Anniversary of the Hiroshima Bombing

[GMantis]

Today being the anniversary of the first usage of Nuclear Weapons, I think it will be interesting to see what people think.
You might want to see this link:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/denson7.html
I think that it wasn't the right think to do and there were several better alternatives

       

[GMantis]

Well, the responses have been utterly predictable. No one (with small exceptions) considers any other option other than bombing or invasion. And there were other options:
- Changing thus policy from unconditional surrender to surrender with the condition that emperor would be permitted to remain and would not be tried. Large parts of the Japanese government were prepared to surrender under these conditions and had actually communicated that to the Americans. Considering that this is what eventually happened, it could have been accepted before 150 thousand people had been killed.
- The Japanese were deadly afraid from communism and would probably have surrendered after the entrance of the Soviet Union into the war to avoid Soviet invasion of the Home islands.
- The bomb could have been demonstrated first - perhaps to representatives of the Japanese government or dropped near Tokyo so that everyone could see its power. If this wasn't enough, it could at least be thrown on a military target.
- Most military advisors of Truman actually believed that Japan would surrender soon anyway: their sea shipping vital for the economy had been practically destroyed at this point and the railways were also being destroyed.
It seems to me that if all those options are considered, the atomic booming was not done for a quick end of the war but for other reasons.
The disheartening response of this forum seems to indicate that the Hiroshima myth described by gar Alperovits has been very successful.