Was this really necessary?

No, the nips wanted to negotiate with the soviets to get the americans to stop attacking them, when the soviets in turn started wrecking the japanese asshole, the nips quickly surrendered to the united states so they didn't become a soviet state. The americans knew this but quickly slipped in a few atom bombs just to show the world how powerfull they were, as well as get revenge, a million german POWs died in camps in 1945 because eisenhower was pissed, this is however covered up very well

>when the soviets turned the japanese quickly surrendered
In his official surrender speech, and his speech to the big six, Hirohito makes no mention of the soviets, but makes several references to the atomic bomb, as well as references to the poor state of the defences facing the western allies:
>Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives.

Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
(jewel voice broadcast)
>I have given serious thought to the situation prevailing at home and abroad and have concluded that continuing the war can only mean destruction for the nation and prolongation of bloodshed and cruelty in the world. I cannot bear to see my innocent people suffer any longer. ...
I was told by those advocating a continuation of hostilities that by June new divisions would be in place in fortified positions [at Kujūkuri Beach, east of Tokyo] ready for the invader when he sought to land. It is now August and the fortifications still have not been completed. ...
There are those who say the key to national survival lies in a decisive battle in the homeland. The experiences of the past, however, show that there has always been a discrepancy between plans and performance. I do not believe that the discrepancy in the case of Kujūkuri can be rectified. Since this is also the shape of things, how can we repel the invaders? [He then made some specific reference to the increased destructiveness of the atomic bomb.]
(Hirohito's speech to the Big 6; from pages 295-296 of "Downfall: the End of the Imperial Japanese" by Richard Frank)

the US could also have surrendered.

Thats actually an interesting proposition, do you think the japanese would have even believed the western allies if they'd been sent a message, signed by all of the presidents and prime ministers, that they surrendered immediately to the japanese?

The Japanese believe their Emperor was a god and followed him.
Of any of the countries involved in the war they are the only ones where attacking civilians was totally justified.

The picture politics guy talks about picture politics. Color me suprised

>Devoted and hard working people deserve to die becouse they just so happen to follow a dude we do not like, like omg wtf start an american lives matter movement
Typical american oppinion

they should have dropped more bombs

>allied soldiers who just want to go home deserve to die because the japanese are being stubburn faggots
>chinese civillians deserve to continued to be raped and murdered because the japanese won't end the war
Really makes me think.

>those guys are behind this dude 100%
>somehow they don't share any of the guilt

Second post best post.

Every other option would have had a higher body count.

Especially surrendering.

>n-no muh soviets did literally everything!
I swear to fuck commieboos are dumber than wehraboos.

Gee it's almost like you have an army to fight with men who want to fight instead of vaporizing innocent civilians who have no choice.

>inb4 japanese were not innocent
Literally kill yourself for falling for 1945 propaganda.

Actually the U.S. dropped as many bombs as it possibly could, there was no withholding of bomb dropping whatsoever in any theater.

>vaporizing innocent civillians
You realize that the allied armies are composed mostly of draftees who don't want to fight and die any more than the civillians, right? And that even if that weren't true, more civillians would have died in operation downfall anyways?

If the US invaded the home islands, it would have killed more people than the atomic bombs did.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff were estimating 2 million casualties, and that was probably too optimistic given that the Japanese high command correctly guessed the landing sites.

If you wanted Japan to be totally, utterly destroyed, and the civilians to suffer to the maximum possible degree, that would be an excellent option.

No but it was sufficient.

Is it necessary to drink my own piss?
No, probably not. But I do it anyways, because its sterile, and I like the taste.

It's almost like it's the government fighting the war as well, and the government forces those to fight, gee, it's almost as if the government was wrong all along!

Kek, you're an idiot.

They had no trade routes, they had no self sufficiency they had only one supply line which connected their main lands and was the only means of communication.

>"The plan I devised was essentially this: Japan was already isolated from the standpoint of ocean shipping. The only remaining means of transportation were the rail network and intercoastal shipping, though our submarines and mines were rapidly eliminating the latter as well. A concentrated air attack on the essential lines of transportation, including railroads and (through the use of the earliest accurately targetable glide bombs, then emerging from development) the Kammon tunnels which connected Honshu with Kyushu, would isolate the Japanese home islands from one another and fragment the enemy's base of operations. I believed that interdiction of the lines of transportation would be sufficiently effective so that additional bombing of urban industrial areas would not be necessary.

