Hiroshima, 64 years ago (boston.com pics)

[GONNAFISTYA]

Change the fuckin world GFY, or go fuck yerself!

I will change the world, one retard at a time.

The pool needs cleaning.

[GONNAFISTYA]

test

Too blue.

[obsidian]

Historically, Japan did not believe that the U.S. had developed a working atom bomb and even after the bomb on Hiroshima, upper levels of Japan's military were in absolute shock and paralysis. They were not entirely sure what had occurred, having received conflicting reports. The second bomb over Nagasaki could have been entirely preventable had the U.S. given Japan another few days to gather their senses and agree to the terms of surrender.

As for whether the bombings were justifiable, nothing in war is justifiable. It is all together cruel and evil. I don't see how it would have balanced either way. Regardless, countless people - soldiers and civilians - would have died, it was just a matter of who, when and where.

[GONNAFISTYA]

"We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay."

In light of the ultimatum that Japan was offered - designed to be rejected - with the threat of "prompt and utter destruction" it wasn't taken seriously by anyone. Especially when Truman didn't tell the Japanese what the "new and powerful weapon" was that he threatened to use on them.

I agree with Obsidian that a few more days (and perhaps another nuke off the coast) would have convinced the leaders of Japan to surrender unconditionally.

As to Japan claiming that they'd "fight to the bitter end" it was pure, defiant grandstanding. For a more recent example of this, anyone remember this guy?

[Oralloy]

GFY - Can you perhaps enlighten us as to the details of the deal that the Japanese were trying to make? Don't recall anyone trying to bargain on Okinawa...

Japan had been given the Potsdam ultimatum from Washington on July 26, 1945. However - like Iraq - America had approached the deal from an "agree to these terms or else" starting position....which anyone with a sense of pride (ie Japan) would reject outright. Regardless of the ultimatum, Truman had already decided to nuke Japan in early July, so - as the Japanese authorities described in their reasons for refusing to surrender - it was a ridiculous offer.

Truman would not have had them nuked if they'd accepted the surrender proposal.

Japan was indeed in the mood to surrender, but not under such moronic terms.

What exactly was moronic about the Potsdam terms? They were actually quite generous.


The terms that Japan wanted to "surrender" under were more a ceasefire than a surrender. They included such gems like:

"No occupation of Japan"

"No war crimes trials for Japanese soldiers unless Japan controls them"

"Japanese troops simply pack up and return to their bases in Japan instead of surrendering"

There seems to be a prevalent consensus that Japan would never have surrendered if they weren't nuked. Most people cite Japan's bloodletting history in support of this. They'll claim that Japan would have fought to the last man, that the conventional bombings that leveled large portions of Japan for six months had no effect and that the war would have probably lasted until December 1945.

If that's true, why did they surrender? Why didn't they ignore the bombings and continue to fight anyways? Simple: because the people who thought they'd never surrender were wrong.

Unfortunately for Japan, they were very convincing in their efforts to make the US believe they'd never surrender.

At any rate, as long as Japan wasn't surrendering, we had no choice but to press on with attacking them.

It is also worth noting that during the six month bombing campaign of Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were purposefully avoided so that the coming nukes could be tested on - as I mentioned - virgin targets. If the military establishments of those two cities was indeed so formidable, why ignore them for six months unless you're planning to nuke them anyways?

Because we wanted a target to nuke when the bomb was ready.

(Incidentally, the targets spared for the A-bomb were Hiroshima, Kokura Arsenal, and Niigata -- Nagasaki was added to the target list a lot later. The reason it hadn't been bombed before that was the difficulty of finding the city using the radar guidance they used to find the targets in the night.)

It is also worth noting that during the six month bombing That's a question nobody seems to have an answer for...at least an answer that doesn't make them uncomfortable. It's also the main reason I dismiss the "they were military targets" argument.

I'm not uncomfortable. We wanted to have some military targets on hand for the nukes, so we set a few aside for when the time was right.

