Did the Japanese deserve the Atomic Bombs?

[Formerjughead]

Originally Posted by Bob Guercio

I don't agree that they deserved it. Maybe I am naive but I don't believe that too many people on this earth deserve a horrible death.

I can think of quite a few actually

[Za Rodinu]

Somewhere in this thread it was stated that the A-bomb at the time was seen as just another bomb only an especially big one with no stigma was attached, that came later. The Japanese civilians had so much "entitlement" to be bombed, or perhaps even more than say the citizens of Amsterdam or Coventry due to the way industrial production was dispersed along a large number of small, private workshops. In total war you hit the other side's economy and that's what the B-29s were doing. The Japanese weren't doing the same to the American civilians because, well, they didn't have the means to. They had acquired enough practice already in the Asian continent.

[Bob Guercio]

Originally Posted by Za Rodinu

Somewhere in this thread it was stated that the A-bomb at the time was seen as just another bomb only an especially big one with no stigma was attached, that came later. The Japanese civilians had so much "entitlement" to be bombed, or perhaps even more than say the citizens of Amsterdam or Coventry due to the way industrial production was dispersed along a large number of small, private workshops. In total war you hit the other side's economy and that's what the B-29s were doing. The Japanese weren't doing the same to the American civilians because, well, they didn't have the means to. They had acquired enough practice already in the Asian continent.

There is no doubt that anybody who had the atomic bomb would have used it!

[Za Rodinu]

But then supposing the shoe had been on/in/into/over/beside the other foot we would be lamenting the Chinese, Korean, Russian, Taiwanese, Philipine, Indonesian, Myanmarian, Kambodian, Singaporean, British, Australian, NZer, USAer, you-name-it victims of the nuclear holocaust indulged in by the "criminal Japanese".

Oh, and we wouldn't be writing in English (or an approximation thereof), by the way. Thinking again, we wouldn't be lamenting at all!