>"While I was working on the new plan of air attack... [I] concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945."

You're an idiot because you think a land invasion of a peoples who had no means for war was the only way to force a surrender. There had been many alternatives given, one was simply the retention of the emperor to lead them through a transition, the US wanted him gone, but he stayed anyway. There is also the facts that the military leaders were not even consulted and saw no military use of using the bombs on them.

But yeah, you're right, aye?

Okay, I'd like you to try a critical thinking exercise

>40s Japan has a totalitarian militaristic government
>90s North Korea has a totalitarian militaristic government
>90s North Korea gets food imports slashed
>government doesn't collapse
>10% of the population dies

Now what do you think would happen if somebody cut off food imports from Japan, and why do you think it would end with less dead people than an atomic bomb.

One of the "safest" bombing of the war, Tokyo was far more gruesome. It was mainly a demonstration of military power. As a romantic I would have prefered that Japan win the war, but I must admit it was a useful move from USA.

>As a romantic I would have prefered that Japan win the war

Ryona doujins are romatic now?

yeah but still, the japanese deserved every one of those atomic bombs and fire raids they were batshit crazy and completely inhumane.

I'm not even american or chinese and i have trouble reading the stories about imperial japan's cruelty

>its almost as if the government is fighting the war as well
Its almost as if the government was thrown into a war after the japanese decided to bomb pearl harbor and started swallowing up american states and alaska....
>they had no trade routes, they had no self sufficiency
Being cut off from supplies and reinforcements never stopped the japanese from fighting before on any of the other islands, why would they start now?
You realize that the plan you're referencing calls for MORE bombing on the japanese home islands, right? 140,000 japanese civillians were dying every month from bombing, let alone from starvation. You really fucking think that continuing with the starvation wouldn't have resulted in less casualties?
The glide bombs your (un-cited) source details were neither accurate nor in full production by the time of the atomic bombs.
Even IF bombing japanese supply lines could have brought about an end to the war by November, you're forgetting that 145,000 chinese civillians and soldiers were being killed every month.(books.google.com/books?id=MYLbCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT58&lpg=PT58&dq=how many chinese were killed per month in 1945&source=bl&ots=hMhTvnq4Oi&sig=o_3yOlKBuLoxDXMrKML0GTh7Nak&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjg5cmvmsbVAhWK5iYKHdfxCFgQ6AEIXzAJ)

I don't know, that's not the point. I am not going to sit here and argue theory with some retard on the internet, you can try all you want to refute these quotes, but they are just that quotes from men who served and won the war.

You have no horse in this race mate, you simply cannot use your sheltered mind to justify this atrocity.

See above.

>China and Japan at War 1937 - 1945 (Images of War)
>June 7, 2016
What a compelling source you've used.

>quotes from men who served in the war
You haven't even identified who said the quote, or provided any source in regards to that
>what a compelling source you've used
Again, you haven't cited anything in this entire thread. The book being published in 2016 has no bearing on its reliability.

Was this really necessary?

>chemical warfare is more or less of a nuisance

Wew lad, ya done triggered me.

>it's an overly emotional fem brained redditors make an arbitrary distinction between single use atomic bomb deployments vs week long hellish firebombing campaigns episode

Stupid doujins are a consequence of USA's victory. Asian's societies would have been much more beautiful if Japan wasn't defeated.
Generaly speaking the world is greyer and tasteless with all that "justice" and "freedom".

>asian societies would be much more beautiful if japan wasn't defeated
tell that to the fucking chinese

They had it coming

Gee.

>dual screen at work for the win.

>In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called original source or evidence) is an artifact, a document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, a recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under study

>In contrast, a secondary source of information is one that was created later by someone who did not experience first-hand or participate in the events or conditions you're researching. For the purposes of a historical research project, secondary sources are generally scholarly books and articles.

>A tertiary source is an index or textual consolidation of primary and secondary sources. For example, articles on Wikipedia would be classified as tertiary sources. Some tertiary sources are not to be used for academic research, unless they can also be used as secondary sources, or to find other sources.

Your source would be tertiary. Sorry for late and shit replies, work is hard.

