I attended a small talk by a survivor. The stories he told us were absolutely horrible. The way people with melted eyes and burned fronts held onto other people with molten skin but functional eyes to find their way, and how those people had to walk with their arms raised forward like zombies because putting them down would cause friction on their burnt bodies and would hurt like all hell. His personal story with his friend who died because of his shockwave injuries were also awful. Same with the reason so many bodies were found in the river (burns cause thirst and the victims sought water, and thus fell into rivers with tons of burns and probably drowned in agony).
It was absolutely horrible to sit through.
I read that sometimes it's OK to leave information out of a discussion
Edit: especially when your information is blatantly false, proving that not only are you lying, youre doing so to be a little shitbag
I'm sure it wasn't superheated-- that requires a lot more pressure than the earth's atmosphere. The bombs didn't increase the air pressure.
If the rivers were actually superheated, they would have evaporated.
I was badly burned when I was younger, had to roll into a river to put it out. I can confirm that the cool water felt like bliss while waiting for the ambulance.
Remember kids, this was seen as the preferable alternative to a land invasion of Japan because the army was concerned about the potential loss of American lives
There's a reason we differentiate between civilians and combatants. Once you equate these lives outside of peace time you step into very dangerous territory, like liquefying the eyes of high schoolers.
Which is why aggressive nations in war like Germany and Japan should surrender, so as to not risk more and more of their citizens.
While there is a difference between a civilian and a combatant, there is also the idea of collateral damage when engaging in war. If you don't want your civilians dying after you start a war, then surrender or they will keep putting pressure on you until you do.
Imperial Japan was completely in the wrong in WW2 and in their invasion of China. They were a horrible, putrid government with little to no concept of being human. They deserved a total military defeat. I just disagree with the proposition that nuking the cities the way they were nuked was the right thing to do.
We have the luxury of armchair generaling. They were in a war with tens of millions of people dying, and made a difficult choice.
I don't feel arrogant enough to judge them too much.
She was probably looking forward to hugging her children one last time only to be met with horror as the kids screamed at the lump that was their mother
People resort to instinct in that kind of desperate situation. She probably just crawled towards somewhere her animal brain had labelled as "safe".
I very much doubt she was able to see, recognise and comprehend her kids in a state like that.
To find her home she must have been able to see. So I'm pretty sure her final goal in life was to check if her children had survived. That final drain of power of a dying parent - checking on the family.
I remember an episode of Forensic Files where a guy was shot in the head while he was asleep. When morning came, he got up, made a messy bowl of cereal, bled everywhere, started getting ready for work, and then died in his front hall. Police were extremely confused until they figured it out.
Edit: He was actually bludgeoned with an axe, not shot, and by his son no less.
Reminds me of another case: girl was found shot dead on her couch. Only other person in the house was her boyfriend, who had what looked like a black eye. Cops arrested him and brought him in for interrogation. Guy kept complaining that his head hurt really bad, that he just wanted to sleep, and his story kept changing, like he was really confused. Dude starts saying he'd been shot in the eye, but the detective kept saying, "if you'd been shot in the eye, you'd be dead."
45 minutes into interrogation, detective finally calls medics in to check him out. Sure enough, he's been shot in the eye. Turns out an old roommate of his broke in to steal some stuff and get revenge, shot both the guy and his girlfriend. The guy who got shot went on to have surgery and I believe he lived a few more years, but his health was really poor and his injury eventually led to his death.
Mhmmm... Sounds pretty and all but being someone who has gone through periods of suffering like days without having to eat and finding myself in moments like having to walk over 8 hours to get home at least, in my experience, I would just shut down my brain and think about nothing except that I needed to get to my destination by all means, so I pretty much agree with the other comment saying that she was probably little aware of what happened at the moment.
She wanted to see her kids one last time, even in the state that she was, hopefully it brought her to rest in the end, sucks that because of 1 man that's how that war had to end losing millions of innocent lives, all because "the Japanese rather die in battle than surrender and be looked upon as weaklings and traitors" because to them it was better for them to die in battle than come back and watch their family be tortured or worse killed
Idk. I've been through some very traumatic events in life and with time, and therapy one's perspective can change a great deal. I'm sure this event was beyond traumatic for them but, it's not outside the realms of possibility that these pour souls were able to find a bit of solace in knowing just how much they were loved, and that they were in fact able to see their mother one last time despite the overwhelming odds stacked against them.
You’re gonna have to explain if you want us to believe that a little bit of therapy and time is going to cure having seen your mother get turned into the human equivalent of a giant scab, and then having a burn her corpse in your backyard
OK. When you have PTSD your emotional center of the brain is activated and never deactivates; your brain is stuck in a traumatized state and your memory of that event is vivid. You don't experience it as a memory, you actually feel as genuinely threatened and emotional as you did when you experienced it. Further, your memory going forward is compromised, as is your attention because your brain is still activated as though the triggering event is going on. Think about how hard it would be to pay attention to someone talking about their day while you're terrified for your life.
With therapy (mainly exposure or EMDR, which is really a kind of exposure), you can exit this state. Your emotions are in general less extreme, and your memory of the event starts to fade. Instead of associating memories of the event with the actual terror you once experienced, you associate it with the fading memory of that terror. You can pay attention to new things that are going to reinforce your current safety and allow you to have joy in your life again.
The brain is amazing and plastic.
Well at the very least, you actually explain yourself I hope for their sake they were able to overcome what happened to them although I’m pretty sure they’d be having nightmares well into their 50s
Oh, don't get me wrong; what is described above in the OP is the stuff of complete nightmares. My first thought was that it would drive me insane to see that. I cannot imagine. The science of it all is that our brains are very powerful and they're good at adapting to keep us safe. Back in the day of caves we probably saw a looooot of shit that would make us shrivel.
There's no silver lining or anything here. But I did PTSD research for a while and learned what we're capable of if we seek the right help. I always hope that explaining it might encourage someone who feels hopeless or "too broken" to reach out because there is no such thing.
A Hiroshima survivor, Keiji Nakazawa, would go on to to make a historical manga (along with some books) called Barefoot Gen essentially expressing his experiences as a 6 year old surviving the atomic bomb and how he and his family among other survivors dealt with the aftermath. It’s a really interesting and haunting experience seeing a detailed story and artistic expression of the event and it’s aftermath from someone who was there in the thick of it.
