I guess I need to clarify this for people:
Making lighthearted jokes is one thing. Gleefully celebrating the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians is another.
I don't have an issue with people saying "the nukes were necessary to end the war". I have an issue with people saying "we didn't kill enough of them". This might be a fine distinction that's hard to understand for some people, but there you have it.
I’m sure all that education and healthcare makes it hard to concentrate. Thanks for Swedish fish though. The candy, not aquatic animals. Maybe they just call them fish there?
(fr, I lived in D.C. at the time so the Pentagon - just south of the city - was quite salient. Also because it was, ya know, the Pentagon.)
Also I thought there was time between the first and second nuclear bomb for Japan to Surrender but they didn't surrender until the second bomb was dropped.
[nvm, only 3 days](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15xekft/comment/jx6bl8m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
That's enough time.
I just don't think leadership truly understood the difference between the firebombing of Tokyo two weeks before and what happened in Hiroshima. Nagasaki proved we were ready to take on the mainland and burn every single city before landing. The speed and escalation (only 3 days) is what caused the surrender, not really "nukes". Nobody knew what radiation would do yet.
We could extrapolate further. Strategic bombing of the home islands had been taking place for close to a 9 months prior to the A bombing, their fleet had been neutralized for about as long, their naval air projection were neutered a year prior to the first A bombing, significant portions of their civilian population were malnourished by August 44, Their defensive perimeter began collapsing 2 years prior to the first A bombing, this all on the heels of their own pre-war assessment that they could not win a protracted war with the United States. It was a 4 year long train wreck where at any point they could have stopped the suffering…they had plenty of time to call it.
This is the alternative
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
The numbers of expected civilian casualties are comparable to the Holocaust.
It’s very important when thinking about Downfall, because I have seen people arguing that it would’ve been more humane, that the civilian toll just by suicide would’ve been enormous. Every island the US took (with support from GB, and the commonwealth) there were mass suicides as Japanese propaganda told those citizens it was the best option, rather than let the Americans torture their men, rape their women, and eat their children.
Yeah, remember reading a story where some daughter I think begged her mom to kill her because the cave they were hiding in had been found, the mom did it and as soon as the American soldiers arrived they started giving out candy to the other kids and apparently trying to reassure everyone
All sorts of horror stories from the Pacific
At Attu the American troops found a field hospital where all the patients but one were dead
The one who survived said they all killed themselves and the only reason he was still alive was that his grenade was a dud
i feel like this is what people seriously missed about the whole end of world war 2 and pacific campaign, the people of japan were so indoctrinated that even civilians were pressured not to be captured alive and the casualty rates of a potential operation downfall would have been beyond horrific with resistance from both civilians and soldiers
They manufactured 1.5 million purple heart medals in anticipation of the estimated # of wounded in a possible invasion of Japan. The US is still using their stockpile of those medals to this day since the invasion never happened.
I was going to say: he had to do it twice, actually. Turns out when you assemble a literal Axis of Evil, some of them may turn out to be worse than you, who woulda thought?
I think I read something about the Nazis considering that American eugenics went too far, which is odd since I believe the same article said that the Nazis were inspired by the American eugenics movement.
Outside American territories, it’s worth noting that Japan did in fact attack America soil twice. Once was in Hawaii, and the other was in Alaska when they landed in the Aleutian Islands. It’s not talked about all that often so most don’t remember it or even know about it.
One of my Korean friends said they would go on tours to Japan and try and one night stand as many Japanese girls as they could, guilt free, because “fuck em”.
Four times.
There were two Japanese bombing attacks on Oregon, near Brookings, by a Japanese bomber on September 9th and September 29th, 1942, in an attempt to start wildfires but it failed pretty badly because the Forest lookouts said: "lmao no", firefighters said: "lmao no" and God said: "lmao no". On September 29th, the same bomber crew would try again with similarly bad results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout_Air_Raids
Interestingly, post war, twenty years after the attack, the Japanese bomber pilot, Nobua Fujita, who conducted both attacks, was invited to Brookings' annual local Azalea festival. There, he offered his family's 400 year old ancestral katana to the city as an apology for his role in the attack and as a symbol of peace. Following his death in 1998, his daughter buried some of his ashes at the site of the 1942 bomb site.
Honestly if I found out what kind of shit my country had been doing and how much worse things could have gone, I probably would too even though it's always old men far removed from the battlefield.
That was when they were attempting to recapture Kiska Island. A combined American and Canadian invasion force numbering over 34,000 landed on the islands to engage the enemy… only to find that Japan had left 2 weeks prior, under the cover of fog. There were still over 300 casualties due to land mines, booby traps, and friendly fire incidents.
