Hiroshima & Nagasaki Bombing.?

Question

After viewing the Discovery Chanel's documentary on the bombing of Hiroshima, the question arises as to how the Japanese heirchy would have responded had we "merely " blown up their "sacred" mountain, Mt. Fuji. Any constructive thoughts?

I am just curious as to what "YOU" people out thet think. I'm not saying that the U. S. of was wrong in bombing them!!!!! LOOSTEN UP!!!

Answer 1

You think we could have blown up Mount Fuji? ROFL! And why would we have? The purpose of bombing those two cities was also beacuse they were strategic developing centers for the Japanese war effort. It wasn't just to kill people and lower morale. Know your history.

Answer 2

The Bomb was experimental, being loaded for shipment hours after the first successful test in New Mexico. Had it failed to detonate on say, Mt Fuji, I think it would have had very negative aftershocks in two ways.

One, if the weapon landed intact, and the Japanese were to figure out the technology, where would we be now?

Two, the weapon never gets found, the US doesn't try to use another one for several months until further testing can be done. The same number of people, or more, die in the continued fighting. The US uses a second, and possibly throed bomb creating more death and destruction.

Who knows what else could have happened, Russia joined the War against the Japanese just before the Japanese surrendered, had the bomb not been dropped, Russia invades Japan, the US doesn't have to and the Japanese Islands become Communist. Todays economic picture changes drastically as the second richest nation on earth will now not grow into the economic powerhouse that it has become....

Answer 3

Do you have any clue how much power it would take to blow up a mountain? We couldn't do that today with H-bombs. Let alone back then with A-bombs.

Also those cities where major production sites with large industrial complexes. We did not know if the bombs would end the war. So why would we have wasted them on some trees when we could take out hundreds of factories that mad suppose for the troops of Japan.

Also we didn't really kill that many civilians with those bombs if you look at the war. I mean they only killed less then 250 thousand. And that is only if you include all the long term effects that may have been from them. Japan killed millions in death camps alone. I think you need to learn some more WW2 history.

You do realize that 3% of the worlds population was killed in that war and 55% of the deaths were allied civilians right. Those bombs we dropped did not account for eve 1% of the civilian deaths for the war. However at the rate people were dyeing if they had not ended the war millions of more civilians would have died.

I am not sure how throwing the bombs against a mountain they would not have damaged would have turned out better. Hey look Japan we have a new powerful weapon. Watch this. . . . Oh it didn't even really damage the mountain. You fear us now right? lol

Answer 4

My answer will be a little different from others since I am Japanese. I will give you the "why" from the accepted Japanese perspective. The atomic bomb was dropped for political and scientific reasons. The US high command was horrified when Soviet forces started to occupy eastern European countries from the Germans. The US thought it was a matter of time before they declared war against Japan and the US was correct. USSR (Soviet Union) invaded Manchuria in 1945 and the US (and it's allies) didn't want Japan to be split in half like Germany. So we had to end the war quickly before the USSR achieved further political power over the Japanese. That is why the US didn't give any warning nor any demonstration before the nuclear attack. Why couldn't the US drop one outside of Tokyo harbor as a warning? Time was the essence and it was running out fast. At the same time, the nuclear attack was a show of force to the USSR. The US knew that they would be the next great enemy in the coming decades. The second reason it was dropped was for scientific purposes. Two different bombs, detonated at different altitudes, on two unscathed cities. Many people will say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were large military industrial centers, but this is not true. Every city in Japan had military factories. All schools were transformed into factories. My grandma made parachutes for flares when she was in middle school. If the two cities were large military industrial centers from the beginning, they would have been fire bombed first by B-29's before Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya, etc. because both are located in southern Japan and that's on the flight path to the bigger cities in the north. Also remember that by 1945, Japan was starving as a nation. They had no food, no medicine, no navy, and barely an army or air force. It's just impossible that they were large military industrial centers. Going back to scientific reasons, they had scientists that went along the nuclear attack to record data. The US developed a new weapon and they wanted to use it like any other nation would. Pretty straight forward. Now after me explaining these two reasons, I don't know why anyone can say that it was "right" to drop the bomb. Many people say that the war would've lasted a lot longer and there would have been millions of casualties. This is not true. The million casualty figure actually comes from a newspaper article written by the assistant of Secretary of War Henry Stimson after the war ended. It was published without any evidence to justify the nuclear attacks (propaganda). It has just been passed along through generations without people saying to themselves "wait...who came up with this number?". There's even videos of Truman being all over the place with the casualty figures. The war lasting longer is also not true. Like I said previously, Japan was starving. The Japanese people knew that they lost the war. They were just waiting for the politicians to make up their minds. The whole "Japan wouldn't fought 'till the last man" is propaganda from the US and the Japanese. The main reason why Japan didn't surrender for so long is because of the issue with the Emperor. Japan was afraid that the Emperor might be executed if unconditionally surrendered. The US had no intention of putting the Emperor on trial from the beginning and if they would have told that to the Japanese the war would have ended sooner without the atomic bombs. Lastly I just want to say, if it's accepted as inhumane and wrong to use nuclear weapons in 2013, wasn't it inhumane and wrong to use it in 1945? It's a simple question with a difficult answer.

Answer 5

Bombing anything other than a major city would have achieved nothing.
Here is another thought. It has been said that the Japanese surrendered at that time not only because of the bomb, but that the USSR was preparing to invade northern Japan as part of Operation Olympic. That would have resulted in Japan being torn into two separate countries, like Korea and Vietnam. I am amazed by how few people have considered that.

Answer 6

The fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't even the primary targets is more interesting...if everything had gone as planned, Kyoto, and Tokyo would have been destroyed.....US killing innocents huh.....how about the hundreds of thousands of chinese and koreans the japanese killed between 1936 and 1940

Answer 7

That wouldn't have been particularly effective. Kind of like shooting a tree to the left of a mad dog. Gotta put a round through the heart & lungs or the grey matter to acheive your goal.

Answer 8

Well...At least you are thinking. Perhaps that would have convinced the emperor to surrender, but the Nipponese are not the French. They do not surrender easily. If it had not worked, we would have had one less H bomb to drop on more strategically, and tactically valuable targets.

Answer 9

I did a lot of research on it and looked up info. from credible sources and I believe they had the right to bomb.

Answer 10

us blown hundreds of thousads innocent people