[Oralloy]

Historically, Japan did not believe that the U.S. had developed a working atom bomb and even after the bomb on Hiroshima, upper levels of Japan's military were in absolute shock and paralysis. They were not entirely sure what had occurred, having received conflicting reports. The second bomb over Nagasaki could have been entirely preventable had the U.S. given Japan another few days to gather their senses and agree to the terms of surrender.

Japan knew by August 7 that the entire city had been destroyed by a single bomb, and that we had claimed it was an A-bomb.

That gave them two days to react to the bombing if they were inclined to.

At any rate, why would we pause the fighting each time we landed a blow to see if they were finally ready to surrender?? That sounds like a recipe for losing a war.

[Peenyuh]

Japan was indeed in the mood to surrender, but not under such moronic terms. The six-month long campaign of firebombing 60 -70 Japanese cities and food producing sites were indeed taking their toll and the Japanese government was afraid of their people starving. Given nowhere to bargain, Japan tried making a deal with Russia, which made matters worse.

Absolutely. They would have surrendered. But they were willing to go through much more suffering before finally surrendering to outrageous terms anyway. Like all leaders, the Japanese military and civilian government were shielded from having to suffer as their people suffered. I think they woulda done the same as Saddam did... wait til we were knocking on their door.

@ Mazdum: Look up the word "hidden". coward

[Tormentius]

At any rate, why would we pause the fighting each time we landed a blow to see if they were finally ready to surrender?? That sounds like a recipe for losing a war.

You stop when your enemy has just lost a city in an instant, is backed into a corner with nowhere to go, and has little left in the way of resistance. There was no risk of losing at that point and a longer break would have allowed them time to discuss things at the top levels of government and surrender.

[Chupacabra]

two wrongs make a right?

anyway, i guess i just see these things are two different issues.

edit: i should also say that i dont know enough about this nuclear weapon thing to really comment on it. but again, that's separate from the japanese war crimes.

how is dropping a bomb to defeat Japan separate than all the other atrocities committed that led to that decision? Japan started war, japan kills millions, America (and allies) join war killing millions and stop japan.

im not saying two wrongs make a right, in fact i never even said we should have used nuclear weapons. the only good thing that happened was the war ending. civilian casualties on both sides are sickening. are you saying it wasnt right to end the war? no, i dont think so. youre confused. Like i said, my main point was to bust GFY's chops and his one track mind. end of discussion.

it was a separate decision because, among other reasons, japan had stopped the killings in china and the rest of southeast asia by that point.

of course it was right to end the war. i think we both agree that we are not saying that it was right or wrong to use nuclear weapons. we just disagree on the idea that japanese atrocities are separate from us's decision to use the war. fair enough. though i do find myself to be in lawl's camp:

lol @ "dropping nukes on civillians wasn't that bad because other bad things were going on".

[Chupacabra]

At any rate, why would we pause the fighting each time we landed a blow to see if they were finally ready to surrender?? That sounds like a recipe for losing a war.

You stop when your enemy has just lost a city in an instant, is backed into a corner with nowhere to go, and has little left in the way of resistance. There was no risk of losing at that point and a longer break would have allowed them time to discuss things at the top levels of government and surrender.

well stated.

[GONNAFISTYA]

What exactly was moronic about the Potsdam terms? They were actually quite generous.


The terms that Japan wanted to "surrender" under were more a ceasefire than a surrender. They included such gems like:

"No occupation of Japan"

"No war crimes trials for Japanese soldiers unless Japan controls them"

"Japanese troops simply pack up and return to their bases in Japan instead of surrendering"

lol

Yes...those terms were listed in the proclamation but you're happily ignoring the terms where Japan pretty much had to give up everything, including the "eliminat(ion) for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest, for we insist that a new order of peace, security, and justice will be impossible until irresponsible militarism is driven from the world." as well as being occupied "Until such a new order is established and until there is convincing proof that Japan's war-making power is destroyed points in Japanese territory designated by the Allies will be occupied to secure the achievement of the basic objective we are here setting forth."

