161–170 of 204 posts
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Which inquiries, by whom, of whom, and in what context? Links, please; that doesn't accord with any history of WWII I've ever read, and while I don't assume that makes what you're saying false, I would very much like to evaluate the claim for myself.
The details were in a memo from the president's Chief of Staff, detailing McArthur's accounts of five separate surrender offers. This article gives more details and a lot of sources: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to hi…
And as we can all agree, the emperor played at least as central a role to the Japanese leadership's legitimacy as the Fuhrer did to his.
What the atomic bombs did was made the emperor himself call on his people to surrender. This removed the ability for more hawkish parts of the Japanese leadership to continue a resistance effort, which some surely would have pursued.
Given the sprawling nature of Japanese positions, its deep cultural divides even between army/navy, its hard to know exactly who could authorize a peace treaty and if all other factions would listen to him.
It always amazes me how seemingly careless they were with these nuclear devices back then. To know that such a devestating bomb was handled by a sultry, shirtless youngster, in a shed on a small island in the Pacific... It reminds me of the Slotin Incident ( http://www.damninteresting.com/bitten-by-the-nuclear-dragon/ ) where dr. Louis Slotin accidently slipped the screwdriver he used to separate two plutonium/uraniu…
It is not clear that dropping the bomb was necessary to end the war. Was it even necessary to develop it? Eisenhower said "it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." At the time Truman said Japan had been "repaid many fold" for Pearl Harbor. In these new images there is a bit of graffiti on the bomb allegedly written by a Rear Admiral: "a second kiss for Hirohito". It seems to me like the mood in the US…
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He was clearly writing this for posterity. Japan was beaten. They had already offered a complete surrender, conditional only on keeping the emperor, which was rejected by the U.S. Their utter defeat and the hopeless state of their armed forces was well-known by the allies, since their communication encryption had been cracked months earlier. The real issue was likely that the Soviet Union, positioned to become a form…
> They had already offered a complete surrender, conditional only on keeping the emperor, which was rejected by the U.S. Are you saying the Japanese offered to surrender, with the only condition being maintaining the emperor, prior to the bombing of Hiroshima? My understanding is that was the terms accepted after the atomic bombings and the declaration of war by the USSR.
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A tail kit that costs almost 10 times as much as the bomb.
Hey, this is Hackernews, not Reddit. You can't just completely make shit up here.
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He was clearly writing this for posterity. Japan was beaten. They had already offered a complete surrender, conditional only on keeping the emperor, which was rejected by the U.S. Their utter defeat and the hopeless state of their armed forces was well-known by the allies, since their communication encryption had been cracked months earlier. The real issue was likely that the Soviet Union, positioned to become a form…
> (which was ignored and they were incinerated along with the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians). This is inaccurate. Much fewer than 200,000 people were killed immediately (totaled across both bombings), including both incinerated and not, civilian and not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...
Casualties and losses: 20 U.S., Dutch, British prisoners of war killed 90,000–166,000 killed in Hiroshima 39,000–80,000 killed in Nagasaki Total: 129,000–246,000+ killed
It doesn't say if these are all immediate casualties (does it even matter), but it does mention estimates for Nagasaki immediate casualties is between 22,000-75,000.
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A tail kit that costs almost 10 times as much as the bomb.
OK. (La Wik says the US Air Force is currently paying $27,000 per tail kit.)
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You should read Command and Control which is about the history of nuclear accidents and management in the US. Carelessness didn't go away for a long time, especially in the upper management. Very well written and interesting book. http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Eric-Schlosser-ebook/d...
Also worthwhile is "Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons" http://www.amazon.com/Five-Myths-About-Nuclear-Weapons/dp/05... A very well-researched book that challenges, adequately in my opinion, some of the fundamental assumptions about nuclear weapons. First and foremost, that "the atomic bombs ended the war with Japan".
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A tail kit that costs almost 10 times as much as the bomb.
Hey, this is Hackernews, not Reddit. You can't just completely make shit up here.
A 500-pound dumb bomb consists of about 250 pounds of steel and 250 pounds of high explosive. Plus a fuze.
When manufactured in large quantities, $3000 in 2014 dollars seems like a reasonable cost.
(Most of the ones in the US Air Force's inventory were manufactured decades ago.)
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It is not clear that dropping the bomb was necessary to end the war. Was it even necessary to develop it? Eisenhower said "it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." At the time Truman said Japan had been "repaid many fold" for Pearl Harbor. In these new images there is a bit of graffiti on the bomb allegedly written by a Rear Admiral: "a second kiss for Hirohito". It seems to me like the mood in the US…
I advise those that get misty eyed over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to look into Unit 731: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731