>When discussing history, please reference credible source material, and provide as much supporting information as possible in your posts.
Cite the source or leave, faggot.

You're not allowed to pretend like you know the difference between sources if you can't even understand how to cite them properly. Any claim backed up by evidence is one which cannot be supported, and as of yet you have supplied zero evidence. But, I will humor you. Nitze's plan was drawn up after the war ended.

Have you seen what has become the Chinese society?? It's a degenerate anthill where no one cares about the day after, a permanent threat to any form of life, and you dare say we should take them in pity for the Japanese "brutality"? It was a pure bliss compared to what they have to suffer today.

>japanese occupation was bliss compared to what china is today
Literally kill yourself. Are 145,000 chinese people being raped and murdered every month? Are there outbreaks of plague and other diseases started by japanese forces? Are biological warfare research units testing on civillians? No?

Those poor bastards that dropped the bomb condemned themselves to hell for thousands of years, at the whims of their victims.
God and man have the final say on what is right and wrong.

The japanese didn't believe in a christian hell, though

>Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 36-37

>"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

>"Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for November 1, 1945] would have been necessary."

So you do know how to google.

>Nitze's plan was drawn up after the war ended.
It's almost as if more time had been giving to contemplate from both parties another end result could have been achieved.

>Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

>The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

There were many alternatives, but you nuked em and it's kay cause they would have died more cause u said so.

Why didn't they surrender after the first bomb?

(3) DAYS IN-BETWEEN NUKES - 72 HOURS.

> It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

>it's almost as if more time had been given to contemplate from both parties another end result could have been achieved
Its almost as if allied soldiers being in combat with japanese forces added some sort of urgency to bring the war to a close before any more casualties could occur.
>"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.
We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us" (Harry Truman, trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=104&st=&st1).
>retention of the institution of the emperor
I don't think you've read the postdam declaration, which is what Macarthur is referring to here. (ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/etc/c06.html). The Postdam document only says that "There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest". They only wanted the emperor removed from power, not the office itself completely removed. The allied powers did not "agree" to anything.
>the war might have ended weeks earlier
The US strategic bombing survey, in a report published in 1946, stated that Japan would have capitulated between Novembor and December 1945. This means that the war would have ended 2-3 months earlier. Considering that every month:
-145,000 chinese people were dying
-47,000 japanese civillians were killed by bombing
For a total of 192,000 deaths per month that the war dragged on; This is equivalent to 2 hiroshimas and nagasakis at minimum.

My great-grandfather was in the USAAF during the war, and he wasn't confined to an office so odds are he was involved in the bombings.

>it was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'
Funny, because they rejected the unconditional surrender proposed by the postdam declaration when the allies first sent it out.

Any negotiations that may have been contemplated ended in April, when the nonaggression pact ran out.

Again, see

>I am not going to sit here and argue theory with some retard on the internet, you can try all you want to refute these quotes, but they are just that quotes from men who served and won the war.

I have not post one singular piece of personal speculation.

You seriously used a quote from Harry Truman, the man who dropped it, really? That quote itself works against you. In war you can do literally what ever you want and there is no consequence for the winners. This sin't the point. But your army from a point of power used a weapon which didn't have to be used for reasons which will never be known.

>For a total of 192,000 deaths per month that the war dragged on; This is equivalent to 2 hiroshimas and nagasakis at minimum.

You literally misunderstood everything about those quotes. Those quotes are saying

>it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

No invasion
No Russia
No Bombs

They surrender because their country is starving and they are not self sufficient that's the conventional means, they are literally under siege, they cannot be an active force anywhere. You do not nuke civilians because "lol it saves time", you can, and that's what you did. You have to recognize it for what it is, I couldn't care less about the nukes, it's the delusion you all suffer from when you think they are right. When the leaders of both the navy and military at the time both say no military use for them, but you, user, 60 years later think you know all the answers. From ignorance.

Again, I am not going to sit here and argue, you are misunderstanding things, on purpose I suppose.

There's no such thing as "innocent civilians" in a total war scenario regardless of what side they're not. The armies are no longer running on reserves, their ability to fight is maintained by the homefront. The civilian population builds the shells and bullets, and grows the food to feed them, and maintains the trains to keep the supply lines going. Therefore their deaths are considered acceptable collateral damage because while they aren't combatants, their existnece allows the enemy army to keep fighting.