You make it seem like governments of the world should be willing to get into a barrel and take it in the ass because someone asks them to.

Unfortunately for Japan, they were very convincing in their efforts to make the US believe they'd never surrender.

Of course they were trying to make the US believe they'd never surrender. Saddam did the same. What's new or surprising about this in war? During the buildup to the Iraq war I was one of a handful of people on this site debunking the reasons for the invasion and some supporters here cited "Saddam's defiance" as reason enough to invade. Methinks you don't understand psychological patterns in people when they're cornered. Governments are comprised of people after all.

At any rate, as long as Japan wasn't surrendering, we had no choice but to press on with attacking them.

Uh...no. You seem to be willfully ignoring what I said about Japan being royaly fucked with not many options. They were NOT an "imminent threat" like everyone claims about their enemies. The US simply wanted to end it as quickly as possible and wasn't interested in giving Japan the time it needed to come around. This is the same "we have to act now" bullshit that you'll ALWAYS hear from the war machine and it's supporters. Can't you put this in perspective? After six months of firebombing the Japanese were in no position to offer any real resistance to an invasion attempt, which (again) wasn't necessary. Sure, lots of yanks would have been killed in the (unnecessary) invasion if it did commence, but they would have eventually overrun the Japanese forces. And - as you've failed to convince otherwise - did not justify nuking civilians.

Because we wanted a target to nuke when the bomb was ready.

Exactly. The US planned on nuking them many months in advance, which is a war crime.

(Incidentally, the targets spared for the A-bomb were Hiroshima, Kokura Arsenal, and Niigata -- Nagasaki was added to the target list a lot later.

I'm fully aware of the selected nuking sites that were and would have been nuked if Japan didn't surrender. All this does is make the war crime look worse.

The reason it hadn't been bombed before that was the difficulty of finding the city using the radar guidance they used to find the targets in the night.)

lol...yeah...after six months they couldn't find a huge city....at night. If they couldn't find the city to bomb its military installations, how could they find it to add it to the "nuke here" list? Find whatever excuse you need to sleep at night.

It is also worth noting that during the six month bombing That's a question nobody seems to have an answer for...at least an answer that doesn't make them uncomfortable. It's also the main reason I dismiss the "they were military targets" argument.

I'm not uncomfortable. We wanted to have some military targets on hand for the nukes, so we set a few aside for when the time was right.

The US "set a few targets aside for when the time was right"....to nuke civilians. FFS. If you cannot see the folly of that comment I feel sorry for you.

[GONNAFISTYA]

Absolutely. They would have surrendered. But they were willing to go through much more suffering before finally surrendering to outrageous terms anyway. Like all leaders, the Japanese military and civilian government were shielded from having to suffer as their people suffered. I think they woulda done the same as Saddam did... wait til we were knocking on their door.

Then I'll reiterate: if nuking civilians is the "smart, efficient" way to end wars, we're fucked as a species.

[GONNAFISTYA]

Oops....missed one.

Truman would not have had them nuked if they'd accepted the surrender proposal.

And you get this information where?

It is quite clear the nuking was planned well in advance and was going to happen anyways....just like the Iraq war. They were simply looking for a "politically sound" excuse. As I said before, it was a show of strength, something that many within the program took pride in. If you take all of the history of aggressive governments/leaders/kings there's one thing you'll notice: they love proving a point.

Can we please dispense with this bullshit notion that "America did what it had to do but didn't really want to do it"? America has proven time and again it's aggressive, oppressive nature but you'll always find people willing to defend the indefensible and tell you that Muicuh is somehow a reluctant hero in all the messes it joyfully creates.

[GONNAFISTYA]

You stop when your enemy has just lost a city in an instant, is backed into a corner with nowhere to go, and has little left in the way of resistance.

Several neo-cons such as Bill Kristol, John Bolton, Dick Cheney, etc would tell you the opposite. They'd also say two nukes wasn't enough.

[Whiskey 7]

I am a history buff and I'd sooner eat broken glass than touch on WWII topics in this forum. YMMV

me too Hannibal but I appreciate the banter

[Peenyuh]

Absolutely. They would have surrendered. But they were willing to go through much more suffering before finally surrendering to outrageous terms anyway. Like all leaders, the Japanese military and civilian government were shielded from having to suffer as their people suffered. I think they woulda done the same as Saddam did... wait til we were knocking on their door.

Then I'll reiterate: if nuking civilians is the "smart, efficient" way to end wars, we're fucked as a species.

I know.

[Oralloy]

At any rate, why would we pause the fighting each time we landed a blow to see if they were finally ready to surrender?? That sounds like a recipe for losing a war.

You stop when your enemy has just lost a city in an instant, is backed into a corner with nowhere to go, and has little left in the way of resistance. There was no risk of losing at that point and a longer break would have allowed them time to discuss things at the top levels of government and surrender.

Nah. We stop when they say "I surrender".

[Oralloy]

What exactly was moronic about the Potsdam terms? They were actually quite generous.


The terms that Japan wanted to "surrender" under were more a ceasefire than a surrender. They included such gems like:

"No occupation of Japan"

"No war crimes trials for Japanese soldiers unless Japan controls them"

"Japanese troops simply pack up and return to their bases in Japan instead of surrendering"

lol

Yes...those terms were listed in the proclamation

Those were the outrageous terms Japan wanted -- that were more a ceasefire than a surrender.

They were never within a lightyear of the Potsdam Proclamation.

but you're happily ignoring the terms where Japan pretty much had to give up everything, including the "eliminat(ion) for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest, for we insist that a new order of peace, security, and justice will be impossible until irresponsible militarism is driven from the world." as well as being occupied "Until such a new order is established and until there is convincing proof that Japan's war-making power is destroyed points in Japanese territory designated by the Allies will be occupied to secure the achievement of the basic objective we are here setting forth."

That doesn't make Japan give up everything. I think we were extremely generous.

You make it seem like governments of the world should be willing to get into a barrel and take it in the ass because someone asks them to.

Japan was going to accept the Potsdam Proclamation or they were going to cease to exist.

Unfortunately for Japan, they were very convincing in their efforts to make the US believe they'd never surrender.

Of course they were trying to make the US believe they'd never surrender. Saddam did the same. What's new or surprising about this in war?

Nothing is surprising about it. But it is equally unsurprising that we took them at their word and kept pounding them as hard as we could.

At any rate, as long as Japan wasn't surrendering, we had no choice but to press on with attacking them.

Uh...no. You seem to be willfully ignoring what I said about Japan being royaly fucked with not many options. They were NOT an "imminent threat" like everyone claims about their enemies. The US simply wanted to end it as quickly as possible and wasn't interested in giving Japan the time it needed to come around.

Of course we wanted to end it as quickly as possible and weren't interested in giving Japan time to dawdle.

That was the entire point.

This is the same "we have to act now" bullshit that you'll ALWAYS hear from the war machine and it's supporters. Can't you put this in perspective? After six months of firebombing the Japanese were in no position to offer any real resistance to an invasion attempt, which (again) wasn't necessary. Sure, lots of yanks would have been killed in the (unnecessary) invasion if it did commence, but they would have eventually overrun the Japanese forces.

Hard to say how it would have turned out. At southern Kyushu Japan had thousands of kamikazes training to take out troop transports, and 900,000 troops ready to repel anyone who made it past the kamikazes.

And - as you've failed to convince otherwise - did not justify nuking civilians.

Civilians were not the target. We hit Hiroshima because it was a major military port filled with tens of thousands of troops.

Because we wanted a target to nuke when the bomb was ready.

Exactly. The US planned on nuking them many months in advance, which is a war crime.

