Why was America the first and only country to drop the nuke?
 

Is it because we're a bunch of dark age animals who relish the idea of randomly killing hundreds of thousands of women and children?

Or is it because we were the first to develop it and the only country to have one at the time and didn't fully understand the consequences?

If Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy or France had developed the nuke first do you think they would have used it during WW II knowing what everyone knew at the time?

yes

because we are the bomb

because america is unique

i think a handful of reasons.

1. to put an end to the fighting on the south pacific. Guys were dying by the thousands on those islands and from kamikazees.

2. to send a message to the rest of the world

The "dark age animals bent on random killings" theory is the one being proven every day since the bombs (two of them remember!) were dropped.

Because it was the right thing to do, and it's a real pity that we only had 2 atomic bombs at the time.

since this time, Japan became a US colonie, Damm they love and play Baseball in there :1orglaugh

[QUOTE]Originally posted by FATPad
didn't fully understand the consequences
[/QUOTE

yep.. so talk to the palm..

btw - didn't france drop bombs on their own people for testing purposes sometime around '97?

:eek7

Lol, they dropped it in the pacific ocean if I'm correct.

fuckin a.

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance. - Aesop

Because the US had the bomb first and because World War II was a war in which targetting civilians became increasingly accepted.

The idea that mostly European and Asian nations killing 50 million of each other including 17 million civilians is somehow overshadowed by at most 200,000 Japanese civilian casualties is an insult to those who lost their lives.

Get that. 17 million civilians were killed during World War II. How many died in Hiroshima or Nagasaki? 120k-200k depending on which estimates you use. Less than 1% of WW II civilian casualties occured at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The firebombing of Tokyo was more deadly than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The bombing of Dresden was more deadly than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Regular bombs killed 100x more civilians than atomic bombs did in World War II.

There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the casualty figures for World War II would have been much higher had the US not used the atomic bomb. How many weeks of war between the USSR and US against Japan would create 200k casualties?

Truman didn't fully understand the consequences, (as v.p. he didn't have the info on the anglo-american program). The first side to have it would have used it, that's what spurned the anglo-american

side as it is called, although it was more an international program (against the Axies)...and why plenty of scientists from Europe joined the Manhatten project and later gave secrets to the ruskies.

So they (Truman) used it, but in comparison to firebombing and carpet bombing it wasn't any worse than conventional methods of warfare over cities in WWII as far as total damage.

It was just the sheer damage in comparison to the size of the bomb and the time it took.

blah blah blah blah blah... I'm bored already.

fucking liberal arts educated fuckers.

Here's to the Sons of Eli. :drinkup

Actually all the estimates of projected casualties at the time if we had had to invade Japan were in the millions. This to finish a war with a country that had committed so many horrific slaughters throught southeast asia and china that it makes the germans look kinda' civilised.....

But anyway Colin....you should know better.....there's no room for the use of historical fact and logic on this board!:1orglaugh

Why was America the first and only country to drop the nuke?

To prove a point "ours is bigger then yours"

Yup. I didn't mention that because I know the counter-argument. "Maybe the estimates were wrong. Look who made them"

Of course, it doesn't really matter what the estimates were. You'd have to be pretty nutty to think the USSR and Japan wouldn't have inflicted far more casualties on each other than those that died at N. and H. The continued US bombing of Japan alone wouldn't have killed any less than at Hiroshima or Nagasaki either.

Oh, yeah. The US had to end the war before the USSR got to Japan. In retrospect that was a fine idea. Japan has the world's second largest economy in the world and is a strong ally of the US. Only Japan and the US have economies > $2 trillion US.

LOL I guess I did phrase that wrong :1orglaugh I didn't mean I thought they were bombing Paris or anything hehe

But I remember reading that there were inhabited islands in the area they were testing. There were huge protests all over Europe during that time.

if there was no pearl harbor there wouldn't have been nagasaki:321GFY

Wrong.

China = $5.7 trillion

India = $2.66 trillion

Germany = $2.184 trillion

Its a stupid question, revisionist history notwithstanding.

My father, still living, was a fighter pilot in the navy and we have discussed this many times.

Fact: We were dying like flies on each island as we made our way to Japan, as many as 25,000 americans dead per island.

Fact: Invasion plans called for one million dead Japanese after we invaded the homeland (mostly civillians) and 100,000 or more additional dead Americans.

Fact: It was not well understood then that low level radiation was dangerous.

Fact: The nuke saved at least a million Japanese lives, and many Americans. Anyone with a brain would appreciate that another 2 years of war would not have been good for the Japanese, who refused to surrender even after the first atom bomb fell.

Because We Do Chicken Right!

Now c'mon now! There are WAAAY too many facts there! You know that FACTS are not tolerated here on GFY whenever a serious topic about world events is being discussed! We just won't stand for it!
We will only deal with crackpot theories, revisionist history, and slanted, single-view sources of information. Any statements resulting from an in-depth, board-reaching knowledge of actual events will please be expunged from the record imedeately!



:) :) :)

Well, it's not a stupid question. I see people continually mentioning the US using nukes on Japan as if everyone else had the chance to use a nuke first and refused out of some moral superiority.

So I figured I would ask.

btw, I agree with your answer.

No, you're wrong Einstein. I specifically said US$ to distinguish it from "purchasing power parity" which you used.

These are the numbers you should use since the nations themselves use them.

http://www.australianpolitics.com/fo...conomies.shtml

More people would have died by NOT dropping the bomb.

Although Japan was the target, it made all our rivals in WWII back the fuck off.

blame the Japanese:thumbsup

Germany developed rocket technology during WW2 and had no qualms in using it first. However, its reluctance and decision to not use chemical weapons does support your second alternative theory.

:thumbsup

A few issues that have not been brought up here:

The USA did not know for sure that the bombs would work. True, they had tested them and found them to work, but the reality was that they had only a few bombs made and they were left with a situation where they could announce to the world we are going to drop the bomb on some island and then it was a dud. Or they could bomb the chosen city without announcement and let the results speak for themselves.

The United States had an effective blockade of Japan and could have chosen a path of starving the enemy into submission. Japan had strong peace negotiations with the Russians and a good blockade could have accomplished the same result of the ending of the war. As previously mentioned in this thread, the USA also had issues with other Allies in the war they were addressing with the bomb's use. A blockade certainly did not have the same impact as everyone in world seeing firsthand the macdaddy weapon we possessed in action.

Good quote.

I hope that history thinks of American's as being really really violent...

so that when a new highschool needs a mascot, it can be called "The American" :thumbsup

Hey Scoreman,

Stalin broke the terms of his treaty with Japan towards the end of the war and invaded Manchuria which was occupied by Japan at the time.

and if the germans had 1-2 more years in the war, the US would have been FUCKED, and nyc would have been a wasteland.

to smack the world's proverbial forehead with our huge mighty cock and leave a cumstain that'd last for generations.


US = big mutha fuggin pimp.

Funny I was watching a show on one of the discovery channel about WWII.

The reason is we were the only ones who had it, we were attacked and we did it instead of invading. It saved alot more lives than it took believe it or not.

Hitler was trying to develop one and had plan to drop one on NYC but, the Russian starting winning the war at that t9ime, they suffered over a 1,300,000 deaths man unbelievable never knew that.

:2 cents: