Koreans, and Filipinos were all fighting as well) the Russians killed twice as many German soldiers as we did Japanese. More Germans died trying to take a single building from 20 Russian soldiers than they lost during the entire invasion of Paris.
Russia had a pretty sizable pacific fleet but the US had a much larger one. Apart from coastal shelling though, which was effective in Island hopping, a fleet couldn't really do much for the invasion of Japan beyond a staging ground for aircraft. What would make Japan scared? How about the largest most experienced fighting force in the entire world. With the strongest tanks in the world 2-3x the number the US had; and with the much more powerful t-34s and t-44s instead of the relatively weak US made Shermans making up the bulk of their force. Their invasion of the Japanese mainland was a much larger threat than the US.
So tell me, assuming the unlikely fact that you actually read this post(not being personal, people on the internet just hate reading and you're a person on the internet,) do you think they were more inclined to end the war because the US dropped a bomb on a few cities causing less damage, less deaths, and less complete horror than our firebombings had been inflicting for months? And keep in mind that our current fear of nukes is brought on by the much larger explosive yields, which weren't available to the US at the time and thus couldn't be imagined by Japan, and the radiation they produce, the effects of which didn't become clear until long after the war had ended and thus were unknown by Japan. Or do you think they surrendered because the largest military in the world(with the most veteran soldiers, the highest scoring pilots still flying at that point in the war, and the most powerful tanks still in operation) decided to turn the fuck around having conquered Germany and head east, taking Manchukuo in no time at all and inflicting 8x casualties on the Japanese there, six days before the Japanese decided to surrender?
Lovely Mixture said:
Indeed, and that's the argument I would use.
I guess I didn't meant to say "justifiable." It's just that they are both equally violent acts but my mind perceives them differently because of the context.
You would have better luck arguing the medical and scientific application of the research we got on radiation by examining both cities and their surviving inhabitants.
Lovely Mixture said:
That's an assumption on your part.
You didn't give any reason for me to think otherwise.
Lovely Mixture said:
I'm not sure what you're arguing to me about here.
Everything I say isn't automatically an argument.
