It was 65 years ago today...

[markfiend]

...that an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

In the following waves [after the initial blast] people's bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured. Then the blast blew the broken bodies at 500 to 1,000 miles per hour through the flaming, rubble-filled air. Practically everybody within a radius of 6,500 feet was killed or seriously injured and all buildings crushed or disemboweled.

And then three days later they did it again, to Nagasaki.

[mh]

I thought it was good to see that the US had sent a representative to the commemoration. Better late than never - it's important to heal old wounds.

[markfiend]

Anybody fancy defending the use of nuclear weapons on civilian targets? :flamebait:

[weebleswobble]

Only if they're really, really, really naughty...

[Big Si]

Anybody fancy defending the use of nuclear weapons on civilian targets? :flamebait:

Nixon and/or Kissinger wanted to drop the bomb on Hanoi, IIRC

[sultan2075]

Does the leader of a nation at war have an equal obligation to the citizens and soldiers of the enemy as he does to his own citizens and soldiers?

[Big Si]

Does the leader of a nation at war have an equal obligation to the citizens and soldiers of the enemy as he does to his own citizens and soldiers?

Only if he's signed the Geneva Convention

[Izzy HaveMercy]

Anybody fancy defending the use of nuclear weapons on civilian targets? :flamebait:

IZ.

[sultan2075]

The fourth Geneva Convention, to which I think you're referring, was signed in 1949. The bombs were dropped in 1945. The previous three (I think) only dealt with the treatment of wounded and prisoners.

[welshbiker]

Anybody fancy defending the use of nuclear weapons on civilian targets? :flamebait:

Absolutely not. But what war or campaign has ever been waged that wasn't, at least in part, against a civilian population? I'm not suggesting it makes it right of course, but succesive governments have viewed civilians as acceptable collateral damage.

And between the middle of February and the start of August 1945, I believe American B-29 bombers caused more civilian deaths in the firestorm raids on Tokyo than the two atom bombs did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined a few months later. If that is indeed true, it rather renders the arguement of whether nuclear weapons are less palatable against a civilian population than conventional ones, superfluous.

Did i just get serioius there?

[James Blast]

it was 44 years ago this day John Lennon used the "Bigger than God" line

[James Blast]

might've been yesterday now I think about it

edit:
naw, it's today

[sam1]

completely off topic..but on this day in 1661 - Holland sold Brazil to Portugal for 8 million guilders..is that a bargain? I don't know

[welshbiker]

Moving just slightly back towards on-topic: -

On this day in 1914: -

Austria-Hungary declared war against Russia.

Serbia declared war against Germany on the same day.

(Taken from http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/theday ... /aug06.htm )

It was a bad day for folks who preferred shagging to fighting.....

[James Blast]

sheeps all over the world relaxed

[welshbiker]

sheeps all over the world relaxed

I never said the folks weren't shagging sheep!!

[markfiend]

Does the leader of a nation at war have an equal obligation to the citizens and soldiers of the enemy as he does to his own citizens and soldiers?

good question.

I believe American B-29 bombers caused more civilian deaths in the firestorm raids on Tokyo than the two atom bombs did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined a few months later. If that is indeed true, it rather renders the arguement of whether nuclear weapons are less palatable against a civilian population than conventional ones, superfluous.

You might be right. I did say it was flamebait.

See also firebombing of Dresden

[EvilBastard]

See also firebombing of Dresden

And Nurnberg, and Hamburg, and Leipzig, and Coventry...

If you get a chance to see Peter Watkins' incredible film, "The War Game". Made in the 60s, it looks at what would probably happen in Britain in the event of nuclear attack, based on what was known about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The devastation isn't the scariest bit - I think we all "get" the scale of destruction. The scary bit is the lead-up and the aftermath - a complete lack of preparation, and a lack of understanding of what would be required after an attack. I don't scare easily but this was really worrying. It was effectively banned in the UK until recently, largely because if the populace knew that the government's answer to an attack was pretyt much "put your head between your knees and kiss your ar$e goodbye" then there might have been civil unrest.

It also examines what happens in a firestorm (which you get with atomic attack or with incendiary bombs) - this isn't just fire, this is fire with an agenda. From the wiki article on the Hamburg bombing:

"Quite literally a tornado of fire, this phenomenon created a huge outdoor blast furnace, containing winds of up to 240 km/h (150 mph) and reaching temperatures of 800 °C (1,500 °F). It caused asphalt on the streets to burst into flame, cooked people to death in air-raid shelters, sucked pedestrians off the sidewalks like leaves into a vacuum cleaner and incinerated some eight square miles (21 km²) of the city. Most of the 40,000 casualties caused by Operation Gomorrah happened on this single night."

Reports from the Tokyo bombing mentioned that piles of coins were found underneath piles of corpses - what had happened was that the coins had heated up enough to melt through the bodies. People who tried to escape into the canal either drowned, suffocated because the air was being sucked into the fire, or boiled alive where the water was shallow enough.

Incendiaries are a vile means of attack - their sole purpose is to devastate densely populated civilian areas. War is filthy, but a war on a civilian population is especially reprehensible.

[mh]

Not exactly rising to the flamebait, but...

