Did this man have any morals at all.....(Hiroshima)

[RoyKinnear]

I do not grieve is demise

Elizabetth - the Japanese were not on the verge of surrendering when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima - they had rejected the proposals put forward after the Potsdam conference in July 1945 and showed no sign of wanting peace with the Allies. As I said in an earlier post there is some evidence that the Japanese would have conceded after the first bomb but the US wanted to test a different type of bomb hence the bomb on Nagaski.

However, this is nothing to do with the pilot. He had no option. He was chosen for the job and had to do what he was ordered to do. If it hadn't been him it would have been somebody else. It has nothing to do with his morals. He and many others believe that there would have been worse casualties had he not done his job. They knew what the Japanese were capable of and wanted to make sure that they didn't do it.

The Japanese have refused to have any nuclear bombs since. It is a shame the rest of world couldn't have learnt from their experience and followed suit.

'Surrender' on their terms, which were that the whole Japanese army would be allowed to remain armed and return to Japan, with no invasion by the Americans.

This would never have been acceptable to the Allied forces

HairyIrene, I'm sure you didn't realise but its not appropriate to call them Japs. Not very PC

neicie..i agree its a lesson we all should've learnt from

ppb..i see what you mean but have always done it to their faces!
it was more abbreviation than meant as insult..

just a thought..er, does that mean you dont say 'brits'?

No Brits as never been used in a derogatory manner the way Japs has.

how do you know?
in other cultures it could be used that way..
we could be insulting ourselves and not know it..
yanks, then? is that un pc?

Oh for goodness sake! What the hell is wrong with saying japs? In what way is that offensive?

well am pretty sure its not as offensive as an atomic bomb, desiderata!

i lived there, called them this to their faces, and as general abbreviation: jap rice, jap ways,..no one ever said they were offended nor looked it...

i cant stand pc-ness when it gets like this, semi ridiculous..
FTR i would never offend someone knowningly deliberately...about their race, creed, colour etc....

I'm sorry, where I am from its a very racist comment and calling someone a yank is actually offensive.

My husband who is British says he would never call someone a Jap

To refer to a Japanese person as a Jap is a racist comment?

I think one of the reasons for dropping both bombs as a couple of people touched on earlier was to warn off the Russians.

Many people (even at the time) beleived that Japan would capitulate before too long and lets me honest the allies weren't really concerned about how the Japanese civilians may have been treated were they?

The British forces were on their knees and the AMericans had had enough of a European war - there was rela concern that the Russians who were advancing at the time would just keep going across Europe. The atmoic bombs were a meesage to Russia - we don;t need manpower we have these weapons and we will use them.

I have no idea if this theory is correct but have heard it from severl informed sources.

"To refer to a Japanese person as a Jap is a racist comment?" - not being japanese I wouldn;t know but isn't "paki" considered racist and thats only a shortening of Pakistani (originally).

What about aussi? is that offensive?

is that a spelling mistake..?

I don't think so. I've never heard it used in a bad way before

Yes, it's a spelling mistake, Taz.

Now that's offensive

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr once recalled looking down at the 'ugly black smudge' that shortly before had been a city with the sun glinting on it.

I don't think that he was unmoved by what he had done, even though he said he had no regrets.

i watched a programme where they re-enacted the day the bomb was dropped, it was very grim, so sad.

did anyone else see the programme about windscale that was on a couple of weeks ago? very frightening stuff

Surprised no one replied to that one! Yes - I saw it. Very scary - not least because the Govt of the day laid the blame squarely at the feet of those whose decisions actually saved this country from catastrophe.

Many more people died in the 'conventional' fire-bombing of Toyko than in Hiroshima. Dresden and Hamburg also had huge death tolls, too.

My father told me that by the end of the war people had become almost hardened to these things. Hardened and exhausted by years of fighting and shortages (if you were in Europe). And they didn't know all we know now about the effects of radiation. They just wanted it over and the troops brought home.

My godmother's first husband fought in WWII. Was sent to bring home the POWs from Japan. He was horrified beyond belief at what he found - and this is a man who had had served for six years and been a volunteer in the International Brigade against Franco.

She says they made his ship circle the Japanese islands several times, because the POWs who had survived were too physically and mentally ill to return to the UK. He died shortly afterwards, she believes due to exposure to radiation.

The people I know who have been through WWII all seem to agree that the atomic bomb was terrible but necessary.

MB - I did look at the site, felt I owed it to the people that it happened to, to not to ignore their stories.
Found it truly shocking, unthinkable and so, so sad.
With regard to Mr Tibbets, I cannot imagine he really knew what his feelings were after such an incident. None of us have walked in his shoes. I don't judge him, but do pity him being the tool of someone else's decision and having to live with it for so long.

I cannot describe my thoughts any better than some of the superb comments already written on here, so I won't even try.

Suffice to say, I find the op at best misguided (understatement).

Have been following this fascinating thread
and, of course, agree with the position so
eloquently put forward by martianbishop.

I also came across this harrowing related article (sorry, it's the Daily Wail) which
again hammers home what kind of enemy the Allies were facing:

'"The Japanese murdered 30million civilians while "liberating"
what it called the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from
colonial rule. About 23million of these were ethnic Chinese.

"It's a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust."