Were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki terrorist acts?

You know, I hate thinking about stuff that old and stuff that could potentially make America look bad but... the more I think of it the more I would consider these bombings terrorist acts (not that it matters THAT much since it was over 60 years ago).

I mean, yes you can argue that we saved more lives than killed but that's still just speculative. And even if you're right... I'm not sure the ends justify the means.

America literally aimed for civilians. Well you can claim otherwise but they knew if they took out the installations within these cities with a freakin' nuke everything else around it would be destroyed too (including tons of innocent civilians).

America literally wanted terror to get them to surrender.

Sounds pretty terrorist to me.



I won't say Japan was fully innocent. Obviously they did a lot of crappy things. But I'd say those bombs were pretty crappy too.

Were the bombs necessary? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. But still...

 

Americans will tell you it was necessary to save American lives.

That it killed 240,000 Japanese in less than a second is totally irrelevant. They weren't Americans.

 

Taking out those factories and military bases with a conventional raid would have killed a lot of civilians too. The deadliest air raid in history was the Firebombing of Tokyo. Conventional bombing raid. Killed between 100 000 to 200 000 people with the figure of 200 000 being seen as more likely. That's more than those killed in both atomic bombings. That's not conjecture.

 

Kind of? I don't know. They did attack us, and wouldn't surrender, so I guess you could say we used a terrorist tactic to defend ourselves? Probably not the first time such a thing has been done.

 

240 000 weren't killed in less than 1 second. 140 000 died to the immediate effects of the bombing. About 200 000 or so were dead by the end of 1945 with no more confirmed cases after that.

 

What?


I have never agreed that Democrat Harry S Truman needed to drop the "big one" once, let alone twice.

However it is asinine to suggest it was a terrorist act. Both countries had, by then, declared war.

If anything, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was a terrorist attack.

At least look up the freakin definitions of the word...

 

This whole war and every country conducted a war against civilians. It is just the way this war was fought with the thought that if you weakened their nations will to fight you would win.

You can't hold America accountable for a terrorist attack when this is simply how each nation was fighting. Nazi's were launching their V-2 rockets into London remember simply to instill terror.

They also estimated that an invasion of Japan would have cost 1 million American lives. Really there was little choice other than to starve out Japan which would have been far worse.

 

Wow! Excuse me for having overestimated the figures.

Consequently the whole thing is a propaganda story which never really happened and is a figment of my imagination.


http://www.numberof.net/number-of-japanese-killed-by-atomic-bomb/

 

I think it's possible that we would have ended up killing more people than that, and losing more of our own, if we'd gone about it the conventional way. Isn't it?

I mean, you never know how things could have gone. Maybe the Japanese were close to surrender. But that is a maybe, isn't it?

 

Maybe America was close to victory. Anything is possible, although if taking into account their 'victories' since 1945, probably unlikely.

 

Conventional bombing raids would have continued. They were knocking the Japanese off in large numbers.

 

It's always just been a matter of economics. The Japanese industrial machine was losing ground and the American was gaining.

I don't think there was any likelihood that we could actually hold territory in Japan. Not more than the islands we keep bases on, anyway. Defeating a country might be easy, but holding it is a whole 'nother story, is the way the lesson of all the warfare since then sounds to me.

 

japan attacked a military base in a suprise attack. While it can be veiwed as a unsavory move, in that they were in peace talks at that time, they did not purposely commit the attack to killing civilians....America did......The intent of the atom bombs used on Japan was to kill so many innocent people that the Japanese citizenry stop supporting the Japanese war effort.....It worked.....but it still begs the question......Is murdering innocent people an acceptable tactic for a nation that tends to claim the moral high ground every chance they get?

 

The war didn't end because the bombs convinced the public that they should give up.

 

In that event, the US hasn't learned much. The world's most gigantic deficit, the continued presence of military in over half the world's countries and the rhetoric to create future mayhem with Israel as the tool.

P.S.

Oops! I was thinking I was on another thread - something about the comments of Leon Panetta. On reflection, perhaps the two are intertwined.

 

Lack of support and fear of more attacks......

But regardless of the exact reason......Anyone who knowingly and purposely attacks civilians is a terrorist.......end of story......

 

They dropped fliers over Hiroshima to warn the people to evacuate but the government told them not read the fliers so they didn't.

 

Wow! That's considerate.

The US government told Americans to believe that Iraq had WMD's. So Americans did.

 

Y'know what's funny, is that no matter what definition you use, I'm pretty sure all nations are terrorist nations. They all maintain at least some of their power through the threat of force. They all reserve the right to wage war, and war is inherently terrorist.

And if all war is terrorist, and some war is justified, I'm pondering ... does that mean that some terrorism is justified? That doesn't sound right.

 

Japan decimated the populations of the islands they occupied and China. There brutality was on scale with the Nazi's if not worse. They would play a game in the philippeans of throwing children in the air and spearing them with bayonetts. They terrorized every population they took over.

 

This is the worst sort of wishful revisionism, though I would say the fact that the Soviet Union declared war on Japan in August of '45 entered into the futility of Japan fighting on as well.
But Emperor Hirohito saw that Japan could not possibly win and after a couple of A bombs dropped on Japan I'm sure the public came to the same conclusion.

 

Relativity speaking it was stupid.
Push a Red Button and still to this day claim "It was the woman you gave me!!!" Hairspray??? Really? "
Terrorize my Generation with acid rain and holes in the Ozone and blame fashion dynamics. Please will a real man step up to the plate?
Interpretation: Men don't like hairspray. And on the 8th day god created man a scapegoat so that he could do whatever the heLL he wants and blame it on women.
Sarah for PreZ.

Q. Why we got no winter woman?
A. Aquanet
Q. What the hell happened to my gold trimmed tectonic plate and my mashed potatoes, woman?
A. I nuked it. Sorry it broke. You should have seen the fireworks. Shocked and awed the hell outta me.
Q.What the hell are you feeding the dog, Woman?
A. Plastic and salt with some e.coli for flavor.
done.
ban me.
.done
I tried.

 

President Truman doesn't fit the definition of a terrorist but he did fit the definition of a mass murderer who ordered the targeting of civilian cities full of women and children.

Nothing was off limits to this disgusting president. Hospitals, schools, day care centers, nurses, doctors, playgrounds, food markets, women nursing their babies, you name it what you want but mass murder of civilians is what it was.

Bettina

 

Actually the USSR attacking Japan didn't enter much in their minds. The leaders didn't find out exactly what was happening due to a break down in communications until after the decision to surrender was made. It was actually hard enough for the Japanese leadership to find out what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki let alone what was happening on mainland Asia.

 

The main targets were actually the factories and military bases which was why those cities, among others, were chosen as possible targets.