Apologize

>The Szilárd petition, drafted by scientist Leo Szilard, was signed by 70 scientists working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois. It was circulated in July 1945 and asked President Harry S. Truman to consider an observed demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb first, before using it against people. However, the petition never made it through the chain of command to President Truman. It also was not declassified and made public until 1961.

Hiroshima was a war crime and your scientists knew it. They were silenced by the ruthless US military. Apologize or your nation will die.

>A committee of presidential advisers had already decided that a public demonstration of an atomic bomb was too risky, because the weapon might not work; that Japan should not be given any warning of a nuclear attack, for much the same reason; that the bomb should be aimed at a war plant surrounded by workers' housing; and that the goal of the bombing would be "to make a profound psychological impression" on as many workers as possible.
>Franklin Roosevelt had never told his vice president, Harry Truman, about the Manhattan Project or the unusual weapon that it was developing. When Roosevelt died unexpectedly, on April 12, 1945, Truman had the thankless task of replacing a beloved and charismatic leader during wartime. The new president was unlikely to reverse a nuclear policy set in motion years earlier, at enormous expense, because a group of relatively unknown scientists now considered it a bad idea.
>[...] a full-scale invasion of Japan might require 1.8 million American troops.
>Unlike most presidents, Truman had firsthand experience of battle.

We had already been firebombing Japan and making cities rubble for a long time. The Atomic bombs brought painless deaths to the majority they killed and saved hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers and millions of Japanese from an invasion.

The most fucked up part about the bombs is that people who were born and raised in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no control over their deaths, because of the actions of their government and military they had almost no chance of surviving, their deaths set in stone as soon as the locations to be bombed were chosen.

The effect of the Atomic Bombs on the formal surrender of Japan are greatly overstated. They were not the reason that Japan capitulated. If the destruction of cities was a pressing concern Japan would have surrendered when more than 3/4ths of their urban centers were being ground into dust by conventional bombing with no end in sight.

Posters often say that "the POWER of the atomic bombs, that they only need ONE to blow up a city instead of hundreds of regular bombs shook the Japanese leadership to the core", but this argument seems flimsy considering that there were hardly any urban areas left worth bombing with convention bombs, let alone an atomic bomb. Why would the Japanese High Command just now worry about their cities being destroyed well after most of them were already ash?

>Atomic bombs brought painless deaths
Can you imagine how butthurt Americans would be if someone said 9/11 was fine because it brought painless deaths?
Do you have any idea how many people burned alive, lost their ability to hear and see because of those bombs?

"if we do it it's necessary and a good thing, if they do it it's bad and evil"
t. USA USA USA

Probably more the fact that their defenses were useless now, hundreds of thousands of soldiers could be killed with one bomb.

I said the majority of people killed by the bombs dies painless deaths, the majority of people who died on 9/11 died horrible deaths by fire, smoke or being crushed. Also the fact that the Atom Bomb was used to end a war while 9/11 was to start one.

meant for

>hundreds of thousands of soldiers could be killed with one bomb.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers aren't going to be clustered in a small enough area to be incinerated by a single atomic bomb and additionally you don't want to spread radioactive fallout where your own troops are going to be walking through. The Atomic Bombs did not 'make their defenses useless' any more than saturated bombing did.

>The Atomic bombs brought painless deaths
Have you ever read first hand accounts of people who were there? Also, the bombs were dropped just to show who had a bigger dick, cities had already been raised to the ground (with more casualties than the atomic bombs), the thing that the Japanese needed to surrender was a promise of maintaining the Emperor as a figure, which was granted after the Soviets invaded Manchuria.

At least the bombs had a political goal that was achieved. 9/11 never had a goal besides killing Americans.

>9/11 never had a goal besides killing Americans.
bruhh WHAT are you talking about? the whole point of 9/11 was to draw the US into a bunch of unsustainable wars and destabilize the whole world order. now the US and Europe (and India, and China, and Russia, and...) are all buttmad about "radicals" and muslims and shit and it's defined our political discourse for the past decade. are you stupid or something?

