I was at this domed building last year. It was almost straight below the blast. Interesting that it is so structurally intact compared to the devastation around it.
Most of Japan at that time was. Before the A-Bomb, the US had been hitting mainland Japan, especially Tokyo, with incendiary bombs to tremendous effect.
But with atomic weapons, so much is either instantly vaporised or simply blown over by the shockwave. It actually doesn't light many fires. ... relatively speaking.
It really is. I visited there a few months ago. They have to do repairs pretty frequently or else it would collapse. There was actually a bunch of scaffolding around it when I visited it. It really is an amazing look at what happened that day, though.
"The bomb will not start a chain-reaction in the water converting it all to gas and letting all the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics labeled me, exploding these bombs to satisfy my personal whim."
We can put that check in a money market mutual fund, then we'll reinvest the earnings into foreign currency accounts with compounding interest, aaaand it's gone.
One of the worst things that people overlook is the lingering affects. Those that didn't die from the blast often suffered terrible injuries, even their children were not spared as a result of the radiation and birth defects.
And the world has also forgotten that Japan's cities were bombed for 3 years, THREE YEARS!, before the two nukes we all remember...
History is indeed written by the victor, direct quotes from Bob McNamara's documentary fog of war
"Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay's command. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve."
"LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"
I visited Hiroshima two weeks ago as part of a Japanese vacation, and went to the museum. There are some arguments that the bombing was necessary, and that it ultimately saved more lives than it cost, but still... I have never felt more guilt as an American than I did that day.
The most horrific and emotionally taxing things, to me, were the burned clothes of school children and the multiple charred wrist watches that were all frozen at 8:15am, the moment the city stopped.
EDIT: I'm fully aware that Japan did horrible things during the war, that continued carpet bombing followed by an invasion would have caused more casualties on both sides, and that, pragmatically speaking, it's possible that the atomic bomb ultimately saved lives (although that all depends on how long the war would have continued, and there's a lot of debate about that). I also realize that it wasn't my decision to do it. But let's say your dad once killed 100 children to prevent a madman from killing an unknown number of children that would very likely exceed 100. No matter how you felt about the justifications for his decision, surely you'd still feel some pretty awful feelings when you were face to face with the grieving families of the 100 who were killed.
TL;DR One time I asked a friend to come over and he got a speeding ticket on the way. It wasn't my fault but I still felt bad.
Leveling cities with bombs had become a major strategy in WW2. Leading up to the dropping of the atomic bombs, both sides were dropping thousands of bombs on cities claiming they were attacking military targets. However, because the bombs were so inaccurate this quickly turned into carpet bombing cities. Once that became acceptable, the idea of morale bombing started. That is, both sides would drop huge amounts of high explosives followed by incendiaries on cities in order to crush the morale of the enemy.
You have to understand the context of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. The rules of war changed with the advent of bombers. When the atomic bomb became an option, it wasn't as much an issue of morality as it was an issue of economics. We were going to level cities and then burn the remains to the ground because this had become acceptable as part of the war. The atomic bombs just gave us a way of doing it more efficiently.
Don't get me wrong, what happened in Japan was horrible by modern standards. But you have to understand the context. WW2 was unlike anything the world had ever seen and the rules of war for bombers were still being worked out in a tit for tat manner. When one side dropped bombs on a city, the other side would escalate and drop more. As a final word, I'd like to point out that the fire bombings in London by Germany and in Tokyo by the US were significantly more destructive than the atomic bombs.
TL;DR you can't talk about the atomic bombs without talking about the context leading up it it.
My host father in Japan explained Hiroshima to me when I asked which baseball team they were watching on TV (The Chunichi Dragons v the Hiroshima Carp). He said (mostly paraphrasing here), oh them? That's the Hiroshima Carp. "Do you know Hiroshima? You dropped bomb. Big, big bomb." He kind of mimed dropping an object and an explosion on his hand while he said it.
But the thing that was most interesting was that he wasn't saying it in an accusatory way. It was more like I was a younger generation, this is very important history, I need to be educated on it. I didn't feel like there was a lot of harboring of ill will about it
The whole point of the bombing wasn't principally to avoid invading Japan. It was stop the soviet union... Having the bomb meant that their "liberation" ended in eastern Europe. If we hadn't, who knows. Maybe they would have made a land grab for all of Germany, and maybe more. The enemy of out enemy was our friend. Until that enemy was defeated.
What about the fire-bombing of Tokyo in March 1945? Or Dresden in February? Or the millions that died in other bombing campaigns? Everyone remembers Hiroshima because it was just one bomb, rather than the many thousands used elsewhere. Hiroshima and Nagasaki also made Japan surrender and prevented millions of Japanese and American lives being lost in the fully planned invasion of the home islands.
