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The Trinity test.

It sure worked. We never had WW III.

ruveyn

mercifullyfree wrote:

Japan had three days after the first bombing to think things over.....

That's not long and I don't recall reading of a warning being given in between. Was there one?

I think accepting conditional surrender instead of insisting on unconditional surrender may have saved even more lives, but without time travel we'll never really know. For that reason, we don't know that dropping nukes instead of accepting conditional surrender saved lives. It seems more like a justification after the fact that some people cling to because they would rather not believe that their nation did anything wrong or "evil." Clears up that cognitive dissonance.

Not a nuke at all...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redoubt_Volcano

If the first one wasn't a warning to knock it off I don't know what would be.


The idea was to totally dismember Japan as a hostile, not leave it intact to fight another day.

BTW: In my case it doesn't bother me a bit to believe that my nation did anything wrong.

Nor I. Those bastards started the war, we finished it.

ruveyn

Nope. First were the US-actions, including a military forced Embargo and stealing Japanese worships in the US-area, then there was Pearl Harbour.

Or to say it simple:

1) Japanese tuff tuff ship

2) American warship make japanese tuff tuff ship dead.

3) Because of american warships, making japanese tufftuff ships dead, japanese economy is in the ass.

4) Japanese cant ignore american warships any longer, and bomb base of american warships.


So its everyones personal oppinion, but from my oppinion the idiot who started to shoot with his warships is the one who started it, not the one who isnt willing to ignore the shooting warship another 6 months.

Sure it was not that simple, so there were great chaos in china around that time, and a national chinese force fighting against a communism chinese force. So sure it was no surprise, that the US feared the communists to rise, so they decided to support the national chinese forces. So long pretty easy. The conflict started when Japanese went on war against China, so they couldnt act directly because it would have been interferring in other nations wars. Instead they tried to support their chinese allies with "economical war", as the mentioned complete Embargo. The thing is, Japan had no ressources, thats why they went to war anyway: To acchieve ressources they didnt have on their own. So by creating that Embargo an foreign uninvolved country forced Japan into the situation of on one side: Accept the Embargo = deciding to loose the war because there is no much use to warships without gas or fighting against the USA.

The thing that makes it bad for me, is that its the normal US citizen who got f****d from his own politics. So instead of all that Embargo stuff and so on, US could have officially declared war against Japan to aid their Chinese partners. So why did this not happen? Because US citizens DID NOT WANT TO GET INVOLVED IN THIS s**t! So going to war with Japan against the wish of the citizens would have killed every political carrier. Solution: Create a solution, in which you get your wished warpartner in a situation, that forces him to declare war on you.

There would have been enough causes to go to war against Japan out of humanitiy. So their war against China was absolutely brutal and cruel. But from my oppinion, if my citizens dont want to go to war because of this, I should simply accept and not force my people into a war, because I think to be smarter than them.

The Nihon-Jun learned the hard way: Do NOT f*ck with the United States of America.

All they had to do, was pull out of Manchuria. They didn't. They followed the Go South strategy and the paid for it dearly.

ruveyn

While that is ironic justice for the Jews it is inconceivable that the US would drop one. Any side effects of the nuke would also affect the US allies in Europe - including Britain. With the Russians being increasingly powerful, they wouldn't want to upset Britain or France.

Besides, bit of a waste. They were running out of non German food by that point.


True, everybody tends to forget that the allies knew sweet FA about the Holocaust until they got to the labour camps. Rescuing the Jews from sewing bags or making ladders was hardly an invasion priority.

True, everybody tends to forget that the allies knew sweet FA about the Holocaust until they got to the labour camps. Rescuing the Jews from sewing bags or making ladders was hardly an invasion priority.[/quote]

Actually they knew about the program in 1943. Jan Karski got the word out. They just did not know how bad it was.

In any case the Allies had no plans whatever to rescue Jews. Their interest was in wrecking Nazi Germany.

ruveyn

The difference is that planes fly into buildings accidentally on occasion. Two had hit skyscrapers in New York in the past 60 years.

If you assign a very low probability to an attack of that nature happening (around 0.005%), then after the first plane you end up with a probability of terrorists being the cause of around 40% if you use Bayes's Theorem. After the second plane, that shoots up to 99.99%.

Now the chance of the USA unleashing a very powerful weapon on a Japanese city in 1945 were probably about 2% given the war situation and worldwide research into WMDs, including by Japan's Allies, Nazi Germany. The probability of the first bomb being a nuclear attack was 100% if it actually was an attack. The probability of some other phenomenon destroying Hiroshima was probably similar to the prior probability of 9/11, which we will call 0.005%. That gives a probability of 99.8% that Nagasaki was due to America launching a WMD. That "shoots up" to 99.995% after Hiroshima.

I've always wondered whether it would have been practical for the US to detonate a bomb so that the shockwave would hit Tokyo but the blast would be over the sea and hopefully kill no-one (though obviously the shockwave would kill many people, just not as many as the blast). I know Japan had a weird pride complex at the time and were determined to not surrender, but surely they would have once they saw the power of the weapons?

From my Oppinion they wanted to have tests on living beings in some amount, to see the fully potential of their weapon on their own. So a small citiy is good for this, lots of different people of all ages and so on. If it was only about the impact on the society, an attack on an military target would be as good as well. One bomg, complete military base including material completely in the ass, what do you want more. But throwing this kind of s**t on a normal small city is criminal act of terror and cannot be excused ever.

[quote]All they had to do, was pull out of Manchuria. They didn't. They followed the Go South strategy and the paid for it dearly.[/quote}

Cool, so there are lots of muslim fanatics who will have lots of similar explanations, why it was necessary to fly two civilian airplanes in two civilian buildings. This whole thinking is wrong. You want to go to war? Then go and fight military targets. This is what official war is about: Army vs. Army. And there will be still enough of collateral civilian damage. But fighting unarmed civilists with military weapons on purpose is no war, it is simple murder. No matter how much people went down the Manchuria and no matter what s**t some of your politics did in Arabia.

First of all: The chance of the USA unleashing a very powerful weapon on a Japanese city in 1945 was 100 percent, as it did occur.

Second of all: Assigning probabilities to events after they take place is often meaningless.

For example, The Japanese had severely underestimated the scope of the US Nuclear Weapons programme, as they initially did not believe that the US had the capacity to produce nukes. Similarly, the US had initially overestimated the Japanese will to fight, as they were preparing to drop another nuke on Japan one week after, and potentially 3 more by October 1945 (so much for the 2 percent claim, BTW).

In other words, whether to drop 1 or 2 nukes wasn't the issue for the US at the time. It was whether to drop up to 6 nukes, because they did not believe that Japan would surrender otherwise...

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were classic examples of choice under uncertainty. Hell, the US barely even knew what they were dropping over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was only 3 weeks since the US carried out the very first nuclear weapons test.

there has also been speculation that japan was considering surrendering anyway out of fear of the USSR invading. they know that the US would not abuse than, unlike the USSR.

That is what it is. Speculation. I am sure a pair of nukes got the Japanese attention and the prospect of Russians invading their norther reaches sped up the decision process. If we had not nuked them, they would not have surrendered easily. The Japanese at that time were bat-sh*t crazy. They were ready to turn their entire population into kamikazes wielding bamboo spears.

If we had invaded, we eventually would have had to use gas and shoot women and children in large numbers. That would not have been popular with Americans but they would have done it if they had to.

ruveyn