Quote:
Originally posted by johnny:
Um... Azred... you speak of tens of thousands of soldiers.... how much damage do you think "little boy" caused ? Or how many victims ?
Estimated numbers at the end of the year are 200.000, all because of one bomb. And i'm not even talking about Nagasaki, that's a whole different story.
Not trying to insinuate anything here, but you talk like there would have been more casualties when there would have been a "normal" battle instead of the atomic bomb. Sorry dude, but that's a little absurd.
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More to the point, as I've already pointed out in a previous thread,
Japan offered to surrender in January, 1945: one month before the bombs were dropped.
And the conditions that they offered?
1. To surrender all land, naval and airforces to the United States
2. To allow the Allies to reclaim all land conquered by Japan
and to allow the Allies to occupy Japanese soil
3. To submit any and all (including the emperor) to any and all war crimes tribunal
In return, the asked for one thing and one thing only. That a member of the royal family would be allowed to continue as an Emperor (but with no state authority). The new emperor did not have to be the existing one - they even offered his child as a replacement.
This was a very innocuous demand, to retain a monarchy stripped of all powers,
but Trueman rejected it. So no, the bombs did not save American lives - the United States did not
need to drop them - it just wanted to test them 'in the field' on a real city with real people - something that it had been unable to do thus far.
Trueman later went on to accept Japanese surrender after the two bombs were dropped and allowed the Japanese to retain their emperor under exactly the same terms as proposed by the Japanese eight months before!
Pavlik, P. "The Ethics of War: Hiroshima and Nagasaki After 50 Years(1995)
It was an unneccessary act - and had the Japanese won the war, Trueman would inevitably have been charged with attempted genocide.