Today August 6, 1945
We dropped the bomb on Hiroshima
And the day my mother was born 78 years ago

70,000 killed with 2 atomic bombs that’s crazy!

And how many more would have died without them?


Conventional bombing killed more in Tokyo.
At least from.the initial.bombings.

We’d probably all be speaking Japanese if we hadn’t.

I understand that was just from the initial blast. Many more perished from radiation poisoning afterwards. Bad deal all around but it put an end to some of the madness.

Lets hope we never have to do anything like it ever again.

I posted this on another thread but I'll share here as well.

Not really as the japs were beaten by that point but refusing to surrender. They were prepared to fight to the very last man, woman and child.

We would have to had to killed almost all of them at the cost of nearly a million of our own.

Pretty much senseless either way.

I can say this in college I had a history professor and all he said was when we cover the Abomb drops on Japan I don’t want to hear one word because I was 18 on a ship heading for the invasion of Japan with an estimated 1 million casualties total he figured he had a good chance of being one. He said it was the happiest day of his life .

No the Japanese were done but with the fanatical defense they very sure to put up in defense of their homeland the war would have been months longer maybe a year with extremely heavy American casualties, think every Japanese soldier a suicide bomber, every plane a kamakaze, every ship and small craft a ramming bomb, that’s what they were facing, it’s hard for most to understand the true depth of fanaticism faced by the US back then

It was a sad thing but it saved American lives and was the right decision m

And just bit of largely unknown history but the Japanese had also completed an atomic bomb and tested it so the first bomb while it shocked them did not break there resolve to protect their homeland it was the second, because it was their belief that it to produce one would take all a country’s resources and a year to manufacture so when we dropped two it shocked them down to their toes and they didn’t know how many we might have, some people take for granted atomic bombs so many have been produced nowadays but back then it was a major undertaking

It was my understanding, that we discovered jet aircraft in some of the caves after Japan had surrendered,,, it was clear that the Nazis and Japanese were both experimenting with the technology. If I remember correctly,,, the Japanese were only a few months away from perfecting the jet aircraft…. Our mustangs and Corsair’s would not be a match

Germany did field jets in the last stages of the war. But it was to little to late. For Japan it would've been even worse, they were down to scraping the bottom of the barrel and coming up short.

My Dad was flying out of Mindoro when the bombs were dropped.
Following week, they moved back to Tinian.
He never did warm up to.anyone or anything Japanese

Law Dog, you obviously never heard about the "Meetinghouse" bombing raid on Tokyo the night of March 9/10, 1945.

That's ok, most Americans have never heard of that raid as well. An estimated 100,000 dead and a million homeless. Curtis LeMay finally found out to effectively use the B-29s against Japan. By August 5, 1945, large swaths of urban Japan had been burned out, un-hit cities were getting harder to find.

What happened on August 6 and August 9 was actually a blessing to millions of Japanese (both military and civilians) and American servicemen that would NOT die during the invasion of the home islands. The atomic bombs gave weak-willed Emperor Hirohito a way out of the continued destruction of his country. Japan has never been a military threat to anyone again and is now going through a slow depopulation as their birth rate is far below replacement levels and they don't allow immigration at this point. Young Japanese don't seem to want to have very many kids. Perhaps the final rebuke of their militaristic, empire-building past...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

In March, 1973 my destroyer pulled off the gun line in Vietnam and we headed to Sasebo, Japan and into drydock for six weeks of repairs. While there, I took an opportunity to travel to (and tour) Nagasaki, where the second A-bomb was dropped. I stood at "ground zero". That bomb was detonated 1500 ft above the ground.
During the 2+ hour bus ride each direction I observed many caves, bunkers and shafts in the sides of the mountainous terrain. U.S. casualties would have been horrible if we hadn't used the A bombs.

FIL went there for the cleanup and to scuttle our boats.
Said the natives were happy to see them.
He had a different perspective than the experts.

Dad always said the fire bombing of Dresden Germany was worse than the Abomb I believe him he was in the ETO

When you consider both Europe and Japan had ancient cities cram packed with wood and timber framed construction it is easy to see just how much worse firebombing could be.