Nuclear attack survivors, 70 years later, fading away

"the United States shocked the world by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki"

I wonder how many people in various countries that Japanese soldiers were in were saved from the war being ended at this time, rather than having the war drag on for who knows how many more months without the atomic bombings...

The U.S. Absolutely made the right decision with the dropping of the bomb. The Japanese in WW2 were as fanatical as ISIS are today. The war would have dragged on and on for years.

Would Japan rather have won the war or the bombs dropped on them? If Japan had won the war, forget every freedom you take for granted today.

It was determined a land forces invasion of Japan would had had an astronomical death toll on allied forces as well as Japanese military and civilians. Was it a good decision? In retrospect we can have our opinions. It certainly was devastating. Sooner or later the first use of nuclear weapons would have to have been used. Sooner than later is better considering the increased destructive force.

Sadly Japan as a whole had to suffer from the decisions of select few.

The Russian invasion ended WWII. The use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was nothing more than a brutal and cynical experiment on live human subjects. The Americans who justify the mass murder of women and children with nuclear weapons are no different than the Neo-Nazis who claim it was necessary to gas the Jews.

After the American military occupied Japan they abolished press freedom for approximately seven years and censored all Japanese media from reporting on the suffering of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki victims. The U.S. also set up labs in Hiroshima/Nagasaki to study victims of the nukes. No substantive medical care was offered.

The use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was nothing more than a brutal and cynical experiment on live human subjects.

Riiiiight.

I actually thought that Japan was on the verge of surrendering anyway... I certainly don't think dropping A bombs on them was justified. A bomb dropped on a naval attack force at sea yes, military target, but on cities? If Dresden was a bad idea, this was worse.

Lets see ,those two cities had a few hundreds schools and tens thousand schoolchildren that suffered the worst imaginable murder.Absolutely the right decision to nuke Children,women ,civilians etc. yeah.Disgusting.

Wow. I'm very surprised to see some say the bombs were a good thing. The only reason it happen was Pearl Harbour. Which was a horrible event as well. But at least it was military.

Wow. I'm very surprised to see some say the bombs were a good thing. The only reason it happen was Pearl Harbour. Which was a horrible event as well. But at least it was military.

And of course by attacking Pearl Harbour the Japanese kicked America into WW2 and thus shortened the war...

I think the people who are saying nuking Japan was a good idea will no doubt by a majority be American.

About nuclear weapons, you should watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGhACYA1mjU

What are the US thinking? If you read the comments, you can see how much people are afraid and scared because of the US policy.

The idea that Japan would have just kept on fighting until extermination is laughable. The Japanese leadership ALWAYS knew that the war with the US would end in a peace settlement. What they wanted was a few military victories to scare the Allies into accepting more lenient terms for Japan. They were betting on repulsing an American attempt to storm a beach on Kyushu to provide that, after which the Allies would be more amenable to accepting a negotiated surrender less unfavorable to Japan (at least, that's what they thought).

The nuclear bombings were not required. Records from the Japanese government at the time don't indicate they played an enormous role in the decision. The Soviets preparing an invasion of Japan weighed way more heavily on the Japanese leadership, as Soviets would invade Manchuria, depriving Japan of its last resource-producing region.

Of course, the war would have ended much earlier had the Allies not decided they would only accept an unconditional surrender. The Japanese government had already sent feelers through third parties to see if they could negotiate peace, one of the only points they were adamant on was that the emperor not be prosecuted or gotten rid of, they weren't so keen on occupation either. But the Allies continued on, killings hundreds of thousands more people until they got their unconditional surrender... and ended up preserving the emperor anyway.

As is so typical NO CONTEXT is provided wrt to the 2 bombings & the pathetic posters spouting Japan was ready to wave the white flag.......WTF! let me repeat W...T...F!!!

I feel sorry for those that were killed & the HORROR the survivors endured, BUT the blame lay in Tokyo, as it STILL DOES TODAY!!!

End of story!

As is so typical NO CONTEXT is provided wrt to the 2 bombings & the pathetic posters spouting Japan was ready to wave the white flag.......WTF! let me repeat W...T...F!!!

I feel sorry for those that were killed & the HORROR the survivors endured, BUT the blame lay in Tokyo, as it STILL DOES TODAY!!!

End of story!

In your opinion ;)

"Of course, the war(and the Nuclear bombing of kinder gardens,,primary schools.highschools etc would have been avoided) would have ended much earlier had the Allies not decided they would only accept an unconditional surrender." Heads up.

Truman said "Thanks God for the atomic bomb?"

I don't even.

