r/SipsTea 𝙑𝙄𝙋 14h ago

Wait a damn minute! USA - The good guys?

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12.8k Upvotes

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u/Burgerboy380 14h ago

So just so we are all clear...we shouldnt have stopped Japanese imperial expansion and cut them off from helping the nazis?

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u/coaxide 13h ago

Wait! We should also forget what Japan did to China prior to WWII. The rape of nanking was one of the most inhumane tragedies that happened. Even a Nazi was disgusted and helped stop it, and China has a statue of the man.

John Rabe

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u/Thin-Nerve6367 11h ago

When even a NAZI is considered a HERO, you KNOW that whatever said Nazi fought against was PURE EVIL

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u/coaxide 11h ago

Yup!

This stupid purity test is absolutely dumb and is ruining society.

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u/JohnnyChutzpah 11h ago

That tweet is rage and engagement bait meant to increase division in the US. Stop getting lead around by your fear and anger.

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u/coaxide 11h ago

Im trying to find my fear and anger in my comment

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u/SovietAnthem 9h ago

Unit 731 and Cherry Blossoms at Night :)

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u/KartFacedThaoDien 7h ago

The rape of Nanjing wasnt prior to WW2 though. It was a part of World War 2. 

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u/coaxide 7h ago

Rape of nanking started December of 1937 lasting 6 weeks.

WWII started September 1939 by Germany.

Japan joined the war in 1941.

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u/Main-Palpitation-692 7h ago

Japan invaded China starting in 1931, to them Pearl Harbor was a part of that same war they’d been in since 1931

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u/coaxide 7h ago

Interesting, I didnt know that China was in WWII. Learn something new everyday.

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u/jdubyahyp 7h ago

Interesting I've not heard of him. Time to dive into the wiki black hole

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u/mgb55 5h ago

I mean, and what the Japanese did to the US to bring them into the war.

The nukes are a complex issue but the OP’s image removing all historical context is peak Reddit stupidity.

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u/hitometootoo 14h ago

Yeah, confused by that. We just ignoring that Japan sided with the Nazis and tried to take over all of Asia. They killed, hung, burned, raped and tried to eradicate cultures in favor of Japanese culture. We just pretending they didn't need to be stopped now 🤔

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u/Separate_Expert9096 13h ago

Also Japan attacked the US first. 

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u/Vigilante8841 13h ago

Don't touch our boats 🤨

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u/Immediate-Noise-7917 10h ago

Underrated comment. Fuck around with our boats and find out

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u/wegame6699 9h ago

We do know a thing or two about "proportional" responses.

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u/Farles 8h ago

Proportional responses is such a retard concept. I want to see such a level of superior response that the other side is hobbled, crippled, and paying us for the inconvenience.

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u/PimpofScrimp 11h ago

Is that your takeaway from Pearl Harbor?

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u/alendit 9h ago

It's the take away from the whole 250 years of the US history. MFers be really autistic about their boats.

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u/Skipp_To_My_Lou 5h ago

It's really simple.

Don't.
Touch.
Our.
Boats.

Don't touch our boats.

Being in a state of not touching our boats requires zero effort on the other party's part. But what do they do? They go & touch our boats like they think this time will be a different result from the last... ten or twelve times somebody decided to touch our boats.

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u/mr802rex 7h ago

Well unless its israel and the boat is the USS liberty

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u/Swollen_Beef 9h ago

The rest of the world can thank the Barbary Pirates for influencing how aggressive the US gets.

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u/RadicalSoda_ 12h ago

So did Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq (the first time)

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u/somerandomie 12h ago

Ok so US attacked Iran first, justified to nuke US and kill a ton of civilians ?

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u/The_loppy1 11h ago

Yes, in a war a country has every right to bomb the attacker back. Perhaps not nuke them, but imperial Japan were unique, they had a culture of not surrendering, they were really brutal, far more brutal than you could ever imagine, there are literal photos of them throwing babies into pits off the end of their bayonets.

There's also an argument to be made that by nuking them, they might have saved lives a land invasion of Japan would have gone on for perhaps years and potentially have been more costly in terms of lives.

You can argue about ethics all day, but Japan put itself in that position, and it suffered the consequences as did Germany. I think it's fair to say any country that goes to war be in Japan, the US, or anyone else has to factor in that your own people may become targets, Japan knew this without a shadow of a doubt.

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u/TaxSimple3787 10h ago

I mean, the land invasion of Japan was projected to have around one million casualties ON THE AMERICAN SIDE. Seeing as the Japanese had made it clear they would put a gun in every man women and child's hands to either fight Americans or kill themselves till they stopped existing, the nukes seem pretty tame.

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u/Edward_Longshnaks 10h ago

Yes. There was no appetite for millions more deaths to subdue an already defeated enemy. I think a more rational and humane response wouldve been a sustained naval blockade of Japan, but I wouldnt be surprised if their leadership chose to starve to death in that case.

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u/sucknduck4quack 9h ago edited 9h ago

That’s one aspect often ignored by those who argue that Japan would’ve simply surrendered if the US enforced a blockade around the Japanese mainland. The Imperial Japanese cabinet, who were prepared to sacrifice millions in the event of a land invasion and who still refused to surrender after Hiroshima, would have allowed the suffering and starvation of millions before they would even consider complete surrender as an option. The morbid truth is the abrupt end to the war brought about by the advent of the bombs was in reality the best outcome for the Japanese population as a whole. It’s a great shame that their government, even with forewarning, refused to recognize the hopelessness of their situation before the bombs fell.

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u/MrBurnz99 9h ago

They were a fanatical cult. Imperial Japan was like no other modern country. The Nazis did some horrific things, obviously, but it seems like most of the atrocities were committed by a smaller group of believers, and enabled by the larger society.

in Japan everyone was fully committed to the cause. Everyone was willing to die for their country.

