In the context of the day, it was well understood that the Japanese would fanatically defend their country. The barbaric and evil behaviour of the Japanese during the 1937/8 ‘rape of Nanking’ (300,000 unarmed humans killed AFTER the surrender of the civilian city and it’s remaining 90,000 soldiers) was well documented by the British, Dutch and Americans present in Nanking as too, was the subsequent behaviour of the Japanese toward all other ‘conquered’ peoples during the course of their expansion. The outright murder by the Japanese of civilians and surrendered soldiers is not in dispute (except by Japanese atrocity denialists and their outright cultural revisionists).  

http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/nanking.htm

Many photographs and films were made by the Japanese during the Nanking murders, but they too, have been suppressed. Maybe they should once again be published to remind us of the risks of blind cultural obedience to established authority and too, of the real value of our dissenters. 

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in 105,000 dead and 94,000 injured (many who would greatly suffer and ultimately die from the incidents for a total of some 195,000 people). 

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp10.shtml

So round it up to 200,000 who died as a direct result of 2 atomic weapons dropped on their country and compare that number to the 300,000 prisoners of war and civilians who were deliberately, officially and wantonly slaughtered by the Japanese in Nanking alone.

The Japanese most certainly got the ‘better’ deal.

In the face of 1945 reality, the only argument worth debating is the targets …. I would have preferred the bombs be dropped on targets with greater military significance or that Einstein and the others had just keep their big bloody mouths shut so that the 3 or 4 contemporary Japanese atomic reactors core and stored ‘spent’ fuel rod meltdowns weren’t currently spewing radioactive particles into the lands, winds and oceans – a very clear and persistent present day danger to humanity which may well cause much more death then did the bombs used in 1945.    

Lawrence A. Oshanek
Calgary, Alberta 

:^D

/end facetiousness

From a post above:

I can’t think of any reason to subject a child to a slow and agonizing
death from full body 3rd degree burns.

I can’t think of a good reason to subject a few million children to a slow and agonizing process of starvation for six months in order to get their parents to capitulate to a lost cause.

See my comment about “evil vs. greater evil”, above. Hiroshima was a necessary evil because it was a clear lesser of two evils.

One of the major problems with Postmodernist Liberal world views is that they are absurdly simplistic. They seem to always frame every problem as “Do A or Not A”, when, in fact, the problem is almost always “Do A or B”, with both A and B being undesirable choices.

Had they succeeded in getting into that fight, then Japan may well have suffered a two-partitioned system of US and USSR control post-war to mirror that which happened in Germany and Austria…

Does anyone here think that partitioning Japan instead of what actually happened would have Been A Real Good Thing?

But I do, very much, concur with the rest of your analysis. The USA has and still has a far, far better  record of conduct under the conditions of war than virtually any other nation of significance — our shameful moments are made even more shameful by their rarity.

Just the book title alone makes the author’s anti-American agenda blatantly clear.

I’m not quite so sure that would have been the case.

Well, then you’re quite ignorant of what the leadership of Japan was saying, and that the people of Japan, trained from birth to respect authority, were absolutely bound to follow them.

It is singular evidence of this that the USA chose to NOT insist on an absolute, unconditional surrender — they allowed the Japanese Emperor to not surrender himself — because it was believed that, had they insisted on this, that, even in the face of those two weapons — that the Japanese people would have fought on had the USA attempted to cause the Emperor to “lose face”.

I think you could also make the argument that Nagasaki was purely for
political capital

You could, if you were utterly clueless and completely ignorant of the facts. The Japanese leadership did not believe that the events there were a weapon, and believed that it was an act of nature which the US leadership was attempting to take credit for. The second bomb was then ordered to be dropped. In both cases, by the way, the US informed the people of the city to flee and that it was about to be destroyed. That’s as about as fair as one can get in times like those.

“An Eye For An Eye only makes the whole world blind”?

NO! Game theory has proven Gandhi utterly wrong on this.

