The End Of A War...
Are they Heroes or not?
Would more people die if the bomb wasn't dropped and the war continued?
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Posted: 2010-04-11 12:45:03
Psst.
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think about it this way: One of the gunners committed suicide not long after the bombings. This is the same man who was quoted as he watched the blast, "My god. What have we done?"
Do you think he felt like a hero?
Do you think he felt like a hero?
good point, these guys had a mission to do, and then they personally were given credit for the effects of it, that credit being both good and bad
Probably saved allot of lives ending the war but still killed allot of people. Whatever you think, these men were following orders and they did their job well. Heroes in my book.
If it got us to where we are today, yeah they're heroes. Sure America's not the greatest and we don't have ALL of our freedom, but it's better than being a commy.
If we never would've dropped the bomb, Japan probably would have fucked us over.
If we never would've dropped the bomb, Japan probably would have fucked us over.
Why would it matter if the soviets ended up invading Japan instead of us when we end up allying with the Red Army to fight off Germany? Another thing is that you have to remember the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and that's why we retaliated with a giant bomb pretty much saying "Fuck You" to Japan. But look at the birght side: we're not in a communist or socialist government. But look at how many people we had to kill to get to where we are today. That fact saddens me in my opinion.
No. Not yet. We're just heading the right way for a socialist government all thanks to our half black, half arab, half hawaiian, half white president.
I wasn't being serious. Jeez. Somebody pays too much attention to channel 2.
To launch a full scale invasion on Japan probably would have resulted in many more American Casualties. The men probably did not feel like heroes after all was said and done.
The most important thing to look at is the ramifications felt far after the war. There has not been another major global conflict in which almost all the worlds nations have been involved. Sounds crazy but the most destructive weapon has been useful in keeping relative peace.
The most important thing to look at is the ramifications felt far after the war. There has not been another major global conflict in which almost all the worlds nations have been involved. Sounds crazy but the most destructive weapon has been useful in keeping relative peace.
Here's the thing, by dropping those bombs, we saved Japan. You see, Japanese mentality, especially at that time, was very much about honour, and never surrendering. If we had fought them with conventional methods, we would have had to fight them down to the point where they would never recover. By scaring them into a sensible surrender, we saved the lives of many, many, many Japanese, as well as a ton of US soldiers. It's like spanking a child. Sure, it hurts, and it may seem mean to some people, but in the long run, the child learns discipline, respect, and becomes a better person. Anyone who says they're traumatized because they were spanked as a child is just after attention. But I digress. My point is, it WAS necessary, and it's good that we did it. Those bombs saved a lot of lives.
well said ertrov i totally agree with you.
The destruction to those two cities was horrible but i believe it saved lives. The Japs faught with unbelievable ferocity for seemingly worthless rocks inflicting horrendous casualties on our Marines. It would have taken many more American and japeneese lives to capture the island.
i'm thankful for the bombs that were dropped on japan because if they went with the first idea (sending soilders) i would not exist because my grandfather was on a boat going to japan after his tour of duty in europe.
No. It's disgusting that the idea was even taken into consideration let alone followed through.
Fuck that.
Fuck that.
I know mate, sure it ended the war quickly, but not for the right reasons.
First off here are the reasons that those cities were picked:
1.The target was larger than three miles in diameter and was an important target in a large urban area.
2.The blast would create effective damage.
3.The target was unlikely to be attacked by August 1945.
Thats just inhumane and a war crime in itself, the fact that the cities were pretty muched picked based on their urban population and low defences, this shows that the aim from the start was to kill civilians and nothing more.
Also Japan was already losing the war and were in fact getting ready to surrender, as President Truman mentioned in his diary "Stalin will be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini Japs when that comes about". The Americans dropped both their bombs in early August before the 15th.
This blatantly shows that the only reason Truman dropped those bombs was to end the war before Russia invaded Japan, so they didn't have another communist occupied area to deal with.
So yeah, fucked up. Just totally fucked up, and the picture you uploaded summarises it beautifully
First off here are the reasons that those cities were picked:
1.The target was larger than three miles in diameter and was an important target in a large urban area.
2.The blast would create effective damage.