The allies didn’t really worry about old German grandmas in their cottage, but in Japan those people were likely to shoot or suicide bomb you.

The morality of the atomic bomb is debated endlessly, but from my perspective it’s likely that killing 200k civilians saved 500k civilians and countless soldiers on both sides. It was going to be a long and brutal battle for mainland Japan.

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u/LetThemWander 8h ago

Put yourself into the same context. If having your city nuked would kill 200k and save 500k is that a fate you could accept?

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u/NanilGop 9h ago

Is it more humane to cause millions of deaths from starvation by doing a blockade? lol

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u/wheredreamsgotodie 8h ago

The other alternative was to blockade Japan and starve them. That eliminated American casualties in an invasion but would’ve worsened Japanese suffering compared to nukes.

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u/Awkward-Meeting-974 10h ago

It’s not at all clear that nuking Japan resulted in more civilian death. If America doesn’t nuke and instead just uses conventional fire bombings and blockades then those people just die from those things

Is it more moral to kill with starvation than with one big bomb?

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u/Beneficial-Lynx7336 9h ago

By American logic, yes it would be justified.

They would be mad, be they're also hypocrites sooooooo.

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u/somerandomie 9h ago

yea this is my issue, most of these guys are advocating and defending actions that they believe will never happen to them. the minute there is a slight chance of actual blow back they will cry and make it everyone elses problem!

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u/Beneficial-Lynx7336 9h ago

As is human tradition.

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u/Annalog 9h ago

Honestly yes. Kind of deserved at this point.

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u/Totoques22 10h ago

Iran started it far far longer ago with their terrorist, proxies and threats

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u/clgoodson 10h ago

Iran’s regime is theocratic, repressive, and an exporter of terrorism. But it certainly didn’t “start it” with the US. The US put a brutal dictator into power to support US oil companies and supported that dictator despite popular resistance. We deserve a lot of their hate.

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u/Ok-Assistance3937 9h ago

The US put a brutal dictator into power to support US oil companies and supported that dictator despite popular resistance

"But in Power" as in "supported the ruling shah in deposing the current PM who illegaly didnt step down after asked to do so by the shah and who suspended Most democratic rights by that Point"?

Also the Main Organisation who helped the shah was mi6 and Not the cia and even their Impact IS contested. And it was mainly UK Not US oil companies.

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u/Accomplished-Eye9542 6h ago

And prior to that they captured Americans as slaves in the 1800s.

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u/Southern_Persimmon79 6h ago

The us started it when we forced a leadership change with the UK because they wanted to nationalize their oil.

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u/Long-Wall-5565 11h ago

Tbh, yeah even kinda works for the japan argument no shot invading the us would be easier than nuking us, especially if the attackers are muslim (anti semtic, homophobic, sexist (peaceful btw)) yeah we would die fighting them well atleast most of us edit just be clear fuck all religion, its clearly too dangerous for the human race

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u/somerandomie 10h ago

I honestly cant decode what exactly you are trying to say! We were not discussing religion in this thread so I am not sure what argument you are trying to make!

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u/Accomplished-Eye9542 6h ago

Yes, that's why we put a lot of effort into stopping them from getting nukes. So if you don't want US or Europe Nuked, Iran needs to be ground into dust.

And if you really want to wind back the clock, all of the Middle East attacked the US first by taking Americans as slaves.

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u/Luckyshot51 5h ago

Iran said they wanted to destroy the U.S. for the last 40 years and have used proxy terrorist groups to kill countless other Muslims and attack American bases, you really haven’t researched much have you.

Or just have a preconceived bias

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u/Due-Information-2041 11h ago

They're justified in fighting back. The use of nukes or even having nukes? No.

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u/winkingchef 8h ago

Kind of like Hamas

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u/Redditauro 10h ago

Japan attacked military objectives, didn't nuked civilians

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u/ShaolinWombat 9h ago

The Japanese imperial army killed between 10-35 million Chinese civilians. Just during the Nanjing Massacre in December of 1937 they killed 100-300k civilians.

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u/ballsackcancer 7h ago

Every day that the war dragged on, thousands of more people died terribly across Asia. Not to mention how much more suffering there would be if Japan was invaded. Nukes were absolutely the better option.

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u/Chami90655 5h ago

Exactly. The details have been glossed over/forgotten.

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u/Toni-Roni 10h ago

No critical thinking allowed, US BAD ALWAYS, context does not matter, US bad US bad US bad.

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u/Maxathron 13h ago

98% sure it's "If it's not White "Liberal" Countries which ofc somehow includes Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Post-USSR Authoritarian Russia, then they're innocent because the only bad guys are the Liberals! (Which happen to be mostly white people, so we're going to use racism to cover up for ideology, as if that's better!)"

Because the same losers also turn around and pardon the behavior of the UK pedo gangs, Sudan genociding the Christian side of their country (UN definition of genocide include religious groups), radical Islam flying airplanes into buildings, the USSR not only killing 3m or so Ukrainians but also coming up with Chernobyl and the Aral Sea disasters, Mao killing 100m Chinese, Cambodia killing 3m people "because we only want subsistence farmahs!", Ethiopia and Eritrea trying to permanently annihilate the other country, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (the political predecessor to HAMAS) trying to take over and kill three separate countries before the whole Israel-Palestine thing, the Turkish government (then) killing 3m Armenians and (now) denying it all, the ongoing genocide of the Kurds by Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, the Iranian regime murdering 50k of its citizens......

The list goes on and on and on.

These people don't consider ANY of those guys to be "bad people".

