Quote:
Originally posted by shadowspecter:
Hmmm... interesting, well my project is already done and due. It’s kinda interesting what some of you said. Well here’s my opinion, it was wrong that U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.S. never even bothered to warn the Japanese that we were going to drop the a-bomb on them if they didn’t surrender. Hundred of thousand of innocent lives were killed instantly and thousand of lives after the war from the cause of radiation. A military general said the Japanese would have surrendered if we warned them since they were already crippled and the blockade of resources were already weakening them. Yes maybe the dropping of the a-bomb ended the war sooner, but would it have really killed one million American lives? We will never know since it never happened.
Think about it, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, Americans responded in rage and said the Japanese were “barbaric” because they attacked civilians. Well what happened in those two Japanese cities? We killed innocent lives too, how did Americans respond to this? They said that they deserved it. If you compared the death toll, Japanese lost far more lives then the attack on Pearl Harbor. I’m not trying to be anti-American, I’m proud to be an American. I just hate how the history was formed, like what happened to the Native Americans, slavery, how ignorant people were and still are.
|
1. Warned them - They will intercept the bombers and the 2 only nuke in the US arsenal at the time would have been lost.
2. It was a tough call - Japanese civillian casualties vs American GIs. If you were the president, whom would you rather loose?
3. There is little chance for precision bombing - even equipped with the infamous Norden Bombsight, the B-17s would have targeted a larger area in order of the bombs to hit their mark, which means some of the bomb would also hit the sorrounding buildings e.g. schools and houses. In WWII, civillian casualties can only be minimized to a certain "acceptable" level.
4. AFAIK US did issue a warning, although not a very clear indication of the incoming A-bombs, but the Generals of Imperial Japanese Army/Navy just couldn't decide if they should surrender or convert all their civillians into homeguards to defend their country.
The problem with the Japanese is their Code of Bushido-- They would rather die "gloriously" in battle than to surrender. It would be crazy for the American GIs to go against hordes of civillians whom would rather die fighting; as if fighting suicidal soldiers aren't bad enough.
5. In the war, the loosers are the villian whereas the victors are always protrayed as the champions/saviors; make no mistake about it. If Hitler had won the war, US and Europe would be written in the history books as the villians of WWII.
My conclusion -- War is bad. Something that should have not been started. But once you have started, you have better prepared to end it quickly, at all cost.
[ 02-13-2004, 01:01 AM: Message edited by: Paladin2000 ]