Obama goes to Hiroshima, and naturally, screws it up

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

What do you base that on, if I may ask?

He's correct - the primary reason was to encourage the Japanese to end the war (and saving millions of lives, American, Chinese, Indo-China, Korean, and yes, Japanese too).

It was also intended to influence the Soviets, and hedge their thoughts of invasion of Japan, But that is considered an influential but not deciding factor. Remember - Truman did not initially know of the bomb until shortly before

Missing in this discussion is that Germany and Japan both had Atomic weapons programs and had their efforts been more fruitful and advanced, things might have been a lot different.

[scottw]

Originally Posted by JohnR

He's correct .

it's hard to be wrong stating the obvious "not the sole reason"....I think the rub is the suggestion that we did it to "field test" a weapon of mass destruction on folks("inferiors") that we didn't necessarily mind mass destroying(women, children and the like) simply because they didn't look like us or our "european brothers"....

[wdmso]

Originally Posted by scottw

it's hard to be wrong stating the obvious "not the sole reason"....I think the rub is the suggestion that we did it to "field test" a weapon of mass destruction on folks("inferiors") that we didn't necessarily mind mass destroying(women, children and the like) simply because they didn't look like us or our "european brothers"....

As unpalatable as that may be by todays standard .... I strongly feel thats exactly what we did... most of the propaganda of that time reflects that believe

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by wdmso

As unpalatable as that may be by todays standard .... I strongly feel thats exactly what we did... most of the propaganda of that time reflects that believe

Jesus God Almighty, that was the world then. Japan set out to enslave the world. They were well on their way until we stepped in. Captured American fliers WDERE TORTURED AND EATEN, and back then we didn't give a sh*t about political correctness. We wanted to annihilate them. They were barbaric monsters.