[BerkeleyRefugee]

My mom is from Nagasaki and she witnessed the bombing of her native city as well as the human devastation that followed. Thankfully the family moved to Sasebo (a neighboring town) long before the bomb fell, but they did know of some people who died. I would encourage everyone to watch the film, “White Light/Black Rain”, the HBO documentary about the bombings told from the viewpoint of some of the remaining survivors. Also recommend the animated film, “Gen of Hiroshima,’ created by a survivor who was a child at the time of the bombing. Japan was already on the verge of surrender. The bombs did not save lives and were a crime against humanity, as the Catholic Church asserts.

[never4get]

I have empathy for those who were forced to suffer because of the Japanese refusal to suffer...but to say... The bombs did not save lives and were a crime against humanity, as the Catholic Church asserts....I disagree with. As many will attest here, as many as who died in the blast would have died in the invasion, fathers and brothers, mothers, children from both sides. Unlike many on this thread who are jovial, I am not. It was a horrific decision to make in a horrific war. I hate war, the pain and death it brings. In this instance I do believe that noting what WOULD have happened absent use of the weapon, there was very little choice....What a terrible decision to have to make if you were the President, but I trust his decision was the right decision. Please try and separate those on this thread who take joy out of the pain and death the bomb caused from those who while they believe it was ultimately the right thing to do also understand the horror of what the weapons of war thrust on people.

[DuncanWaring]

Japan was already on the verge of surrender.

Considering the fact that the Japanese fought, for all intents and purposes, to the last man all the way up through the Pacific Island Campaign, the idea that they would just roll over and surrender the Homeland is preposterous.

Here's a more likely scenario.

Little Boy and Fat Man saved tens of millions of lives.

The Catholic Church is wrong on this one.

[wordsofearnest]

I just read Pope John Paul’s address at Hiroshima in 1981. His call was to end war and all war is a crime against humanity.

[mass55th]

And I suppose the Japanese weren’t guilty of crimes against humanity during the war they chose to start?

[Moose4]

If Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been leveled by one atomic bomb each, they would have shortly been burned out by Curtis Lemay’s Twentieth Air Force, flying hundreds of B-29s each carrying thousands of pounds of incendiary bombs. Five months of seeing Tokyo and every other major city in Japan burned to the ground, with hundreds of thousands dead and millions homeless and starving, had not convinced the hard-liners in the Japanese government to surrender. It wasn’t until after we demonstrated to do with one airplane what had previously taken four hundred did Emperor Hirohito bestir himself and overrule his suicidal subordinates.

More people died in one night in Tokyo (around 125,000) and more territory was obliterated (16.4 square miles) than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The only difference was that in Tokyo, it was 336 airplanes carrying napalm, instead of one carrying a nuclear weapon.

No, it’s not really something to celebrate, because so many people did die. But I still thank God for it, because my father’d already been told he was going to get transferred from his motor pool job on Leyte and get sent ashore on Kyushu. I might not be here today if it wasn’t for those bombs making Hirohito come to his senses. After all, the Japanese had THIRTY-TWO MILLION civilians ready to resist to the death, even if they were mostly armed only with spears or sticks.

}:-)4

[MarineBrat]

The bombs did not save lives and were a crime against humanity, as the Catholic Church asserts.

Crime against humanity? The historical record doesn't show much "humanity" coming out of Japan in those days.

[Fundamentally Fair]

Japan was already on the verge of surrender.

Is that why it took TWO BOMBS separated by days to make them finally give up?

[packrat35]

Is this the same Catholic Church that didn’t do anyhting about pedophile priests and supports illegals coming to this country?

[A.A. Cunningham]

The bombs did not save lives and were a crime against humanity,

Bulls***

Ask your mother why the largest Allied air raid of the war took place after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.

[Skooz]

Japan was already on the verge of surrender.

No one who knows the history of the period believes that to be the case.

The Imperial Army had issued orders to resist to the last man, and the entire Japanese main island was being prepared with an intricate defense in depth. Civilians were being trained in suicidal warfare and were, like the army, preparing to fight to the last man, woman and child.

Japan was, in NO WAY, on the verge of surrender.

An invasion of Japan would have cost 500,000 - 800,000 American lives and tens of millions of Japanese lives. Those lives were spared by the use of the terrible weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The "Japan was already on the verge of surrender" nonsense is just the latest propaganda sound byte parroted by the anti-Americans who refuse to believe what history tells them.

[Centurion2000]

Japan was already on the verge of surrender. The bombs did not save lives and were a crime against humanity, as the Catholic Church asserts.

Bullshit. Don't start what you cannot finish.

[Repeal The 17th]

“Japan was already on the verge of surrender. The bombs
did not save lives and were a crime against humanity...”

---

Sorry, in reading the whole thread it is taking a bit of time
for me to catch up, but I just wanted to let you know that
I think you have reached your maximum storage capacity of feces.

[Eaker]

Read about the Bataan Death march and any pity toward those that died in the justified nuclear bombings will disappear.

If it doesn’t then you ain’t an American.