Here's the REAL question for GOP[h]ers...

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Seeing as how over 20,000 American lives were lost during the battle of Okinawa,and as many as 110,000 Japanese soldiers, and as many as 150,000 civilian deaths I think it's safe to come to the conclusion that an invasion of the much larger and more heavily populated Japanese mainland would be been much more costly in terms of lives spent.

Thenjapanese civilians were strapping themselves with bombs and running into troops including the children since Americans were weak and would pick up and try to help the kids. They also did mass suicides as us troops approached their cities. Their God told them to fight to the death and was ready to issue weapons to them all. Their pilots would ram perfectly good plans into ships in a in logical attempt to sink them only at the end realizing those nightly trained fighter posits would be far more useful stopping bombers. They would either suicide charge troops or kill themselves after ran out of ammo. There's a reason why we didn't capture many Japanese POWs.
/quote]
A scene from the miniseries The Pacific of the battle of Okinawa.

/True,my father experienced this on Attu.
http://www.historynet.com/alaskas-cutthroats.htm

Yeah, but that's not why we dropped the bombs...

While US troop deaths were of paramount concern, NOBODYCARED ABOUT Japanese deaths at all during this time. By this stage of the war we could have encircled the Japanese home islands and starved them out.

We didn't do that for a number of reasons:

1. USSR was about to start an offensive in Asia. Considering what they did in Europe, we didn't want them to occupy ANY additional territory anywhere. Remember, China was our NON-Communist ally back then.

2. Dropping the bombs also served as an object lesson for Stalin, again, considering what he'd done in eastern Europe.

3. The atomic bombs cost a VAST amount of money and we needed to justify the expendature.

4. Dropping atom bombs only became a big deal in hindsight. We didn't really understand all the after effects yet. Also, we'd just incenerated 88,000 Japanese during the 3 day fire bombing of Tokyo. Atom bombs were just a more efficient way to do WHAT WE HAD ALREADY BEEN DOING.

You say things like "gun nut fantacy" without much beside personal opinion to back your insulting words. I think "off-the-cuff" statements should have at least a modicum of fact.

If you'd done your homework you would have dug up at least a few cases of armed citizen's stopping a shooter. It doesn't take a mathematical genius to intuit a more numerous response to future shooters would be created were there more patriotic armed citizens.

I think the fantasy is self made.

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, 2.500 killed. No Japanese women, children, or monks were involved.

They worship their ancestors and their Emperor who is a living god.

We did not take prisoners, firebombed Tokyo, killing mass civilians, then nuked the women and children in two safe cities.

Islam attacks the World Trade Towers, over 3,000 killed. Many Muslims were not involved.

They worship a religion, government, social system, legal system, that chops off heads, hands, feet, and stones people. Some they hang, crucify, or throw off of tall buildings.

We attacked two countries who had nothing to do with the attack, three if Pakistan counts. Four if Syria counts.

It was Saudis who did it, who wanted the rest, and for us to destroy Iran, so the Kings of Saudi Arabia can rule the world.

It is not politically correct to say the Saudi Race commits crimes. They funded the Iraq resistance that killed 5,000 Americans and seriously wounded 20,000.

We should apologize for being Racists.

At this rate, Japan may have another go at Pearl.

If I were casual reader I might think the Japanese were dropping flowers from their bombers and the (dead) men, women and children killed and tortured in China by the peaceful Japanese were only whiners. I know this is not your contention, but a little more comprehensive understanding might be called for to prevent misunderstanding by other readers.

Personally, after the worst human rights behavior possible in China by the Japanese, I doubt their behavior would have been altered had the U.S. come under their control. Our civilian population was only spared by distance. The fumbling and ineffective efforts by the Japanese to use terror attacks on our civilian population are well documented.