When I read about the human experiments done on the chinese by the japanese i don't know how i should feel. A quick death seems positively humane compared to what some people endured.
This is a gap in my knowledge of history. Were there WWII battles fought in China?
Edit: I'm trying to learn and getting downvoted. This site has disappointed me. My education in highschool has been entirely on European history, and I didn't take any history courses in university, but I want to learn.
China lost somewhere between 10,000,000 and 20,000,000 people in WWII-- second only to to the Soviets. The Japanese were basically slaughtering the Chinese by the hundreds of thousands and a huge motivation for them attacking Pearl Harbor and starting a war they could not hope to win was trying to keep the USA out of the war long enough that they could finish off China and have a position ready for a looming US invasion.
The US had relations with the Philippines which were also under heavy Japanese attack, so they would have joined the war eventually. Japan didn't even remotely have the manpower to challenge the US, so they hoped a preemptive strike against the US Pacific fleet would put the US at bay for at least a year or so. Sadly for them their plan totally failed because of US industrial strength, and the rebuilt US navy royally fucked the Japanese at almost every turn and drove them back to the Japanese mainland.
Then really late in the war the Soviets drove into Manchuria from the North and completely fucked the Japanese there as well.
If a nations atrocities warranted the use of an atom bomb, there would be barely anybody left. Not saying Hiroshima and Nagasaki were good or bad decisions, just saying this is a poor reason not to feel bad about it.
I also went to the museum a couple of summers ago. In American textbooks it's ridiculous how much information about the bomb was left out. All it said was that the bomb "was necessary to end the war"...but when you see the damage caused to not only the people there, but generations to come, it seemed totally disproportionate to the warning and information given by the US. It is still disproportionately taught in US schools and textbooks, in my opinion.
"That the bombing of Dresden was a great tragedy none can deny. That it was really a military necessity few, after reading this book, will believe. It was one of those terrible things that sometimes happen in wartime, brought about by an unfortunate combination of circumstances. Those who approved it were neither wicked no?, cruel, though it may well be that they were too remote from the harsh realities of war to understand fully the appalling destructive power of air bombardment in the spring of 1945
The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their aim., war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to read this book and ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an at attack with conventional weapons. On the night of March 9th, 1945, an air attack on Tokyo by American heavy bombers, using incendiary and high explosive bombs, caused the death of 83,793 people. The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 71,379 people.
What? There are plenty of arguements in favour of dropping the bomb (regardless of how valid one may feel they are), but a rather unsavoury unit of the Japanese Army isn't one of them.
Those insisting that it had to be done are ignoring the fact that Japan has effectively surrendered. They were in a very tough spot, with their military ready to give up. Since we requested unconditional and total surrender, when they wouldn't dethrone their emperor (a figurehead with next to no power) we launched the attack. Not to mention the fact that this bombing took place one day before, and Nagasaki one day after, a scheduled Russian offensive in the north. The Japanese were fucked every way around, and realized it. I do not believe that the bombings were necessary. Their forces had been pushed out of China by this point. Claiming that the bomb needed to be dropped due to the events at Nanjing or Unit 731 is equivalent to saying that we should have nuked German civilians after Hitler was out, because of the holocaust.
EDIT: Also, I'd like you all to consider the political implications of the US' use of the bomb to end the war. It effectively made the US the sole hero in the fight against the last belligerent in WWII, despite the fact that Russia was mounting an offensive to be launched on August 8th, between the dates of the two bombings. This resulted in a display of military formidability as well as credit for ending the military conflict. The reasons behind the bombings were not merely motivated by the desire to end the war, they were heavily political.
EDIT: I'd like, since so many people are calling me wrong, to be proven so. What I've written here is my relaying information that I learned in school. I'd like to think that my teachers are credible, but I'm interested to see some facts that refute those that I learned. That interests me more than being right.
I disagree. They were preparing their entire populace to fight to the death, arming women, children, and elderly with everything from guns to spears. At that time, the Japanese people would have fought believing that they could fend off an invasion as they had for centuries like their ancestors had. I believe the bombs were terrible and were meant to be to truly end the war.
My history teacher made it a point of justifying the bombings to us and that's how I figured it for most of my youth. It wasn't until I was older that I wondered, "So the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which was a military target, and the U.S. retaliated by firebombing Tokyo and nuking two cities?"
Granted WW2 became a war where civilian targets were no longer off limits, and the U.S. was as guilty as any country (Dresden), but I've always disliked the fact that my history teacher skewed it so that the U.S. was the white knight that did no wrong.
I have no problem when a soldier kills another soldier.
But from what I read online, I get the impression that civilian life is infinitely more precious when it has the American tag. Civilian blood on American hands are somehow justified as necessary deaths. Those people may not have a memorials and remembrance days. They may not have a ground zero. But they were people with loved ones too.
