70 years ago Today, Aug 6.

We dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

World changed a lot in a few weeks in the middle of 1945.

Good or bad, it happened.

The world definitely changed.

I bet the guys that were getting ready to invade the homeland thought it was a good thing.

BTW its also my daughter's birthday.

It's an odd thing that the fire bombings of Japan killed way more people and destroyed more square miles of cities than the two nuclear weapons combined.

Fire Bombing vs Nuclear Bombing said: This map depicts the percentage of the city's area that was destroyed by strategic firebombing prior to the nuclear bombs. Much of the attacks were carried out by low flying incendiary attacks under the direction of Curtis LeMay. (Ditext)

No doubt it changed the world, however.

I recently read a book that was a historical fiction type book. It focused a lot on the battle of Okinawa, but also covered the atomic bombs. It was an interesting read.

In reply to T.J.:

I guess there are many ways to be that guy.

Curiosity landed on Mars, Aug 06, 2012

In reply to RossD:

That's very true, but the controversial point is that it's thousands and thousands of bombs vs. one.

And those thousands and thousands had no real impact on convincing Japan to stop, but two bombs convinced the emperor that it had to end. So even though it's actual destruction impact was less, the real impact ended the war.

There are a lot of good and a lot of bad from the bomb, and all sides have a real point.

The decision to use the atomic bomb will always be a topic of debate. To me the topic that is usually left unsaid is the development of the bomb itself. The scientists could only guess what kind of power they would unleash during the Trinity test. And keep in mind the Trinity test was on July 16, so in 21 days the military was able to go from successful test to weaponization. That's astounding.

After the successful Trinity test Kenneth Bainbridge turned to J. Robert Oppenheimer and said, "Now we are all sons of bitches." They knew what they built, if used, would cause death on an epic scale.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Curiosity landed on Mars, Aug 06, 2012

But Curiosity didn't nuke the martians, just killed the cat. Probably with conventional weapons.

As a combat veteran I'm perfectly at peace with the atomic bombing of Japan. War is ugly and if fought on equal footing will result in many more casualties and more deaths. The quickest most decisive way to fight a war is with overwhelming force and end it quickly. That's exactly what the "shock and awe" factor of a nuke brought to the table with an intractable foe.

slefain wrote: After the successful Trinity test Kenneth Bainbridge turned to J. Robert Oppenheimer and said, "Now we are all sons of bitches." They knew what they built, if used, would cause death on an epic scale.

Oppenheimer said "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

IT was a horrible thing to happen, but I am firmly in the camp that says a)It saved hundreds of thousands of lives and years of ongoing war and we should never apologize for that fact and b)It helped keep the relative peace for the next 70 years.

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

slefain wrote: After the successful Trinity test Kenneth Bainbridge turned to J. Robert Oppenheimer and said, "Now we are all sons of bitches." They knew what they built, if used, would cause death on an epic scale.

Oppenheimer said "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." IT was a horrible thing to happen, but I am firmly in the camp that says a)It saved hundreds of thousands of lives and years of ongoing war and we should never apologize for that fact and b)It helped keep the sweaty, nervous, itchy trigger finger, relative peace for the next 70 years.

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

slefain wrote: After the successful Trinity test Kenneth Bainbridge turned to J. Robert Oppenheimer and said, "Now we are all sons of bitches." They knew what they built, if used, would cause death on an epic scale.

Oppenheimer said "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." IT was a horrible thing to happen, but I am firmly in the camp that says a)It saved hundreds of thousands of lives and years of ongoing war and we should never apologize for that fact and b)It helped keep the relative peace for the next 70 years.

Agreed, and I like to think that since the world saw what these things actually do when used against cities, they were less likely to use them again in the instances afterward where we came close, like the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And Japan wasn't the only place that suffered huge casualties from fire bombing. Dresden was more or less destroyed by it, too.

In reply to RossD:

sweaty, nervous, itchy trigger finger, relative peace or not, I'll take it over the alternative of WWIII and WWIV fought with conventional and/or chemical weapons.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: In reply to RossD: sweaty, nervous, itchy trigger finger, relative peace or not, I'll take it over the alternative of WWIII and WWIV fought with conventional and/or chemical weapons.

It's interesting how it's pretty universally agreed that the stockpiling of the weapons was pretty insane, but it worked (so far). Get so much that the world will be destroyed many times over, just to make sure that the humanity in the most insane person still comes out.

wild.

In reply to alfadriver:

It's like not knowing if someone else has a gun as a deterrent against committing gun violence, only on a much larger scale and with countries opposed to individuals as the parties involved.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to RossD: That's very true, but the controversial point is that it's thousands and thousands of bombs vs. one. And those thousands and thousands had no real impact on convincing Japan to stop, but two bombs convinced the emperor that it had to end. So even though it's actual destruction impact was less, the real impact ended the war. There are a lot of good and a lot of bad from the bomb, and all sides have a real point.