And did the Japanese know that? No they did not, Did the Japanese know we only had one more bomb? No they did not. Using the bombs was a gamble to save lives and it worked. Also It is true that hundreds of thousands will probably not be clustered in one area, I just used that as an example of how destructive the bombs were, but you could wipe an entire division off the map with one bomb now. And the Japanese did not know how many we had.

>Terribly sorry your son died in a ditch somewhere outside Sakura. We had a weapon that would have ended the war months earlier but we didn't use it because some scientists felt icky.

2 bombs was not enough.

You're shooting an arrow and then painting a target around it. The attackers motivation was revenge for the American foreign policy that destabilized the Middle East in the first place. They had no idea how the US would react.

>And did the Japanese know that?
Know what?
> Did the Japanese know we only had one more bomb? No they did not
While the Japanese didn't know the exact number of bombs or the time-table at which they were produced, they knew enough about nuclear-physics to know that the process of creating an atomic bomb would be incredibly expensive and time consuming.
>but you could wipe an entire division off the map with one bomb now
They probably also realized that using an atomic bomb tactically would most likely be a tremendous waste and counter-productive to the ability for an invading force to advance. It's not a good idea to try and occupy areas that are inundated in toxic material.

The Atomic Bombs 'ending' the war is a convenient narrative that both sides tacitly agreed on because it had useful political aspects. For the Americans it represented overwhelming power and technical prowess and to the Japanese it allowed them to assume the identity of a victim of a horrible new superweapon instead of murderous imperialists, absolving their leaders of the blame for embarking the nation on a militaristic course that ended in abject failure.

Tbh Kyoto should had been the first Japanese city to get nuked.

>revenge
It's well and good to jsut take Bin Laden at his word when he says "oh we didn't WANT to blow up the towers but we had to do it" except that's a bunch of bs

Additionally, while Atomic Bombs are effective against stationary above-ground targets like cities, they are decidedly less effective against mobile targets or hardened targets (both of which defending Japanese troops were likely to be).

>Terribly sorry your son starved but we had to feed our prisoners of war first
>Terribly sorry your son died, we could have used poison gas to wipe out the enemy town but we didn't use it because some scientists felt icky.
>Terribly sorry your son died, we could have carpet bombed Warsaw, but some moralfag felt icky

You can justify any kind of cruel act with your reasoning.

My problem with the whole "apologize" narrative is that people either make the assumption that

A.The bombs were used because we had already spent money on it.

Or B. That we used them just to make a point to the Soviets.

The main reason they were used to was to save lives, whether they did or not (I do believe that they were a factor in the Japanese surrender) whether they were the biggest factor compared the Soviets entering Manchuria is a matter for debate, I disagree that America should apologize when the military and government at the times primary concern regarding to bombs was how do we end the war quickly, and how do we limit the loss of life.

Not to mention that there is nothing for Americans to apologize about, those "innocent civilians" were actively working in support of regime that's armies engaged in cannibalism, slavery, large scale rape, human experimentation, and in general tried to commit as many war crimes as humanly possible..

There can be more than one reason. While the potential of averting a deadly invasion was an immediate concern, the bombs were made with the assumption that they were going to be used. At no point during the Manhattan Project was there ever any serious doubt about whether or not to deploy them. Truman himself bragged to Stalin at Potsdam about having a new superweapon so the effect it could have on the Soviets in the post-war deliberations was at least considered.

You're being needlessly reductive with the way you're presenting those arguments (They were ONLY used for X or Y), instead of acknowledging that the there were many facets to the decision.

Then it is decided: every cruel act that saves lives is hereby justified.

And the bombs were made so that the war would be ended quicker, just like any other weapon.

If the Japanese surrendered the bombs would not have been used would they have?

>And the bombs were made so that the war would be ended quicker, just like any other weapon.
Ok and that's a poor justification because you can literally justify anything with it.
>inundating Tokyo in Nerve Gas is OK because we wouldn't have done it if they just surrendered earlier

>USA USA USA

>be USA
>literally nuke civilans on purpose
>dare to judge nazis
>dare to judge dictators

HOW

It's almost like it's a war, or something.