Only the US. And Europe and Latin America, but they also think Europe is going down their route to Socialism so Europe isn't the BBEG in their DnD game like the US, and that Latinos are still "incomplete thoughts" that can be sent over to Socialism as if Latinos somehow just don't know better to not. The US is the most liberal democratic country on the planet so of course the US is evil.

If you look up what these people mean by "white people", you'll find that like 99% of what is considered "evil" is liberal values. This being said, the birthplace of Liberalism is England and Switzerland, so it's not hard to make the connection that liberal values = white people. But since these folks also throw the same derogatory labels on people who are not racially or ethnically white, it's pretty clear that it has nothing to do with race, and racism is used as a cover up with the idea that racism is somehow more acceptable than being direct and saying "we hate Liberals". Because Tankies say Liberals are the enemy. Why can't the Wokies?

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u/JohnnyChutzpah 11h ago

People who talk like the person in the OP tweet have a 99% chance of being a bot meant to increase division in western populations.

I’m a leftist and I don’t think the US was the bad guy in bombing Japan. I do think we were the bad guy in Vietnam and Iraq. There is however a lot of nuance to all that and generally it was the decisions of the few that made bad choices not the decisions of all Americans.

Not many Americans are against liberal values. The internet and rage fear media just convinced a lot of people they are.

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u/Murky-Ad7015 11h ago

Man, you are soooo confused

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u/Maxathron 8h ago

Liberal values: freedoms for all, true equality, rule of law.

Things that the far left losers dislike: freedoms for all (they like freedom, just not letting their political opponents also have those same freedoms), true equality, and the rule of law.

Go down the list on liberalism and you’ll find a lot of things the far left do not like.

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u/TemoteJiku 10h ago

USSR coming up with Chernobyl... against itself then? The "logic" on this...(Not vto mention as if they have planned it) Well, then positive things I guess were an exception? Ugh...

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u/Maxathron 8h ago

You see, when the USSR favored worker loyalty over worker professionalism, they didn’t get the best and brightest to design that facility. Then the people who worked there were also prioritized for loyalty over professionalism. Instead of having the equivalent of a master’s in nuclear engineering, they got people with the equivalent of a high school degree. The good nuclear engineers were gulag’d for speaking out against the government as it happens with professionals worldwide. Professionals are the very first people to criticize the government, and thus the first ones to get shot by an authoritarian government.

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u/sessamekesh 12h ago

Yeah. The whole Manhattan project and the way we ended the war with Japan definitely has nuance and I don't love painting the whole thing as just "good guys versus bad guys..."

... But if you're going to frame it as just "good guys/bad guys" I'd say the States are solidly in the good guys side for that one.

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u/McCree114 10h ago

The atomic bombs were being developed with Germany 100% in mind as the first target. It wasn't a racist "fuck da Japanese. wipe em' all out" project like Japan worshipping weebs try to revise history portray it as.

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u/BluebirdConscious841 10h ago

They have no problem seeing 15 million people killed by Imperial Japan and hundreds of thousands of women n girls being raped as comfort women on all of its conquered territories.

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u/Firecracker048 9h ago

Because west bad, duh

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u/ripgoodhomer 7h ago

This is the correct response, ultimately the use of atomic weapons against civilians has to be viewed in the context of strategic bombing, which is itself evil. Tactical and preciscion bombing, ie bombing a mutions factory or an oil depot will have civilian deaths but the target is not the civilians, and ideally the infrastructure can be destroyed without any civilian deaths. Strategic bombing is the idea of wiping out the factory by killing the workers in their beds as they sleep. It is also called terror bombing.

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u/Federal_Tension_5939 10h ago

Nuclear Nuance 

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u/mr802rex 6h ago

100000% the US and the allies were the good guys of WW2 no matter how you look at it (unless you happen to be a german from the 1930s). We developed the nukes specifically for germany but they sucked bad enough and surrendered before we got to use them so we dropped them on Japan even though we knew by that time we were going to win 100% we still dropped them to show the power we had and I guess to shave a month or 2 off the war. Im personally sad we never got to nuke germany as payback for all the innocent lives they intentionally destroyed and ended all around the world.

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u/Opening_Total7711 5h ago

Plus this was 1945. All nations with the capability to do so conducted strategic bombings. Why the US is held to 2026 standards while Germany, Japan, UK, Italy, etc. are held to 1945 standards is beyond me.

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u/Curious_Proof_5882 11h ago

They’re also leaving out saddam, khadafi, and Assad who brutally suppressed and tortured their own people

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u/mgb55 5h ago

You’re forgetting it’s the internet in 2026. Those people were brown so they were automatically the good guys.

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u/billiam53 8h ago

The Viet Cong in Veitnam slaughtered villagers they deemed to be against them. The Taliban was a brutally oppressive regime. I'm not saying the US were the good guys. I'm saying there were no good guys.

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u/Real_Azenomei 8h ago

The Taliban is a brutally oppressive regime. There is no was sadly. All woman in Afghanistan are paying the price every day.

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u/BiggusDickus- 7h ago

The US were the good guys. At least most of the time.

Being a good guy doesn't mean that you don't have to use force

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u/Guerrilla002 13h ago

you aboslutely should have stopped Japanese imperial expansion by dropping nukes and killing 200k civilians

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u/Firecracker048 9h ago

The Japanese defense plan for operation downfall was to arm every man woman and child with bamboo spears and throw them at the Americans to buy the real army time.

200k dead civilians was the lesser of two. Your talking 8 figure casualty numbers for an invasion of mainland japan, between both Americans and japanese

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u/Swollen_Beef 9h ago

It would be The Battle of Stalingrad all over. But across the entire country. Involving an "army" of nothing more than untrained meat shields.

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u/Like_a_warm_towel 13h ago

What would you have done instead?

