Atomic Bombs from WWII

[Rodion Romanovich]

Re the fore-warning or not discussion: The allies did indeed drop warnings about most of (or all of) the regular bombing raids of cities, however they did not warn before the nuke raids.

As for whether the nukes were needed or not, it's clear that the Japanese were in serious problems already before the first nuke. They were facing massive starvation, all their ports were mined, pretty much all of the Imperial Navy destroyed, the Soviets had launched their massive offensive into the only territory the Japanese still had any considerable strength, and they had lost a majority of their planes and AA - they had so little left that during several of the months before, fighter escorts were considered unneeded. Whether the first nuke had any effect at all is difficult to say, but in any case it clearly gave the Japanese an excuse to not die in "an honorable defeat", as many Japanese commanders expressed the refusal to surrender, because the nuke was something that they couldn't in any way fight, it was, in comparison to regular weapons, superhuman, unreal. So the first nuke might indeed have been useful, but not in the way most people seem to be claiming. Not for scaring and setting examples, but for giving the commanders an excuse for breaking the honor traditions.

However it's strange that there was no regular flyer drop of warnings prior to the nuke bombing raid, unlike what was the doctrine for the regular bombing raids that happened at the same time. What's also a bit scary is the reasoning behind the second nuke drop. The Japanese had already offered their surrender when the second nuke was dropped. In official statements it was clear that there were scientists insisting on dropping the second nuke, which was of another type than the first nuke, to "get a chance to test it in practise". What is positive is that they chose to drop the second nuke over a smaller city, Nagasaki, instead of another large city. However I tend to agree that they should have used the normal doctrine of dropping flyers over Hiroshima before bombing, and that they would have skipped the dropping of the second nuke, which was clearly dropped only for research purposes. Some would also claim that the lack of flyers warnings over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were due to a desire to get research material on the effects of the bombs, but that's not totally clear. In defense of this, it's understandable that a war-tired nation after a war that it didn't choose to fight (USA was attacked by a regular declaration of war by the official representatives of the Japanese nation and by the army and navy of the country) chooses a slightly immoral approach to end the war when they finally turn the tide. Compared to the extensive city carpet bombing raids carried out by RAF over Europe, and the city carpet bombing raids carried out by USAAF over Japanese cities with regular bombs, the nukes actually only constitue a fraction of the civilian massacres.

As for effects on the world caused by radiation etc., I have to disagree with the people who claim it is as if it never happened today. For example all metals in the entire world today are still affected by the radiation from the nukes of 1945, and this has forced people to take metal from - guess what - the scuttled Hochseeflotte at Scapa Flow, which hasn't been affected by the radiation because the metal was below water at the time. There were also noticeable weather effects for the decade following upon the nukings. Furthermore, the death caused by nuke was more horrible than any death that could be caused by regular bombs, with the skin being peeled off the victims and falling off. The nukes of such detonation power are also horrible weapons due to the fact that their only possible use is to cause mass murder of civilian targets, not elimination of military targets. So while the first nuke over Hiroshima might have been understandable, we should at the same time, when the subject is up for discussion, remember that any usage of nukes in our modern world, would result in a disaster. Modern nukes are several hundred times more powerful than those used back in ww2, and once one country starts using nukes all countries will soon use them, with the result being a nuclear winter, probably death to all of mankind. It's probable that even a single one of, or only a dozen, of the heaviest of the modern nukes, would cause so severe environmental destruction that it'll be impossible to live on earth afterwards.