Current Events > Who bears the moral responsibility for the lives lost during the atomic bombing?

(+) Yeah! (+)

1 & 5

ForsakenHermit posted...

1 & 5

So relatively equal blame but pushing it on the Japanese government?

Chicken and cow

Greg

ultimately the Japanese government yeah

The government(s) (whether you think Japan is at fault at all depends on how much you buy into the body of evidence that Japan was wiling to surrender but the US was more interested in demonstrating the power of the bomb, etc. etc. it gets complicated).

I think once the US started the Manhattan project, the science was already in a place where it was a matter of "when/where" and not "if". Granted you can make a similar argument about once the nuclear bomb were we always going to use it eventually? Except we didn't do that with the hydrogen bomb so *shrug*.

Irony posted...

Chicken and cow

dolphin and whale did it.

kingdrake2 posted...

dolphin and whale did it.

No chicken and cow use dolphin and whale as scapegoat

The relevant governments and militaries, more so the US as the ones who actually used it.

The creators simply invented something that if they hadn't, someone else would've soon enough anyway.

The crew on the missions, it's harder to say. (Also worth noting that some of the crew, especially for Hiroshima, did not know they were carrying an atomic bomb until it exploded. Some likely didn't even know atomic bombs existed yet.)

3

The US government and the pilots

"How dare you not surrender fast enough" is not a justification to murder hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The Atomic Playboy, Harry Truman. He later went on to test the effects of nuclear fallout on US Naval servicemen under the guise of it being a test on livestock.

Japan should have given up when they got bodied by all those firebombs.

Hell, they shouldnt have started shit to begin with.

Truman would have denied Japan's right to surrender until after he had a chance to test out his new toy.

It was a necessary evil, as the alternative would have been invading the homeland that would most likely have claimed more lives, and possibly resulted in Japan and possibly even the northern part of Australia going Communist.

TyVulpine posted...

It was a necessary evil, as the alternative would have been invading the homeland that would most likely have claimed more lives, and possibly resulted in Japan and possibly even the northern part of Australia going Communist.

What the fuck am I reading

UnholyMudcrab posted...

What the fuck am I reading

An outdated argument in favor of the bombings, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Even more so for Nagasaki.

I do believe the one that stated if we didnr make them somebody else eventually would.

So as shitty as it is I'm just glad my country was the winning side on thay one.

If Oppenheimer didn't make the atomic bomb, the first atomic weapon dropped would have been a hydrogen bomb developed by Teller with a 100x the yield. There would have been 0 survivors in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Kent Mansley.

1 & 3.

wackyteen posted...

So relatively equal blame but pushing it on the Japanese government?

I saw 1 as a condemnation of everyone involved on the American side so added 5 to say Japan had blame too.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

What the fuck am I reading

never heard of Operation Downfall? Or the fact that we still have a surplus of Purple Hearts that were made in anitcipation of the casualties that were expected if the invasion were to happen?

uberl33tpro posted...

If Oppenheimer didn't make the atomic bomb, the first atomic weapon dropped would have been a hydrogen bomb developed by Teller with a 100x the yield. There would have been 0 survivors in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

No, that's not the case. Hydrogen bombs require an atomic bomb to start them off; you can't have them without the atomic bomb.

(Strictly speaking both names are misleading, but eh.)

trivialbeing posted...

never heard of Operation Downfall? Or the fact that we still have a surplus of Purple Hearts that were made in anitcipation of the casualties that were expected if the invasion were to happen?

I wasn't aware that part of the planning for the invasion of Japan was to install a Communist government both there and in Australia for some reason.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

I wasn't aware that part of the planning for the invasion of Japan was to install a Communist government.

The Soviets easily could have invaded Northern Japan and pulled a Korea there.

Order of blame:

1. Japanese and American warhawks for sabotaging surrender negotiations. This wasn't a universally held opinion even among military leadership but the people who wanted to negotiate from both sides were simply fewer in number and had less seniority.
2. Truman.
3. Stalin who was potentially going to sack Japan had we not secured it first, creating the urgency.
4. Oppenheimer.
5. The Enola gay pilots.
6. The Japanese emperor.

ForsakenHermit posted...

The Soviets easily could have invaded Northern Japan and pulled a Korea there.

With what? The Soviets had no amphibious assault doctrine, and what little equipment they had was on loan from the Americans. When they tried an amphibious landing at Shumshu in the Kurils, they took huge casualties and lost a third of their landing ships.

This is one of those things that seems far too dense and old to every really have a proper answer for. Even Japanese historians can't agree on it.

The whole point of dropping both bombs was for Truman to wave his little man energy dick at the Russians to show off his new toy. It had nothing to do with the Japanese surrender. So yeah, the US government is to blame.

AdrianBeterson posted...

The whole point of dropping both bombs was for Truman to wave his little man energy dick at the Russians to show off his new toy. It had nothing to do with the Japanese surrender. So yeah, the US government is to blame.

Over 100,000 American and Japanese soldiers died in the Battle of Okinawa alone, and took three months to win the battle. An invasion of mainland Japan would have cost several times that many lives on both sides and dragged the war on even longer.

What, no Russia option for all the Russia haters who will point out that one of the reasons the bomb was used was because America didn't want Japan to turn into another split-nation situation like Germany was shaping up to be?

At least give all the blamers' choices an equal representation.

Truman

the winners benefitted from it and will allow the use of it again when threatened so nobody really bears any kind of responsibility

The Japanese government for being cowards and refusing to accept the L. Anyone trying to say otherwise is full of shit.

TyVulpine posted...

Over 100,000 American and Japanese soldiers died in the Battle of Okinawa alone, and took three months to win the battle. An invasion of mainland Japan would have cost several times that many lives on both sides and dragged the war on even longer.

The Japanese didnt surrender because of the nukes. They surrendered because they couldnt broker an agreement with the soviets to prevent their invasion. The nukes just happened to be dropped around the time the talks with the soviets fell through, but the USA (or the number of Japanese casualties) were not the reasons they surrendered.