The real controversial part about the fire bombing (I am pretty sure just one of the raids on Tokyo killed more then Hiroshima) vs the atomic bomb was the fact that although the atomic bomb, by default, was a weapon of mass destruction and was going to kill a lot of civilians no matter what you did. The fire bombing though, was essentially specifically designed to kill civilians by destroying as much of the city as possible. Certainly industry was affected, but burning down a city full of civilians was the goal.

This sort of thing was certainly not unheard of in WWII. The British night raids on Germany (no real chance of accuracy, so general city bombing), the German bombing of London, the bombing of Hamburg (kind of where they learned about bombing inspired fire storms, 42,000 civilians killed, they said they could feel the heat 20,000 feet up) and of course Dresden. The raids on Japan where just a bit more extreme (helped out a lot by the generally very flammable Japanese homes)

E.g. the fire bombing had a clear stink of vengeance and cruelty while the atomic bomb had a bit of an excuse.

Historically of course, the Japanese could, by many at the time, be considered a bit sub-human, so there is that...

CDS, I think it's more like knowing someone else has a gun is a deterrent against committing violence against that person. When it comes to nukes, everyone that has one has pretty much let it be known that they have them. I think even the Israelis finally admitted they are armed to the teeth with them too. All the big boys have them. If you want to run with the big boys, you need them too. NorKs? Kissy-kissy. Libyans? They get "regime changed."

"Historically of course, the Japanese could, by many at the time, be considered a bit sub-human, so there is that..."

Considering their treatment of the Chinese and POWs, they lived up to our expectations in those ways.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

"General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war.""

Just realize that history is written by the victors. Yes, there would've been more casualties if we had to invade the Japanese homeland, but who is to say we would've had to do that?

In reply to T.J.:

Robert S. McNamara worked for General LeMay at the time of the fire bombings. He said in the movie 'Fog of War' that if we had lost the war, himself, LeMay, and the rest of them involved with the bombing of Japan would have been tried for war crimes.

*I found the movie "Fog of War" to give a great deal of insight to lots of USA/World history from 1940s up until even some recent events. I think I need to watch it again actually.

There are a number of possible "reasons" why the bomb was dropped. The saving lives from an invasion is the most popular, but there are others. Realistically, Japan was not that far from surrender (they did need a push of course) and did not pose much of a threat at that point to anyone. It might have taken a bit more, and more fire bombing. You might say of course, the atomic bombs saved a lot more Japanese lives, then American. It is certainly possible (likely?) an invasion was never really necessary. Of course, it was the "expected" tactic, and that machine was rolling (lots of peoples jobs to do just that).

There is stopping the Russians from invading Japan and taking it, but it is pretty clear, they were a long way from that. There is pure revenge (the fire bombing kind of supports this). One of the more interesting, and realistically compelling is that the US spend a LOT LOT LOT LOT of money (no, I really mean it, a LOT) on developing the bomb.... to not use it... well... Again, that machine was rolling for an expected result. All that effort and no payoff?

They also did not really know how well it would work operationally, what better way to test it.

As with many things, the real answer is likely a combination.

In reply to aircooled:

But it is pretty interesting that two bombs that didn't nearly have the effect of the fire bombing had such an effect on the emperor.

One can try to speculate what would have happened if Germany was still in the war in August. It was the original target, afterall.

And I really was not that aware that the industry to make more and more Fat Boy's was pretty much in place- we were capable of making 1-2 a month then, probably could have sped that up, too. Plans were in place.

From an engineering standpoint, I'm still pretty fascinated that the bomb dropped 70 years ago today was the first time ever that it was run at full scale. Talk about taking a risk. The second one was at least tried in New Mexico.

Also from a development standpoint- the combination of an academic setting where information flows like a river with a military one where secrets are guarded with force- all for the most secret project of the war... wow. Oppenheimer was a pretty darned good manager to deal with that crazy mess of situations.

A couple of points about Japan. First, they have the distinction of being the only modern military ever issue orders to not eat their own dead soldiers. It was OK to eat enemy soldiers, but not their own. They did behead and cannibalize captured enemy soldiers however. The issue was they did not have proper supply chains, you know, such as food, etc. They were expected to find that on their on for the most part.

As for the surrender, not only was it for bombings, but mostly because the war in Europe had ended and they were terrified of what the Russians might do. They would much rather have surrendered to the Russians than the US.

I used to work with a guy many years ago that was trained to be kamikaze pilot, but the war ended before he had to go. He had quite a bit to say about the mindset then and it was fascinating. Basically, they would have fought man, woman and child, to the death if there would have been a mainland invasion. They had been taught the emperor was their god and they were to die for him. It would have been ugly.

Dropping the bombs certainly helped bring everything to an end, but it was not the only reason. Just like anything, there are always multiple reasons for a decision.