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75 years ago

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Post by The Pantry Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 15:24

This is what it looked like after the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima
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Post by Other Teams Pursuing That Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 16:37

Despicable.
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Post by kingstonlake Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 16:41

What’s the 75 year later take? Saved lives or no?
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Post by tGreenWay Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 16:50

kingstonlake wrote:What’s the 75 year later take? Saved lives or no?


Hey DWags, tell us what it was like living in the US in the first few days after the bombs were dropped.
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Post by The Pantry Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 17:00

Harry S Truman’s Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb
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Post by Cameron Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 17:14

kingstonlake wrote:What’s the 75 year later take? Saved lives or no?
No.
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Post by kingstonlake Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 17:22

Cameron wrote:
kingstonlake wrote:What’s the 75 year later take? Saved lives or no?
No.

Bout 200,000 died, correct?
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Post by Travis of the Cosmos Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 17:32

No
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Post by CORNER BLITZ Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 17:37

The Pantry wrote:Harry S Truman’s Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb

Interesting read

Another on Nagasaki's selection
https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/history/2020/08/twists-fate-made-nagasaki-target-atomic-bomb
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Post by kingstonlake Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 17:40

Crazy to think they haven’t been used since. Maybe whoever was first would be the last. 75 years ago 2599972566
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Post by Turtleneck Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 18:39

Miami is going lecture all of you.
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Post by steveschneider Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 18:42

RIP to Slim Pickins.
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Post by Floyd Robertson Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 18:44

If only the Germans hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor.
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Post by tGreenWay Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 19:32

kingstonlake wrote:Crazy to think they haven’t been used since. Maybe whoever was first would be the last. 75 years ago 2599972566


The first is the last until he’s not, dummy. Why you so stoopid?
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Post by tGreenWay Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 19:34

steveschneider wrote:RIP to Slim Pickins.

His death was Oklahoma State’s gain.
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Post by tGreenWay Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 19:34

Floyd Robertson wrote:If only the Germans hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor.


I’m with you, Floyd.
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Post by kingstonlake Thu 6 Aug 2020 - 19:41

tGreenWay wrote:
kingstonlake wrote:Crazy to think they haven’t been used since. Maybe whoever was first would be the last. 75 years ago 2599972566


The first is the last until he’s not, dummy. Why you so stoopid?

You dumber than stoopid 75 years ago 1486952199
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Post by MiamiSpartan Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 7:38

kingstonlake wrote:
Cameron wrote:
No.

Bout 200,000 died, correct?

Millions of Japanese lives saved. It is not even a question.
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Post by kingstonlake Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 8:26

MiamiSpartan wrote:
kingstonlake wrote:

Bout 200,000 died, correct?

Millions of Japanese lives saved. It is not even a question.

I tend to agree. It’s a good debate. Doesn’t even take into account the number of Philippine, Burmese, and Chinese’s lives that were spared under a brutal occupation.
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Post by DWags Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 9:17

kingstonlake wrote:
MiamiSpartan wrote:

Millions of Japanese lives saved. It is not even a question.

I tend to agree. It’s a good debate. Doesn’t even take into account the number of Philippine, Burmese, and Chinese’s lives that were spared under a brutal occupation.

certainly can make a lot of arguments about the lives saved. And certainly did save sives in the long run. However, this bombing did come at a cost. We did kill a ton of innocent children. I guess we can say conventional bombing would eventually do that too. It's really a tough debate. I know the pilot and the crew had issues with what they had done after they saw it dropped,but like us 75 years later, could understand it was a horrible decision,but maybe a needed one.
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Post by kingstonlake Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 9:35

DWags wrote:
kingstonlake wrote:

I tend to agree. It’s a good debate. Doesn’t even take into account the number of Philippine, Burmese, and Chinese’s lives that were spared under a brutal occupation.

certainly can make a lot of arguments about the lives saved. And certainly did save sives in the long run. However, this bombing did come at a cost. We did kill a ton of innocent children. I guess we can say conventional bombing would eventually do that too. It's really a tough debate. I know the pilot and the crew had issues with what they had done after they saw it dropped,but like us 75 years later, could understand it was a horrible decision,but maybe a needed one.
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Yup, so many ethical and “by the numbers“ angles. The summer conventional bombing of Tokyo took more lives than either nuclear bomb. There shear awe of what one bomb could do more than likely was a motivator although not initially....even though it wasn’t as deadly as sustained conventional bombing. One thing that’s not debatable is it saved American lives. The cost and morality is definitely debatable.
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Post by Watch Out Pylon! Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 9:45

MiamiSpartan wrote:
kingstonlake wrote:

Bout 200,000 died, correct?

Millions of Japanese lives saved.  It is not even a question.

I'm in this boat.

Question for the no people. Are you thinking the Japanese would have just surrendered once we reached their mainland?

