I see that you disgree with the links I posted once again ~Mesanthorpe~.

Okay, I may have used the word "thermocuclear" improperly, I confess to ignorance of the "technical" word usage. let me replace that word with "atomic bombs". My point was, the Japanese could have created havoc and may have had atomic bombs ready, or dirty bombs ready, for use against our landing forces. That is what Truman was well aware of.

Thank you for the pleasant 'technical' correction ~Misanthorpe~. But could you give us a link to support YOUR "informed" words about the decision for the drop time? Appreciate it.

Nuke the Iranians and then steal their oil. That sounds Cheneyesque, doesn't it?

I wrote a letter to my local paper clarifying the Mahmoud Amadinejad misquote about "blowing Israel off the map" and they ran my letter with the misquote after removing the correct translation. I was livid!

Our media must have orders NEVER to print the Iranian president's words unless they are negative.

The sad thing is that most Americans are being kept in the dark.

"Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength""

If I remember correctly, the US mil deliberately kept Hiroshima and Nagasaki off the conventional bombing lists to make sure they had a good target to use the nukes on.

The Strategic Bombing survey of 1946 is highly in doubt. At the time, the (future) Air Force was heavily biased towards the theory that bombing alone would bring about victory in war. This was proven not to be the case at the time and is still not the case. Conventional bombing has never ever won a war, only invasion and occupation succeeds and sometimes not even then. For the USAAF, they needed to find justification for their mission to establish a separate branch of service that ultimately would become first among equals with the other services.

Even after the Hiroshima bombing, remember that there was an unsuccessful coup to not allow the Emperor to surrender. After the war, Japanese diplomats privately thanked US leaders for dropping the bomb because it allowed them to wrest control away from the military faction governing at the time.

Bombing Japan was necessary and saved lives. Mostly Japanese lives at that. This is pure revisionism and wishful thinking and not worth the bits used on the Internet.

Why call them 'our media'? I know its semantics, but it reflects a mindset. The myth is that the media is a part of our community. Maybe it was years ago when newspapers and tv and radio stations were locally owned. But not these days.

The key is to realize that they aren't on our side. They are not 'our media'. They are indeed there to mislead and misdirect. So, the easy answer is to ignore them. Oh, its nice that someone tried to correct the lies in a letter, but you see the response.

The key is to constantly attack their credibility. Constantly point out the lies. Constantly remind people that this is exactly the same media that lied us into the Iraq war, and its the same media that made absolutely zero reforms after that to prevent it from occurring again.

Person by person, friend by friend, convince the people around you not to pay any attention to these lying fools. Strike at their credibility. The media's stories should be greeted with laughter. When they support a candidate, that should be the sign for the rest of us to never support that candidate. These people are our opposition. They are not 'our media'.

In the last year of WWII, many well-to-do Americans who had supported Hitler before the war and supplied him during the war, beseiged FDR with peace proposals. These usually amounted to trying Hitler and some others for war crimes, but leaving Europe in its state of Nazi occupation. Allen Dulles from his position in the OSS, for instance, submitted several of these despite having no authority to negotiate a peace, and orders from his superiors to cease and desist. The blanket position of the White House with regard to these efforts was "unconditional surrender."
FDR was ailing in his last campaign, but could not let the pro-Fascist American elite take over the war effort. In the event, he died before Hitler's suicide and Germany's surrender, which was the main thrust of the war. Had FDR lived another 90 days, the closing events and the development of the post-war world would have been considerably different. Most likely the "unconditional surrender" ploy would not have been used to delay the Japanese surrender to use its people for an atomic test as the opening act of a new "cold" war.

Goose is full of it. There's plenty of evidence to back up Mr. Pilger's story. What goose is citing is the old BS line.

The Japanese were suing for peace months before the bombings. Who cares if a small handful didn't like it and tried an 'unsuccessful coup'. Obviously the key word there was 'unsuccessful'. This is all just crap to cover up the deliberate murder of a couple of hundred thousand people.

PS ... Japan was collapsing. At that time, the US really just had to do nothing. There was no reason to invade Japan.

Japan started the war because they had no raw materials. They had to invade what is today Indonesian to get oil. By 1945, their Navy and Air Force had been destroyed. The US controlled all the waters around Japan. Thus Japan could get no oil from outside Japan, and they have little to none inside Japan.

No modern war machine can function without oil. Even if Japan had ships and planes left, with no oil they couldn't use them. The Us could easily blockade Japan. And they had free reign over Japan's airspace. Japan could do nothing. Their military was collapsing. Their war economy was collapsing.

If the US did nothing and just sat their and watched, Japan would have been forced to surrender. But the murder of a couple of hundred thousand people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki into that context.

One can justify with their mind that bombing Hiroshima was necessary for bringing a more rapid end to the war, but if you ever watch pictures of the aftermath, your heart tells you it was a horrible and evil thing. I suppose it did pretty much correspond to war-madness everyone was so infected with at that time.

It was doubtless the Russians-at-their-door that forced the insisted-upon Unconditional-Surrender, not those Nukes (which were used primarily to Impress those Russians/Chinese/etc., and partially for Punishment -- albeit a poorly-targeted punishment). They would have accepted the same 'conditional-surrender Terms' that we so happily-gave them, later [re: 'their Emperor'] before "bombing became necessary" -- but, we wanted to impress the World with a demonstration of our new-Toy, and were fearful of 'running out of war' before being able to do-so...

