BF2S Forums Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Was It Necessary?

We gave Japan the opportunity to surrender. . . .they refused

They got bombed as a result. . . war over. . .end of story

Why waste more lives fighting a war of attrition on the island of Japan. . .any military strategist will tell you that we made the right move by ending the war the way we did. . .

Oh btw we did have men amassing for a ground invasion. . .my grandfather was in transit from Europe to Japan for the invasion. . .

Last edited by fadedsteve (2007-02-01 18:42:03)

Albert Einstein was a brilliant mathematician and scientist, but I don't think he'd make a good general.

It was Necessary and we should do it to the middle east as well

ProRacerNorm wrote:

It was Necessary and we should do it to the middle east as well

Well...  that's going a bit far there...  Pakistan is more of a threat than the Middle East.  Hopefully, it won't come to nuking anyone, but since Pakistan has nukes itself, we might end up in a conflict that leads to it....

We have to argue this again?

Ubersturmbannfuhrer wrote:

Nagasaki

DAMAGE CAUSED BY THE ATOMIC BOMB EXPLOSION

Levelled Area...................6.7 million square meters
Damaged Houses:
Completely Burned ------11,574
Completely Destroyed-----1,326
Badly Damaged------------5,509
Total-------------------18,409
Casualties
Killed------73,884
Injured-----74,909
Total------148,793
(Large numbers of people died in the following years from the effects of radioactive poisoning.)
http://content.answers.com/main/content … isei32.jpg http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1516/15160047.jpg

Now that was only Nagasaki....

No one can say that the bomb was a must.... NO ONE!!!! ARE YOU FUCKING SICK!!!!!

"An army friend of mine looked at five skeletons, it was his mother, wife and children. "It was us soldiers who was supposed to die in this war"" Was one of the the comments i read about where a guy told about surviving the blast...

I still can´t believe why we have have nukes stored in silos all over the planet "just in case"
We humans are fucking sick when it comes to this matter....

Everyone should get rid of those abominations....
Some sick fuck is going to launch one someday and that day....well I don´t know what I´m gonna do....

It´s fucking sad guys......

But let's not forget the alternative of a successful Imperialistic Japan.


Eyewitness accounts from the period state that over the course of six weeks following the fall of Nanjing, Japanese troops engaged in an orgy of rape, murder, theft, and arson. The most reliable accounts came from foreigners who opted to stay behind in order to protect Chinese civilians from certain harm, including the diaries of John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin. Others include first-person testimonies of the Nanjing Massacre survivors. Still more were gathered from eyewitness reports of journalists, both Western and Japanese, as well as the field diaries of certain military personnel. An American missionary, John Magee, stayed behind to provide a 16mm film documentary and first-hand photographs of the Nanjing Massacre. In addition, although few Japanese veterans have admitted to having participated in atrocities in Nanjing, some—most notably Shiro Azuma—have admitted to criminal behavior.

Immediately after the city's fall, a group of foreign expatriates headed by John Rabe formed the 15-man International Committee on November 22 and drew up the Nanking Safety Zone in order to safeguard the lives of civilians in the city, where the population ran from 200,000 to 250,000. It is likely that the civilian death toll would have been higher had this safe haven not been created. Rabe and American missionary Lewis S. C. Smythe, the secretary of the International Committee, who was also a professor of sociology at the University of Nanking, recorded atrocities of the Japanese troops and filed reports of complaints to the Japanese embassy.

Nanjing Hospital was the site of some of the most gruesome atrocities committed during the occupation. Bandages were torn from the flesh of the wounded, casts were smashed with clubs, and nurses were repeatedly raped.[citation needed]

[edit] Rape

    Thirty girls were taken from language school last night, and today I have heard scores of heartbreaking stories of girls who were taken from their homes last night--one of the girls was but 12 years old....Tonight a truck passed in which there were eight or ten girls, and as it passed they called out "Ging ming! Ging ming!"--save our lives. (Minnie Vautrin's diary, 16 December 1937)

    It is a horrible story to relate; I know not where to begin nor to end. Never have I heard or read of such brutality. Rape: We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval there is a bayonet stab or a bullet. (James McCallum, letter to his family, 19 December 1937)

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East stated that 20,000 (and perhaps up to 80,000) women were raped—their ages ranging from infants to the elderly (as old as 80). Rapes were often performed in public during the day, sometimes in front of spouses or family members. A large number of them were systematized in a process where soldiers would search door-to-door for young girls, with many women taken captive and gang raped. The women were then killed immediately after the rape, often by mutilation. According to some testimonies, other women were forced into military prostitution as comfort women. There are even stories of Japanese troops forcing families to commit acts of incest.[14] Sons were forced to rape their mothers, fathers were forced to rape daughters. One pregnant woman who was gang-raped by Japanese soldiers gave birth only a few hours later; the baby was perfectly healthy (Robert B. Edgerton, Warriors of the Rising Sun). Monks who had declared a life of celibacy were forced to rape women for the amusement of the Japanese.[14] Chinese men were forced to have sex with corpses. Any resistance would be met with summary executions. While the rape peaked immediately following the fall of the city, it continued for the duration of the Japanese occupation.