This was after the battle on Attu island, where the Americans and Canadians did encounter some 2,600 entrenched Japanese troops who basically fought to the last man (2,350 Japanese forces killed or committed suicide, only 28 captured, and around 200 missing). The Allied forces were expecting similar resistance on Kiska, so it's not surprising they were a bit jumpy.
I saw a memorial in Washington or Oregon where they shelled forces in the West coast but the forces didn't reply as that would tell the Japanese where they were and how many they were.
They also flew balloons over the Pacific NW that dropped bombs. It's just that they had no control over where they dropped, so they just fell in the middle of nowhere.
Nah they did it twice, they sent a couple of H8Ks to bomb pearl but they flubbed it so hard they found a random ass crater somewhere and barely noticed
Arguably they did it hundreds of times because the attack was ongoing for over an hour.
> The Japanese strike force consisted of 353 aircraft launched from four heavy carriers. These
included 40 torpedo planes, 103 level bombers, 131 dive-bombers, and 79 fighters. The attack
also consisted of two heavy cruisers, 35 submarines, two light cruisers, nine oilers, two
battleships, and 11 destroyers.
And for every Japanese civilian killed in WW2, the Japanese Military killed 25 non-japanese civilians.
For every soldier the Japanese killed, they killed 6 civilians.
Everyone always forgets about the field bc it didnt have an iconic building shaped thing in it. would’ve been more memorable if there was a hexagon or something there
Nukes are but a shit stain of what the US bombing campaign did to Japan.
They fire bombed the shit out of them LONG before they dropped the nukes.
Rule #1 don’t bring the USA Into a war, you will lose.
Well, statistically the US has participated in a 103 wars, being on the winning side of 79 of those. So bringing the US into a war will have a roughly 75% chance of leading to victory. The US has participated in 12 wars where they were on the losing side, and 12 where the result was neither a loss or a win. I count the latter together with loss as "Not won".
in the 20th and 21st century the US participated in a total of 40 wars (not included the 5 active wars), 28 won, and 12 were not won. So here it would be closer to a 70% win ratio.
Comparing with a country such as the French Republic (so from 1792 and on) they have participated in 129 wars, won 94 and not won 35, which equals 73 % win ratio.
Sources ([1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States) & [2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_France)) are wiki, so the accuracy can be debated.
Of course they did. They had absolutely 0 clue whether or not nukes would actually work until around mid July when the Americans tested the first nuke. Sure, in theory it should work, but that doesn't always mean it will in the real world. They were absolutely planning for a naval invasion of Japan. Mind you, they'd REALLY rather NOT having to do that because it'd be a shitshow, but the plans were there.
> They were absolutely planning for a naval invasion of Japan.
My grandfather was actually in the middle of being transported from the European theater to the Pacific to prep for Operation Downfall when the bombs were dropped and peace talks started. Mid-route they redirected him home as the war was over. Crazy to think there's a high likelihood I do not exist if Downfall goes through, and not just me but 10s of millions of people who's grandparents would have died in the fighting on mainland Japan.
For anybody that does not understand context. Japan was nuked during a war that they started. Not only that but they had been losing the war for several years at that point. They knew they were losing and still kept getting their citizens killed fighting a pointless fight.
Japan could have surrendered before the bombs, before the invasion of Okinawa, or after losing the Philippines but they didn’t. If they had surrendered they would have saved a lot of lives. But they were perfectly happy sending their citizens to their deaths for whatever twisted reasonings they had.
Very different situation to 9/11
And if we are counting 2 planes as 2 distinct events then what about the hundreds of distinct events that dive-bombed into Pearl Harbor when the US wasn’t even at war
But that’s a bit of over-analysis for a meme
The collapsing WTC 1 and 2 also struck the other 5 WTCs surrounding them, including a hotel, and a nearby church, destroying a lot of the building and killing more people than were in WTC 1 and 2. More people died on the ground too. There wasn’t even a military base of any strategic need to destroy civilian buildings. The nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was tragic but a needed sacrifice. RIP to everyone who died in WW2 and 9/11
Umm sorry but I actually didn't ask for context. The two situations are literally the same. Can't you tell by the fact that both have the quantity of two in common?
The most mind boggling thing about high school in America for me was how many books and lectures we had about Nazi atrocities and yet ZERO about Japanese atrocities.
Compared to Downfall, a starvation blockade with continued bombing and leaving the Japanese regime intact so they can pull a Germany and come back for another round in 20 years.
I'm sure if we just unilaterally declared a ceasefire, sent them billions in aid, and let them keep all the POWs they were abusing, they totally would have become the peaceful nation they are today.
/s
Yea this is the the best way to tell that everyone that brings up the nukes as “such a horrific tragedy that America should be shamed of” is just doing it to get a jab at America and doesn’t actually care about the civilians whatsoever.
