There might not have been a North Korea dictatorship today.
The Soviet Union might have been ended in 1950. Just a thought.
What did you have to do with it?
Our cousin was on a troop ship; headed for an invasion of
Japan - an American ship. Their CO lined them up & said,
“Look to your right, then to your left. After this invasion,
one out of every three or you will be dead. - On their way
over, Truman dropped the A-bomb. Their ship turned around
mid-way & returned home. Every Japanese citizen was ordered
to fight to the death to defend Japan with anything they
could use for a weapon. - My father was a hardened combat
veteran of N. Africa, Italy & Germany. If not for the bomb;
he would have had to go to Japan & fight them. He was in
for the duration plus 6 months. I wasn’t born ‘til after
the war. - I do not second guess President Truman.
The Japanese should be thanking America for nuking their asses and bringing them to the modern era.
They Saw how a Brokered Peace turned out, an Armistice for 20 years.
That is why they had such insistence on Total and Unconditional surrender on the part of Germany and Japan. They didn't want their sons fighting the same war in 1960.
And I think they did a pretty good job. Germany hasn't started a World War in 70 years!
I read the book “The Making Of The Atomic Bomb” and General Gates, who was in charge of the Manhattan Project said that after all that money and resources and material used the Bomb had to be dropped. Also the powers that be were convinced that Japan would surrender real quick after Hiroshima but it took the second one to convince them that we had more. The firebombing campaign obliterated something like 59 cities and there wasn’t very many to choose from to be Atom Bombed (as the book stated) that were intact so they could measure the destruction. To me, and the generation that fought thought that bombing Nagasaki was vengeance because that’s where the torpedo’s used at Pearl Harbor were manufactured. Karma is a real biatch. The liberals today didn’t live through that era and don’t know squat on how Americans felt during the war or their feelings towards the Japanese.
Oh and PS, one of the reasons MacArthur was fired as commander in Korea was he wanted to use the atomic bomb.
As I posted in another thread, but is more appropriate for your thread:
A comment/question I asked a college professor who said that we shouldn’t have dropped the bomb or dropped it on a deserted island.
“Have you ever considered that the reason no one has used atomic and hydrogen bombs since Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that those two uses showed the destructive force of such weapons? Perhaps only our initial use has prevented all out nuclear war since then?”
His response was a blank stare and he walked away without responding. I considered that I had made the point and he had never or refused to consider that point.
Imagine how much longer and how many more dead if we attacked the Japanese mainland and tried to work toward a surrender.
Maybe we would never of had an Obama presidency
FYI, I had a class on the then-recent diplomatic history of the US, circa 1981, with a prof who was retired State Dept.
One day, when discussing the Korean War, he told us something that he said, “You won’t see in any history texts.” Specifically, he said that after Ike had won the 1952 election, but before he was inaugurated, he was very upset about the continued carnage and about the plight of US prisoners. So he passed word, very discreetly, to the Norks, that if they didn’t release ALL of our prisoners very shortly after he got into office, he’d nuke their asses even further back into the Stone Age than they already were. Needless to say, they took seriously this threat from a former 5-star general who had literally led millions of men in an all-out assault against Festung Europa. Our guys were released not terri bly long after Ike assumed office.
I am sure that the willingness of the Norks to be serious about negotiations had something to do with what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Russian and Chinese worries about riling up a nuclear-armed US.
Sorry, we should have ended the Korean war with one
or two. Then no one would doubt our resolve today.
The problem we have is that the world believes we
won’t use them again.
We should have nuked China/N Korea before the Korean War got out of hand.
Now our enemies laugh at us since we can’t even beat stone age, mud hut dwelling 3rd Worlders.
Thanks Truman!
If we had never hit the nips w/the big one we never would’ve had all those Godzilla movies.
I love those!
If not for the Nukes, most likely Japan winds up divided, like Korea.
The nukes were pinpricks vs. the firebombing.
I understand why they did them. But I am glad I wasn’t the one making those decisions. Those raids were, in a word, horrific.
And the libs bitch about Dresden. Sometimes understanding history isn’t fun.
Despite all the agreements to not use chemical or biological weapons, Japan was developing chemical and biological weapons to use against us. They tested them on Chinese and American POWS.
Nuking Japan was an object lesson that he evidently heeded.
Too bad they murdered Patton before he could beat the drum enough to get the Allies to finish the job in Russia.