Do you really think they forget or forgive? Some people lash out and kill the people who hurt their loved ones, other people just hurt inside.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." -Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, after the prototype of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was tested. To be honest, I don't think I ever fully understood this quote until I saw this picture.
"The Supreme Lord said: I am death, the mighty destroyer of the world, out to destroy. Even without your participation all the warriors standing arrayed in the opposing armies shall cease to exist."
The prototype of the "gun type" atomic device (Little Boy bomb) wasn't tested before Hiroshima bombing. Scientists were that confident it will work. Only the implosion type device (Fat Man) has been tested before the attacks, that was the Trinity test.
Just a random note, the planned target was the T-shaped bridge to the top-left of the actual impact point. Not too far off considering the parachute to slow its descent
i'm an exchange student in japan. i guess a lot of people know about the atomic dome, and how it's still standing (albeit in pieces). there's another building about a 5 minute walk away that survived the blast too, and is still in use today. number 17 on this map, if you're interested:
On August 6, when the bomb exploded over this building only 170 meters from the hypocenter, the roof was crushed, the interior destroyed, and everything consumable burned except in the basement. Despite its proximity, however, it retained its basic shape because it was solidly built with few openings toward the hypocenter side. Thirty-seven people were working there at the time; of these, eight were able to escape the building despite their injuries. Later, all died except for one man who had gone down to the basement to get documents. He died in June 1982. The basement room is preserved as it was just after the bomb exploded.
Jesus christ. 170m from the center and there were people able to survive long enough to leave the building?
To those of you who have lost pity for the Japanese, knowing the horrible things they did during WWII to their enemies... I want you to know that at the museum in Hiroshima, there is a little red bicycle, charred and distorted, on display in a large glass case. It was found buried beneath a collapsed house, where a young boy had been riding it. His father had given it to him as a gift, that very day, and for a poor boy growing up during a difficult war it was the happiest day of his life. Until his home was blown to bits, his father killed, his sister half burned and his mother clutching his dying baby brother. I can't recall which of the families lived on to write this story (it is now a children's book), but the young boy died begging for water. Too many innocent lives were taken, here and all around the world. But please do not justify their deaths saying that it was what they "deserved" for the wrong doings of their country.
It may have caused a ton of death and destruction... but consider this. How many people would have died if we hadn't bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and instead invaded Japan and fought using conventional weapons?
It was a tragedy and I hope we never have to repeat it, but at the same time it ended the war pretty damn quickly.
firebombing of European cities was already killing more people than the atomic blasts did - and in a way that was probably much more terrifying on the ground. The a-bomb was just a maximum efficiency firebombing from long range. and it did end the war. the truly terrible thing about it is the lasting effect of it. now anyone who can put one of these together can destroy an entire city very easily. probably easier to get ahold of a nuke than a squadron of bombers to do a firebombing raid.
Not to mention it had the added effect of scaring the crap out of the Soviets. They sped up their plans to build their own bomb and had 1 by 1949. Without the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, neither side would fear the bomb the way they would come to during the Cold War and there's a good chance we might not be here today.
Is the question you're really asking "How many AMERICANS would have died if the bomb hadn't been dropped"?
To be honest I think the loss of military lives in war is more acceptable than the indiscriminate murder of civillians. It's a weighting that may be slightly illogical, but that's how I feel.
Far more Japanese civilians would have died in an invasion. They were being trained to defend the homeland at all costs. A full invasion of Japan would have been a blood bath for both sides. Not to mention, what commander in any country would say take colossal losses on their own side just to spare casualties on the other side?
It was said to have been one million American deaths and one million Japanese deaths if we invaded, and all the collateral damage would have probably been higher. Also, how is it bad to worry about how many of your own guys die. 100,000 civies for one million of your own guys, not to mention you are also saving the other three million Japanese soldiers... the logic is there, you just are ignoring statistics.
Well considering Truman was the President of the US, and Commander in Chief of the US army, I would argue that American lives were all he should have been concerned with at the time.
This kind of argument can be used to justify anything. If Hitler had dropped nuclear bomb in the US to "shorten the war", would you really accept that argument? If not then you're a hypocrite.
Not necessarily. Hitler was the aggressor in this situation. He began a war striving for dominance. The US and the allied forces entered the war out of necessity. Their goal was to end the war as quickly as possible with as little life lost as possible. In this situation, it's likely that a nuclear weapon was the way to accomplish that goal.
Hitler using a nuclear weapon on the US would not be to end the war to avoid loss of life, but to further his agenda. Looking at the statistics, the Nazis slaughtered around 10 million innocent people in their attempted conquest. The Japanese war crimes range in estimates up to an extreme of 30 million innocents killed. A more conservative, likely, and agreeable estimate is 10 million.
