samboct
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Joined: 1/17/2007
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I suspect that part of the reverence that we hold for the people who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes from Hollywood and scare propaganda about radiation (although it is pretty nasty.) The figures I recall were some 50-60k dead at Hiroshima, and 25-35k dead at Nagasaki (the bombardier missed.).
Of this death toll, perhaps 10% was due to radiation and fallout. (I guess you could include the extra 100-200 munched by cockroaches some months/years? after the attack in there too if you like.) The rest of the casualties were due to the fires started by the bombs or blast.
Methodologies of starting fires and then burning people are all pretty nasty. Napalm- effectively jellied gasoline tends to stick and burn through everything. Flamethrowers were also really nasty. And both the Germans, British, and I think the US all used phosphorus- a nasty compound that keeps burning no matter what- even when dowsed in water. The only trick was to put sand on it, but then when the sand came off, it'd start burning again. There were hundreds of people in Hamburg that died in the river from phosphorus burns. So if you'd give me a choice between being at ground zero and getting vaporized pretty damn fast or getting splashed with phosphorus and taking 3 days to die in agony, frankly, I'd rather be at ground zero. Hence, I'm not sure why we think that dying from an atomic bomb is any worse than dying from any other damn type of bomb. The only difference is that it took just one a-bomb, versus thousands of conventional and inciendiary devices to start the firestorms of Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo. (Meatcleavers numbers jibe with what I recall.) But the numbers he left out were the 200-300,000 dead in Shanghai (think it was Shanghai, might have been Nanking) when the Japanese bombers came over for a month and dropped bombs on the undefended city- prior to Pearl Harbor.
Lady E- the raid on Dresden was requested by the Red Army, since it was being used as a major way point for troops heading to the Eastern Front. Effectively the fact that the city was historical and had a very swollen population fleeing westward was also a function of the atrocities that the Germans inflicted on the Eastern front- but at the time, the death toll was seen as collateral damage. Fiurestorms were very difficult to predict- the atmospheric conditions had to be just right, and the weather forecasting wasn't good enough to predict it accurately- but if they could be started-firestorms worked. After Hamburg, Goebbels said that if there were half a dozen raids like that- the war was over. People were shattered by what happened there- it really did strangle morale. The RAF tried, but wasn't successful again at starting that type of blaze till Dresden.
I often get pretty annoyed with revisionist historians who distort the facts and more importantly the knowledge of the time in order to make a "moral" point. One can certainly argue how much freedom people had in Japan to oppose the war, but there was such tight control over the media, that people simply had no idea of what was going on. For example- when the superbattleship Musashi was under construction- elaborate screens were built to hide the fact. Can you imagine- trying to hide a 900 foot, 70,000 ton battleship? But I don't think there are any photos taken of her during her construction- which shows how tightly the populace was controlled- Japan was much more tightly controlled than Germany. The idea that these people were going to get the idea to surrender if that's not what their leaders ordered is laughable. Hence, no demonstration bombs- too easy to pass off as a trick. Nor do I have any qualms about the second bomb- while Japan was trying to make up its mind, US servicemen were still dying in conventional attacks. How long should we have given them?
The idea that Japan was going to surrender- extremely unlikely given what had happened up until then. During the invasion of Saipan (and I think Okinowa) the civilian populace committed suicide in the thousands by jumping off cliffs rather than face the US troops. They had been told that US troops would beat them, rape them, and eat them- not necessarily in that order. Furthermore, the Japanese troops in China had done exactly that- including bayoneting infants. So I suspect from a Japanese civilian's standpoint, that US troops were going to be monsters was believable. And these people had certainly shown a willingness to die, although the tragedy of the kamikazes is that while the US troops were furious at who they thought were madmen yelling Banzai, the reality was that most of them were scared kids- the most common cry over the radio in their final dive was for their mothers.
Also- Japan was fully prepared for a final kamikaze send off with tens of thousands of small craft with bombs (think about the attack on the USS Cole) along with thousands of aircraft hidden in caves. There's nothing to suggest that they wouldn't have resorted to these tactics had the bombs not been dropped, with US casualty estimates close to 1 million- maybe higher.
So I'm sorry, but I hold no special reverence for the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not unless we include all the people that perished in that war. And the distinction between civilian and military has always been blurry, not just in WWII. Even in medieval times, with all that nonsense about "chivalry", farmers would be butchered because they provided food for the castle- hence the "civilians" would shelter in the castle at the time of attack. I think only revisionist historians get to draw such fine distinctions- and it often reminds of the delicacy of some folks who are aghast at the butcher, but happily eat steak.
Sam
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RE: Remembrance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 
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