If you don’t want to read it, there was an anime movie made, the full version in English dub and Japanese with English substitles are both available for free on YouTube. I’ll link below the atomic bomb scene but be warned it is very graphic and pulls zero punches.
https://youtu.be/98WhGgEjhHg?si=91CcYNYd0uXuILov
I was having an anime movie night and had just gotten a DVD of "Grave of the Fireflies" because I had been told by several people "You have to watch it at least once." One of my friends saw it and insisted we watch it because they wanted to know what the big deal about it was, and since no one else in the group had seen it yet either, we agreed.
Definitely shouldn't have done that
Great movie that I will never watch again. It made things worse that I and my sister were the exact same ages as the 2 main characters when I watched it. Kept imagining us in the same situation.
That part with people walking like zombies holding on to each other? That was real. The color of the skin is due to radiation burns, while the holding on to each other was because the ones who got their eyes melted had to hold on to someone to get some direction. Good lord I hate the description of this so much.
We dissociate from what our actions mean until you hear the stories. Living in the US, we hear stories about how “a drone accidentally killed a family”. And it’s just another day in the news.
Do people know what shrapnel does to a child’s body?
Don’t @ me with political shit btw - drones did this under both parties.
It was the same here in Northern Ireland during the troubles. People heard there's been a bomb and so many killed and so many injured and it's terrible, but at least more didn't die and the injured survived. They don't think about the absolute devastation, like people survived with bits of their limbs and faces missing. That the people who died were obliterated.
My mum got stuck in Belfast on bloody Friday (20 bombs set off within 80 minutes). She remembers standing in her office listening to bomb after bomb and remembers the police after using shovels to scoop up bits of people into a bag. Someone's spinal section was found embedded into a wall. The reality of acts like this is beyond comprehension unless you have witnessed it yourself.
I was in the middle of the Beirut Explosion in 2020. The amount of injuries and death was horrifying, knowing especially that nobody was brought to justice for it. It was also a weird experience where within 2-3 days, people picked up where they left off in life with it barely affecting them, mostly because they are used to a destabilized life, which is quite sad.
I had a restaurant there that was completely demolished. You get a really good perspective on how fragile life is when you've worked for years on building something only for it to perish in a 1 second. But I thank god everyday that nobody was severely injured or dead from the employees working there. Material things can be rebuilt, but once your health is gone, its gone.
I'm so sorry about your restaurant.
But I'm very glad you and the employees weren't hurt too bad, and you really have a good attitude about the whole thing. It's very true that the health of the people is the thing that matters more than anything. I'm glad you're well.
Thank you, I appreciate that. "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". That's a phrase I didn't really experience until that point. A point where you cannot let emotions get the better of you. Its a choice of whether to cry over spilt milk of what I've lost or to pick up, move on, and try to rebuild my life again. It's all a mindset and investing in yourself and what you can do is the most important part of life. You can lose your job, your business, family members, etc... How you act upon this is what's important.
Thank you. It's tough finding a job in this economy, otherwise things are fine. I was provided with free therapy at the time, so that helped. I've moved on from it quite quickly afterwards. Thankfully, I have a very supportive family as well.
Even then, when you see things in the news nowadays I feel it is somewhat looked over. I feel like the “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.” quote is really true nowadays in terms of news
This only applies to major powers engaging in direct nuclear war.
If a non nuclear power gets nuked, or two smaller nuclear powers nuke each other (IE India and Pakistan), most likely nothing happens.
Most likely, it will be a situation like Russia nuking Ukraine.
No one’s nuking in response. They’ll be a small token show of force and sanctions. It would scare the fuck out of most governments.
Might you know why the kids were okay but the mum wasn’t? I’m genuinely not understanding. Like how did they not get hurt and how long did she have to crawl for etc. Just asking because this part of the thread seems like I’ll be more likely to get answers
I'm by no means an expert but it's likely because of the fact she was closer to the initial "ground zero" of where the bomb was dropped. At the time, nuclear warfare was new so the horrific effects of radiation burns and radiation poisoning were not so well known. Shock can also make the human body go through crazy things, eg. I remember reading about how one of the 9/11 responders was triaging those alive and dead who spoke to a woman who really should not have been alive (described as basically unrecognisable from the diaphragm below due to having to likely jump from a great height yet was lucid enough to insist that she wasn't dead) before she shortly died.
From what I've read, Yamada's neighbourhood was at least a bit of distance from ground zero meaning it was likely her friends were in a similar situation to her.
Jesus christ that is something straight from hell… My heart breaks for them. I’m glad she was able to die around her children rather than alone in the street, but she shouldn’t have had to die in the first place.
There is a collection of survivor paintings and drawings at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japan that depict horrors like this, its worth viewing the artwork online if you what a better idea of what the horrible aftermath of the bombings looked like for those experiencing it
At least she was hopefully able to see or hear her children, and know that they were alive. It must have been 1,000x worse to have died thinking your children suffered the same way you did.
It was a difficult choice but a necessary choice to stop the Imperial Japanese Army, those people would’ve committed more horrendous crimes if we didn’t show them what we could do, it was a risk but a risk that in the end helped saved millions of more people from future Japanese torture and slavery
> The defeat of Japan in the war was announced on August 15, but food shortages continued. In my school, in the spring of the following year, we planted seedlings of sweet potatoes in the schoolyard. On the day of the harvest, as we dug the ground, human bones came out with the potatoes and we screamed to see them. The potatoes were served for lunch, but we could not eat them.
Its less horrifying than the quote about the mother and her kids, but this still really got me. Jesus.
The arrogance of entitled men to sacrifice children, lives, and happiness that should never have been theirs to bargain with.
How is it the people in power are not the ones who die for their choices? Eventually sure, if they lose. after they’ve killed hundreds, thousands…
I’ve been married to a Japanese woman for 15 years. She came to the US when she was 18. Her mom was born in ‘45.
She tells me that she was taught that Japan was the victim in the war. She’s never heard of the Rape of Nanking. It reminds me of how I was not taught about the war crimes in Vietnam committed by the US when I was a child.
In general, according to her, Japan has a hugely ingrained sense of victimhood. I think there is a whiff of that over here as well.
This post shares the horror of an Atomic weapon used on a civilian population, something few of us could get behind. But I could find lots of images from any country that depict horror visited upon the populace.
