Morris R. Jeppson talks about apologizing for the atomic bombings

Why not make the plane apologise as well – break it up into scrap as punishment, or something equally silly.

Japan was already attempting to surrender but the US wanted to test their weapon on a real populace and also to show their power off Russia.

Yes war does suck, it is a game of the rich and powerful that costs of the lives of the middle and lower class. When will people realize that there it is not other countries that are their enemies but rather the upper class. Stop thinking horizontal but instead vertical.

Ha. Clinton never said that, you silly person, you.

“…they would dropped it on as many west coast cities as they could have.”

Which would have been precisely zero. Allied forces on Saipan or even Okinawa would be a better target.

But yeah, imagine if everything north of Niigata was like North Korea.

You didn’t do those things, but you have directly benefited from them. That’s the point. But I can understand your perspective.

As for the Nukes, why weren’t they dropped on Imperial / Government buildings? Why were they dropped in civilian areas? It was definitely no mistake, everything was well planned.

A good comment, but I would like to emphasise the casualty predictions were very confusing and confused, with different branches or offices coming up with different predictions, with the ones Truman was given not being all of them, and add a note to the effect that the different branches had different ideas about how to the end the war (the army was not actually happy with the idea that the final victory could be won without them).

The storyline “the bombings saved a lot of lives which would have been lost in an invasion” is the often iterated official version (excuse for mass murder, really), but not the real historical reason. Clearly the US leadership knew that they had won before they dropped the bombs.

“Did Japan attempt an armistice? Yes. The problem: [A] they went to the Soviets who actively hid that effort from the Americans”
The US were reading all Japanese military and diplomatic communication at that time. They knew about that effort. Plus, there was a second attempt of surrender via Switzerland.

For a very well researched historical account of this I can only again recommend “Brighter than a Thousand Suns” by R. Jungk.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial

During the Edo Period (1603-1867), Hiroshima City was the leading castle town in the Chugoku and Shikoku regions. During the Meiji Restoration (1868), Hiroshima City was redeveloped as the capital of the Hiroshima Prefecture. Built on a delta, boasting the three natural treasures of sea, rivers and mountains, and graced by large trees, the city attracted schools and businesses and developed thriving commercial districts. However, the steady accumulation of various military facilities indicated that Hiroshima was developing two faces: academic and military. The heavy industries that began to develop in the 1920s had turned into military plants by the latter half of the 1930s. Prior to the atomic bombing, the entire harbor on taken on the military ambience of the Kure naval base.
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/virtual/VirtualMuseum_e/visit_e/vist_fr_e.html

Memorandum of Conference with the President, June 6, 1945, Top Secret
Source: Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Henry Lewis Stimson Papers (microfilm at Library of Congress)

I told him I was busy considering our conduct of the war, against Japan and I told him how I was trying to hold the Air Force down to to precision bombing but that with the Japanese method of scattering its manufacture it was rather difficult to prevent the area bombing. I told him I was anxious about this feature of the war for two reason ;first , I didn’t want to have the Untited States get the reputation in outdoing Hitler in atrocities. Second, I was little fearful we could get ready the airforce might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that a new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strengh . He laughed and said he understood
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/15.pdf

On other occasions, Truman claimed that Hiroshima was bombed because it was an industrial center. But, as noted in the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, “all major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the city – and escaped serious damage.”90 The target was the center of the city. That Truman realized the kind of victims the bombs consumed is evident from his comment to his cabinet on August 10, explaining his reluctance to drop a third bomb: “The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible,” he said; he didn’t like the idea of killing “all those kids.”91 Wiping out another one hundred thousand people . . . all those kids
http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico22.html

Hansell received a directive on targeting that marked an important point in his tenure. In light of the success of the previous day’s precision attack, he was shocked that the new directive specified a full-scale incendiary attack on Nagoya. He reflected later,

We were beginning to show some improvement in bombing accuracy, both visual and rad er. Now we were directed to reverse our painfully achieved progress in accuracy and turn area bombing It was no good trying to achieve real accuracy with incendiaries. Their imprecise ballistic characteristics precludes any accuracy in delivery even if sighting performance should be perfect. (1944 December 19 ) k

Genreral Curis LeMay （page 171 Among the Dead Cities）

We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night of march 9-10 than went up in vapor in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Killing Japanese didn’t bother me very much at the time……I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal….every soldier thinks something of the moral aspect of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let bother that you, you’re not a good soldier