Also without-doubt, and however, they would have jumped to 'treat us the same', had History allowed them that option/choice. "Power' is an exceedingly-dangerous Opiate...

Goose2 is full of it2.

"Bombing Japan was necessary and saved lives. Mostly Japanese lives at that. This is pure revisionism and wishful thinking and not worth the bits used on the Internet." -- Why not just go on and say "The Japs were lucky we did not kill even more of 'em to save even more lives".

The Revisionist is just correcting the blatantly propagandistic BS we have been fed as "U.S." history. We (the U.S.)were, and are, mass murderers on a scale that would (and did) impress the Stalin/Mao/Goose2-we-destroyed-the-village-to-save-it scholars.

I'm torn on the issue. I know that the bombing of H+N wasn't necessary, however I think that because they were bombed and the results of that action became known that the chances of an all out nuke war have been greatly reduced. Not elimanated, as there are always suicidal arsehats like bush who dream of taking out the whole world in a 'blaze of glory'.

Yes, a blockade with a conventional air bombing campaign would have ended japan's war without using the bomb. Yes, accepting the 'conditional' surrender offered by Japan would have ended the war without using the bomb.

Had that happened, what do you really think would have occured in October 1962? I think Ken and Kru would have launched at each other, they would not have had much idea about the effect that those munitions would have on the world. We wouldn't now be worried about global warming, or the economy, or anything other than the survival of what was left of the human race.

While I normally agree with most sentiments expressed on the Common Dreams web site, I do not agree with this article in the least.

There is absolutely no evidence that Japan was "collapsing" or that they were ready to sue for peace. On the contrary, we had just witnessed Japanese troops fighting to the last man on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, while Japanese kamikaze pilots were committing suicide flying their planes into US warships. All evidence available at the time suggested (and still suggests) that the Japanese would fight for every inch of their homeland as fiercely as they had fought elsewhere. And only months before, the Germans had done the same - refusing to quit until Berlin was in ruins and Hitler dead in his bunker. So why would anyone think or try to argue that the Japanese would not do the same? Or is someone on this website going to try to argue that the kamikazes or the defense of Okinawa and Iwo Jima did not happen as history records? If so - there's some Holocaust deniers I know I can introduce you to.

So what would an invasion of Japan have meant, if the plan to convince the Japanese to surrender using the new "superweapon" failed? Probably millions of additional Japanese casualties, to include women, children, and the elderly caught in the crossfire as we attempted to take Japanese cities block by block a la Fallujah. Hundreds of thousands of additional US casualties. A war that might have dragged on for years more as the emperor went into hiding and his undefeated militarist puppet-masters directed the resistance from mountain hideouts. You think the Iraq insurgency was bad last year? This insurgency would have been Iraq to the tenth power. We might still be fighting it now sixty years later.

The only other alternative would have been to relent on our demand for unconditional surrender - which would have meant that the Japanese regime would have lived to fight another day - and believe you me - they would have come back to do just that. These people were every bit as ruthless and demented as the Bush administration is today. They had to be defeated completely and removed from power. If you are having trouble trying to understand how twisted the Japanese leaders were at the time, and how necessary it was to eliminate them, just picture Bush and Cheney in charge of Imperial Japan and you'll be on the right track...

Like it or not - the atomic bombings were the least of all possible evils. The death and destruction unleashed was hideous, and there is no doubt that tens of thousands of innocents were slain. I am not ignorant or unmoved by this. Unfortunately, there is a lot of evil built into homo sapiens and I have no idea how to fix that. Plato once said "only the dead have seen the end of war" and unless we come up with a way to genetically alter the species I don't think his observation will ever be rendered untrue. I understand that many progressives have difficulty with utilitarian thinking - which explains why so many have issues with Obama as well, I suppose. But that's a topic for another day.

Officially Truman used the ABOMB to get Japan to surrender before Stalin entered the war. Japan said that that was why it surrendered, because Stalin entered the war.

Let's not forget the Nuremberg war crimes trial. TIme and time again a US, UK or French prosecutor accused a German defendant of commiting war crimes. The German defendant simply looked in the direction of the Soviet prosecutors and said "So did they.".

Japanese troops were NOT fighting to the last man. General slim defeated a superior Japanese army in Burma and took tens of thousands of prisoners.

The USSR took several hundred thousand prisoners with Minimal losses.

Quoting from a 2004 article by "Mickey Z," entitled "59 Years After Hiroshima; Two Traditions: WMDs and Misinformation" --

"Although hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives were lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bombings are often explained away as a 'life-saving' measure - (i.e., the saving of) American lives.

"Exactly how many lives saved is, however, up for grabs. ... In defense of the U.S. action, it is usually claimed that the bombs saved lives. The hypothetical body count ranges from 20,000 to 'millions.'

"In an August 9, 1945 statement to 'the men and women of the Manhattan Project,' President Truman declared the hope that 'this new weapon will result in saving thousands of American lives.'

"'The president's initial formulation of 'thousands,' however, was clearly not his final statement on the matter to say the least,' remarks historian Gar Alperovitz. In his book, 'The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth,' Alperovitz documents but a few of Truman's public estimates throughout the years:

" * December 15, 1945: 'It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities . . .'

" * Late 1946: 'A year less of war will mean life for three hundred thousand - maybe half a million - of America's finest youth.'