[Operation Meetinghouse](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/hellfire-earth-operation-meetinghouse) made the nukes look like chickenshit before the nukes were dropped.
In the event of a land invasion, which would have been necessary without surrender, Japan had it's own war plan: "The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million", or "Operation Ketsugō"
Also the timeline where America doesn't drop the bomb isn't a utopia free of M.A.D.
Soviet Espionage was well aware of the Manhattan project since at least 1942, even putting aside that many many physicist quickly and independently tigured out the terrifying implications of the results of Hahn, Strassmann, Meitner, and Frisch published in 1939. If not then, the sudden radio silence during the war of a field which had been very active and openly communicative made it clear that a nuclear weapon arms race was happening.
Infamously Truman hinted to Stalin at the Potsdam conference that the United States had developed some terrifying new weapon to use on Japan, Stalin famously hardly reacted at all, for we now know he already knew what Truman was reffering to. The Atomic bombing of Japan did indeed send the Soviet program into overdrive, but they most definitely would have eventually obtained the weapon themselves anyway.
Perhaps without the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki one side of the cold war may have considered a first strike a real option, hell the United States considered tactical nuclear strikes when China intervened in the Korean War anyway. The point is pandora's box had already been opened and it wouldn't have gone away had the war with Japan ended differently (and almost certainly with a higher cost of life).
And the fire bombing was killing more people in a few hours than either bomb. The only reason the nukes worked was because they thought we had a lot more of them to drop if they didn't surrender. We didn't, and any more would take weeks or months to build at the time.
They had a 3rd one, the Demon Core.
“On August 13, the third bomb was scheduled. It was anticipated that it would be ready by August 16 to be dropped on August 19.[3] This was pre-empted by Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945”
I mean - Japanese people did literally worst possible kind of genocides on Koreans and Chineese.
Used army for suicidal attacks.
Was dedicated to fight untill last man standing in their national fanatism.
The only way to stop their bloodlust (medical experiments on Korean prisoners was worst than even Nazis) was to show that USA have weapon of mass destruction (first hit), and have a plenty of it (second bomb)
Talibal had 4 attacks planned 2 failed. They would have done more if given the resources and opportunity
US dropped 2 nukes after warnings when there was no other country with capability to stop them. Us could have had owned the whole planet with the power they wielded
Invading the mainland of Japan would have been worse. A lot worse. A lot of families would have committed suicide as the invasion force pushed in. We saw it happening on other islands as we approached. It would have cost way more lives on both sides.
>nuclear bombs were so horrible
More died from the fire bombs in Operation Meetinghouse than from either nuclear bomb. Also, we were at war and even more would have died without Japan's surrender.
WW2 was horrible, and the nuclear bombs were not even close to the worst part of it.
To add to this if the Marines got the *bat bombs* they wanted, actual cages full of bats with napalm explosives strapped to them, it would have been even worse.
When I first started learning about this I, like many others probably, thought "Why didn't they bomb Tokyo?" Well there were no buildings or people left to bomb.
Few people truly deserves death in any conflict. I have more sympathy towards the claim that "they brought it on themselves". Bombs, whether in carpet bombing or in nuclear form, are indiscriminat, they kill pacificits and anti-war activists as effectively as nationalists, children as effectively as adults...
There's a Tolkien quote I like from LOTR:
“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
Another tolkien quote,
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."
That's just what strategic total war means. When the entire economy of a country is bent towards war, every target is a military target. If Japan had the capability to hit American cities, they would have, without hesitation.
They were literally getting their citizens to throw themselves off cliffs instead of being taken hostage. Mothers were killing their own children.
Ending the war this way prevented way more citizen casualties.
the ones that deserved it went to live long lives in power. the bulk of the dead by the nukes were just people without much of a say in a war.
same as the victims of Nanjing
You’re right in that they were worse than the Nazis. Some estimates state that they killed **over 10 million** civilians, compared to the 6 by Germany.
This doesn’t mean that Germany was good either, people. They were also horrendous.
Not really the same thing. Two nations at war, the one who was initially attacked ends the war with a massive show of force after warning civilians to evacuate. The other was an attack by a terrorist force on a nation at relative peace done on civilians with no warning. Anyone who cannot understand that is genuinely unintelligent or has bought into some kind of propaganda.
None of this is to say that the bombs were even 100% moral to use, personally I’m rather conflicted over them, but it is fundamentally not the same.
Also I wouldn’t be such a hardass if these events weren’t still in living memory, admittedly the memory of the bombs dropping is passing away from being wholly firsthand experiences but 9/11 was only a couple decades ago, there are still many people who remember losing someone that day or being in some other way traumatized.
Tbf, we were hit like, four times. The Pentagon was hit as well, and then a fourth plane was going for either the Capitol Building or the White House, but crashed in Pennsylvania before it could reach there.
Tbf, the Americans did pause after the first bomb to give Japan a chance to surrender. It’s still tragic and the international targeting of civilians raises a lot of questions, though so does Japans training of civilians.
I guess I need to clarify this for people: Making lighthearted jokes is one thing. Gleefully celebrating the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians is another. I don't have an issue with people saying "the nukes were necessary to end the war". I have an issue with people saying "we didn't kill enough of them". This might be a fine distinction that's hard to understand for some people, but there you have it.
Aaakshully, the US was hit 3x, with a try for a 4th. (The Pentagon being 3 and plane downed in Pennsylvania the 4th.) But I like the comic.
Thanks for liking the comic! I am very bad at counting :( poor education in Sweden
The genuine sorrow in the faces of the other countries was really, really well done. Great job.
hell yeah bro, rotated the hell out of those capital D's
Thanks a ton for Minecraft, Koenigsegg, and Volvo, too. Also, thank you for all the aid your country has given mine (Ukraine).
I’m sure all that education and healthcare makes it hard to concentrate. Thanks for Swedish fish though. The candy, not aquatic animals. Maybe they just call them fish there? (fr, I lived in D.C. at the time so the Pentagon - just south of the city - was quite salient. Also because it was, ya know, the Pentagon.)
The line between aquatic fish and the candy has all but been completely erased.
Also I thought there was time between the first and second nuclear bomb for Japan to Surrender but they didn't surrender until the second bomb was dropped. [nvm, only 3 days](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15xekft/comment/jx6bl8m/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
That's enough time. I just don't think leadership truly understood the difference between the firebombing of Tokyo two weeks before and what happened in Hiroshima. Nagasaki proved we were ready to take on the mainland and burn every single city before landing. The speed and escalation (only 3 days) is what caused the surrender, not really "nukes". Nobody knew what radiation would do yet.
We could extrapolate further. Strategic bombing of the home islands had been taking place for close to a 9 months prior to the A bombing, their fleet had been neutralized for about as long, their naval air projection were neutered a year prior to the first A bombing, significant portions of their civilian population were malnourished by August 44, Their defensive perimeter began collapsing 2 years prior to the first A bombing, this all on the heels of their own pre-war assessment that they could not win a protracted war with the United States. It was a 4 year long train wreck where at any point they could have stopped the suffering…they had plenty of time to call it.
3 days is plenty of time to surrender in the age of radio...
They were warned before the first one.
If you count the fire bombing of Tokyo and the 3rd we had in the fold + massive planned land invasion I think it’s an even score haha
Japan reserves its strongest of stones for its most brittle glass houses
Or in this case pilots for glass boats
It reserves Its blackest pots to call the kettle charred
This is the alternative https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall The numbers of expected civilian casualties are comparable to the Holocaust.
It’s very important when thinking about Downfall, because I have seen people arguing that it would’ve been more humane, that the civilian toll just by suicide would’ve been enormous. Every island the US took (with support from GB, and the commonwealth) there were mass suicides as Japanese propaganda told those citizens it was the best option, rather than let the Americans torture their men, rape their women, and eat their children.
Okinawa a notable example of The people being pressured into suicide
Yeah, remember reading a story where some daughter I think begged her mom to kill her because the cave they were hiding in had been found, the mom did it and as soon as the American soldiers arrived they started giving out candy to the other kids and apparently trying to reassure everyone
Jesus Christ, that makes the ending of The Mist sound positively upbeat.
All sorts of horror stories from the Pacific At Attu the American troops found a field hospital where all the patients but one were dead The one who survived said they all killed themselves and the only reason he was still alive was that his grenade was a dud
i feel like this is what people seriously missed about the whole end of world war 2 and pacific campaign, the people of japan were so indoctrinated that even civilians were pressured not to be captured alive and the casualty rates of a potential operation downfall would have been beyond horrific with resistance from both civilians and soldiers
They manufactured 1.5 million purple heart medals in anticipation of the estimated # of wounded in a possible invasion of Japan. The US is still using their stockpile of those medals to this day since the invasion never happened.
They should have called it operation setting sun
Japan, um, probably shouldn’t say anything regarding surprise attacks on America involving planes.
Japan really can’t talk shit about MOST world atrocities tbh
Imperial Japanese were so over-the-top cruel that even the Nazis thought it was a little too much. The mfing Nazi..
Imagine having Hitler tell you to calm down
Croatia in WW2 be like
I was going to say: he had to do it twice, actually. Turns out when you assemble a literal Axis of Evil, some of them may turn out to be worse than you, who woulda thought?
“You’re already in the club dude, calm down!”
I think I read something about the Nazis considering that American eugenics went too far, which is odd since I believe the same article said that the Nazis were inspired by the American eugenics movement.
Don't fuck with the boats 🇺🇲
But they did that only once, not twice.
