Was the Hiroshima bomb the largest terrorist atrocitie the world has ever witnessed?

Question

These pathetic braindead people that keep using the excuse that we were at war? war does not justify murdering 200,000 innocent civilians (many of them children or parents) by one of the most painfull and cruel means possible. Parents having to watch their babies burn from the inside out can not be justified by anything other than large scale terrorism.

Answer 1

I was born in 1946, but my Father and I discussed this topic when I was much older. He was in the Navy during the 2nd WW.

The Japenese military were certainly a vicious and cruel regime at that time.

The dropping of the 2 bombs certainly had the desired effect in ending the war in the Pacific, and on that basis was justified.

It probably saved more lives in the long run, but it is sad that so many innocent civilians died and continued dying for many many years afterwards.

I wonder how people would look at history if the Japenese had dropped atomic bombs on say Washington and Boston. Would THEY be reguarded as terrorists?

I think they would.

Answer 2

Terrorism is an act without declared war. Terrorists are typically not part of a recognised military and wear no recognized uniform. This means they are not protected under the Geneva Convention. So this was not terrorism. (you might argue that that Pearl Harbor was since war had not been declared yet) Usually terrorism is targeting of non military targets. WW2 Bombing was so poor that even targeting military targets resulted in a high amount of non military damage. All the targets were debated and Tokyo was considered lacking in military target value so it was not a good enough target for the Bomb. The others were heavy in war processing facilities. The choice to drop the bomb was tough for the President to make, in fact it may have saved more people than it killed. The Japanese Military had already designed to kidnap the royal family so that surrender could not be made. they planned to fight to the last man, it would have been a bigger loss of life.

Answer 3

I don't buy into your poor innocent civilians routine. I have been to japan and I have seen the under ground aircraft workshops and bunkers. Those so called innocent civilians were building weapons in there homes. An example would be a family would make bolts or some other gun part. Then a wagon comes around picks up the parts and these would be assembled under ground. Every house had a quota to fill. They weren't innocent. You want terror! Terror is the systematic rounding up of truly innocent civilians and packing them up like cattle and gassing them,strip them of there processions and even there gold teeth. That is terror that a people would do that and that people would defend it is even more scary that is true terrorism. Not the glorified murders who blow up some people or shot into a crowd they are just thugs and criminals with a grudge. The holocaust now that's true terror! I suppose it would have been better if we just fire bombed them and watch them burn to cinders like we did tokyo and dresden .

Answer 4

There are two sides to this. One, by use of the two atomic bombs, many lives were saved, and one of the most horrific and life-taking wars in history today was ended. On the other hand, rather than attacking militia, we did exactly what we got mad at other countries for doing: ending the lives of 214,000 people, many if not all of them were civilian. Many exposed to the bomb, referred to as the hibakusha, still remain; over 250,000, in fact. As well remains the mark on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the only time a nuclear weapon was used on an opponent in war.

While it was well intentioned, it was indeed a terrorist action. While many see terrorists as being evil, it goes deeper than that: a terrorists job is to enforce terror. By "terrorizing" the Japanese, and those in power in Japan, we ended World War II. So the answer would probably be yes.

Answer 5

No, the Hiroshima bomb was a necessary evil to make Japan capitulate to surrender, unfortunately the secondary bombing only 3 days later of Nagasaki probably was. Insufficient time was allowed for the Hiroshima bombs devastation to be fully taken in by the Japanese government before dropping the next. It would have saved more lives than it took on both sides had the war continued via conventional means. But was Nagasaki necessary I don't believe so...

Answer 6

While technically it could be seen as a terrorist act under a very narrow definition of the term, it was simply another attack in a war that was started by Japan.

It would have been a far greater atrocity to have chosen one of the 2 alternatives to ending the war: the invasion of Japan or the starvation of Japan by continuation of the air/naval blockade. Either of those choices would have caused FAR more deaths on both sides than did the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Oh, and the firebombing of Japanese cities, particularly Tokyo, caused more death and destruction than the nuclear weapons did.

It was the lesser of 3 evils, simply put.

Answer 7

Because it was done by an actual nation state during a provoked (Pearl Harbour, and holocaust) act of war this can't really be classified as terrorist incident.

Although the Hiroshima nuclear bomb does seem like a tremendously crule action, it should also be remembered that far far more people died in the war before that attack. It should also be noted that the rationale for dropping that bomb was that 'this will make Japan surrender', had the bomb not been dropped it was believed that to continue fighting the axis forces would have led to even more casualties than the bomb caused.

Therefore this bomb was the perhaps the lesser of two very bad outcomes.

Answer 8

You are an naive and I will explain why. Without the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We would have to invade Japan the conventional way, that involved turning Japanese cities into ruble like Germany before the troops go in. That's 100 of thousands perhaps millions of civilians. I have seen interviews with Japanese and American military from WW2 these were the estimates about 1.5 million troops needed to invade Japan 200,000 dead approx 1/2 million wounded ,that's the American side.. 1-1.5 million dead, millions wounded that's the Japanese side. So even you can see that this was a no brainer we basically ended up saving American lives as well as Japanese. The Japanese military knew they lost the war but said they were going to make it very costly for America to invade their island. this was from the mouth of some of surviving military Japanese generals from WW2.

Answer 9

The estimated life loss for attacking the Japanese mainland of both American an Japanese troops was in the millions. Plural. Besides, In Hiroshima, of a resident civilian population of 250 000 it was estimated that 45 000 died on the first day and a further 19 000 during the subsequent four months. In Nagasaki, out of a population of 174 000, 22 000 died on the first day and another 17 000 within four months. I don't know where you got your 200,000 figure from, but your a tad bit off. This number brings the grand total to 103,000. If we had not dropped those bombs, the Japanese would have fought until they had only a few dozen troops left. Have you ever heard of the sang "death before dishonor". The Japanese troops took this to heart. While fighting the Japanese we would barely ever take prisoners because thy would fight down to the very last man. And that last man would commit suicide. If we had tried to take th Japanese mainland, lets just say the history books would be a whole lot different. I admit, a lot of people suffered in the after affects, but believe me, the people who died from the initial blast didn't feel a thing.

Answer 10

The bombing wasn't a terrorist act; it was war! I might add that it was a very vicious, and bloody war! The bombing put an end to a war that we would have lost without it. My deepest regret, is the loss of so many innocent people, and future harm to generations to come. Sometimes, difficult decisions must be made; many of our boys died, were tortured, and maimed in that war. We are not a perfect nation, but we also didn't start that war, the Japanese made that choice when they hit Pearl Harbor!