" * October 1948: 'In the long run we could save a quarter of a million young Americans from being killed, and would save an equal number of Japanese young men from being killed.'

" * April 6, 1949: 'I thought 200,000 of our young men would be saved.'

" * November 1949: Truman quotes Army Chief of Staff George S. Marshall as estimating the cost of an Allied invasion of Japan to be 'half a million casualties.'

" * January 12, 1953: Still quoting Marshall, Truman raises the estimate to 'a minimum one quarter of a million' and maybe 'as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy.'

" * Finally, on April 28, 1959, Truman concluded: 'the dropping of the bombs . . . saved millions of lives.'

"Fortunately, we are not operating without the benefit of official estimates.

"In June 1945, Truman ordered the U.S. military to calculate the cost in American lives for a planned assault on Japan. Consequently, the Joint War Plans Committee prepared a report for the Chiefs of Staff, dated June 15, 1945, thus providing the closest thing anyone has to 'accurate': 40,000 U.S. soldiers killed, 150,000 wounded, and 3,500 missing.

"While the actual casualty count remains unknowable, it was widely known at the time that Japan had been trying to surrender for months prior to the atomic bombing. A May 5, 1945 cable, intercepted and decoded by the U.S., 'dispelled any possible doubt that the Japanese were eager to sue for peace.' In fact, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported shortly after the war, that Japan 'in all probability' would have surrendered before the much-discussed November 1, 1945 Allied invasion of the homeland.

"Truman himself eloquently noted in his diary that Stalin would 'be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini (sic) Japs when that comes about.'

"Many post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki sentiments questioned the use of the bombs.

"'I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives,' said General Dwight D. Eisenhower; while, not long after the Japanese surrender, New York Times military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, 'The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position. Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative.'

"Was it the cold logic of capitalism that motivated the nuking of civilians? As far back as May 1945, a Venezuelan diplomat was reporting how Assistant Secretary of State Nelson Rockefeller 'communicated to us the anxiety of the United States government about the Russian attitude.'

"U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes seemed to agree when he turned the anxiety up a notch by explaining how 'our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in the East . . . The demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia with America's military might.'

"General Leslie Groves was less cryptic: 'There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this Project, any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy, and the Project was conducted on that basis.'

"During the same time period, President Truman noted that Secretary of War Henry Stimson was 'at least as much concerned with the role of the atomic bomb in the shaping of history as in its capacity to shorten the war.'

"What sort of shaping Stimson had in mind might be discerned from his Sept. 11, 1945 comment to the president: 'I consider the problem of our satisfactory relations with Russia as not merely connected but as virtually dominated by the problem of the atomic bomb.'

"Stimson called the bomb a 'diplomatic weapon,' and duly explained: 'American statesmen were eager for their country to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip.'

"'The psychological effect [of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] on Stalin was twofold,' proposes historian Charles L. Mee, Jr. 'The Americans had not only used a doomsday machine; they had used it when, as Stalin knew, it was not militarily necessary. It was this last chilling fact that doubtless made the greatest impression on the Russians.'

"It also made an impression on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director at Los Alamos. After learning of the carnage wrought upon Japan, he began to harbor second thoughts and he resigned in October 1945.

"In March of the following year, Oppenheimer told Truman: 'Mr. President, I have blood on my hands.'

"Truman's reply: 'It'll come out in the wash.'

"Later, the president told an aide, 'Don't bring that fellow around again.'

"'Why did we drop [the bomb]?' pondered Studs Terkel at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

"'So little Harry could show Molotov and Stalin we've got the cards,' he explained. 'That was the phrase Truman used. We showed the goddamned Russians we've got something and they'd better behave themselves in Europe. That's why it was dropped. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet you tell that to 99 percent of Americans and they'll spit in your eye.'

Click here for the entire article -- http://www.counterpunch.org/mickey08042004.html

And so atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

a.) to graphically demonstrate to the Soviet Union the blood and guts -- the horror -- that takes place when atomic bombs are dropped on large urban areas; and

b.) to show the Soviet Union that the United States is ready, willing and able to use such a horrible weapon -- recklessly and unnecessarily.

This brings to mind the so-called "Christmas bombing" of North Vietnam by Richard Nixon. ... The 1972 carpet-bombing of North Vietnam by Nixon and Kissinger was also known as the "Madman Strategy." ...

That is to say, Nixon and Kissinger wanted the North Vietnamese to make certain concessions at the Paris Peace talks
-- concessions the North Vietnamese were unwilling to make. And so Nixon and Kissinger "carpet-bombed" North Vietnam in an effort to convince the North Vietnamese that Richard Nixon had, quite literally, gone mad.

Kissinger's orders to the air force were simple: "Bomb anything that moves."

The "Final Tally" for Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon -- these two madmen, these two mass murderers -- was:

-- between 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 Vietnamese dead; at least 900,000 of whom were civiilians;

-- 58,000+ American soldiers dead;

-- over 14,000,000 Indochinese either killed, wounded or made refugees.

The Bombing of Hiroshima was not necessary.

The Japanese were on the verge of collapse, simply because they were an Island economy.

Since the USA controlled the seas, and the air they simply could have waited for the Japanese to get hungry enough to start eating each other, and then surrender.

The Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were for the Russians and the rest of the world to observe. The fact that the Americans were willing to drop these terrible weapons on civilian populations and targets simply drove home the point----but most likely was the first nail in the coffin of the USA---they have always and still disregard innocent life, and they never have made any bones about it.

