Atomic Bomb Why did we attack Japan? What did Japan do...etc?

Question

Why did we attack Japan with anuclear weapon?

Did we try military force before that?

Did we give any threats?

so basically it was revenge?

or was it to prevent more harm/self defense?

I know the concept of The world Wars. and such, but i was looking for an answer of how it made our actions just.

Revenge is not just, or if it is , how.

Yes, im actually from New York City thankyouvery much

They dont really teach us all about what we failed to do, or what they failed to do in highschool.


im in debate, and i know everything your telling me, im just trying to find a variety of opinions, and the form of how this act was or was not just, and out of all the answers only 3 help, w


the ones about the presidents decision to save more people, [ not invading by being in the middle of the war ] , but i was also looking for how it is JUST OR UNJUST.

not how " im not american, or how i must be retarded because im asking for an opinion. jeez people these days!

Answer 1

The Russians wanted to go into Japan the same way they went into Germany. You know what happened to THAT country after they went in. They put up their GODDAMNED WALL! That SAME THING would have happened to Japan! We HAD to have some definite event that SCREAMED to our "allies" the Russians that their going into Japan wasn't necessary so POUND SAND, you communist LOSERS!!

Answer 2

The estimates Truman was given suggested ~ 1,000,000 American casualties , + all the Japanese casualties . It's come to light recently , that the Japanese were considering surrender , and Truman was advised of that possibilty . He apparently put more credence into the former, and didn't wan't to risk our casualties & all the Japanese civillian casualties . We did send warnings to the Japanese . Of course ,~ nobody on either side really understood the full consequences. We'll never really know which was the best choice .

Another consideration was that the Germans, were working on the same thing . Also the possible deterrent effect on Russia may have played a part .

As bad as it was , it may be for the best. The horrific reality of that has forestalled any serious temptation to use nuclear weapons since then. Better it was those first,smallest bombs, than what came after . The sacrifice of all those people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have saved everyone thereafter .

Answer 3

You must live under a rock. FDR forced Japan into an economic corner and they attacked pearl Harbor 12/7/1941. after a long war it was decided to end it and save thousand of U.S. military lives. By dropping the a bomb, the need to invade Japan was eliminated. It would have cost thousands of lives on both sides if the U.S. had invaded Japan. Pamphlets were dropped on the target areas in time for the Japanese to leave but they chose to stay or were forced to stay. The war ended soon after the second bomb was dropped. It looks like the right decision.

Answer 4

The hardest part of winning a war is removing your enemy's will to fight. It took two nuclear bombs dropped on two separate days by two separate B-29s(Enola Gay and Bock's Car) and the near instant obliteration of two major cities to do that with Japan. Prior to dropping "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" we flew numerous bombing sorties over Japanese cities first with high explosives. When we figured out the the high explosives were not causing the required damage to Japan's war production capabilities we switched to incendiary bombs. Have you any idea the chaos and damage incendiaries can cause in cities made out of wood and paper. We killed more people with incendiaries in Japan than nukes. Had we decided to invade Japan more American lives would have been lost in the process. As far as threats in war go you don't give threats you act or you lose, you don't fire warning shots.

Furthermore you don't go to war solely for the sake of vengence. You go to war when you have the will of the people and a clear set of objectives you wish to accomplish by use of force. Frankly, we all wanted vengence after 911 whether or not everbody admits it. The tricky thing about the war on terror is how do you combat/defeat decades of brainwashing?



Respectfully,

A.C.

PS
Sorry about the research line, it was a little harsh.

Answer 5

Read your text book, try the section covering World War 2 and Japans attack on the United States port and ships located at Pearl harbor December 7, 1941

Answer 6

Japan tried to surrender previous to the dropping of the bombs. However, their one inflexible demand was the retention of the Emperor. No demands for territory or concessions beyond that. The US knew this when it issued the Potsdam Declaration, basically an ultimatum that consciously did NOT make provisions for the Emperor. Thus, the US, along with Britain and the Soviet Union, backed Japan into yet another corner. If they had opened negotiations with retention of the Emperor as a possibility, the Japanese would probably have surrendered. The move was made by the US in order to keep Russia from getting at Japan, as Stalin was about to declare war on the Japanese (in order to gain in China). The bombs were dropped on Aug. 6 and 9; Russia declared war on Aug. 8, I believe. The US dropped the bombs to end the war before Russia could make more demands for war reparation/gain from Japan. It was more a political move against the Soviets than against Japan. A less destructive end to WWII could have been had if the US had simply negotiated this one point with the Japanese. Instead they forced it in order to teach Russia a lesson.

Answer 7

The Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor in 1941. After 3 years of fighting the Japanese across the Pacific Ocean we finally fought them at Okanawa. The Japanese refused to give up. We used incinderary bombs to bomb Japanese cities, including Tokyo. They refused to give up. The next thing we could do to end the war was to invade Japan, itself! The estimates for this invasion was projecting 1 MILLION AMERICAN and at least 1 MILLION more Japanese and Japanese Civilian lives lost to complete a final victory. President Truman decided that the Atomic Bomb would end the war sooner, thus making the invasion on Japan unnecesary and SAVING several MILLION lives.