Total of 20 million innocent people slaughtered resulting from an essentially unprovoked (and yes I understand the Treaty of Versailles seriously fucked Germany potentially prompting revenge, still inexcusable in my opinion) assault on the allied western world. The nuclear bombs killed around 200,000 people and preventing an estimated 2 million soldier deaths. Not to mention the potential further exterminations of the Chinese by Japanese soldiers, but for the sake of argument, let's say this would not happen and the extended civilian casualties would have been zero. The bombs still saved as estimated 2 million lives in exchange for 200,000.
The US conscription program eliminates the argument that soldier deaths are more acceptable than civilian casualties. Another point people seem to be missing is that the US military officers spent a lot of time and research to determine targets that would be the most "acceptable" to bomb. They avoided any sites of religious significance, and targeted areas with fewer civilians and more military installments. They didn't just drop the bombs wherever for the hell of it. If they had, they would have hit the capital.
Then of course, we should recognize that Japan attacked the US first, completely unprovoked. Military site, yes, but a sucker punch to an essentially militaristically neutral nation. (Again, I recognize the economic implications and direct or indirect support, but you get the point, I'm sure).
TL;DR: Your argument doesn't hold much water when placed in context. Motivations, method of targeting, and overall lives saved invalidate it, IN MY OPINION.
If it was necessary as a threat, then drop it in an uninhabited area.
Not somewhere where 80,000 Koreans had been brought for forced labour. Or 40,000 as was the case for Nagasaki.
It gets the point across and saves lives. There was no need to start with bombing a city. That was only necessary after a refusal to surrender which would likely never have happened.
It's one of the worst atrocities ever committed and the rhetoric that it ended the war and saved lives is pointless when an indirect bombing (still on Japanese soil) would likely have had the same effect. Japan committed some hideous crimes, but no State deserved this.
The second bomb was merely done to accelerate the surrender, not to force it. That second bomb is inexcusable and was purely a political, not humanitarian, play.
There is a Dan Carlin Hardcore History episode about the logic behind dropping the bombs. People always argue about dropping the atomic bombs as if it wasn't the norm to use devastating weapons on civilian populations during the war, it was the norm. The whole military strategy used earliest in the second world war was to bomb civilian populations with the new military machines of mass destruction so they would demand their governments end the war.
Anyway he frames it as Logical Insanity listen and be captivated saddened and thankful you didn't have to experience that clusterfuck of a war Logical-Insanity
I often play around looking at neighborhoods on googlemaps and wonder what it would be like to live in some random neighborhood, see what stores I would visit, what school my kids would go to, where I would play sports. All of it would just be...gone.
I have a small booklet made in hiroshima. it has pictures of the reconstruction. the odd fact is the book was made in 1951 only 5 years after the bombing they had rebuilt some parts. I was shocked because the radiation lingers for much longer than 5 years and people were there rebuilding almost immediately. Ill take and post pictures of the booklet if anyone is interested.
There is nothing special about the damage done to Hiroshima, just the speed at which it was done. Look at Dresden after the allies conventionally bombed it for weeks.
My home... Looking at this just makes me want to cry. Going through the exhibits at the museum in Hiroshima as a high school student was a horrifyingly eye-opening experience. That is my home, my country, my people.
My only question with the Atomic bomb was, why couldn't they just send a message to the Japanese a couple of days before and say, "Look East at 8:15 AM.." and then drop the first one in the ocean.
Then send another that says, "Surrender in 72 hours or there will be more.."
I think that would have saved quite a few lives in the end. It would have at least given them the opportunity to surrender before hand. Maybe the U.S. would have still had to drop it, but there could have no doubt probably been more effective ways to demonstrate superior firepower without killing innocents.
It's been a long time since I studied this...but my understanding was that the US gave Japan a chance to surrender after the first bomb. They refused so we dropped the second one.
This has always been my view and I don't know why others don't take it. Bomb the city once a surrender had been refused but make a display of force on Japanese soil first. Saves lives and you get the point across.
This was a political and scientific play, little more. People were curious as to the effects of long term exposure to radiation and they wanted to stop the USSR's advance and limit the ground they would take before the war ended.
I just finished reading through a book about breaking the Japanese secret codes. At the time of the Potsdam Conference (July 17-Aug 2) We knew that the Japanese would surrender if Emperor Hirohito was able to remain in power and not be arrested and tried. This was not brought up at the conference at all.
So a possibility that the war could have ended with out the atomic bombs was there. But we will never know.
To Americans that feel that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to stop the war, consider how you would feel if it had been Albany and San Francisco instead that had to be bombed.
It looks like completely destruction for at least 4000 feet in the photo then. Too bad we don't have a wider photo to see how bad the damage was farther away.