Actions speak louder than words----and the USA then and everywhere else they go---tell the world that they are a dangerous and rogue nation.

Unless they make some drastic changes and very soon----the world will have no other choice but to take the USA and "make history of them".........because if the USA is so dangerous; who what other nation will be next?

Both Japan, and Iraq were former "friends" of the USA..

It is truly disturbing to hear human beings attempting to justify the total destruction of an entire city and the eradication of all life therein.
How can any sane person justify burning children to ash?

The attack on Hiroshima was a terrorist act. It was aimed directly at the civilian populace and was politcally motivated. (Terrorism in it's purest definition) It was effective at achieving the ultimate goal.

I think some people are confused that the ends justify the means. These are the same people that approve of torture. If a family's murder will "save another life" or achieve some sort of political goal can you justify it? At what point is murder OK? If a child knew information but wouldn't tell, would you torture the child? How old would they have to be before torturing them is OK? Is it OK if they aren't white? Is it OK if they aren't Christian?

Hopefully, rationality will prevail and you can see that there is never any circumstance that justifies torture, murder, or terrorism. Hiroshima was all three.

Guy;
Yes, there is evidence that Japan was trying to negotiate a peace. That being said, they didn't want to surrender unconditionally. It exists in the archives of the us diplomatic service, as well as from sources in the former USSR whom the Japs approached asking them to help with negotiating a surrender that kept their emperor on his throne.

I agree with most of what you said, an invasion would have been a blood bath, NFD. The other options were starving them out and bombing them from the air if the us didn't invade, again that would have been a bloodbath; although not the stated desire from some of the more militaristic for the 100 million dying as one.

I doubt very much that an invasion/occupation would have seen 60 years of fighting in Japan. Not because I'm a hippy, old or otherwise, but because Japan had no natural resource base for the production of weapons. The hard liners would have been killed, allong with a very high number of civvies and us soldiers. That would not have been a good outcome either way.

War is organised murder. Always has been, always will be. That's why it should be avoided if possible, and in most cases it is possible to avoid using war to settle differences. Heck of a lot cheaper to avoid war too, for that matter.

The problem with this discussion is that the US never needed to go war in the pacific or europe. We could have all worked things out if only we had more dialog. We needed to wage a war of peace with love and tenderness not tanks and guns.

NativeSon August 6th, 2008 3:01 pm

The Bombing of Hiroshima was not necessary.

Since the USA controlled the seas, and the air they simply could have waited for the Japanese to get hungry enough to start eating each other, and then surrender.

Blockade would have killed more people than those who were killed at Hiroshima. It would also have added billions to the final cost of the war. Then the Democrats of the day would have had to explain why they spent 2 billion dollars on a weapon that was never used. Are you arguing that forcing people to resort to cannibalism is morally superior to dropping a big bomb on them? Don't forget, at that time they didn't know that the bomb would kill tens of thousands of people with radiation sickness.

TheLorax
Hopefully, rationality will prevail and you can see that there is never any circumstance that justifies torture, murder, or terrorism. Hiroshima was all three.

Hiroshima was a mixed target, they built weapons in that city, they had an army HQ base at that city. War is state terrorism. What else do you call the killing of millions? War is torture. What else would you call the crippling injuries inflicted on millions more? War is, and always has been, murder. Totally premeditated killing, planned and timed as best as possible. That's why most people argue that it should be avoided. Not a single war of the twentieth century was justified. Not the Boar War, not the Balkins wars which led to the Great War, not the Second World War which grew out of the 'peace treaty' from the First World War. Certainly not any of the colonial wars were justified. The first of the resource wars of the twenty-first century are not justifiable either.

As usual, this debate is being boxed into opposing corners without considering all the possibilities

Common fallacies:

1. "They would have done the same to us."

Not if they knew we had the bomb also! This fails to distinguish between "having" and "using." If Japan had developed the bomb before we did (there was no chance of this, though) they might have used it on us. But if both Japan and the U.S. had the bomb, it is extremely likely that neither side would have used it. But this, of course, is just a game of woulda, could shoulda, irrelevant to the morality of the U.S. decision.

2. "They fought relentlessly, even in 1945, and showed no sign of willingness to surrender."

Overlooks the crucial distinction between a "conditional" surrender - supported by many both in and out of Truman's circle - and an unconditional surrender. For the last two years, Japan knew it had lost East Asia, and was merely fighting for its survival. It believed that, if it surrendered without conditions, Americans would rape and murder indiscriminantly and try the emperor for war crimes. it had good reason to believe this, based on America's wartime conduct and on the long history of White Supremacy that motivated Western Imperialism in East Asia in the previous decades. The Japanese only agreed to surrender to the U.S. when Russian invasion was imminent - the Russians having a reputation for brutality far beyond the U.S.

The U.S. deliberately refrained from clarifying the surrender terms which would have most likely been accepted by japan - the same terms, incidentally, which the U.S. actually settled on afterwards (retention of the emperor and national sovereignty).

3. "The bomb ended the war, making an invasion unnecessary, and thus saving lives, both American and Japanese."

Even overlooking the first two points - why was no attempt made to demonstrate the bomb on an uninhabited area beforehand? As in "look at what this can do - and we have more of them." The U.S. was not going to be able to launch and invasion before NOVEMBER - so there was hardly any urgent need to negate the possibility of using the bomb to threaten, rather than kill.

