Did the Atomic Bomb End WW2??

[toby]

Anna posted.:-The Brits started civilian bombing against Germany! Churchill wanted to provoke Hitler into likewise bombing civilians instead of military targets and Churchill succeeded.


Toby comments.;- This is a statement of fact, it was British Policy to goad the Germans to start dropping Bombs on London because their tactic of dropping bombs on the Airfields was so successful the Airfields were becoming unusable also those getting the bombs dropped on their heads mutinied !
It's a little known fact but Air ground crews mutinied and had to be forced to perform their duties under threat of getting shot if they refused.

[toby]

BA posted.:-These were evil regimes and then needed to be shut down.

Toby comments.:-They were regimes of their time, no more evil or good than others.
The reson why WW2 was connived at was to kickstart the world economy after the great depression.
Wars make money pure and simple ! Lots of folk in the armaments business made a mass of cash, the USA came out of WW2 as a major power which was Roosevelts intention.
Poor Britain was bankrupted though !

[DAS (formerly BushAdmirer)]

Toby - I don't believe you actually said: "They were regimes of their time, no more evil or good than others."

You don't think the Nazis and the Japs were more evil than other governments? C'mon -- stop it with that nonsense.

[♫anna♫]

Nov 14, 2012 23:49:31 GMT DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) said:

Toby - I don't believe you actually said: "They were regimes of their time, no more evil or good than others."

You don't think the Nazis and the Japs were more evil than other governments? C'mon -- stop it with that nonsense.

Dearest Bush Admirer!
Do you honestly believe the regimes of Mao and Stalin were better?

[toby]

BA posted.:-You don't think the Nazis and the Japs were more evil than other governments? C'mon -- stop it with that nonsense.

Toby comments.;- Stalin allowed 7 Million Ukranians to starve to death in 1937.
Turkey exterminated nearly 2 Million Armenians in the 1920's
Chinese civil war caused untold number of deaths.
Britain massacred loads of Indians in the 1930's.
One simple example, a few British Soldiers armed with machine guns shot over 3 thousand innocent Indian civilians inside 5 minutes, this happened in the 1930's.
Consider the Spanish civil war and the massive amount of casualties.
Consider the Belgian Congo, how do you think the Belgians got control of the Congo ? by giving cheap mirrors and glass beads to the natives ? no BA they used the Maxim Gun !

The whole world was fighting during the 20's and 30's.
The Germans were a calming influence, the Ukranians certainly welcomed the German Soldiers during the initial stages of Barbarossa !

Let's not forget that during our lifetime, Mao allowed 33 Million Chinese to starve to death (in the 1970's).
I shall not mention the 1 Million Vietnamese killed during the Vietnam War.

[mikemarshall]

Nov 15, 2012 20:08:50 GMT toby said:

BA posted.:-You don't think the Nazis and the Japs were more evil than other governments? C'mon -- stop it with that nonsense.

Toby comments.;- Stalin allowed 7 Million Ukranians to starve to death in 1937.
Turkey exterminated nearly 2 Million Armenians in the 1920's
Chinese civil war caused untold number of deaths.
Britain massacred loads of Indians in the 1930's.
One simple example, a few British Soldiers armed with machine guns shot over 3 thousand innocent Indian civilians inside 5 minutes, this happened in the 1930's.
Consider the Spanish civil war and the massive amount of casualties.
Consider the Belgian Congo, how do you think the Belgians got control of the Congo ? by giving cheap mirrors and glass beads to the natives ? no BA they used the Maxim Gun !

The whole world was fighting during the 20's and 30's.
The Germans were a calming influence, the Ukranians certainly welcomed the German Soldiers during the initial stages of Barbarossa !

Let's not forget that during our lifetime, Mao allowed 33 Million Chinese to starve to death (in the 1970's).
I shall not mention the 1 Million Vietnamese killed during the Vietnam War.

I doubt if any member here would defend Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or other equally despicable regimes.

The problem is that right-wingers always seem to find excuses for bad behaviour by right-wingers and left-wingers always seem to be able to excuse it when left-wingers are responsible.

As someone who regards both 'left' and 'right' as terms that are equally deserving of ridicule and opprobrium I find this attitude irrational at best and hypocritical at worst.

