The enemy is beaten when it surrenders. The Japanese did not surrender until after the bombs were dropped. Even then, the Imperial military staged a coup against their own God-Emperor to stop him from broadcasting his surrender speech. They stormed the Imperial Palace and ransacked the place - the recording was smuggled out in a pile of laundry. We are taking about a country run by people with that level of deathwish, you cannot just assume that they were beaten.
Setting all of that aside, there were still hundreds of thousands of Imperial Japanese soldiers in China and Korea at the time of surrender. Those soldiers were oppressing, murdering, raping and stealing up until the very end. Just because the Japanese military ceased to be a threat to the US Fleet does not mean that they ceased to be a threat to millions of people.
There are soldiers in China that we need to stop, obviously the solution is to vaporize a bunch of innocent civilians in Japan, great idea.
The solution is to continue to fight against the aggressor occupier fascist state using all means available until they surrender. A naval invasion of Japan was projected to cause up to 500,000 casualties. A naval blockade until starvation might have caused millions of civilian deaths if you take Leningrad as an example of how a starvation blockade would go.
It is tragic and horrific when a civilian is killed in war, but civilian deaths in war are unavoidable. The guilty party are the Japanese militarists who were refusing to surrender and holding out for some deathride bloodbath (of their own civilians).
I really think you ought to watch that video before continuing to support the US in its completely unnecessary and indefensible slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
As a Chinese person who's lived in Japan for many years and read about the topic pretty extensively in three languages, I don't think that I need my opinions to be validated by an Englishman.
He makes a very extensively researched and rigorously sourced case that the dropping of the nuclear bombs served no practical purpose regarding the war and that, furthermore, those responsible knew it served no such purpose.
Your position is identical to the modern, western narrative which was cooked up as a retroactive justification for an obviously unjustifiable act.
I am not watching a 2 hour long video. If you would like to summarize his most salient points then I am happy to respond to those points. If me not watching this video is a deal breaker for you then we do not have to continue this conversation.
Your position is identical to the modern, western narrative which was cooked up as a retroactive justification for an obviously unjustifiable act.
I would be interested in these western sources which use the saving of Chinese and Korean lives as an explicit justification for the atomic bombings.
Also, your position is also the position of the Nanjing-denying Japanese far right so... Idk where that leaves us if we apply your reasoning.
This is applying post facto knowledge to a decision when assessing it ethically. Even if the Japanese had planned to surrender following the Soviet invasion (there is no evidence that any such decision was made before the atomic bombings) such decision was not communicated to any of the Allied powers. Even if an intention to surrender had been teased at, a surrender is not a surrender until the surrendering side accepte terms and lays down arms.
Even if we accept for sake of argument that the US decision makers thought the bombs had zero military value and were purely for show, how do you think it would have gone down if the US had went to Stalin with this information? Stalin, the man who had been pushing for intensified Allied air raids against Germany and a second front since 1941, would have just been like "oh don't worry about using your new city destroying wonder weapon, I'll just let Soviet soldiers continue to fight and die in a war you could probably end easily"?
It always comes down to this. Chinese lives don't matter, Korean lives don't matter, Soviet lives don't matter. As long as the precious Fascist civilians get to starve to death instead of being bombed, or conscripted into a kamikaze mission, or shot for dissenting instead, it's aaaaaalllll worth it!
The enemy is beaten when it surrenders. The Japanese did not surrender until after the bombs were dropped. Even then, the Imperial military staged a coup against their own God-Emperor to stop him from broadcasting his surrender speech. They stormed the Imperial Palace and ransacked the place - the recording was smuggled out in a pile of laundry. We are taking about a country run by people with that level of deathwish, you cannot just assume that they were beaten.
Setting all of that aside, there were still hundreds of thousands of Imperial Japanese soldiers in China and Korea at the time of surrender. Those soldiers were oppressing, murdering, raping and stealing up until the very end. Just because the Japanese military ceased to be a threat to the US Fleet does not mean that they ceased to be a threat to millions of people.
There are soldiers in China that we need to stop, obviously the solution is to vaporize a bunch of innocent civilians in Japan, great idea.
There's a video about this topic I think you would benefit from watching.
youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go
The solution is to continue to fight against the aggressor occupier fascist state using all means available until they surrender. A naval invasion of Japan was projected to cause up to 500,000 casualties. A naval blockade until starvation might have caused millions of civilian deaths if you take Leningrad as an example of how a starvation blockade would go.
It is tragic and horrific when a civilian is killed in war, but civilian deaths in war are unavoidable. The guilty party are the Japanese militarists who were refusing to surrender and holding out for some deathride bloodbath (of their own civilians).
I really think you ought to watch that video before continuing to support the US in its completely unnecessary and indefensible slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
As a Chinese person who's lived in Japan for many years and read about the topic pretty extensively in three languages, I don't think that I need my opinions to be validated by an Englishman.
He makes a very extensively researched and rigorously sourced case that the dropping of the nuclear bombs served no practical purpose regarding the war and that, furthermore, those responsible knew it served no such purpose.
Your position is identical to the modern, western narrative which was cooked up as a retroactive justification for an obviously unjustifiable act.
I am not watching a 2 hour long video. If you would like to summarize his most salient points then I am happy to respond to those points. If me not watching this video is a deal breaker for you then we do not have to continue this conversation.
I would be interested in these western sources which use the saving of Chinese and Korean lives as an explicit justification for the atomic bombings.
Also, your position is also the position of the Nanjing-denying Japanese far right so... Idk where that leaves us if we apply your reasoning.
how about a 25-minute video
the Red Army's advance would have led to Japan's surrender, the bombs were a warning to the USSR
This is applying post facto knowledge to a decision when assessing it ethically. Even if the Japanese had planned to surrender following the Soviet invasion (there is no evidence that any such decision was made before the atomic bombings) such decision was not communicated to any of the Allied powers. Even if an intention to surrender had been teased at, a surrender is not a surrender until the surrendering side accepte terms and lays down arms.
Even if we accept for sake of argument that the US decision makers thought the bombs had zero military value and were purely for show, how do you think it would have gone down if the US had went to Stalin with this information? Stalin, the man who had been pushing for intensified Allied air raids against Germany and a second front since 1941, would have just been like "oh don't worry about using your new city destroying wonder weapon, I'll just let Soviet soldiers continue to fight and die in a war you could probably end easily"?
It always comes down to this. Chinese lives don't matter, Korean lives don't matter, Soviet lives don't matter. As long as the precious Fascist civilians get to starve to death instead of being bombed, or conscripted into a kamikaze mission, or shot for dissenting instead, it's aaaaaalllll worth it!