75 years since the bomb

[OOOSH YEAH]

I visited Hiroshima a few year ago. Apart from the famous ruined building left standing in the centre and a couple of monuments, you would never begin to imagine that an atom bomb had dropped there.

Tbh same with Berlin. There’s an aerial video taken just after the war from a flyover and the whole place was rubble. It’s a beautiful city now.

 

[Kent_Mackem]

I visited Hiroshima a few year ago. Apart from the famous ruined building left standing in the centre and a couple of monuments, you would never begin to imagine that an atom bomb had dropped there.

My grandpa worked for GPO and while he was in the army he was sent out to India and Japan post-war to help build communications. He brought back a melted bottle from Hiroshima. Incredible to think of the heat that must have caused it.

 

[bomber]

The emperor of Japan was revered as a god and worshipped accordingly at the time.

Theocracy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Japan[edit]
The emperor was historically venerated as the descendant of the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu. Through this line of descent, the emperor was seen as a living god who was the supreme leader of the Japanese people. This status only changed with the Occupation of Japan following the end of the Second World War when Emperor Hirohito was forced to declare that he was not a living god in order for Japan to reorganize into a democratic nation.[36]

The Japanese public were done up like kippers.

 

[FootballFan]

A disgraceful act against humanity by the US, let us never forget the awful crimes they are capable of.

 

[chriswallace85]

Logon or register to see this image

 

[Metro Man]

A disgraceful act against humanity by the US, let us never forget the awful crimes they are capable of.

 

[FootballFan]

You agree with launching atom bombs on civilisations??

 

[Metro Man]

You agree with launching atom bombs on civilisations??

In the last resort, yes.

 

[FootballFan]

In the last resort, yes.

What is the "last resort"? - leaving that definition to US Presidents is a dangerous road

 

[Metro Man]

What is the "last resort"? - leaving that definition to US Presidents is a dangerous road

Someone has to take decisions.

 

[MonkeyLove]

I hate nuclear weapons. I wish they had never existed. I wish every country would multilaterally get rid of every single one but that is never going to happen.

I suppose the argument is that our constant at-sea deterrent would ensure that whoever bombed us would be disadvantage more than any advantage they’d gain from bombing us. In other words, why bother bombing us?

Which has worked so far but we haven’t had religious nut job dictators, who believe in alsorts if crazy shit about being rewarded in the “after life”, in charge of nuclear weapons...... yet. When Iran gets nuclear weapons all bets are off in rationality. Which is why Israel and USA would disable Iran before that day came. Not a great future ahead for our species I’m afraid.

(and people say religious is harmless and no threat)

They better start soon then the latest IAEA report shows they are vastly increasing their enriched uranium.

Its suggested they could obtain nuclear weapons in less then a year.

Iran's just signed deal with China complicates things somewhat even if the US ever did want to act.

What China's New Deal with Iran Says About Its Ambitions in the Region

And what it might mean for the U.S.

time.com

 

[Select coaches]

Wasn’t it more to do with finishing the war quickly to stop Russia claiming more territory?

 

[Far Tibetan Mountain]

Shadows of people burnt into the street from the bomb. Haunting.

hiroshima shadows - Google Suche

www.google.co.uk

I was in Pompeii many years ago, and a group of an American tourists came up and asked my group where they could find the shadows of burnt bodies. "Erm... i think they're in Hiroshima?" was our answer oddly enough.

 

[JonMc]

Wasn’t it more to do with finishing the war quickly to stop Russia claiming more territory?

Russian involvement certainly played a part. It was thought that Japan was prepared to continue the war against the USA but a war on two fronts, against Russia as well was just too much.

But of course Russia could have come in earlier which would increase the chances of Japan surrendering without the bomb's use. But they didn't.

That said, I'm sure the Yanks were happy to see what their newest toy could do. They locked down Japan tight after the war and all photographs of the devastation were not allowed to leave Japan. Still...we got Godzilla out of it.

Truly amazing though that Japan could turn from a militaristic theocracy to a totally pacifist nation in a generation or so.