There's no prohibition in the laws of war against setting a target aside for later.

(Incidentally, the targets spared for the A-bomb were Hiroshima, Kokura Arsenal, and Niigata -- Nagasaki was added to the target list a lot later.

I'm fully aware of the selected nuking sites that were and would have been nuked if Japan didn't surrender. All this does is make the war crime look worse.

The fact that Nagasaki was not one of the cities specifically spared for the A-bomb does not make any alleged crime any worse.

The reason it hadn't been bombed before that was the difficulty of finding the city using the radar guidance they used to find the targets in the night.)

lol...yeah...after six months they couldn't find a huge city....at night.

The passage of six months would not make the city easier to find with radar.

If they couldn't find the city to bomb its military installations, how could they find it to add it to the "nuke here" list?

The nukes were to be dropped visually in daylight. Concerns over radar guidance were not an issue.

Find whatever excuse you need to sleep at night.

I don't require any excuses to sleep at night.

I'm not uncomfortable. We wanted to have some military targets on hand for the nukes, so we set a few aside for when the time was right.

The US "set a few targets aside for when the time was right"....to nuke civilians.

No, the targets were military in nature.

Oops....missed one.

Truman would not have had them nuked if they'd accepted the surrender proposal.

And you get this information where?

From my understanding of how war works.

You hammer them until they surrender.

When they surrender then you stop hammering them.

It is quite clear the nuking was planned well in advance and was going to happen anyways....

If the bombs worked, and Japan was still at war, the A-bombings were guaranteed to happen.

But we wouldn't have nuked them if we weren't at war with them anymore.

(Notice for instance that we stopped nuking them when they did surrender.)

[Oralloy]

I am a history buff and I'd sooner eat broken glass than touch on WWII topics in this forum. YMMV

me too Hannibal but I appreciate the banter

Actually, I'm not finding the Hiroshima debating all that bad here.

You wouldn't believe some other boards around the internet.

[Whiskey 7]

...............all that bad here. You wouldn't believe some other boards around the internet.

Oh, really

[seremtan]

I am a history buff and I'd sooner eat broken glass than touch on WWII topics in this forum. YMMV

ooh get her

[Tormentius]

Nah. We stop when they say "I surrender".

Typical arrogant, shortsighted response. The US had an absolute meltdown that "changed the nation" when a few thousand people were tragically killed in '01. While the reaction of fear and anger are understandable to such an event it strikes me as pathetic that inbred yokels don't see the hypocrisy of tossing around the "proud to have nuked defenceless women and children" comments about Japan. Even in war the ends do not always justify the means. This is especially clear when those means include the willful targetting of civilian life and infrastructure in disproportional response to the threat at hand.

[GONNAFISTYA]

That doesn't make Japan give up everything. I think we were extremely generous.

The two terms that I listed were utterly impossible to accomplish...that's how they were designed to be rejected. And that's only two of them. If you read them again you'll find there was no way Japan could guarantee that either of those two terms could be met. It's the same as Bush saying "We'll stay in Iraq until terrorism is defeated." Humanity will never "defeat" terrorism because terrorism isn't a government or an army, it's a tactic used because it's cheap. It's the same as saying "We'll stay in Iraq until guerrilla warfare, flanking and the brutal practice of a steel-toed boot to the head are defeated....until peace on Earth with no chance for war ever happening again has been firmly established...and we'll make that determination as to when peace on Earth is firmly established." Rubbish.

Their demands were as retarded and unrealistic as Bush's "We'll attack Iraq if they don't stop their nuclear weapons program." You know...the nuclear weapons program that didn't exist.

But hey the yanks also promised to bring flowers and cake. Chocolate cake no less. And balloons. I have no idea why Japan didn't just bend over right away for that.

Japan was going to accept the Potsdam Proclamation or they were going to cease to exist.

