"Hiroshima" Topic

Thanks for posting that, Steve.

No problem, guys! :)

My step-father had fought in France and into southern Germany with the 3rd Army. Having been shipped to Europe in January as a replacement, he did not have enough "points" to go home at the end of the war and was sent south to Marseille with tens of thousands of other GIs to await shipment to the Pacific.

He always mentioned how he sat and cried when word of the bombings came through the loudspeakers in his camp and he realized that he'd not have to go into combat again.

The bombs were a necessary evil and if Truman, with his experiences in WWI had not used them, then the blood of millions would have been on his hands. Thank God that he did. The fact that Truman never felt remorseful says a lot about how he felt about their use.

I've always cut Ike some slack about certain ideas he had as he was never in combat in his entire career.

Dan

Interesting debate.
It was right to drop the bomb, and right to drop it on Japanese cities.

After the bombs had dropped the Japanese army wished to fight on and were prepared to imprison the emperor to keep Japan in the fight. The emperor, however, felt that he had a duty to his people and moved to make a radio broadcast that preempted the coup and effectively surrendered.
A bomb on an abandoned site or a military tRget would likely not gave motivated the emperor and thus not ended the war.
Those who have said that the bombs prevented huge casualties in an invasion are right. I doubt that the Japanese casualties weighed that heavily on the US government, but who would want to be the politician who sent hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths when it layer turned out that a potentially war winning weapon had existed and not been used.
My grandfather fought in WW1, my father in WW2. I did not have to fight because a US nuclear umbrella was extended above me and pretty well everyone else in Western Europe. We should be more grateful to the US for preventing the aggression that would undoubtedly have been unleashed by the Soviets if they had thought they could get away with it.. Similarly the Chinese people should have some gratitude to the US for going to war on their behalf by instituting the sanctions that were designed to stop the Japanese War on China which led to the Pearl Harbour attack.

My father fought in Normandy in the British army -he was pleased the bombs were dropped said he was even more impressed that they managed to drop them on the enemy…