These guys who ordered their soldiers to die to the last rather than surrender in any situation, these guys who locked up kids in planes packed with explosives and ordered them to crash on allied ships, these guys who used women and children as weapons against the invading force, these guys were not ready to surrender. That's an ENORMOUS LIE and nothing else. It is much more than likely that, for all the horror they caused, the A-bombs saved many more lives than they took. The only perspective of these mad men was either victory or an enormous suicide at the scale of a nation, at least as long as the One who was supposed to 'be' the nation all by himself was alive. That's why after the A bombings the only question ignoble Hirohito asked his generals was whether one could build Him a shelter, capable of withstanding A bombings. It is sad to say so, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki were probably not an error. The big American error which bears poisoned fruits up until now and might continue to do so in the future was to spare criminal number one, to depict him as a victim, to offer him a lifetime golden job and to cheat the Japanese people. That was an American-size pedagogical error. If only one was to be hanged, the Japanese Hitler was the one.

@onagagamo "The U.S. made Absolutely right decision with the dropping of the bomb."

While the U.S. accomplished that horrible act of genocide in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Soviet troops were fighting IJA in Manchuria. Americans targeted innocent women and children while Soviets fought Japanese combatants. Talks about "bombs, saving lives of American soldiers" are sign of stupidity.

I find these survivors inspirational. I told them that when I met them in Hiroshima... that they inspire the world to live in peace and what they went through should be remembered and respected... the victors in the war always want Japan to apologize for its role in the war.. but never has anyone on those planes made the effort to apologize or show any remorse or compassion for their actions... we must learn from the sacrifices of so many and we must never forget least this happen again...

The Americans had a new war toy and had to find a way to use it on actual people before the war ended. Just another one of our medical experiments with weapons. I have no illusion about any morality of my American government or of the America people in general. If it makes us money, we will do it, period. It is why we have "In God We Trust". How better to identify our real god, Cash.

@kchoze

Why laughable? Its the plain truth that the japanese imperial army was preparing for mainland fortification, mobilizing millions of men. One reason not more people died in Hiroshima is that they were evacuating, not to protect, but to shift the industrial war production to smaller towns and mountains.

People left in Hiroshima were dismantling or keeping afloat the industrial needs. thoses with no war machine value were not even considered to leave, despite the knowledge of the Hiroshima prefectural government and military that a huge bombardment could come any day.

Japan never surrendered, its a huge chance that the military surrendered to the emperors call, undermining the cult around him stronger then Tojos war call. If the emperor would have been killed this would happened:

1) Massive a bomb drops on Kyushu, possibly up to 5 in one year to make the massive landing force of about 500.000 US soldiers possible on Kyushu ( putting them on contaminated territory) Up to 500.000 japanaese deaths in the first 4 months.

2) Winter 1945 would have been the Kanto region invasion, destroying first what was left of Kanagawa and further putting Tokyo to ashes. Again up to a million casualties on japanaese side.

3) Invasion of Hakkaido Sapporo and Hakodake, to repulse a possible russian invasion, destruction of both cities would have happened like in Manila, as the marine forces in theses cities were in the thousands stranded without ships to embark in august 45. All fanatics.

4) Getting all pockets of resistance destroyed through out japan, would either put US soldiers lives in the same danger as on Iwojima and Okinawa or the US would have had to destroy each city around these pockets first to kill resistance and fanatism . . . .

5) Eventually to stop the japanese from fighting, you would have needed to either rage a vietnam war with 1 million US soldier casualties (80%deaths) and spare the japanese population as far possible or keep US boys casualties low by crashing everything hostile with overwhelming force. There would have been more then a dozen a bomb drops on japan to succeed this . . . . . japan was ready to fight to death taking the entire population with them out of national pride!

Last but not least historic researches would have estimated:

US soldier casualties: 800.000 deaths /1.5million wounded

Japanese army and resistance casualties: 3.000.000 deaths /most died of wounds

Japanese civilan deaths: up to 10.000.000 / a good portion do to refusing surrender calls during the invasion, being forced in to suicide, starvation and human shields in cities.

The japanese army was never fighting for their people, women, children in first place . . . . the massacres and brutality level of how the massacres in china were perpetrated were only possible with young man from INAKA provinces already beaten down in life without a proper family structure to protect or support them, this reality is why japanese men were so brutal. . . . the image of well educated japanese citizen eating ramen in Ginza during the war is a myth, representing no reality of japan of the time. The brutality of the IJA was only made possible do to the uneducation, harsh living, poor recruits from the country sides anyway, like the SS recruits of cheko, polish, ukranien militias. They too came from poor harsh backgrounds and didn`t make a fuzz to hammer jewish children skulls in front of mothers or kill their own citizen out of greed.