This is legitimate through what is called double effect. If an army base in the middle of a city is bombed and civilians living nearby are killed as well, nothing unethical has been done, because the army base was a legitimate target and the death of civilians was not the intention of the bombing (even though their death could be predicted). Every city we bombed in WW2 we were in fact aiming for military/industrial targets, but the reality is bombs didn't have shit for accuracy back then so you kinda had to carpet bomb indiscriminately just to hit the intended target. It was argued even before WW1 broke out that the most ethical thing to do would be for zeppelins to fly over and just devastate the capital of the enemy at the war's start and cause as much devastation to it as possible and force a surrender. Because as horrific as that action is, it saves lives in the long run by not forcing the war to be dragged out.

>enemies didn't want to surrender
Ya, read some history senpai.

Except the nukes didn't destroy a city to stop it's manufacturing, it specifically targeted civilians.

I wasn't defending the nukes, I was defending the firebombing campaign. But even then, Nagasaki was a major industrial center for the country.

>Nagasaki was a major industrial center for the country.

Which was crippled from the conventional weapons used. Nagasaki also wasn't even the intended target. Kokura was the target but bad weather forced Nagasaki to be the target. But yeah, that's totally justifiable? It's more proof they simply had no fucking clue what they were doing, testing a new weapon.

>America leaves the North Koreans alone postwar and enbargoes them
>America leaves the Cubans alone postwar and embargoes them

We could have just blockaded them, no one else would have helped them unlike Cuba and the Norks and they would have eventually opened up out of need for industrial goods and materiel. The bombs being dropped were merely saber rattling at the Russians and Chinese, to let everyone know the US had them. The Japanese were merely a convenient target. The entire bombing campaign against the Japanese and their internment in the US was one massive war crime. The US had no moral superiority to try the Japanese or the Germans for war crimes.

Of course it's justifiable. We had already torched dozens of cities and turned Dresden into an inferno. There was no moral quandry here, we were merely continuing what had been our course of action through the last few years. 60 million people already died in this war, half of them civilians, do you really think we cared about 100,000 more?

>60 million people already died in this war, half of them civilians, do you really think we cared about 100,000 more?

eVIDENTLY THE WHOLE WORLD COMMUNITY DOES, EXPCET FOR aMERICANS.

Whoops.

New to the thread, but he's specifically talking about deaths in CHINA you dumbfuck. Yes, if there's no invasion ,and no bombs, and no Russia, and a surrender at the close of 1945, that means you still get lots of fun in China, Malaya, Burma, and the Solomon Islands, all of which were hot theaters at the time of the atomic bombings. How many people are going to die in those intervening months?

For someone getting on about misunderstanding things on purpose, you're either remarkably dense or simply intellectually dishonest.

No, people TODAY care. People in my father's time in the 60s if asked if we were justified in bombing Japan's and Germany's cities would've said, "of course we were, if they didn't want their civilians to be bombed then they shouldn't have bombed London, they shouldn't have invaded all those sovereign countries. They got what they deserved". It's very easy to argue the morality of a war when you're living 70 years from it.

>They surrender because their country is starving and are not self-sufficient by conventional means
You're missing the point, civillians were dying every second in asia. "saving time" directly results in "saving lives".
>when the leaders of both the navy and the military think their is no military use for them
You say that like you think there was any sort of consensus amongst the allied commanders that the bombs were not nessecary.
According to "Minutes of Meeting held at the White House, June 18, 1945.", Generals Macarthur, Marshall, Eisenhower and Eaker, as well as Admiral Leary, all believed that a mainland invasion of Japan would have been necessary to end the war, and that air domination alone would not have been sufficient. All of the sources you are referencing are speaking after the war ended. Hindsight is a bitch. Macarthur even wrote "..... Sooner or later a decisive ground attack must be made."
"General Eaker said that....those who advocated the use of air power alone over japan that air casualties are always much heavier when the air force faces the enemy alone...... He pointed to the fact that the air force suffered 30 percent casualties every month."
"Mr. forrestal pointed out that even if we wished to besiege japan for a year or a year and a half, the capture of kyushu would still be essential"
Hindsight certainly is a bitch, but all of the major generals in the US army saw a bloody invasion of Kyushu as inevitable.