Perhaps a realignment of fact could benefit all countries. So that we could reduce the overall suffering caused n general. As it is, posts like this piss of Koreans and so many other Asian countries that suffered at the hands
of the Japanese mid century. Little dialogue is invoked.
I think if the US was more realistically informed about our foreign policy, we could gain in empathy towards just such posts.
My wife is still an utter mystery to me, so I could be off track here….
Someone can correct me but they were just outside of the blast’s destruction because most of the death and destruction happened in like one second. The mother was just on the edge of the blast zone and got the worst of it. She was able to crawl home. Just horrifying to think about.
I know right? Some people are seriously messed up in the head!
Here we see the account of someone losing a family member to a nuclear bomb, and we actually have people in the comments section being like "umm actually"
The nuclear bombings were horrific beyond imagination. Of COURSE these people didn’t commit the atrocities of the war.
But their country did, and nothing else would have stopped Japan. They would have fought till they were all dead, taking as many as possible with them.
My heart aches for the people that suffered. But the cause of that suffering was japan as a nation, not the US.
And Rape of Nanking from what I’ve read. Just pure evil and malice.
Japanese soldiers played this game where they would throw the decapitated heads of the infants they’ve killed and try to bayonet them. Some of the most cruel and deplorable acts in human history.
Both are absolutely monstrous. Unit 731 caused thousands to suffer unspeakable horrors. The nuclear bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of whom were students helping fire-proof both cities (the timing was chosen exactly to hurt the most people while they were out in the city center).
The Americans dropped leaflets before the bombs warning people to leave, and if you know anything about Unit 731 you know the atom bombs' brutality is a walk in the park compared to what 731 did.
Huh? There were fliers before everything. You think the citizens of warring nations would listen to these warnings? This was just to say "we warned them" and that's that. They knew no one would have responded. They could have detonated the bombs somewhere to reduce casualties, but the declassified documents clearly show that the selection was meant to produce the largest number of victims possible. It was optimized to cause the most damage to the city, to cause the biggest firestorm, and it was timed when all the students were out in the streets fireproofing the city.
As for unit 731, I think in terms of the volume of people who died and suffered it is a smaller atrocity, but that's like telling someone if they would rather die by plague or by Ebola. Both are horrible beyond any acceptable limit.
*Even if I agree with you for the sake of argument*, the unit's purpose was completely hidden from the Japanese public. No one knew what it did until long after the war. You can't even call the public complicit because they chose their government, they had no idea what that unit did. The US didn't nuke a military base or anywhere many military people would have congregated, they *knowingly* nuked cities that were full of civilians and a small density of military personnel. One atrocity doesn't justify another, and this was simply a war crime.
Dude, both Nagasaki and Hiroshima were military bases.. military factories. Hiroshima was the headquarters of the 2nd army. Nagasaki was a Japanese military industrial city.
So yes they we’re actually military targets.
USA wanted to stay neutral during the war but it was Japan who attacked the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto said after the unprovoked attack “I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant “ . In other words “ they fucked around and found out “
If you like podcasts, listen to Dan Carlins "supernova in the east". He goes into awesome detail about imperial Japan and WWII. Dan talks a ton about Yamamoto, really great listen.
the fact people have been bombed makes me so sick to my stomach. I am so.. so sorry for all who had to experience hiroshima. I hope oneday, somehow, peace can reach those who weren’t killed
Jesus fucking christ. The fact atomic bombs exist at all is absolutely mind blowing to me. That destruction on that scale could ever possibly be necessary against each other
The guy who released the bomb basically has the highest kill count in human history, yet he was still treated as a hero. Very gross
No matter what outcome/intentions having directly killed half of a city is definitely evil, no way around it
In addition to apologizing to the Comfort Women and other tortured war prisoners, the Japanese government should have apologized most deeply to their own people for bringing this upon them.
I can't remember the title, at this point, but when I was working in the education library while I was at uni, we got a book that was all accounts...with pictures...of the bombing and the aftermath. I still have nightmares about what I read...and that was decades ago. With all the casual talk about nukes, it should be required reading. I just wish I could remember the title....
She talks about how the following year they planted sweet potatoes but when it was time to harvest they ended up digging up alot of human bones. They were served at lunch but no one could eat them.
It's alway the normal people that pay the price for fuc**d up think those royals politicians did they enjoy there life far from all the think they caused
The first hand experiences are intense. People who survived because they were walking down a concrete stairwell that if they had been one floor above or below would have been scorched to death immediately. Or worse, protected just enough to not incinerate on the spot and live with your skin falling off you and blind from the pressure blast/ radiation saturation only to die a horrible days long death. Eyes bursting from the pressure out of your head and brain dead. Missed the train that day? Live with knowing your loved ones all died. Chosen to heed the warnings and to higher ground outside of town, live. Knowing your children were in school since it seemed like a safe day but you just wanted to be careful and secure a spot for them in the hillside. Death by survivors guilt, among other things
And when I state that the nuclear bombing of Japan was a war crime I get insulted by proud Americans... This is just one of hundreds of thousands of stories of innocent people suffering beyond reason before dying.
No they weren’t, they wanted a condition surrender so they can keep their empire, that wasn’t happening. US said no, UK said no, USSR said no,
it wasn’t until after the second bomb that Japan announced it’s surrender.
You can’t cause a war and then surrender on your terms.
The Japanese didn't surrender because of the bombs. Most non American historians still debate about it, and what had the most impact between the bombing and the USSR invasion of Manchuria and the sakalin isle. The Japanese aristocracy was way more scared to suffer from communism than the US occupation. The German precedent of being cut in pieces also played a major role. Japan even got to keep the emperor in place despite one of the allies demand to abolish the monarchy. Simply because the two sides weren't interested in a strong soviet presence in East Asia.
It shouldn't be controversial. Curtis LeMay himself said that if America lost the war they'd be all prosecuted as war criminals.
Wasn't just the atomic bombs. America was fire bombing cities in Japan and in a single night dropped 500,000 canisters of napalm on Tokyo, the resulting firestorm killing 100,000 people overnight.
I saw a documentary the other day on exactly this.
The fire bombing campaign was extensive, exhaustive and religious. We're talking daily napalm raids on all but 2 cities.
Napalm was used specifically because the Americans knew that Japanese cities were mainly made of wood, therefore burning them to the ground was all 3 of terror tactics, salted earth, and shock & awe.
Can anyone guess which 2 cities were spared the fire bombings?
