What is Digg?275 Comments
- yosserhughes, on 08/06/2008, -15/+87"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." DWIGHT EISENHOWER
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan." ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
"The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul." HERBERT HOOVER
"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, .... he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs." BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm - quomen, on 08/06/2008, -21/+75While it's very sad that we had to drop nukes on innocent civilians, I have a hard time sympathizing with the Japanese because of what they've done to the Korean and Chinese. They tried to erase the collective identity of all of Korea and if it wasn't for the Japanese occupation, Korea would most likely have avoided the Korean War and be a unified country right now.
- WELLDOITLIVE, on 08/06/2008, -11/+58My uncle HYUNDAI tomorrow
- Whorebane, on 08/06/2008, -10/+53Nuclear launch detected.
- Mier, on 08/06/2008, -28/+62Here come the armchair hippies to scream how we should never have done it. Well if it hadn't then I wonder how many fewer hippies of the baby boom we'd have since their daddy would have died on the landing beaches.
- inactive, on 08/06/2008, -13/+47My uncle KIA the day before. :-(
- MaynardKx, on 08/06/2008, -21/+52I guess joining forces with Hitler wasn't such a good idea.
- markgl, on 08/06/2008, -17/+40if we wouldn't have dropped those bombs we would've had to send millions of troops into mainland japan to fight and hundreds of thousands of american troops would've died. So dropping the bombs prevented anymore bloodshed of american and allied troops.
- JimmyIkon, on 08/06/2008, -0/+22Good hi-res image of Hiroshima today.
http://flickr.com/photos/nabin/2388999721/sizes/l/ - dshPls, on 08/06/2008, -1/+23My Grandfather was a WW2 vet who fought in the Battle of the Bulge(i loled), marched through Paris, and many other things I've now since forgot. After he died I really felt like I should have paid more attention to his stories, wrote them down or published some online... he had some good ones. Also for the record, he was extremely anti-war because he felt that no one should have to go through the hell he did.
- markgl, on 08/06/2008, -2/+21no not really. he means the mainland japan invasion that would've occured if we had not dropped the bombs and ended the war.
- britblogger, on 08/06/2008, -1/+17nice sacrasm, alas I don't feel the subject matter warrants it. Even I wouldn't stoop that low to take a shot at the Yanks.
- WordsnCollision, on 08/06/2008, -0/+16This meme has jumped the shark.
- inactive, on 08/06/2008, -4/+20The Japanese military also treated American soldiers without accord to the Geneva Conventions.
On the other hand, the German military treated soldiers in accord with the Third Geneva Convention of 1929. - HarryBauzonia, on 08/06/2008, -3/+18That looks a lot like Nanking after the Japanese left.
...or Manila after the Japanese left.
...or Singapore after the Japanese left.
...or Hong Kong after the Japanese left.
...or any Allied POW camp after the Japanese left. - JKAL, on 08/06/2008, -5/+19thank you! at last someone with common sense.
- bmcnally, on 08/06/2008, -3/+17It's funny: people don't realize that we killed a hell of a lot more civilians in the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo. Think a nuclear blast is bad? Imagine a fire so large that it creates massive winds, sucking back fleeing people into its inferno. You stay alive long enough to see your family burned alive. The worst part about Dresden: it was largely unneeded as Germany was about to fall.
Tokyo was slightly different, but you figure a paper city + firebombs is going to be very bad. - SniperZero, on 08/06/2008, -26/+39It sucks it happened. Then again in times of war you really do have to do what you need to do to survive. (damn that sounds long)
- Erythroxylum, on 08/06/2008, -0/+12Yeah, it's just an anomaly. The rest of humanity has been spent hugging and playing the bongos.
- NippleNutz, on 08/06/2008, -1/+13Comments from the navigator that dropped the bomb
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,368433, ...
And the pilot
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/06/nuclea ... - inactive, on 08/06/2008, -10/+22"We shale fight to the very last man, woman and child" Japanese Emperor "living god"
The bombs were as much to stop the Japanese it was as it was to stop the Red Army from running over the whole of Asia, including Japan. Russian saw we had nukes and not just one. If Russian would have taken over Japan they would have made the rape at Nanking look like a picnic and the Bataan death march feel like a nice afternoon stroll. - loobis, on 08/06/2008, -10/+22My dad was in WWII in the South Pacific (He had me very late in life). He was scheduled to be among the first waves to land in Japan, so I, along with many other children of returning soldiers, surely wouldn't be here right now if this didn't happen (I'm not egotistical to use this as justification, I'm just saying...)
Anyway, the whole thing sucked. I know that my dad saw things done to captured American soldiers that he was never really able to get over. Likewise, I'm sure that he did things he wasn't proud of. The only good thing you can really say about the bomb is at least it ended everything. It's just too bad that it came to that. - DemonWasp, on 08/06/2008, -2/+13But this argument can be used to justify anything; consider:
1. The US has repeatedly used its economic and military power to exert control over as much of the world as possible, with special emphasis on the Middle East and the oil reserves there. This has resulted in thousands of deaths, with the US as the aggressor.
2. Without their economic power, the US would be unable to inflict this on the citizens of the Middle East.
3. By destroying the World Trade Center, the US economy would be severely handicapped.
4. Since destroying the means of production is sufficient cause to attack civilians, the 9/11 assault on the World Trade Center is justified. By your logic, nobody should have any right to complain about that, either.