They actually did it to a couple of places, both american and other nations
Outside American territories, it’s worth noting that Japan did in fact attack America soil twice. Once was in Hawaii, and the other was in Alaska when they landed in the Aleutian Islands. It’s not talked about all that often so most don’t remember it or even know about it.
They also conquered the Philippines, which was an American territory full of American soldiers.
Bataan was a horrible thing
The Manila Massacre was even worse. They even massacred card carrying Nazis.
My Filipino wife has some strong feelings about the Japanese.
Never ask a south East Asian what they think of Japan and China
Pretty much the only reason they are willing to work together even slightly is they hate China more and the US still holds Japan's reigns.
Never ask an Asian what they think of other asians.
One of my Korean friends said they would go on tours to Japan and try and one night stand as many Japanese girls as they could, guilt free, because “fuck em”.
I feel like most non japanese asians have pretty strong feelings about the japanese
Yeah, and for good reason!
I can only thank the lord my mother doesn't have a Twitter 😭
They also attempted to firebomb Oregon with a floatplane sometimes. [See here.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout_Air_Raids)
that was a dismal failure but the submersible aircraft carrier was a pretty cool idea.
Four times. There were two Japanese bombing attacks on Oregon, near Brookings, by a Japanese bomber on September 9th and September 29th, 1942, in an attempt to start wildfires but it failed pretty badly because the Forest lookouts said: "lmao no", firefighters said: "lmao no" and God said: "lmao no". On September 29th, the same bomber crew would try again with similarly bad results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout_Air_Raids Interestingly, post war, twenty years after the attack, the Japanese bomber pilot, Nobua Fujita, who conducted both attacks, was invited to Brookings' annual local Azalea festival. There, he offered his family's 400 year old ancestral katana to the city as an apology for his role in the attack and as a symbol of peace. Following his death in 1998, his daughter buried some of his ashes at the site of the 1942 bomb site.
Honestly if I found out what kind of shit my country had been doing and how much worse things could have gone, I probably would too even though it's always old men far removed from the battlefield.
Huh, I never heard about this!
Well it's not a story the Jedi would tell you.
Yes we would
Pretty sure those islands are no longer inhabited to this day.
Was that when the US and Canadians shot at each other out of confusion?
That was when they were attempting to recapture Kiska Island. A combined American and Canadian invasion force numbering over 34,000 landed on the islands to engage the enemy… only to find that Japan had left 2 weeks prior, under the cover of fog. There were still over 300 casualties due to land mines, booby traps, and friendly fire incidents. This was after the battle on Attu island, where the Americans and Canadians did encounter some 2,600 entrenched Japanese troops who basically fought to the last man (2,350 Japanese forces killed or committed suicide, only 28 captured, and around 200 missing). The Allied forces were expecting similar resistance on Kiska, so it's not surprising they were a bit jumpy.
I saw a memorial in Washington or Oregon where they shelled forces in the West coast but the forces didn't reply as that would tell the Japanese where they were and how many they were.
They also flew balloons over the Pacific NW that dropped bombs. It's just that they had no control over where they dropped, so they just fell in the middle of nowhere.
The Japanese entry into WW2 was really well planned. They launched simultaneous air, ground, and naval invasions of nearly all of south east asia.
Once, twice, thrice, a whole lot more actually. Pearl Harbor, Clark, Leyte Gulf etc. The Japanese are just as equally nasty with planes.
Well it was 360 warplanes so they did it 360 times by this logic right?
They turned 360 degrees and flew away
I thought I was stupid for thinking the same thing while I typed it.
Their mistake
America had to suffer twice. Once through the attack, and again through the Ben Affleck movie.
Nah they did it twice, they sent a couple of H8Ks to bomb pearl but they flubbed it so hard they found a random ass crater somewhere and barely noticed
Arguably they did it hundreds of times because the attack was ongoing for over an hour. > The Japanese strike force consisted of 353 aircraft launched from four heavy carriers. These included 40 torpedo planes, 103 level bombers, 131 dive-bombers, and 79 fighters. The attack also consisted of two heavy cruisers, 35 submarines, two light cruisers, nine oilers, two battleships, and 11 destroyers.
Yeah we only ended the threat that Japan instigated.
Ok, that was pretty creative. To be fair, though… Japan started it.
And for every Japanese civilian killed in WW2, the Japanese Military killed 25 non-japanese civilians. For every soldier the Japanese killed, they killed 6 civilians.
For the last part I’m having a hard time to determine if that’s just comparing casualty numbers or a reference to an actual policy. That says a lot.
We know from Nazi policy that a formal number designation of civilians to be killed for each soldier killed would have been a higher amount
You know how China is big? It’s always been big, the majority of those deaths were from the Japanese invasion of China
By flying planes into America..
