MovieChat Forums > Fat Man and Little Boy (1989) Discussion > 60 years later, any thoughts?

60 years later, any thoughts?

posted 19 years ago by rsuriyop
46 replies | jump to latest

It has been almost exactly sixty years today after the dropping of the two bombs. And so I was just wondering, what do you think of the decision to drop those bombs?

For me, I personally think that there was little choice but to, seeing as how this war would have been prolonged and result in the deaths of a million-plus. However, I would never dare use the word "justified" in this sense because it would imply the idea that it was the absolute right thing to do, which it was not (the destruction of civillian life in any given situation is never justified). It was just something that we were forced in to, which is entirely different.

On a side note, I do believe that we should all give those who had perished during the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings alot of respect. Because if you think about it, if all those people hadn't died, the war of course would not have ended so abrubtly and thus, save so many lives (both Japanese and allied). And so in a sense, it was like sacrifice.

Any thoughts?

The slow, unchanging progression of time: "... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..."(etcetera)

[–] munched12 14 years ago

Yep. Better them than us. Bottom line.

[–] standrkm 10 years ago

Gotta agree with one of the posters that stated "before the atomic bombs, we had firebombed the hell out of the Japanese". The bombing before then was even worse than what the a-bombs did but the Japanese still wouldn't surrender...even after the first a-bomb! The Japanese and Germans would fight til the last breath, until there was nothing left. Only their leaders could make them stop. Hitler had everyone fighting even when the war was obviously lost and if Emperor Hrohito didn't surrender the Japanese would have done the same.

Many Generals including Eisenhower regretted dropping the bombs because they felt the Japanese were pretty much defeated and no one wanted to target so many civilians. But it's really not that easy. The Germans and Japanese had been at war causing massive casualties to the allies for years, tens of millions had died and were starving as it continued. The axis powers were so fearful of being defeated and captured (rightly so) that by that point it was all or nothing. They didn't see a choice, it was either rape or torture. Imagine fighting an enemy like that!

You would think you could just take the allied forces and blitz them into submission but it wasn't a game that had to be fought fairly. You had the wonder weapon, you could end it immediately and send the boys home. Imagine if the bombs weren't dropped and hundreds of thousands of allies and Japanese died anyway then the American/Russian/French/UK people find out a year or so later about how you opted to use their son as cannon fodder. Imagine answering to that.

What's really sad is the actual number of civilian casualties in war. More than half of the deaths were of civilians in WW2. The percentage gets higher with each coming war and it's at it's highest percentage now. The days of hand to hand sword fighting are over and desperate people don't follow rules of war. Plus yeah, eventually Russia got the bomb and there's no telling what might have happened if we didn't show the world we weren't scared to use it and just how powerful it was. No one has nuked anyone since so that right there tells me that dropping the nukes in 1945 was the right decision in the long run.

We were extremely close to the cold war turning hot but it didn't happen and maybe that act in '45 played a part. Could the human race go on for nearly 70 years since the creation of the nuke without someone dropping atleast one, I'm doubtful.

"the day I tried to live, I learned that I was alive"

[–] 10 years ago

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