Do you see how your logic leads to a very dangerous slippery-slope problem? - rlh1, on 08/06/2008, -1/+12You had me until you mentioned Okinawa...............the Americans had already captured Okinawa. They had already fire bombed Tokyo into oblivion. Your grasp of things seems pretty slanted.
- BetterOffEd, on 08/06/2008, -1/+12The *original* weapons of mass destruction?
- petebot, on 08/06/2008, -9/+20So if the tables were turned, and some Saddam loyalist had dropped a nuclear bomb on, say, Houston, that would be OK, because those people were contributing to the war effort? You ***** idiot, I can't believe your daft, ridiculous, logic-defying nonsense. Civilians do not deserve to be killed in war. period.
- mk3k, on 08/06/2008, -3/+14Firebombings were just as deadly. We would have firebombed them if we didn't have nukes back then, the result would have been much the same just more plains and bombs.
- JorgeGT, on 08/06/2008, -3/+14Because they thought "maybe the US just had one bomb". When they saw they had more than one, and was capable of producing more, they gave up.
- woodrow8292, on 08/06/2008, -0/+11Yes we see that you have no understanding of history since he was talking about the invasion of Japan that was inevitable since up to the dropping of the bombs the Japanese had no intentions of surrender. So the invasion of Japan would have occurred and probably cost more lives than those other beach landings.
- inactive, on 08/06/2008, -1/+11Ok, How?
- FlyCO, on 08/06/2008, -4/+13it's hard to say if the use of nuclear power in Japan was needed or not, there are no "ifs" in history. But I can't help to think killing 200k civilians was tremendous act of douchbaggery
- z95headhunter, on 08/06/2008, -1/+10It only takes around 2 weeks for radiation levels to fall to safe levels.
- a65bugman, on 08/06/2008, -1/+10I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
J. Robert Oppenheimer - brokerjoker, on 08/06/2008, -2/+10strange that common media (and also this article) tells that "the bomb was dropped on hiroshima" and makes it sound as if was some higher, secret and unavoidable mechanism dropping it.
although this is not wrong, it misses one simple, but important fact: the USA dropped the bomb on hiroshima. i don't want to argue about the why and what, but this is a simple fact and i heard three different news today, all missing this fact.
strange, isn't it? - anillop, on 08/06/2008, -7/+15They got what they deserved. Just ask the citizens of China, Korea, Thailand, Burma, Philippines, and other south east Asian countries occupied by Japan as well as the soldiers of the US, Brittan, and Australia who were POWs. They brought it on them selves. Is nuking them something to be proud of, No. Is it something we should be ashamed of, hell no.
- inactive, on 08/06/2008, -16/+24damn these weapons - damn them all to hell!
- xtrainsomnia, on 08/06/2008, -3/+11why on innocent civilians?!
- hammerpants, on 08/06/2008, -0/+8Yeah, I think, "additional comment necessary."
- warlax27, on 08/06/2008, -2/+9GG SUCKERS!
- petebot, on 08/06/2008, -2/+9No, no it doesn't. At the time, America didn't need to fear repercussions from anyone because no one else had the bomb. Now, several nations (many of them enemies) have the bomb. If any of them drop it, they will face retaliation from someone else. You might as well drop a nuclear bomb on yourself.
- tokkio, on 08/06/2008, -1/+8This is about a solemn gallery associated with the anniversary of the atomic bomb. The peace memorial is about the devastation of war and the costs of waging it. No one is asking for any of your pity, sympathy or justifications; so I don't know why so many people are chiming in on it. It's a glimpse at our history and what we are capable of.
- inactive, on 08/06/2008, -2/+9See why I have to ridicule you Jimmy. I am sick of people like you, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and the Scientologists making people think that everyone from Florida is an idiot.
- inactive, on 08/06/2008, -7/+14For once I can agree with you Jimmy. Or at least part of what you say. My grandfather was a Pacific World War II hero. He was scheduled to be in the first wave of troops to attack Japanese mainland. If those bombs were not dropped, I never would have been born. I hope that doesn't change your mind on this issue.
Evilena Born July 16th - (Astrology sign: Trinity Blast)
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008 ... - JimmyIkon, on 08/06/2008, -0/+7You need to harvest more vespene gas.
- EntropyFan, on 08/06/2008, -2/+8Many people who say 'we never should have done it' look at the event with post-cold war eyes, knowing what the a-bomb currently represents. The overtones of Armageddon, the end of humanity.
At the time, it was considered just another 'really big' bomb. When reports of radiation sickness and other effects started spreading, US scientists thought the Japanese were lying. It wasn't until they got their own people on the ground that the understood what was happening.
Another thing to consider is the death toll from firebombing Tokyo(http://tinyurl.com/dfblm). We were already devastating huge civilian areas. We had also done so in Germany. They don't call it 'total war' because you show restraint. - warlax27, on 08/06/2008, -4/+10BOOOOOOO!!!!!
- rrife, on 08/06/2008, -4/+10I kind of agree. When they decided to attack us they'd have to know that we'd retaliate and their cities would be bombed and a lot of their civilians would have died. Did they expect us to just roll over and surrender after bombing pearl harbor?
- inactive, on 08/06/2008, -1/+7firebombs are much more devastating than the nuke we had back then.
Just ask anyone from Nuremberg or Tokyo. - happystatic, on 08/06/2008, -6/+12why didnt they surrender after the first bomb was dropped?
- xsecretfiles, on 08/06/2008, -1/+7You mean the whole Democratic congress at the time?
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