Changes
cat
In historical retrospect, it was perhaps the lesser of three evils. There's no guarantee that the generals and the people would have surrendered, in the short and long runs - consider the belief of the people of Nazi Germany that they had only lost the first World War because their government betrayed them by surrendering. The atomic bombings made sure Japan went down, and stayed down. A land invasion in Japan may have cost more civilian lives as well as costing the Allies a great deal in manpower. The "third" evil I mentioned was that at one point, I believe they had planned on destroying as many as five major cities, but mercifully decided that only two were necessary. --[[User:JonathanDrain|JonathanDrain]] 10:33, 31 July 2007 (EDT)
Mokugatsu! Ring a bell? The US was waiting on a reply to a demand of surrender when they dropped the bomb. (Mokugatsu was misinterpreted as "treat with contempt" when it was in fact "answer pending" (not a direct translation)).
:Suppose you pull up evidence for "mokugatsu", including the actual translation of this word, as well as the actual evidence this word was used on a message intended to be "answer pending". Your statement is certainly not ringing any bells here. [[User:Karajou|Karajou]] 13:00, 25 September 2008 (EDT)
::The contributor above almost used the correct word. It should be ''Mokusatsu'' (黙殺), which does mean "to withhold comment" or in even better terms "to kill with silence" - often used in business parlance <ref>http://www.apmforum.com/columns/boye36.htm</ref>. However, it also means "to treat with silent contempt.", but is very different from rejection (''hiketsu'' 否決) (The word comes from ''moku'' = silence and ''satsu'' = kill.). Unfortunately, it comes down to interpretation and context and in this case it was taken to mean that the terms of the Potsdam Declaration had been rejected, rather than they were being considered. <ref>http://www.jstor.org/pss/3635822</ref>. I am sure [[user:RJJensen]] will be able to provide more clarity on this than I can, but those are the basics, with some English documents I found to support.
::Personally, I would rather the bombs had not been dropped, or at worst one dropped offshore would have made quite an impact on an already demoralised population. Dropping both was overkill. Anybody still in favour of atomic weapons should spend a 6<sup>th</sup> August at the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima. --[[User:JessicaT|KotomiT]]<sup>[[User talk:JessicaT|''Hajimemashi<!---->te!'']]</sup> 13:42, 25 September 2008 (EDT)
Besides American GI lives, just think of all the Japanese lives that were saved. We lost 4000 GI's the first week of Iwo Jima. An invasion of mainland Japan would have killed 100 times more than two atomic bombs. I would have favored nuc strikes in China for the interference in Korea. It was a problem left for another generation- ours. Now both countries are America's enemy and both coutries have nuc weapons. -- [[Image:50 star flag.png|14px]] [[User:Jpatt|jp]] 14:45, 25 September 2008 (EDT)
:Do you really consider China to be an enemy, or more of a rival? --[[User:DinsdaleP|DinsdaleP]] 17:20, 25 September 2008 (EDT)
===="Quickly"====
What exactly was so "quick" about the U.S. dropping the first bomb on Hiroshima? Look up statistics on U.S. losses in the Pacific and tell me how "quick" it was. [[User:JLauttamus|Jeffrey W. Lauttamus]][[User_talk:JLauttamus|<sub>Discussion</sub>]] 13:05, 25 September 2008 (EDT)
== It was to keep the Soviet Union out of Japan ==
The allies had agreed to a partitioning of Germany after the victory over Hitler. The United States, however, had conducted the Pacific War practically alone and we did not intend to share the fruits of victory with the Soviet Union after a protracted sea-land invasion of the home islands by both countries. Therefore, Harry Truman undertook to force Japan to capitulate before the USSR could mobilize by knocking out two Japanese cities with the nuclear bombs. The detonations also had a dampening effect on further Soviet aggression until 1949 when they obtained their own atomic devices. [[User:Teresita|Teresita]] 20:11, 11 April 2007 (EDT)
== No ==
i think that we were right to drop the first atomic bomb, but that we should have waited a little longer than a few days for them to surrender, mabey a week or a few weeks for them to decide, but after that dropped another one (although they weren't relatively that bad compared to all of the firebombings in japan)-[[User:Greenmeanie|Greenmeanie]] 00:24, 16 May 2008 (EDT)
==References==
{{Reflist}}
[[Category:Conservapedia Debates]]
