I was watching some documentary on Hiroshima by the BBC and this bunch of Liberal fools were floating the conspiracy that America nuked Hiroshima just to show the Soviets we could and that peace feelers were under way and the attacks could have been avoided. Man it sickens me to watch this crap.

Yes the Japs were making peace feelers thru the Soviets, who BTW backstabbed them anyway, but thats just what it was. An offer for peace, not unconditional surrender. The Japs wanted to keep the Political machinery of the Showa era in place including their Govt. and the Emperor as a living God. Even tho they were on their backs they figured if they caused enough allied casualties they could flim flam this peace accord thru and everyone could just go on living like their horrendous War atrocity never happened. The Krauts had the same delusions, Himmler himself thought he could swing a deal with Ike to call it off and let the Nazi's still run things while we'd both fight the Soviets.

Invading the homeland of these evil bastards would have caused horrendous casualties on both sides. The attack on Okinawa alone caused 80,000 American casualties. And that was just Okinawa. And even there they were handing out hand grenades to woman with children who blew up our guys when they surrendered, along with themselves and their own kids. Those 14yos practicing with sharpened pitch forks weren't playing games. Plus Japan still had considerable forces saved to protect the homeland including 10,000 war planes almost all of which would be used as Kamikaze's. And they were planning to use them all to attack troops transports and not capitol ships. The IJN still had 50 fleet submarines and hundreds of those little shits that could get a lucky shot in. Add to that they had the best torpedoes of the war and this becomes a very real threat in confined waters.

They had about a million troops ready and were getting the civilians ready for a mass suicide. I think they meant business and to allow, in any way, that Jap Govt. to continue to function in any way after a peace deal was only a guarantee to hand off an even worse war to the next generation. WW1 taught us that, or should have. Those atomic bombs saved millions of allied troops from death or injury and God knows how many Japs, along with ensuring peace for generations by putting that atrocious Military Dictatorship out of power.

The BBC is a real POS. Is this is the kind of tripe our kids are learning then were in trouble.

We didn't go to the moon.

Thought BBC meant something else.

In all seriousness I agree the bomb had to be dropped. It was fucked up we had to resort to it but we literally had no other option.

A couple years ago I spoke to a 25-30 year old who thought the Pacific war was : Japan bombed Pearl Harbor,US drops 2 nukes in response,war over.

The other thing it means is Big Block Chevy.

You mean that guy on Xhamster with the hanging 3-gallon bag of olive oil and the plastic tarp?

Those two bombs saved a hell of a lot more Japanese lives than American.

They may very well saved the Japanese people from literal extinction.

I'm not sure what you're so offended about.    Of course it was done as a warning to the Soviets, and all other potentially hostile nations.  

It's common sense, and not even debatable.  

Japan is an island.

No, what was fucked up was using nukes was the path with the lowest body count.

Japs and Soviets working together for peace.....

Pretty sure the Japs were fighting the Soviets at that time...in Manchuria

The only reason we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to save the lives of our own troops after the high losses getting to that point. Truman wanted a weapon to end the war and he had one. Without using the two nukes at the time everyone said that the Jap's wouldn't surrender.

This is the first you're hearing of it?  It's not exactly a new thing.    Revisionist history of the Cold War isn't a BBC invention.  They're about 50 years late to the party.  

See: The Tragedy of American Diplomacy by Williams, published in 1959.  And he was influenced by folks like Charles Beard, and so on and so forth.

People have been interpreting history to fit their own political narratives since we first started writing the history of human events.

This

Probably true yet after Iwo Jima and all the lives lost on the American side if you were Truman what would you do? We here in the US will never know how many Japanese died in WWII cause not in our history yet we know how many Americans died.

Pretty much. It's fucked up the situation got that bad to begin with. It's even more fucked up after it was dropped, the Emperor basically said "Bet you won't do that again!" and we had to drop a second one.

Current Japan is pretty nice, but Imperial Japan was all kinds of fucked up. Unit 731, the Balloon Bombs (which was pretty clever to be honest.) Pearl Harbor Attacks, etc.

Absolutely unforgivable. While I'm fine with "New" Japan, I'll NEVER forgive Imperial Japan. I'm mostly bummed we didn't execute their Emperor. He deserved it.

Truman had absolutely no choice.  (Which is good, because he was a pinko fuckstain that likely would have chosen poorly, but that's another thread).  Had he refused to order the bomb dropped, he would have been looking at a coup where the bomb was dropped anyway, or a public lynching after Operation Downfall saw its ridiculous and inevitable body count and then word got out that we had the a-bomb.

Most literature from directly after the war supports nearly every thing you mentioned OP, if you need a little more concrete evidence than my word, you should read "The decision to drop the atomic bomb" Henry Stimson (wartime secretary of war) (Feb-1947), and the an article of the same name by Lewis Morton -1957. The dropping of the atomic bomb was as much a result of govt. policy, as it was necessity to end the war quickly.

Double tap

That was bull shit, he really did deserve to be executed.

It is my understanding that the Purple Hearts manufactured in anticipation of the invasion of Japan are still being issued today. Since the invasion didn't happen, no more have had to be made yet.

They were just as bad as the Nazis,deserved worse than they got

Complicated subject.

First of all from what I have seen the soviets were preparing for invasion. Given how they were kicking ass in Manchuko that probably wouldn't have worked out well for the Japanese with their assets deployed for an anticipated American invasion. Soviet brokered peace?

Second, the decision to surrender was almost undone by a failed military coup. I remember a very interesting documentary on the history channel called the last mission which detailed the last B29 bombing raid against Japan's last oil refinery accidentally foiling this coup. Had the military coup gone ahead, well, Japan would have been a pile of ashes.