Ethically this was an abhorrent decision, but from a pure numbers perspective the no people sound real fucking stupid to me.

Yes, I am bored and I'm trying to stir the pot.
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Post by DWags Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:02

What made it such a hard decision was the fact it was such a tightly guarded national secret. We could not tell a third party to negotiate a meeting with Japanese scientists and military and show them what we had. How could you even consider that at the time?

Truman had balls. That wasn’t easy.
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Post by Floyd Robertson Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:07

DWags wrote:What made it such a hard decision was the fact it was such a tightly guarded national secret. We could not tell a third party to negotiate a meeting with Japanese scientists and military and show them what we had. How could you even consider that at the time?

Truman had balls. That wasn’t easy.

I'm not sure a meeting was necessary. Send them a cable and tell them to send a ship and some scientists to the Bikini atoll at such and such date and time and watch what happens. Tell them if they don't surrender then the same thing is going to happen on their homeland in 72 hours. It would have helped to have a third nuke ready to go.

I mean, hypothetically.
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Post by Travis of the Cosmos Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:20

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:
MiamiSpartan wrote:

Millions of Japanese lives saved.  It is not even a question.

I'm in this boat.

Question for the no people. Are you thinking the Japanese would have just surrendered once we reached their mainland?

Ethically this was an abhorrent decision, but from a pure numbers perspective the no people sound real fucking stupid to me.

Yes, I am bored and I'm trying to stir the pot.

The Soviets were set to invade japan 3 months after the end of the war in Germany, and they did, on August 8th after we had already bombed Hiroshima. The US didn’t want the Soviets to be coming in to save their ass in Japan and needed to end the war before that, so we did. The timing of the bombing, days before the Soviets came, is no coincidence.

The history is twisted into “oh if we hadn’t don’t that millions of people would have died instead” but that’s dubious. With the Soviets coming in from the other side, an already weakened japan wouldn’t have had much of a choice anymore to keep fighting, it would have ended very quickly. From a humanitarian perspective it was totally unnecessary to kill as many people as we did.
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Post by WhiteBoyHatcher Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:22

We should have nuked more. Nuke everybody. Nuke the middle east. Nuke all the shithole countries.
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Post by Travis of the Cosmos Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:27

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:
Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

I'm in this boat.

Question for the no people. Are you thinking the Japanese would have just surrendered once we reached their mainland?

Ethically this was an abhorrent decision, but from a pure numbers perspective the no people sound real fucking stupid to me.

Yes, I am bored and I'm trying to stir the pot.

The Soviets were set to invade japan 3 months after the end of the war in Germany, and they did, on August 8th after we had already bombed Hiroshima. The US didn’t want the Soviets to be coming in to save their ass in Japan and needed to end the war before that, so we did. The timing of the bombing, days before the Soviets came, is no coincidence.

The history is twisted into “oh if we hadn’t don’t that millions of people would have died instead” but that’s dubious. With the Soviets coming in from the other side, an already weakened japan wouldn’t have had much of a choice anymore to keep fighting, it would have ended very quickly. From a humanitarian perspective it was totally unnecessary to kill as many people as we did.

Let me amend one thing to say “the perception of the Soviets coming in to save our ass” not that they really would have been. The Cold War was on it’s way, we knew that, and we didn’t need them looking like the worlds hero swooping in to save the Americans. It was PR.
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Post by MiamiSpartan Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:28

kingstonlake wrote:
DWags wrote:

certainly can make a lot of arguments about the lives saved. And certainly did save sives in the long run. However, this bombing did come at a cost. We did kill a ton of innocent children. I guess we can say conventional bombing would eventually do that too. It's really a tough debate. I know the pilot and the crew had issues with what they had done after they saw it dropped,but like us 75 years later, could understand it was a horrible decision,but maybe a needed one.
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Yup, so many ethical and “by the numbers“ angles. The summer conventional bombing of Tokyo took more lives than either nuclear bomb. There shear awe of what one bomb could do more than likely was a motivator although not initially....even though it wasn’t as deadly as sustained conventional bombing. One thing that’s not debatable is it saved American lives. The cost and morality is definitely debatable.


Heck, more were killed in a single night in March than both atomic bombs put together. And we still kept bombing them conventionally for a couple of days after Nagasaki.

We can also look to Okinawa as a sign of what would have happened in an invasion of mainland Japan. That was the one real Japanese island that we invaded (i.e., not occupied, with Japanese civilians, etc.). 150,000 Okinawans died, out of a pre-war population of 300,000 (and at the time of the battle in 1945, closer to 200,000). That's around 70-80% of the existing civilian population in April 1945.
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Post by MiamiSpartan Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:30

Floyd Robertson wrote:
DWags wrote:What made it such a hard decision was the fact it was such a tightly guarded national secret. We could not tell a third party to negotiate a meeting with Japanese scientists and military and show them what we had. How could you even consider that at the time?

