Quote:
Originally Posted by Agamemnon
The documentary "Fog of War" pointed out that at the time the US droped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima/Nagasaki, American fire-bombing had already killed 20-50% of the population of Japan's 20 largest cities. Some individual firebombing campaigns alone killed 100,000's of Japanese (supposedly 100,000 alone were killed in Tokyo on March 9, 1945).
The notion that the a-bomb had to be dropped to avoid a ground invasion seems a bit weak when the US was already burning Japan to the ground before the a-bomb's were dropped. Firebombing killed a lot more people than the a-bomb's.
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Big difference though - the A-Bomb is more than just a killing machine, it wiped out thousands of lives in a split second.
I don't think you can underestimate the serious shock factor that dropping this weapon had on the Japanese leadership - the damage of a single bomb.