Word: hiroshima
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...looking at it another way, in terms of whether or not the bombing of Hiroshima saved lives in the long run, most observers agree that it did. If we had invaded the main islands, it would have cost perhaps a million American casualties, certainly more than a million Japanese. How many civilian deaths did the nuclear bomb cause? Well, it cost a total of 200,000 in two places, and that's terrible. But it may have saved ten times that number...
...course the Bomb had a traumatic effect on the Japanese. I was in Hiroshima in the 1960s, speaking at a dinner of the country's leaders. The Japanese are excellent hosts. They drink pretty good, as we say. All through my speech there was clapping and laughing, and then I mentioned the bombing, something to the effect that it should never happen again--and the light went out of their eyes. All the smiles went. It was as if somebody had [he makes the gesture of cutting the air with a sword]. Like that. Hiroshima was simply too horrible...
...saying that the Hiroshima bombing saved ten times as many lives as it claimed, Nixon may actually be understating the issue. In fact, estimates at the time were that as many as 10 million Japanese would have been lost in an American invasion, as well as a million U.S. troops. In the summer of 1945, Japan had more than 2 million soldiers and 30 million citizens prepared to choose death over dishonor. The kamikaze pilots and the Japanese troops who fought at Okinawa and Iwo Jima had already established the point. This is not just the American view. Kawamoto...
...bellyful of war, and the assumption of the times was if the Bomb could bring peace in one shot, then use the thing. But a strong impulse for retribution must have applied as well. Harold Agnew was not alone in feeling that the Japanese "bloody well deserved" Hiroshima. There is also a theory that the U.S. used the Bomb as much to frighten the Soviets, with whom it was about to divide the world, as to win the war with Japan. More have dismissed this theory than embraced it. The Soviets, however, believe it to this...
Then, too: Was it in fact the Bomb that brought the war to an end? The Japanese government was in total disarray in the summer of 1945, so Hiroshima and Nagasaki may merely have provided an excuse for a surrender. The Soviets entered the war on Aug. 8--after Hiroshima and before Nagasaki. The Japanese may have concluded that it would be better to surrender to the Americans than to risk prolonging the war and allowing the Soviets to take more spoils. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey conducted just after the war concluded that the atom bombings were not decisive...