The simple fact is that National Socialism was predicated on the basis of the delusional belief in the Germans as the Master Race and the Jews and gypsies as being subhuman.

This racial mythology led to the deaths of millions of people.

It is certainly NOT the case that those who condemn the Nazis are unaware of or insensitive towards those who suffered at the hands of other equally nauseous regimes.

But it is strange how those who appear to sympathise in some degree with Nazi ideology always seem to attempt to downplay their appalling excesses.

I vividly recall having a similar argument with an unreconstructed Stalinist in the late 1970s when I was still a young man.

His attitude offended me then and does now.

So does any attempt to whitewash the Nazis.

[chips]

being a tad older than most of you i remember well the condition in which a lot of allied soldiers came back Even at my young tender age it was heart breaking
had it been left to me i'd have bombed the cruel little sods out of existence I felt so then and still feel that way now

[DAS (formerly BushAdmirer)]

To fully appreciate the evil of Nazi Germany, watch this video

Subj: Holocaust List Found - 60 Minutes Report

This is frightening and beyond words. When you have a half-hour to absorb this, I think you will also be as horrified as me.

This story was aired on CBS, about a long-secret German archive that houses a treasure trove of information on 17.5 million victims of the Holocaust. The archive, located in the German town of Bad Arolsen , is massive (there are 16 miles of shelving containing 50 million pages of documents) and until recently, was off-limits to the public. But after the German government agreed earlier this year to open the archives, CBS News' Scott Pelley traveled there with three Jewish survivors who were able to see their own Holocaust records. It's an incredibly moving piece, all the more poignant in the wake of the meeting of Holocaust deniers in Iran and the denial speeches in the UN.

www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2972691n&tag=mncol%3blst%3b9

[♫anna♫]

Nov 15, 2012 22:13:40 GMT DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) said:

To fully appreciate the evil of Nazi Germany, watch this video

Subj: Holocaust List Found - 60 Minutes Report

This is frightening and beyond words. When you have a half-hour to absorb this, I think you will also be as horrified as me.

This story was aired on CBS, about a long-secret German archive that houses a treasure trove of information on 17.5 million victims of the Holocaust. The archive, located in the German town of Bad Arolsen , is massive (there are 16 miles of shelving containing 50 million pages of documents) and until recently, was off-limits to the public. But after the German government agreed earlier this year to open the archives, CBS News' Scott Pelley traveled there with three Jewish survivors who were able to see their own Holocaust records. It's an incredibly moving piece, all the more poignant in the wake of the meeting of Holocaust deniers in Iran and the denial speeches in the UN.

www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2972691n&tag=mncol%3blst%3b9

Dearest BushAdmirer!
No one is defending the nazi concentration camps here! Killing countless innocent civilians, mothers and children, via aerial bombing is a crime too! It's no different than my example of exterminating the innocent family members of a serial killer because of that criminal's murders. True none of the perpetrators had to look into the eyes of their victims at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and elsewhere. Some courts may consider that a mitigating factor, it was nevertheless a war crime!

Two wrongs never make a right!

[♫anna♫]

www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2190186/Review-Hiroshima-Nagasaki-Paul-Ham.html?ito=feeds-newsxml QUOTE:
REVIEW OF THE WEEK: Exploding the atomic bomb myth

Aug. 18, 2012
When Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945, his Vice-President, Harry Truman, was suddenly elevated to the American Presidency. A few hours later, the War Secretary, Henry L. Stimson, took him aside to tell him about a secret government programme to create ‘an explosive of almost unbelievable power’.

This programme, called the Manhattan Project, sought to harness ‘the basic power of the universe’, to create a bomb capable of levelling an entire city in a single explosion. This extraordinary scene, which comes near the beginning of Paul Ham’s new book about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, kickstarts a chilling story of ruthless determination and terrible suffering.

Ham, who spent years searching through Japanese and American archives and interviewing survivors, tells the story from several angles simultaneously: the scientific discoveries that led to the atomic breakthrough, the administrative genius that brought the Manhattan Project to fruition, the political manoeuvring, the military operations, and, of course, the horrific consequences for the Japanese.

