Japan fell silent @ 08:15 this morning

The only people I feel sorry for are the 10 million plus killed often in truly appalling ways by the Japanese.

Sow the wind and you get a whirlwind. Unfortunately all the Japs got back was a light breeze.

And don't give me the bit about innocent civilians - read the history. Their whole society was deeply sick even more so in many ways than the Nazi's.
 
MartynK said:
AFAIK, the Enola Gay was used for a reconnaissance/practice run over Hiroshima a few days before the mission.
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I believe she also ran "interference" for Bockscar, B29 the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki
 
If you read history more widely you might conclude that a medieval, militaristic society obtaining modern weapon systems has an inevitable outcome.

Imagine if the Normans had access to tanks.
 
zendog said:
The only people I feel sorry for are the 10 million plus killed often in truly appalling ways by the Japanese.

Sow the wind and you get a whirlwind. Unfortunately all the Japs got back was a light breeze.

And don't give me the bit about innocent civilians - read the history. Their whole society was deeply sick even more so in many ways than the Nazi's.
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I agree.

Famous last words "What the **** was that" - Mayor of Hiroshima, 1945.
 
arclight said:
Famous last words "What the **** was that" - Mayor of Hiroshima, 1945.
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Ah yes, the old joke there have only been 10 times in history when the use of the word f*** has been acceptable.
But you missed the word "bang" off that ;)
 
MartynK said:
Yip. I think she's in a US museum now?
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Wiki confirms
Bockscar is now on permanent display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio, next to a replica of a Fat Man.
 
zendog said:
The only people I feel sorry for are the 10 million plus killed often in truly appalling ways by the Japanese.

Sow the wind and you get a whirlwind. Unfortunately all the Japs got back was a light breeze.

And don't give me the bit about innocent civilians - read the history. Their whole society was deeply sick even more so in many ways than the Nazi's.
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And of course everyone else was an innocent.
 
eeyore said:
Don't get me wrong I hate war but if we have to then it's better to do it with a system that trys to keep innocent out of it.
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like the imperial japanese army did at shanghai , nanking, singapore etc... IMO while war is never pleasant they asked for what they got - the Japanese started the war in the east and the japanese forces committed atrocity after atrocity on civilians, combatants, and prisoners alike.

Had the allies not used atomic arms to force a surrender far more allied soldiers would have died forcing a landing on the japan - and probably lots of japanese civilians in the subsequent street fighting.

I suspect chris is right that we wouldn't do it today , but i'm not sure that is a good thing - these days the politicians like to force the armed forces to fight with one hand tied behind their backs for fear of bad press which leads only to unnecessary friendly casualties and losing wars.
 
Nuclear weapons have always been about deterrent since the first two were dropped. Testing emphasised that. The effect of using the weapons too terrible to contemplate so it was a stalemate between the superpowers.
However with the breakup of the soviet union and the loss of some material, the rise of other factions, it's now a distinct possibility of a small dirty weapon being used. The so called suitcase bomb, wouldn't have to cause much damage, it'll more be the area of denial caused by the fallout.
 
big soft moose said:
Had the allies not used atomic arms to force a surrender far more allied soldiers would have died forcing a landing on the japan - and probably lots of japanese civilians in the subsequent street fighting.

.
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It was by no means certain that Japan was going to surrender after the 2nd bomb. There was a lot of very senior opposition to that decision.
 
arclight said:
It was by no means certain that Japan was going to surrender after the 2nd bomb. There was a lot of very senior opposition to that decision.
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This is true - but in a war like that you use every weapon that comes to hand - if they hadn't surrendered after the second bomb we would have used a third, 4th, 5th whatever it took ... this is also why tokyo wasn't the target the first time round , because it makes the implicit threat - surrender now or this will happen to your capital
 
big soft moose said:
this is also why tokyo wasn't the target the first time round , because it makes the implicit threat - surrender now or this will happen to your capital
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Tokyo was never a considered target, it had already been heavily bombed, and no point in killing the Japanese Government and throwing the conflict into utter
chaos and complicating peace keeping negotiations.
They wanted the effects of the bombs to show, not get lost in previous destruction
 
From the web
On this day ( August the 19th) in 1945, the third atomic bomb was dropped on Tokyo. Or, rather, might have been had not Japan surrendered on 15 August.