3.The target was unlikely to be attacked by August 1945.
Thats just inhumane and a war crime in itself, the fact that the cities were pretty muched picked based on their urban population and low defences, this shows that the aim from the start was to kill civilians and nothing more.
Also Japan was already losing the war and were in fact getting ready to surrender, as President Truman mentioned in his diary "Stalin will be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini Japs when that comes about". The Americans dropped both their bombs in early August before the 15th.
This blatantly shows that the only reason Truman dropped those bombs was to end the war before Russia invaded Japan, so they didn't have another communist occupied area to deal with.
So yeah, fucked up. Just totally fucked up, and the picture you uploaded summarises it beautifully
what was inhumane was the fact that the japs killed, raped, plundered everything in its path.
Has that not happened in almost every war by every army in the history of humans? The vikings, Romans, Mongols, Russians etc plundered, raped and kill everything in their path when invading countries. Thats war, it's horrible, but that's war.
The point is that the japanese were already holding talks of surrender, and the fact that tens of thousands of civilians were killed for whatever reasons Americans put out there is fucking horrible, and if people can't see the wrong in that then I just don't know.
Now I'm not saying this to be anti American whatsoever, because I think every country in the world (apart from Switzerland) has fucked up big time at one point or another. I'm English and we've done some pretty horrendous stuff aswell, but I can admit that, I would just like to see Americans admitting to be wrong for fucking once in your lives, instead of coating it over and trying to convince yourselves that killing all those people was the right thing to do. Because whichever way you look at it, killing thousands of civilians is NEVER the right thing to do.
The point is that the japanese were already holding talks of surrender, and the fact that tens of thousands of civilians were killed for whatever reasons Americans put out there is fucking horrible, and if people can't see the wrong in that then I just don't know.
Now I'm not saying this to be anti American whatsoever, because I think every country in the world (apart from Switzerland) has fucked up big time at one point or another. I'm English and we've done some pretty horrendous stuff aswell, but I can admit that, I would just like to see Americans admitting to be wrong for fucking once in your lives, instead of coating it over and trying to convince yourselves that killing all those people was the right thing to do. Because whichever way you look at it, killing thousands of civilians is NEVER the right thing to do.
i dont think america's reason for the bombs being dropped was because they probably didn't know what the japanese were capable of so the most effective way to end the war was to blow shit up
to finish a war another country started is never an excuse. in life for every action there is a reaction. the action Pearl Harbor. The reaction, 2 bombs from 2 planes. what people need to understand is we didn't start that war, we finished it. you don't like the way the US goes at war, then don't attack us. just that easy.
I would like to throw in two things here:
1. More were killed by fire bombing than atomic bombing.
2. We were horrifically disobeying standard rules of war, throwing morality out of the window.
I think we shouldn't just think of the atomic bomb, but all of the ridiculous amounts of civilian casualties induced. Not the greatest moment in American history.
1. More were killed by fire bombing than atomic bombing.
2. We were horrifically disobeying standard rules of war, throwing morality out of the window.
I think we shouldn't just think of the atomic bomb, but all of the ridiculous amounts of civilian casualties induced. Not the greatest moment in American history.
well said but i dont really think that there are standard rulles in war but who knows but i think its funny that we trained with sticks, cans of soup, and bags of flour and we still kicked some ass.
Yeah I heard about this, also about their kamikazee suicide pilots, and I get where you're coming from.
I read that thing that I said before about the Japanese talking about surrender on a couple of websites, so I'm in doubt about how truthful/legit it is but still man, I will never see how dropping two massive bombs on civilian cities could ever be the right way out.
I read that thing that I said before about the Japanese talking about surrender on a couple of websites, so I'm in doubt about how truthful/legit it is but still man, I will never see how dropping two massive bombs on civilian cities could ever be the right way out.
for me this debate has only 2 points;
1. we are using knowledge and biases from 2010 to judge something from 1945. things have changed since then and I don't personally feel it is ok to use todays morals to judge people from 1945. try and put yourself in their shoes.
