To adress your (John HSOG) points on an issue I have already debated (
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=110767 ):
1.
More people were killed in the bombings of cities such as Dresden and Tokyo, than by either of the two atomic bombs.
roughly translated early in the morning
Dresden 13/2 1945 Dresden became the brittish air force's greatest victory (in bombing) during the entire war. The firestorm of Hamburg ... reemerged in an even more terrifying shape. The temperature rose to more than 1 000 degrees [celcius]. Around 100 000 civilians killed - the exact number was impossible to determine because that many bodies could never have been identified or even sepparated from one another before they had transformed "into the half-liquid state that must be passed before earth may become earth once more". The statement is of Kurt Vonnegut. He was a POW at Dresden, survived the air raid and took part in digging up the bodies.
Tokyo 9-10/3 1945 In Tokyo the winter of 1944-45 was the clearest and coldest in decades. For 45 days in a row the temperature had been below zero [celcius] and it was still snowing at the end of Febuary. But the 9th of March spring finally came. There was a strong wind the entire day and in the eavening the weather was almost stormy. At around 11 the bomb alert sounded. For the first time, the plane came at a low altitude. The Order was for every family to stay and defend its own home. But how? The bomb shelters where merely holes in the ground covered by wooden boards and a thin layer of dirt. The bombs fell by the thousands, once house could be hit by 10 or more at the same time. These were a new kid of bombs, they spread a flaming liquid that poured along the roofs and light up everything it touched. The violent winds caught the burning drops and soon it was raing fire that stuck to everthing.
The neighbors formed a chai, as planned, to passed buckets of water. efter a few seconds they were surrounded by flames. The fragile wooden houses light up immidieatly, the families left their houses screaming, carrying their babies on their backs. The were met by a wall of flames. They light up in the fire storm, became living torches and disappeared. People threw themselvs into the canals and emerged until only their mouth was above water. Hundreds suffocated due to smoke and lack of oxygen. Other canals were heated up by the fires. The people in those were boiled alive.
One fourth of the capital burned tot he ground, one million people homeless, 100 000 abhorrantly killed.
Hiroshima 6/8 1945, 8:16 AM This is what happened in the first second of the bomb's explosion.
0.0 The bomb detonated around 600 meters above the shima hospital in central Hiroshima, in the height of the morning traffic. The temperature at the time of detonation rose (in a millionth of a second) to many million degrees [celcius].
0.1 A fireball measuring 15 meters in diameterwas formed with a temperature at around 300 000 degrees [celcius]. At the same time neutrons and gamma rays reeached the ground and cause the direct radiation damage on living organisms.
0.15 The fireball expanded och faster still expanded the shock wave. The air got hotter and became illuminated.
0.2-0.3 Huge amounts of infrared energy are formed and caused the greater part of the burn damage on people.
1.0 The fireball reached maximal size, 200-300 meters diameter. The shockwave that carried the fire expanded at the speed of sound.
Around 100 000 citizens, of which 95 000 civilians, where killed immidiatly. Some 100 000 people, mostly civilian, continued long after to die a drawn out death to radiation.
Conclusion: More people died from the Atomic bombings than from the larger conventional/ napalm bombings.
2.
Japan commited atrocities against the Chinese that pale in comparison to the acts of Hitler, Stalin, and make the Atomic Bombings look like a slap of the hand. The Japanese soldiers and people as a whole were a massively destruction and aggressive force capable of acts beyond your worst nightmares. Read about the rape of Nanking, sometime. The United States was fully justified in using all means neccessary to end the war as quickly as possible.
right, the japs were bad and needed to be punished. The janks can walk away guiltfree. The same day that the reports from Hiroshima reach the American homes (6th of september, 1945, thanks to the australian journalist Wilfred Burchett) the military published a report (saved for the occassion) describing around 200 japanese abuses of american POWs, incluing acts of canibalism and living burials. Also the government employed journalist William Laurance wrote a piece on how great it had been to bomb Nagasaki. Also the general Farrell flew 11 scientists (lacking backbone) to Hiroshima and had them state that the bomb had left no traces of radioactive fallout. Furthmore General Groves convinced the US congress that the radiation did not cause any meaningless suffering but was rather "a very pleasurable way to die."
How could he have been proven wrong? Fotographs of victims were banned, a three hour long documntary was confiscated and released 20 years later.
Justified my *ss.
3.
Very few individuals knew just how destructive the bomb was. Even fewer had any idea that such residual effects would exist.
oh yeah? then why did 70 of the scientists who made the bomb (including Leo Szilard, the main guy involved in teh project) sign a letter beggin Truman not to use the bomb?
And afterwards the destructive effects were hidden to the media and the american citizens (as usual).
4.
Japan was working testing chemical weapons and other devices on Prisoners of War and foreign nationals. They had also been working, up until the end of the war, to send bombs laden with chemical weapons to be dropped on the west coast via use of baloons and sophisticated timing devices
they were also sending constant preace proposals, all which the US government ignored.
The fact is that we can play this game all day, but the fact is that if these several hundred thousand civilians had been killed by conventional strategic bombing, if the marred survivors had been torn up by conventional strategic bombing, then we would not be speaking of any of this today. Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not be known to so many. And we probably would not have Godzilla.
We still speak with loathing of conventional bombing. We still speak of Chechaouen and Guernica. We still speak of Dresden and Tokyo. We still speak of the bombing of Vietnam and the bombing of Iraq. Nukes are worse, but that doesn't mean that the anti-nuke lobby enjoys the conventional "send 10 planes to bomb that village" bombing that has been used from the Italian assualt outside Tripoli to the Gulf War.
Bombing is not good, is not clean and it doesn't save lives, it takes lives.