Third, and this is where we get into some really controversial territory. The Japanese had WMD programs. The bubonic plague bombs developed by unit 731 and others. I have even seen evidence (kinda shaky) that they may have had an operational radiological weapon at the end of the war.

Finally as brutal as it may sound though, the samurai sword probably killed more people than the atomic bomb in WW2. As gruesome as it was, sometimes you have to make a point to people.

The Japanese people live with a horrifying legacy of trauma that one could write an encyclopedia detailing. The atomic bombings left a noticeable scar on their national psyches. But personally I think it is considered a greater outrage to people in other countries that the nukes were used.

I mean, anyone ever hear of the Tokyo firebombings? Or the numerous other Japanese cities that were burned to the ground?

In March of '45 Soviet staff officers began drafting plans for the Manchurian offensive, which began on August 8, '45.

Jap HQ was getting ready to throw 20,000,000 civilian suicide fighters at the American invasion. Twenty million. The Japanese who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved the lives of twenty million fellow Japanese.

The Soviets definitely wanted to have a role in brokering a peace - that wanted in Japan, like they were getting into Europe. They would get credit and spoils for a war they did nothing about.

Our receiving an unconditional surrender from Japan and 100% occupying the country severely curtailed Soviet ambitions, forcing them to move quickly to secure the Kuril Islands, but affording them no further conquest.

Of course signaling to the Soviets was part of the calculus for the bomb, but any idea that Japan would have accepted such peace terms - or the US would have or should have tolerated Soviet initiated peace terms, is asinine.

Many Americans seem to not remember that Japan and the Russia (as the successor state to the USSR) remain in every bit as much a state of war as North and South Korea. The Soviets were not happy with Amercia's superior gamesmanship in the Pacific, and would have liked to do to Japan what they did to Germany and Korea.

Imagine a "People's Republic of Japan" scenario playing out in the Cold War. Fuck that.

Only because Stalin waited until the last minute to declare war on Japan

I've got your PRJ right here...





Pity someone didn't stick Lenin when he started advocating mass larceny and genocide.

Hard to believe that such woefully historically illiterate people even exist. Even if you don't study the history of the time period, how did such a person grow up without seeing any number of WW 2 movies made over the past 75 years to have some casual level of knowledge of events....

Indeed.

Reminds me I need to find a good print of this famous photo:



When you think about how fast that action was, it really makes the quick thinking and acting of the photographer quite impressive.

It was a Munitions choice.  Use of any powerful munition will help assuage other future threats and help deal with other nations Duh.  Its never Not been a part of war .  I don't understand why people get worked up over munitions choices, - large scale firebombing of a Japanese  city is not altogether different than nuking these cities.  The radiation effects seem insidious to the novice, but as a health physicist that deals with radiation effects on the body every day, you learn its just another physical agent that we live and die with.  Burning to death from a nuclear weapon or debris last is no different than conventional means - the uninformed masses really think there is something insidious - its just merely most people fear what they do not understand.

The Japanese played the victim card well, but they were not above germ warfare, chemical warfare, and radiological warfare including a limited nuclear program.  They would have used it if they could develop it - make no mistake they were not above using it themselves - but they were resource limited.

I was incorrect.

After fighting at the Rhineland (the Bulge)
My FIL was being trained for a land invasion of Japan.

No you didn't.

Revisionism by the ministry of lies, in order to replace history with their own progressive narrative.

It's what the neo-Marxists do.

Truman???   Truman threatened to nuke the riskies constantly. He essentially threatened to nuke everyone constantly.

I don't know about extinction but it sure as shit saved my mother's life.  She was an 8 yr old girl ready to die for the Emperor.

And fuck every one of you cocksucking shitbirds who thinks it's ok to say "Jap".

Whether a nuke was absolutely necessary to end the war? Doubtful, we had complete air superiority and could continue conventional and fire bombing until they submitted. Japan was close to surrendering pre-nuke, just not unconditionally.

The nukes on Japan were a warning to the Russians (Patton was right, we should have kept rolling on to Moscow after Berlin fell).
The nukes on Japan were an immediate "war ender" that saved millions of lives.
The nukes on Japan were also a "fuck you" to Japan for all their atrocities.

It's not all revisionist history saying the nukes were just a big middle finger to Japan and Russia.

Still disgusting...



Disgusting power! Am I right???

There is a great book called "the fall of japan" by the same guy who wrote "enemy at the gates".  It's a fairly well documented book that goes into some detail about how and why the japanese acted the way they did in the last few months of the war when they all knew it was lost.  It gets into the rivalries between factions and deep divides between them.

They would have fought the the bitter end, sacrificing their entire population if need be, sending children out to fight with pointed sticks.   After the bombs dropped it took hirohito's direct intervention to change course and even then there was significant infighting, a coup attempt and efforts to sideline him to continue the war.

Sure there were people who knew the war was lost, who wanted peace but even they were balking unconditional surrender.  And the surrender wasn't even completely unconditional in that hirohito kept his throne.  

These people saying we were wrong to drop the bomb were fools.  Even the shock of the bombs was almost not enough to persuade them to surrender.  Anything less would have resulted in a war to the bitter end.

I read the thread title and wondered what weird shit James Love said this time.

What really pisses me off is that the Japanese,Germans, etc., were all working on the bomb and would have used it to kill or put into submission every American at the time, in order to take us over. They had no problem bringing us into a war we didn't want a part of initially and killed many of our troops without hesitation. I find it amazing no media coverage brings that up now. Some of our nation has become such a bunch sissy,p.c.,afraid of upsetting anyone under the prior idiot in charge liberals, we have to feel ashamed of something that protected/protects our way of life now. I don't understand that sick mentality.