4. "We had already firebombed their cities, so this was hardly any different."

This is called having your cake and eating it too. If the use of atomic weapons was not substantially different from firebombing cities, then there is to defend the notion that the a-bomb was instrumental in ending the war.

5."They started it."

It seems that many in the progressive community, who should know better - knowing as they do the cynical and amoral calculations that lead countries into wars and wartime alliances - still believe that WW2 was some grand exception, and that it really was good (allies) vs. evil (axis).

First of all, war had been brewing between the U.S. and Japan, and between Japan and much of the west in general, for decades. However horrific Japans conduct at the worst moments of ww2, its imperial entanglements beforehand were no better and no worse than those of the British, French, Dutch, Germans, and Russians who had brutalized and enslaved East Asia long before Japan ever stuck a toe in the ocean. Japan in the 1920's was a functioning democracy that tried to have a normal relationship of equals with the west, and was rebuffed on overtly white-supremicist grounds.

No, they did not "start it." Nobody "started it." WW2 was the inevitable culmination of a half-century of imperial gamesmanship and manipulation by all parties concerned.

Hitler was only defeated by an alliance with someone of equal nastiness - Stalin. I am amazed that people would think that the U.S. would NOT consider the obvious problem of the Soviets and would NOT want to intimidate them with a demonstration of the power of the a-bomb with the Japanese as experimental subjects. The defense that we treated Japan well once they were defeated overlooks (again!) the obvious need the U.S. felt for strategic pull in the region, and that this would be easier to accomplish with Japan's postwar goodwill.

"Unfortunately, there is a lot of evil built into homo sapiens and I have no idea how to fix that."

No, dear Guy Gorilla, Not Homo sapiens, Homo imperialsiticus norteamericanus. From Dresden, to Tokyo, To Hiroshima, To Nagasaki to Korea, to Hanoi to Cambodian villages; from Beograd to Bagdad, to numerous Afghan villages; NO nation has a record of mass murder by aerial bombing that the US (with some help from it's little bulldog) has. None. Hitlers London bombings positively pale in comparison.

I remain stupefied at the number of "liberals" that claim to the myth that the bombings were necessary. Don't they know that this whole purported invasion that would have been needed is a years after-the-fact fabrication? No such invasion by the US was being planned.

And now, this latest complete loony nonsense that the bombings were necessary to prevent future use of N-bombs Where the hell did this crazy argument come from??? The US and Soviet Union knew what the bombs were capable of from numerous surface tests!

Raw truth is bitter.

WWII Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey ... "Kill Japs! Kill Japs! Kill More Japs! You will help to kill the yellow bastards if you do your job well."

WWII General Curtis LeMay ... "Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier."

And this form Curtis LeMay on war criminals ... "Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal."

General George S. Patton ... "Give me 200,000 gallons of gas and I'll kill Germans."

Harry S. Truman (1911), in a letter to his future wife Bess ... "I think one man is just as good as another so long as he's not a nigger or a Chinaman. Uncle Will says that the Lord made a White man from dust, a nigger from mud, then He threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, Yellow men in Asia and White men in Europe and America."

Harry Truman, in a June 30, 1935 letter to Elizabeth Truman ... "We played five-cent poker and I won five dollars, the Costa Rican Minister lost and he screamed like a Jewish merchant. He is a Jew I think. At least he looks and talks like one."

The single greatest terrorist attack in history.

Inhuman, heinous, monstrous. The US will be stained forever.

it drives me nuts to not only listen to the psychopathic alcoholic bush rant on about iran being a "threat" but it also goads me to no end to listen to the idiots who believe him

he is a liar, drug addict, lunatic, sycophant, and a patsy all rolled into one ugly american nightmare

when i listen to the cowards in the us, the greatest terrorist nation in the world, piss on and on about how safe they are or aren't, what is the level of threat, please protect me, mama - oooh i pissed my pants again

i'm so scared........

makes me sick

as noted above, these two cities were not bombed because the psychos who run the nazi american government wanted a pristine environment for what truman called an "experiment"

they were in fact traditional japanese cities and most of the buildings were in fact made of paper

listening to the jewish state warn of nuclear armageddon makes me sick as well

the marriage of the nazis and the jews - how sick is that

no wonder anti-semitic cultures evolve

eustace mullins calls them "a parasitic people"

he points out that when the zionists first envisioned stealing a country they wanted to go to uganda but decided later to take palestine instead

while ridding the world of the nazi americans may be not doable the jews should keep in mind that they are not quite in that boat - they should look ahead and try to see what a real pogrom would look like - 600 nukes or not

certainly the rothschild's will take all the money no matter who is doing what to whom

as i said - a parasitic people

Samson said: "What goose is citing is the old BS line. "

What goose ALWAYS cites is BS.

Guy The Gorilla says

"Like it or not - the atomic bombings were the least of all possible evils. The death and destruction unleashed was hideous, and there is no doubt that tens of thousands of innocents were slain. I am not ignorant or unmoved by this."

Lets change this to 'is hideous' as is depleted uranium use which may be 'obvious' to some as being 'the least of all possible evils' too. What utter claptrap for even utilitarian thinkers.