The fact is well documented that no invasion would ever have taken place as the Russian invasion ended the war. Additionally, no US Pacific top level military commander supported either nuking civilians or an invasion. They collectively felt Japan was defeated and ready to surrender. Here is an excellent starting point for their feelings.

http://doug-long.com/quotes.htm

In this regard, six of the seven highest ranking US WWII officers are on record as stating that using nuclear weapons on Japanese civilian targets was an unnecessary and cowardly atrocity. I place far more weight on their opinions than the fantasy "casualty" figures invented by US politicians as risible justification for mass murder of innocent women and children with nuclear weapons.

As Brig. Gen. Carter Clarke stated:

"….we knew we didnt need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didnt need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

American politicians decided to nuke hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children needlessly. They chose to do this despite clear knowledge that Russia`s imminent declaration of war in early August 1945 would cause Japan to surrender, without invasion, upon nearly any terms the U.S. chose to dictate. That makes them complicit in the two most heinous single event atrocities in human history.

@Christopher Blackwell. Right. C'mon everyone knows "The business of America is business". What a beautiful concept.

Yawn, same worn out arguments on both sides. It happened, can't be changed, and the world has moved on. Japan simply never should have started a war it could not win - period.

BTW, people don't "fade away" they die.

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

All else is bs.

A side of some incredibly ignorant and plainly scary comments in here.

Do you see people demanding an apologize to the U.S. government? It was a horrible thing to use that weapon. Was it justify to do so? may be, may be not.... but it is something that has passed... we should not forget the act, but most Japanese have forgive the act. Both Japan and US, with all their flaws and problems, are now partners ... (may be friends?)

Let the past in the past... sadly some (many) are not able to do that....

On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."

in early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."

ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

It was a horrible weapon & a horrible thing to do. But the other inevitable choice was an invasion which would have made Japan a nation of corpses. They were training civilians to fight a modern army with spears or to run at tanks with explosives!!! Invasion would have been the other horrible choice. As it was, Japan was cauterized, a war ended, & a nation got to survive. There were two horrible choices, & the one less horrible taken.

LeeBearTea & asdfgtr

Valid comments but out of context. These comments were made short after war and were only ment to comment on direct military action under rules of war. The US generals had an easy take on Hiroshima do to the easy to understand nature of the happening: one plane, one bomb = city gone!

I support LeMay, who did the only the right thing for the exact matter of time.

Japan was not defeated and no near defeat at all. All they had lost was the industry, but other then germany and the Wehrmacht that was build on total maneuverability, hence needed constant industry out put, the IJA decided to suicide them selves by fortifying japan, without the need for industrial complex support. Okinawa and Iwojima or the Battle of Peleliu illustrated that very well. The overwhelming US logistic and machinery superiority was of no use against low tech fortified japanese. Each hole was to be costly burned out and losses amongst US soldiers were abysmal. A fortified japan mainland would have been 100 times Okinawa and Iwojima together. Hiroshima was a strategic target and by dropping the bomb ended stubborn military production. The weapons out putted from Hiroshima, transferred to fortifications in Chugoku and western Honshu, down to Kyushu. Operation Ketsugo is the name of that and the IJA had 60 divisions ready to fight to the end, an end that also envisioned looting and scorched earth tactics against its own citizen when pushed land inwards.

Again japan was ready for collective suicide and by august 45 the US propaganda leaflet initiative that dropped millions of leaflets over japan to surrender, had no feedback what so ever from any japanese instance, hence the frustration of the US generals. Lemay prior the massive Tokyo bombing was loosing too many airmen to make a difference. Japan was immune to strategic bombardments, hence the firebombing tactics.

Anyone who thinks that the japanese were willing to surrender is wrong, the general population had no free will, police and military were controlling everything. And millions of men were digged in already waiting for the final battle, Operation Ketsugo.

The emperors speech was a coincidence and nearly failed as the militarists wanted to silence him. Just imagine if they did succeed? Just google Operation Ketsugo and you quick understand the nature of it. Okinawa was the blueprint for Operation Ketsugo.

Theres a difference between logistic and logic future military anticipated defeat, forwarded by many in this thread and the harsh reality of an enemy willing to sacrifice its entire army and civilian population in a final battle to death!

Pearl harbour 2,500 deaths 1000 wounded, Millitary bases hit....Japan estimated 200,000 Japanese CIVILIANS woman, children, and old people, non soldiers, it was murder no matter how many people try to dress it up, as i put on my Facebook.

"Apart from the moral questions involved, were the atomic bombings militarily necessary? By any rational yardstick, they were not. Japan already had been defeated militarily by June 1945. Almost nothing was left of the once mighty Imperial Navy, and Japan's air force had been all but totally destroyed. Against only token opposition, American war planes ranged at will over the country, and US bombers rained down devastation on her cities, steadily reducing them to rubble."

