Cyprus-Forum.com

[connor]

Should the U.S have used the atom bomb on Japan ?

[denizaksulu]

Definitely NO. The war was already won by the allies. They were merely looking for 'guinea pigs' to test their new power. Japan was 'days' away from surrendering.

[connor]

Think i find that a little hard to believe..don't think the US was that bloody minded. They'd already tested it anyway so they knew it would work.

[CBBB]

The reason attributed to the decision to drop the Bomb, was that it would be less costly in human life on both sides compared to a long drawn out invasion.

[denizaksulu]

Think i find that a little hard to believe..don't think the US was that bloody minded. They'd already tested it anyway so they knew it would work.

Tested? Yes. Tested on the effect on human beings. NO. Oh yes. Here is Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Red herring.........lets shorten the war and save allied lives. Oh please!!!!!!!!!!!

[tessintrnc]

Think i find that a little hard to believe..don't think the US was that bloody minded. They'd already tested it anyway so they knew it would work.

They knew it would work in deserted desert or underwater conditions - but what a great way to see it actually used on FLESH and BLOOD and BONE, NO they were WRONG to use the bomb, there was no need. God forgive them.
Tess

[denizaksulu]

Think i find that a little hard to believe..don't think the US was that bloody minded. They'd already tested it anyway so they knew it would work.

They knew it would work in deserted desert or underwater conditions - but what a great way to see it actually used on FLESH and BLOOD and BONE, NO they were WRONG to use the bomb, there was no need. God forgive them.
Tess

The Americans not bloody minded? Saddam has gone and still the innocents die in their thousands. Aint it a pity Mugabe has no petrol.

[observer]

It’s difficult to get into the minds of those who actually made the decision, as we inevitably have the wisdom of hindsight, and few are now alive who were adult enough to have felt the circumstances. A good site is http://www.dannen.com/decision/ , giving an array of documents written at the time by people involved.

At the time the decision was taken, the battle for Okinawa had just finished. It had cost the Japanese 90,000 casualties (coincidently about the same number killed initially at Hiroshima) and the Allies 50,000 casualties. The Japanese had continued to fight suicidally, as they had for the previous 4 years. There is no reason to believe that they would not continue to do so when mainland Japan was invaded.

Allied planners estimated that their own casualties would be between 500,000 and 1 million if they invaded Japan. Japanese casualties, including civilians, were expected to be higher. Since we can not re-run history, there is no way of knowing whether or not an Allied landing would have brought about the surrender of Japan, but there was no evidence that it would, and a great deal of experience to indicate that it would not.

Faced with dropping an atomic bomb, with probably little understanding by President Truman of radiation effects, or launching an invasion that would likely result in millions of casualties, I would have agreed with Truman and have voted for the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima.

[denizaksulu]

It’s difficult to get into the minds of those who actually made the decision, as we inevitably have the wisdom of hindsight, and few are now alive who were adult enough to have felt the circumstances. A good site is http://www.dannen.com/decision/ , giving an array of documents written at the time by people involved.

At the time the decision was taken, the battle for Okinawa had just finished. It had cost the Japanese 90,000 casualties (coincidently about the same number killed initially at Hiroshima) and the Allies 50,000 casualties. The Japanese had continued to fight suicidally, as they had for the previous 4 years. There is no reason to believe that they would not continue to do so when mainland Japan was invaded.

Allied planners estimated that their own casualties would be between 500,000 and 1 million if they invaded Japan. Japanese casualties, including civilians, were expected to be higher. Since we can not re-run history, there is no way of knowing whether or not an Allied landing would have brought about the surrender of Japan, but there was no evidence that it would, and a great deal of experience to indicate that it would not.

Faced with dropping an atomic bomb, with probably little understanding by President Truman of radiation effects, or launching an invasion that would likely result in millions of casualties, I would have agreed with Truman and have voted for the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima.

..........and the sources for the figures are western ofcourse.

[CanDiaz]

Was Hiroshima Necessary?
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

A Beaten Country

Apart from the moral questions involved, were the atomic bombings militarily necessary? By any rational yardstick, they were not. Japan already had been defeated militarily by June 1945. Almost nothing was left of the once mighty Imperial Navy, and Japan's air force had been all but totally destroyed. Against only token opposition, American war planes ranged at will over the country, and US bombers rained down devastation on her cities, steadily reducing them to rubble.

A Secret Memorandum

It was only after the war that the American public learned about Japan's efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan, for example, was obliged by wartime censorship to withhold for seven months one of the most important stories of the war.

In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

* Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
* Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
* Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
* Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
* Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
* Surrender of designated war criminals.

Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):

The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.