If you think while Japan is capable of warfare outside the mainland while completely blockaded, no supply lines and completely surrounded by a superior navy with next to no capabilities of manufacturing for war, I honestly do not know what to say to you.

Maybe if you are new to the thread you should actually read it.

I think that the armies that were present in those theaters, were fighting in those theaters (yes, even when cut off from regular shipments from Japan) would in fact keep doing so. Why do you think otherwise?

Are you serious right now, people on both sides in 1945 were heavily influenced by propaganda. You cannot be serious in your argument?

What ever happened to "History will judge us" what do you think we are doing? We are judging the actions of our forefathers who are inexplicable unable to judge things for themselves in the grand scheme of history.

>People in my father's time in the 60s if asked if we were justified in bombing Japan's and Germany's cities would've said
It's not about "bombing" it's about nuking.

>According to "Minutes of Meeting held at the White House, June 18, 1945.", Generals Macarthur, Marshall, Eisenhower and Eaker, as well as Admiral Leary, all believed that a mainland invasion of Japan would have been necessary to end the war, and that air domination alone would not have been sufficient. All of the sources you are referencing are speaking after the war ended. Hindsight is a bitch. Macarthur even wrote "..... Sooner or later a decisive ground attack must be made."

Where have I said anything about MacArthur and ground invasions? The only thing I post about another plan not involving a ground invasion was Paul Nitze. Please try to keep a better track of these sources, I know there are so many it can be hard. What I said the leaders of the navy and army said was that there was no military justification about dropping the nukes, not a land invasion.

>Hindsight certainly is a bitch, but all of the major generals in the US army saw a bloody invasion of Kyushu as inevitable.
And this has nothing to do with the justification of a nuke. It comes back to "lol it saves time".

no

>I think that the armies that were present in those theaters, were fighting in those theaters (yes, even when cut off from regular shipments from Japan) would in fact keep doing so. Why do you think otherwise?
Oh so you agree it would be conventional warfare still, you know, armies fighting one another until one side gives, willing and able participants. Not the targeting and destruction of civilians.

A nuke is just a big bomb, you're letting your emotions get the better of you. It's a war, civilians die, if they had the capability to do the same to us they would've done it. You think the 2 million who died at Stalingrad were all soldiers?

Better a war is horrific and over quickly than drawn out and prolonging human suffering for as long as possible.

>Are 145,000 chinese people being raped and murdered every month?
Probably not that far, there's 1.500.000.000 Chinese, do the math yourself. And we're talking about peace time...

>Are there outbreaks of plague and other diseases
Absolutely, China is a sanitary hell.

>Are biological warfare research units testing on civillians?
I wouldn't be surprised, but you're referring to a marginal case (thousands dead lol), it's objectively irrelevant compared to the death toll during this war.

I can't believe people are still fooled by cherry-picking history pages, ignoring how much worse is the real world...

>Oh so you agree it would be conventional warfare still, you know, armies fighting one another until one side gives, willing and able participants. Not the targeting and destruction of civilians.
Are you in any way familiar with how WW2 land combat went? The civilian population, if they weren't just killed deliberately by the armies (which oh yeah, Japan did. Ever hear of things like the Rape of Nanking?), tended to die in all sorts of ways just from the existence of said armed forces. Especially when you have soldiers who are cut off from home supply, that means confiscatory expropriation, especially of food, which will cause civilian starvation, as well as the inevitable shooting of civilians who get too upset, or the ones who try to pilfer from the armies because they're starving. You also have all the joys and explosions that a 1945 battlefield brings, with all the desturction it does to local infrastructure, so local civilian populations are likely to die in large numbers even if nobody is directly interested in killing them.

Total conventional warfare kills a shitton of civilains. That's why a lot more of them died in WW2 than military personnel.

>where have I said anything about MacArthur and ground invasions
You have continuously quoted MacArthur that the bombs were not necessary as the japanese government was already looking for a way out. The quotation from the meeting in the white house shows that that was nothing more than hindsight, and that he fully believed that the war would not end before the invasion of kyushu in November. The allied leaders were all in agreement that an air war alone would not bring about japan's capitulation, and that a bloody invasion of kyushu was necessary.
The majority of allied and japanese soldiers were draftees. Why do you think its any more moral to have draftees dying instead of civillians?