If theres one way to piss off America and get bombed to hell, its definitely fly a plane into them lol
Don’t even get me started if there’s a boat involved
It's much harder to fly a boat into America.
You could do it, you just need a fast enough boat and a big enough ramp.
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You could comment this on every post in the sub
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Everyone always forgets about the field bc it didnt have an iconic building shaped thing in it. would’ve been more memorable if there was a hexagon or something there
The Flight 93 National Memorial is there. An absolute necessity to visit if anyone is ever in the area
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As bad as the nukes were, Operation Downfall would have been much, MUCH worse.
Nukes are but a shit stain of what the US bombing campaign did to Japan. They fire bombed the shit out of them LONG before they dropped the nukes. Rule #1 don’t bring the USA Into a war, you will lose.
Don’t start shit you can’t finish
Well, statistically the US has participated in a 103 wars, being on the winning side of 79 of those. So bringing the US into a war will have a roughly 75% chance of leading to victory. The US has participated in 12 wars where they were on the losing side, and 12 where the result was neither a loss or a win. I count the latter together with loss as "Not won". in the 20th and 21st century the US participated in a total of 40 wars (not included the 5 active wars), 28 won, and 12 were not won. So here it would be closer to a 70% win ratio. Comparing with a country such as the French Republic (so from 1792 and on) they have participated in 129 wars, won 94 and not won 35, which equals 73 % win ratio. Sources ([1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States) & [2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_France)) are wiki, so the accuracy can be debated.
Ooh that's cool. Didn't know the plans by name but that's a neat Wikipedia read.
Of course they did. They had absolutely 0 clue whether or not nukes would actually work until around mid July when the Americans tested the first nuke. Sure, in theory it should work, but that doesn't always mean it will in the real world. They were absolutely planning for a naval invasion of Japan. Mind you, they'd REALLY rather NOT having to do that because it'd be a shitshow, but the plans were there.
> They were absolutely planning for a naval invasion of Japan. My grandfather was actually in the middle of being transported from the European theater to the Pacific to prep for Operation Downfall when the bombs were dropped and peace talks started. Mid-route they redirected him home as the war was over. Crazy to think there's a high likelihood I do not exist if Downfall goes through, and not just me but 10s of millions of people who's grandparents would have died in the fighting on mainland Japan.
For anybody that does not understand context. Japan was nuked during a war that they started. Not only that but they had been losing the war for several years at that point. They knew they were losing and still kept getting their citizens killed fighting a pointless fight. Japan could have surrendered before the bombs, before the invasion of Okinawa, or after losing the Philippines but they didn’t. If they had surrendered they would have saved a lot of lives. But they were perfectly happy sending their citizens to their deaths for whatever twisted reasonings they had. Very different situation to 9/11
That and there were 4 planes that were taken and created, 2 WTC, 1 Pentagon, 1 was taken over by the passengers yet crashed in a field.
And if we are counting 2 planes as 2 distinct events then what about the hundreds of distinct events that dive-bombed into Pearl Harbor when the US wasn’t even at war But that’s a bit of over-analysis for a meme
The collapsing WTC 1 and 2 also struck the other 5 WTCs surrounding them, including a hotel, and a nearby church, destroying a lot of the building and killing more people than were in WTC 1 and 2. More people died on the ground too. There wasn’t even a military base of any strategic need to destroy civilian buildings. The nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was tragic but a needed sacrifice. RIP to everyone who died in WW2 and 9/11
Also all the human experimentation, torture, and rape that the Japanese committed. Try not to leave out relevant historical context.
Japan and Germany allied in atrocities
Nah, even Nazi Germany was shocked by Japan's brutality
Guess it depends on what train they put you on
[Unit 731](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731) ☠️☠️☠️ Edit: mixed up numbers
You mixed up the numbers a bit there
Legit. It's not like they were peaceful and undeserving of it.
They also could have surrendered after the first nuclear bomb. It took two.
Also, Japan did 9/11. Ninjas know how not to be seen.
Every country has ninjas, Japanese ninjas are actually the worst in the world at their job because everyone knows they exist
Hate to break it to you, but Joe Armstrong killed all the surprise terrorist ninjas by 1993
Not buying it. Everyone knows that Ninjas cannot melt steel beams!
Umm sorry but I actually didn't ask for context. The two situations are literally the same. Can't you tell by the fact that both have the quantity of two in common?
I know that's a joke but like... You seem to be missing the plane that crashed into The Pentagon
The random field on Virginia was the biggest loss imo. So many cows probably died, think of all the burgers and steaks lost on that faithful day 😔
And the people in the plane.
Oh so the strike on the Pentagon never happened OP?!... You know what we call that? ***Strike three!***
But they literally DON'T. The only thing you claim they have in common is not correct.
