Big Beef City posted:

One thing I don't like about nuclear bombing is what happens.

Methanar posted:

north korea should have been nuked before the soviets got soldiers on the ground

Confusedslight posted:

Can't believe how lucky we are that something like this hasn't happened since.

Nuts and Gum posted:

Nukes caused anime is legit sa 1.0 posting. The forum version of high waist jeans is back baby

baalaagaa posted:

Two wasn't enough. Should have kept going until every trace of Anime was destroyed.

Nuts and Gum posted:

Nukes caused anime is legit sa 1.0 posting. The forum version of high waist jeans is back baby

GABA ghoul posted:

How many countries that didn't get nuked developed anime? Can you name even one?

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-05/hiroshima-anniversary-japan-atomic-bombs posted:

While a majority of Americans may not be familiar with this history, the National Museum of the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., states unambiguously on a plaque with its atomic bomb exhibit: “The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria … changed their minds.” But online the wording has been modified to put the atomic bombings in a more positive light — once again showing how myths can overwhelm historical evidence.

Nuts and Gum posted:

Wasn�t Japan on the verge of surrendering anyway as the Soviet�s were slaughtering them from the other side?

Or did Oliver Stone lie to me?

some bust on that guy posted:

It was good

Torquemada posted:

But then China would be allowed to pick a small town in Japan where they could murder 200,000 people and rape 10% of them. Or we could enslave 330,000 Japanese and work them to death building railways. Where will the madness end.

Wizard Master posted:

I think it saved millions of both Japanese and American lives that would have been lost had a land invasion of the Japanese mainland proceeded

Calvin Johnson Jr. posted:

They were objectively more humane than literally firebombing a city every other day. It stopped Japan from being split in two with the Soviets, saved millions of lives on both sides in regards to the planned land invasion, and Japan's leadership was not united in aiming for peace.

Considering they were already accustomed to fire bombings, these were simply an escalation in scale. They were cited as prime reasons in Emperor Hirohito's surrendering speech; it's safe to say they at least gave the Japanese an "out" to surrender. The Soviets were an existential threat and Japan did not want them involved in any post-war negotiations.

To put this further into perspective, the nuclear bombs dropped on both cities destroyed 4.7 miles and then 1.8 miles of land. The conventional bombing of Tokyo destroyed 15.8 miles. War sucks but it is what it is. Modern nuclear weapons are much, much more destructive than what was used in '45.

Schweinhund posted:

Pearl Harbor = hosed around
Hiroshima/Nagasaki = found out

Worf posted:

I would say Japan made it's choices really.

I agree it would have been way funnier to let the soviets deal with it though, lmfao.

Skeleton Ape posted:

In war lots of cultures say they will fight to the last man, woman, and child, but the Japanese actually meant it. We were doing very, very bad things to them for a long time before the nukes

Groke posted:

Seriouspost: I think we got lucky as hell.

Nuclear weapons were going to be developed, once science advanced to the point where they started discovering nuclear physics it was just a matter of time. One discovery leads to another and sooner or later people would figure out how to make things go boom via this new physics.

However. The timing of this was coincidentally such that the development of a working nuclear bomb was on the horizon just before and then during a huge global war; and it was just barely accomplished towards the end of that war, just in time for two (comparably small) first-generation bombs to be dropped on inhabited urban targets. In particular, nobody other than the USA had a realistic chance of completing a nuclear bomb project before the war would have been over, thanks to a truly massive advantage in both material resources and available trained personnel. (Not just the big physics thinkers, but every qualified lab worker you need for a project like that... if you don't have them, you need to spend years educating them.) Some years later, of course, multiple other powers had copied the homework and got their own arsenals, bigger numbers of bigger bombs... but by then we'd all had a good eyeful of the actual effects the drat things have on cities full of humans, and successfully classified them as last-resort deterrence weapons. 77 years later and they've still not been used again.

Contrast with the alternate possibility, where the required advances in science came during peacetime; maybe a situation similar to the decade or so before WW1... multipolar political setup, several militaristic great powers, everyone always working to strengthen their military power. Someone completes their project, everyone else copies their homework, soon enough everyone has sizeable arsenals of bombs significantly bigger than the ones dropped on Japan... then some fucker shoots an Archduke in the Balkans or something... and nobody has seen what a nuclear bomb will do to a city, it's all theoretical.

Worf posted:

Conversely if the United States had nuclear bombs in 1938, Pearl harbor never would have happened in 41 and Germany would have probably been a lot more hesitant about attacking Western European allies of the United States lol

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

No, this is one of those things that self-hating US americans repeat over and over. The japanese government gave about as many fucks about August Storm as it did about the years-long chinese stalemate, the blockade, the regular bombing, and the nukes: they were divided and callously uncaring about the lives of citizens.

The US was actively fighting the Kriegsmarine long before Pearl Harbor but again,

Darth Brooks posted:

Maybe, just maybe, some of us are a fan of history and read a hell of a lot about it.

It is funny that one of the reasons given for bombing cities was the idea that the citizens would be shocked and demoralized. It never worked except with the atomic bomb. The effects were so fear inspiring that it shook the Japanese government out of their "It would be beautiful if everybody died" mindset.

Hardcore History had a multi part podcast about the mindset of the Imperial Japanese government before and during WWII.