2. the US did not start the war. we did the best we could to stay out of the war. Japan brought us into the war. so we finished it. its kinda like this. when i was in middle school i had a bully who was always trying to fight me. well one day he finally got me to fight him. he was the agressor but i broke his nose and arm (the funny thing the bully never knew was that earlier that week i had gotten my black belt that took me 4 years to get). well how suprised was that bully when he came to beat up his prey but the prey was a wolf is sheeps clothing. this bully was suspened from school for 2 weeks for trying to start and getting into fights. i will always remeber my PE coach telling me that the kid got what he deserved. in closeing, i like the US will never start a fight but if you do engage me or the US in a fight we will use everything in our power to make sure you never want to fight us again. if you agree or disagree that the bomb was a good or bad idea does not matter. what i am sure we can all agree on is that if Japan had not attacked the US then the US probly would not had droped a bomb. funny thing is, since the US dropped the bomb japan has been real nice to the US. Point made.
1. we are using knowledge and biases from 2010 to judge something from 1945. things have changed since then and I don't personally feel it is ok to use todays morals to judge people from 1945. try and put yourself in their shoes.
2. the US did not start the war. we did the best we could to stay out of the war. Japan brought us into the war. so we finished it. its kinda like this. when i was in middle school i had a bully who was always trying to fight me. well one day he finally got me to fight him. he was the agressor but i broke his nose and arm (the funny thing the bully never knew was that earlier that week i had gotten my black belt that took me 4 years to get). well how suprised was that bully when he came to beat up his prey but the prey was a wolf is sheeps clothing. this bully was suspened from school for 2 weeks for trying to start and getting into fights. i will always remeber my PE coach telling me that the kid got what he deserved. in closeing, i like the US will never start a fight but if you do engage me or the US in a fight we will use everything in our power to make sure you never want to fight us again. if you agree or disagree that the bomb was a good or bad idea does not matter. what i am sure we can all agree on is that if Japan had not attacked the US then the US probly would not had droped a bomb. funny thing is, since the US dropped the bomb japan has been real nice to the US. Point made.
its difficult to discuss a topic like this. the main reason is we know what happened. or as Paul Harvy said,"and now you know the rest of the story." it was wrong for George Washington to own slaves, but it does not make him a bad man. put yourself in his time and understand his way of life. as such we must put ourself in the shoes of Harry S. Truman. he truly did what he thought was best for the US and the world. i hope that we never see the abomb in anger again.
The Cold War and days leading to it have been some of the darkest in American international history, like slavery it is something we, as a nation, are still working to overcome
Will somebody please explain why you americans are so scared of Socialism? There is nothing socialistic about anything your gov't is doing. Obama is no socialist, he's hardly a liberal. Also, what's so bad about socialism anyway? I'll bet most of you don't know anything about it.
Yes the federal govt cut banks out of the student loan industry.
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obama took over GM so instead of general motors its now goverment motors
no i mean take over by buying up most of GM's stocks which in a way was taking control of GM without really taking over GM
yes but now they pretty much own the company
Posted: 2010-04-14 13:45:19 Report
its not the american way. thats what we don't like it. the government should do nothing more than make it where you can suceed or fail on your own. the US for the most part does not like big government. also statements like"Ill bet most of you don't know anything about it." are just insulting and do not help your topic.
socialism goes hand in hand with marxism and comunnism and there can never be true socialism or comunnism and as we saw with lenin and stalin totalitarianism was the outcome of socialism / comunnism.
No one had a problem witgh Lenin. As soon as he died and Joseph Stalin took over and made the motherland a dictatorship, all of The Soviet Union was in hell.
Lenin was a hero at the time. Before communism, Russia was still a monarchy, with an incompetent tsar as a leader. On top of that, people were suffering from famine and the aftermath of a war. Revolution was needed at the time. (Say what you will about the result) Another interesting thing is that Lenin did not want Stalin to take over, he made that clear before he died.
Communism (way to spell it wrong.) and socialism are very different. Saying they go hand in hand is like saying capitalism and facism do. You're taking the extreme left of the politcal spectrum and assuming the moderate is equal to it. A little bit of left wing policy here and there isn't going to turn a country into a dictatorship. Stop trying to fear monger.
so i doubled the wrong letter, and when you look at the path of communism that lenin preached it slowly led to socialism, and stalin piggy back on lenin after lenin died and stalin made it a totalitaian state of government in russia. communism is, a social stucture where there is no classes, everyone is equal, and everyone works for the benifit of the people as a whole, communism and marxism are so much a like that they are almost the same. socialism is like communism just with a slash of capitalism and in the communist manifesto socialism is the step before communism therfore they go hand in hand.