"What was left of Japan's factories and workshops struggled fitfully to turn out weapons and other goods from inadequate raw materials. (Oil supplies had not been available since April.) By July about a quarter of all the houses in Japan had been destroyed, and her transportation system was near collapse. Food had become so scarce that most Japanese were subsisting on a sub-starvation diet".

There was no need to invade or nuke women and children. This should be obvious to all but the most bloodthirsty of terrorists. 

As Brig. Gen. Carter W. Clarke, the officer in charge of preparing MAGIC intercepted cable summaries in 1945, stated:

"….we brought them [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

Prior to nuking Hiroshima, the U.S. military had already obliterated over 60 Japanese cities with napalm and white phosphorous. This conclusively proves that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had little value other than as an opportunity for the US military to conduct nuke testing on human subjects.

In this connection, Paul Tibbets is on record as stating that Hiroshima was set aside as a "virgin" test city. Additionally, the primary targets at Hiroshima were residential in nature with the overwhelming majority of casualties being civilian. In fact, Hosokawa Elementary school was mere meters from the epicenter of the Hiroshima nuke strike.

The fire-bombings and nuclear attacks on Japan were war crimes on par with the holocaust suffered by the Jews.

There was no need to invade or nuke women and children. This should be obvious to all but the most bloodthirsty of terrorists. 

As Brig. Gen. Carter W. Clarke, the officer in charge of preparing MAGIC intercepted cable summaries in 1945, stated:

"….we brought them [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

Prior to nuking Hiroshima, the U.S. military had already obliterated over 60 Japanese cities with napalm and white phosphorous. This conclusively proves that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had little value other than as an opportunity for the US military to conduct nuke testing on human subjects.

In this connection, Paul Tibbets is on record as stating that Hiroshima was set aside as a "virgin" test city. Additionally, the primary targets at Hiroshima were residential in nature with the overwhelming majority of casualties being civilian. In fact, Hosokawa Elementary school was mere meters from the epicenter of the Hiroshima nuke strike.

The fire-bombings and nuclear attacks on Japan were war crimes on par with the holocaust suffered by the Jews.

"Japan was not defeated and no near defeat at all." Dude! You're brainwashed. After Midway, it was all downhill for Japan.

The very fact that you mention, "Japan was ready for collective suicide by Aug. 1945" Justifies both Atomic bombings. Operation Ketsugo?? who cares-

asdfgtr Apr. 30, 2015 - 11:57PM JST This conclusively proves that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had little value other than as an opportunity for the US military to conduct nuke testing on human subjects.

How ridiculous. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries had two plants along the coast of Hiroshima City. One of them is in Ebaokimachi, part of Naka Ward, and was called “Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Hiroshima Shipyard” during the war. According to a report on the A-bomb damage in Hiroshima, the number of people working at the two plants, at the time of the bombing, was approximately 9,200. About 3,200 of them were mobilized students, while the others were young women and Korean workers. In 1944, the Hiroshima Shipyard completed its first ship, the Hisakawamaru, which then set sail. From April 1945, the plant began producing one-man torpedoes that made suicide attacks on U.S. ships.

Thank you for proving my point. The Mitusbishi Heavy Industries factory was so far away from the Hiroshima target that of the 9,200 working at the factory, there were only 3 deaths.

The actual target of the Hiroshima nuclear strike was a crowded residential district full of children. Honkawa Elementary School was so close to the epicenter of the nuke strike that all 400 elementary school children were killed. A kill ratio of 100%.

This conclusively proves that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had little value other than as an opportunity for the US military to mass murder the maximum number of women and children and conduct live human experiments on civilians.

@asdfgtr

here is one good article about the Kamikazes on japantimes

Especially after the end of the Battle of Okinawa, all military personnel were Tokko and they didn’t even bother with the formality of “volunteering ceremonies” anymore. The understanding at all ranks and in both services was that all planes and pilots were now slated for Tokko.if you’re a trained pilot, be ready for Tokko.

That was actually related to the relative paucity of air defense efforts over Japanese cities. When Allied planes started making bombing raids in force and strength over Japan from fall 1944, the numbers of Japanese fighters engaging the B-29s fell off drastically after the first few months — almost to zero once the bombers started having fighter escorts after the fall of Iwo Jima. This was not because the Japanese military ran out of planes. Between the Japanese army and navy they had something like 6,000 planes at the time Japan’s surrender happened. They had been holding back those planes for Tokkō.

So they let the cities burn, basically, because the Japanese military looked at air defense against the B-29s and their fighter escorts as a waste of pilots and aircraft. Better to save them for Tokkō to use when the Americans invaded Kyushu and Kanto.