"Hiroshima was a war crime and your scientists knew it."

>Invents new technology to cut the war short
>Saves countless American and Japanese lives from a potential occupation
>End the war with full capitulation to the US rather than Soviets
>Ensures industrial and economic progress for the future
>Stops Bushido from being a factor in an occupation, and the subsequent honor killings as well as Kamikazes

Yeah, the atomic bomb saved lives, it was justified.

Also, the military is exists to kill people and break shit. In my humble opinion, I'd say they did their job.

Also, if I may
>"The Japanese entered this war under the rather childish illusion that they were going to kill everyone else, and no one was going to kill them. At Nanking, Pearl harbor, and half a hundred other places, they put their naive theory into operation. They sowed the "Kamikaze", the "divine wind". And now they are going to real the whirlwind

Harris would be proud

Why do these Axis-boo threads always weep bitterly about the horror of Axis civilians being killed, but say nothing about the Allied civilians being killed by Axis soldiers?

The arguments are that killing civilians is wrong and that Americans pride in this is disgusting.
These things are universal and only on /pol/ people will cheer about the holocaust, yet everywhere the bombing of civilians by the allies is cheered on. It's the same kind of ignorance and arrogance that led to the use of agent orange or the disaster that is the middle east.
At least don't be proud about it.

This thread is specifically about the nuclear attacks on Japan. No one else ever used nuclear weapons in warfare and using poison gas is hardly shunned.

>poison gas is hardly shunned

Say what?

It's almost like the two sides were killing different numbers of civilians, for different reasons...

Well, fuck. I meant shunned a lot. badly shunned might have been a better word.

Nuclear, biological and chemical attacks are seen as the same kind of evil. Rightfully so.

Look at this image. They've just nuked thousands of women and children. Time to celebrate!

>ywn have first slice of a mushroom cloud cake

This wasn't supposed to be a feels thread.

They've just saved millions of women, children and men on both sides. Time to celebrate!

>The Atomic bombs brought painless deaths to the majority they killed

The fuck did they teach you at school?
Only the people lucky enough to be very close (relatively speaking) disappear instantly.
Everyone else (you know, the 95% of casualties) died from whole body burning (ever seen people burned alive, that's how these people went away), further away you had people who were killed by the shockwave, which is a nasty way to go as it ruptures some of your organs and you're left to go by internal hemorraging. There's of course being killed by the rubble falling down, there's the people who got shot through by the shrapnels and either bled out or got hit in a sensitive spot so these could have been painless.
And then you get to the people who suffered radiation burns, radiation posining. You literally start bleeding from your nose, start violently puking and count your last minutes in a fetal position with a pain that makes childbirth look like fun. There's also the irradiated clouds that got a fuckload of people well after the bomb fell, developing the shittiest forms of cancer (ever seen a smoker die from lung cancer, it's not a pretty sight) or having their kids be born as nothing more than mutants.

There is a great fucking reason not even the biggest patriotic shithead on Earth would ever wish to be the one to push that fucking button.

>Painless death.
For fuck's sake, Trump. Fix those idiots of yours and give them some decent education.

N A N K I NG
A
N
K
I
N
G

nice bait

What did they do to celebrate the capturing of the chinese capital again?

>being within the borders of a country whose army commits war crimes makes it okay to commit war crimes against you
So we can just start killing random Americans now?

>Japan completely isolated
>sole reason it has not capitulated yet is because it would under the condition that the emperor retreats

You're repeating government propaganda from the 50ies. Japan was defeated, but the military needed a proper examination of the full potential of their new 'toy'. These people were criminals and you know it.

Also

>killing innocents in order to maybe prevent innocents to getting killed

Yeah, and dinosaur bones are manufactured by the devil. Right.

And did the Emperor "retreat"?

And yes, killing enemy innocents to prevent your innocents from being killed, is how war works and has worked for all of civilisation.

>They didn't bomb those horrible inhumane shitstains back to the Stone age

Feels bad man

in a total war that the other side started? Yes