Right, and you know what else? Facism on the politcal spectrum is a step above capitalism by your logic. I think we can both agree that your country is not turning into a facist dictatorship (nor will it according to you.) At any rate, I have to wonder why a bit of socialism in the US would be so bad? About 2% of your country controls 80% of your currency. You would help far more people than you would hurt if you balanced the wealth a little. Also, in a true socialist gov't more money goes toward social programs (for example, things like water, power, university tuition would be much cheaper if not free.) It's too bad so many people like you let communism scare you.
your right a little socialism would be good but a little can turn into alot in a hurry so and in my area at least there are more middle and upper middle class familys but in places like detroit and harlem the exact opposite exists so in certain areas large companies could put money into those area and develope work theres so that the areas economy can support its basic need. i think most americans are afraid of communism because of the label.
yeah but what are ya gunna do, and luckly im not one of the people that its could help
Posted: 2010-04-14 17:41:57 Report
i can't stand Glenn Beck. so what you are saying is if i can't prove it to you then it must not be true? i think i will pass on your silly test, i just hope you are truly smarter than what you said. the only thing you said that truly pissed me off is that i like glenn beck, rush, or Bill "Papa Bear" O'Realy. i would love to tie all 3 of them to a steak in the middle of a field. put honey all over them. let the fire ants do the rest.
yeah man, no point debating because they won't even be the slightest bit open to your opinion. brainwashed as fuck haha
I have mixed feelings about it. At the time the two bombs were dropped, Japan was losing the war. They would have lost without the bmbs, but it probably would have resulted in more US soldiers dying and the war would have lasted much longer (posssibly continuing during the cold war, giving russia an excuse to side with Japan.)On the other hand, these bombs were dropped on 2 non-military targets, killing many civilians. Even years later, the radiation was still taking effect. When it comes down to it, you have to ask yourself, what's worse? The deaths of american soldiers, who knew what they were getting into, OR the deaths of Japanese civilians who didn't sign up for the war and probably wanted nothing to do with it. I can understand american bias, but I'm more inclined to sympathize with the japanese civilians.
and all is fair in love and war and they were not just civies they were basically sucide bombers ready to die for what were basically barbaric ideals.
if your saying that all of the propaganda about the japanese i would have beleived is at the time i was old enough to serve in the army hell yeah i would have beleived it just after 9/11 there were record enlistment numbers its situational
Atleast these are men willing to die for what they believed in CrazyJay. And stop being a grammar nazi. Nobody likes grammar nazi's or nazi's in general. Another thing: this is the atomic bomb, not the 4th reactor meltdown (due to a flawed reactor) at Chernobyl. Any radiation would have long worn off after about 10 years or so. You didn't hear about mutated babies being born in Japan. And we have propaganda for reason: to persuade.
So people should be willing to die for exagerrated nonsense about the enemy? Should people really be willing to die just for ideas? I'm perfectly content to survive with my accurate information, rather than put my life on the line for a couple of lies my gov't told me just to scare the country into war. Also, about the whole grammar nazi thing: If people can barely spell "communism" why should I even expect them to know what they're talking about?
ha you mispelled it too. Try "communism". Spell it right yourself before you go correcting others. The Japanese kamikazes and banzai's had way more honor than you ever will. Wanna know why? Because they were willing to blow themselves and run right into the line of fire up in order to kill US troops. Now i'm not saying they were right. I'm not saying our troops deserved to die. And about the exaggerated nonsense, let me ask you this; was it true? The US will always find a way to drag themselves into the middle of a war no matter what. I'm gonna quote Patton here “You shouldn't underestimate an enemy, but it is just as fatal to overestimate him.” And that is why we lost so many troops and how the attack on Pearl Harbor came about. Because we underestimated them. ANybody else agree?