What bigger crime could have been committed? A Holocaust?
But we don't count any more and The Armenian Holocaust is being denied too. Who does the counting and who pays for these crimes? The dead indeed are deserving of defence and the perpetrators of on all sides should be held accountable openly and honestly. Where would American leaderships throughout their history stand in the criminal Pantheon? Why are there not War Crimes Tribunals for the 'victors too?

The evidence well documented with its authenticity verified from impeccable research, sources, recordings and witnesses overwhelming that Japan wanted to surrender. The bomb myth continues and the second one was a worse indictment on human kinds capacity for merciless destruction of everything living. May those who would justify such revisionist interpretations as his poster has, be aware that they cannot then use those who deny similar atrocities as examples that stand for ridicule. I repeat who counts the numbers of deaths and injuries, deformities, abortions, child deaths, contaminated resources in the food chain and so on that result from deliberate policy decisions to abuse power? Far more Germans suffered unimaginably after the war ended than during any defence of The Fatherland. These numbered in millions. After Berlin was occupied. Where is the count and who is to blame here?

The fiction that the bombs were dropped to save lives is the same as the fiction that democracy and freedom are the reasons for occupation of Muslim lands to-day. The British sing about how they 'won the war'. Its their fiction. The USA is happy to propagate that it won the war in Europe (giving Britain an allied position along with freedom fighters). But even to-day little recognition is afforded Russia's role in the defeat of Germany as our ally Stalin is not suitable.

This Hollywood stuff is more like 'The Lone Ranger and Tonto' or 'The Green Berets'. That the Japanese were horribly cruel (very true) but the allies were not guilty of War Crimes too when Nuremburg deliberately left out the crime of bombing cities which they excelled at? And why was this do you think? This culminated, after the fire bombings of cities in Japan, in Horishima and Nagasaki. And its the anniversary too. Were these not also War Crimes on the same scale as any death camp? Most certainly they were and now the Israelis are rightly accused of dropping masses of cluster ammunitions across the south of Lebanon. That's another defined War Crime now to-day. But who cares or remembers any more? Only Hussein or the likes of Karadic are worthy enough to stand trial it appears? We have sanitised our participation in genocidal destruction and occupations on a far greater scale consistently since the end of the Second World War. But we are after all the good guys fighting evil. The evil doers will be brought to Justice. Our good doers support dictators who keep the masses in check and then we claim these masses are jealous of our freedoms? We insist on keeping them under the screw and then accuse them of terrorism and plotting against us? We imprison the innocent, support and install their complicit and merciless guards and then we sing songs about how free we are! We drop nuclear bombs on cities and say it is the least of all possible evils? We like to torture. Another least of all possible evils I presume? Puke!

Truman dropped the bomb to threaten the Soviets and start the cold war, as someone stated above. The Japanese were ready to surrender. Whether it was conditional or unconditional is not really important, is it. Emperor Hirohito is dead now anyway. Goose2 IS full of it. How can you kill 200 thousand people to save lives. That's pretty twisted logic. Negotiation and eventual surrender works a lot better, and many more lives would have been saved. Truman and the other criminal perpetrators are gone too, so why are we bickering with each other today to assuage someone else's guilt?

Skippy-

You are making baseless generalizations in an attempt to win your jusification for using atomic weapons. You stated:
"Since the USA controlled the seas, and the air they simply could have waited for the Japanese to get hungry enough to start eating each other, and then surrender. - Blockade would have killed more people than those who were killed at Hiroshima. Are you arguing that forcing people to resort to cannibalism is morally superior to dropping a big bomb on them?"
Since Japan's imports are mainly metals and textiles (not FOOD) I fail to see how you can justify that they would "eat each other". Japan had plenty enogh agriculture in 1945 to feed their citizens.

You then stated "It would also have added billions to the final cost of the war. Then the Democrats of the day would have had to explain why they spent 2 billion dollars on a weapon that was never used." So money is a motice for incinerating a city? 2 billion dollars is worth exterminating life in Hiroshima? I think that's pretty sick.

Then you stated "Hiroshima was a mixed target, they built weapons in that city, they had an army HQ base at that city." So if a factory is building bombs I should also destroy the kindergarten across the street and the convalescent home on the next block? If an Army base is located in a city I can go ahead and wipe out a subdivision across town? (maybe one of them might work at that army base!)

Your post leads me to a few conclusions:
1. Human life has a dollar value attached.
2. In war, it's OK to kill non-combatants, including entire families.
3. If they do it to us it's ok to reciprocate.

I cannot agree with any aspect of your point of view. I find it disturbing that people that think like you are out there.

Warmongers have never been in a war.

TheLorax;
If you read everything I've said on this topic you'll see that I'm not arguing that it was a good thing for the weapons to exist. Nor am I one of the people who say war is good. Did you miss my mention of the fact that not one war of the last century was justified?

As far as the cannibalism quote goes, I was responding to someone else's point about that topic. Moreover Japan relied very heavily on fishing to sustain its population in the 40s (and now) so yes, starvation would have been a military option. Same as it was a threat faced by the UK.

[Your post leads me to a few conclusions:
1. Human life has a dollar value attached.]

It's both priceless and cheap. Don't think it's not both, or have you never heard of why Ford ignored the safety issues with the Pinto? Did humans ever sell each other as slaves? Obviously there is a dollar value attached to human life. As far as war goes, it's the most expensive way of killing each other that we've come up with. If you're a tory, that's a good thing, if you're not you'll tend to argue that we should avoid killing each other.

[2. In war, it's OK to kill non-combatants, including entire families.]