Nuts and Gum posted:

The presumption from the documentary I watched was had the us done nothing Russia was about to crush them anyway and we could have just waited on the sidelines I guess?

Oliver Stone has lied to me. He is definitely in the self hating American group.

twistedmentat posted:

Japanese surrender that is often touted as "see the Americans dropped the bomb because America is bad" was "America stops attacking us and we get to keep all the territory will still have left, so a lot of SEA, China, Maylasia and any Islands left".

It is weird how the absolutely monstrous atrocities done by Japan in China are kinda overlooked, like there's always this weird narrative that Japan going to war was because the Americans forced them to, because they were mean and wouldn't give them oil and rubber so they could keep invading china. I guess because we like Japan and not China so we'll feel bad for tens of thousands of dead Japanese but not the millions of Chinese that died? Also its not like Saipan and Okinawa didn't give the Americans a taste of what it would be like to invade Japan proper, showing the IJA was not hesitant to force local civilians into the front lines to slow them down.

Another thing a lot of people seem to ignore that no one in Japan during the war had been alive during a period where the Emperor was not seen as God and i was better to die for the emperor than to live for yourself. That they had the whole twisted version of Bushido drilled into them, that anyone not conforming was shamed and forced out of public life. The complete disregard for the civilian population by the military leaders was also a fact, they were perfectly willing to kill the entire country to save face. Nazi Germany only lasted 12 stupid and bloody years, but they produced insane fanatics, how do you think people in Japan who were raised from birth thinking like this were? It's not like the American leaders were utterly ignorant of what people in Japan were thinking and being told to think, and despite how some people might want to portray it, Truman and his cabinet weren't lusting for more civilian deaths. They weren't bomber command.

That being said, and here's the but,

There was no need to drop the bombs on purely civilian targets. Yes they went for less important cities, as Kyoto was the first target but due to the Americans knowing how important it was to the Japanese they moved it to another city. And they dropped leaflets saying that poo poo was going to go down, the same effect would have been achieved by dropping it on an navel anchorage or an airbase. Drop it on one of the main bases on the home islands Kamikaze's were launching from, boom, Japanese leadership now knows you can take out an entire base with one bomb. It would probably have the same effect with much less civilian casualties. But again here's Bomber Command still thinking terror bombing will break the enemies will to fight.

I've never been sold on the "they only dropped it to wag their dick at Stalin" because no one has ever provided serious primary evidence that this was a reason. Crackpots like Patton were saying hey lets join forces with the Germans once they're defeated and go after the commies, and some others based on faulty evidence that the Abwehr director gave the Allies in exchange for not being hung, but there was never a serious "we gotta go after the Russkies right now!" among the actual leadership of the allies. Everyone was sick of war and just wanted it to be over, even the Soviets.

Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:

the japanese government started internal surrender discussions by late 1944 and they were fully going over the issue in the spring of 1945 as the american bombing campaign demonstrated that america could flatten japan

Lawrence Gilchrist posted:

It might end a little faster when history is reported accurately.

Go back to posting cartoons of Jussie Smollett getting bleach poured on him.

"America had two buttons and both said bomb civilians"

The missing operative here is "who"

I would say advocating whitewashing nuking innocent women and babies should be discouraged

Donald Trump's speechwriter has logged on

ghoul

Conversely, if Jesus had nuclear bombs, we

"Self-hating" to not believe in race war. Got it

Hey fan of history, you know what would have shook the Japanese government? A bomb dropped on it and not a bunch of civilians! Let's all suck your dick because you listened to a podcast, though!

You get lied to a lot, huh.

Who was overlooking how fascistic and evil Japan's government was? Who set the tone for an Operation Paperclip style reintegration of these war criminals back into government after taking over the country? If only we knew.

Flatten Japan, also known as nuking women and babies

twistedmentat posted:

There was no need to drop the bombs on purely civilian targets. Yes they went for less important cities, as Kyoto was the first target but due to the Americans knowing how important it was to the Japanese they moved it to another city. And they dropped leaflets saying that poo poo was going to go down, the same effect would have been achieved by dropping it on an navel anchorage or an airbase. Drop it on one of the main bases on the home islands Kamikaze's were launching from, boom, Japanese leadership now knows you can take out an entire base with one bomb. It would probably have the same effect with much less civilian casualties. But again here's Bomber Command still thinking terror bombing will break the enemies will to fight.

KrunkMcGrunk posted:

I think some people really don't understand how fanatical the average Japanese soldier was at that time. And also Japanese civilians were brainwashed to the point of women and children in the south Pacific committing suicide when faced with Americans. Invading Japan carried the prospect of massive civilian and military death.

Also Imperial Japan was on team Nazi.

Lawrence Gilchrist posted:

Deki posted:

IIRC Kyoto wasn't a target purely because some US Diplomat or general or something vacationed there in the past and thought it'd be a waste if the town got wiped out.

Deki posted:

IIRC Kyoto wasn't a target purely because some US Diplomat or general or something vacationed there in the past and thought it'd be a waste if the town got wiped out.

Lawrence Gilchrist posted:

Who What Now posted:

Personally I think nuking civilians is bad and I'm willing to die on that hill no matter how much Bushido honor the women and children supposedly had