Truman had balls. That wasn’t easy.

I'm not sure a meeting was necessary. Send them a cable and tell them to send a ship and some scientists to the Bikini atoll at such and such date and time and watch what happens. Tell them if they don't surrender then the same thing is going to happen on their homeland in 72 hours. It would have helped to have a third nuke ready to go.

I mean, hypothetically.

I don't think that would have worked. They didn't surrender after Hiroshima. And they continued a lot of debate even after Nagasaki, which was combined with the Soviet invasion. And STILL there was a lot of debate and even an attempted coup. It took the emperor finally stepping in (which he normally didn't do on war matters) in order to really end the debates of the Supreme War Council, and end the war.
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Post by kingstonlake Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:35

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:
Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

I'm in this boat.

Question for the no people. Are you thinking the Japanese would have just surrendered once we reached their mainland?

Ethically this was an abhorrent decision, but from a pure numbers perspective the no people sound real fucking stupid to me.

Yes, I am bored and I'm trying to stir the pot.

The Soviets were set to invade japan 3 months after the end of the war in Germany, and they did, on August 8th after we had already bombed Hiroshima. The US didn’t want the Soviets to be coming in to save their ass in Japan and needed to end the war before that, so we did. The timing of the bombing, days before the Soviets came, is no coincidence.

The history is twisted into “oh if we hadn’t don’t that millions of people would have died instead” but that’s dubious. With the Soviets coming in from the other side, an already weakened japan wouldn’t have had much of a choice anymore to keep fighting, it would have ended very quickly.  From a humanitarian perspective it was totally unnecessary to kill as many people as we did.

Japan knew this. Yet still didn’t surrender. I forgot about the Soviet angle though. I’ll add them to the list of lives potentially saved.


Last edited by kingstonlake on Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:36; edited 1 time in total
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Post by Travis of the Cosmos Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:36

kingstonlake wrote:
Travis of the Cosmos wrote:

The Soviets were set to invade japan 3 months after the end of the war in Germany, and they did, on August 8th after we had already bombed Hiroshima. The US didn’t want the Soviets to be coming in to save their ass in Japan and needed to end the war before that, so we did. The timing of the bombing, days before the Soviets came, is no coincidence.

The history is twisted into “oh if we hadn’t don’t that millions of people would have died instead” but that’s dubious. With the Soviets coming in from the other side, an already weakened japan wouldn’t have had much of a choice anymore to keep fighting, it would have ended very quickly. From a humanitarian perspective it was totally unnecessary to kill as many people as we did.

Japan knee this. Yet still didn’t surrender. I forgot about the Soviet angle though. I’ll add them to the list of lives potentially saved.

They knew what?
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Post by Floyd Robertson Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:38

MiamiSpartan wrote:
Floyd Robertson wrote:

I'm not sure a meeting was necessary. Send them a cable and tell them to send a ship and some scientists to the Bikini atoll at such and such date and time and watch what happens. Tell them if they don't surrender then the same thing is going to happen on their homeland in 72 hours. It would have helped to have a third nuke ready to go.

I mean, hypothetically.

I don't think that would have worked. They didn't surrender after Hiroshima. And they continued a lot of debate even after Nagasaki, which was combined with the Soviet invasion. And STILL there was a lot of debate and even an attempted coup. It took the emperor finally stepping in (which he normally didn't do on war matters) in order to really end the debates of the Supreme War Council, and end the war.

Hmmm. You're probably right. If they didn't surrender after the first one, then showing them a test on neutral turf wouldn't have worked.
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Post by MiamiSpartan Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:45

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:
Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

I'm in this boat.

Question for the no people. Are you thinking the Japanese would have just surrendered once we reached their mainland?

Ethically this was an abhorrent decision, but from a pure numbers perspective the no people sound real fucking stupid to me.

Yes, I am bored and I'm trying to stir the pot.

The Soviets were set to invade japan 3 months after the end of the war in Germany, and they did, on August 8th after we had already bombed Hiroshima. The US didn’t want the Soviets to be coming in to save their ass in Japan and needed to end the war before that, so we did. The timing of the bombing, days before the Soviets came, is no coincidence.

The history is twisted into “oh if we hadn’t don’t that millions of people would have died instead” but that’s dubious. With the Soviets coming in from the other side, an already weakened japan wouldn’t have had much of a choice anymore to keep fighting, it would have ended very quickly. From a humanitarian perspective it was totally unnecessary to kill as many people as we did.

The Soviet invasion was never set in stone. We did not know the date, the extent to it, or what effect it would have. All we had was a claim from Stalin several months earlier. That argument holds no water.