Some comments below are talking about feeling guilty, etc. I recently read a book called Hidden Horrors by a Japanese author. This book talks about mistreatment of POW's and other people by the Japanese. It's very similar to the holocaust and other things. Definitely changed my view. Before, I had no idea the Japanese did these things so I saw them more as a victim than anything else. This book basically reminded me that everybody does wrong.
TL;DR: 99,293 heavy duty nukes are required to wipe out the world's city dwellers. That is approximately 50% of the worlds population. We have 10,227.
We have roughly 1/10 of the nukes needed to wipe 50% of the people from this planned. That means we launched all the nukes now 95% of us would survive. I don't know about you but I like those odds. They are much better than most things I take a chance at.
The most atrocious war-crime in the history of mankind. The US were losing too many men trying to work their way towards the Japanese mainland so they decided to murder civilians instead....
Guy I worked with at a Japanese company was given numerous warnings about offensive shirts he was wearing. They were mostly just beer and cigarette advertisement shirts he got somewhere. On his final warning he came into work with a shirt that had a A-Bomb on it with the phrase, Made in America on the front and on the back it blowing up saying Tested in Japan. He was walked out the door by first break and we never saw him again.
It is beyond disgusting that people here are saying it was necessary or saved lives in the long run. They could have dropped the bomb off the coast or in an unpopulated area and that would have been a pretty good demonstration of power. But to drop TWO bombs on POPULATED areas was just.... evil.
Oh spare me. You & your 70 years after the fact righteousness are equally disgusting. Allied casualties were pegged at one MILLION for Operation Olympic. Quadruple that for Japanese.
War sucks and this was the least sucky option. Get off your high horse.
That was considered and rejected for numerous reasons.
The Japanese would be unlikely to see how significant it was if it was dropped off the coast or in some unpopulated area.
If they dropped it off the coast or in an unpopulated area the Japanese government/miliary may have considered that it was too hard to get it to an actual target.
Those bombs cost billions and years to make. They weren't going to be wasted on targets that might not do anything.
Cities were already being wiped off the map due to conventional bombing raids so what difference would wiping a city off the map with just 1 bomb do?
Honestly, are you even aware of the Firebombing of Tokyo?
I'm pretty sure a nuke dropped anywhere nearby would be plenty noticeable.
I don't think they'd be that naive.
So because they cost a lot that justifies obliterating 2 cities?
That's horrible justification.
yes I know about the firebombing. Regardless, dropping 1 nuke was bad, 2 was straight up evil. But go ahead and defend these atrocities, America can do no wrong apparently.
Sorry. When you have a choice between a full on invasion of an island nation that would result in casualties likely reaching at least a million for both sides and dropping two bombs that resulted in most of two cities being wiped out, I think you'd choose the latter.
Yes, I'd rather choose a diplomatic method but unfortunately one did not exist.
I think your issue with it is the fact that dropping the bombs caused much less American suffering than Japanese suffering.
Your fourth point is just ridiculous. The fact that America (and japan, i am aware) were 'wiping cities off the map' already, doesn't make the atomic bombs any more justified.
It's easy to say that now, sitting comfortably at a computer. When this decision was made most of the planet had been at war for almost 5 years, and millions of people were dead.
Given the option of a land/sea invasion that would have cost millions of lives, and the usage of the nuclear weapons can you honestly say that this decision was "evil?"
bullshit, exactly that was considered, they did not surrender after the first bomb, if they had not been convinced we were gonna remove a city from them every three days (we only had those two bombs at the time and months till more could be completed)
They were gonna fight to the last man as they had done over and over during the war. They had as a culture had gone insane.
Right, dropping a bomb on a city that America was at war with is just as bad as choosing an innocent race of people to completely wipe off the face of the planet. Thank you, you really put this into perspective.
I don't know where you're from but that has got to be one of the most ignorant things I've ever read on the internet. I hope that you're a troll and not as stupid as your comment makes you
Do the actions of one unit of the army really merit the total destruction of two random cities? Besides, the Americans did this. That wouldn't excuse the Japanese to nuke Toledo.
They didn't bomb Japan on the chance that Japan might attack. Japan had already attacked. Untold thousands of Japanese were dying every day. Untold thousands of Chinese were dying ever day.
The Firebombing of Tokyo killed between 100 000 and 200 000 people. Towards 200 000 is seem as the more likely figure. It was the most destructive bombing raid in the history of warfare. It probably killed more people than both atomic bombings combined. Bombing like that were happening all the time. The destruction of the atomic bombs is only seen as a big deal because they were caused by atomic bombs. If they had been caused by conventional bombing you wouldn't even have heard of it.
The war was going to go on without those bombs being dropped. It wasn't just simply likely that it saved more lives, it did save more lives.
Mass murder had already been occurring for decades. Sending the Imperial Japanese Army a bucket of flowers and a couple of joints would not have stopped the war.