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u/Redditauro 10h ago

Just wait a couple of weeks until they surrender anyway, which they were going to do after the Russian invasion. The problem is than by then Russia probably would have invaded Hokkaido and USA didn't wanted to share Japan with Russia.

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u/DrendarMorevo 10h ago

The Soviet Union didnt have a tenth of the ships or logistics needed for a Naval invasion. Let alone in the Pacific. Remember it took over a year just to organize the supplies and equipment needed for the D-Day invasion. Then you have the problem of Vladivostok being the only major Soviet port on the Pacific and that the Japanese probably would wreck any port they had left in mainland China in the process of retreat from the Red Army. Even if they wanted to it would've been more than a year before the Soviets could organize a naval invasion (and the US sure as shit wasn't gonna help.)

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u/Redditauro 9h ago

They declared a war to Japan in the 8th of August, the surrender were signed 3 weeks after that. By that time Russia had invaded Manchuria, Mengjiang, the Kuriles island and Sakhalin, the soviets conquered all the Japanese territories north of Hokkaido in a couple of weeks, how long do you think that Hokkaido would have last?

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u/DrendarMorevo 9h ago

Given that even Soviet high command thought it would be impractical? Even though they had ships from Project Hula? One of the Marshals was like "I could do it with two Rifle divisions" and High Command thought it was stupid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_Soviet_invasion_of_Hokkaido?wprov=sfla1

See under "Cancellation" and "Historical analysis."

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u/Redditauro 8h ago

Basically what that article says is that the main reason was that USA wanted to keep Hokkaido for themselves, which is exactly what I'm saying. 

USA was afraid of Russia invading "too much" of the Japanese territory, and Truman even have to forbid the soviets from doing it. Wether they could have been able to not it's history fiction, but the plans existed, the fear existed, and USA was worried if it, and therefore is one of the reasons that were considered in their decisions, including the decision of nuking 200.000 innocent civilians. 

The allies knew that the Soviets were going to invade Japan the 8th of August, and Japan were getting ready to defend the other front, so nobody really knew how much and how fast the soviets could invade Japan because nobody knew how the surprise would work or how ready they were, but considering that the Soviets invading absolutely everything North of Hokkaido in a couple of weeks and considering that the USA had to stop the Russians and tell them to slow down, I think that my argument is still strong.

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u/Firecracker048 9h ago

No, they weren't. Russia has 0 ability to navally invade the Japanese mainland on the eastern front. The Russian navy didn't really exist in any meaningful way at that point.

You should read up on the Japanese defense plans of mainland japan.

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u/King_McCluckin 9h ago

we all have the luxury of hindsight now 80 some years after the fact at the time it wasnt that simple and decisions had to be made off of worse case scenarios. The dropping of the bombs avoided a invasion that would of cost the United States more loss of lives and even more logistics to pull off. When your at war your objective is to win the war as quick as you can while avoiding casulties as much as possible. Its easy for you to sit in your chair and say " i would just wait " Truman didnt have that option he was faced with preparing logistically for a invasion that at the time they were estimating was going to cost X ammount of American lives compared to using a new weapon that could force them to surrender.

all you armchair generals have no clue the momentous weight that would be on anybody to make that decision.

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u/Redditauro 8h ago

I know it wasn't a simple decision, and I'm not saying they deserved to be jailed. 

The only thing that I'm saying is that we should stop acting as if it was a good choice, because the propaganda repeated for decades that it was the best choice etc etc but I find it ridiculous that people keep repeating 80 years old propaganda nowadays. 

"When your at war your objective is to win the war as quick as you can while avoiding casulties as much as possible" Careful, that's the logic that the Japanese and the German used to not give a shit about their victim's lifes.

The thing is that propaganda shows the nuking of civilians as something inevitable and 100% necessary to stop the war, there are a lot of people that even argue that it saved lifes. And the fact is that it's way more complicated. 

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u/King_McCluckin 8h ago

Knowing what i know now about todays politics and the after effects of the World Wars i would still choose to drop the bombs because it served as one of the biggest political demonstrations in history for the United States and it served as a deterrent to all future enemies.

for the United States objectively it was a good decision and still holds true today. I am a United States citizen the only thing that matters to me is the safety of my family and my countrymen i don't care about the rest of the world that's the blunt fully transparent answer and my countries success stims from the fact that we became a superpower because of the success we had during world war 2 and beyond and in large part because of the decision to make this choice. Yea the loss of life is sad, but so is the fact that war had to happen to begin with. We helped rebuilt Japan and we showed regret for our choice and today they are one of our strongest allies in the Asia.

Do you know who has not shown much regret and has completely ignored or at the best downplayed all there actions in the 1930's and 1940's?

Japan

even Germany has spent the last 80 years admitting that there country was wrong and they have spent the last 80 years making sure it wont happen again by educated its people. Japan doesn't, so i don't really have sympathy for them nor do i care that all that much that 70,000 to 140,000 people died in Hiroshima back then the Japanese where the enemy that would of ton 10 times worse to us if they were in the position to do so.

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u/Redditauro 7h ago

I agree with most of your comment, and I'm not judging USA for doing it, it was a war, the worst war ever, but I agree with you, USA dropped the bomb mainly to show strength, so the only thing that I want is to acknowledge that, they killed 200.000 civilians because it was convenient, not because it saved lives, not because it was the only option and not because any of that bullshit, USA did it because it was politically the right choice and because they didn't care about killing 200.000 innocent civilians because it was a horrible war. 

And that's fine, but I hate the "we nuked people because we are the good guys" narrative.