>innocent citizens
They deserved it after what they did in Korea and China

>what they did in Korea and China
Wich is...?

Rape, burn, kidnap, human experimantion, just to name a few

Except human experimentations (without further proofs, winners write the truth), every camp did the same, it was a goddamn world war. Stop swallowing "facts" without chewing. German, French, British, US, Russian... every troop commited atrocities.

The US did not kill 14 million civillians.

>14 million civillians
my sides

If the winners write the truth why was Franz Halder a historical advisor for the US army?

Because he was borderline traitor to say the least? Come on...

No, but Japs have no room to bitch about war crimes.

Read Gar Alperovitz's "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb". Japan made numerous peace feelers to the U.S. and British via the Vatican, Swedes, and especially the Soviets. Stalin explicity cold shouldered them because he wanted a say in the negotiations with Japan and her imperial territories, either to spread communism or prevent pro-Western states from rising up on Russia's south-eastern border. To get a spot at the table he would have to roll in and conquer Manchuria. It's honestly by far one of the lighter decisions Stalin ever made.

>japan made numerous peace feelers to the US and british via the vatican
And yet, they still refused to even acknowledge the postdam declaration

>Why do you think its any more moral to have draftees dying instead of civillians?
>It's almost like it's the government fighting the war as well, and the government forces those to fight, gee, it's almost as if the government was wrong all along!

Why are you purposefully circling, have you not read the thread? Why does a government conscript a force, make them fight, and then in order to save their lives completely vaporises an opposing 'force' not even fighting, women and children. How is that justifiable? You are talking about this war as if there was no control, no decisions. They were simply wrong.

>You have continuously quoted MacArthur that the bombs were not necessary as the japanese government was already looking for a way out. The quotation from the meeting in the white house shows that that was nothing more than hindsight, and that he fully believed that the war would not end before the invasion of kyushu in November.

These two points simply do not connect. I am saying MaAthur saw no military justification for dropping a nuke, this has nothing to do with a land invasion, even if his other plan was to invade militarily, he still saw that as more justifiable than the dropping of a new atomic weapon. Just stop man, you are not making any headway.

You keep saying land invasion land invasion land invasion, while ignoring every other possibility presented in this thread, retention of the emperor, possible siege.

You are simply saying the same thing over and over and I am doing the same thing back, you simply cannot justify this action as a force of good, as the Americans say it is. As you believe it is, it simply is not.

The only condition they made was that the Emperor retain his throne (which was necessary for keeping Japs from fighting to the last), which America and Britain obliged anyways after puffed up talk of "total surrender or bust".

That's simply a lie. They also demanded to keep onto their territories in places like Formosa, Heinan, Malaya, Korea, etc.

You got a source for that?

>why does a government conscript a force, make them fight
Because the government in question was fucking attacked by the japanese for no reason and faced direct threats to the security of its citizens.
>I am saying that macarthur saw no military justification for dropping the nukes
And if you read what I had been saying you would realize that was nothing more than a hindsight decision
>You keep saying land invasion land invasion while ignoring any possibility presented in the thread
Can you fucking read? The only other possibility that the allied commanders were aware of at the time the bomb was dropped was an invasion of the japanese home islands in order to constrict their supply lines. The atomic bombs were dropped specifically to avoid this measure. Whether or not other possibilities existed is irrelevant, the allies were not aware of them. Retention of the emperor was never an option and did not occur anyways. The taking of kyushu was necessary for a complete siege of the home islands. Dropping the atomic bombs was the best option that the allies were aware of for avoiding further American, British, Indian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese casualties.

They didn't care about whether or not the emperor could retain his throne, they only cared that he would no longer have power over japan.

>They didn't care about whether or not the emperor could retain his throne
Roosevelt/Truman and Churchill had explicitly stated they would allow nothing short of total surrender of Japan. For Japan to request the emperor retain his throne, which they even specified as a figurehead only, meant Truman/Churchill would accept a negotiated surrender.

The postdam declaration only called for
the following: "There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest, for we insist that a new order of peace, security and justice will be impossible until irresponsible militarism is driven from the world.". Making it so that the emperor was no longer a part of the government in any fashion wouldn't be going against this point.

>so odds are he was involved in the bombings.
lol.