To The honorable, brave,just & conscientious people of earth : Do you think The Japan's bombing by Truman...?

Question

.....was a civilized or a genocide act ! ?
Did he have a private drinking laughing party in closed door area after bombing or not .
I appreciate your honest answer

Answer 1

The United States, nor it's elected leaders have any interest in genocide of any Japanese, nor Iraqis, or anyone else. Our position, IS and WAS at the dropping of those two infamous bombs, to end hostilities in a swift and decisive victory with as little loss of life on either side.
Those two bombs eliminated the necessity of ground invasion. It is estimated that a ground invasion would have cost many more lives than those two bombs took, of both US troops AND Japanese civilians. ALSO, we didn't want Japan to be split in two as Germany was. We wanted a free, single Japanese democracy.

Answer 2

Just how would civilized be defined? It was certainly not a civil act.

Genocide act? If there was a true intent to commit genocide, might there have been further bombings. We could have done additional napalm bombings, we were out of the A bombs after we dropped the 2 but napalm bombings were pretty devastating too. The fact that we stopped fighting after the 2 bombs suggests that we were not out to kill every person in Japan, just to end the war.

Would we have not dropped the bombs had the USSR not declared war on Japan? Perhaps. If there was an invasion rather than bombing them into submission, likely Japan would be a divided country like Korea, with a Soviet invasion from the north and our invasion from the south. That would probably have been a much more complicated world if that was the case. Would the devastation of a dual invasion been worse than the devastation of 2 A bombs? Probably.

I would hope that Truman was shocked by the force that was unleashed and not laughing. I don't really know detailed aspects of his character to say for sure but I would doubt that that would be the case.

Answer 3

No doubt that the decision to drop "the bomb" on Japan was not an easy one for President Truman.

It was either that or organize a total invasion of Japan itself, which would cost a lot more lives than the bombs themselves (both military and civillian).

In the end, dropping the bombs was the "lesser of the two evils" because 1.) like I said earlier, an invasion of Japan would kill more people and 2.) it was necessary to end the war, thus saving the lives of hundreds of U.S. servicemen.

It was not a civilized act, however, I don't understand how it could be considered genocide since the intent of the bomb was to end the war and not to systematically kill Asian people. Besides, they attacked us first in Pearl Harbor.

Answer 4

Jonathan D has the right of it.

War is never easy or clean and civilians do get killed. For most armies such civilian killings are not intended but for some they not only intend to kill civilians but do so with zeal and extreme cruelty, Japan is one such country. The rape of Nan king killed more people than did both atomic bombs. Further, the killings in Nan king were by intention and often accomplished by the sword eye to eye with victims held helpless. This doesn’t count the numbers harmed by intention and all of this included women and children.

There was no way that Japan would easily surrender and for the allies to invade the Japanese home land was estimated to cost 100,000 deaths of allied troops and more than a million Japanese.

The atomic bombs were used to shock the Japanese government into surrender as opposed to invasion. To limit the options of this act to being a civilized or a an act of genocide is to not understand warfare or the situation during world war II.

To suggest that President Truman had a private drinking laughing party is both insulting and demonstrates the cost of such decisions to the leadership which makes them. While it was necessary, it was not something that any leader would wish to do or would do so lightly.

Answer 5

He made what he thought was the best choice to end the war and end U.S. casualties. He may have had momentary twinges of doubt that he did the right thing, but I think he was reasonably certain it had been necessary and proper. I'm sure he felt it was too serious a matter to laugh over. It was in no way genocidal, because the killing of a few hundred thousand out of many tens of millions had no genocidal intent or effect.

Answer 6

The story goes the dropping of the 2 atomic bombs may well have saved the lives of up to 1,0000,000 allied troups who would have to envade and capture Japan the old fashion way. Truman wasn't thinking of the Japanese per se, but rather the possibility of saving so many allies.

Answer 7

Many people above me have straightened out the facts here.
I will only add that it was a military decision primarily. The casualties we in the US suffered at Iwo Jima and Okinawa were enormous. We didn't start that war if you haven't noticed. We did have to finish it though. At both Iwo Jima and Okinawa few Japanese surrendered but preferred to fight to the death. We suffered tens of thousand of deaths and injuries. Considering the facts militarily, the Japanese had it coming. There was no way they would not battle to the death for every inch of Japanese soil. The two bombs were the right thing to do, as horrific as they were, to end their fight.
As to genocide: The United States DID NOT participate in genocide in WWII. But the Japanese certainly did.
I would like to know if by any chance you are a younger Japanese? It is a well known fact that Japan does not teach the real history of what it did in WWII to it's children. In fact young people in Japan have very little idea what really happened. Any cursory study of the Japanese in WWII shows them as Samurai expansionists with a bloodthirsty desire to dominate the Asian world.

Answer 8

I think that it was justified in part. He dropped the atom bomb in order to shorten the war and save American lives. There seems to be some question whether Japan was going to surrender and it seems unclear whether they were or not. I believe if they had not offered to surrender the bombing was justified. I do not think the bombing of Nagasaki was justified and nobody seems to have addressed this issue. All the focus seems to have been on Hiroshima

Answer 9

The Japanese war machine had armed its civilian population and trained every man woman and child to fight any invading American armed force to the death. It was calculated that there would be 100,000 American casualties and that it would drag on for months. Using the A-bombs ended the war quickly and decisively

Answer 10

in 1945 there was no precedence for using atomic weapons, the war in Europe was all but over and the pacific was dragging on, though the US was clearly winning. I will always defend his decision to drop the bomb. Perhaps the most telling defense is the fact that it took TWO!!! bombs before Japan surrendered, Hitler gets all the play, but the f-in japanese meant business and werent about to go quietly in an underground bunker with their mistress