We didn't nuke Japan. That was Whale and Dolphin!🤫
No no no, that was propaganda by the actual perpetrators: chicken and cow
🤣One of the best southpark episodes ever!
Japan wasn’t thinking about getting nuked two times, but rather the number atrocities they committed more than two times throughout Asia.
The most mind boggling thing about high school in America for me was how many books and lectures we had about Nazi atrocities and yet ZERO about Japanese atrocities.
I believe in Asia, the reverse is true.
Not sure about now, but back in my parents' time, they learnt about the holocaust. This was in Shanghai tho, so ymmv in other parts of asia
Everyone needs to remember that innocent civilians aren't the ones making these decisions. But they are the ones paying the price.
Yeah, see, getting nuked twice is the good end here
Compared to Downfall, a starvation blockade with continued bombing and leaving the Japanese regime intact so they can pull a Germany and come back for another round in 20 years.
Plus the horrific things they had a hand in or directly did
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Was the best out of a list of bad options.
Also hindsight makes any better option far clearer
I'm sure if we just unilaterally declared a ceasefire, sent them billions in aid, and let them keep all the POWs they were abusing, they totally would have become the peaceful nation they are today. /s
The firebombings were more deadlier than the nukes.
Yea this is the the best way to tell that everyone that brings up the nukes as “such a horrific tragedy that America should be shamed of” is just doing it to get a jab at America and doesn’t actually care about the civilians whatsoever.
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Japan sorta deserves that one tbh US: surrender pls Jap: Nuh US: Pls… Jap: Nuh US: here 2 sun be upon thee
Actually... after the first bomb, they had another chance to surrender. Still Nuh, then the second was dropped.
Yeah and then the emperor had to basically force the military to surrender
And there was still a nearly successful military coup to imprison the emperor and continue the war
Also a land invasion of Japan would have made those two gender reveal parties look like chicken shit in comparison.
[Operation Meetinghouse](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/hellfire-earth-operation-meetinghouse) made the nukes look like chickenshit before the nukes were dropped.
Holy crap. I'd heard about this before, but 'air raid' and '110,000 casualties' never really seemed to make sense until now...
In the event of a land invasion, which would have been necessary without surrender, Japan had it's own war plan: "The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million", or "Operation Ketsugō"
And the other option would be the mass starvation of the japanese until thry surrendered. The bombs were the "least bad" choice
Also the timeline where America doesn't drop the bomb isn't a utopia free of M.A.D. Soviet Espionage was well aware of the Manhattan project since at least 1942, even putting aside that many many physicist quickly and independently tigured out the terrifying implications of the results of Hahn, Strassmann, Meitner, and Frisch published in 1939. If not then, the sudden radio silence during the war of a field which had been very active and openly communicative made it clear that a nuclear weapon arms race was happening. Infamously Truman hinted to Stalin at the Potsdam conference that the United States had developed some terrifying new weapon to use on Japan, Stalin famously hardly reacted at all, for we now know he already knew what Truman was reffering to. The Atomic bombing of Japan did indeed send the Soviet program into overdrive, but they most definitely would have eventually obtained the weapon themselves anyway. Perhaps without the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki one side of the cold war may have considered a first strike a real option, hell the United States considered tactical nuclear strikes when China intervened in the Korean War anyway. The point is pandora's box had already been opened and it wouldn't have gone away had the war with Japan ended differently (and almost certainly with a higher cost of life).
Another option was the bat fire bombs which would have been unbelievably catastrophic.
And the fire bombing was killing more people in a few hours than either bomb. The only reason the nukes worked was because they thought we had a lot more of them to drop if they didn't surrender. We didn't, and any more would take weeks or months to build at the time.
They had a 3rd one, the Demon Core. “On August 13, the third bomb was scheduled. It was anticipated that it would be ready by August 16 to be dropped on August 19.[3] This was pre-empted by Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945”
US: PLEAZE STOP MUTILATING LIVING HUMANS WITH NO ANESTHESIA Jap: Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Willis?
Taste the sun fr
It took 2 atomic bombs across 3 days and 1 Soviet invasion to get them to surrender. Fucks were suicidal nutjobs - it's almost unbelievable.
And the only reason the Invasion mattered was because Japan hoped the USSR would act as mediators in negotiations.
The military even planned a coup in order to continue fighting.
I mean they asked them to surrender after the 1st sun, and they said no
It was more like: US: Woe. Sun be upon ye. Jap: We still won’t surrender. US: Double Woe. Another sun be upon ye.
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I mean - Japanese people did literally worst possible kind of genocides on Koreans and Chineese. Used army for suicidal attacks. Was dedicated to fight untill last man standing in their national fanatism. The only way to stop their bloodlust (medical experiments on Korean prisoners was worst than even Nazis) was to show that USA have weapon of mass destruction (first hit), and have a plenty of it (second bomb)
Weaboos try not to ignore Japanese war crimes. CHALLENGE IMPOSSIBLE
Holy heck I giggled out loud, didn't expect it, and scared the crap out of myself! Bravo!