The callousness of your position on this is quite cemented I see. I'm assuming it makes it easier to deal with vaporizing an entire city or an entire country. They are just collateral damage after all. Wrong place wrong time. Bad luck. Karma, etc. No reason to get worked up about anything except wait for the smoke to clear.

Of course we wanted to end it as quickly as possible and weren't interested in giving Japan time to dawdle.

That was the entire point.

Yeah I just said that. Except it makes me wretch in utter disgust. But hey...they were evil or sumthin and needed to be stopped immediately....even though they were already defeated.

Civilians were not the target. We hit Hiroshima because it was a major military port filled with tens of thousands of troops.

Look we can go in circles all day with this but it's quite obvious we disagree on the use of weapons of mass destruction. You can sit there and tell me that "these were special circumstances", which is the same justification for all atrocities. People will focus on each particular war and it's situation to justify anything but they don't realize that it's always the same excuse in all of them: We had to because... (fill in the blank). I'll say once again that hindsight isn't 20/20 if you don't learn from it.

I'm quite sure if nukes were used in Iraq someone would say "but in this circumstance they gave us no choice...." blah blah blah. Warmongers never will understand the need to think before bombing and are the best at coming up with excuses after the fact.

There's no prohibition in the laws of war against setting a target aside for later.

Except for weapons of mass destruction and other "cruel, inhumane" weapons. While it's true that alot of the things we consider "off limits" or "warcrimes" weren't spelled out during WW2 but that didn't stop the Nazis from being retroactively prosecuted for some of those crimes after WW2. Nobody had stipulated that the Germans couldn't gas Jews until after they did it. But the Germans ultimately came to determine that it was wrong....as I hope the nuke supporters also ultimately see it was wrong.

It's a hot potato I know but hey...since it wasn't specifically mentioned that nuking a city into dust wasn't ok back then I guess that it's all just water under the bridge.

lol

The fact that Nagasaki was not one of the cities specifically spared for the A-bomb does not make any alleged crime any worse.

So if the Nazis didn't have as many concentration camps the holocaust wouldn't have been so bad? Please.

The nukes were to be dropped visually in daylight. Concerns over radar guidance were not an issue.

My point was they already knew where they were long before hand. You're side-stepping. They knew about the military implications of those cities for a long time, having considered firebombing them previously. But that's all beside the point.

While the cities were "pristine" because they "couldn't reach them to bomb them at night" the cities weren't firebombed because - as you say - they were saving it for later. So your "radar-related" excuse is a distraction that you chose to focus on instead of looking at the big picture: They were selected specifically for nuking BECAUSE they hadn't been bombed before.

The recommended criteria from the May 10–11, 1945 Target Committee, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer:

* The target was larger than three miles in diameter and was an important target in a large urban area.
* The blast would create effective damage.
* The target was unlikely to be attacked by August 1945. "Any small and strictly military objective should be located in a much larger area subject to blast damage in order to avoid undue risks of the weapon being lost due to bad placing of the bomb."

They deliberately selected them to isolate and measure the bomb's effects.....all in a "real world" urban setting. By that time blowing up a tower in Wile E.Coyote's backyard or making an already existing crater a little bit larger (atoll testing) had become so boring. Since the two bombs were different types of weapons, the bomb nerds wanted a comparative damage analysis of them. Fat Man was moved up to August 9 in case Japan surrendered before the second bomb fell. Since Kukura had thick clouds that day and they couldn't get good pictures for analysis, Nagasaki was nuked instead.

The major point you are not addressing is that the two nukes were as much sick medical experiments as what happened to the Jews in WW2. Instead you're making frivolous arguments about the fact that the city wasn't targeted for conventional bombing and ignoring why it was targeted for an A-bomb. It was a twisted experiment and everybody who's awake knows it.

I don't require any excuses to sleep at night.

Obviously.

No, the targets were military in nature.

Yes, you keep saying that but over 100,000 civilians just happened to be walking under the nuke when it hit. If there was a single soldier in the area I guess that makes it a military target by default? Is that really your reasoning? Quit splitting hairs because it makes you look narrow-minded.