 

[buster]

That was certainly the argument for unleashing the Bombs, but it is far from an undebateable fact. The Japanese were beaten and they knew it. The Soviets had joined the war against them and invaded Manchuria. The war in Germany had ended so the Japanese would now be facing the combined military strength of all of the allies. There is certainly a fair argument to say that they weren't far away and that a simple naval blockade would have ended it.

The fact is that we will never know as that was the way that the USA chose to end the war, the alternative is that the Japanese may have fought on for a year or they may have surrendered 2 weeks later anyway. We'll never know.

It was probably as much a demonstration of power to the USSR as it was a coupe de grace to Japan, in fairness.

Good post.

Not withstanding the fire bombing of Tokyo that caused huge amount of death and destruction ,a blockade could have gone on for years and still let the Japanese regain some resemblance of power.

The dropping of the first bomb should have been a demonstration of ultimate destruction, why the Japanese didn’t capitulate then I’ll never know , the second bomb was one too many .

Get what you’re saying about the demonstration to the USSR , but I’m not up to date With the political situation between the two super powers in 1945 , I always thought that was a byproduct of the war.

Sacrificing the Japanese public was a price worth paying to save the allies from potentially years of ongoing war.

imho.

 

[Kent_Mackem]

They better start soon then the latest IAEA report shows they are vastly increasing their enriched uranium.

Its suggested they could obtain nuclear weapons in less then a year.

Iran's just signed deal with China complicates things somewhat even if the US ever did want to act.

What China's New Deal with Iran Says About Its Ambitions in the Region

And what it might mean for the U.S.

time.com

Yup. I don’t think there will be a happy ending unfortunately. You can almost see Iran’s “what are you going to do about it?” expression.

 

[RichD]

The only known survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs lived to the age of ninety-three with only a slightly deaf ear.

He didn’t really mind, though, since the other 3 worked fine.

 

[MonkeyLove]

Yup. I don’t think there will be a happy ending unfortunately. You can almost see Iran’s “what are you going to do about it?” expression.

And I think the answer is nothing as there is little they can realistically do.

Bibi has been talking about Iran getting the bomb for 15 years. Not been a single tangible step forward

 

[mickb2112]

There is a school of thought that the bombs didn't cause the Japanese surrender, it had much more to do with the soviet union declaring war on them on 8th August and sending 1 million troops into Japanese occupied Manchuria.

I`ve read this too. Japanese sources said that the dropping of the bombs had no significant effect on their decision to end the war as they`d had many of their cities levelled by extensive firebombing. The navy was destroyed and they had little of no airforce. They were pretty much defenceless BUT they would have fought to the last man, woman and child as they`d been fed propaganda about how monstrous the allies were.

That was certainly the argument for unleashing the Bombs, but it is far from an undebateable fact. The Japanese were beaten and they knew it. The Soviets had joined the war against them and invaded Manchuria. The war in Germany had ended so the Japanese would now be facing the combined military strength of all of the allies. There is certainly a fair argument to say that they weren't far away and that a simple naval blockade would have ended it.

The fact is that we will never know as that was the way that the USA chose to end the war, the alternative is that the Japanese may have fought on for a year or they may have surrendered 2 weeks later anyway. We'll never know.

It was probably as much a demonstration of power to the USSR as it was a coupe de grace to Japan, in fairness.

Great, well balanced post.

 

[Lord Potts]

I met a Sunderland chap some years back who had been a POW in Japan and who had been in Hiroshima after the bomb. He said that the devastation was centralised and not as massive as most believed.

I have only his word to go on and of course it was hard to tell what he had seen of the effects of the conventional bombing of Japan and what he was comparing it with. The firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 for example had flattened 16 square mile of the city in just one night that's twice the area that the A bomb flattened in Hiroshima. The buildings and neighbourhoods in Tokyo were also depleted by constant air raids where as Hiroshima was untouched until the A bomb itself was dropped. (Deliberately so the Allies could clearly assess the effect of the A bomb on the city).

Of course he wasn't very sympathetic towards the Japanese owing to his own experience as their prisoner. He said that if it had come to a US invasion he was sure that the 32,000 allied POWs that were held in Japan would have all been slaughtered as soon as the Yanks hit the beaches . To him the use of the bomb had saved his and the lives of all the other POWs in Japan and that its dropping was fair enough.