So it's honourable to sacrifice yourself to kill someone else? I don't see alot of honour in that. As for the exaggeration, it isn't right to get people rilled up over falsehoods. There's a difference between underestimating an enemy and being honest about them. The Japanese back then were likened to barbarians, to get people rilled up. That was wrong.
Posted: 2010-04-14 05:49:09 Report
hi my name is war. have you ever heard of me before? threw out history only the loosing side ever bitches about the rules and how it was unfair. i bet you play video games. people still do the same thing today with games. the brits bomb civilian targets during ww2. they were so bad about it they would go at night and just drop the bombs any place. the US killed more Japs(sorry for the slang but i must get my mind correct here)for the napalm/fire bombings than the two aboms did.
final point. the japs bombed the US. if you bomb us we will find you and fuck you up. we didn't start WW2 but we sure as hell ended it with a BANG! moral of the story leave us alone and you don't get the sun dropped in your back yard.
final point. the japs bombed the US. if you bomb us we will find you and fuck you up. we didn't start WW2 but we sure as hell ended it with a BANG! moral of the story leave us alone and you don't get the sun dropped in your back yard.
War in itself doesn't justify it, but the ending of war does, at the time, the American people had no idea how far the war was going to escalate so it was basically a 'lesser of two evils' decision, shock them into losing or have more of our men gone forever.
war is war anything can be justified and we were fighting germany when japan sucker punched us by dropping over half of our pacific fleat the odds were on the japs side but as the world all saw we kicked ass and tooked names and ontop of that we were fighting on 2 fronts for most of the time
as allies of england and france we were inclined to help but yes war was no officially declared until pearl when neutrality was taken away. my mistake
i wasn't implying that sry if seemed that way i was just stating that the atlantic fleat was ready to fight german fleats when or if the time came.
Posted: 2010-04-13 16:04:25 Report
well we were neutral and they kindda and they did it anyway. and if you got a letter from peru that warn you of something like that would you beleive them?
I already explained it pretty clearly. I don't think that the amount of civilian casualties was worth it. The whole point of this post was to get people's opinions, I gave mine. Nobody here was around, or "in mind" as you said, so the point you're trying to make is completely worthless.
i agree. you said it best. what you think is worthless. you are talking about what we should do with the horse now that its already out.
you must put yourself in their shoes. they did not know the war was going to be over that soon. all they knew is it had to be finished.
if your true problem is the civilian deaths then why even mention the abomb? man more people were killed in the napalm strikes but that is war. if you don't want your country bombed back to the stone age, don't attack my country. its that simple.
you must put yourself in their shoes. they did not know the war was going to be over that soon. all they knew is it had to be finished.
if your true problem is the civilian deaths then why even mention the abomb? man more people were killed in the napalm strikes but that is war. if you don't want your country bombed back to the stone age, don't attack my country. its that simple.
Posted: 2010-04-13 11:32:26 Report
ill argue with ya and all but when it comes to retards like johne ill side with you and everyone else
Posted: 2010-04-13 16:13:12 Report
I'm see what you are getting at Crazyjay, but he won't let you have you own opinion, even though you were expressly asked for it by Naugron.
We've all learned to totally ignore that fact that such a bigoted, self opinionated arsehole even exists. So just play along with us and ignore his poorly spelled attempts to put you down.
We've all learned to totally ignore that fact that such a bigoted, self opinionated arsehole even exists. So just play along with us and ignore his poorly spelled attempts to put you down.
Posted: 2010-04-13 11:46:49 Report
As far as not wanting to be involved goes, most American men didn't have a say in whether they went to war or not as well.
But only after we were bombed. They pretty much asked for it when they attacked us.
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You can argue either way that it helped shorten the war, but I think the dropping of the bombs on Japan was a good thing for what came after. We're lucky that the bombs were developed during war and were used in limited numbers as soon as they were ready so that only one side had them. Imagine if WW2 ended without them and the Cold War started, with by 1949 both sides having nuclear weapons and in larger numbers. Without the initial shock at having seen them used on a civilian population and world reaction to this there would have been even greater pressure on both superpowers to use them. I think without the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was a much greater chance of the Cold War descending into nuclear conflict.