Perhaps the most fascinating strand in this book, and the least well-known, is the diplomatic one. In the months leading up to the end of the Second World War, it seems that factions within the Japanese imperial government were doing their best to surrender, while elements within the Allied governments – determined to use the atom bomb come what may – were doing their best to ignore them.

Ham builds up to the appalling events of August 1945 with wonderful narrative skill. There is an almost unbearable pathos in the chapters that focus on life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that spring, because we know what is about to hit them.

Children are described making their way to school, ordinary shopkeepers and civil servants go about their business, oblivious to their impending doom; indeed, in Nagasaki at least, a myth was circulating that the Allies had deliberately avoided bombing them because of the large Christian population there.

The nuclear strikes themselves are described in unflinching detail. We see the atomic flash, vast shockwaves and the atomic wind that blew away everything in its path. We see melted bodies fused to their bicycles, rivers filled with corpses, and rubble stretching into the distance. One of Ham’s interviewees describes seeing everyone at the Hiroshima Telephone Exchange electrocuted at their desks. When she jumped from a window to escape the building, she landed on molten glass.

Other eyewitnesses tell of the greasy, black rain that began to fall on Hiroshima shortly afterwards; how they thought it was gasoline, how some even tasted it, unaware of its radioactive toxicity.

Ham argues passionately that the bombing was both inhuman and unnecessary. He criticises the decisions that led to the attacks, but reserves his greatest scorn for the hypocrisy and heartlessness that came afterwards, in particular the American medical missions to Japan which seemed more intent on gathering data than helping those suffering from radiation sickness. And he strongly condemns those American politicians, Truman included, who scrambled to justify what they had done.

Despite moments of great insight, Ham’s impassioned argument sometimes gets muddled.

For all his criticism of the bombing, he never convincingly explains what they should have done instead. For Truman, a ground invasion of Japan was out of the question, since it would have led to unacceptable American casualties. To allow the Soviets to invade was hardly a better solution, as events in Eastern Europe would later prove. And letting the Japanese dictate the terms of their surrender was politically impossible.

Ham’s preferred option – an international demonstration of the atomic bomb – would have been far too time-consuming, and too uncertain in outcome. He does, however, make one concession: that the A-bomb provided the Japanese emperor with a face-saving way to exit the war.

Ham also weakens his case by getting background information wrong. He is critical of America’s insistence on ‘unconditional surrender’, but this policy was rooted in the Allies’ disastrous experience with Germany after the First World War.

He claims that Allied strategic bombing had ‘little impact on German productive capacity’, when recent research has demonstrated that it had a significant effect. And he claims that 100,000 died in the bombing of Dresden when the accepted figure is far fewer.

Nevertheless, there is much to admire in this book, which punctures some of the myths that have been associated with the A-bomb. Most importantly, it reminds us of the vast destructive power that still lies at our fingertips – and at those of our rivals.

[chips]

Dropping of atomic bomb on Hiroshima the biggest single turning point in modern history, says new research

More than 1,000 British adults were surveyed
More than one in four people rated the end of the Second World War and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 the most significant
The next most significant was the 9/11 terrorist attack

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 02:05 GMT, 8 December 2012 | UPDATED: 02:06 GMT, 8 December 2012

Read more:


www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2244928/Dropping-atomic-bomb-Hiroshima-biggest-single-turning-point-modern-history-says-new-research.html#ixzz2EV5e6gVm

[Deleted]

What about the moon landing?

The fall of the Berlin Wall?

9/11?

[♫anna♫]

The dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan was just as senseless as sacrificing children to Inca gods! A mass hysteria still reigns reinforcing the belief that using the atomic bomb was neccesary, but someday it will seen as just as senseless as the mass murder of Inca children, which at the time many were likewise brainwashed into approving!

General Curtis Lemay
www.doug-long.com/guide1.htm QUOTE:
On September 20, 1945 the famous "hawk" who commanded the Twenty-First Bomber Command, Major General Curtis E. LeMay (as reported in The New York Herald Tribune) publicly:

said flatly at one press conference that the atomic bomb "had nothing to do with the end of the war." He said the war would have been over in two weeks without the use of the atomic bomb or the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 336, Chapter 27 Gar Alperovitz's
THE DECISION TO USE THE ATOMIC BOMB)

The text of the press conference provides these details:

LeMay: The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb.

