As horrible as the damage and loss of life were, they prevented an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Had the Allies invaded Japan, there would have been more Japanese civilians killed in the fighting then were killed by the two bombings.

The Japanese Imperial Government was providing special hand grenades to civilians to use in the event of an allied invasion. Thus, civilians would have been armed, and would have had to be killed by the allies. Additionally, given the high density of Japan's urban centers, there would have been a massive amount of street fighting which would have resulted in more civilian deaths.

Of course, the above does not take into account the loss of life for the allies which would have been astronomical. The Japanese coast was heavily fortified, and the earlier battles at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and others had taught the allies that the Japanese would fight to the last man.

I wish that the Japanese had surrendered earlier so we would not have had to drop the bombs. But, they did not and thus the allies had a very limited number of ways to end the war.

Of course, I hope that no more nuclear warheads ever have to get dropped by anyone.

Doesn't make me sad, doesn't make me proud. War sucks, but when you have no choice but to defend your country then by all means use every weapon at your disposal and hope you kill more of the enemy than they kill of you.

Is it better that we let the war in Iraq and Afghanistan linger for decades when we have the military power to have ended the war years ago? How many unnecessary American deaths occurred because we want to level the warring field?

Don't get me wrong, we shouldn't have gone to war with Iraq, but damn if we do go to war, lets remember the goal is to kill as many of them as it takes to stop the threat without too many of us being killed.

Yeah, nuke those civilians!

Really?

And yet, we have had fairly continuous wars for quite a while - doesn't seem to be achieving that objective, does it?

The distinction between civilians and combatants is a vitally important one, to my mind.

I suppose that torture is ok too, for you?

Jafs - a few points.

We have had continuous wars because we have strayed from the Constituion in terms of declaring a war.

The distinction between a cilviand and combatant is important but sometimes in war cilviand get killed. If you have a bomb factory in the middle of a city then it is the governments fault that cilvians get killed when the other side bombs it.

We shouldn't kill civilians if it can be avoided but the possible death of civilians should not deter a country from its objective of neutralizing the threat ASAP and with minimum loss of lives on their side.

Your comment about torture is akin to me saying to you, so jafs you support not defending your country under any circumstance? Neither has anything to do with the issue. But yes, under certain circumstances torture might be warranted although I am generally opposed to torture. I know other countries use it but that doesn't justify it as a rule. And I might add there are different types of torture. Blaring rock music vs mutilation so it is not a black and white issue.

I was responding to tbaker.

You seem to have conflicting views here - first you say use all the weapons, and do everything you can to end the war quickly, then you say we shouldn't kill civilians if it can be avoided.

Why would you oppose torture if you want to use "all the weapons" as well?

tbaker says war is supposed to be barbaric so that it deters us from war, but that doesn't seem to work very well, does it?

Jafs it is difficult because like most serious decisions it is not black and white.

Let's start with torture. As I said I am not opposed to it in all circumstances and in all forms. We have to be careful that we do not become barbaric when engaging in the barbaric act of war. Sleep depravation may be a useful form of torture and may be appropriate but under no circumstances would cutting off a mans fingers or raping a female soldier

As for killing civilians yes we should take precautions not to kill them but under certain circumstances it would be appropriate as in the case of bombing Hiroshima. Now if it comes to sending in ground troops knowing we will incur heavy casualties or bombing the city with no loss of American life but loss of civilians I'd opt to bomb the city.

That's fine, and a much more nuanced approach - I don't necessarily agree with everything you said.

But, it's very different from your first post - perhaps if you take a more nuanced approach like this one, you should reconsider posting things like that.

1) I had a great uncle that was in a unit that was headed to Japan in order to force a surrender. He served in the Pacific theater since he was an ethnic German. It was very likely he would not survive the war, and everyone in his unit knew that.

But, after the bombs dropped, he had orders to go home. Then the war was over, and ever after that, he would never ride in a Japanese car.

If you have any sympathy for the Japanese Army, you should read about what happened in Nanking, China. Sure, they didn't drop a big bomb, they just kidnapped girls and forced them into prostitution. And, the Japanese almost totally destroyed just about everything in Manilla, which was known as the Pearl of the Orient before the war. Today, only a small area of Manilla still has anything from before W.W. II.

2) But, the Nazis also forced girls into prostitution, but you will find very few references to that. You have to read a lot of history books to find any mention of that fact. Think about Paris, France. Adolf Hitler issued orders for the entire city to be destroyed, but fortunately for the world, those orders were never carried out.