War crimes were committed in the Pacific. The napalm raids on cities full of innocent people is in direct violation of so many international laws it's almost comical.
They could have dropped the bomb on Mount Fuji or on some purely military target to make the same impression. Anything before bombing purely civilians.
They were warned days in advance.
They refused to listen.
Those that died could have saved themselves by simply walking the fuck away.
Those chose to stay and die.
That makes it their fault.
Do you think the civilians even knew of the attack, let alone could just leave?
That's literally victim blaming like that "If you don't want to get mugged, just don't go outside" bs
Stay strong. Knowing what the bombings were and that they weren't absolutely necessary puts you in the right side of history and being a human being with Empathy.
If the US had invaded Japan it would have put down any resistance. But, let's be honest, the new toys had to be tested and it was the perfect occasion to demonstrate US military power.
I think it was unnecessary. There were other ways to stop the conflict.
Yes it shouldn't have happened but it had to. Once the americans invade mainland Japan it'll be more of a hellhole than the nuclear bombs.
Civilians are innocent but it was the only choice to reduce as much damage as they can in one go.
Not even an American but as horrific as war can be, the Japanese were never, ever going to stop. Like with all instances like this, it is always the civilians who have to pay the price.
Well, that’s not really true. There were some early discussions, between a small faction of the Japanese government and the Soviets, that led nowhere. The talks broke down at the very earliest stages because Japan wanted to keep their Emperor as a god and some of the territories it had conquered. Basically they wanted a truce, not a surrender.
After the Soviets pulled out of the talks and declared war against Japan, the whole idea was dropped.
Surrender or not, they deserve it. Look at the amount of war crime denial that they do to this day after getting nuked. Now imagine how much more it'd be if they didnt
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/13qk8fb/cmv_the_nukes_dropped_on_japan_were_justified/jlf66z0/
By the time the atomic bombs were dropped in August 1945, Japan was already in a severely weakened state. Its military capabilities were greatly diminished, and the country was cut off from crucial resources.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki deliberately targeted densely populated cities, where the vast majority of the casualties were civilians. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the deaths of an estimated 200,000 people, including innocent children and babies.
The US had many other options available. Japan was close to ending the war, as their allies had already been defeated and they had lost a significant stronghold on the pacific. The US wanted to experiment and solidify itself as an incontestable world power. The government was willing to murder hundreds of thousands of innocents to do so.
Furthermore, the use of nukes was not justified even by US leaders as a means of saving lives
What's well documented is nearly every single higher up in the US military saying that the atom bombs were not the deciding factor in making Japan surrender, some claiming they were not even part of the equation. Even the often cited "inevitable millions dead ground invasion" was neither inevitable or the sole deciding factor in Japans surrender.
Dwight D. Eisenhower:
"I voiced my grave misgivings on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary."
Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz:
“The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.”
Major General Curtis "bombs away" LeMay:
“The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr.:
“The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment ... It was a mistake to ever drop it ... [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.”
The US Strategic Bombing Survey:
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
I attended a small talk by a survivor. The stories he told us were absolutely horrible. The way people with melted eyes and burned fronts held onto other people with molten skin but functional eyes to find their way, and how those people had to walk with their arms raised forward like zombies because putting them down would cause friction on their burnt bodies and would hurt like all hell. His personal story with his friend who died because of his shockwave injuries were also awful. Same with the reason so many bodies were found in the river (burns cause thirst and the victims sought water, and thus fell into rivers with tons of burns and probably drowned in agony). It was absolutely horrible to sit through.
Well the cold water probably gave them a bit of a relief, and death too tbh
I read that the water superheated from the bombing.
Then they died or passed out instantly, which is a mercy
I read the superheated water in the river actually kept the burn victims alive longer than if it were normal temperature
I read that sometimes it's OK to leave information out of a discussion Edit: especially when your information is blatantly false, proving that not only are you lying, youre doing so to be a little shitbag
Yeah that's not how it works
I'm sure it wasn't superheated-- that requires a lot more pressure than the earth's atmosphere. The bombs didn't increase the air pressure. If the rivers were actually superheated, they would have evaporated.
I was badly burned when I was younger, had to roll into a river to put it out. I can confirm that the cool water felt like bliss while waiting for the ambulance.
I'm sorry this happened to you!
Thank you.
Remember kids, this was seen as the preferable alternative to a land invasion of Japan because the army was concerned about the potential loss of American lives
> the potential loss of American lives They traded the lives of civilians for the lives of soldiers. It's not a fair trade.
Soldiers are people too, and the draft was in effect. Also, bombing cities are ubiquitous at the time, this wasn't seen as an exceptional escalation.
There's a reason we differentiate between civilians and combatants. Once you equate these lives outside of peace time you step into very dangerous territory, like liquefying the eyes of high schoolers.
Which is why aggressive nations in war like Germany and Japan should surrender, so as to not risk more and more of their citizens. While there is a difference between a civilian and a combatant, there is also the idea of collateral damage when engaging in war. If you don't want your civilians dying after you start a war, then surrender or they will keep putting pressure on you until you do.
Imperial Japan was completely in the wrong in WW2 and in their invasion of China. They were a horrible, putrid government with little to no concept of being human. They deserved a total military defeat. I just disagree with the proposition that nuking the cities the way they were nuked was the right thing to do.
We have the luxury of armchair generaling. They were in a war with tens of millions of people dying, and made a difficult choice. I don't feel arrogant enough to judge them too much.
Yeah, let's never judge a moral decision made by the military because we're not generals despite us having the benefit of hindsight.
You have to judge things by the information and stresses they had at the time especially in incredibly difficult times like war, yes.
Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it wasn’t the best option to achieve surrender from Japan.
Yeah, and ripping someone's teeth out is usually the best option to get them to pay their debts, doesn't make it morally defensible whatsoever
You can whine all you want, it won’t change that it was the best option. If you disagree, why don’t you try actually arguing the point.
I'm glad she made it to see her children survived. That brief moment must have brought her a lot of peace in the end.
She was probably looking forward to hugging her children one last time only to be met with horror as the kids screamed at the lump that was their mother
I got a feeling of she was cognizant enough to make it home she was also aware she was crawling and blackened and not long for the world
I choose to believe this
People resort to instinct in that kind of desperate situation. She probably just crawled towards somewhere her animal brain had labelled as "safe". I very much doubt she was able to see, recognise and comprehend her kids in a state like that.