The Press: You mean that, sir? Without the Russians and the atomic bomb?

. . .

LeMay: The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

(See p. 336, Chapter 27)

On other occasions in internal histories and elsewhere LeMay gave even shorter estimates of how long the war might have lasted (e.g., "a few days"). (See pp. 336-341, Chapter 27)

[OldHippieDude]

I have read a number of rather obscure books on the matter written by select, intricately involved, high ranking members of the military, but with so much war propaganda being profusely 'fabricated' and disseminated so massively at the time, post-war and afterward, on all fronts, it's difficult at best to make an educated guess or give an informed opinion, (vote.) It's vastly complex.

No 'one individual,' or group of individuals knows the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! It is impossible to discern with decidedly real accuracy because of the prevalently strong biases, then and now.

Speaking on a more emotional level, or in visceral terms, I think the bombing was utterly and horribly wrong! The mere fact that the allies (or the U.S., secretly) targeted and subjected innocent men, women, and children by the tens or hundreds of thousands, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the fiery Hell from the A bombs was, in the most profound sense of the word, inhumane!

Collateral damage during war is to be expected, but not planned for on such a massive scale. From what I've gleaned, the J*ps were out of gasoline, diesel, and virtually all other petrol supplies, so it was just a matter of days or at most a few weeks before they would have been utterly overwhelmed and defeated with conventional weapons, by our allied forces.

In a cold, calculating sense, it did indeed cause or bring about an abrupt halt to WWII. That much is self evident.

Peace,

OHD

[♫anna♫]

Apr 1, 2013 7:08:59 GMT OldHippieDude said:

I have read a number of rather obscure books on the matter written by select, intricately involved, high ranking members of the military, but with so much war propaganda being profusely 'fabricated' and disseminated so massively at the time, post-war and afterward, on all fronts, it's difficult at best to make an educated guess or give an informed opinion, (vote.) It's vastly complex.

No 'one individual,' or group of individuals knows the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! It is impossible to discern with decidedly real accuracy because of the prevalently strong biases, then and now.

Speaking on a more emotional level, or in visceral terms, I think the bombing was utterly and horribly wrong! The mere fact that the allies (or the U.S., secretly) targeted and subjected innocent men, women, and children by the tens or hundreds of thousands, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the fiery Hell from the A bombs was, in the most profound sense of the word, inhumane!

Collateral damage during war is to be expected, but not planned for on such a massive scale. From what I've gleaned, the J*ps were out of gasoline, diesel, and virtually all other petrol supplies, so it was just a matter of days or at most a few weeks before they would have been utterly overwhelmed and defeated with conventional weapons, by our allied forces.

In a cold, calculating sense, it did indeed cause or bring about an abrupt halt to WWII. That much is self evident.

Peace,

OHD

Hi OHD!
I'm in agreement with much of your post, but not your final statement! I concede that many of those, if not all, who knew the truth are dead now and that dead men tell no tales. The high standards of a forensic court will never resolve the Hiroshima debate either. Nor can we disprove the existence of the Inca gods and their alledged wish to have children sacrificed to them-or else! This was also held to be "self evident" in a different time and place!

Read my response to BushAdmirer on this thread on Nov 11, 2012 at 9:59pm!
biglinmarshall.proboards.com/thread/2401/atomic-bomb-end-ww2?page=13
The Japanese never did surrender unconditionally! Another Truman lie that they did! They only surrendered when the Truman administration finally promised to safeguard and preserve the position of Emperor Hirohito. This condition was stubbornly not granted until the "Fat Boy atomic bomb" could be tested on Nagasaki!

Hirohito would have probably followed Hitler's example had his survival and position as emperor not been guaranteed! The use of the atomic bombs or even the impending Russian invasion of mainland Japan in Hokkaido was not the reason for the surrender!

Obviously Hirohito would never admit that his personal agenda and an opportunity for his survival was the reason for accepting the surrender!