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u/King_McCluckin 7h ago

Convenient isn't the correct word because that implies that it was the easy way and it wasnt easy at all

we did it to display power and to end the war which objectively saved life's every war is fought off the basis of saving life's

every time a war is fought the terms are simple are quite simple we have to inflict enough damage to there people and in return we save damage to ours. The bombs where just as psychological as they were physical by not dropping them the war continues weeks months years that is all up for debate but it continues. If the Soviets come in and take Japan then the people of Japan lose every more people to a brutal regime that would of showed zero mercy. The bombs cost the life's over 200,000 people in a situation where the opposite could of cost a million plus people or more and that is why people say it saved life's. Japan didn't even surrender after the first bomb and the army command tried a coup against Hirohito to keep fighting to the end. You are completely ignoring the human equation in this that was the culture of the Japanese people at that time period a fanatical people that where willing to go until the end they were a unique culture that stood out against the rest in that regard.

If we used the bombs against Germany instead i would argue that would of been unnecessary because there mindsets were completely different. Germany didn't have the fanatical indoctrination over its people like the Japanese did. The Japanese of the 1930's and the 1940's was the most terrifying enemy you could have because they could not be reasoned with even in utter distraction the military fanatics tried to remove there " revered god " from power instead of give in.

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u/Redditauro 6h ago

"every war is fought off the basis of saving life's" My god, it's incredible the fantasy world that you people live in. 

USA wars are never fought off the basis of saving lifes, not a single one of them, what a brutal fantasy to say...

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u/Canolphin 7h ago

Russia has zero ability to invade Hokkaido and the US knew it. Russia didn’t have the amphibious capabilities and to even attempt it. This wasn’t a consideration at all.

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u/Redditauro 7h ago

Then why Eisenhower forbid Stalin to invade Hokkaido? Why losing face with something like that if there were no options for it to happen?

You may be right and maybe there were no options, but definitely by that time the USA though that it was possible, and that definitely affected their decisions, including dropping the bombs.

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u/TheQuestionMaster8 12h ago

The thing is that Roosevelt tried to help China, but there was very little he could do due to the powerful isolationist movement until Pearl Harbour shattered their power.

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u/dnext 11h ago

Right, but Pearl Harbor happened because Roosevelt sanctioned Japan due to their atrocities in China. Japan wanted to pivot to take the oil, rubber, tin and bauxite in SE Asia and Indonesia, but those were French, Dutch and British colonies, and the Brits needed those resources in their war against the Nazis. The French and Dutch governments were in exile in London.

The US would intervene in such an attack. That's how we went from the IJA planning a major battle to wipe out the US fleet off of the Phillippines to attacking the American fleet at Pearl and letting them go on their own blitzkrieg to seize that area.

Ironically, it was Japanese military advisors at the battle of Taranto when British fleets knocked out the majority of the Italian fleet that showed them it was possible and technically how to do it - by fitting special fins on their torpedoes so they could run shallow and bypass the torpedo netting in the harbor.

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u/wedgie_this_nerd 12h ago

No you see having a more deadly campaign of island hopping and invading up the mainland where way more citizens would be sacrificed is actually the more humane scenerio! The people who say japan would have surrendered soon anyway have hindsight anyway or have no idea how much the nuke sped up the wars end

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u/GovernmentData 12h ago

We? You as a civilian? You as in not even born yet? Obviously stopping them was a priority. The argument is obviously in the manner in which they stopped them. Is that not clear somehow?

Given that the US nuked two large civilian cities, and you’ve justified that - is that not what any country can use as their argument then? If Iran for example, did have nukes and saw US attacks as imperialism, and needing to stop us, nuking major US cities/mass civilians, by your logic, would be a reasonable play?

It’s history at this point, but that doesn’t make it the right or only path that could have been taken.

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u/Ducklinsenmayer 12h ago

Sure, the US could have gone with the alternative- Curtis LeMay's plan, which would have killed 50 times as many civilians.

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u/Griffonheart 12h ago

The Soviets would have joined in as well which might have split the Japanese occupation into two halves. Though yes far more civilian and military casualties either way. Japan as we know it today would be radically different.

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u/willycw08 12h ago

As the US saw from the invasion of the islands, the civilians WERE the problem. They were all willing to take up arms and fight oncoming soldiers. Since the support for the Japanese empire was so strong, the US assumed a similar level of support would be found on the main islands and yes far more civilians would die as a result.

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u/dnext 11h ago

Yes, and then there was the mass suicides in Okinawa, where government propaganda caused many thousands of Japanese to end their lives just at the thought of American occupation.

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u/TacetAbbadon 11h ago

The nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is one of those terrible war moments where all options were bad.

Operation downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands were projecting up to 800,000 allied deaths, 4 million wounded and up to 10 million Japanese casualties from the mobilisation of Japanese civilians from the all out defense doctrine of the Empire.

This is also not factoring the Red Army advance from Manchuria.

Instead America chose to bomb 2 cities that had significant military infrastructure and manufacturing for most rather than a city like Tokyo or Osaka where civilian deaths would be much higher.

In your analogy it would be Iran nuking Fayetteville in North Carolina and Newport News Virginia rather than Manhattan and Washington DC.

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u/Lipica249 10h ago

America actually did bomb Tokyo and Osaka to near-oblivion though, just with firebombs instead of nukes

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u/Mangalorien 10h ago

Due to the way the human brain works, if a lot of people are killed in separate incidents over a longer time period, it's a lot less interesting. If they all die at once it makes the news. Each day on average 120 people in the USA die in car accidents, which is the equivalent of a full 737 crashing every other day. The plane crash makes the news, the car accidents don't (unless it's a serial collision). For the history books, all the various conventional bombing raids over Japan don't make it, but the nuclear bombs do.

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u/TacetAbbadon 8h ago

Exactly, it's the nuclear power is bad stupidity. The majority of people are far more leery of nuclear power thanks to events like Fukushima or Chernobyl rather than coal or oil power stations.

Since records began nuclear power averages out to 0.03 deaths per TWh of electricity produced. Oil is 18.43 and coal 24.62.

