Quote:
Originally Posted by Berger_4_
Sorry, I forgot to reply to this. I think risking the failure of the second bomb should have been one they took. No doubt the Americans were pissed off about Pearl Harbour, and no doubt everyone wanted to end the war quickly, but I think if you would have fired that first one as a warning shot and then said "Hey guys, the next one is coming right for Tokyo" the war could have been ended without the number of civilian casualties that were caused.
If you only have two of the biggest guns on the planet, I think you have to use them with extreme care. There's not many things more devastating than a nuclear blast and like troutman said in his first quote, the Japanese were already blockaded, and the Commies were starting to take it to them from the other side. They had nowhere to run.
I can understand wanting the war to end as quickly as possible, it's just that the civilian casualties were awfully high.
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They did drop one on a city and they still didn't quit, why would dropping one into the Ocean have any impact on their decision making if they didn't care that a city was destroyed.
Anyways I hate arguments such as these because they completely ignore the historical context in which the bombs were dropped in the first place. Hundreds of thousands of American men had come home in body bags and those who didn't die and were taken prisoner were tortured in unimaginable ways. People were tired of war, they were tired of everything that went along with total war, and if you have the option to help put an end to your countries suffering, would it not be irresponsible not to? And that is not even beginning to mention the communist threat which everyone knew existed at the time.
Lastly the idea of globalization is a pretty recent phenomenon look at the popular views at the time regarding the Japanese and how they were viewed as humans, in the sense that they weren't