6/8/2025

The 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and the eventual end of the Pacific War and therefore WW2 will be commemorated on 6 August 2025.

No one quite knows how many lives were saved by the decision to use the bomb but a rough estimate of well over 2 million is certainly reasonable. While around 150,000 people perished from the blast or the following radiation, the lives saved were at least an order of magnitude greater. These lives included allied POWs who were, by this time dying in droves from disease and malnutrition; natives of the lands still under Japanese control who likewise were dying in their thousands per day due to the Japanese diverting food to their homeland and overseas troops; American servicemen who were not needed to invade the Japanese homeland - the US estimates were that such an invasion would cost up to 1 million US lives; the lives of Japanese civilians who would have died during the invasion since the Japanese Imperial Command planned to fight to the last man and woman.

Although the war officially ended almost a month after the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan's unconditional surrender came just nine days after the first and six days after the second bombs were dropped

It got my father home. I was two years old before he met me, and I told Mum, "I don't like that man".

He was so close to what he referred to as the 'Nips' that some of them were caught sneaking through the jungle to watch films in the Australians' camp.

I've been to Hiroshima. It was a very eerie experience. I still feel that it's amazing that we are now allies with Japan, and that my wife had lunch yesterday with our 50 year old Japanese 'daughter' who flew in from Tokyo for 4 days to see her and another friend in Adelaide.

mhaze,

That “2 million lives saved” figure didn’t exist in 1945. It emerged decades later when officials were defending the bombings against critics. At the time, US estimates for invading Japan were far lower (some as low as 30-50,000 and Truman himself spoke of approximately 500,000).

Japan was already collapsing under blockade and relentless bombing, and Soviet entry into the war on August 8th - rather than the bombs alone - was likely decisive in forcing surrender.

Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Admiral Leahy all questioned whether dropping the bomb was necessary. Those doubts existed then - long before later political narratives turned it into a neat story that “nukes saved millions and ended the war.”

Trumpster,

A very neat story, but the only true fact is the US atomic bomb killed something like 150,000 innocent people, the rest of your post is conjecture. Even if all you say was to be true, there is the moral question of what right is there to murder innocent people. I know, you're very big on "collective guilt", no doubt in your eyes the Japanese people were just as guilty as the Palestinian people of today, including the babies. ALL WAR IS WRONG! There is no right side.

The two million lives were the total American lives saved, Japanese lives saved, POW lives saved and lives saved in the Japanese occupied S-E Asian nations. The 500,000 American lives saved was just a portion of that.

"ALL WAR IS WRONG! There is no right side."

During the Japanese occupation of China, somewhere between 20 million 40 million Chinese were killed in fighting, wanton massacres, and deliberate starvation. It took a war to stop that.

No right side?