• whelks_chance
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        1 year ago

        Bomb something else. Certainly don’t bomb two cities. If the objective was to show it could be done twice, then the second bomb need not kill anyone, it just needs to be dropped.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t think you understand how effective firebombing was…

          Firebomb and nuke a random Forrest and it looks the same after.

          A nuke would literally flatten where it landed. It would erase whatever had been there. The threat was Japan would be completely erased and so irradiated that it couldn’t be rebuilt. Cities that had existed for thousands of years would just be gone.

          It was the only option that was worse to the Japanese than surrender.

          Going back to how effective firebombing was, it was killing just as many civilians. I think you qualify the atomic bombs as so barbaric, because you don’t understand how barbaric shit was before their invention.

          The biggest battles were often in cities where people were still living. The rich ran off to the country, but even they didn’t fare well when an invading army came across their estate.

          • gbuttersnaps@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The fire bombing of Tokyo killed more people than either of the atomic bombs. I don’t pretend to know the right decision about the Bombs, but I know the casualty estimates for Operation Downfall included 400,000 US deaths and 5,000,000 Japanese deaths. I think I would have been hard-pressed not to make the same decision, whether it was right or wrong.