Thoughts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Was it the Right Call?

BAYLOR said:

Did you live in London during the Blitz?

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I'm 39.

My family were in London and Liverpool during the blitz. Or they were in the war.

Ray McCarthy said:

Irrelevant.

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Not really


The War Before my time , all I have is the history ive read.


What about you Ray?

BAYLOR said:

The War Before my time , all I have is the history ive read.

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I grew up in Liverpool surrounded by men and women who were involved in the war. Walked passed a variety of bomb sites on a regular basis and could name who died there - and exactly how. (whether they drowned, burned, suffocated etc). My life was filled with first hand accounts of World War II. Including a German Great-Aunt.

My gran sat in a chair every air raid listening to the bombs fall. My grandfather was a deeply scarred navigator. My Great Uncle Ken was a conscientious objector so served in the ambulance corps. Great Uncle Harold was in the Merchant navy. And my Uncle got sent back from being evacuated for burning down a school.

My family were in London and Liverpool during the blitz. Or they were in the war.[/QUOTE]


But you were not there , you didn't experience the blitz. They did, that generation might have a different perspective on Dresden then you ?

BAYLOR said:

But you we're there , you didn't experience the blitz. They did, that generation might have a different perspective on Dresden then you ?

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They formed my perspective. It's very difficult to say bombing children is unfortunate when you've seen it before your eyes and had your heartbroken by it. A good portion of the men I grew up with were disillusioned and damaged or pacifists.

AnyaKimlin said:

They formed my perspective.

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Long after the fact. Hindsight something that our generations have the luxury of . Im not unaware of the dark deeds of the Allies , there are alot of them. But what the Germany and Japan and Italy did was far worse and I shudder to think of the millions more that would have died had they won.

BAYLOR said:

Long after the fact. Hindsight, It's easy look at the past and draw the different conclusion then the people living the history. .

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You asked what their perspective was. They had lived the same atrocities and no way would they call it unfortunate. And there were a lot of men who came back who did not think any of the war was worth it. And they were still living the pain in the 1980s. It wasn't long after the fact -- I don't think you understand how long the consequences of World War Two lasted on the cities who had been bombed.

AnyaKimlin said:

You asked what their perspective was.

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They lived it our generations didn't. They might be less inclined to agree with your point of view?

BAYLOR said:

They lived it our generations didn't. They might be less inclined to agree with your point of view?

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They agreed with me. I sat listening to them talk every Thursday. That's where my view came from. Whether it was right or wrong they would never ever have white washed the war.

AnyaKimlin said:

They agreed with me. I sat listening to them talk every Thursday. That's where my view came from. Whether it was right or wrong they would never ever have white washed the war.

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The war wasn't pretty Anya , not at all. 55 million people lost their lives . There is one possible way it all could have all been prevented. Woodrow Wilson , David Lloyd George, George Clemenceau and Vitorro Orlando could have crafted a better Treaty of Versailles. One that didn't bankrupt and embitter Germany.

BAYLOR said:

The war wasn't pretty Anya ,.

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My objection is to the way you play down just how bad it was. Not that war should or should not happen.

What I don't think you are coming even close to grasping is how long the consequences of being heavily bombed lasted in cities like Liverpool and Dresden. In so many ways. Cleaning up, injured people, PTSD etc And we didn't have to cope with the nuclear aftermath. You say "you're not of that generation" and no I wasn't in the blitz but I was still witnessing the aftermath. If my gran and auntie had been Hiroshima rather than Liverpool I almost certainly wouldn't be here.

AnyaKimlin said:

My objection is to the way you play down just how bad it was. Not that war should or should not happen.

What I don't think you are coming even close to grasping is how long the consequences of being heavily bombed lasted in cities like Liverpool and Dresden. In so many ways. Cleaning up, injured people, PTSD etc And we didn't have to cope with the nuclear aftermath. You say "you're not of that generation" and no I wasn't in the blitz but I was still witnessing the aftermath. If my gran and auntie had been Hiroshima rather than Liverpool I almost certainly wouldn't be here.

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And my objection to your point of view to is the whole we should be all be guilty and lament over the past forever, which is neither practical nor realistic. It won't change the past .

And yes Im well aware of how it many years took for Europe and Japan to rebuild after the war and all the various other consequences of that war.

BAYLOR said:

And my objection to your point of view to is the whole we should be all be guilty and lament over the past forever, which is neither practical nor realistic. It won't change anything.

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Acknowledgement is not guilt. I don't feel guilty about Dresden or Hiroshima. Or even Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria -- I don't have to feel guilty to believe my country acted poorly. And I think more empathy for the "other" side is where we start to reduce war. You can't legislate for that.

And yes Im well aware of how it many took for Europe and Japan to rebuild after the war.

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Really? You've never mentioned the human cost, just the fatalities. To quote from a lady just back from Syria "There are far worse things in war than death."

Yes ive read about what happened to the survivors in Germany and the rest of Europe after the fighting had stopped. It wasn't pleasant and idealistic like the news reel portrayed. It was years of hell for them. Ive read all about.



Anya it easy to read about history and make lofty judgments. I do it myself.

While I was born a few years after WW2 I lost an aunt & a grandfather in the Coventry blitz of 1940.
I also lost a cousin of my mother in Italy who was hiding from the Germans to avoid forced labour.
As for Dresden and the rest it's easy to say that they brought this upon themselves but it's true.
Sherman had it right, WAR IS HELL ! ! !

BAYLOR said:

They lived it our generations didn't. They might be less inclined to agree with your point of view?

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So you have no right to comment on Dresden right?

Dinosaur said:

So you have no right to comment on Dresden right?

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That i did not say. And while we're on the topic , What are your thoughts on Dresden?

Bomber Harris always gets the blame for Dresden, but it was Churchill and his cabinet who ordered him to do so, why I don't know?
Harris was reluctant to do so as there were much more important targets.

It's easy to judge the actions of others with hindsight; far harder to make the right calls at the time. I do think the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were avoidable, and I do think that a military target would have been more appropriate. Of course a military target wouldn't have had the same impact as wiping out a whole city, but would still have sent the right message to Japanese high command.

In wiping out those civiliian populations, I think the US was telling the Japanese that they were prepared to do anything to end the war. I also think that they wanted to see the effectiveness of the weapons. For me , this is wrong, and if it had been done by the Germans or the Japanese would have been deemed a war crime. But then again so would Dresden, the Dambuster raids , and other similar Allied assaults that killed more civillians than military personnel.

Like I said , it's tough to judge. The Allies (particularly with the war against Germany) wanted to make sure that they ended the war as quickly as possible. Hitler kept going on about his 'wonder weapons', and for all the Allies knew he might have stockpiles of biological or chemical - or possibly even nuclear -weapons to use as a last throw of the dice. Perhaps more importantly the had to make sure that the Soviet army didn't advance too far West.

If the atomic weapons hadn't been used , perhaps the Japanese may have not surrendered completely , and there may have been Allied prisoners in Japanese camps for years whilst negotiations took place. Perhaps a less effective peace treaty would have given them time to re-group... who knows?
In all honesty I think that all that would have happened is every city in Japan being carpet bombed into oblivion before a ground invasion leading to the loss of many lives on both sides.

But does the ends justify the means? I guess the answer can't be 'yes' or 'no', just 'that's war'. I know that it sounds more than a little trite, but that I think is the only answer.

I believe the disaster already existed, the people were already dead in some reality or the other, those who made the choice, made it to live through their guilt.