Was it right? Hiroshima 40 years later

U.S. President Harry Truman never backed down on his assertion that dropping two atomic bombs on Japan was necessary. Otherwise, he maintained, half a million American lives would have been sacrificed to win the war. Forty years later, two military researchers are challenging that number, saying only 40,000 Americans would have been killed. In this CBC Television clip, physicist and anti-nuclear activist Arjun Makhijani says the decision-makers never considered the morality of the bomb.
Broadcast Date: Aug. 5, 1985

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Education

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• hiroshima1985

[Corleone2239]

I'm sorry but you young people today don't understand a damn thing, all the awful and inhumane things those Japs did to captured U.S. soldiers, they got what was coming to them. I'm sorry to say that but it is true, and they are still suffering today this that tsunami thing, that was their own fault. GOD BLESS AMERICA A GREAT COUNTRY ~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[antipike]

It was not needed to use nuclear weapons as it was not needed to bomb any city in japan , the west could have accepted japans unconditional surrender but the west wanted its pound of flesh and got it in the form of HIROSHIMA / NAGASAKI , now i sincerely hope karma does not give the USA a dose of its own medicine

The usa are the only nation to use such a weapon on humans , they are the ones not to be trusted with such a weapon yet they see iran as a threat ? russia / china will curb them

[meronmotors]

@antipike This may sound like an oxymoron but the a bomb was less inhumane then the firebombing of tokyo. 100000 people burned or choked to death with firebombing. Nagasaki lost 50000 people. Most of them died instantly. Vaporized. Very few died from radiation sickness. Somthing like 5,000. Within aweek. This is terrible but not as bad as tokyo. look up unit 731, it was neccisary to stop japan. How would you have done it?

[antipike]

@meronmotors Thats conjecture as you dont know what was going to happen , Two wrongs dont make a right and you dont get any more wrong than using a nuclear weapon on humans do you

[meronmotors]

@antipike we also did NOT want the soviets in asia. After what had happended in europe with the land grabbing we knew it would happen in asia. Creating a red empire after the war. this happended anyways. The soviets stole land after the japs surrenderd for over a month. Had we used the nuke aalittle earlier north korea would not exist. Had we not used it. There would be a north and south japan along with many other split nations or red nations in asia.

[antipike]

@meronmotors So when the usa get them back with interest I hope you will feel better when the other side that use them say it was needed as there was no other way . there is always another way

Nagasaki / hiroshima was simply a test to see how the nukes worked on humans nothing more nothing less

[meronmotors]

@antipike wrong. Fire bombing tokyo killed 100,000 in one night. More then the hiroshima bombing. The atom bomb was not worse then the firebombing at that time.. It was just more intimidating. Under todays standards it was wrong but at the time it was neccisary. 25-40 million chinese were murdered by the japanese occupation. They were slaughtering natives from all the occupied zones. It was NECCISARY to make japan surrender no matter the cost. Im sorry that war is so cruel but it had to be done

[antipike]

These two bombs caused the cold war and the arms race in nuclear weapons , in one moment the USA took the world onto a very dangerous path of W.M.D

[antipike]

Truman was a war criminal and history should be rewritten to include this as he should have been hung alongside all the other war criminals ,

In my opinion he was the worst of the lot

Why not use nukes on vietnam ? surely that would have saved the lives of usa soldiers , why not ? because the experiment had already been done at hiroshima / nagasaki , these two nuclear attacks where simply an experiment on humans

[AmorBravo]

Wow why hasn't this been viewed by more people