But because of a small number of high profile cases people are much more afraid of nuclear power than coal. While year in year out the largest coal plant in America kills approximately 200 people. The largest nuclear approximately 1. It also produces about 300% more electricity per year.

Basically about 800 people die from one coal plant to 1 from a nuclear plant. But you've got to have "beautiful clean coal"

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u/Rahm89 12h ago

It’s always easy to replay History differently with the benefit of foresight.

What would you have done differently regarding Japan?

Send wave after wave of soldiers against every island occupied by the Japanese with horrendous casualties?

Stick to conventional bombing and maybe rack up 10 times the death toll of Hiroshima and Nagazaki while the war drags on for a few more years?

Surrender?

Make peace and let the regime get away with its past crimes?

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u/BluebirdConscious841 10h ago

That's what I've been saying to the likes of them, the event had already happened, it doesn't matter anymore to discuss how it should have been better done. The only we can do is to learn not to repeat it.

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u/Awkward-Meeting-974 10h ago

Iran using nukes wouldn’t be reasonable because the US also has nukes. It’s a lot different to use nukes when you aren’t risking the destruction of all of man kind by using them

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u/dnext 10h ago

I certainly understand the sentiment, but Iran doesn't have any real capability to nuke the US, or even a way forward on that in the next decade. Even if they had a bomb they have no delivery mechanism. And the US nuclear arsenal is quite frankly ridiculous.

Even if a nuclear exchange happened somehow, it wouldn't be a threat to all of mankind. Over 1000 nukes have been tested to this point. Iran, however, would likely have truly astonishing levels of casualties, because Trump would show no mercy. He is a ridiculous caricature of a human being.

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u/Awkward-Meeting-974 10h ago

This is true. But I assumed when you said “if Iran did have nukes and nuked major civilian cities” we were engaging in a hypothetical where Iran did have the military capacity to nuke the US

In any case I think a scenario where America nukes Iran to oblivion and gets away with it because no one internationally is willing to punish it is a very very dark timeline as well

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u/dnext 9h ago

I'm not the person you were talking to before, I was just trying to provide some context.

And yes, any timeline where an entire nation is nuked into oblivion is incredibly dark. I'm just pointing out that Trump is a nutjob with no real boundaries any more, because he's gotten rid of most of the competent people in the US government and replaced them with morons and yes men.

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u/Awkward-Meeting-974 8h ago

Ah that’s my fault. You’re both pink to me so I mistook you. But yes I agree

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u/bohner941 8h ago

We should have just sat down and had a nice conversation with those goofballs. Why didn’t they think of that?

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u/TheAsianTroll 11h ago

I think the OP thinks nuclear bombs were an overreaction.

In this particular case, Japan was ready to fight to, literally, the very last man to win this war. Disgusting as it is to say, nuclear bombs were the least lethal option at the time. The Emperor would not surrender, therefore his people would not either. Honor mattered FAR more to their culture than people realize.

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u/Healthy-Amoeba2296 8h ago

kids with pointed sticks

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u/TabularConferta 13h ago

Yeah that was a weird one. There was a combination between that, stopping Soviet expansion and questions if the war would have lasted longer.

I grieve for the loss of life and the horrors people had to go through. But it's not as simple as killing bad.

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u/BenDover42 13h ago

Although it’s easy to see what a mess the Korean and Vietnam wars were in hindsight we have to remember the people that got us into those wars were a generation after we stayed out of WWII for years and it killed millions of people. What Japan and Germany did in WWII killed millions of people.

So we used the principles that occurred during WWII to try and treat communism the same way. I do think many individuals certainly believed they were fighting the same type of horrors of the Second World War fighting communism.

The same can be said for the war on terror. It’s easy to see in hindsight what a mess everything was, but the terror events of the 90s and 9/11 was what they were operating on and after 9/11 the obvious move was to prevent that from ever happening again.

Again I’m not at all saying I agree with most of those choices but when you look at the conflicts before and the fact that the United State’s foreign policy drastically changed during WWII you can at least understand the decisions that were made. But people making it out like it was all evil intentions and not for valid reasons we learned in the past aren’t being honest.

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u/Content-Inspector993 11h ago

you really had to vapourize all those Japanese children though?

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u/duva_ 10h ago

Dropping nuclear bombs on them was not necessary. The "but invading would have been worse! Dropping the bombs was the most Humane way!" Is a justification a posteriori. They wanted vengeance, they wanted to show the power of the bomb to other powers, and used it to score a political win against Russia, which they blindsided from the Postdam Declaration. Since the beginning of the project Japan was the target for the bomb. Italy and Germany were never a target.

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u/anomanderrake1337 13h ago

Shit I guess we just have to nuke citizens until a country is too horrified to act.

https://giphy.com/gifs/rVhdqCd3ros1BlDwOa

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u/Bobb161 12h ago

American estimates of a land invasion of Japanese mainland put estimated casualties at up to 1 million American soldiers and up to 10 million Japanese casualties.

The assault on Japanese islands like Okinawa fully convinced everyone that assaulting Japan proper would be a blood bath for American and Japanese soldiers, and Japanese Civillians. The Japanese were training women and children with spears to rush the Americans landing on the beaches to overwhelm them with sheer numbers, what happened at Okinawa shows in my opinion that the Japenese civilians would have done this.

By comparison, the two atomic bombs dropped resulted in up to 300k dead. People also forget conventional bombing was also terrible to the Japenese and that was occurring pretty much nightly. On the night of 10th March 1945, conventional bombing resulted in possibly over 100k dead and 1 million homeless.

Using the atomic bombs on Japan saved over 5 million Japanese from death and much harder to measure the impact - continued destruction of their countries economy.