What some can suggest more legitimately, is that Nagasaki was unnecessary due to the Soviet invasion. However, that's not a complaint that really holds water. The bomb on Nagasaki was dropped about 11 hours after the Soviet invasion. The invasion wasn't live streamed on the internet. The Japanese government didn't even know for sure about the invasion until several hours after it begun. What information we had was limited. Additionally, Truman did not "order" the bombing after the Soviet invasion like some claim. Truman ordered 3 bombs to be dropped, on 3 specific dates. They were to continue unless otherwise ordered. He did call off the third bombing (and the conventional bombings that were continuing after Nagasaki), prior to Japan's agreement to terms. However, less than 11 hours to ascertain the extent of the Soviet invasion, get a feel for what impact it might have on Japan's thinking, make a decision, and get an abort order to the Pacific, isn't a lot of time.

As mentioned above, however, the debate continued after Nagasaki, and required a rare instance of the Emperor stepping in....and even then, some elements attempted a coup after the decision to surrender. People want to argue that the bombs forced them to surrender, or the Soviets forced them to surrender, but the fact is that both contributed heavily toward it.
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Post by kingstonlake Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 11:53

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:
kingstonlake wrote:

Japan knee this. Yet still didn’t surrender. I forgot about the Soviet angle though. I’ll add them to the list of lives potentially saved.

They knew what?

That the Soviets were going to invade at some point.
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Post by Travis of the Cosmos Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 12:00

So you’re going with, even with the benefit of history “they said they would but we didn’t know that they’d follow through (even though they did follow through so we probably knew that)” Yeah I mean I get that you’re not going to change your mind but shit. I guess.

The fact is that we didn’t wait a week to see what would happen. We didn’t allow the Japanese to face down a two front war while already weakened and realize there was no point. We didn’t do that because we had already lost the race to Berlin and we were not going to allow the Soviets the chance to win in japan too. So we did it the day we did it, and with purpose beyond just ending the war. And we were right. Just based on the perception 75 years later, looking at the comments in the thread. It is what it is as they say.


Last edited by Travis of the Cosmos on Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 12:02; edited 1 time in total
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Post by Travis of the Cosmos Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 12:01

kingstonlake wrote:
Travis of the Cosmos wrote:

They knew what?

That the Soviets were going to invade at some point.

They didn’t. We did.
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Post by Cameron Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 12:48

I'm firmly with Travis on this one.

One thing I'll point out that hasn't been mentioned are the terms of surrender. We demanded unconditional surrender, and many on the Japanese side were concerned that we would try the Emperor as a war criminal and execute him. We didn't do that, and had we conditioned their surrender upon the survival of the Emperor, the nuclear option could have been avoided.

I completely reject the false choice that it was nuke them or full on ground invasion of the Japanese homeland. The Japanese war machine was broken and depleted. They are an island nation, not too hard to interfere with their supply lines. We definitely could have waited them out, but as Travis pointed out, we didn't want to have to share with the Soviets like we did in Germany.
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Post by kingstonlake Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 12:49

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:
kingstonlake wrote:

That the Soviets were going to invade at some point.

They didn’t. We did.

What was the reason the soviets declared to them they weren’t renewing their neutrality pact in the spring?
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75 years ago Empty Re: 75 years ago

Post by Travis of the Cosmos Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 12:53

kingstonlake wrote:
Travis of the Cosmos wrote:

They didn’t. We did.

What was the reason the soviets declared to them they weren’t renewing their neutrality pact in the spring?

I’m sure they would probably have been aware that at some point it was coming, but they didn’t know when.... and we should have at least let it happen first before murdering that many people potentially unnecessarily. If we had let the soviets invade, then a month later it was still deemed necessary.... but we didn’t. We hadn’t exhausted all realistic options to save lives, because we were more worried about saving face than lives.
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75 years ago Empty Re: 75 years ago

Post by MSU addict Fri 7 Aug 2020 - 13:01

Floyd Robertson wrote:
DWags wrote:What made it such a hard decision was the fact it was such a tightly guarded national secret. We could not tell a third party to negotiate a meeting with Japanese scientists and military and show them what we had.   How could you even consider that at the time?  

Truman had balls.  That wasn’t easy.

I'm not sure a meeting was necessary. Send them a cable and tell them to send a ship and some scientists to the Bikini atoll at such and such date and time and watch what happens. Tell them if they don't surrender then the same thing is going to happen on their homeland in 72 hours. It would have helped to have a third nuke ready to go.

I mean, hypothetically.
While we did not have a third bomb ready to go, the US was capable of producing 3-4 nuclear bombs per month at the time we dropped the first on Hiroshima. 

As for DWags point, the cat was out of the bag when we dropped the first bomb.  No other country was close to developing a nuclear weapon at that point.  That is hind sight though, you never know what your enemy is truly capable of.

That said, in my opinion a demonstration was really not a practical option.
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75 years ago Empty Re: 75 years ago

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