Watch Oppenheimer: The Decision to Drop the Bomb, a 1965 Documentary Featuring J. Robert Oppenheimer

There was no need to drop the atom­ic bomb on a Euro­pean city. The War in Europe was over. Ger­man sol­diers were sur­ren­der­ing in droves.

Con­trast this with the last two major bat­tles in the Pacif­ic. At Iwo Jima, 6,900 Marines were KIA. At Oki­nawa, over 12,000 Amer­i­can ser­vice­men were KIA. After both bat­tles just a hand­ful of Japan­ese sur­ren­dered.

The Japan­ese were not going to give up the fight. They were ready to die and they would have tak­en many Amer­i­cans with them.

I think this “racism” argu­ment is pop­py­cock.

The Japan­ese were being bombed to obliv­ion. They knew there was no win­ning this war. They sig­naled that they were will­ing to sur­ren­der as long as Hiro­hi­to, who they con­sid­ered to be God like, would not be harmed. Tru­man stuck by his uncon­di­tion­al sur­ren­der stance, so no deal was made. The bomb was then used.

IF TRUMAN HAD RELENTED ON UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, AND LEFT THEM WITH THEIR EMPEROR JAPAN WOULD HAVE SURRENDED AND THE BOMB WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN DROPPED. THE IRONY WAS THE LEFT HIROHITO AS EMPEROR AFTER THEY SURRENDED ANYWAY.

We were for­tu­nate that Japan sur­ren­dered after Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, for we only had 2 atom bombs in our arse­nal!

Apart from the fact that the Japan­ese had been suing for peace and that the chiefs of staff said drop­ping the bomb would not give any mil­i­tary advan­tage, and apart from the fact that the so-called “strate­gic bomb­ing” was the great­est act of state ter­ror­ism in his­to­ry (inten­tion­al tar­get­ing of civil­ian pop­u­la­tions), the oth­er ques­tion that is not posed is this doc­u­men­tary is this: Why, espe­cial­ly at the point where Japan was crip­pled, was it thought nec­es­sary to have a land inva­sion at all? There was noth­ing more the Japan­ese army could do at that point. A con­tin­ued siege would have accom­plished an even more com­plete vic­to­ry. Clear­ly, the bomb as dropped as a demon­stra­tion to Stal­in.

To counter the still dom­i­nant myth jus­ti­fy­ing the use of the bomb, please read the fol­low­ing:
A must read on the fal­si­ty of the dom­i­nant nar­ra­tive around the atom­ic bomb­ing of Japan:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020–08-05/hiroshima-anniversary-japan-atomic-bombshttps://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020–08-05/hiroshima-anniversary-japan-atomic-bombs

Opin­ion: U.S. lead­ers knew we did­n’t have to drop atom­ic bombs on Japan to win the war. We did it any­way
We’ve been taught that the U.S. had to drop atom­ic bombs on Japan to end World War II. His­tor­i­cal evi­dence shows Japan would have sur­ren­dered any­way.
http://www.latimes.com

Amer­i­ca, in short, was wag­ing war against Japan’s civil­ians. “The pre­pon­der­ant pur­pose appears to have been to secure the heav­i­est pos­si­ble morale and shock effect by wide­spread attack upon the Japan­ese civil­ian pop­u­la­tion,” the Strate­gic Bomb­ing Sur­vey con­clud­ed. “Cer­tain of the cities attacked had vir­tu­al­ly no indus­tri­al impor­tance.”

https://www.salon.com/2022/10/30/when-we-criticize-in-ukraine-we-should-remember-the-bombing-of-tokyo/

When we crit­i­cize Rus­si­a’s war crimes in Ukraine, we should remem­ber the bomb­ing of Tokyo
Of course Rus­sia should be con­demned for tar­get­ing civil­ians. But the bru­tal U.S. air war on Japan was much worse
http://www.salon.com

http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/09/dont-let-the-victors-define-morality-hiroshima-was-always-indefensible

Don’t let the vic­tors define moral­i­ty – Hiroshi­ma was always inde­fen­si­ble | Kenan Malik
The deci­sion 75 years ago to use atom­ic bombs was fuelled not by strat­e­gy but by sheer inhu­man­i­ty
http://www.theguardian.com

This series of inter­views with Ells­berg is, to my mind, essen­tial edu­ca­tion, not only in terms of inte­grat­ing the past, but of know­ing what we still face. All of the episodes are worth watch­ing, but I rec­om­mend that you at least watch this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwNRWcl5usQ

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The Largest Act of Ter­ror­ism in Human His­to­ry — Daniel Ells­berg on RAI (4/13)
http://www.youtube.com
The British bomb­ing of Ham­burg in 1942, and the Amer­i­can fire­bomb­ing of Japan in March 1945 that killed as many as 120,000 peo­ple in one night, cre­at­ed the con­di­tions for the atom­ic bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki which were con­sid­ered mere exten­sions of the fire­bomb­ing tac­tics, says Daniel Ells­berg on Real­i­ty Asserts Itself with Paul Jay …

To me, it is more clear (then before watch­ing this doc­u­men­tary) that the main rea­son for drop­ping the bomb was to show it to Sovi­ets.
Killing hun­dreds thou­sands Japan­ese was col­lat­er­al dam­age. The His­to­ry of a cold war and beyond — proves it.
And: The ques­tion that was not men­tioned on the end: Why Nagasa­ki?