70 years since the bombings ,what did we learn

[happy_tiger]

Been watching a couple of documentaries in the last few days in regards to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

To see two groups of people who after putting up with the horror that they went through and become so segregated by their own countrymen was arguably the worst thing the Japanese did

The Americans argued that a million soldiers would of been lost trying to invade Japan to end WW2

What do you think we as humanity learnt about this and do you think we will ever see another atomic attack on a major city or country ??

 

[Blackpearl]

yeh happy, watched the same doco's were very good imo.
the US in particular suffered many losses at places like tarawa, guadalcanal and iwo jima during the pacific island ' hopping ' campaign in the last few years of the war.
things may have been different if FDR had not died before the end of the war and there may have been another method such as bombing with conventional weapons as japan were virtualy defenceless after the fall of iwo jima.
no doubt there were plenty of political motives for the nuclear option.
i have some old box brownie pics taken by my father of hiroshima when he was in japan with the occupation forces and the destruction of the city is quite unbelievable.
watched another doco about how close the soviet union came to launching nukes during the cold war in the 70's from a soviet submarine when its captain was on weapons launch waiting for the go ahead and then lost contact with the kremlin. he did not know if a nuclear war had started or not and he decided not to launch.
scary stuff.

 

[Geo]

Atomic Bombs kill people…

 

[Cultured_Bogan]

The only thing we've learnt is that we likely won't use them to kill again, just threaten all corners of the planet with them via M.A.D policy.

We still have no problem wiping each other out with conventional bombs, cruise missiles, drone strikes and fully automatic rifles but…

 

[happy_tiger]

I guess the thing that surprised me the most was how their own people treated them

They didn't even acknowledge that a bomb had been dropped ,even after Nagasaki

The Emperors first move was to send the army in to grab every male youngster for the Army

The Yakuza grabbed many orphans and turned them into gangs , looting ,robbing and stealing

They were treated like dirt , you didn't hire them , you didn't let them marry into your family , the Americans came in to help and preceded to just do tests to see how radiation affected a person's life

 

[Tim Sheens]

For mine it was a power play,the first shot of the Cold War across the bow of the soviets and stating that we have the power and are the only ones with it.

 

[cunno]

unfortunately how to build bigger and better bombs, proliferation…

 

[TurnStyle]

Great thread HT; I really enjoy the serious ones like this as they are really interesting and I love to read posts like (most of!) these that show the depth of knowledge possessed by quite a few of our fellow wtfers.

"I am become death".
There is a series called The World at War that is 26 episodes long covering WWII that is fascinating. I don't think a lot of people (kids) realise the profound effect it had on the world we live in.
Blackpearl I've also seen about that soviet submarine captain. He went against orders to withhold from launching just off Cuba. He alone was practically responsible for avoiding the start of WWIII: amazing when you think about one decision one man in a submarine made and the outcomes.

 

[guyofthetiger]

It may have meant winning WWII, and may also have led to ultimately winning the Cold War, but I fear we've learned from neither.

Power has only bred more hunger for power, as always.

Warfare as defence of national interests, has morphed into warfare as a means of attack in the form of economic imperialism.

The one-off mass destruction of nukes has been replaced by the constant 24/7 destruction of drone strikes.

Some 70+% of the Afghan/Pakistani population are believed to suffer PTSD from the constant threat of drones above.

Drone pilots in Arizona and Rammstein have the same PTSD symptoms of frontline soldiers even though they go home to their families at the end of a shift.

The dropping of the nukes was perhaps when we first entered the grey area of what actions you might justify if you're sufficiently convinced you're the good guy.

And to that end, it was perhaps much clearer that we were the good guys with good reasons to defend ourselves, than it is understanding why we do what we do sometimes now.

So maybe we haven't learned much at all from those terrible events.

_Posted using RoarFEED 4.2.0_