The narrative taught in school or at least the way I remember it... "Americans were far superior intelligent beings and were able to develop something no one else could and if it had not been for traitorous Americans, the Soviets would never have developed theirs". Yet history indicates that refugees from Hitler's Europe were instrumental in not only the development of the bomb, but persuading Roosevelt to start the Manhattan project in the first place. IF Hitler wasn't such a bigot, history might have been quite different, imo.
On this day, August 6,1945, America dropped an Atomic Bomb on Japan, destroying the city of Hiroshima and killing 60,000 Japanese, mostly Civilians. Three days later, on August 9, America dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, to show Japan that we had more than one atomic bomb in our arsenal. Six days later, on August 15, Japan surrendered to America, ending World War 2. On September 2, aboard the battleship USS Missouri, formal surrender ceremonies took place, under General Douglas MacArthur. It was feared that if Japan did not surrender under our conventional large-scale bombing raids, we would have to invade her Home Islands, possibly resulting in 1/2 to 1 million American casualties. Hal
Thank God for all those who fought to give us the freedom we enjoy today. None of us who have been lucky enough to be born since the world wars, ( not including services personnel who fought and died in Vietnam, Falklands etc) can even imagine what hell people went through to protect us from goose stepping our way through life...
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not flattened by the A-bombs. Hiroshima was 60% destroyed, but the buildings of reinforced concrete were not flattened. The target city of Hiroshima was chosen because most of its structures were of wood and paper. Nagasaki was protected by hilly terrain, and suffered less destruction, even though the bomb was more powerful (21,000 tons of TNT), than the one that was dropped on Hiroshima. (!5,000 tons of TNT) Hal
Since the USS Missouri was anchored in Tokyo Bay, the nine 16" guns would not have to be elevated at all! They could have caused great damage to the city of Tokyo if they were fired at zero elevation! They were only raised to maximum elevation to present a threatening appearance. Hal
@Hal Pollner Ah, Hal........watch post dates if you want to, Gary Ridenhour is dead, and Corrie, so much as I liked her, has been away a long time, I think. I saw "eye-to-eye" with Gary completely. He even swore at me! I miss him more than I can express. Frank
The city had been spared, for whatever reasons, from the relentless bombing suffered by others. The one bombing campaign against Tokyo had resulted in many more deaths than would the coming Hiroshima holocaust. Enormous numbers of warships and planes were already at the launch locations, to precipitate an all-out invasion of the Japanese homeland. Casuality estimates were staggering, by anyone's measure: up to one million US casualties possible. (Casualties means combined deaths and injuries forcing removal from action). The last most terrible island invasion by US troops had been Okinawa, 375 miles SW of mainland Japan. Numbers vary, but about 18,000 Marines died while killing over 100,000 Japanese. This activity was for an ISLAND. The next would be for Japan, itself. Before invasion plans could be carried out, only weeks previous to the planned all-out invasion of Japan, a single US B-29 Bomber, the Enola Gay, #82, had dropped only one bomb above the city of Hiroshima, a manufacturing center for war munitions, but also home to thousands of non-combatant civilians, who actually were involved, since a few months previous as all schools were closed, in the preparing of munitions to be used during the expected invasion. Even schoolchildren were wrapping and preparing bomb fuses. The single bomb loosed from Enola Gay's belly virtually eliminated the city of Hiroshima. The first use of "weapons of mass destruction", is the description used by "bleeding hearts". But, those folks hid from the facts which were true: several hundred thousand were dead already due to incendiary bombings, NOT resulting from weapons of mass destruction, but even worse, but thus the die was cast about WMD...... Should U.S. NOT have used the Atomic Bomb? What alternative would you have recomended then? Did use of the "bomb" later provide incentive to the world powers to re-consider the use of Nukes? Given the horrible consequences? Soon, many countries built nuclear bombs. None have ever deployed any in aggression. Or DEFENSE. Was the U.S. use then a best contra-indicating example to be carried forth for new generations? Frank
If the study of war were to be broken down into it’s simplest form it would be “to kill people and wreck things until there is no one left to kill and nothing left to wreck”. In a war as massive as was WWII, all people of every country involved were working to build better equipment, clothe and feed soldiers, provide medical care for the same and train more men to again, kill people and wreck things. In other words and to put it quite bluntly; tragically, other than those who are incapable of helping the war effort, there are no innocents. Everyone from the farmer to the soldier is involved. The systematic killing of human beings by sea, land and air skirmishes and battles do very little as long as a country has the resources in order to replenish men and materials for more battles and skirmishes. In the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was an act of finality. Brutal.....yes but if one observes how much longer the war would have gone on, battle after battle, human maiming and loss time after time, an act as seemingly brutal as the bombing was, was consequentially small at the time compared to the overall alternative. Weep for the dead most certainly, but breath a prayer of thanks for the many more who would have given their lives but in the end, didn’t have to. The stark reality of it is that many of us would not have been born had the war gone on longer. Now, does the nuclear capability of those countries who have it act as a deterrent for further mass devastation? One cannot know the future, but I do hope so.
There has never been an excuse to use nuclear weapons. Using them on Japan was going against all the generals at the time. My personally belief was to demonstrate a weapon so superior than know one would ever attack the US. In time other countries seen they needed the same to protect them. This is OK until you get a group who thinks they can survive a nuclear exchange devastation. Like I posted in another thread where some of the elites are all running if this happens. Has the world devastation happened before I think it has there is a web site called Mystery History on you tube that proves there has been superior people on this earth before question what happened to them??
@Martin Alonzo "there has been superior people on this earth before question what happened to them??" They called themselves "NAZIs", and they are gone.............. Frank