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Was the U.S. entering WW2 after Pearl Harbor just systematic barbarism in retribution?

C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago
Honest question — how else would you describe dropping a nuclear bomb each on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cities full of civilians, causing "between 129,000 and 226,000" deaths (source: Wikipedia)? Those were not military targets.
- defrost 3y ago
  Honest contextual answer: .. a rush job to test two different designs for a new weapon, snuck in before the very same cities were destroyed much more cheaply with conventional heavy explosives and incideriaries, just as 72 Japanese cities had already been destroyed. That answer because you asked about the nuclear bombs rather than the total destruction of complete cities in the European and Japanese theatres. You can compare the death toll from the Tokyo firebombings to that in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, you can look up the names of the other 71 cities destroyed and you can find the full list of planned targets (now long forgotten save for H & N) in the archives.
- edanm 3y ago
  I'd say that in times of war, the goal is to win. The war continuing longer would cause far more deaths than ending the war quickly. More importantly for the US, the war ending in victory is more important than basically any other consideration, given what would happen if they lost. That doesn't mean dropping those bombs was the right thing to do, neither militarily or morally. But at the end of the day, that's what war is, and people thinking differnetly is why Germany was able to conquery several countries in WW2 and trigger a war that caused 50million deaths.
- p3rls 3y ago
  Meanwhile Japan was killing that amount of Chinese civilians a week through only sheer willpower -- very kawaii. How many Chinese victims and American servicemen (mostly conscripts) were you willing to sacrifice on this altar of stupidity/hindsight? Not to even mention the fact MORE JAPANESE themselves would have died without the bombs being dropped and I really begin to question not just the morals of the OP but your intelligence as well. Get off YouTube and read some David Glantz if you want to learn what WW2 was really like.
  - C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago
    Japan has committed many atrocities and had no moral high ground, nor would I have suggested so. I am not debating how many conscripts to sacrifice and so on, and you are free to question my intelligence however much you wish. I reject your framing of my answer to the OP and engaging with false implications and things I have not claimed. More to the point, the bomb(s) could have been dropped on military targets away from civilians and still fully display their destructive power to the same effect of forcing a surrender. Did they absolutely need to be dropped on top of cities and murder so many civilians? This IS a display of barbarism and revenge, no matter how conducive to the goal of ending the war.
    - junofan 3y ago
      Yeah it was to show Stalin we’d have absolutely no qualms about dropping it on Moscow.
jacknews 3y ago
Non sequiteur, as AFAIK America had not been systematically oppressing Japan for decades. Pearl Harbor was not then a desperate attempt to upturn the rotten-apple cart, but a simple imperial power grab.

Honest question — how else would you describe dropping a nuclear bomb each on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cities full of civilians, causing "between 129,000 and 226,000" deaths (source: Wikipedia)? Those were not military targets.

defrost 3y ago
Honest contextual answer: .. a rush job to test two different designs for a new weapon, snuck in before the very same cities were destroyed much more cheaply with conventional heavy explosives and incideriaries, just as 72 Japanese cities had already been destroyed. That answer because you asked about the nuclear bombs rather than the total destruction of complete cities in the European and Japanese theatres. You can compare the death toll from the Tokyo firebombings to that in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, you can look up the names of the other 71 cities destroyed and you can find the full list of planned targets (now long forgotten save for H & N) in the archives.
edanm 3y ago
I'd say that in times of war, the goal is to win. The war continuing longer would cause far more deaths than ending the war quickly. More importantly for the US, the war ending in victory is more important than basically any other consideration, given what would happen if they lost. That doesn't mean dropping those bombs was the right thing to do, neither militarily or morally. But at the end of the day, that's what war is, and people thinking differnetly is why Germany was able to conquery several countries in WW2 and trigger a war that caused 50million deaths.
p3rls 3y ago
Meanwhile Japan was killing that amount of Chinese civilians a week through only sheer willpower -- very kawaii. How many Chinese victims and American servicemen (mostly conscripts) were you willing to sacrifice on this altar of stupidity/hindsight? Not to even mention the fact MORE JAPANESE themselves would have died without the bombs being dropped and I really begin to question not just the morals of the OP but your intelligence as well. Get off YouTube and read some David Glantz if you want to learn what WW2 was really like.
- C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago
  Japan has committed many atrocities and had no moral high ground, nor would I have suggested so. I am not debating how many conscripts to sacrifice and so on, and you are free to question my intelligence however much you wish. I reject your framing of my answer to the OP and engaging with false implications and things I have not claimed. More to the point, the bomb(s) could have been dropped on military targets away from civilians and still fully display their destructive power to the same effect of forcing a surrender. Did they absolutely need to be dropped on top of cities and murder so many civilians? This IS a display of barbarism and revenge, no matter how conducive to the goal of ending the war.
  - junofan 3y ago
    Yeah it was to show Stalin we’d have absolutely no qualms about dropping it on Moscow.

jacknews 3y ago

Non sequiteur, as AFAIK America had not been systematically oppressing Japan for decades. Pearl Harbor was not then a desperate attempt to upturn the rotten-apple cart, but a simple imperial power grab.