[edit] Murder
Massacred Chinese civilians at Hsuchow
Massacred Chinese civilians at Hsuchow[15]

Various foreign residents in Nanking at the time recorded their experiences with what was going on in the city:

    Robert Wilson in his letter to his family: The slaughter of civilians is appalling. I could go on for pages telling of cases of rape and brutality almost beyond belief. Two bayoneted corpses are the only survivors of seven street cleaners who were sitting in their headquarters when Japanese soldiers came in without warning or reason and killed five of their number and wounded the two that found their way to the hospital. [16]

    John Magee in his letter to his wife: They not only killed every prisoner they could find but also a vast number of ordinary citizens of all ages.... Just the day before yesterday we saw a poor wretch killed very near the house where we are living.[17]

    Robert Wilson in his another letter to his family: They [Japanese soldiers] bayoneted one little boy, killing him, and I spent an hour and a half this morning patching up another little boy of eight who had five bayonet wounds including one that penetrated his stomach, a portion of omentum was outside the abdomen. [18]

Immediately after the fall of the city, Japanese troops embarked on a determined search for former soldiers, in which thousands of young men were captured. Many were taken to the Yangtze River, where they were machine-gunned so their bodies would be carried down to Shanghai. Others were reportedly used for live bayonet practice. Decapitation was a popular method of killing, while more drastic practices included burning, nailing to trees, live burial, and hanging by the tongue. Some people were beaten to death. The Japanese also summarily executed many pedestrians on the streets, usually under the pretext that they might be soldiers disguised in civilian clothing.

Thousands were led away and mass-executed in an excavation known as the "Ten-Thousand-Corpse Ditch", a trench measuring about 300m long and 5m wide. Since records were not kept, estimates regarding the number of victims buried in the ditch range from 4,000 to 20,000. However, most scholars and historians consider the number to be around 12,000 victims.[citation needed]

Women and children were not spared from the horrors of the massacres. Witnesses recall Japanese soldiers throwing babies into the air and catching them with their bayonets. Pregnant women were often the target of murder, as they would often be bayoneted in the belly, sometimes after rape.[citation needed] Many women were first brutally raped then killed.

[edit] Theft and arson

It is estimated that over one-third and as much as two-thirds of the city was destroyed as a result of arson. According to reports, Japanese troops torched newly-built government buildings as well as the homes of many civilians. There was considerable destruction to areas outside the city walls. Soldiers pillaged from the poor and the wealthy alike. The lack of resistance from Chinese troops and civilians in Nanjing meant that the Japanese soldiers were free to divvy up the city's valuables as they saw fit. This resulted in the widespread looting and burglary. General Matsui Iwane was given an art collection worth $2,000,000 that was stolen from a Shanghai banker.[citation needed]

[edit] Death toll estimates
Manchester Guardian correspondent H.J. Timperley wrote this telegram, which was stopped by Japanese censors in Shanghai. It was forwarded to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, D.C. on January 17th, 1938, by Japanese foreign minister Kōki Hirota, where the transmission was intercepted and decoded by the Americans. "Since return (to) Shanghai (a) few days ago I investigated reported atrocities committed by Japanese Army in Nanking and elsewhere. Verbal accounts (of) reliable eye-witnesses and letters from individuals whose credibility (is) beyond question afford convincing proof (that) Japanese Army behaved and (is) continuing (to) behave in (a) fashion reminiscent (of) Attila (and) his Huns. (Not) less than three hundred thousand Chinese civilians slaughtered, many cases (in) cold blood."
Manchester Guardian correspondent H.J. Timperley wrote this telegram, which was stopped by Japanese censors in Shanghai. It was forwarded to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, D.C. on January 17th, 1938, by Japanese foreign minister Kōki Hirota, where the transmission was intercepted and decoded by the Americans. "Since return (to) Shanghai (a) few days ago I investigated reported atrocities committed by Japanese Army in Nanking and elsewhere. Verbal accounts (of) reliable eye-witnesses and letters from individuals whose credibility (is) beyond question afford convincing proof (that) Japanese Army behaved and (is) continuing (to) behave in (a) fashion reminiscent (of) Attila (and) his Huns. (Not) less than three hundred thousand Chinese civilians slaughtered, many cases (in) cold blood."

