Quote:
| Originally Posted by BJ Lets not forget the nation that dropped two nuclear devices on soft civilian targets (wooden-built cities with no strategic importance) rather than military or military-production targets because "they were too well defended". |
All very well for us to be smug and dismissive John, some others who were closer to the action had somewhat different views.
My Grandfather, who having fought his way across North Africa, Italy and finally Germany, was then put on a boat to India preparatory to taking part in the invasion of Japan, proposed for 1946 and expected to result in a million allied casualties, (based on the experiences at Okinawa and Iwo Jima) was pretty relieved when they got the news - a couple of hundred thousand people seemed a light price to pay in the context of what they were expecting....and, had an allied invasion of the Home Islands taken place, light civilian casualties too.
The A-bombs were spectacular and devastating for a single weapon but the fact is that similar levels of damage and casualties were inflicted on Japanese and German cities by the area bombing offensives conducted at that time, yet you hear very little of them - the Tokyo raids cleared more ground & killed more people.
We focus on the devastation of a nuclear weapon but the reality is that a 12 Kt nuke going off 500 metres away isn't a great deal different, in the eye of the beholder to a 1000lb HE bomb hitting the next door neighbour's back yard or an incendiary crashing through your roof.
Similarly, Japan was not averse to inflicting mass casualties, such as the Nanking Massacre, involving 300,000 deaths according to the Chinese, 100,000 - 200,000 according to Japanese historians, and apparently, for no other reason than bloodlust.
If we are going to pile guilt on the USA for this action, then you have to look at it through the prism of the times and the devastating war, no surrender-take no prisoners that was still in progress.