I also had an inlaw uncle that was also an ethnic German, and I believe that since he was so fluent in German, he would be perfect for reconnaissance missions. He had a very close call once, you can read about it here, this is a reposting of a comment I made on this site 11 months ago:

As an aside, I have a small tidbit of history that I am absolutely sure you will never find in any history book, because I know the man involved and he never talked about it until I believe the 1980s. He didn't talk about the war at all for decades, totally refused to discuss it, and the only thing he ever said until the 1980s was that he was never going to go back to Germany, ever. But in the 1980s, he finally talked, and told his son in law, who was my brother, something that had happened, and my brother thought it to be father funny in a tragic way.

Mr. B., who is still living, was an American soldier fighting in Europe. It was terrifically unusual that he was there because he was an ethnic German. Very few ethic Germans were sent to fight in Europe, most of them were in the Pacific theater.

Even to this day Mr. B. speaks German better than he speaks English. He certainly speaks English with a very heavy German accent!

Mr. B. was on a reconnaissance mission, and he and only a few crossed the Rhine on a very small boat in the middle of the night to scout out German positions.

The group scattered, to see if they could discover any German positions. Mr. B. was making his way through some brushes in a wooded area, when every reconnaissance man's worst nightmare happened.

Very loudly, he heard a very loud shout: "Wer ist dort?"!!! (Who is there?)

A German patrol consisting of a few German solders was passing by, and one of them had heard something suspicious moving in the bushes.

Very loudly, he shouted back in extremely fluent German "I'm, das eine Scheiße nimmt!" (I'm taking a ****!)

"Heil!" was shouted back, and the German patrol kept on patrolling, looking for Allied spies to shoot.

The only reason he survived was because of his very fluent German. In German, he has no accent at all.

I'm sure you're correct, I hadn't thought of accelerometers. That's rather odd that I didn't even think of that, since I worked for a company that did flight tests of business jets and we did use accelerometers on the systems that I built from instruction.

I have a tendency to remember and repeat what I've read or been told, without a whole lot of references. I was told that only gyroscopes were used, and I believed it!

"Duck and Cover was a social guidance film produced in 1951 by the United States federal government's Civil Defense branch shortly after the Soviet Union began nuclear testing. Written by Raymond J. Mauer and directed by Anthony Rizzo of Archer Productions and made with the help of schoolchildren from New York City and Astoria, New York, it was shown in schools as the cornerstone of the government's "duck and cover" public awareness campaign. The movie states that nuclear war could happen at any time without warning, and U.S. citizens should keep this constantly in mind and be ever ready."

That would be the next day, Aug 7th. The vigil for the London bombings will be Aug. 8th, holocaust victims, Aug. 9th, rape of Nanking Aug. 10th. 9/11 victims is Aug. 11th.

What is so unfortunate, yet so true, is that we can fill in all 365 days and still not be able to remember all who have died at the hands of man's inhumanity towards man.

Rarely agree with you, but this time I do---except for a slight error, 9/11 would be September 11, wouldn't it?

I find it sad that whenever the peace coalition is mentioned, so many snarky remarks are made. Whether you agree with the Japanese bombings or not, can you not remember the innocent people who died there?

Whether you agree with everything the peace coalition does or not, surely it's good to have somebody as a counter balance to the war-mongering in our government. Obviously not an equal counter balance, but at least they're trying to do something.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was not due to any one single factor.

A) The Japanese wanted to expand the Japanese Empire, that is, the Japanese wanted to control more of the Pacific Ocean.

B) The Japanese felt threatened by the USA.

C) The cutoff of fuel destined for Japan, they were under embargo from fuel supplies at the time.

There is a significant point that is often overlooked, and that is that the Japanese concept of the conclusion of a war is very different than ours. The Japanese were under the very mistaken impression that the result of the war would be that an armistice line would be drawn father eastward. That concept was part of the Samurai tradition. Since Japan was so small, the wars that they had fought for centuries were no more than a redrawing of the boundaries of principalities or kingdoms.

Of course, that is not a complete list, there have been many lengthy books written on that very subject.

A cultural clash, and a war begins. That's an endless history.

That's off the top if my head, I'm sure there were other reasons as well.

My dad was a waist gunner and radio operator on a B17 bomber. He spent the last months of the war killing time at Scott Field near St. Louis. Although he didn't know it at the time, his squadron was being held in reserve for the anticipated invasion of Japan. Had the two atomic bombs not been dropped, I may very well have never been born.

The atomic bombings were a horror, but a necessary one. More human lives--both American and Japanese--would have been lost in an invasion, than were lost in the atomic blasts. Truman had one viable option. He did the right thing.