Anonymous #5 9w

They realized too that no city or terrain was safe anymore. We could essentially wipe the entire country off the planet if we thought it was necessary. It is what made the Emperor and (some of) his forces surrender. The Emperor knew he was just a man, even if his followers didn’t, and as a man he was scared, like a mortal.

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Anonymous #5 9w

Quick side note: a common argument people make is “Oh well the Soviets were coming from the North so they had to surrender anyway” WRONG. The Soviets were taking mainland Asian territories, but they didn’t enter the war against Japan until 1945 and their entire Navy was already caught up in other places at the time, with a majority of the fleet being damaged in the Black Sea. The Soviets didn’t really put that much pressure on Japan in comparison to the bombs.

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Anonymous #5 8w

They didn’t enter until 1945 because they’re were fighting in Europe. Once Germany was defeated, they directed all their attention and resources towards Japan. They were by far the deciding factor, not the bombs

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Anonymous #6 8w

The second bomb proved we could keep doing using them on Japanese cities. It finally got the emperor to break the deadlock and force a surrender. In the end the Japanese got to keep the emperor, and we didn’t have to invade mainland Japan which would have made Stalingrad’s casualty numbers look like child’s play by every estimate at the time. I don’t get what all the debate is about. Today Japan is one of our closest allies because of the way WW2 ended and our reconstruction efforts.

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Anonymous #3 8w

War is hell. There are never any good options in war. Sometimes the best option in the long run will kill a lot more people right now than the alternative but ultimately save 100x more lives in the long run because it shortens a war by years. I wish today’s leaders understood that. Of course the best option is to avoid war whenever possible, but if you can’t you always should choose the path that ends it as quickly as possible even if it kills more people because it saves lives in the long

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Anonymous #3 8w

Run

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Anonymous #3 8w

Exactly this, there is no “good guy” in war, there is nothing but victims. Yes, killing civilians- dropping a nuke- it’s wrong, it’s evil, but it was the lesser of the two evils presented to us at the time. Kill thousands, or risk millions? I don’t mean to fully justify the bombings because the horrors they caused and the pain they caused on regular people are atrocious, but ultimately it was necessary and I think that if it came to full invasion we would be having a different conversation

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Anonymous #5 8w

Given that a full scale invasion would likely have to mean killing a majority of Japan’s military, and possibly population who were taught to fight Americans or end their own lives before the Americans arrived. This conversation would be about the atrocities of an invasion the world can’t even fully imagine

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Anonymous #6 8w

But not their navy, the one thing they’d need to meaningfully threaten the Emperor

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Anonymous #5 8w

The casualty estimates dwarf what we suffered in both the European and pacific theaters combined. The Japanese were training children younger than 8 to strap bombs onto themselves and run at American troops. They were training women to use sharpened bamboo sticks as weapons and young boys as soldiers. The death toll would have been well over a million Americans killed and tens of millions of Japanese. I don’t think your average person today can comprehend just how many would have died

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