[♫anna♫]

Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was as wrong and as unnecessary as the Incas' misguided act of sacrificing children to their gods!

www.wagingpeace.org/articles/db_article.php?article_id=381 QUOTE:
Were the Atomic Bombings Necessary?
by David Krieger
July 30, 2012

On August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered and World War II was over. American policy makers have argued that the atomic bombs were the precipitating cause of the surrender. Historical studies of the Japanese decision, however, reveal that what the Japanese were most concerned with was the Soviet Union’s entry into the war. Japan surrendered with the understanding that the emperor system would be retained. The US agreed to do what Truman had been advised to do before the bombings: it signaled to the Japanese that they would be allowed to retain the emperor. This has left historians to speculate that the war could have ended without either the use of the two atomic weapons on Japanese cities or an Allied invasion of Japan.

The US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that, even without the use of the atomic bombs, without the Soviet Union entering the war and without an Allied invasion of Japan, the war would have ended before December 31, 1945 and, in all likelihood, before November 1, 1945. Prior to the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US was destroying Japanese cities at will with conventional bombs. The Japanese were offering virtually no resistance. The US dropped atomic bombs on a nation that had been largely defeated and some of whose leaders were seeking terms of surrender.

Despite strong evidence that the atomic bombings were not responsible for ending the war with Japan, most Americans, particularly those who lived through World War II, believe that they were. Many World War II era servicemen who were in the Pacific or anticipated being shipped there believed that the bombs saved them from fighting hard battles on the shores of Japan, as had been fought on the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. What they did not take into account was that the Japanese were trying to surrender, that the US had broken the Japanese codes and knew they were trying to surrender, and that, had the US accepted their offer, the war could have ended without the use of the atomic bombs.

Most high ranking Allied military leaders were appalled by the use of the atomic bombs. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Europe, recognized that Japan was ready to surrender and said, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” General Hap Arnold, commander of the US Army Air Corps pointed out, “Atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”

Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, put it this way: “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. In being the first to use it, we adopted an ethical standard common to barbarians of the Dark Ages. Wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

What Truman had described as “the greatest thing in history” was actually, according to his own military leaders, an act of unparalleled cowardice, the mass annihilation of men, women and children. The use of the atomic bombs was the culmination of an air war fought against civilians in Germany and Japan, an air war that showed increasing contempt for the lives of civilians and for the laws of war.

The end of the war was a great relief to those who had fought for so long. There were nuclear scientists, though, who now regretted what they had created and how their creations had been used. One of these was Leo Szilard, the Hungarian émigré physicist who had warned Einstein of the possibility of the Germans creating an atomic weapon first and of the need for the US to begin a bomb project. Szilard had convinced Einstein to send a letter of warning to Roosevelt, which led at first to a small project to explore the potential of uranium to sustain a chain reaction and then to the Manhattan Project that resulted in the creation of the first atomic weapons.

Szilard did his utmost to prevent the bomb from being used against Japanese civilians. He wanted to meet with President Franklin Roosevelt, but Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. He next tried to meet with the new president, Harry Truman, but Truman sent him to Spartanburg, South Carolina to talk with his mentor in the Senate, Jimmy Byrnes, who was dismissive of Szilard. Szilard then tried to organize the scientists in the Manhattan Project to appeal for a demonstration of the bomb rather than immediately using it on a Japanese city. The appeal was stalled by General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, and did not reach President Truman until after the atomic bombs were used.

The use of the bomb caused many other scientists to despair as well. Albert Einstein deeply regretted that he had written to President Roosevelt. He did not work on the Manhattan Project, but he had used his influence to encourage the start of the American bomb project. Einstein, like Szilard, believed that the purpose of the U.S. bomb project was to deter the use of a German bomb. He was shocked that, once created, the bomb was used offensively against the Japanese. Einstein would spend the remaining ten years of his life speaking out against the bomb and seeking its elimination. He famously said, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

[DAS (formerly BushAdmirer)]

The fallacy in the above Time Magazine article is this statement: "The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."

That's entirely false. The Japanese had demonstrated a suicidal fanaticism. The military leaders who were in charge would have fought on.

President Truman really had only two options: 1/ Drop the A Bomb, or 2/ Invade the Japanese Mainland with ground forces.

The main question he had to answer was: Which of those two options would likely result in fewer American military casualties?