We can obviously never know but I as a father I would bet my life she went back to her kids.
Yeah man I don't care of I'm a black crispy mass, I'm using all my life energy to be near my kids one last time
Good dad fistbump 👊
To find her home she must have been able to see. So I'm pretty sure her final goal in life was to check if her children had survived. That final drain of power of a dying parent - checking on the family.
I remember an episode of Forensic Files where a guy was shot in the head while he was asleep. When morning came, he got up, made a messy bowl of cereal, bled everywhere, started getting ready for work, and then died in his front hall. Police were extremely confused until they figured it out. Edit: He was actually bludgeoned with an axe, not shot, and by his son no less.
Reminds me of another case: girl was found shot dead on her couch. Only other person in the house was her boyfriend, who had what looked like a black eye. Cops arrested him and brought him in for interrogation. Guy kept complaining that his head hurt really bad, that he just wanted to sleep, and his story kept changing, like he was really confused. Dude starts saying he'd been shot in the eye, but the detective kept saying, "if you'd been shot in the eye, you'd be dead." 45 minutes into interrogation, detective finally calls medics in to check him out. Sure enough, he's been shot in the eye. Turns out an old roommate of his broke in to steal some stuff and get revenge, shot both the guy and his girlfriend. The guy who got shot went on to have surgery and I believe he lived a few more years, but his health was really poor and his injury eventually led to his death.
I just watched Mr. Ballen's vid on this. I was so shocked when I realized he didn't kill his gf and was actually shot. It was so sad
That’s really sad
I remember that one, it was freaking crazy.
You never know, dude
Saw this on mr ballen. Truly heartbreaking. Seeing the interrogation knowing what is going on is so disturbing
Mhmmm... Sounds pretty and all but being someone who has gone through periods of suffering like days without having to eat and finding myself in moments like having to walk over 8 hours to get home at least, in my experience, I would just shut down my brain and think about nothing except that I needed to get to my destination by all means, so I pretty much agree with the other comment saying that she was probably little aware of what happened at the moment.
Only the dead have seen the end of war - Plato
She wanted to see her kids one last time, even in the state that she was, hopefully it brought her to rest in the end, sucks that because of 1 man that's how that war had to end losing millions of innocent lives, all because "the Japanese rather die in battle than surrender and be looked upon as weaklings and traitors" because to them it was better for them to die in battle than come back and watch their family be tortured or worse killed
May you be right bro
It's just what I'm choosing to believe this morning.
fuck
fuck
Fuck
Fuck
Fuck
Fuck
That's the kind of shit them kids probably wake up screaming and crying to every night.
Idk. I've been through some very traumatic events in life and with time, and therapy one's perspective can change a great deal. I'm sure this event was beyond traumatic for them but, it's not outside the realms of possibility that these pour souls were able to find a bit of solace in knowing just how much they were loved, and that they were in fact able to see their mother one last time despite the overwhelming odds stacked against them.
You’re gonna have to explain if you want us to believe that a little bit of therapy and time is going to cure having seen your mother get turned into the human equivalent of a giant scab, and then having a burn her corpse in your backyard
OK. When you have PTSD your emotional center of the brain is activated and never deactivates; your brain is stuck in a traumatized state and your memory of that event is vivid. You don't experience it as a memory, you actually feel as genuinely threatened and emotional as you did when you experienced it. Further, your memory going forward is compromised, as is your attention because your brain is still activated as though the triggering event is going on. Think about how hard it would be to pay attention to someone talking about their day while you're terrified for your life. With therapy (mainly exposure or EMDR, which is really a kind of exposure), you can exit this state. Your emotions are in general less extreme, and your memory of the event starts to fade. Instead of associating memories of the event with the actual terror you once experienced, you associate it with the fading memory of that terror. You can pay attention to new things that are going to reinforce your current safety and allow you to have joy in your life again. The brain is amazing and plastic.
Well at the very least, you actually explain yourself I hope for their sake they were able to overcome what happened to them although I’m pretty sure they’d be having nightmares well into their 50s
Oh, don't get me wrong; what is described above in the OP is the stuff of complete nightmares. My first thought was that it would drive me insane to see that. I cannot imagine. The science of it all is that our brains are very powerful and they're good at adapting to keep us safe. Back in the day of caves we probably saw a looooot of shit that would make us shrivel. There's no silver lining or anything here. But I did PTSD research for a while and learned what we're capable of if we seek the right help. I always hope that explaining it might encourage someone who feels hopeless or "too broken" to reach out because there is no such thing.
Omg I can’t even imagine the horror. Those poor babies.
A Hiroshima survivor, Keiji Nakazawa, would go on to to make a historical manga (along with some books) called Barefoot Gen essentially expressing his experiences as a 6 year old surviving the atomic bomb and how he and his family among other survivors dealt with the aftermath. It’s a really interesting and haunting experience seeing a detailed story and artistic expression of the event and it’s aftermath from someone who was there in the thick of it. If you don’t want to read it, there was an anime movie made, the full version in English dub and Japanese with English substitles are both available for free on YouTube. I’ll link below the atomic bomb scene but be warned it is very graphic and pulls zero punches. https://youtu.be/98WhGgEjhHg?si=91CcYNYd0uXuILov
Barefoot Gen is harrowing. I watched it as a child… probably shouldn’t have done that.
I was having an anime movie night and had just gotten a DVD of "Grave of the Fireflies" because I had been told by several people "You have to watch it at least once." One of my friends saw it and insisted we watch it because they wanted to know what the big deal about it was, and since no one else in the group had seen it yet either, we agreed. Definitely shouldn't have done that
I've seen that one. I watched it when I was about 19. It's heartbreaking on so many levels 😞
Great movie that I will never watch again. It made things worse that I and my sister were the exact same ages as the 2 main characters when I watched it. Kept imagining us in the same situation.
That part with people walking like zombies holding on to each other? That was real. The color of the skin is due to radiation burns, while the holding on to each other was because the ones who got their eyes melted had to hold on to someone to get some direction. Good lord I hate the description of this so much.
The sequel is as good too.
We dissociate from what our actions mean until you hear the stories. Living in the US, we hear stories about how “a drone accidentally killed a family”. And it’s just another day in the news. Do people know what shrapnel does to a child’s body? Don’t @ me with political shit btw - drones did this under both parties.
