60 Years Ago..... - Striper Talk Striped Bass Fishing, Surfcasting, Boating

BigFish · 08-07-2005, 12:07 AM

I have been watching some of the documentaries on the bombing of Hiroshima 60 years ago.....heart wrenching to say the least! Though it saved untold numbers of both American and Japanese lives, and ultimately brought Japan to its knees ending World War II.....the devastation and the numbers of dead was very tragic. It is things like this humanity must never forget and hope it never has to happen again. On Sunday morning, though the anniversary was yesterday morning,.....have a thought for those who perished all those years ago.....100,000 it is estimated in Hiroshima and another 80,000 in Nagasaki......those were the immediate dead. Necessary??? Perhaps.....but tragic also. They report that the Hiroshima explosion was that of 67 million sticks of dynamite......temperatures at ground zero were estimated to be in excess of 7000 degrees. I find it difficult to wrap my mind around numbers like those......I hope that I never have to witness such a thing or my children either.

Raider Ronnie · 08-07-2005, 02:22 AM

I knew a guy who was on the plane that dropped the bomb!
He died a few years ago.

afterhours · 08-07-2005, 02:44 AM

tragic, but as you said- it saved more lifes on both sides.

basswipe · 08-07-2005, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigFish

They report that the Hiroshima explosion was that of 67 million sticks of dynamite......temperatures at ground zero were estimated to be in excess of 7000 degrees. I find it difficult to wrap my mind around numbers like those......I hope that I never have to witness such a thing or my children either.

Just think today's largest hydrogen nukes make those two bombs look like ladyfingers.Scary stuff when you think about something like that in the wrong hands.

Skip N · 08-07-2005, 09:13 AM

It was estimated that there would be 1 millions US casualties during an invasion of mainland Japan if it came to that. The Japaneesee were savages and never surrendered and fought to the death. It sucks we had to drop a couple a-bombs on them but hey...they deserved it and it ended the war rather quickly and saved millions of lives. The fact that after the first bomb was dropped they STILL didnt surrender tells you the mindset of the japs at the time. Im gald we dropped the bombs and saved amercian lives...including both my grandfathers who sure as hell would have been going in on the invasion of Japan. Props to Truman for ending that bloody war. And the Japs started the war with us so screw em! they got what they deserved at the time. That sounds harsh but i dont care...they killed hundreds of thousonds of our boys so they desreved what they got.

Iwannakeeper · 08-08-2005, 10:10 AM

I say we pull out of IRAQ and drop a couple more.

Nothing take the 'fun' out of 'fundamentalist' like a couple of nukes.

We have waisted enough American lives trying to bring democracy to a country that doesn't necessarily want it. Once Sadam was captured, we should have pulled out.

Rob Rockcrawler · 08-08-2005, 10:33 AM

It would be nice to put a quick end to the war in Iraq but if we dropped a couple nukes over there it would set a really bad precedent. You know the terrorists would love to get their hands on some nukes right now and if we dropped a couple over there. Im sure there would be a lot more states willing to hook them up with the materials and technology if we dropped em.

Flaptail · 08-08-2005, 11:54 AM

It was a tragic but necesary event. Operation Olympic, which was the code name for the invasion of Japan, was scheduled for early 1946. It was estimated that the Allied casualties alone would number over a million. Thats 1 million guys on just our side, more than half of them would have been killed besides the maimed and wounded. My father spent three years in the Pacific theater of operations. Wounded on Peilelu and Saipan. Would he have come home? Probably not as the law of averages was already against him. He knew the way the Japanese would fight, death before dishonor. On the Japanese side how many would have died? Best guesses say millions both military and civilian. One must remember that more people died in the fire bombing raids on Tokyo then at either bomb site. The real tragedy of it all was that it was surely nescesary and the legacy it left of Nuclear proliferation that was to become it's bastard child. War is never good. Some may be just but most, as is our current involvement, our the schemings of old men with old ideoligies and political views not borne of the public sentement. Iraq was not nescesary, I beleive that. I do support the men fighting it as they are just doing what every good soldier does and pledges to do to hold up our countrys policies whenever asked without question and for that our Armed Forces our second to none, they have never failed to go when called upon even when the cause is subject to suspicion. The war on terror is the real enemy. OBL and Al-Qaida and religious extremism is where we should have focused our military and intelligence strengths. Now that we are there we have to finish the job as we have created a state where the line between democracy and an extremist society sympathetic to the cause of Jihad in the name of extremist Islam interpretation. Hiroshima and Nagasaki will always be debated but one must remeber in those debates to put oneself back into the time and place the decision was made. What were the options available. Though Japan was secretly making overtures of surrender they wanted to do it on thier terms. The Emperor was in favor of it but the military was not and the military not the emperor were the ones who were in the drivers seat. They needed to be persuaded. The world had already seen the deaths of over twenty million people in the period between 1939 and August 1945 and the world was weary of the death and destruction. Innocent people paid more heavily than all the military personal involved. Civilian deaths were near twenty to one over military casualties. It had to stop. The two bombs, and the threat of more, stopped it. It had to be and I, and a lot of you, would not be here if it did not stop then and there.

likwid · 08-08-2005, 02:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flaptail

It was estimated that the Allied casualties alone would number over a million. Thats 1 million guys on just our side, more than half of them would have been killed besides the maimed and wounded.

Actually estimates for US deaths from an invasion of Japan were about 1/10th of that at the high end and about 1/50th of it at the low end.

1. The US insisted on unconditional surrender.
2. Japan says no, but they'd accept everything except getting rid of the emperor.
3. The US nukes Hiroshima and Nagaski, to show Stalin that we have two kinds of bombs and to try to halt their movement into China and Japan.
4. Japan surrenders.
5. The US lets them keep the emperor anyway.

Lots of internal documents show we wouldnt have had to invade. but really, the whole mass bombing of civilians lead to lots of deaths but didnt really reduce their military abililty much. same in germany.