Cyprus-Forum.com

[Oracle]

"Little Boy" and "Fat Man" were the Nuclear Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9th August 1945, respectively.

Were they a necessary Act of Peace, or a War Crime of over-kill?

[Novus]

Necessary.
An invasion of Japan would have cost ten times as many lives at least and Japan was not intending on surrendering. They were planning on stretching things out for six months hoping for a stalemate at least.

Japan had a huge capability to repel an invasion on their home island and they were willing to send in masses of civillians (women and children) armed with pointed sticks to reserve the forces for even longer.

People talk about how a demostration would have worked too, but there are a few problems with this. One, what if the first bomb was a dud? Then we would still have to drop the second one on a city to end a war.
Two, they could still either not believe it was just one bomb, and/or they could have erroneously believed we only had one and we wasted it on the demonstration.
And this is of course any such demonstration was even possible to set up in the first place.
Also, even with the demonstration and the emporer wanted to surrender, there could have been a coup like there almost was after the bombs were dropped and the emporer stated his intent to surrender.

[Kikapu]

No doubt it ended the war much sooner than it would have and many American soldiers would have lost their lives if continued. So the bombs in fact were all about saving the lives of the American forces, much more than the lives of the Japanese had the war continued, which is an argument many Americans use today for the justification of dropping "Little Boy" and "Fat Man", that the bombs killed less Japanese than if the war did not end for another year or so.

The Americans could have of course given to Japan all the films taken during nuclear tests carried out in the USA. This may have made the Japanese take notice. Then again, the Japanese were not going to be fooled with something they would have thought for sure, that was made in Hollywood.!! OK, so invited them to demonstrate the force of this new weapon live. It would have been worth it to save so many innocent lives. As it happened, no one really knew how and what exactly happen Hiroshima, and further more, why was it so necessary to drop the second one so soon after the first one.? Was enough time given to the Japanese to come to terms with this new weapon.? By the way, did the US have a third bomb ready to go, in case the first two were ignored by the Japanese, and would they have dropped it, and how many times more there after.??

[soyer]

Necessary.
An invasion of Japan would have cost ten times as many lives at least and Japan was not intending on surrendering. They were planning on stretching things out for six months hoping for a stalemate at least.

Japan had a huge capability to repel an invasion on their home island and they were willing to send in masses of civillians (women and children) armed with pointed sticks to reserve the forces for even longer.

People talk about how a demostration would have worked too, but there are a few problems with this. One, what if the first bomb was a dud? Then we would still have to drop the second one on a city to end a war.
Two, they could still either not believe it was just one bomb, and/or they could have erroneously believed we only had one and we wasted it on the demonstration.
And this is of course any such demonstration was even possible to set up in the first place.
Also, even with the demonstration and the emporer wanted to surrender, there could have been a coup like there almost was after the bombs were dropped and the emporer stated his intent to surrender.

UNNECESSARY
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to December 31 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.


Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped. Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb? Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment?

[connor]

Necessary. I agree with Novus.

[Oracle]

Necessary.
One, what if the first bomb was a dud? Then we would still have to drop the second one on a city to end a war.
Two, they could still either not believe it was just one bomb, and/or they could have erroneously believed we only had one and we wasted it on the demonstration.
And this is of course any such demonstration was even possible to set up in the first place.
Also, even with the demonstration and the emporer wanted to surrender, there could have been a coup like there almost was after the bombs were dropped and the emporer stated his intent to surrender.

A demonstration off the coast of Japan could have been set up and would have provided just as much, any necessary scientific data, if that was what the Americans still required, as part of any justification for releasing the bombs.

If they had the option to drop one instead of two .... then this falls into the category of a war crime since we are not talking collateral damage, but a direct and highly co-ordinated attack on civilians.

[connor]

I think the Americans showed remarkable restraint in only dropping two bombs..They could have done a lot more damage and killed far more civilians.

[Novus]

....By the way, did the US have a third bomb ready to go, in case the first two were ignored by the Japanese, and would they have dropped it, and how many times more there after.??

I have heard about the third bomb before, but I have never seen verification of this. From what I understand there were only three bombs made up untill that point and one of them was used in a test.

[Novus]

Necessary.
An invasion of Japan would have cost ten times as many lives at least and Japan was not intending on surrendering. They were planning on stretching things out for six months hoping for a stalemate at least.

Japan had a huge capability to repel an invasion on their home island and they were willing to send in masses of civillians (women and children) armed with pointed sticks to reserve the forces for even longer.

People talk about how a demostration would have worked too, but there are a few problems with this. One, what if the first bomb was a dud? Then we would still have to drop the second one on a city to end a war.
Two, they could still either not believe it was just one bomb, and/or they could have erroneously believed we only had one and we wasted it on the demonstration.
And this is of course any such demonstration was even possible to set up in the first place.
Also, even with the demonstration and the emporer wanted to surrender, there could have been a coup like there almost was after the bombs were dropped and the emporer stated his intent to surrender.

UNNECESSARY
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to December 31 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

Not true at all. Some of the military controlled government who had the most power had absolutely no intention of surrendering. There was a small faction of the government that was seeking surrender, but they were the minority and they would have been ignored by the stalwarts.

Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped. Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb? Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment?

It was not scheduled in advance. I do not know where you got that from. We didn't even know the bomb was going to even work untill a few months prior.

[Novus]

A demonstration off the coast of Japan could have been set up and would have provided just as much, any necessary scientific data, if that was what the Americans still required, as part of any justification for releasing the bombs.

If they had the option to drop one instead of two .... then this falls into the category of a war crime since we are not talking collateral damage, but a direct and highly co-ordinated attack on civilians.

It was not an attack on civillians. If you will look you will discover the targets were military industry and ports. If it was an attack on civillians, they would have bombed the other side of the valley and took out another 100,000 or 200,000 people.

One of the places hit was the Japanese secret nerve gas and biological weapons plant which would have made nerve gas and bilogical warfare weapons to repel the American invasion. It was located right at the harbor.