As a matter of compassion, Truman halted, after dropping the first A Bomb, to see if the Japanese were then ready to surrender. They were not. Hence the second A Bomb.

Truman made a difficult decision and he made the right call.

[Deleted]

they never should have dropped it , it was a crime against humanity imo

[♫anna♫]

Aug 11, 2013 15:02:19 GMT DAS (formerly BushAdmirer) said:

The fallacy in the above Time Magazine article is this statement: "The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."

That's entirely false. The Japanese had demonstrated a suicidal fanaticism. The military leaders who were in charge would have fought on.

President Truman really had only two options: 1/ Drop the A Bomb, or 2/ Invade the Japanese Mainland with ground forces.

The main question he had to answer was: Which of those two options would likely result in fewer American military casualties?

As a matter of compassion, Truman halted, after dropping the first A Bomb, to see if the Japanese were then ready to surrender. They were not. Hence the second A Bomb.

Truman made a difficult decision and he made the right call.

Hi BushAdmirer!
You are only right on the claim that the Japanese had a suicidal mentality! One of the members of the war cabinet was quoted as saying "Wouldn't it be beautiful, if Japan disappears into a giant mushroom cloud!" referring to the threat of the atomic bombs. Remember 60 Japanese cities were already destroyed by phosphorus bombings. The bombing of Tokyo carried out by over 300 US bombers was much more destructive than the atomic bombings and is considered to be the most destructive bombing of all time! The bombing of Dresden was likewise more destructive than Hiroshima. These civilian bombings are simply a form of terrorism and terrorism whether carried out by the Truman administration or Al Qaida doesn't promote peace!

The Japanese were much more concerned with the impending Russian invasion on the Japanese mainline at Hokkaido, which was just hours away. The Japanese suicidal mentality would have obliged them to murder their families and kill themselves rather than surrender to the invading Russians as we saw on Okinawa. A less desirable form of suicide than disappearing into a mushroom cloud from their perspective!

Only Emperor Hirohito had a will to live on and his Shintoist supporters would never surrender, unless Hirohito was allowed to remain as emperor and be granted immunity from war crimes!

[♫anna♫]

Condemning Truman's senseless and criminal civilian terror bombing of Hiroshima and other cities is no more "Anti-American" than condemning the nazi concentration camps is "Anti-German"!

www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/68-years-ago-truman-opene_b_3713210.html QUOTE:
68 Years Ago: Truman Opened the Nuclear Era -- With a Lie About Hiroshima
Aug. 6, 2013
When the shocking news emerged that morning, exactly 68 years ago, it took the form of a routine press release, a little more than one thousand words long. President Harry S Truman was in the middle of the Atlantic, returning from the Potsdam conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Shortly before 11 o'clock, an information officer from the Pentagon arrived at the White House carrying bundles of press releases. A few minutes later, assistant press secretary Eben Ayers started reading the announcement to about a dozen members of the Washington press corps.

In this way, on this day, President Truman informed the press, and the world, that America's war against fascism -- with victory over Germany already in hand -- had culminated in exploding a revolutionary new weapon over a Japanese target.

The atmosphere was so casual, many reporters had difficulty grasping the announcement. "The thing didn't penetrate with most of them," Ayers later remarked. Finally, the journalists rushed to call their editors.

The first few sentences of the statement set the tone:

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. ...The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold....It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.

Truman's four-page statement had been crafted with considerable care over many months, as my research at the Truman Library for two books on the subject made clear. With use of the atomic bomb rarely debated at the highest levels, an announcement of this sort was inevitable -- if the new weapon actually worked.

Those who helped prepare the presidential statement -- principally Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson -- sensed that the stakes were high, for this marked the unveiling of both the atomic bomb and the official narrative of Hiroshima, which largely persists to this day. It was vital that this event be viewed as consistent with American decency and concern for human life.

And so, from its very first words, the official narrative was built on a lie, or at best a half-truth. Hiroshima did contain an important military base, used as a staging area for Southeast Asia, where perhaps 25,000 troops might be quartered. But the bomb had been aimed not at the "Army base" but at the very center of a city of 350,000, with the vast majority women and children and elderly males.

