Truman's impact
On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima., killing roughly 140,000 people. Three days later, a nuclear bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing roughly 74,000 people. Most of the dead were civilians. On August 15, Japan did something that they refused to do at Iwo Jima and Okinawa; they surrendered.
As Iran gets closer to developing nuclear technology, is the only country to ever use atomic bombs against an enemy in any position to lecture?
Once in a while, Patriot of 76 gets historical rather than political. Put yourself in the shoes of our 33rd President. Would you have done the same? Did Truman’s decision ultimately save lives, or did it forever undermine American credibility?
posted by CitizenPatriot at 8:12:00 PM
9 Comments:
Elbaum,
Easy answer: Drop em and keep Droppin' till they surrender. The firebombings over Tokyo were killing 100k's of civilians, and Dresdan was the same story. The bombing saved lives. Period
8:19 PM
Okay, the above comment is disgusting.
I can't propose an easy solution because I have no ideas; however, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians is not an "easy answer".
Are we no better than Iran? How can we expect the future of war to change if our destructive actions are simply intermittent? By validating the above statement we are indeed perpetuating the inevitability of terrorism.
9:39 PM
Truman had no other choice. the estimates for invading Tokyo were near one million casualties for the Americans. As selfish as it may sound, forcing Japan to surrender with the use of the bomb was better than letting a million American soldiers die. In 1945 the bomb was the best choice for victory, but now any use of an atomic bomb will ruin the world and in essence they should be gotten rid of or at least kept away from terrorists with better security
11:51 PM
Mccall used my thoughts somehow for this one. I completely agree with mike but would just like to add a few tidbits to extend his answer. As president I think in a time of war like this when your enemy is as defined as the Japanese were, your main objective is to protect the lives of the U.S people which is clearly what Truman was doing. Also to say the majority of those killed in the bombings is false because the Japanese had armed there people making them no longer civilians but soldiers. Also the Japanese were known to follow the practice of no surrender, or fight till death, I forget the name of this that the Japanese gave it, if someone knows it please throw it in their post because I would like to know what it is called. Back to what mike said though, due to this we were ensured of alarming numbers of American casualties. So for people who say it wasn't humane I'd like them to ask themselves, Would you rather have the American soldiers die and the Japanese at the same time, or just the Japanese while we spare our own? Well there answer may be we could have talked it out. Which is where you run into the debate between left and right today, talk it out or fight.
4:49 PM
Quinn,
Bushido
5:33 PM
Quinn and McCall,
You're both fooling yourself if don't think that Truman only dropped it to show the Russians that we would. WE killed 200k civilians in an act of shameful bravado and one upsmanship.
5:38 PM
he did drop it to show the russians but that was not the only objective
1:27 AM
Are Japanese civilian lives more important than American ones?
11:15 AM
There is no cost greater than that of an American life. Yes, American lives are worth much more than Japaneese lives, even to the Japaneese.
Truman was absolutely right when he said dropping "the bomb" was one of the easiest choice and Korea was the hardest.
It is the commanders duty to accomplish the mission with the smallest cost.
The "bomb" was a readily available weapon, the side affects of nuclear radiation were relatively unknown to us, which is definately an excuse. Truman saw wat happened at Wake, Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor, and pretty much anytime Americans went onto the same piece of igneous rock the Japaneese were on and decided, no more.
As Commander in chief he had to achieve victory
As Commander in chief he had to achieve vicrory with the least cost
The Russian army wasnt a collection of peasants. It was one HELL of a collection of peasants that would work for nothing that hated our guts. That was another threat to American lives and English and Polish and Norwegian and Finish and even German lives. If we didn't prove ourselves willing to stop them from continuing west in their campaign there would have been a serious threat to lives of many nations.
Josef "Stalin" Dugeshivili was known and is now renowned for killing civilians. He killed over 10 million. That number could have been much higher.
History shows what the United Soviet Socialist Republic did to nations that didnt put up a fight.
Most of the nations that were under its curtain could bearly stand after it left.
9:41 PM
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