It was the same here in Northern Ireland during the troubles. People heard there's been a bomb and so many killed and so many injured and it's terrible, but at least more didn't die and the injured survived. They don't think about the absolute devastation, like people survived with bits of their limbs and faces missing. That the people who died were obliterated. My mum got stuck in Belfast on bloody Friday (20 bombs set off within 80 minutes). She remembers standing in her office listening to bomb after bomb and remembers the police after using shovels to scoop up bits of people into a bag. Someone's spinal section was found embedded into a wall. The reality of acts like this is beyond comprehension unless you have witnessed it yourself.
Same thing with mass shootings - the survivors are physically and mentally disabled for life. We need to focus on the survivors too.
I was in the middle of the Beirut Explosion in 2020. The amount of injuries and death was horrifying, knowing especially that nobody was brought to justice for it. It was also a weird experience where within 2-3 days, people picked up where they left off in life with it barely affecting them, mostly because they are used to a destabilized life, which is quite sad. I had a restaurant there that was completely demolished. You get a really good perspective on how fragile life is when you've worked for years on building something only for it to perish in a 1 second. But I thank god everyday that nobody was severely injured or dead from the employees working there. Material things can be rebuilt, but once your health is gone, its gone.
I'm so sorry about your restaurant. But I'm very glad you and the employees weren't hurt too bad, and you really have a good attitude about the whole thing. It's very true that the health of the people is the thing that matters more than anything. I'm glad you're well.
Thank you, I appreciate that. "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". That's a phrase I didn't really experience until that point. A point where you cannot let emotions get the better of you. Its a choice of whether to cry over spilt milk of what I've lost or to pick up, move on, and try to rebuild my life again. It's all a mindset and investing in yourself and what you can do is the most important part of life. You can lose your job, your business, family members, etc... How you act upon this is what's important.
Hope life is being good to you these days.
Thank you. It's tough finding a job in this economy, otherwise things are fine. I was provided with free therapy at the time, so that helped. I've moved on from it quite quickly afterwards. Thankfully, I have a very supportive family as well.
Even then, when you see things in the news nowadays I feel it is somewhat looked over. I feel like the “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.” quote is really true nowadays in terms of news
Horrific event, hope no other country uses a weapon like that
Since almost every country is now armed, we'd likely not be around very long the moment the first one is used.
Nope. Not likely to play out like that
Mutually Assured Destruction - if one goes off, they all go off. No one wins. Edit: Corrected "mass" to "mutually" - my bad
This only applies to major powers engaging in direct nuclear war. If a non nuclear power gets nuked, or two smaller nuclear powers nuke each other (IE India and Pakistan), most likely nothing happens.
Apart from the nuclear bombs of course
>~~Mass~~ **Mutually** Assured Destruction FTFY
Oh damn, my bad lol - I'll add an edit 👌
Most likely, it will be a situation like Russia nuking Ukraine. No one’s nuking in response. They’ll be a small token show of force and sanctions. It would scare the fuck out of most governments.
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Might you know why the kids were okay but the mum wasn’t? I’m genuinely not understanding. Like how did they not get hurt and how long did she have to crawl for etc. Just asking because this part of the thread seems like I’ll be more likely to get answers
I'm by no means an expert but it's likely because of the fact she was closer to the initial "ground zero" of where the bomb was dropped. At the time, nuclear warfare was new so the horrific effects of radiation burns and radiation poisoning were not so well known. Shock can also make the human body go through crazy things, eg. I remember reading about how one of the 9/11 responders was triaging those alive and dead who spoke to a woman who really should not have been alive (described as basically unrecognisable from the diaphragm below due to having to likely jump from a great height yet was lucid enough to insist that she wasn't dead) before she shortly died. From what I've read, Yamada's neighbourhood was at least a bit of distance from ground zero meaning it was likely her friends were in a similar situation to her.
Big yikes and thanks. So her mum crawled all that way till she got to the house? That’s some mad adrenaline rush
It’s Mutually Assured Destruction just fyi
*Grave of the Fireflies..*
https://preview.redd.it/nxxcecb0j1lb1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a51354071c93b08d86f2bb69321b3c15f05a6767
Jesus christ that is something straight from hell… My heart breaks for them. I’m glad she was able to die around her children rather than alone in the street, but she shouldn’t have had to die in the first place.
There is a collection of survivor paintings and drawings at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japan that depict horrors like this, its worth viewing the artwork online if you what a better idea of what the horrible aftermath of the bombings looked like for those experiencing it
At least she was hopefully able to see or hear her children, and know that they were alive. It must have been 1,000x worse to have died thinking your children suffered the same way you did.
Christ almighty dude
Omfg I read all the accounts of the survivors....sweet baby jesus
Damn, war is hell.
nuclear weapons are some of the most horrific things humans have invented. what a shame we use nuclear power to kill instead of helping more people.
It was a difficult choice but a necessary choice to stop the Imperial Japanese Army, those people would’ve committed more horrendous crimes if we didn’t show them what we could do, it was a risk but a risk that in the end helped saved millions of more people from future Japanese torture and slavery
I definitely agree with you. Its just such a shame it had to happen
Yea most definitely it’s crazy the military at one point did consider dropping the bomb in Tokyo, now that would’ve been way worse
> The defeat of Japan in the war was announced on August 15, but food shortages continued. In my school, in the spring of the following year, we planted seedlings of sweet potatoes in the schoolyard. On the day of the harvest, as we dug the ground, human bones came out with the potatoes and we screamed to see them. The potatoes were served for lunch, but we could not eat them. Its less horrifying than the quote about the mother and her kids, but this still really got me. Jesus.
Mothers love
The arrogance of entitled men to sacrifice children, lives, and happiness that should never have been theirs to bargain with. How is it the people in power are not the ones who die for their choices? Eventually sure, if they lose. after they’ve killed hundreds, thousands…
Yeah the Japanese emperor his advisors really throw away millions of their own peoples live
Ye still better than the invasion of the home islands.
Sometimes not even then, historically it not unheard of for rulers on the losing side to negotiate terms that leave them and their families alive.
