1. Easily none
2. Less than a hundred thousands which is around how many innocent Japanese civilians were killed.

Who is Barrack Obama?

@Flum. Ummm, full of it, you are?

Bearattack Obama is a child murderer. Hes on trial for first degree murder. He saw that child and said fuck that kid. Imma kill him with a big bad drone.

Wow people think the use of two atomic bombs were necessary?? Good job American propaganda

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/12/if-the-atomic-bomb-had-not-been-used/376238/

Interesting

I believe at the time estimates ran around 1 million US casualties to invade mainland Japan, not to mention untold Japanese military and civilian casualties. You can't compare Japan to other countries who might have surrendered in similar circumstances. The national military culture of bushido showed throughout the war that Japanese soldiers would fight under circumstances that no German, Russian, British, or American soldiers would, refusing surrender and committing veritable suicide in their attempts to keep fighting. There was no logical reason to assume this would cease, as these tendencies only increased as Japan started losing. Heck, it wasn't even until Okinawa that kamikazes were used en masse.

I don't know whether it was the *right* thing to do, especially when you consider the two bombs used close to each other, or the idea of using a bomb in a unpopulated area to demonstrate without loss of life, but it is not a hard and fast consensus that the bombs were unnecessary.

Well Leyte Gulf was where you had lots of kamikazee attacks. By the time we were on Okinawa, Japan had no carriers and few planes to even use as kamikazee.

@"Where I'm confused in your arguments is your argument purpose isn't clear. You are arguing that capitalism is terrible. Okay...so what? What are you trying to convince people to do instead? Do you have ideas on what would be an improvement, if so I really am honestly curious to hear it."

I almost feel like discussing a solution deserves its own thread. But lets look at the specifics of what is bad about a capitalist system, rather than the specifics of wha the US has done.

Capitalism allows, no encourages, the accumulation of power into the hands of thefew, and the exploitation or oppression of people and 'natural resources' to an extent which no other economic system has managed. So the alternative must necessarily look at the distribution of resources.

I would advocate a democratic socialism or social democracy (similar to what we have in a number of EU countries, but with some changes) at a national level. But on a global level this will not address several of the serious issues we will face in the 21st century.

The only way you could improve capitalism is to force people making exorbitant sums of money are required to spend 1/3 of their income as well.

@nukes in Japan.

This was a warcrime even by US measure. They attacked civilian targets, and intentionally killing non-combatants. I didn't think there is any question on that.

Force the money back into circulation and allow the market to grow

@sorren: uhh, what? Full of what?

@King Cyrus: One of the reasons Japanese leaders were fighting as hard as they did, was because America was demanding unconditional surrender, and they knew how much unconditional surrender destroyed Germany after the first world war.
Truman was very likely receiving reports (assuming sources are accurate) Japan was considering surrender if the unconditional surrender was dropped which Truman refused to do.

But by the end, Japan had no fleet and the air force was depleted. They could have easily just kept bombing military bases and a homeland invasion wasn't ever going to be necessary. They had free rain on the skies which is why Japan had massive casualties from bombing long before the atom bombs came in.

You guys realize more people died in the fire bombings of tokyo than hiroshima and nagasaki combined. Tokyo was burnt to the ground essentially.

I mentioned that in my post. I don't think people have read it though. lol

It was long. And im tired. But for sure the Nagasaki Bomb was uneccessary. Just poor communication and unfortunate

The importance of the use of nuclear weapons is that the world learned the aftermath and destruction. It was only a matter of time before one was used.

Superpowers practice restraint now as a result of that moment in history. And the fact it would just start a war. Macarthur wanted to nuke China in Korean War.

Fluminator is basically right: the decision to drop the atomic bombs was almost certainly militarily unnecessary. The estimates for American losses in an invasion were less than have been reported, but that didn't matter - it would have been easy to end the war while requiring neither the dropping of the bombs nor the American invasion of the Japanese home islands.

My disagreement is the motivation. I don't think atomic diplomacy was the real goal of dropping the atomic bombs. Instead, the dropping of the bombs (in my view, at least) is the logical endpoint of WWII, the worst thing that's ever happened in human history. World War II was total war, and if there is a weapon that will destroy thousands of enemies, then it would be used. If chlorine gas and mustard gas hadn't already been discovered and earned such a deserved taboo, then I have no doubt the Axis and Allies would have been gassing each other's cities.