There is great debate as to the extent of the war atrocities in Nanking, especially regarding estimates of the death toll. The issues involved in calculating the number of victims are largely based on the debatees' definitions of the geographical range and the duration of the event, as well as their definition of the "victims".

[edit] Range and duration

The most conservative viewpoint is that the geographical area of the incident should be limited to the few square kilometers of the city known as the Safety Zone, where the civilians gathered after the invasion. Many Japanese historians seized upon the fact that during the Japanese invasion there were only 200,000–250,000 citizens in Nanking as reported by John Rabe, to argue that the PRC's estimate of 300,000 deaths is a vast exaggeration.

However, many historians include a much larger area around the city. Including the Xiaguan district (the suburbs north of Nanjing city, about 31 square km in size) and other areas on the outskirts of the city, the population of greater Nanjing was running between 535,000 and 635,000 just prior to the Japanese occupation.[19] Some historians also include six counties around Nanjing, known as the Nanjing Special Municipality.

The duration of the incident is naturally defined by its geography: the earlier the Japanese entered the area, the longer the duration. The Battle of Nanking ended on December 13, when the divisions of the Japanese Army entered the walled city of Nanking. The Tokyo War Crime Tribunal defined the period of the massacre to the ensuing six weeks. More conservative estimates say the massacre started on December 14, when the troops entered the Safety Zone, and that it lasted for 6 weeks. Historians who define the Nanking Massacre as having started from the time the Japanese Army entered Jiangsu province push the beginning of the massacre to around mid-November to early December (Suzhou fell on November 19), and stretch the end of the massacre to late March 1938. Naturally, the number of victims proposed by these historians is much greater than more conservative estimates.

Kukulcan wrote:

If they did to ''quick the war times'' why didn't they do that also europe? I'm happy they didn't , cause i'm italian but i don't find an explanation to this.... they already had the projects ( stolen from germany ) .

germany was nowhere near completing a nuclear device in any shape or form(they were the leaders in nuclear fission, thats all). the only way you can say "german projects" is by basically saying their scientists came to us.so we put their minds to work for us, and we made it.

"The German government never did finance a full crash program to develop weapons, as they estimated it could not be completed in time for use in the war, thus the German program was much more limited in capacity and ability when compared to the eventual size and priority of the Manhattan Project."

taken from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuc … gy_project

this is "germanys nuclear bomb", ROFL?

Last edited by T0rr3nt (2007-02-01 19:19:49)

Were the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Necessary?

No.  The US should have carpet bombed every major city until no person was left alive so we would have cry asses whining about their evil forefathers getting their arses pwned even though they were told multiple times it was going to happen.

They could have bombed them with everything else except the nuke...

One more thing that I just started to think about....

If the Americans would have had the nuke earlier, would they have nuked Berlin and München????
That thought gave me the creeps....

lavadisk wrote:

wars are bad.
killing people is bad.
blowing up lots of people is bad.

But lets think about if the axis won the war. (yeah, they wouldn't have won anyway) but the point is that we did what was needed to win the war. It probably was overkill but after the first nuke they didn't stand down till we dropped another one and threatened them even more.

ffs

Like I said earlier.  Even if we had just left them alone, they couldn't have done anything.  They didn't have a navy, air force, and hell even if they would have had an army, they're on an island so they couldn't have gone anywhere.  It's like shooting someone with no arms or legs in the face several times...

CommieChipmunk wrote:

lavadisk wrote:

wars are bad.
killing people is bad.
blowing up lots of people is bad.

But lets think about if the axis won the war. (yeah, they wouldn't have won anyway) but the point is that we did what was needed to win the war. It probably was overkill but after the first nuke they didn't stand down till we dropped another one and threatened them even more.

ffs

Like I said earlier.  Even if we had just left them alone, they couldn't have done anything.  They didn't have a navy, air force, and hell even if they would have had an army, they're on an island so they couldn't have gone anywhere.  It's like shooting someone with no arms or legs in the face several times...

Alright. I see your side.

lavadisk wrote:

CommieChipmunk wrote:

lavadisk wrote:

wars are bad.
killing people is bad.
blowing up lots of people is bad.

But lets think about if the axis won the war. (yeah, they wouldn't have won anyway) but the point is that we did what was needed to win the war. It probably was overkill but after the first nuke they didn't stand down till we dropped another one and threatened them even more.

ffs

Like I said earlier.  Even if we had just left them alone, they couldn't have done anything.  They didn't have a navy, air force, and hell even if they would have had an army, they're on an island so they couldn't have gone anywhere.  It's like shooting someone with no arms or legs in the face several times...

Alright. I see your side.

and thats all i ask