do you think the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki was the worst decision made by the u.s military ever?

Question

i think yes, and also sticking all the japanese living the united states during the war in those "camps"

Answer 1

Every country has their ghosts in the closet and are guilty of something horrific. (See Japans Bataan Death March).
In retrospect, the bombing of two cities put a decisive end to an otherwise cloudy situation. The US, and its Allies would have had to invade the island of Japan without the bombs being dropped, thereby costing more Japanese life by having to fight city to city. The Japanese were VERY tenacious in defense of their outlying territories and common consensus at the time was to strategically force them to negotiate without unnecessary loss of life.
It seems a horrific thing to do, however, it was a necessary evil to save many lives.

Answer 2

The "sticking" of the Japanese in the detention camps was certainally not the greatest and most kind thing to do. Of course the times were quite different than today so it cannot be really said that this was politically incorrect because of the circumstances of the times. In this day and age you can bet that agents of some government agency would be attached to people to watch and report on their activities. However the Japanese were hated moreso than the Germans and the Italians because of the nature of their sneak attack. America considered it dastardly and anti-Japanese sentiment was running high. The detention camps were a quick solution to a problem of oversight.
Of course this doesn't excuse the method because many, many Japanese-American born citizens (in other words...American citizens) were unjustly interred.
Now...the bombs. Necessary without a doubt. You have to understand that unlike their Eurpopean counterparts, the Japanese had no intention whatsoever of surrendering. The plan was to fight to the death defending Japan for bushido..the code of honor. Sadly, the military (particularly the Army) took the ancient Samuri code and warped it grossly to include everyone to die for the Emperor. The Battle of Iwo Jima was just one example that showed their resolve. Japan lost 21,000 soldiers on that island. Most of the latter battles with the Japanese resulted in wave after wave of Japanese soldiers running forward in banzai charges and Imperial Japanese Naval fliers slamming their planes into American bombers and ships. America was never faced with an enemy that determined and one that resorted to such horrific tactics. The Germans did not subscribe to suicide charges. Jungle warfare was a relatively new battleground for the average soldier to deal with and remember, the Japanese were also doing this because they considered the Emperor a god. Once again....a war that involves religion will always be bloody when you're fighting for faith as well as honor.
The massive firebombing raids on Tokoyo and other cities on the mainland did nothing to slow the Japanese wartime effort. President Truman hesitated on using the bomb(s) however the American military estimated casulaties for Okinawa to be in the 1,000,000 range. It was a sacrifice truman was not prepared to make. Besides...the money just wasn't there for equipment and troops. The Japanese refused unconditional surrender and dropping the bombs were the only way to get the japanese to realize their efforts were futile. Even then that was a gamble because we weren't sure if the Japanese would capitulate.

I think if you were an American at that time you'd think the decision to let fly those bombs was a wise one. You're stating it was the worst decision is wrong. It was the only sensible decision given the circumstances.

Answer 3

It's true we lost the moral high ground after use of the nukes on Japan, but looking at what Truman faced in 1945, i probably would've done the same thing. To compare the moral depravity of state sponsored genocide where the death ovens at Aushwitz/Birkenau were topping out at 2,600 per day or 80,000 killed per month and the aerial bombardment of civilians in Nanking, China is looking at different scales.

The fire bombing of Dresden by the 8th Air Force and RAF Bomber Command, caused the destruction of 15 square kms including 14,000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 18 churches, etc. with a conservative estimate of around 30,000 civilians killed. At the time, the Germans used it as propaganda to advocate against following the Geneva conventions and to attack people's perception of the Allies claim to absolute moral superiority. The military claimed the railroad center was a military target, which it was, altho it was up and running a week later. Feb 1945 was only 3 months away from May 1945 (end of the Euopean war), the outcome of the war was not in doubt, so why bomb a 'cultural' medieval city of 600,000?

The firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, genocide should also include civilian victims of aerial bombardment. Even after saying this, i still don't think the Allies were close to the moral depravity of the Nazis and their wholesale holocaust of the Euopean Jews.

The bombing of civilians is a great tragedy, none can deny. It is not so much this or the other means of making war that is immoral or inhumane. What is immoral is war itself.

Answer 4

No.

The allies were expecting to lose 100,000 - 300,000 men in invading the homelands. The Japanese were arming 12-year old school children with sharpened bamboo sticks. Figure 200,000 allied dead to make the math easy. Those allied dead would all have friends, who would be mad at the Japanese. They would all be armed with rifles at least, if not machine guns. They would not worry about the age or equipment of the Japanese opposing them. They would be willing, if not happy, to mow down the "114th Middle School Defense Brigade" as they came charging down the beach with their sharpened bamboo sticks.

10:1 is a reasonable ratio of how many basically unarmed but aggressive civilians a trained force can kill, so the invasion would have resulted in 2,000,000 civilian Japanese deaths.

Dropping the bombs killed about 50,000 people in both cities. (Had they dropped one in Tokyo or Osaka, they could have killed four times that many people.) The bombs forced the Japanese to surrender, which in turn saved millions of lives.