The real point isn't that the atomic bomb was militarily necessary (or not) to ending World War II. What's important is that the Allied leadership had no interest in pursuing the numerous available alternatives to atomic bombs and invasion.

Easy for sideline quarterbacks to make assumptions. After 4+Years of war and millions of causalities, the end result was what it was. If it saved one more American life, I would have dropped a third bomb. Do you forget that Dec 7 1941 was an unprovoked attack.
I'm sure there were other motivations behind dropping the bomb, but the end result needed to be the end of the war in the pacific without further American causualties.

Truman could have easily ended the war in the Pacific without further American casualties and without dropping the atomic bomb. The policies which led to the dropping of the bomb, especially the irregular emphasis on unconditional surrender, extended the war and cost lives.

Not to get on a thing, but while the Pearl Harbor attack was by no means defensible and is well-remembered as a treacherous surprise assault, it wasn't "unprovoked." The United States had (rightly, in my view) put an embargo and assets freeze on Japan as a result of various Japanese misdeeds. This boxed Japan into a situation where it either had to acquiesce to external limits on its foreign policy in East Asia or go to war with the United States.

So because military leaders of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, it's justified to nuke Japan and the countless civilians who probably didn't even know about Pearl Harbor?
(And as ckroberts said, America provoked Japan a lot leading up to Pearl Harbor. Not saying Pearl Harbor wasn't a bad thing)

I sincerely hope you value the average Japanese lives as much as the average American life regardless of what your view on the bombs are.

if you didn't like barry obama your'e going to hate adolf hitllary

Barraks Obomo. I have entered the Barracks, and discovered secret plans to blow up kids. Barracks plans to use drones to murder giraffes in the savannah next. We should take him to court for murder and animal cruelty

To those who read my post and misconstrued it. What I stated was that it is agreed that without the bombs Japan would not have surrendered. I should have stated unconditionally, but that is historical fact that before the bombs use the US threatened them with complete destruction if they refused to surrender unconditionally. That threat was ignored. The use of the nukes lead to a fast surrender that stopped the war in it's tracks and created the nuclear deterrent we have in place now. Which it could easily be argued, prevented a likely war between the US and the Soviet Union at the time.

Was the decision to use the bombs right, I have no idea, nor did I make a claim about that ethical decision. I think this article outlines the overall problem from both sides pretty well. http://www.ushistory.org/us/51g.asp


As for:
"Less than a hundred thousands"
@Flum, the initial studies done do suggest the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Further studies suggested numbers ranging from 1-4 million american deaths and 5-10 million Japanese before the end of the war. Throw in some other facts like the Japanese commanders had issued the threat that any invasion/blockade of Japan would lead to the massacre of 100,000 POW's, and near all of them were returned alive after the use of the bombs. Then the claim that this was a clear cut case of the bombs being wrong is a bit harder to say. Throw in the added facts that the Japanese had been fighting to the last man and women and even committing suicide instead of surrendering, and suddenly conventional warfare doesn't seem all that likely to have lead to a low death toll.

Again, no idea if the bombs were right. Nobody can know that for sure. But on the same note, nobody can know they were wrong for sure either. Claiming otherwise like you are doing, is just playing make believe. Which is why I refrained from making a judgement and stuck with the fact that prior to the bombs surrender had been refused despite staggering Japanese defeats and after a surrender quickly ended the war.

@orathaic, +1 on your answer, I would be interested in seeing that separate thread as I feel the title of this one already leads to biased viewpoints that aren't conducive to any intelligent conversation.

im not sure what to think of this thread. the OP is so blatantly ignorant and cornball I cant take it seriously and evidently nobody else in the thread can either. Its devolved into discussions about if capitalism should exist, and if the nuclear bombs should have been used in World War 2.

@brainbomb, well it's normally pretty safe to ignore any OP from Tolstoy, so yes, you're assessment of how people are acting in this thread is spot on. For example, his point is spot on, the events he's referencing are terrible. But he opens with an OP that is 100% styled as troll bait because he's more interested in starting an argument then he is in informing people or starting a discussion.

Well, he wasn't even polished enough to spell his fucking name right. I could have even agreed with the notion that drone strikes kill innocent people more often than enemy combatants. Thats not even a dispute, any American who claims drones are a good thing and improve our standing in the world would have to be a John McCain supporter.