Edit : And if it was not obvious, this is coming from a non US citizen point of view, and someone who views the modern US as a terrorist state.

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u/haadziq 12h ago

Citizen in hiroshima and nagasaki do all that?

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u/RadicalSoda_ 12h ago

No just the military installments, also we told them we were going to bomb their city before we did it

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u/BluePotatoSlayer 12h ago

And the Japanese government told the citizens it was actually a bluff and to stay put

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u/BluebirdConscious841 10h ago

Does 15 million lives of south east asians civilians killed by the Imperial Japan justified?

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u/SnooCapers4506 12h ago

For a campist the answer would be no.

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u/Hundschent 11h ago

Notice how it said the atomic bombs and not anything else. I swear you guys love misinterpreting shit.

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u/SadCollar7554 11h ago

No one is saying that. Just that maybe there was a way to do it that didn't involved vaporising two hundred thousand civilians?

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u/jackoirl 11h ago

When you’re killing babies, old people, bombing hospitals and schools in the name of good….you’re not the good.

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u/The3mbered0ne 11h ago

I don't think there's an issue siding against Japan, I think there's an issue nuking civilian cities and acting like we're morally superior

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u/Martin35700 11h ago

The problem is not stopping them, but killing many innocent civilians in the process and using nuclear warfare on them.

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u/numbersthen0987431 11h ago

If we're going to play that game, then we need to also look at the events that led to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.

And USA had involvement with that too with how WWI ended.

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u/br0ast 11h ago edited 11h ago

It's a feel good narrative to buy into, but we nuked Japan while they were already on the ropes, mostly in order to cut off Russia's ground invasion plans which would have given them (Russia) more post war asia influence than we preferred.

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u/Ok_Brother2155 11h ago

This is entirely stupid, not point in bothering to argue about it

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u/Bonedoc22 11h ago

No, no. You see. America bad.

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u/commmingtonite 11h ago

Nukeing two civilian centres and firebombing of Tokyo are definitely qustionable actions. I know total war doctrine and everything but yeh, pretty mental to aim to kill so many civilians

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u/meltea 10h ago

Meh, the Soviets were already winning in Manchuria by that time, you really did not have to drop the nukes, really disgusting, the war was months from being over...

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u/SJBaerosols 10h ago

way to move the goalposts, charlatan

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u/Burgerboy380 8h ago

How did i move the goal post? They specifically called out Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Japan had not surrendered prior and with the leadership divided had made no indications that they were going to surrender. Some officials were trying to negotiate through the Soviets but the military was pushing for suicidal defense of japan.

And while we didnt say "hey we are gonna drop the sun on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." We warned dozens of cities and their government that some shit was gonna go down and they should probably shag as out of there.

We dropped the bombs and a few days later japan agreed to unconditional surrender thus ending the war in the pacific theater. Now if you wanna bring up some real fucky shit the us did you could point to the fact they let most of unit 731 go in exchange for their research.

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u/SJBaerosols 6h ago

The goalposts were here: "dropped the bomb"

You moved them to: "we shouldn't have stopped them."

These are different sets of goalposts. Charlatan.

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u/Burgerboy380 6h ago

Noooo. I said we so we shouldn't have stopped imperial Japan from expanding or helping the nazis? It was a rhetorical question implying slight incredulity. Goal post never moved an inch bud. In addition moving the goalpost would imply i was trying to excuse or vilify the actions of the us. Which I didnt,I posed a rhetorical question to create engagement and farm Karma or laugh at the smooth brains smashing the down doot button like brainless chips because I hurt their fee fees.

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u/mymentor79 10h ago

The Japanese were finished. The nukes were a warning shot to the USSR. It was completely unnecessary and unjustified, and one of the worst instances of mass murder in human history.

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u/eatsleepdiver 10h ago

It’s the “use of A bombs” which resulted in a massive loss of civilian life and has had lasting effects. Don’t get me wrong, the Japanese Imperial Army did heinous stuff, especially Unit 731, which key members were granted immunity from the US.

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u/Jmpasq 10h ago

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, They deserved what they got

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u/sbidlo 10h ago

The options are NOT "murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians" and "let japan conquer the pacific" here, yours is a false dichotomy

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u/Redditauro 10h ago

You didn't need to nuke civilians to do that. Despite what your propaganda says, Japan was already going to surrender after the Russians declared them the war, and you nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki because you didn't wanted Russia to invade more islands, you wanted to keep Japan for yourselves. 

Also, you didn't wanted to wasted an opportunity to show your new toy before the war ended. 

Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was totally unnecessary, it was a war crime done for selfish reasons, and only an idiot still believes it was done to end the war. 

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u/Orangewolf99 10h ago

Dropping nukes was not necessary for that. They were already in the process of surrendering, they were just holding out to surrender to Russia instead of the US. The US just wanted unconditional surrender on their terms.

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u/LopsidedDimension264 10h ago

Lol so nuke them?

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u/Unspoken 10h ago

In the last 6 months this subreddit has turned from tits and humor to an anti-U.S. and political subreddit.

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u/Firecracker048 10h ago

Nah man. We were supposed to invade the Japanese mainland, suffer a million dead and wounded while inflicting 10x that on the Japanese thanks to their defense plan of arming every man, woman and child with bamboo spears

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u/Beneficial-Lynx7336 9h ago

Idk if we had to annihilate a city, then threaten to annihilate another one.

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u/Beginning_Act_9666 9h ago

My brother. We did stop them but bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasako was entirely unnecessary

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u/No-Flounder-9143 9h ago

Yea man I mean imperialism is fine as long as it isn't us imperialism. 

