RE: The Nuking of Japan
September 12, 2012 at 4:21 pm
(This post was last modified: September 12, 2012 at 4:34 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(September 12, 2012 at 2:52 pm)TaraJo Wrote:(September 12, 2012 at 2:46 pm)teaearlgreyhot Wrote: If they had to use the bombs, why bomb civilians? That's what I don't understand.
I actually read something on how they decided on the spot they dropped the bomb. The military generals were told they had to select at least two certain cities to be 'test spots' for the bomb. The selected sites, they didn't want those sites to be damaged at all so they could really judge how much the damage the bomb did. That meant they had to select sites that we weren't going to need to bomb otherwise.
One of the candidate cities was Kyoto. But that city was struck off the list because it was deemed worth preserving for cultural and historical values because it had been the historical capital of Japan before the capital was moved to Tokyo during Meiji restoration.
(September 12, 2012 at 2:46 pm)teaearlgreyhot Wrote: If they had to use the bombs, why bomb civilians? That's what I don't understand.
Because it was used specifically as a terror weapon, to explicitly terrify the Japanese and implicitly terrify the Russians.
As it happened the Japanese were already adaquately terrified and the Soviets weren't terrified. Stalin had a fairly good idea of the size, scope and progress of American bomb project before Harry Truman himself has ever heard of the bomb, and had calculated Soviet Union could absorb 40 atomic bombs and survive, and knew the Americans had very few bombs.