In fact, the two most important reasons Hiroshima had been chosen as our #1 target were: It had been relatively untouched by conventional bombs, meaning its large population was still in place and the bomb's effects could be fully judged; and the hills which surround the city on three sides would have a "focusing effect" (as the target committee put it), increasing the bomb's destructive force.

Indeed, a U.S. survey of the damage, not released to the press, found that residential areas bore the brunt of the bomb, with less than 10 percent of the city's manufacturing, transportation, and storage facilities damaged.

There was something else missing in the Truman announcement: Because the president in his statement failed to mention radiation effects, which officials knew would be horrendous, the imagery of just "a bigger bomb" would prevail for days in the press. Truman described the new weapon as "revolutionary" but only in regard to the destruction it could cause, failing to even mention its most lethal new feature: radiation.

In many ways, the same dangerous myth about nuclear weapons, first promoted by Truman, persists in the minds of many today: That any use of the more powerful weapons of today by a state (say, the U.S. or Israel) could be and would be targeted on strictly military enclaves or weapon sites, with little threat to thousands or millions living nearby.

Many Americans on August 6, 1945, heard the news from the radio, which broadcast the text of Truman's statement shortly after its release. The afternoon papers carried banner headlines along the lines of : "Atom Bomb, World's Greatest, Hits Japs!"

On the evening of August 9, Truman addressed the American people over the radio. Again he took pains to picture Hiroshima as a military base, even claiming that "we wished in the first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians." By then, an American B-29 had dropped a second atomic bomb over the city of Nagasaki, which killed tens of thousands of civilians and only a handful of Japanese troops (along with Allied prisoners of war). Nagasaki was variously described by U.S. officials as a "naval base" or "industrial center."

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books, including Atomic Cover-Up (on the decades-long suppression of shocking film shot in the atomic cities by the U.S. military) and Hollywood Bomb (the wild story of how an MGM 1947 drama was censored by the military and Truman himself).

kronks @menantol

[Deleted]

Aug 12, 2013 7:09:10 GMT Gibby said:

they never should have dropped it , it was a crime against humanity imo

Would you say the same thing about the "Rape of Nanking or the brutal treatment of prisoners by Japan?  In late December, 1937 and early January, 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army perpetrated one of the most horrific war crimes of the World War II era. In what is known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, Japanese soldiers systematically raped thousands of Chinese women and girls of all ages - even infants. They also murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war in what was then the Chinese capital city of Nanking. Or how about Japan's brutal subjugation of Korea and their use of 'pillow woman.'

Japan was ruled by a cadre of warriors who operated in the barbaric acts of previous times and they responded only to similar strengths and acts.  If the had not been brutally beaten and subjugated and a 'treaty' established, they would still be treating subjugated peoples as they did then. 

Like it or not the use of nuclear weapons brought Japan to the peace agreement as a complete and totally beaten warrior nation and from that they have been developed into a world power by those who beat them.  An act of victors that was outside of any cultural acts possible by Japan.

[Deleted]

May 13, 2016 17:27:24 GMT @menantol said:

Aug 12, 2013 7:09:10 GMT Gibby said:

they never should have dropped it , it was a crime against humanity imo

Would you say the same thing about the "Rape of Nanking or the brutal treatment of prisoners by Japan?  In late December, 1937 and early January, 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army perpetrated one of the most horrific war crimes of the World War II era. In what is known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, Japanese soldiers systematically raped thousands of Chinese women and girls of all ages - even infants. They also murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war in what was then the Chinese capital city of Nanking. Or how about Japan's brutal subjugation of Korea and their use of 'pillow woman.'

Japan was ruled by a cadre of warriors who operated in the barbaric acts of previous times and they responded only to similar strengths and acts.  If the had not been brutally beaten and subjugated and a 'treaty' established, they would still be treating subjugated peoples as they did then. 

Like it or not the use of nuclear weapons brought Japan to the peace agreement as a complete and totally beaten warrior nation and from that they have been developed into a world power by those who beat them.  An act of victors that was outside of any cultural acts possible by Japan.

Two wrongs don't make a right , it was wrong to drop the bomb regardless of what they were allegedly doing

[Deleted]

Gibby stated, “ . . . Two wrongs don't make a right , it was wrong to drop the bomb regardless of what they were allegedly doing . . . “

Allegedly doing? The facts of history means nothing anymore?

