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Comment by Hayvok | Hacker News Reader

“Militarily crippled” makes it sound like the US campaign was getting easier. It was not. Military casualties were getting higher every single fight. Civilian casualties were jaw dropping. Japanese civilians were committing mass suicide or making suicidal charges against marines while carrying sticks. Saipan and Okinawa invasions were humanitarian disasters, despite US forces best efforts.

The ethics of strategic bombing in general and nuclear bombing in particular are rightly debated, but you should bring better facts and understanding when touching such an incandescent topic.

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What do you mean ethics? Of murdering people? I am to this day baffled by American people justifying the use of nuclear bomb and try to make it sound like it saved people. Stop! Just frigging say we did it and we won the war simple as that.

Maybe a simplistic black and white reductionist view is not the best way to understand and contextualize a historic event. I am to this day baffled by people that refuse to engage in any kind of nuance for something as complex as a war involving the majority of the globe.

"Oh you do not understand it was complicated"? I think what you are saying is just creating another excuse to justify the bombing. As complex as it is at the end of the day you are making a decision to nuke a nation. Do you think Russia should have used it on Ukraine by now?

I think it is a fact of life that atrocities happen during war. Just admit it and say that this was one of them. Do not give me the "This was for the betterment of the world" BS.

>I think it is a fact of life that atrocities happen during war

No need to debate ethics. Shooting someone with a gun, killing them in a concentration camp, using an atomic bomb on them, bayoneting them. Just admit they are all bad. All sides are the same and it is BS for the US or Nazis or Imperial Japan or anyone to say anything was "for the betterment of the world".

  - Option 1: Drop nuclear bombs on Japan, kill 200 000 people, end the war right there.
  - Option 2: Continue as is and let 400 000 people die every month.

Which option do you prefer?

There's an argument that Japan was ready to surrender. When? In a month? Two? Three?

Wow were you able to see the future? There is a name for what you are saying but I do not remember what it is called false dichotomy? - Option 1: Kill 200k. - Option 2: Do not kill 200k

Which one do you choose?

That's where you go wrong - you see the nuclear bombing of Japan as an isolated event. Place it into the context of several hundred thousand people dying every month as it was at the time, and it will look different.

It feels very strange to read the level of willful ignorance displayed by objektif on hackernews. To ignore the context that the Pacific theater was 4.5 years of the most brutal fighting of the war, a mountain of experience demonstrating the Japanese resolve to never surrender, and the looming land invasion of Japan that at the time was predicted to likely kill 1,000,000+ US soldiers and many times more Japanese civilians is so disconnected from reality.

I would also argue that the use of those bombs saved many more lives by teaching the world a lesson about the horror of nuclear weapons. Its very possible that nuclear weapons would have been used in future conflicts when they would have been much more prevalent had it not been for the example set in WWII.

Another prediction from a genius forecaster. This post reads like illogic 101. How do you teach someone horrors of Nuclear weapon by nuking a city?

If no one ever even dies from a weapon, how would you expect them to even believe it was real? Let alone horrible?

Japan didn’t even surrender after the first one! It took two to convince them it wasn’t a one-time fluke and that it was real and could be repeated.

May be blow it up on the Ocean next to them?

> Saipan and Okinawa invasions were humanitarian disasters, despite US forces best efforts.

How is that the Japanese's fault? The US invaded.

Americans always justify the genocide by saying "we had to bomb them otherwise we would have killed more of them by conventional means"... Well maybe don't kill them?

Japan knew it was beaten, but Roosevelt insisted on unconditional surrender. A negotiated peace would have been better for everyone especially since the Americans kept the emperor, which was the principal condition the Japanese wanted.

Bwaha. Japan attacked the US first. Japan refused to actually surrender until the second nuke. Japan was planning mass wave civilian attacks if there was any landings. Japan was refusing to surrender despite mass firebombings on the Japanese capital that were killing more than the nukes did.

Hell, even when the Japanese emperor finally tried to surrender, his own military cabinet tried to stop him.

It’s like hitler in his bunker. He only finally gave up when essentially everyone else was dead and/or the fight was completely, literally, impossible.

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