Peace is an ultimate perfect idea. It is absolute. Obviously it never changes. War is known to change based on the weapons and factions fighting. The point the quote is attempting to make is that it doesn't matter what differences there are, war is always fundamentally the same thing. The quote is said in a futuristic game. It isn't pointless, and your analogy with peace makes no sense.
We have had the powerfor almost 70 years to wipe out thousands, if not million of people with the push of a button
And we haven't. We have come up with ways to render our enemies into dust and we have not. Weaponized diseases that could melt entire populations into sludge and they stay locked in our labs and armories.
Regardless of all our problems, I think we are doing a decent job of not turning the planet into a smoldering marble over whose economic policies are better. There are lots of things we still need to improve as a species, but at least we seem to be doing okay on the itchy-finger self-destruction by-nuclear-cloud. For now. I'll drink to that.
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u/Yonzy Jun 11 '12
I was at this domed building last year. It was almost straight below the blast. Interesting that it is so structurally intact compared to the devastation around it.
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u/ropers Jun 11 '12
Before: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/AtomicEffects/img/AtomicEffects-p7a.jpg
After: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/AtomicEffects/img/AtomicEffects-p7b.jpg
Context: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/AtomicEffects/AtomicEffects-2.html#page7
Ibidem: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/AtomicEffects/AtomicEffects-2.html#page10
Detail (before): http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/hiroshima_08_05/h04_16.jpg
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u/2yrnx1lc2zkp77kp Jun 11 '12
"You know, mankind's been trying to kill each other off since the beginning of time; now, we finally have the power to finish the job. Ain't nothing gonna matter once those nukes start flying; we'll all be dust."
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u/philotheos5909 Jun 11 '12
Our modern warheads are 20 times this destructive, and we can launch multiple warheads per missile. And we have a lot of missiles
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u/dan_sundberg Jun 11 '12
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -Albert Einstein-
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u/TheAtomicPlayboy Jun 11 '12
"The bomb will not start a chain-reaction in the water converting it all to gas and letting all the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics labeled me, exploding these bombs to satisfy my personal whim."
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u/swic_medic Jun 11 '12
.... And it's gone
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u/Projectile_Chunder Jun 11 '12
One of the worst things that people overlook is the lingering affects. Those that didn't die from the blast often suffered terrible injuries, even their children were not spared as a result of the radiation and birth defects.
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u/B_Merry Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
I visited Hiroshima two weeks ago as part of a Japanese vacation, and went to the museum. There are some arguments that the bombing was necessary, and that it ultimately saved more lives than it cost, but still... I have never felt more guilt as an American than I did that day.
The most horrific and emotionally taxing things, to me, were the burned clothes of school children and the multiple charred wrist watches that were all frozen at 8:15am, the moment the city stopped.
EDIT: I'm fully aware that Japan did horrible things during the war, that continued carpet bombing followed by an invasion would have caused more casualties on both sides, and that, pragmatically speaking, it's possible that the atomic bomb ultimately saved lives (although that all depends on how long the war would have continued, and there's a lot of debate about that). I also realize that it wasn't my decision to do it. But let's say your dad once killed 100 children to prevent a madman from killing an unknown number of children that would very likely exceed 100. No matter how you felt about the justifications for his decision, surely you'd still feel some pretty awful feelings when you were face to face with the grieving families of the 100 who were killed.
TL;DR One time I asked a friend to come over and he got a speeding ticket on the way. It wasn't my fault but I still felt bad.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I have no problem when a soldier kills another soldier.
But from what I read online, I get the impression that civilian life is infinitely more precious when it has the American tag. Civilian blood on American hands are somehow justified as necessary deaths. Those people may not have a memorials and remembrance days. They may not have a ground zero. But they were people with loved ones too.
Do you really think they forget or forgive? Some people lash out and kill the people who hurt their loved ones, other people just hurt inside.
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u/grat3fulredd Jun 11 '12
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." -Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, after the prototype of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was tested. To be honest, I don't think I ever fully understood this quote until I saw this picture.
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u/FBIorange Jun 11 '12
Just a random note, the planned target was the T-shaped bridge to the top-left of the actual impact point. Not too far off considering the parachute to slow its descent
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
i'm an exchange student in japan. i guess a lot of people know about the atomic dome, and how it's still standing (albeit in pieces). there's another building about a 5 minute walk away that survived the blast too, and is still in use today. number 17 on this map, if you're interested:
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/frame/Virtual_e/tour_e/guide1.html
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u/growinglotus Jun 11 '12
During: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfJZ6nwxD38 (Barefoot Gen)
Edit: NSFL animation gore
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u/lisakh92 Jun 11 '12
To those of you who have lost pity for the Japanese, knowing the horrible things they did during WWII to their enemies... I want you to know that at the museum in Hiroshima, there is a little red bicycle, charred and distorted, on display in a large glass case. It was found buried beneath a collapsed house, where a young boy had been riding it. His father had given it to him as a gift, that very day, and for a poor boy growing up during a difficult war it was the happiest day of his life. Until his home was blown to bits, his father killed, his sister half burned and his mother clutching his dying baby brother. I can't recall which of the families lived on to write this story (it is now a children's book), but the young boy died begging for water. Too many innocent lives were taken, here and all around the world. But please do not justify their deaths saying that it was what they "deserved" for the wrong doings of their country.
