yeah, lets just casually forget the millions of casaulties caused by Japan in Asia during WWII. lets just forget about the unspeakable atrocities commited by the japanese against korean and chinese civilians. lets forget all that, because it fit an anti-american narrative.


imperial japan in ww2 was an evil force that had to be stopped. but due to the japanese culture (dont lose face by surrendering), they would not have given up even in a military no-win situation.

by the very controversial nuke deployments over hiroshima and nagasaki, by using this most terrifying weapon, the US forced japan to do the unimaginable and actually surrender. yes, the nukes were horrible and crimes in their own right - but a case can be made that they saved millions of japanese and american lives who would otherwise been wasted during a bloody and lenghty invasion of mainland japan.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 20 2017 01:47am

'b-b-but what about THEIR crimes?!' well, no one ever said or suggested to "forget about the atrocities japan committed". you're trying to appear reasonable concerning the nukes yet your reaction shows that you're unwilling to accept any views contradicting your "good vs. evil" and "justified / necessary action" narrative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

i agree that the bombs "saved" lives if you only do the numbers, but the one and only motive was to spare the us army invading japan at the expense of civilians
cant blame the decision makers tbh, they had the choice between entering the worst and probably bloodiest campaign of the pacific war and ending the war immediately
an easy choice for most

The Japanese were absolutely brutal in their foreign policy ever since the Korean War (Japan's Korean war not America's). However, they were already willing to surrender months before even the first nuke was dropped. You're subscribing to a popular narrative when the evidence tells a different story mate.

e/ and let's not forget - it was America who was largely responsible for Imperialist Japan in the first place.

This post was edited by Scaly on Dec 20 2017 08:27am

When someone "surrenders" they live to fight another day. Right or wrong, the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military engagements, not in WW2, but to prevent WW3. We turned Japan from a ferocious lion into a fuzzy little lamb. Again, right or wrong this is the reality.

they were "willing to surrender". where they willing to accept occupation which pacified the region for decades? how about willing to repay damages for war crimes? of course not.

The nukes werent about ending THE world war, they were about preventing ALL world wars to come. So far they've been highly effective. We see engagements like Iraq and Vietnam even as noteworthy when their body counts are a joke compared to world wars.

Feel free to come back with an emotionally penned narrative about the horrors of US occupation and apologetics for Japanese war crimes in China, Philippines, and elsewhere though.

the bolded part is laughable, we're talking about a subjective reality with unknown un-played-out hypotheticals.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Dec 20 2017 08:34am

Why would I excuse Japanese war crimes? They did some nasty shit.

The bombs were unnecessary because Japan was already fucked. Their naval, air and ground forces were all basically done for. US bombers roamed the skies virtually unchallenged and continued levelling their cities to the ground. No hypotheticals at all. The Japanese had already sought peace through neutral parties back in April of that year. They had already offered terms that were basically the same as the terms accepted by the US after the bombs.

If, as you claim, this was about demonstrating the force of a nuclear weapon then these weapons could have been used on purely military targets. Truman claimed that the bomb was dropped first on Hiroshima because it was a military base saying -

But that is straight up horseshit as there were numerous other targets that didn't have highly concentrated civilian populations (almost all victims of the first bomb were civilians) AND this doesn't explain the second bombing in Nagasaki.
The US strategic bombing committee admitted as much about a year later in a report. I forget where to find it now, probably a journal article anyway, but they essentially said that the sites were chosen BECAUSE of their 'concentrated populations and activity'.

The US just wanted to see what happened when you dropped a nuke on a large population. It was an experiment. No other explanation fits the evidence... and that's disgusting.
No amount of whataboutism involving the rape of Nanking or the treatment of POWs by the Japanese excuses that. Yes - the Japanese committed horrendous atrocities... and then the US dropped nukes on two major civilian populations.

This post was edited by Scaly on Dec 20 2017 09:18am

it seems we're at an impasse. you take the Japanese conditions and surrender itself as factual, i see them as fluid. in this case fluid that's only kept in a container built by the threat of another nuclear bomb. remove the container and it becomes impossible to track what the liquid would do. im not inherently suggesting that the japanese would have broken treaties, attempted to expel the occupied US, started more regional conflicts, etc. What im suggesting is that after the bomb none of that is plausible.

"sending a message", "conducting an experiment", "revenge", etc are all likely true. for some people in the administration, and many motivations can be present in one individual, people are complex. Reducing the administrations motivation to a single goal is silly though, one move can accomplish both an illogical goal and a logical goal, a morally repugnant and morally utilitarian goal. scratch numbers show what, 250kish dead? how many bodies would have been produced by a WW3? either much more (if the US refused again to use nukes) or the same amount more or less when the US would have dropped a bomb in the 50s-60s to accomplish the same goals. the body count was either a discount or an eventuality, butthurt by those who survived is expected. I simply disagree that the "facts" that you present them are as decided as you present them.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Dec 20 2017 09:53am

The nukes barely made any impact on the Japanese decision. They were in the process of surrendering. They waved a white flag and the US laughed and hit the red button. However you justify it it's morally repugnant.

The Japanese military was done. The conditions of surrender would have meant they could have made no military resistance, nuke or not - and like I said - if it was a demonstration of power it could have been made against a purely military target. Instead not only one but two tightly packed civilian populations were deliberately targeted. The US goal was to kill as many people as possible with those bombs regardless of whether those targets were military or civilian. I find that to be inexcusable.

So to summarise - there was no threat of Japan starting WW3 under the conditions of surrender which were the same before and after the bomb, the US deliberately targeted civilians for no discernible reason other than to see what happened. Your idea that the Japanese could somehow have expelled the US occupation and overturned the restrictions on their military post-WW2 is entirely unsupported as there was no means by which they could.

why would the conditions of the surrender matter when i've said my position is that they might not adhere to said conditions?

No Nuke, they potentially turn from bitter enemy to valuable ally. Or in a spectrum of potential nuance they put up fusses or openly rebel at some point. Even if they dont...someone somewhere stars some shit, we nuke them instead of japan, same result in body count.

Nuke, guarantees they are broken in spirit. No one anywhere else starts shit.

Like i said, if we assume the creation of a nuclear bomb was never an empty threat, the launching of one is an eventuality, as is the civilian death. The fact that it happened in Japan is happenstance, but logical.



never at any point am i suggesting the nuke was solely to sway their opinion to surrender, simply to stay down.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Dec 20 2017 11:31am

source? I'm hearing this for the first time...