Were any members of the Allied forces put on trial for the firebombing of Germany? War is organised murder, what's the diff between killing a million soldiers and killing a million civies? Nothing in my opinion, each are as wastefull as the other. Did any of the mass deaths committed by the allies, the axis or the empires really settle any grievances (real or imagined) during those wars? Did killing millions restore the Austro-Hungarian empire? Did killing millions save the British Empire? Did killing millions save the Empire of Japan?

[3. If they do it to us it's ok to reciprocate.]

That is exactly the arguement that has been used by the wartime leaders in each country that has fought a war over the last thousand years. Each one of them says that same line of crap. Only those who lose the war are punished, never the victor.

Interesting footnote:
2 things Americans weren't allowed to see in '46 re:Hiroshima. Dead or mutilated bodies (only shell of buildings) and the hysterical blooming of flowers growing out of the burned ground.

USAn August 6th, 2008 3:31 pm
And now, this latest complete loony nonsense that the bombings were necessary to prevent future use of N-bombs Where the hell did this crazy argument come from??? The US and Soviet Union knew what the bombs were capable of from numerous surface tests!

I beleive that was me that brought that up. The leaders of the world may have known about the effects of later tests on various atols in the pacific, but they didn't know what the effect of the bomb would be on human beings in a city, certainly not before 1945. The fact that the leaders may have known something is worthless, the fact that the citizens know it means the end of life if they're used is far more crucial.

Would there be any opposition to their existance if we didn't know that tens of thousands would die from the blast, but millions more would die from the radiation?

"Were any members of the Allied forces put on trial for the firebombing of Germany? War is organised murder, what's the diff between killing a million soldiers and killing a million civies? "

See my point RE: Noam Chomsky. The Nuremberg trials were set up specifically so that anything that was done by both the Axis and the Allies was not considered a war crime.

BTW, most experts agree that the "supreme" war crime is unprovoked aggression, which means that the invasion of Iraq was illegal from the start.

Nuclear bombing H & N was unnecessary and an evil, criminal act on a level not approached by any other historical crime. There always has been, and is a portion of the populace willing to rationalize such evildoings; In this case they got control of the military and government; today the same sort have control of at least the government....truly a scary situation .... proof .... you only hear about the probability of success of wantonly starting a war with Iran discussed .... not that it would be totally immoral, unnecessary , illegal ...and yes evil.... human DNA has not changed ....

~JOHN PILGER~

Are you aware of the classified top secret, or ultra secret issues, that president Truman and a handful of other Americans were fully aware of in 1945. Ultra secret issues that Truman had to seriously consider, before he made that awful decision to use atomic weapons against Japan?

Just wondered if you were aware of everything president Truman was fully aware of before you wrote this article.

E=Mc2 was perhaps the worst math mistake humanity ever made.

Samson August 6th, 2008 12:39 pm

Japan was by no means collapsing. They were still fighting as hard as they could. And the closer we got to the Japanese mainland the harder they fought. Losing over 30,000 Marines on Iwo Jima just doesn't fit the collapsing scenario.

"GwNorth August 6th, 2008 2:49 pm
Japanese troops were NOT fighting to the last man."

We didn't take many prisoners at Iwo Jima. The Japanese were fighting as hard as they could, using any means they could. Kamakazies and a refusal to surrender are not your usual clue to a collapsing military.

The men that were there in the South Pacific don't agree with all the folks on here that wanted them to hit the beaches on the mainland of Japan instead of dropping the bombs.

Speaking of atrocities, you might want to do some research into Japans military conquests and actions from Batann to Manchuria. You'll get an eyefull.

My father and the rest of the Marine veterans had no desire to assault Japan if there was any alternative. I defer to the men that were there and the way they felt about it. I know that he and many others were grateful for the decision. I am because I got to keep my father.

To any one that thinks it was criminal, what would you consider your decision to send hundreds of thousands of marines to their death if you didn't drop those bombs?
And no we weren't able to just blockade and wait them out. They weren't going to sit there and politely allow us to starve them out.

Save Americans and kill Japanese or kill Japanese and save American lives. Which would you really choose? Would you kill your father and brother to save the enemy? This was a real choice.

KEM PATRICK August 6th, 2008 5:56 pm
E=Mc2 was perhaps the worst math mistake humanity ever made.

There's something we really agree on.

Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki were significant military targets, they were useful only as petri dishes for an horrific scientific experiment to determine the effects of atomic weapons on a civilian target. After the war Admiral William D. Leahy stated:
"The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. Being the first to use it we adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."
Today the only appropriate response is to bow our heads in shame and beg forgivness of the Japanese people.

The truth is simply; the USA has never truly had the legal justification for any of the wars it has been involved with since 1812.
That every war they have been involved with they have shed innocent blood, even the one they made against each other that they call the "Civil War".

The truth is simply; that most Americans could care less about anyone but themselves first, then their country, then the lesser things like other people and their country take lesser importance. Down the line that resembles a "food chain".

The truth is simply; that reading some of the statements above shows that far too many Americans are supporters of the mistakes the USA has made, for various reasons, than to make any kind of judgement about very much that does not have to do directly with them.

The truth is simply that because of this, the USA has never really amounted to much more than a negative example for the world, and most likely has no intentions of changing.