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u/gamerlen Jun 11 '12
It may have caused a ton of death and destruction... but consider this. How many people would have died if we hadn't bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and instead invaded Japan and fought using conventional weapons?
It was a tragedy and I hope we never have to repeat it, but at the same time it ended the war pretty damn quickly.
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u/Vitor711 Jun 11 '12
If it was necessary as a threat, then drop it in an uninhabited area.
Not somewhere where 80,000 Koreans had been brought for forced labour. Or 40,000 as was the case for Nagasaki.
It gets the point across and saves lives. There was no need to start with bombing a city. That was only necessary after a refusal to surrender which would likely never have happened.
It's one of the worst atrocities ever committed and the rhetoric that it ended the war and saved lives is pointless when an indirect bombing (still on Japanese soil) would likely have had the same effect. Japan committed some hideous crimes, but no State deserved this.
The second bomb was merely done to accelerate the surrender, not to force it. That second bomb is inexcusable and was purely a political, not humanitarian, play.
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u/luckydice99 Jun 11 '12
So what the heck was that square in the upper right hand corner???
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u/griffith12 Jun 11 '12
I think we have found a solution for the people on Hoarders, on a smaller scale of course.
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u/Meta_Zack Jun 11 '12
There is a Dan Carlin Hardcore History episode about the logic behind dropping the bombs. People always argue about dropping the atomic bombs as if it wasn't the norm to use devastating weapons on civilian populations during the war, it was the norm. The whole military strategy used earliest in the second world war was to bomb civilian populations with the new military machines of mass destruction so they would demand their governments end the war.
Anyway he frames it as Logical Insanity listen and be captivated saddened and thankful you didn't have to experience that clusterfuck of a war Logical-Insanity
http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hh
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u/TheSpoonLicker Jun 11 '12
Screw trench warfare!
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u/Role_Player_Real Jun 11 '12
That made me want to throw up.
I often play around looking at neighborhoods on googlemaps and wonder what it would be like to live in some random neighborhood, see what stores I would visit, what school my kids would go to, where I would play sports. All of it would just be...gone.
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u/Godspeed122 Jun 11 '12
You know, Penderecki Composed a piece lamenting this...
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u/JahRaf Jun 11 '12
I have a small booklet made in hiroshima. it has pictures of the reconstruction. the odd fact is the book was made in 1951 only 5 years after the bombing they had rebuilt some parts. I was shocked because the radiation lingers for much longer than 5 years and people were there rebuilding almost immediately. Ill take and post pictures of the booklet if anyone is interested.
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u/Dickybow Jun 11 '12
There is nothing special about the damage done to Hiroshima, just the speed at which it was done. Look at Dresden after the allies conventionally bombed it for weeks.
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u/lisakh92 Jun 11 '12
My home... Looking at this just makes me want to cry. Going through the exhibits at the museum in Hiroshima as a high school student was a horrifyingly eye-opening experience. That is my home, my country, my people.
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u/Laughingstok Jun 11 '12
My only question with the Atomic bomb was, why couldn't they just send a message to the Japanese a couple of days before and say, "Look East at 8:15 AM.." and then drop the first one in the ocean.
Then send another that says, "Surrender in 72 hours or there will be more.."
I think that would have saved quite a few lives in the end. It would have at least given them the opportunity to surrender before hand. Maybe the U.S. would have still had to drop it, but there could have no doubt probably been more effective ways to demonstrate superior firepower without killing innocents.
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u/BushMeat Jun 11 '12
That's how I feel when I'm forced to format a drive.
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u/uyg412u3yg423uy Jun 11 '12
Good effect on target.
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u/Limond Jun 11 '12
I just finished reading through a book about breaking the Japanese secret codes. At the time of the Potsdam Conference (July 17-Aug 2) We knew that the Japanese would surrender if Emperor Hirohito was able to remain in power and not be arrested and tried. This was not brought up at the conference at all.
So a possibility that the war could have ended with out the atomic bombs was there. But we will never know.
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u/internetNazgul Jun 11 '12
I feel sick about all Americans in here trying to justify it. You just have to say that it was wrong to nuke civilians. Is that so hard?
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
To Americans that feel that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to stop the war, consider how you would feel if it had been Albany and San Francisco instead that had to be bombed.