Japan did not become a peaceful country until AFTER the bombs were dropped. If anyone is interested here's a Wikipedia article with details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes

While you are right about the Soviet advance playing a roll; if Japan had not been forced to surrender and they fought as they fought on all those islands in the Pacific then there would of been probably been a 1,000,000+ American casualties and many many more Japanese. This was expected and is why they still award Purple Hearts from WWII to this day because all that were ever needed were made in preparation of the invasion of the Japanese home island. The Japanese were not going to unconditionally surrender, their only strategy at the end was to inflict massive causalities on the allied forces to force them to negotiate an end to the war that was on some level favorable to them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, i know all that. The point was the legitimacy of nuking Japan as opposed to a land invasion.

Maybe, though I think I'd much prefer getting shot or blown up with a regular bomb than dying the lingering nuclear radiation death many of the Hiroshima civilians died. So maybe more would have died but perhaps a more humane death.

Also though beings most of the casualties were civilians, what makes people so certain the civilian populace wouldn't have surrendered to the U.S had they land invaded? I don't know that males not trained in military combat, women and children would have been so quick to fight to the death.

Last edited by Sweetleaf on 16 Dec 2015, 2:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

^ You're just being intentionally obtuse now.

Have you read up on that horrendous death? You might see good old fashioned bombs and bullets as the more humane death as well if you did. Not sure how it is obtuse to mention the fact that it is a horrendous death or that I am of the opinion getting shot is more humane.

The Japanese were planning to fight to the death; man, woman and child. The civilian population was specifically trained for this, they were to engage in a guerrilla war of attrition in face of the American invasion. An invasion of Japan would of resulted in the deaths of millions, the atomic bombs saved lives by forcing Emperor Hirohito into unconditional surrender. We were preparing to drop more bombs, 3 every month until Japan surrendered. They estimated 5-10 million Japanese might of died in the planned American invasion. The Soviets also planned to invade Japan, from the north in Hokkaido. Japan probably would of been split just like North Korea in that scenario.

WW2 was the first war in history where civilian deaths far outnumbered military ones. Even with the insane meat grinder that the Eastern Front was, where the Germans and Soviets probably suffered 5-10 million military deaths, the number of civilians killed between 1939 and 1945 has been estimated to exceed 20 million. I'm not sure whether this figure includes the 11 million who were outright murdered during the Holocaust.

As tragic as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, more Japanese civilians died during the mass incendiary raids over Tokyo and other major Japanese cities than in the atomic blasts. The incendiary raids were designed to terrorize the Japanese populace. The objective was to burn entire sections of those cities to the ground. They created fire storms that spread far beyond the bombed areas.

The winners write the histories. The losers get hanged as war criminals. And ordinary people die.

Where are you getting that all the civilians were that extreme? I know their military force was taught that and expected to follow that mindset but yeah I have never seen any substantial evidence that all the japanese civilians where bloodthirsty battle hungry barbarians...I know it was common during WW11 to put out propaganda that demonized all the Japanese but don't think all the demonizations were true. But yeah I'd like to see some relevent documentation on this indoctrination of all the civilians including children as I have only heard it theorized but not actually proven that it was the common civilian mindset.

Also I guess the U.S would have destroyed the whole planet had Japan not surrendered, if they were going to drop 3 nukes every month. Also if we truly had to target a large civilian area and indiscriminately kill thousands of civilians why did they have to be nukes? Why didn't they just blitzkrieg them? Nukes put radiation in the atmosphere, ground, water, ect and can prove dangerous to others aside from the target.

And finally even if more would have died had the bombs not been dropped I still think deaths that don't involve nuclear bombs are more humane that is just my opinion there. That said 11 million people died in the holocaust and no one felt the need to nuke civilian areas of Germany...even after it was known the holocaust was going on.

Yeah, and my point is that saving Japanese lives is a BS justification, because saving Japanese lives was never a consideration. At best, it was an unintended side effect.

We nuked Japan for the reasons I listed. At the time, it was the best play Truman could make, but he sure as hell didn't do it to save Japanese lives.