Your thoughts?
You are assuming that our Commanders did not know the Japanese mindset which had an ultranationalist government and a state religion which worshiped the emperor.
Our Commanders knew how radical those people were and how willingly they would kill—even themselves in battle. They were brutal, inhumane and ruthless to all their enemies which made a joke of the Geneva Convention and made water boarding look like paradise. ANY regard for individual rights, life, women, and their people, was non-existent.
Our Commander knew that they would probably give up only under a dire situation and he was willing to drop that bomb and create that situation to get the insane Japanese to surrender. They didn’t care about their own people, but, our Commanders DID care about their people. They had to force the Japanese to give up and, thus, not only saving many of our men from a brutal insane tortured death, but also theirs. “Them or us” was Truman’s ONLY decision. He said “Them!”, thank God.
I see no moral ambiguity at all. Neither did my father who went onto the Island after the surrender. He was the next in line to engage in battle, and would have probably been killed, if the bomb was not dropped.
The day I read about Nanking was the day any feeling of guilt over Hiroshima was forever swept away.
My grandfather designed and tested the bomb casing, the shell that held the atomic device. He has no regrets about using them and neither do I.
The Japanese slaughtered whole villages, raping and pillaging as they went, cutting a bloody swathe through the women and children of southeast Asia. Apologists will tell you that it was just a symptom of the war. Women and girls conscripted to service Japanese soldiers in the Joy Division undoubtedly feel differently.
The Japanese government was warned for a week prior to the bombs being dropped to evacuate the cities. They were told what to expect from the bombs. They were asked to surrender. They chose to ignore the warnings and continued fighting the war. Yet, we’re the bad guys. If there was any sense in people, they’d be angry with the people in the Japanese government who made the decision to ignore our warnings, thereby putting their citizens through the agony of being nuked. No one ever seems to reach that conclusion. Wake up and place blame where it belongs: on the Japanese government!
The fact is that those two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki took the fight right out of the Japanese people and, more importantly, the Japanese government. Those two bombs ended the war, which the Japanese had declared on us and other nations, siding with Hitler, thereby preventing any further casualties ON BOTH SIDES, which would certainly have numbered into the millions.
After dropping the bombs and after years of warfare, we were first on the scene to treat casualties, bury the dead, and rebuild their entire country. We rebuilt it better than before and gave the Japanese the tools they needed to thrive as an industrialized nation. With the bombs, we prevented further casualties due to protracted fighting and defeated a powerful fascist enemy whose goal was domination of Asia. Yet, the USA is somehow, to this day, held as monsters.
You’re welcome Japan.