no, they should have dropped an anvil on his head from 10,000 feet. that will show that imperial fucker!
Japan is far better off for being nuked than they would have been after living under decades of Soviet occupation.
Interesting bit of trivia, Japan did bomb the US from a submarine. This happened off the coast of Oregon, near Astoria. No real damage was done. http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/exhibits/ww2/threat/bombs.htm The Japanese also bombed the US and Canada using balloon bombs: On December 6 after a "mysterious explosion" in Wyoming, officials found balloon parts and bomb casing fragments from what had been a 33 pound high explosive bomb. During the course of the next several months, Japan launched over 9,000 balloon bombs resulting in over 342 incidents registered throughout western United States and Canada. Oregon alone counted 45 balloon incidents. While they varied in size and design, many of the balloons measured about 100 feet in circumference and about 33 feet in diameter. The ingenious design helped them drift along the newly discovered fast moving jet stream at an average elevation of 30,000 feet.
I have often said that it's not at all clear that the world is better off for the way WWII ended. In Europe we replaced Hitler with Stalin, and in Asia Tojo with Mao. "Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss."
Hmm, more of your senseless, useless "what if" scenarios, Fraggle? Is this where you speculate, then tell us exactly what life would have been like IF something did or didn't happen? ...as if you can not only see into the future, but you can see what WOULD HAVE BEEN in the past?! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Baron Max
Wasn't the point of the Marshall Plan, in the end, that 'everyone wins'? To lift Europe out of the (unproductive) cycle of war and punishment that took it from WWI to WWII? If America was simply interested in beating down Europe, they could've left the war to drag on, and then nuked the winner. Or if the winner was interested in building an empire, like Germany, they could've funded insurgents in Britain and turned Europe into an Iraq...
Whoa, whoa. As I recall, the US did inform the Japanese about the impending attack. The message was received by the Emperor and considered; the newspapers reported that he was "considering" the surrender ultimatum but used a verb that meant, depending on the user and usage, either "careful consideration" or "to smother with distain". The newspapers picked up the latter, as newspapers will do. In any event, it mattered nothing: the war cabinet did indeed distain the ultimatum, and so condemned their own cities.
No surrender after first. Their choice, really. I would certainly agree that their refusal after the first was needless, however.
Well, you could do some research and see if your recollection is in fact accurate, or you could just regurgitate the ideas that make you feel most comfortable with your jingoistic pride. The demand for a surrender you might be recalling is most likely the Potsdam Declaration, a joint demand for surrender from the US, Britain, and China. It didn't mention a nuclear weapon, or super weapon of any kind, though it did contain some combative speech about the impending fall of Japan, as one might expect from a demand of surrender. The Nuclear bomb was, at the time of this declaration still a closely guarded national secret, and would remain so until it slew 140,000 people.
The U.S. government had made every effort to conceal the fact that we had been making satisfactory progress in our nuclear weapon program, much less that it was complete. There was considerable skepticism throughout the world that such a weapon could be created with existing science and technology, if at all. We did not want to dispel that pessimism since optimism is one of the strongest forces for success. The Germans, for example, had made a few judgment errors that led their nuclear program up a blind alley. The Russians were staffing their nuclear program with the same now-captive German scientists who were dispirited by the weight of their failures. I believe we had only successfully tested one bomb, a laboratory prototype in today's jargon. The chances were quite reasonable that the attack on Hiroshima could have failed due to unforeseen technical problems in what we would now call the alpha test. If it had been a dud we would probably have come back and destroyed a huge area around the landing site with conventional weapons--at any cost--to prevent the world from knowing that we believed we had a working nuclear weapon. At least those are the orders I would have had in place if I were FDR. I have no idea whether this was the case.
How about that - they didn't warn Japan about the first bomb. But they did warn them about the second. So you were partially right. It was still the decision of the Japanese government to keep fighting, however. And, in total casualties, there were far worse firebombing raids for which no warning was given. But, that's what you get when you embark on total war instead of an honourable one. What can one say? A very Merry Jingoistic Pride Day to you.
This is the second time someone has mentioned this absurd sentiment. The war with Japan was exclusive to two regular and organized national military forces before the point in time when we chose to begin exterminating their citizens and destroying their civilian infrastructure. The acts we took against the Japanese are what made it a total war, not the other way around.
How nice of them. I bet very FEW people lived in the emperor's garden and in temples. Instead the US bombed the highly populated areas...
Pure science. It was a different kind of bomb, and if you go into trouble making one, you would probably want to test it...
No, the Japanese treatment of civilians and POWs made it a total war. Never heard of Burma, Singapore, the Death March or the Rape of Nanking? There are other examples - the slaughter of military prisoners, for example. How about Japanese experimentation on prisoners? Laying aside the attack without a formal declaration of war, of course. So, I begin to wonder where you get the idea that the armed forces of only two nations were being concerned in isolation here.