If one was to play devils advocate, and I'm aware that this is really stretching things and on a thin line that it's dangerous to cross, one might argue that a US invasion of Japan would have potentially protracted the war quite a bit, would have caused colossal human suffering, and would have possibly led to substantial international tension and bitterness in the longer term. Iwo Jima and Okinawa were already quite horrific, and the same thing happening on the Japanese mainland would certainly have been none too pretty.

None of that is to say that destroying a civilian target is the right thing, of course. Was there even a right thing to do given the cirsumstances? It's all speculative of course, so now I'm getting off that thin line.

[welshbiker]

Was there even a right thing to do given the cirsumstances?

I think that's quite a pertinent question. War is not fought by an equivalent set of Queensbury Rules, they are kind of made up as things go along. And as a result, sometimes bad things happen. But, as has been asked, i wonder if a land invasion would have been any less messy?

[paint it black]

OMD gave me my first blow job; would not of happened without the bomb. thank you bomb

[BaroqueHyena]

When I was in high school, there was a U.S. History teacher that made us watch a video of the bombs being dropped-- Ungh, the whole thing makes me queasy, but then again I'm a massive pansy.

Anyone ever read some testimonies of survivors? Gruesome, but eye-opening:
http://atomicbombmuseum.org/6_testimonies.shtml

[markfiend]

I was a card-carrying member of CND in my youth. Twenty-odd years ago I would have seen it entirely as a black-and-white issue. But like mh said, an invasion of the Japanese main islands could have cost millions of lives.

There's an argument I saw yesterday that went something like this: because the USA and USSR had seen the effects of nuclear weapons on the Japanese, they never quite dared to use them during the Cold War. Which is probably a good thing. Rather than a few kilotons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki it could have been megatons on Moscow or Washington DC. That probably wouldn't have ended well, to say the least.

On the other hand, there are some pretty shocking aspects to the bombings; for instance, Hiroshima had been left un-bombed deliberately so the effects of the A-bomb could be judged more accurately.

[sultan2075]

I was a card-carrying member of CND in my youth. Twenty-odd years ago I would have seen it entirely as a black-and-white issue. But like mh said, an invasion of the Japanese main islands could have cost millions of lives.

There's an argument I saw yesterday that went something like this: because the USA and USSR had seen the effects of nuclear weapons on the Japanese, they never quite dared to use them during the Cold War. Which is probably a good thing. Rather than a few kilotons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki it could have been megatons on Moscow or Washington DC. That probably wouldn't have ended well, to say the least.

On the other hand, there are some pretty shocking aspects to the bombings; for instance, Hiroshima had been left un-bombed deliberately so the effects of the A-bomb could be judged more accurately.

I think a good case can be made that part of the reason for the bombing was concern about the USSR--i.e., in addition to the military purpose (and there was one--I'll get to that in a moment) this can be viewed as the opening shot in the Cold War. I also think that in the long-term it was better for Japan to be bombed by the US than invaded by the USSR (which had abandoned its neutrality treaty, and declared war on August 9). That sounds remarkably callous, but I don't think Japan would be as well off as it is today (socially, politically, economically) if it had been invaded by the Allies. There would have been an enormous death toll in the Japanese civilian population as well as the defending forces, and there would have been an enormous death toll on the part of the invading forces (amphibious landings against a fortified enemy are very difficult--recall the Normandy invasion). Worse still, looking at post-war Europe, we can imagine what the long-term effects of a Soviet invasion of the Japanese home islands might have been. It's quite conceivable that we'd have seen the division of Germany replicated in Japan.

Militarily, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were important. Hiroshima, for instance, was a center of coordination and communications for the Imperial military. After the bombing of Hiroshima, the Emperor was still rejecting the late July demand for unconditional Japanese surrender. The strike on Nagasaki could have been avoided if the Japanese leadership had offered an unconditional surrender (which they did, afterwards). Nagasaki itself was also militarily important--it was a center for the production of munitions, ships, and other materials of war.

All of that being said, there is still the question of civilian casualties. At this point, it's probably important to remember that in war there are frequently no good options at all, and one must choose between various bad options. Discrimination in targeting is a moral luxury we have derived from our technological advances. The object of war, as ever, is to kill enough people that your enemy surrenders. It is, by definition, horrific. As General Sherman said during the American Civil War, "War is hell." He cruelly burned his way through the state of Georgia, but his cruelty in Georgia may have played an essential role in making continued conflict unpalatable to the Confederacy. As Patton is alleged to have said: "You don't win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his." Victory in warfare only comes when you have made the conditions of continued conflict unpalatable to your enemy. Surrender and defeat have to be the only attractive options.

Given the demonstrated unwillingness of the Japanese high command to surrender and given the likely extensive casualties both military and civilian that would come from an amphibious invasion, the first bombing may have been the least bad option. Given that Japan did not surrender after the first one, the second one became necessary. At that point, the Japanese leadership realized that continued warfare would only lead to certain death. The hope of victory was snatched away. Was it cruel? Immeasurably so. Was it crueler than a conventional invasion of Japan? Probably not.

[mh]

it's probably important to remember that in war there are frequently no good options at all, and one must choose between various bad options. Discrimination in targeting is a moral luxury we have derived from our technological advances

They're extremely good points, yes.

Something else we got out of it is an economic superpower in western Asia that abhors nuclear weaponry. It's an ill wind, etc.