I was going to post about this the other day, but I was offline, and the Hiroshima thread has reminded me about it.

First off, there's no denying this is a touchy subject.  We can joke around about Pearl Harbor if we wanted to, because Zeroes aren't going to be flying and attacking the base in any of our lifetimes, but nuclear weapons are still a threat to humanity (or so we're told).  With that said, I hope no one will get hot-headed as seen in the past.

Now...

I defend the use of the atom bomb, as I do believe it seriously saved lives.  I'm not sure, but I believe in many instances more persihed in American and British firestorms than in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6^th and 9^th of August.

Had Opeation Downfall ensued, apart from battle between uniformed armies, would the civilian population really have rushed foward to sacrifice their lives?  While the Kamikaze attacks paint one picture, a series I watched the other day had interviews with several veteran aces, including Saburo Sakai, who said that generally, most pilots did not really want to sacrifice themselves, but they followed orders.  If a trained serviceman was unenthusiastic about giving his life, would the civilian population really flood foward?

Also, while much of the IJA on the Japanese mainland was well trained and equipped, could it have been an instance resembling the Gulf War II (Iraq's current state)?  Where the Republican Gaurd was a fanatical and dedicated force, however, as American forces rolled in...  nothing.

Could the IJA really have put up a resistance strong enough to inflict casualties heavy enough to make America reconsider its invasion?  Japan, in rough contrast to Western Europe, is very rugged and defendable land - land ill suited to armoured vehicles, and excellent for a retreating army on foot.  Criteria that matched Japanese forces well.

I think I've already run off on a tangent, and I'm quite tired.  I think I'll turn in and continue this mess of a topic tomorrow when I haven't lost all mental focus.

I think that the civvie population would have been a greater threat then the regular military...the regs had a pretty good idea of their personal chances in a suicide attack or a human wave...the civvies had no real concept about what they would be facing.

It's like the most skilled swordsman in the world...he doesn't fear the second most skilled, he fears the worst skilled...the guy who is completely unpredicatable.

Without trying to make this political, our government has a way of making things much worse than they sound in order to justify their actions.  Kamikazees actually weren't very effective.  Very few of them really actually hit their targets.  Most of those secret weapons you hear about Japan having were not near enoughin production to be put into widespread use, even if a protracted invasion occured.  How the populace would have reacted to an invasion?  I do not know.  I do know that an effective demonstration could have been made without using a city as a target.  Japan is littered with islands that are scarcely populated and would have been (imho) a lot better than causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and CHILDREN. 

I tend to be of a more conservative bent, with the notable exception of several issues.  But when it comes to this, I do not believe the US was wrong in dropping the bombs, but I do believe our choice of targets is circumspect.  If the world were to try us for it, I doubt we would win.

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Actually, there is reason to believe that there was about to have been a major reshuffling of those in power, that would have resulted in an approach to the Allies to cease hostilities - in effect, a surrender.  THis was appreantly either not know by the Allies, or not known with reliability, so that the orders to use the atomic bombs were given.

This scenario could pose an interesting "what if"?  If the Japanese had surrendered without the use of nucelar bombs, how would the world situation have developed?  Would bombs have been used in later conflicts?  WHO would have used them - first?

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You can be sure that the Japanese public believed just the same about Americans. Stirring up hatred & contempt for the enemy has been one purpose of wartime propaganda throughout history. This is used by both sides in a conflict to give ordinary people the incentive to fight.

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People tend to fight the hardest when protecting their homeland. This is hard to imagine if your home & way of life has never been under threat. Many ordinary Japanese would have killed themselves & their loved ones rather than be captured & mistreated (as they had been told & believed). If they had to die anyway they would have taken as many of the invaders with them as possible. I'm sure that most people would do the same in this situation.

I don't think we really knew what kind of distruction the bomb was going to cause, with only one test before it was dropped (in a completely uninhabited area) it was really an unknown.  I'm sure they had no idea of the long term effects.  Also, it sounds terrible, but I'll bet after fighting for several years like that-we wern't too concerned about the loss of civilian lives (since they were a potential enemy in the event of invasion).  Many American's truly hated the Japanese people, so I don't imagine there was too much concern.  I have heard several interesting comments from one of my relatives (I'm not going to post what he said) about his feelings about the bomb-and I'll bet many people felt the same way as him (he fought in the Pacific for 3 years). 

It's sad that it happened, but I really believe that it needed to be done.  In the long run, I feel that it saved more lives than it lost.  I've read that there was an estimated 1 million American solders would have been killed in an invasion along with countless Japanese. 

I suppose I probably have a unique outlook on such events since my family has a very rich military history and I had relatives who were involved in such events.  But, I find it sad that it was ever neccessary and I hope and pray that we have learned something from the past and are now wise enough to solve our problems differently.

The difference between those lives that would have been lost and the lives that were lost is that those who fall into the 'Would Have ' category were soldiers.  To be blunt, it's their job to risk their lives to fulfill their duty.  Those that were killed were civilians.  In every war until recently, the lives of civilians were held as sacrosanct.  Civilians and non-combatants were not to be touched.  But the US disobeyed that conviction.  We even broke the rules of the Geneva convention by attacking civilians.  I understand that many lives may have been saved, and that is good, but at what cost?

There is also the theory that the whole thing was a message to Stalin, and to show HIM what we could do... 

I am a loyal American.  I love my country, I have served in the military, and I hold the people in the military in the highest regard.  But I do not believe the US was right in this case and I don't think I ever will.