Now to my mind, it would seem a little rash to "hit" Tokyo, when the Emperor would be ( and I assume) along with many of his high ranking officers.
Surely you need these people alive to negotiate a surrender.

I guess failing the ability to negotiate the USA would have just claimed it (Japan) as their own.
Now there's another interesting thought ;)


 
Cobra said:
From the web
On this day ( August the 19th) in 1945, the third atomic bomb was dropped on Tokyo. Or, rather, might have been had not Japan surrendered on 15 August.
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Take it you are referring to this site, which does only states:

He says there that the third drop would 'probably' have been on Tokyo.

As it wasn't included in the original 5 targets it does beg the question why would it suddenly come into play ?
 
I suppose there comes a time when if the high command won't negotiate you need to take them out of the picture ... the japanese must have had a decentralised command just like we did so thee'd have been someone left to take control , with a very object lesson of surrender immediately or be utterly destroyed.

On that note there were people in the american high command who wanted to use nuke after nuke to completely destroy japan as a clear demonstration not to f*** with the US - cooler heads prevailed, probably realising that we would need bases there against the russians who were already becoming a threat
 
Gremlin said:
He says there that the third drop would 'probably' have been on Tokyo.
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Cobra said:
Or, rather, might have been
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Same thing, only "probably" gives a higher chance than "might have"

Gremlin said:
As it wasn't included in the original 5 targets it does beg the question why would it suddenly come into play ?
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Some web sources suggest that the other two targets were "experimental" to discover the effects.
And to nuke Tokyo, wouldn't have given a true picture, as it had been consistently fire bombed.

And to turn my previous comment on its head,
If you look at any bombing pattern, the capital city is always hit the hardest,
(even by today's terrorists)






.
 
Heres a thought - we know the Axis forces were working on atomic arms too (indeed many of their scientists wound up working for the US during the cold war) if they'd got there first would we have surrendered rather than face atomic bombing of british cities ?

and if so give that history is generally written by the victors history books would now describe how the nuking of london and birmingham was 'necessary'
 
Gremlin said:
Tokyo was never a considered target, it had already been heavily bombed, and no point in killing the Japanese Government and throwing the conflict into utter
chaos and complicating peace keeping negotiations.
They wanted the effects of the bombs to show, not get lost in previous destruction
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That is correct, Ingrid. There were some in the Japanese high command who would have readily claimed that much of the destruction was pre-existing in order to continue fighting. There were very few targets left that were suitable for a demonstration of the weapon's power.
 
Dropping the bomb earned the Japanese worldwide sympathy , probably forever, but let's not forget the barbaric ways in which they treated their prisoners.

My next door neighbour was a POW in the Far East , to the day he died in the late 70s there was nothing Japanese in his house.

Dropping the bombs saved many thousands of lives , both allied and Japanese , the only issue I have with it is the targets chosen were picked because they were relatively untouched so they could see what sort of damage they did.

It would have been hand to hand fighting all the way to Tokyo with no prisoners taken , with the atom bomb at their disposal they did what they were charged to do, save allied lives

The 40s were a lot different to today, there wasn't an investigation every time a shot was fired, we're looking at it with 21st century eyes , not how it was at the time , 6 years, they just wanted it over at any cost
 
wack61 said:
The 40s were a lot different to today, there wasn't an investigation every time a shot was fired, we're looking at it with 21st century eyes , not how it was at the time , 6 years, they just wanted it over at any cost
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**Pedantry Alert**

If by "they" you mean the USA, they were only at was for 4 years.
 
Horrific thing! You can only feel for those who died and lived a life of such horror. Mankind is so cruel, will our planet ever see a time of global peace. You can only hope for us all.
 
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I think the lack of sympathy is something you'll find from anyone kept prisoner by an opposing force though, and human nature.

