Was it good that the U.S dropped the atomic bombs?

Because the invasion would have never happened. Japan was on its knees ---on the verge of surrendering.

 

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i disagree and heres why
we routed the japanese from every outlying island that they invaded
even mighty truk which the japanese boasted could withstand the onslaught of one million men
one by one through a bloody engagement of battles we wrested them all from the grip of the japanese

then we get to okinawa in june of 45
even in that late date after losing every single island the japanese invaded she still managed to mount a defense of kamakazes

we were slaughtering the japanese like cattle but yet she refused to surrender

in my opinion it should be apparent that the japanese was going to fight to the last man, woman and child

 

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That's what I learned In history class

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No Possumking, the Japanies were not on the verge of surrendering, if you do even a little reasearch you will find a lot of information that the Military Leadership was planning to take the Emporer into protective custody,to prevent him from calling for a end to the war, was practiceing mass civilian human wave attacks armed with bambo spears! You must understand the Bushido Code, that if you die in combat against a enemy soldier you have served the Emporer and are Honored for the scrafice, what we did with the atomic bomb is took away the honor of sacrificeing your self and taking a enemy of the Emporer with you, there by making your death usless, so finally most of the Officer Corp realised futher reisistance was truely futile. Even then there were Officers who tried to kidnap the Emporer to avoide the shame of haveing to surrender.

 

http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/chamberl.html
The freezing of Japanese assets in the United States on July 25, 1941.

The attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, took place on December 7th 1941.


(please note those dates.... 25/7/41 and 7/12/41)
despite NO american casualities or attacks by the japanese at that time on the usa itself..
the japanese let 5 MONTHS go by-only using diplomatic means to protest

AFTER 5 months when this achieved nothing-they attacked by military might


surprise surprise they didnt exactly take out full page adds when they did so


`with no provocation whatsoever'


im glad i grew up in a country that actually HAS an education system...

(see i even spelt education wrong the first time and knew it was wrong..and didnt even have to google to find the correct `spullin')

;-)

 

the first 2 setences from your quoted site:

From the archives of The Memory Hole
Antiwar Propaganda: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

'nuff said

 

No the Japanese used those 5 month to plan, assemble, pratice, move into position,and attack, and they had already sunk the USS Panay before WW II.
For two miles the American flotilla sustained fire from Japanese shore batteries. The intent of the Japanese was to provoke the United States into a declaration of war. Militarists close to seizing full control in Japan hoped that a declaration of war by the United States would give them the final push needed to eliminate civilian influence in their government.

Japanese military goals, they thought, could be more easily obtained without resistance from civilian Japanese governmental officials. The shelling was so inaccurate that the Panay and the barges, even going against the current at slow speeds, were able to pull away without damage. Communications to the Panay on Dec. 11 indicated that Chinese troops were fleeing the capital and that a Japanese takeover of the entire country could not be far off. By all accounts the Panay needed to press forward and get away from the advancing Japanese.

At 11 a.m. on Dec. 12 the Panay and the three oil barges, Mei Ping, Mei Hsia and Mei An were anchored near Hoshien, located upstream from Nanking. American flags were hoisted on the masts and painted on the awnings and topsides so Japanese forces would be able to distinguish between them and Chinese vessels.

As it was a Sunday, time was taken out for all aboard the Panay to have their dinner. None of the craft's guns were manned and the day was clear, sunny and still. All seemed peaceful despite what was happening ashore several miles away. Just after 1:30 p.m. in the afternoon, three Japanese naval aircraft flew overhead and released 18 bombs. One of the bombs disabled the Panay's forward three-inch gun and wrecked the pilothouse, the sick bay and the fire room.

The captain of the Panay, Lieutenant Commander J.J. Hughes, and several others were wounded. Immediately after the first assault, 12 more planes dive-bombed and nine fighters strafed the barges and the Panay. The fighters made several runs over the vessels. The American crew fought back with .30-caliber machine guns on the ship but the outcome looked bleak. Just minutes after 2 p.m. with all propulsion lost and the main deck awash, Captain Hughes ordered the ship abandoned.

The attack, however, continued. Japanese planes then attacked the lifeboats on their way to shore. The fighters even strafed the reeds along the riverbank where the wounded were trying to get ashore or hide temporarily. Two of the three oil barges were destroyed. The Mei An captain, Carl H. Carlson, and several dozen of his crew perished when their barge sank. Twenty minutes after the first explosion, the 450-ton Panay with its 55-man crew and passengers began to sink. Finally at 3:54 p.m., the ship flooded and then rolled beneath the water. Two were dead and 48 were wounded, some seriously. The survivors of the attack cared for the wounded and assisted in getting word to the commander of the USS Oahu. Two days later the USS Oahu and the HMS Ladybird picked up the survivors.

 

Jumping in to post an interesting tidbit from the USAAF Strategic Bombing Survey.

Summary of Rail Attacks.

Aside from the raids directed against the Amori-Hakodate car ferries, and yards at the Kagoshima and Iwakuni, the few attacks sustained by the rails were the result of spillage or opportunity bombing and were not a part of any planned bombing offensive directed against the railroads specifically.