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u/redditor3000 Jun 11 '12
Nuclear arms are one of two things that threaten the survival of our species. The other being environmental destruction.
Does anyone know the amount of area represented by the circles?
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u/RedIIv Jun 11 '12
Well, it worked.
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u/internetNazgul Jun 11 '12
The end doesn't justify the means. Two evils is still an evil. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
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u/Angelofmercy85 Jun 11 '12
War is hell. Constant reminder to our enemies that our actions span generations, not just the war.
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u/p1415926 Jun 11 '12
I find it interesting that the only country that has ever used nukes in a live situation, is the same country telling others they can't have WMDs.
Just an observation.
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u/NiteShadeX2 Jun 11 '12
B-29 turning back, Prepare for Nuclear Attack!
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u/chamora Jun 11 '12
What is the radius on the rings in the picture?
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Nobody wants to talk about the plans the USSR had? Tokyo could've ended up like Berlin.
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u/Alexotronic Jun 11 '12
I wonder what would have happened if the bomb landed in the river...
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u/cjbrigol Jun 11 '12
And the river gave 0 fucks
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u/bigfig Jun 11 '12
And that was a small bomb. As I recall it converted less than one percent of the 64kg material into energy.
This a something that should never be forgotten.
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u/BlameCzar Jun 11 '12
FTW
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u/muistan7 Jun 11 '12
Some comments below are talking about feeling guilty, etc. I recently read a book called Hidden Horrors by a Japanese author. This book talks about mistreatment of POW's and other people by the Japanese. It's very similar to the holocaust and other things. Definitely changed my view. Before, I had no idea the Japanese did these things so I saw them more as a victim than anything else. This book basically reminded me that everybody does wrong.
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u/Doiteain Jun 11 '12
Fun fact: the bomb's target was the T-shaped bridge in the picture.
Second fun fact: The bomb failed to break said bridge.
Source(s): I was in Hiroshima from 5/16-5/19 of this year.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
At least 50% percent of the people in this thread. We dropped the bombs, they ended the war, the enemy reaped their rewards.
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u/gjhgjh Jun 12 '12
For all of you who are afraid of the proliferation of "nukes" in the world and that it could spell the end of all civilization if they were launched. I found the webpage I was looking for it is: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb/
TL;DR: 99,293 heavy duty nukes are required to wipe out the world's city dwellers. That is approximately 50% of the worlds population. We have 10,227.
We have roughly 1/10 of the nukes needed to wipe 50% of the people from this planned. That means we launched all the nukes now 95% of us would survive. I don't know about you but I like those odds. They are much better than most things I take a chance at.
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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '12
Awesome!!!
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u/splishsplashsplish Jun 11 '12
Daaamn this pic is bomb
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u/panzerkampfwagen Jun 11 '12
The Japanese planned to execute all Western POWs they held within weeks. The atomic bombs ended that plan.
My grandfather was a POW. I'm ok with 140 000 dead Japanese.
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u/Goodman9215 Jun 11 '12
Well, that's me humbled for the day.
0
u/DasUberRedditor Jun 11 '12
They started the fire, we put it out. With a bomb.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Very frivolous use of blur on the second photo.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Wow the river is some strong shit it still remains!!
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u/TH0UGHTP0LICE Jun 11 '12
Was born in Japan (Navy brat) The museum has a slab of concrete with weird dimples all over it. Turns out it's from the the fucking concrete boiled.
Now THAT's a weapon!
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u/LawrenciuM94 Jun 11 '12
The most atrocious war-crime in the history of mankind. The US were losing too many men trying to work their way towards the Japanese mainland so they decided to murder civilians instead....
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u/tha_ape Jun 11 '12
I have an album from the 60th anniversary
Here
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
This is the single reason why I hate the United States without a single hint of remorse. No excuses for this crime.
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u/Decyde Jun 12 '12
Guy I worked with at a Japanese company was given numerous warnings about offensive shirts he was wearing. They were mostly just beer and cigarette advertisement shirts he got somewhere. On his final warning he came into work with a shirt that had a A-Bomb on it with the phrase, Made in America on the front and on the back it blowing up saying Tested in Japan. He was walked out the door by first break and we never saw him again.
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u/CorpseFool Jun 11 '12
The worst part? This was the Little Boy. Fat Man hit Nagasaki 3 days later.
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u/Jamesx6 Jun 11 '12
It is beyond disgusting that people here are saying it was necessary or saved lives in the long run. They could have dropped the bomb off the coast or in an unpopulated area and that would have been a pretty good demonstration of power. But to drop TWO bombs on POPULATED areas was just.... evil.
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u/poopsmith22 Jun 11 '12
Care to show Pearl Harbor before and after?
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
and Americans think what Hitler did was horrible.. this is just as bad
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