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The Enola Gay and the use of atomic weapons - was it justified? opinions on this difficult issue.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1217-06.htm

   

well , say whatever,,,,it did end the war ...

   

A lot of people, including some military leaders of the time, feel that Japan was about to surrender anyway, that it wasn't necessary to drop the bomb. Some think it was dropped because US leaders were already seeing the Cold War begin to develop, others feel it was caused by a misunderstanding.

   

....they should label it as "just another bomber" like the article said. I watched a video in my History class all about WWII. Even though Canada didn't fight the Japanese as much as we did the Germans, we still watched alot about the Pacific battles. Part of it said that if the US didn't drop the bomb, they would have about a million more casualties if they had to take the whole Island. I still don't think that made it right though....

   

Other sources say that Japan would have surrendered within weeks. I doubt we'll ever know the real truth, which likely lay somewhere between. Something we do know though...both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely civilian targets. There were military bases and factories, but what really happened is that a huge number of civilians were vapourised. They suffered radiation sickness, cancer, and a bevy of other problems. They continue to suffer from high rates of cancer and other radiation-related diseases and there are still birth defects more than 50 years later.

   

... exactly sure, but aren't the cities still in ruin? I always here stuff about radiation contaminating the ground for thousands of years....

   

It was clearly the right decision, the Japanese barely agree to surrender as it was and a invading the home islands would have been by far the bloodiest, most horrific chapter in human history. The Japanese people were just too proud to surrender their nation and their emporer {who they considered a living god} to the men of nations they considered to be barbarians and inferiors. On the Pacific approaches to the home islands the Japanese fought almost literally to the last life, military and civilian, against overwhelming odds.

What the A-bomb did was give them an "out", where they wouldn't so much be defeated by a nation but by a force of nature, something they were able to come to terms with.

Also there was a dangerous possibility among the Allied armies of large scale mutinies breaking out amongst the men that had served in Europe and other theatre of the war who felt that they had done plenty enough already and weren't keen on being sent to nearly certain death in Japan.

If all that wasn't enough there was the tens of thousands of Allied POWs to worry about, who weren't going to last much longer in brutal Japanese captivity, especially since the Japanese were considering executing them all so they didn't have to feed them.

   

nicly put, and if they had won..do ya think the world would be better off...i bet we would have been thier slaves...ask the chinese how much they liked the nips.....why debate whats already happened?..cant change it

   

There very well maybe something to this statement. The Japanese were and are a very proud people. With extensive rules for proper ettiquette (sp?) although I'm sure if asked the people who were vapourized, and who died later from radiation burns, poisoning might disagree with the necessity for such an action.

I remember watching those documentaries too. Although not at school. My dad was in the Navy before I was born and toured Asia during the late 50's-early sixties. He watched every documentary to come on PBS, and as a result, so did I. The programs were devestating to watch.

   

They didnt have other bombs they could have used?
I think they wanted to see if it would work as well as they calculated!

   

Lanconfir:

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are both thriving today.

Twila:

I doubt many of the people who died in the A-bombing would have survived an Allied invasion, nor would have many of the people who survived for that matter.

Evan:

They used plenty of other bombs. The most notorious example being a single surprise bombing raid on Tokyo using incindiary {fire} bombs that ended up torching the city and killing more people than the A-bombings.

   

There are a growing number of people who feel that the bombings weren't necessary, Roscoe...that Japan was getting to surrender anyway. They point to government documentation coming out of both the US and Japan, things not previously known.

That documentation is far from complete and, as I said, the truth is likely someplace between the two viewpoints, but it is far from certain that dropping those bombs saved lives.

Feeko: Watch the racial slurs. They are very much unappreciated.

   

Ditto, feeko - even if you dont mean any harm by it, a term like "nips" is soooo "50's". Makes you look like you come from a world of huge tail-fins, pointy bras and chewing tobacco.
Catch up with the world, eh?

   

They barely agreed to surrender even after the second bomb was dropped...

The Nazi wanted to surrender too, however not unconditionally, letting them do so would have spared them justice and continued the problem at a later date IMO.

The Japanese military was effectively in control of the country, it doesn't matter what certain portions of the Japanese civilian government wanted to do so long as that was the case. I believe the plans made to execute the Allied POWs were partly to ensure the people would fight to the death against what would be dire Allied retribution.

Also what's not so well known now is the Japanese had what was at the time the best chemical and biological weapons program in the world {the certainly didn't lack for test subjects, ask the Chinese} and though they weren't the only ones to possess these weapons even the Nazis didn't use them because they feared retribution in kind.

The Japanese OTOH weren't really concerned about that and didn't use them against their main opponents more they lacked an effective means of delivery by the time they started really needing these weapons than any hesitation on their behalf. Invading the home islands would have given the Japanese plenty of opportunity to use them against the invaders though, the consequences would have been horrific .

   

tail fins...pointy bras [ ooohhh!!!]...where does chew come in that list?

when I talk about 1940's japan...they were nips....eh

anther point no one has yet made...the fire bombs dropped earlier in the war killed far more people...no one bitches about them...


what..americans cant be a proud people...

while their ambas was talking peace in wash..they attacked us ...with out provication...

they did bio reasearch on the chinese

they used bio bombs and balloons [ that failed]....


they deserved what they got ..end of story

   

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