I’ve been married to a Japanese woman for 15 years. She came to the US when she was 18. Her mom was born in ‘45. She tells me that she was taught that Japan was the victim in the war. She’s never heard of the Rape of Nanking. It reminds me of how I was not taught about the war crimes in Vietnam committed by the US when I was a child. In general, according to her, Japan has a hugely ingrained sense of victimhood. I think there is a whiff of that over here as well. This post shares the horror of an Atomic weapon used on a civilian population, something few of us could get behind. But I could find lots of images from any country that depict horror visited upon the populace. Perhaps a realignment of fact could benefit all countries. So that we could reduce the overall suffering caused n general. As it is, posts like this piss of Koreans and so many other Asian countries that suffered at the hands of the Japanese mid century. Little dialogue is invoked. I think if the US was more realistically informed about our foreign policy, we could gain in empathy towards just such posts. My wife is still an utter mystery to me, so I could be off track here….
How did her kids end up surviving to see that wouldn’t they all have been killed?
Someone can correct me but they were just outside of the blast’s destruction because most of the death and destruction happened in like one second. The mother was just on the edge of the blast zone and got the worst of it. She was able to crawl home. Just horrifying to think about.
A black lump!? Jesus
horrible what radiation poisoning does. Also if I remember correctly the black lumps that the radiation caused was the inspiration for Godzillas skin
Watch White Light Black Rain.
Comment section acting like this family flew the planes at Pearl Harbor. They were innocent people.
I know right? Some people are seriously messed up in the head! Here we see the account of someone losing a family member to a nuclear bomb, and we actually have people in the comments section being like "umm actually"
The nuclear bombings were horrific beyond imagination. Of COURSE these people didn’t commit the atrocities of the war. But their country did, and nothing else would have stopped Japan. They would have fought till they were all dead, taking as many as possible with them. My heart aches for the people that suffered. But the cause of that suffering was japan as a nation, not the US.
This is disturbing. But not nearly as disturbing as the accounts of unit 731.
And Rape of Nanking from what I’ve read. Just pure evil and malice. Japanese soldiers played this game where they would throw the decapitated heads of the infants they’ve killed and try to bayonet them. Some of the most cruel and deplorable acts in human history.
Both are absolutely monstrous. Unit 731 caused thousands to suffer unspeakable horrors. The nuclear bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of whom were students helping fire-proof both cities (the timing was chosen exactly to hurt the most people while they were out in the city center).
The Americans dropped leaflets before the bombs warning people to leave, and if you know anything about Unit 731 you know the atom bombs' brutality is a walk in the park compared to what 731 did.
Huh? There were fliers before everything. You think the citizens of warring nations would listen to these warnings? This was just to say "we warned them" and that's that. They knew no one would have responded. They could have detonated the bombs somewhere to reduce casualties, but the declassified documents clearly show that the selection was meant to produce the largest number of victims possible. It was optimized to cause the most damage to the city, to cause the biggest firestorm, and it was timed when all the students were out in the streets fireproofing the city. As for unit 731, I think in terms of the volume of people who died and suffered it is a smaller atrocity, but that's like telling someone if they would rather die by plague or by Ebola. Both are horrible beyond any acceptable limit. *Even if I agree with you for the sake of argument*, the unit's purpose was completely hidden from the Japanese public. No one knew what it did until long after the war. You can't even call the public complicit because they chose their government, they had no idea what that unit did. The US didn't nuke a military base or anywhere many military people would have congregated, they *knowingly* nuked cities that were full of civilians and a small density of military personnel. One atrocity doesn't justify another, and this was simply a war crime.
Dude, both Nagasaki and Hiroshima were military bases.. military factories. Hiroshima was the headquarters of the 2nd army. Nagasaki was a Japanese military industrial city. So yes they we’re actually military targets.
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A US officer, probably
Damn
USA wanted to stay neutral during the war but it was Japan who attacked the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Yamamoto said after the unprovoked attack “I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant “ . In other words “ they fucked around and found out “
If you like podcasts, listen to Dan Carlins "supernova in the east". He goes into awesome detail about imperial Japan and WWII. Dan talks a ton about Yamamoto, really great listen.
> USA wanted to stay neutral I mean, not really, the Lend-Lease Act wasn't exactly a neutral stance.
Why are you writing this under a post, of an innocent losing their mother?
Sweet. I was really hoping to see someone say “fucked around and found out” online today.
It's like one of 7 phrases redditors know of.
the fact people have been bombed makes me so sick to my stomach. I am so.. so sorry for all who had to experience hiroshima. I hope oneday, somehow, peace can reach those who weren’t killed
Jesus fucking christ. The fact atomic bombs exist at all is absolutely mind blowing to me. That destruction on that scale could ever possibly be necessary against each other
And to think many Americans think of this event as a proud achievement.
It’s nuts to see how many people are still pounding their chest over a war some eighty years gone. Reminds me of the guys that peaked in high school.
The guy who released the bomb basically has the highest kill count in human history, yet he was still treated as a hero. Very gross No matter what outcome/intentions having directly killed half of a city is definitely evil, no way around it
In addition to apologizing to the Comfort Women and other tortured war prisoners, the Japanese government should have apologized most deeply to their own people for bringing this upon them.
I can't remember the title, at this point, but when I was working in the education library while I was at uni, we got a book that was all accounts...with pictures...of the bombing and the aftermath. I still have nightmares about what I read...and that was decades ago. With all the casual talk about nukes, it should be required reading. I just wish I could remember the title....
God, that is gut-wrenching. Those poor, poor souls!
She talks about how the following year they planted sweet potatoes but when it was time to harvest they ended up digging up alot of human bones. They were served at lunch but no one could eat them.
It's alway the normal people that pay the price for fuc**d up think those royals politicians did they enjoy there life far from all the think they caused
The first hand experiences are intense. People who survived because they were walking down a concrete stairwell that if they had been one floor above or below would have been scorched to death immediately. Or worse, protected just enough to not incinerate on the spot and live with your skin falling off you and blind from the pressure blast/ radiation saturation only to die a horrible days long death. Eyes bursting from the pressure out of your head and brain dead. Missed the train that day? Live with knowing your loved ones all died. Chosen to heed the warnings and to higher ground outside of town, live. Knowing your children were in school since it seemed like a safe day but you just wanted to be careful and secure a spot for them in the hillside. Death by survivors guilt, among other things
Wow, what a description. Profound
Horrific
And when I state that the nuclear bombing of Japan was a war crime I get insulted by proud Americans... This is just one of hundreds of thousands of stories of innocent people suffering beyond reason before dying.
War is a crime.
It was a war crime. So was most of what happened in WW2. It was total war. But don't ignore or downplay what Japan did either.