Their society is based on the ridiculous, with the absurd as the best description. Most of the members are scared to death of things that should not scare anyone; and oblivious to the things about their country that should scare the hell out of them. Most of them are under educated, and could most likely be described as " functionally ignorant", mostly of history and especially of their own. Most would rather believe the Hollywood version, than the true story. Most of them are slaves; if not to some Religion, then a pseudo religion, or other fairy tale based on mass consumption, of goods that fall out of fashion yearly. That most of them are slaves to fashion itself and have forgotten if they ever knew what originality is. Most of them would sell their children into slavery by teaching them the same things that make them slaves.

That the USA could be so materially wealthy and so unworthy of all of it must be the greatest joke of all.

That such a relative few should have so much power and piss it all away.

During the final fighting at Okinawa, hundreds of Japanese citizens, women carrying babies and or holding their young children's hands, lept from hgh cliffs to their deaths onto the rocky ocean shorelines. Our few nearby troops could not stop them and they did try to. The few available films of that event are horrific.

The Japanese militry or the Japanede citizens were NOT going to surrender. If we had invaded the Japanese homeland islands, the killing would have gone on until almost all of the Japanese were dead. Also, after and IF we had made a sucessful landing, the Russians would have declared war on Japan and their troops would have been pouring down across Japan from the north. Russia declared war on Japan after we used the atomic bombs.

General Curtis E. LeMay would have insured the continued fire bombing raids on every city in Japan. It would have been far more horrible than Hiroshima, far more, as it was in Tokyo that fateful week. After the second atomic bomb was dropped, LeMay had a thousand B-29s fly in formation over Japan and they dropped no bombs during that mision. It was a show of force.

There were no "meaningful" surrender negotiations ever conducted by the Japanese and the final surrender terms were EXACTLY the same as those agreed upon by the allies at the Potsdam Conference. Most, if not all of the bloggers posting comments here on this subject, are unaware of the very critical facts that president Truman was aware of. You should check it out, so should the author of this article.

KEM PATRICK August 6th, 2008 6:49 pm
"During the final fighting at Okinawa, hundreds of Japanese citizens, women carrying babies and or holding their young children's hands, lept from hgh cliffs to their deaths onto the rocky ocean shorelines. Our few nearby troops could not stop them and they did try to. The few available films of that event are horrific."

I saw some films of that. It was horrible, I couldn't even watch all of it. Makes you sick.

My dad told me some of the Marines that were there on Okinawa that he later serrved with during the occupation had continuing nightmares about that. the children were what really tore them up he said.

Thank God for sparing him that. He wasn't involved on Okinawa.

You are dead right in your facts.

By the summer of 1945, the U.S. was weary of war and the pressure on Truman to finish it was heavy. Remember, that war wasn't paid out of the general fund with tax dollars like it is (unfortunately) today. It was paid with U.S. Savings Bond issues and a lot of sacrifice on the home front.

To Truman, things were mostly black and white. As an admired artillery officer in WWI he knew the suffering and hopelessness of the average soldier and the misery for civilians of a long, protracted war. Yes, he likely knew Japan was in its last throes but how long they could hold out was at issue. Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, the battles of Manila, Saipan, and Okinawa were costly in American lives so Japan's unconditional surrender was the national mindset back then. Truman knew an army officer must always aim for completing a mission satisfactorily with minimum loss of men and materiel. As president, any unnecessary loss of life, he realized, would be on his shoulders. As a lifelong student of history, I've asked myself what Truman's consequences might have been for NOT using the bombs when he did and letting WWII run on. Whether he saved one million or just one Allied life, Truman could see no reason to hold back.

I hate nuclear bombs and fear nuclear power plants. But I have to give Truman the nod for making his decision in the context of that time. By avoiding a Japanese invasion, American lives were spared. As a Vietnam Era soldier I got a taste of being "expendable" and Duty-Honor-Country wasn't on my mind.

I visited Hiroshima in 2007 and stayed in a hotel close to the Memorial Park. In such a beautiful reconstructed city the monuments to one of the greatest acts of terrorism in the 20th century are stark reminders of the inhumanity of state armed forces.

The "What if?" question is fairly pointless now. What is more important is the present and future danger to the world of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction.

How many nuclear weapons does the USA possess? How many is it prepared to use? Against whom? Why?

How far does the nuclear research (and the necessary finance of billions of dollars) go before somebody decides that planet earth and its people would benefit immeasurably
more by peaceful application of these funds?

Almost unmentioned: fire-bombing

"The first raid of this type on Tokyo was on the night of 23 February–24 when 174 B-29s destroyed around one square mile (3 km²) of the city. Following on that success 334 B-29s raided on the night of 9 March–10 March, dropping around 1,700 tons of bombs. Around 16 square miles (41 km²) of the city was destroyed and over 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the fire storm. The destruction and damage was at its worst in the city sections east of the Imperial Palace. It was the most destructive conventional raid in all of history. The city was made primarily of wood and paper, and Japanese firefighting methods were not up to the challenge. The fires burned out of control, boiling canal water and causing entire blocks of buildings to spontaneously combust from the heat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_in_World_War_II

"...67 Japanese cities, as many as 500,000 Japanese deaths and some 5 million more made homeless."
wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/56vryw

We are working "To abolish war as an instrument of national policy."

Veterans for Peace

It would be wonderful if someone could solve the problems of the world.

I'd be grateful if I could at least solve my own interpersonal relationship problems!

We firebombed the Germans too...we're equal opportunity warriors