The US military has made lots of mistakes. I don't think the atomic bombs were the worst. Harry Truman made that decision, by the way, not the generals.

The relocation camps were also a political decision. They were not paradise. They were better than the camps the British used for the Boers in their war or Hitler used for Jews, Gypsies and homsexuals in Germany. They were not as good as treating the Japanese-Americans as the citizens they were. They didn't kill people. Most bad military decisions killed people. So did most good ones.

You should capitalize the first word in every sentence and abbreviations like "U.S." or you look like a dufus. You can't have two "worst" mistakes, any more than you can have two "best" of anything.

Answer 5

I have to assume you are Japanese. What happened here in America was a sad thing with our Japanese Americans. I wonder why my German family wasnt rounded up too...
But the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki-while an incredibly horrible thing for the Japanese-here in America it ended the war. While our body count here in America is relatively small (290,000 military) to the price that the Japanese paid (1.7 million Military and over 360,000 civilians) I think the tenacity of the Japanese and the fact that they started the war of aggression against the US is why the bomb was dropped.
It wasnt an easy decision then and the ramifications of it linger in my thoughts when we talk about nuclear war today.

One thing is for sure, Japanese were bad azz people. Practiced live bayonet practice on the Chinese, very skilled torturers. In the end, what the Japanese wanted was oil and land.

Mmmm, think about that in relation to today!

Answer 6

The bomb did end the war singlehandedly. It is said that without the bomb on mainland japan, the tiny islands held by japan would have had to be cleaned up one at a time, at the cost of thousands more US lives -- and Japanese too, for that matter. The bomb ended the war that very day, basically.

I am a peacenik from way back. I feel very sorry for those whose lives were transformed into death, or a living hell, by the bomb. But the whole question isn't as cut and dried as "was dropping the bomb a nice thing to do?"

The camps are harder to defend. It was racist-predicated, because it was a policy made possible only because you could look at someone and tell where their ancestors came from.-- The very definition of racism. It was a foolish and over-scared over-reaction by the US. Later Supreme Court Judge Earl Warren masterminded that. He was considered a liberal judge by a lot of people. Ironic, hm?

Answer 7

Japan was close to defeat already. It was running out of arms and resources. People like to say that dropping the bombs saved 1 million American lives and that it would have been too costly to mount a landing on Japan but it's just false conjecture. We didn't have to mount an assault. All we had to do was surround Japan and prevent anything from going in or out and wait. We could have done this with the help of the Chinese and Koreans.

However, when you fight a war, you go in, blow everything up, and kill people until they surrender. You lose a few of your own soldiers as possible in the process. Dropping the bombs was a better alternative. It did save some American lives, not a million, and it ended the war faster so it was worth it.

Answer 8

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved between 500,000 and 1,000,000 American lives AND even more Japanese. Until the second bomb, they were preparing old women and children to defend the home islands with sticks and stones if necessary. How would you feel if your father, brother, or husband was killed in the invasion and you later learned the President had a weapon that would have ended the war earlier.

Answer 9

uh, first of all, the decision was made by a democrat president, NOT the military. Secondly, the japanese were the ENEMY. I don't care about whether the exact figures of enemy killed vs american troops saved, the fact is the bombings saved thousands of American lives. And both those cities were involved in the manufacture of japanese military hardware that was being used to kill Americans. Had we not nuked them, we would have firebombed them anyway, So they would have still been dead, it would have just taken longer.

BTW, I have two different direct family connections to this issue. My stepfather was in the Pacific theater (Army), and would have probably have been part of an invading force, which would have dwarfed the carnage we saw in Normandy. And I had an Uncle who fought at Tarawa in 43, Saipan and Tinian in 44, and was part of the second marine div stationed in NAGASAKI ! in 45. My Aunt tells me that when he came home his face was red for awhile due to the radiation. He always supported the actions taken by our government, knowing full well what would have happened had we not ended it then. Did he die of cancer prematurely? No, he died last year at the age of 82, a proud AMERICAN.

Answer 10

Apparently you do not understand the situation at the time. If the U.S. had not dropped them, it was believed that millions more would have died rather a few hundred thousand that did die. The Japanese were ready to defend their home with everything available, including women, children and older people. It was proven on the island of Okinawa what could have happened on the home island of Honshu. During the Battle of Okinawa, women and children sacrificed themselves for the Emperor. Some committed suicide before the Americans could capture them. At least 150,000 civilians died during the battle, some were innocents, but some were willing to kill Americans. 100,000 Japanese soldiers died during the battle and 12,500 American soldiers also died in the battle. Now, take these figures and multiply that many times over and that is what would have happened had the U.S. and her allies tried to take Honshu. The Soviet Union was very close to joining to the battle for Honshu and they would have killed everything in their path, while taking massive casualties of their own. Yes, it was a tragedy that the U.S. dropped atomic bombs, but the situation called for it. You had to have lived during that time to understand the situation. The one thing we have on our side is time. We can look back on that time and realize that it was bad, but you needed to be there to understand it completely.