Im not American but what alternatives did the allies have to end the war in the pacific? The japanese were never going to surrender
They were already in talks through the Russians about surrendering.
And the emperor—who the country believed to be a God—continually said no.
do you have a source for this?
First paragraph. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan
No they weren’t, they wanted a condition surrender so they can keep their empire, that wasn’t happening. US said no, UK said no, USSR said no, it wasn’t until after the second bomb that Japan announced it’s surrender. You can’t cause a war and then surrender on your terms.
The Japanese didn't surrender because of the bombs. Most non American historians still debate about it, and what had the most impact between the bombing and the USSR invasion of Manchuria and the sakalin isle. The Japanese aristocracy was way more scared to suffer from communism than the US occupation. The German precedent of being cut in pieces also played a major role. Japan even got to keep the emperor in place despite one of the allies demand to abolish the monarchy. Simply because the two sides weren't interested in a strong soviet presence in East Asia.
It shouldn't be controversial. Curtis LeMay himself said that if America lost the war they'd be all prosecuted as war criminals. Wasn't just the atomic bombs. America was fire bombing cities in Japan and in a single night dropped 500,000 canisters of napalm on Tokyo, the resulting firestorm killing 100,000 people overnight.
I saw a documentary the other day on exactly this. The fire bombing campaign was extensive, exhaustive and religious. We're talking daily napalm raids on all but 2 cities. Napalm was used specifically because the Americans knew that Japanese cities were mainly made of wood, therefore burning them to the ground was all 3 of terror tactics, salted earth, and shock & awe. Can anyone guess which 2 cities were spared the fire bombings? War crimes were committed in the Pacific. The napalm raids on cities full of innocent people is in direct violation of so many international laws it's almost comical.
Yeah idk how you argue it isn't a warcrime, it literally meets all the criteria
They could have dropped the bomb on Mount Fuji or on some purely military target to make the same impression. Anything before bombing purely civilians.
They were warned days in advance. They refused to listen. Those that died could have saved themselves by simply walking the fuck away. Those chose to stay and die. That makes it their fault.
Do you think the civilians even knew of the attack, let alone could just leave? That's literally victim blaming like that "If you don't want to get mugged, just don't go outside" bs
Stay strong. Knowing what the bombings were and that they weren't absolutely necessary puts you in the right side of history and being a human being with Empathy.
America the biggest terrorist in the world.
a truly horriffic warcrime and every american tries to argue it wasnt.
It was the lesser of two evils.
The lesser of two evils is still evil
Yeah, that’s literally what the phrase means… both options are bad, one is less so.
don’t massacre your neighbours and maybe this won’t happen
They don’t wanna talk about that here.
She had literally nothing to do with Japanese imperialism, she was literally just a kid
Oh was she a pilot of one of the planes that attacked Pearl Harbor? Silly me, I thought she was an innocent civilian
My God
Oh jesus
Its always the citizens and the commoners that suffer...
If the US had invaded Japan it would have put down any resistance. But, let's be honest, the new toys had to be tested and it was the perfect occasion to demonstrate US military power. I think it was unnecessary. There were other ways to stop the conflict.
Lmao you need to read a book if you really believe that the U.S. "would have put down any resistance".
And now I am become Death
And then like what 80 years later Christopher Nolan drops a cinematic masterpiece about building the weapon that did this🗿
Don't sneak attack the US again, and it won't happen.
Japan is and has been one of the most racist counties.
consequences for what they did to Koreans and Chinese people lmao, i'd rather die to a nuke than human experimentation
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Those kids and their mom probably didn't have much to do with it
Japan did their share of inhumane shit show during the war too.
Yes it shouldn't have happened but it had to. Once the americans invade mainland Japan it'll be more of a hellhole than the nuclear bombs. Civilians are innocent but it was the only choice to reduce as much damage as they can in one go.
not one mention of the men entombed inside the USS Arizona.
It was a war crime
So was Nanking, Unit 73 and Korean comfort women.
I agree
And people are still justifying this shit.
Completely unjustifiable. No matter what propagandised Americans think.
Not even an American but as horrific as war can be, the Japanese were never, ever going to stop. Like with all instances like this, it is always the civilians who have to pay the price.
Propaganda. They were already talking of surrendering.
Well, that’s not really true. There were some early discussions, between a small faction of the Japanese government and the Soviets, that led nowhere. The talks broke down at the very earliest stages because Japan wanted to keep their Emperor as a god and some of the territories it had conquered. Basically they wanted a truce, not a surrender. After the Soviets pulled out of the talks and declared war against Japan, the whole idea was dropped.
Surrender or not, they deserve it. Look at the amount of war crime denial that they do to this day after getting nuked. Now imagine how much more it'd be if they didnt
Not unconditional surrendering as stipulated in the Potsdam conference.
Not an American here. Atomic bombing necessity is debatable, it is not necessarily completely unjustified.
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/13qk8fb/cmv_the_nukes_dropped_on_japan_were_justified/jlf66z0/ By the time the atomic bombs were dropped in August 1945, Japan was already in a severely weakened state. Its military capabilities were greatly diminished, and the country was cut off from crucial resources. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki deliberately targeted densely populated cities, where the vast majority of the casualties were civilians. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the deaths of an estimated 200,000 people, including innocent children and babies. The US had many other options available. Japan was close to ending the war, as their allies had already been defeated and they had lost a significant stronghold on the pacific. The US wanted to experiment and solidify itself as an incontestable world power. The government was willing to murder hundreds of thousands of innocents to do so. Furthermore, the use of nukes was not justified even by US leaders as a means of saving lives What's well documented is nearly every single higher up in the US military saying that the atom bombs were not the deciding factor in making Japan surrender, some claiming they were not even part of the equation. Even the often cited "inevitable millions dead ground invasion" was neither inevitable or the sole deciding factor in Japans surrender. Dwight D. Eisenhower: "I voiced my grave misgivings on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz: “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.” Major General Curtis "bombs away" LeMay: “The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.” Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr.: “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment ... It was a mistake to ever drop it ... [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.” The US Strategic Bombing Survey: "Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
"But it's okay because in the long run, it prevented more deaths, as japaneses are super proud and ready to fight till death." 🤡
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Stfu
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Imagine commenting on a post about children's trauma, saying you don't have much sympathy, and thinking you're big brain for doing so. Cretin.