Ahh, applying a supposed ethical absolute rather than face the practicality of survival.

Better I guess to die than kill the rabid dog.

Apply that to today. Western culture exists! Islamic culture exists! They do not mesh!

One of them is committed to its very core to do away with (enslave, kill) the other. Following your axiom, we of the west would be better served to lay down and present the bared neck to the killers. Of course that would mean the west would no longer exist, that is, civilization that we know, civilization we value, will be no more. What is left will be the savage, the barbarian, rule of the mighty, the end of the independence of women.

But hey! We shouldn’t be concern for suicidal acts against our own culture is okay because we won’t be acting like the sub-humans. Rather, we’ll just become them.

[♫anna♫]

May 13, 2016 17:27:24 GMT @menantol said:

Aug 12, 2013 7:09:10 GMT Gibby said:

they never should have dropped it , it was a crime against humanity imo

Would you say the same thing about the "Rape of Nanking or the brutal treatment of prisoners by Japan?  In late December, 1937 and early January, 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army perpetrated one of the most horrific war crimes of the World War II era. In what is known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, Japanese soldiers systematically raped thousands of Chinese women and girls of all ages - even infants. They also murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war in what was then the Chinese capital city of Nanking. Or how about Japan's brutal subjugation of Korea and their use of 'pillow woman.'

Japan was ruled by a cadre of warriors who operated in the barbaric acts of previous times and they responded only to similar strengths and acts.  If the had not been brutally beaten and subjugated and a 'treaty' established, they would still be treating subjugated peoples as they did then. 

Like it or not the use of nuclear weapons brought Japan to the peace agreement as a complete and totally beaten warrior nation and from that they have been developed into a world power by those who beat them.  An act of victors that was outside of any cultural acts possible by Japan.

Killing innocent civilians in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and not to mention the 60 other Japanese cities that were senselessly destroyed by fire bombing has nothing to do with military strategy. This was simply genocide.
The perpetrators of 911 also believed this twisted nonsense that innocent people had to die because of alleged wrongdoings that they had nothing to do with.

[DAS (formerly BushAdmirer)]

May 13, 2016 17:56:08 GMT Gibby said:

May 13, 2016 17:27:24 GMT @menantol said:

Would you say the same thing about the "Rape of Nanking or the brutal treatment of prisoners by Japan?  In late December, 1937 and early January, 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army perpetrated one of the most horrific war crimes of the World War II era. In what is known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, Japanese soldiers systematically raped thousands of Chinese women and girls of all ages - even infants. They also murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war in what was then the Chinese capital city of Nanking. Or how about Japan's brutal subjugation of Korea and their use of 'pillow woman.'

Japan was ruled by a cadre of warriors who operated in the barbaric acts of previous times and they responded only to similar strengths and acts.  If the had not been brutally beaten and subjugated and a 'treaty' established, they would still be treating subjugated peoples as they did then. 

Like it or not the use of nuclear weapons brought Japan to the peace agreement as a complete and totally beaten warrior nation and from that they have been developed into a world power by those who beat them.  An act of victors that was outside of any cultural acts possible by Japan.

Two wrongs don't make a right , it was wrong to drop the bomb regardless of what they were allegedly doing

Though I usually agree with your posts Gibby, I have to take exception with this one.

Harry Truman was one of Americas greatest Presidents. He made the decision to drop the A Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those were his best two decisions.That is why he's one of my heroes even though he was a Democrat. I consider him to be the only great Democrat President America has ever had, with a tip of the hat to Franklin Roosevelt who was good on the war but not the economy.

To really understand the importance of those two A Bombs, you have to firs acquaint yourself with the military conquest of Okinawa. You can do that here

Okinawa is a large Island just south of the Japanese mainland. It was defended by Japanese troops who proved to be fanatical and suicidal in the extreme. There were also the Kamikaze pilots making suicide attacks on American ships. With that information, Truman could clearly see that a land invasion of Japan would be very costly. The Japanese army would resist to the death.

Dropping those two bombs saved lives, lots and lots of them.