Yes...there were 6000 troops stationed directly below the detonation, as well as 100,000 grannies, babies and kittens eating rice. Or perhaps those grannies, babies and kittens were sewing boots for the troops?

"....the targets were military in nature".

lol

You make it sound like they were targeting a military base somewhere out in the desert with a minimal loss of civilian life.

Truman would not have had them nuked if they'd accepted the surrender proposal.

And you get this information where?

From my understanding of how war works.

You hammer them until they surrender.

When they surrender then you stop hammering them.

lol...and people call me the armchair general.

Japan had been under blockade for months and had no resources on the home islands. The firebombing was killing the will of the army to fight. China was boot-fucking them with two straight months of battle losses. Their navy was gone. Martial law was declared for fear of a revolt. The reported assassination attempts and plots against Emperor Showa finally convinced him to end the war "at any cost". Truman knew all this as the the Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that Japan was beaten and on the verge of surrender - with no need of an invasion.

So you still think Truman wouldn't have nuked them if they surrendered immediately? Yeah...and I'm sure Bush wouldn't have used "Shock and Awe" © 2003 in Iraq if Saddam left the country within 48 hours.

If the bombs worked, and Japan was still at war, the A-bombings were guaranteed to happen.

But we wouldn't have nuked them if we weren't at war with them anymore.

(Notice for instance that we stopped nuking them when they did surrender.)

Hey look, the Iraqis stopped throwing rocks at our tanks when we killed them with white phosporus. It worked!

The sheer amount of cognitive dissonance and utter detachment (ie sociopath-level detachment) one needs to justify atrocities is more than I could ever muster.

[Peenyuh]

Nah. We stop when they say "I surrender".

Typical arrogant, shortsighted response. The US had an absolute meltdown that "changed the nation" when a few thousand people were tragically killed in '01. While the reaction of fear and anger are understandable to such an event it strikes me as pathetic that inbred yokels don't see the hypocrisy of tossing around the "proud to have nuked defenceless women and children" comments about Japan. Even in war the ends do not always justify the means. This is especially clear when those means include the willful targetting of civilian life and infrastructure in disproportional response to the threat at hand.

"Proud" to have nuked someone? Just No.

I'm sure that the people who attacked the WTC were proud of what they'd done... just look at their reaction... Both attacks (WTC, nuking of Japan) were abhorrent acts. Both attackers felt they had to do what they had to do. Bitching about what humanity has done to itself is fruitless. Live a better life. Teach your children to live a better life.

The thing about humans, is that we want to have peace, so we make laws to "enforce" it. People are assholes because they have no accountability. Kinda like internet bitches. Half of the things people say to each other here wouldn't be said face to face, cause someone would get socked in the mouth. Vengeance is the only accountability available at times. Notice: Japan hasn't attacked anyone in a very long time. If it wasn't for fear of the US reaction, we wouldn't exist. Americans would be victims of the atrocities that so many others have been.

Here's some advice. Don't be a dick. Don't allow people to be a dick to you.

[KingManULTRA]

In light of the ultimatum that Japan was offered - designed to be rejected - with the threat of "prompt and utter destruction" it wasn't taken seriously by anyone.

Especially when Truman didn't tell the Japanese what the "new and powerful weapon" was that he threatened to use on them.

Um, he threatened attacks on Japan that would result in "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland". Clear enough for ya?

EDIT: And of course the terms on Japan were harsh because Japan had committed enormous atrocities against other nations and had to be fully accountable. Furthermore, Japan was in no position to negotiate the U.S. demands. In fact, your argument that Japanese pride prevented them from agreeing to US terms actually enhances the argument for dropping of the nukes: it was only after dropping the nukes that Japan shed their sense of arrogance and agreed to unconditionally surrender and allowed foreign control ("demilitarization") of Japan by McArthur and Company.