Can anybody excuse Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

[Woodrow]

The road to war between Japan and the United States began in the 1930s when differences over China drove the two nations apart. In 1931 Japan conquered Manchuria, which until then had been part of China. In 1937 Japan began a long and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to conquer the rest of China. In 1940, the Japanese government allied their country with Nazi Germany in the Axis Alliance, and, in the following year, occupied all of Indochina.

The United States, which had important political and economic interests in East Asia, was alarmed by these Japanese moves. The U.S. increased military and financial aid to China, embarked on a program of strengthening its military power in the Pacific, and cut off the shipment of oil and other raw materials to Japan.

Because Japan was poor in natural resources, its government viewed these steps, especially the embargo on oil as a threat to the nation's survival. Japan's leaders responded by resolving to seize the resource-rich territories of Southeast Asia, even though that move would certainly result in war with the United States.

The problem with the plan was the danger posed by the U.S. Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese fleet, devised a plan to immobilize the U.S. fleet at the outset of the war with a surprise attack.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-1.htm

here u go Engle baby

we cant be handfeeding you info....if u dont know anythang...catch up...are we expected to provide links everytime historical facts u are unaware of is brought up?  

Sigh...

Thanks for the info Infinite...

What I am trying to do is start the practice of backing up what you say... If you make a claim, back it up with evidence. It makes your argument a whole lot stronger and you not look so ignorant.

Infinite claims the road to war was started as far back as WW1... Yet the link you provided says it didn't start untill the 1930's...

[M Dogg™]

Why was the bomb dropped. Simple, we are going to invade Japan and this was going to cost many hundreds of thousands United States solders lives. The answer was to show Japan that in fact we have a weapon that will totally kill them off if in fact they don't surrender. Why did we select Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because they were cities in which military weapons were being made for WWII. Could we have picked better targets, yes. Should we have not dropped the bombs, that has been asked since the moment they dropped and Russia copied ours. But in the end, they were dropped, and we dropped them. We hit our targets, and many United States solders lives were saved. Why two, 'cause we thought Japan would surrender after one, but they refused, they thought we only have one, but after two they knew we could drop them all day, so they finally surrender. The results, America's rebuilding of Japan, and now they are one of our closest allies. Who would have knowed, eventually Chine became our rival.