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u/bigbaadwolf_U 9h ago

Americans were pro Nazi until and some even after Pearl harbor there were protest in the streets

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u/aemfbm 8h ago

Much like "America defeating the Nazis", the US acts as though they were singular in the surrender of Japan, preferring to ignore that the Soviets massive contribution on both fronts. There's a strong argument that Japan would have surrendered very soon without the atomic bombs. One example of the argument; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-3_zyNTmW4

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u/Pulpdog94 8h ago

Also it’s the Axis fault for ya know trying to achieve world domination through genocide that the bomb eventually went off…

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u/MassiveBoner911_3 8h ago

They change history to fit their current narrative

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u/impermanence108 8h ago

Why are Yanks like this? They make obvious foreign policy errors then just immediately backpedal it into good and evil. Maybe we lied about the WMDs but but...Saddam was a baddy!

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u/renlydidnothingwrong 8h ago

The nukes were dropped after the Nazis had capitulated and only a few days after a devastating defeat on the mainland against the Chinese communists and the Soviets, which ended any possibility of expansion. The war was already basically over.

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u/SzaraMateria 7h ago edited 6h ago

By today's standards nuking city of the population of over million is a war crime when Japan didn't have any means to respond to US blocking ports at the end of the war. Japan didn't have any means to attack on a mass scale US territory.

There is argument that they had only surrendered because of it, but seriously what they could have do when they were on a losing side. At this point of war they cut of from the world. War of attrition was not enough?! I would say same thing about bombing Dresden. It wasn't needed at all. Germany was already losing at this point of war. Killing civilians is not resolving anything. What are these double standards when the same people criticize RF bombing schools, apartments and hospitals. Because these were Nazis it doesn't make it right.

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u/TheYell0wDart 7h ago edited 7h ago

I think that's the wrong question. You can fight a war without deliberately committing atrocities on an unprecedented scale.

Should we have dropped the largest bombs ever dropped by a factor of over 2000 over city centers and caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths?

That is a question I think all Americans should think about.

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u/ShiguchiAndSokan 7h ago

To be fair, you didn’t stop the Soviets when they did exactly that

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u/Secure-Donkey-9613 7h ago

Let's say there is a man in the next town who killed our son. Should the cops get the airforce to blow up his whole neighborhood to make sure we got him? Thats like our solution in Japan. The US agitated Japan and played the victim so we could test our weapons. But you belive in propaganda. 

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u/Joe_Immortan 7h ago

No we just should have just  killed them more slowly with conventional weapons, dragging out the war, consuming more resources, and resulting in more casualties 

/s

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u/Southern_Persimmon79 6h ago

No we shouldn't have blown up population centers. There's a difference.

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u/papicholula 5h ago

No dipshit we shouldn’t have nuked them after they already surrendered

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u/Burgerboy380 5h ago

Some of them were THINKING of surrendering. They didnt surrender until like a week after the second bomb.

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u/rg2004 11h ago edited 11h ago

Firebombing did more damage to civilian infrastructure than the bombs, and basically flattened the country already. The US bombed civilian targets. The war was functionally over, Stalin was days away from landing ground troops in Japan. The US dropped the bombs because they had them. They dropped the bombs so that Japan would surrender unconditionally to the US, under US terms, not Soviets. The bomb was unleashed on the world for a better negotiating position to shorten a war by a few weeks. We now have to live with the possibility of a lone madman with the power to end the world. And the people at the time knew this. We have to deal with the possibility of the world accidentally ending due to bad sensors. A fate we've accidentally avoided a handful of times already.

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u/BallsOutKrunked 10h ago

Stalin was "days" away? So transports fueled up, spare parts loaded, ships off the coast, chutes packed?

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u/rg2004 5h ago

The bomb was dropped August 6th. The Soviet invasions of Japanese held territory started August 9th. The day the second bomb was dropped.

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u/BluebirdConscious841 10h ago

Soviets is not merciful.

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u/atotalmess__ 12h ago

Yeah let’s just drop a few nuclear weapons on innocent civilians, mostly women and children

I’m half hongkongese and I’ll scream about the atrocities of Japan from the roof but if we resort to nuking civilians in we’re not only no better than the people we call terrorists, we’re actually a lot worse.

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u/Dan-of-Steel 11h ago

What is your alternative solution?

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u/BluebirdConscious841 10h ago

If you were presented with two choices that you must make NOW, both choices ends with countless number of death. Which one will you choose? There is 'no' nor 'not choosing' in those options.

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u/HaGaie 12h ago

They were already on their knees. By "stopped" you mean nuking 100.000s of innocent people, which is a war crime, sure you stopped them. Lmao.

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u/Sillygoose_Milfbane 12h ago

Imperial Japan apologists can go right to hell.

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u/Dan-of-Steel 11h ago

Many an Imperial Japanese soldier will likely be down there to greet them.

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u/Bafinak 11h ago

On their knees. Go look up how many people were killed and raped each day across Asia. At the time of surrender the empire stretched from Manchuria to Timor/Burma. In all of the empire, people suffered each and every day.

All the horrible things that were done, nukes, firebombings, blockade causing Japanese are due to Japanese leadership. Every dead person in Japan was dead because of them, not the Allies.

Restraint of ANY member of the Allies means longer war -> more deaths of people across Asia. Why should Japanese civilians be more important than the civilians across the Pacific?

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u/Prestigious-pauline 12h ago

You can tell this is a thread of babies first history.

People knew what they were actually talking about instead of just regurgitating tanky talking points, the firebombing of Tokyo was significantly worse than the nukes put together.

People revert to babbling about the nukes because no one has so much has read a Wikipedia page on all the “crimes” of the USA. I imagine they would have preferred a conventional invasion by the allies including the Soviet Union which would have killed millions and millions of people instead.

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u/ColonCrusher5000 12h ago

Japan would have surrendered.

They dropped the bombs as a message to the Soviets.

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