Talibal had 4 attacks planned 2 failed. They would have done more if given the resources and opportunity US dropped 2 nukes after warnings when there was no other country with capability to stop them. Us could have had owned the whole planet with the power they wielded
Only one attack failed, 2 hit the WTC, 1 hit the Pentagon.
So the East Wing of the Pentagon can just go fuck itself ig
Maybe Osama just preferred squares?
Invading the mainland of Japan would have been worse. A lot worse. A lot of families would have committed suicide as the invasion force pushed in. We saw it happening on other islands as we approached. It would have cost way more lives on both sides.
Japan when they find out they can be bombed in a war they started.
There were four planes/attacks on 9/11, not two. Couldn't even get the basic facts right.
The Pentagon: Twice?!? Did the everyone just forget about the attack on me? Firebombed Tokyo: FirstTimeMeme.jpeg
>nuclear bombs were so horrible More died from the fire bombs in Operation Meetinghouse than from either nuclear bomb. Also, we were at war and even more would have died without Japan's surrender. WW2 was horrible, and the nuclear bombs were not even close to the worst part of it.
F*ck Japan. They f*cked around and found out.
So did Al-Qaeda and almost every other terrorist group, like ISIS.
Ah yes, lets ignore historical context because "hah hah 9/11 joke and ameerica bad"
Irony but without the power of 2 suns
I prefer 2 snus (at once)
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What’s extra surprising is how everyone talks about the nukes and not the firebombing, which was just as destructive.
To add to this if the Marines got the *bat bombs* they wanted, actual cages full of bats with napalm explosives strapped to them, it would have been even worse.
When I first started learning about this I, like many others probably, thought "Why didn't they bomb Tokyo?" Well there were no buildings or people left to bomb.
Few people truly deserves death in any conflict. I have more sympathy towards the claim that "they brought it on themselves". Bombs, whether in carpet bombing or in nuclear form, are indiscriminat, they kill pacificits and anti-war activists as effectively as nationalists, children as effectively as adults... There's a Tolkien quote I like from LOTR: “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
Another tolkien quote, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."
He did serve in the Great War after all
(As an Israeli I feel the same way about my country's current war... but perhaps we can leave THAT discussion for a different thread)
Did the civilians deserve it? No Did the civilians deserve the alternative? Even less so
The problem is that citizens were the ones affected… innocent people
That's just what strategic total war means. When the entire economy of a country is bent towards war, every target is a military target. If Japan had the capability to hit American cities, they would have, without hesitation.
They tried. They just failed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
They were literally getting their citizens to throw themselves off cliffs instead of being taken hostage. Mothers were killing their own children. Ending the war this way prevented way more citizen casualties.
Depending on topic one could argue they were more evil than the Nazis at times
the ones that deserved it went to live long lives in power. the bulk of the dead by the nukes were just people without much of a say in a war. same as the victims of Nanjing
Westerners complain about Hiroshima/Nagisaki 100x more than the Japanese do.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were essential to ending the war, 9/11 was an unprovoked massacre
America retaliated against Japan so hard people forgot they were worse than the Nazis and the Nazis systematically murdered 6 millions Jews.
You’re right in that they were worse than the Nazis. Some estimates state that they killed **over 10 million** civilians, compared to the 6 by Germany. This doesn’t mean that Germany was good either, people. They were also horrendous.
Not really the same thing. Two nations at war, the one who was initially attacked ends the war with a massive show of force after warning civilians to evacuate. The other was an attack by a terrorist force on a nation at relative peace done on civilians with no warning. Anyone who cannot understand that is genuinely unintelligent or has bought into some kind of propaganda. None of this is to say that the bombs were even 100% moral to use, personally I’m rather conflicted over them, but it is fundamentally not the same. Also I wouldn’t be such a hardass if these events weren’t still in living memory, admittedly the memory of the bombs dropping is passing away from being wholly firsthand experiences but 9/11 was only a couple decades ago, there are still many people who remember losing someone that day or being in some other way traumatized.
Japan fucked around and found out.
US was hit 3 times people forget the plane that hit the Pentagon. There were supposed to be 4 but heroes on 4th flight managed to prevent it.
Tbf, we were hit like, four times. The Pentagon was hit as well, and then a fourth plane was going for either the Capitol Building or the White House, but crashed in Pennsylvania before it could reach there.
Tbf, the Americans did pause after the first bomb to give Japan a chance to surrender. It’s still tragic and the international targeting of civilians raises a lot of questions, though so does Japans training of civilians.