In the real world — the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma indeed reveals that the best strategy is the Christian variant on AE4AE: “Tit for Tat, with Forgiveness”

There are NO absolute rules in this universe. Go ahead, think of something you think as utterly, absolutely inviolable. I’ll then describe a situation for you — albeit improbable — in which violating your rule is the least of two evils.

…Because no matter how evil an act your rule is intended to deal with, I’ll devise for you a greater evil to choose it against.

B) I can’t think of any reason to subject an American child to the loss of his father in order to stop a relentless and implacable enemy willing to fight to the last man to retain its immoral authority.

Which rule is to be applied first? I’m going with  “B”

Maybe it should be singled out because it’s too easy. War needs to cost
money and expend lives on all sides to be properly feared.

??? Excuse me ??? What planet are YOU living on that you think nuclear war — war of ANY kind — doesn’t cost money and take lives on both sides?

Did you happen to notice the endless litany of death statistics from the media regarding the War in Iraq, as long as it wasn’t clearly being WON?

His argument was rather subtle but, I’d suggest, undeniable: For the first time since that era, those whose decision it was to go to war were likely to endure the most profound and deep effects OF that war. The Rich and Powerful would suffer as much, or ever more, than the plebes who would generally wind up in the front lines. In fact, the Rich and Powerful, from those pictures, could easily wind up… not Rich and Powerful.

Ellison also noted this: That it had then been 45 years (now 60!) since the weapon had been invented and we haven’t seen a second use of it. For humans to invent a weapon and then NOT USE IT for 45/60 years is unprecedented in human history. It is easy to see a likely connection between this latter fact and the earlier one.

And I’d argue that perhaps one of the BEST things to happen to humanity WAS the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was done when further use of it was impossible (they were the only two in existence) and provided very graphic images, and plenty of time to contemplate their significance, to the power elite who have held the capacity to hit the trigger since that time. It was understood to be that nuclear war would most likely result in MAD, something people without those graphic images might not have fully appreciated, or managed to rationalize away… But not with those photos and videos staring them in the face… And so no one wanted to be the ones to pull the trigger.

So, YES, in response to your question… it HAS made us more averse to both.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/08/02/fukushima-radiation-1000-times-h-bomb-peak-2/

Rather then just burying the reactors, as they did at Chernobyl, Japan seems willing to kill 20% of it’s own population over time because all the winds are westerly and how many millions will be killed or otherwise effected by fallout in North America?

Screw old deeds and arguments, we have a real problem in the here and now!

Lawrence A. Oshanek
Calgary, Canada

If it was being suppressed, you would not know it existed.
Not everything is a conspiracy.

Now take your meds and go back under your bridge.

342.12 MOTION PICTURES (GENERAL) 
1900-72 
[snip]
Project Crossroads atomic bomb tests, Bikini Atoll, 1946 (77 reels). Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 1945 (133 reels). 
[snip]

And yes — it’s Kodachrome film. Not particularly unusual; 16mm Kodachrome was introduced in 1935 and rereleased with stabler color dyes in 1938. It cost about $6.00 for a 3-minute roll plus processing; multiply by 10 or 12 to get comparable cost today. 

How about the Rape of Nanking?

World War II had had to end.
Millions dead; maybe 78million–4% of the world’s population. 
Over 16 million Americans served in the military during the war.
Almost 417,000 died.
Nearly 684,000 wounded.
That was a little over 300 Americans killed every day.
If Truman had a means to end the war and stop the American casualties ASAP and did not use it, the American public  would have been held him responsible.

The footage still probably has not have been seen by most people, though – even with the “WWII In Color” series and the like, most people still know WWII through black and white newsreel footage.

In university I took a class in the film department on Godzilla films. Being a serious class, it started with a lot of background on Japan’s relationship to nuclear energy – starting of course with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I saw some color footage such as this in that class, but most of it was black and white. Either way, the imagery remains the same – it’s been reduced to grey and brown rubble anyway. Although the footage of injuries is more intense in color, of course.