We dropped the first bomb on Heroshima - the Japanese refused to surrender. We droped a second atom bomb on Nagasaki - after several days the Japanese FINALLY surrendered, realizing that they could not defeat us. Japanese surrender, war ends.

Did we try military force before that! YES, 3 years of fighting them on a campaign across the Pacific Ocean. That's plenty of effort to end a war.

Did we give any threats (warning)! NO, A-Bomb was top secret and we couldn't let the Japanese know about the A-Bomb in advance. First - they wouldn't believe it - remember at the time no one knew what an A-Bomb was or what it could do. Second, even after we droped the first bomb on Heroshima - remember - the Japanese STILL REFUSED to surrender! It took TWO bombs over a 6 day period of time to convience the Japanese govt. to end the war.

Answer 8

Gee... ever heard of WWII? If you study it a bit you might find out that we *DID* use military force before that.... The US lost several hundred thousand men in that war.. and we were bombing Japan before we used the Atom Bomb.. the Japanese were willing to fight to the last man alive if we invaded the mainland.... That would have cost another couple hundred thousand American lives.. So... we dropped the A-Bomb and ask for surrender... no word from them... we dropped the second A-Bomb... still no sign of surrender.. We actually were getting ready to drop a 3rd A-Bomb when word of their willingness for unconditional surrender came

Answer 9

The projected Death toll of the invasion of Japan was approximately 1-2 Million American soldiers (if I recall correctly) and 10 Million or so Japanese.

We were in the middle of a war with Japan

and we leafleted both cities in advance warning them to surrender

Answer 10

Dec 7, 1941, a day that will live in infamy. We wanted Japan to surrender unconditionally. Now, we could have invaded Japan and caused millions of Japanese and hundreds of thousands of allied troops to be killed, but we chose to use a weapon that resulted in zero American casualties. Of course, we had bombed Japan using conventional weapons prior to the Hiroshima attack but they would not surrender, and they did not surrender until the after the second atomic bomb was dropped.

It was the right decision to make, and it had nothing to do with the fact that the Japs were of a different race. The years of bombing is Germany by the allies killed hundreds of thousands of German civilians, and the Germans are Caucasians.

Answer 11

Offhand, I can assume that both your history books and your teachers are rather weak on the conditions that brought about World War II, and specifically, what caused Japan to tackle the US Navy.

Japan needed oil and mineral resources. During the decades leading up to 1941, the Brits and the US were competing for market share in the Western Pacific, and didn't need Japanese competition.

The Japanese were being squeezed out, and decided to use military force to acquire their resources. Most of the resources were located in what is today Indonesia, and the surrounding area.

To develop secure sea routes to and from there, the Japanese would have to neutralize the British presence (Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia) and the U.S. presence (the Pacific Fleet, based out of Hawaii; and the American presence in Guam, Midway, and the Philippines.

As luck would have it, the decades of peace had come to allow the American Navy to concentrate their bases, rather than keep them dispersed. The Japanese planned to take out the Pacific fleet in one swoop, right after the returned to Pearl Harbor from a large training exercise.

They didn't expect to knock out the American military for more than five years, but did expect to have sufficient naval growth (with the increased resource levels) in those five years to keep the Americans at bay.

The Japanese military, with the exception of one Admiral Yamamoto, who had been to the U.S., seriously underestimated the U.S. ability to rebuild.

(The U.S. was back up in eighteen months, and powering up faster than the Japanese, as well as interfering with Japanese shipping in the South China Sea via a heavy submarine presence.)

The Pacific strategy of Gen MacArthur was classic maneuver warfare, applied to island chains. Still, the Japanese proved to be tenacious fighters, giving every bit as much as they got in the way of casualties. War in the Pacific was expensive, in terms of men and materiel.

By the time the Americans started closing on the southern approaches to Japan, a detailed projection of the costs of invading the main islands could be developed. The estimates were put at 1 million casualties, just for the first beach landing.

Simultaneously, the U.S. had been working on the Manhattan project, the fledgling nuclear weapons program. The objective was to pack more explosive force into a smaller package (the bomb itself), so as to minimize the risks to the bomber crews.

By using nukes, one plane could deliver the equivalent tonnage of a hundred bombers carrying conventional weapons.

Ultimately, the test showed that the bombs were so powerful that the use of one or two could well convince the Japanese to give it up.

President Truman did deliver such an ultimatum, without going into the details. The Japanese High Command put it down to propaganda.

After the first bomb was dropped at Hiroshima, the Japanese military simply did not believe the extent of the damage. They didn't even believe the initial reports filtering back from those sent to investigate why Hiroshima was no longer answering phones or radio messages. (The extent of the damage simply wasn't in the experience of anyone in the High command.)

After about a week, the notion sank in. The second bomb (at Nagasaki) demonstrated that the damage was no fluke.

The Japanese finally decided to surrender before any more bombs were dropped. Just as well; it would have been six months or more before the Americans would have had a third bomb ready to go. (Truman's last threats were simply an old poker player's bluff, which, for a variety of reasons, worked.)

In short the War in the Pacific was about oil. The Japanese needed it, and did what they could to enforce it. The U.S., knocked to it's knees, got off the floor and pushed back.