Not one of the many vulnerable and accessible line-cut points on the main trunk lines had been attacked in planned aerial assualt. Incalculable damage could have been done to the railroads and in turn to the Japanese economy by one or two cuts on the Tokaido and Sanyo main lines over which moved the bulk of the freight traffic transported between Tokyo and Shimonoseki and intermediate industrial areas.

The gist of the Survey was that the destruction of the Japanese merchant marine had placed a massive burden upon the rail system to make up the slack in the movements of goods about Japan. Further, that the Japanese rail system was coastal and intensly vulnerable to interdiction because a few key junctions functioned as traffic chokepoints, the interdiction of which would have ground the Japanese economy to a halt within weeks.

So, my question isf the Americans were so fearful that the Japanese weren't going to surrender, they why did they refrain from the type of transportation attacks that they knew how to perform (lots of European experience) and knew would bring the Japanese to their knees within weeks?

 

The fog of war to quote Clausewitz, how many times in your life have you missed something obivious?

 

anyone that is familiar with the japanese fighting tactics of ww2 will quickly come to the conclusion that they did not surrender.

the islands of the south pacific was taken by the allies by a series of bloody brutal engagements.

 

Perhaps they did it because experienced military strategists who were alive during the time and had intelligence on their enemies state of mind at the time had a better idea of what needed to be done than citizens of anti american countries doped up on propoganda and perhaps the words of some bleeding heart japanese of today (as opposed to the japanese of the time who would rather hold an american's bleeding heart)

 

Consult the history of the United States airforce in the European conflict. Rail transportation interdiction was a fundamental, core strategy and it is patently impossible that this could have been overlooked or otherwise neglected in the Pacific.

I think droppingthe A-bomb was the right thing to do, I would never choose to second guess Truman on that score.

However, the question I asked was entirely different: Why was an obvious, tried and true strategy from Europe not used on Japan? The USAAF Strategic Bombing Survey seems to indicate a deliberate decision was made to refrain from a tactic that could have brought the Japanese to their knees in weeks. I wonder why this was so. It appears I'm not the only one with no answer...

 

It is a very interesting point, and I would also like some kind of conjecture on the topic.
My position on the detonation of the atomic bombs is that it needs no moral justification, nor does any other act of war. I am a firm believer in total war, so I may appear like an amoral asshole to the lot of you, but that's my position.

 

japan was an island nation
not only was she an island nation she is composed of 4 or 5 main islands
i for one find it hard to believe that bombing a few "key" railroads would have brought japan to its knees

would a tactic like that have worked on britain? if so why didn't hitler use it?

the european theatre was different than the pacific theatre

 

The quote was concise and precise, and straight from the horse’s mouth: the United States Army Air Force itself. For further details, see the Bombing Survey itself, (Vol. VII, I think). Japan’s rail system was inherently vulnerable to bombing for two reasons. First, because Japan was a series of islands that were long but thin. This meant that only a few rail lines (two to be exact) ran the entire length of Honshu, one in the north, one in the south. Extending inwards from these two main east-west arteries were numerous branch lines running north-south into the interior. But these all depended upon the two main lines for communications.

The second factor was that Japan was flush with ports along both coasts. This meant that the rail system had always played second fiddle to the sea lanes in the movement of goods about the country. So when those oceanic communications were extinguished, the railroads rapidly became the only means to move minorly convenient things (such as food to ward off mass starvation) about the nation. Therefore; a national resource of critical importance in the preservation of Japan’s population and ability to wage war. The USAAF SBS records the fact that rail communications were at max capacity by 1945 and could not afford any form of sustained attack. It also records the fact that said interdiction would have been easily within the USAAF’s capabilities due to fortunate geographical and logistical circumstances. And that by doing so, the Japanese economy would have disintegrated, perhaps within weeks.

I will not speculate as to why the Americans deliberately refrained from a tactic that could win them the war. But I think it’s difficult to suppose that this inaction stemmed from a conviction that securing a Japanese surrender would be difficult or impossible.

 

A very good site on the estamated causalitys for the invasion of Japan,
http://home.kc.rr.com/casualties/
Another for invasion,
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8141/downfall.html
Another on Japans plans for defence,
http://www.users.bigpond.com/pacificwar/AtomBomb_Japan.html
http://www.warbirdforum.com/olympic.htm
if you do the reaserch the answer is obivious, and the bomb was nessary.

 

can you provide a link so that i may view this work myself?

there is one major problem with the above quoted passage.
and that is japan prior to the end of ww2 was not an indusrial nation
the food staple consisted mainly of rice which was grown in great quantity by the individual people. the rice, to my knowledge, was transported to market by oxcart where it was sold.
a great many of japanese families had there own gardens where they could grow their own food

the only area where the railroads would be of any value is the fish market.

 

And the people were literally expected to fight to the death.
Starvation to them was better than raising a white flag.

 

To answer this question correctly to me, seems like a hell of a guess.
(I of course am talking about the atom bomb being dropped. After all it's only impossible to know for sure. So keep guessing.)

 

I'm not aware of the USAAF SBS being on the net. Try a local university.