I also saw in interview with a Japanese fellow in his (I think) 81st year. He was riding his bike a few km outside nagasaki when that bomb detonated. The skin was stripped from much if his body.
He (obviously) survived, but I don't think I've ever seen such horrendous scarring before.
The physical pain he has endured for 70 years is unthinkable.
He was 10.
 
thats what happens to civilians in a war - his govt should have thought of that before they decided to try and take about half the globe by force- i bet if you could be arsed you could find kids who suffered in japanese captivity or were horribly scarred by japanese bombs.

also while any POW is going to resent being captured there is a big difference between the way axis POWs were treated by the allies, (or for that matter mostly the way the western POWs were treated by the germans) and the sort of thing that happened on the burma railway or at outram road etc
 
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I've met Japanese POW's and German POW's and the Japanese ones were by far the worst affected by the ordeal,
one of my ex neighbours' would never talk about it, but as said wouldn't have anything Japanese in the house.
Sympathy wasn't something given out in time of conflict, all sides suffered, the innocent as much as the forces.
The A bombs aren't something I'd ever want used again, and doubt they would be, the range these days is so far that
even if a country was destroyed reprisals would come from allies, which is the biggest detterrant.

If I am right I believe that the Japanese also cited the Russians invasion their territory as a reason for surrender to lessen
the effct the bombings had on them
 
Yes im sure I could have padded out the post with a little copying and pasting from Google, but not all of us feel the need to do that; and at no point have I said other civilians and POWs, of differing nationalities, haven't also suffered as victims of war.

I saw an interview with the previously mentioned gentleman because it was shown on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

I mentioned it here because it had been interesting to watch and is thread relevant.
 
Yes I think we all have our little stories to tell, like my great uncle that spent the best part of the war, in a Japanese POW camp, after being shot down in the early days of the WWII.
he never talked much about it at all, in fact he never talked about much of anything...
 
Hmmmmm didn't think I'd put any links in my post :thinking:
Just speaking from personal experience
 
Ah well, I've no personal stories.
One granddad was a foreman at Rosyth naval yards, the other was a shopkeeper.
 
big soft moose said:
Heres a thought - we know the Axis forces were working on atomic arms too (indeed many of their scientists wound up working for the US during the cold war) if they'd got there first would we have surrendered rather than face atomic bombing of british cities ?

and if so give that history is generally written by the victors history books would now describe how the nuking of london and birmingham was 'necessary'
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The winner always get to write the history :)
 
kendo1 said:
Ah well, I've no personal stories.
One granddad was a foreman at Rosyth naval yards, the other was a shopkeeper.
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And there is no shame in that whatsoever, :D
it was never about sharing stories TBH.
More like what man is prepared to do to man to get the upper hand ;)
 
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big soft moose said:
Heres a thought - we know the Axis forces were working on atomic arms too (indeed many of their scientists wound up working for the US during the cold war) if they'd got there first would we have surrendered rather than face atomic bombing of british cities ?
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This started long before the Cold War.

Germany had an atomic programme, but hamstrung her own research by dismissing 'Jewish Science' - which relied heavily on theory - in favour of 'Deutsche Physik'. Many Jewish scientists left Germany in the 1930s and moved to the UK and the US, where they continued their work, and several of them joined the Manhattan Project.

Would the Nazis have got there first, if they hadn't lost some of their best scientists? Historians are still arguing about this.
 
MartynK said:
Would the Nazis have got there first, if they hadn't lost some of their best scientists? Historians are still arguing about this.
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A scary thought, I suppose you have to say it was the only good thing that came from Hitler's dislike of the Jews
 
MartynK said:
This started long before the Cold War.

Germany had an atomic programme, but hamstrung her own research by dismissing 'Jewish Science' - which relied heavily on theory - in favour of 'Deutsche Physik'. Many Jewish scientists left Germany in the 1930s and moved to the UK and the US, where they continued their work, and several of them joined the Manhattan Project.

Would the Nazis have got there first, if they hadn't lost some of their best scientists? Historians are still arguing about this.
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I wonder how they felt about the ex nazi scientists joining them post '45
 
Gremlin said:
Hmmmmm didn't think I'd put any links in my post :thinking:
Just speaking from personal experience
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she's having a pop at me (again) despite the fact that actually neither did I
 
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