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Originally Posted by cyberxxx
Just FYI: Genetic sicknesses are transfered from parents to children. This doesn't matter how long away from Hiroshima these kids are living today if their parents (grand parents) were in the zone of radiation. The guy whos hand you'd like to shake has sentenced them to a terrible and painful death  |
Well I don't want to sound unsympathetic to a generation not even involved in the conflict, it is of course unfortunate for them that they might end up paying for the mistakes of their ancestors. Or the 'mistakes of the US' as you see it.
My point was that given the circumstances at the time I really see nothing wrong with what was done. People didn't know about the long term effects of radiation. They did know that alot of Americans were dying at the hands of the Japanese at the time. Many were being tortured. The US was involved in a battle that could probably never be totally won through conventional means by either side because of the mentality of the Japanese. The A-bomb saved a lot of American lives; if the option to simply retreat had existed that would have been preferable but the Japanese would have simply regrouped and attacked again. Hell the enemy was even doing shit as stupid as attaching bombs to large balloons and hoping they'd drop "somewhere" over the western US - so you can't really say the Japanese were all that concerned about avoiding civilian targets in the US either. They had already demonstrated that they didn't care about civilian casualties by doing that.
Given the choices of having them come to the US and bomb indiscrimenantly or end it on their turf quickly, I'm glad the latter was the result.