Was it right to drop the bomb?

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Keep drinking dat red, white and blue Kool Aid.

I agree fully.


I HAVE TO RETURN SOME VIDEOTAPES

" Though there was one big difference: Pearl Harbor was specifically a military target. Hiroshima was not. "

Theres another big difference as well. America and Japan was not at war when Pearl Harbor happened.

Somebody here has been drinking and I'm sad to say it ain't me - Allan Francis Doyle

I sadly disagree. The impact of this bombing ended the war because of its statement. It was brutal and extreme and haunting.

Also, Pearl Harbor did kill of a lot of non-military people, just not intentionally.

In both points, killing military perssonel was expected. It's war....killing off a whole island with one bomb however, is something else entirely.

"Life is a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing. Keep pretending"-Kermit

The dropping of the atom bombs were an act of terror, no different from 9/11

Everyone will have different opinions of it. I personally feel that the Americans wanted to test their new bomb "on the field" and what better a target then Japan? Knowing full well that the Japanese civilians, man woman and child, were also willing to fight for their emperor to the death they decided to use their bomb.

What the American military neglect to tell you in all this is that they already had broken the Japanese cyphers, just like the English and Polish alliance at Bletchley Park had done with the German Enigma Code, and had the Japanese military cornered. That has only recently been declassified (in fact it featured on a show called "Secrets of World War II") and does add an interesting point to the argument.

I will close with the following question/dilemma to chew on.
Yes the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were horrific on so many levels, but imagine if they had never happened and no one knew about the horrifically devastating effects of fallout radiation. Would the world leaders have been "trigger happy" with nuclear weapons? Would we have already had WW3 and now be a starving, cold, epidemic ridden, slowly dying race? Maybe those deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki have saved far more then American and Japanese lives. They may have saved you (and your loved ones) from a lingering, painful, radioactive death.

Right is the wrong word. I dont think the Empire of Japan was a threat to the USA anyway, ok they attacked pearl harbor (so we are led to believe, some "conspiracy theorists" would argue different just like Lusitania theories or 9/11) but apart from that they took insignificant pacific islands, they were a threat to the greatly weakened British empire and they took Singapore and gained support in India with nationalists. But even so the Japanese didn't match the British in terms of hardware or manpower.

The Japanese, lets not forget were absolutely evil in there treatment of POW and civilians. I know all nations commit atrocities but I think the Japanese would take first prize for being terrible. Of course there would of been Japanese soldiers that did not take part in rapes, torture, biological weapons spreading etc. I think the Japanese still largely ignore just how bad there forces were to people.

As for the bombs, did they need to be dropped? In terms of war and how the world sadly works then yes. Did they need to drop two, I would say no and that dropping two was just a way of testing the two different types of bomb and a way for the USA to flex its new found muscles to the Soviets, France and Britain. Its also important to remember that incendiary and high explosive bombs killed far more than either of the atomic bombs, so should we focus so much on the atomic bombs when the other conventional bombs were worse. Either way the whole thing is just plain wrong, all war is. Its the pawns that suffer, the people that start them and benefit from them usually do fine. We should also remember just how obscene it was to have two huge wars so close together, and then have many more after and to this day. Its crazy but we are brainwashed to accept it and do very little to stop it.

Saw this for the first time last night - I'd seen Grave of the Fireflies and watched documentaries on Hiroshima years back, but this hit my a lot harder than I'd expected it to and probably one of the hardest things I've ever watched.

I disagree with the dropping of the bomb. It's not just the fact that this would involve more civilians than Pearl Harbour (and as others have said, military casualties are expected and accepted as part of war) - I think it was something like 4 or 5 times more civilian casualties than than military after Hiroshima. It's the sheer suffering. I'm not saying that getting blown up from the impact of a doodle bug or being gunned down or firebombed isn't horrific, but the appalling injuries, mutations, contamination and psychological impact (for example, the fear of the unknown and unexperienced - not understanding the black rain, why people are getting sick from radiation), not to mention the long-term health effects....that's something else entirely. I consider it to be a crime against humanity.

From my understanding, Japan were losing anyway but perhaps it was all looking a bit too expensive for the Allies to conduct a land invasion (even though they'd spent something like 2 billion developing the bomb), although I believe Japan should have surrendered after Hiroshima without question so in my view, they aren't without blame, and the UK authorised the attack. What angers me is the censorship and propaganda that was conducted afterwards, shielding the public from reality.

There are sources that claim the US dropped millions of leaflets to civilians in several cities (although not specifically mentioning atomic weapons to Hiroshima civilians) before they dropped both bombs, but, as they say, the victors of war write the history... It looks as though leaflets specifically mentioning nuclear weapons were dropped on Nagasaki and advising civilians to look to Hiroshima for an idea of the devastation, but how much the public knew and understood about what had happened days earlier in Hiroshima was very likely to be limited and after all, this was the world's first (and I hope last) experience of a nuclear attack.

Had Hiroshima been properly warned, perhaps it would have been largely evacuated first so the US's message to surrender wouldn't have had quite so much impact, but Hiroshima was a strategic target so at least some of their objective would presumably have been met by obliterating the infrastructure and contaminating the land, and at this point they wouldn't have known that Japan wouldn't surrender. The US had a load more bombs lined up for the coming months anyway so could have always upped the ante so I still believe it was way too heavy-handed.