"Volvería a tirar la bomba atómica"

elfo-oscuro dijo:

la bomba de hiroshima salvó millones de vidas, sino hubieran muerto en la guerra que proseguiria para la invasion de japón.
eso si, la bomba de nagasaki sobraba, con la de hiroshima se hubieran rendido.

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The other day, General Arnold [commander general of the army air corps] offered me three names. "Both of the others were full colonels; Iwas a lieutenant-colonel. He said that when General Arnold asked which of them could do this atomic weapons deal, he replied without hesitation, "Paul Tibbets is the man to do it." I said, "Well, thank you , sir." Then he laid out what was going on and it was up to me now to put together an organization and train them to drop atomic weapons on both Europe and the Pacific - Tokyo.
Studs Terkel: Interesting that they would have dropped it on Europe as well. We didn't know that.
Paul Tibbets: My edict was as clear as could be. Drop simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific because of the secrecy problem - you couldn't drop it in one part of the world without dropping it in the other.

Studs Terkel: Why did they drop the second one, the Bockscar [bomb] on Nagasaki?
Paul Tibbets: Unknown to anybody else - I knew it, but nobody else knew - there was a third one. See, the first bomb went off and they didn't hear anything out of the Japanese for two or three days. The second bomb was dropped and again they were silent for another couple of days. Then I got aphone call from General Curtis LeMay [chief of staff of the strategic air forces in the Pacific]. He said, "You got another one of those damn things?" I said, "Yes sir." He said, "Where is it?" I said, "Over in Utah." He said, "Get it out here. You and your crew are going to fly it." I said, "Yes sir." I sent word back and the crew loaded it on an airplane and we headed back to bring it right on out to Tinian and when they got it to California debarkation point, the war was over.
Studs Terkel: What did General LeMay have in mind with the third one?
Paul Tibbets: Nobody knows.

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During the war "annihilationist and exterminationalist rhetoric" was tolerated at all levels of U.S. society; according to the UK embassy in Washington the Americans regarded the Japanese as "a nameless mass of vermin".[88] Caricatures depicting Japanese as less than human, e.g. monkeys, were common.[88] A 1944 opinion poll that asked what should be done with Japan found that 13% of the U.S. public were in favor of the extermination of all Japanese: men, women, and children.[89][90]

News of the atomic bombing were greeted enthusiastically in the U.S.; a poll in Fortune magazine in late 1945 showed a significant minority of Americans wishing that more atomic bombs could have been dropped on Japan.[91] The initial positive response was supported by the imagery presented to the public (mainly the powerful mushroom cloud) and the censorship of photographs that showed corpses incinerated by the blast as well as photos of maimed survivors.[91] As an example, a member of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Lieutenant Daniel McGovern, used a film crew to document the results. The film crew's work resulted in a three-hour documentary entitled The Effects of the Atomic Bombs Against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The documentary included images from hospitals showing the human effects of the bomb; it showed burned out buildings and cars, and rows of skulls and bones on the ground. When sent to the U.S., it was mentioned widely in the U.S. press, then quietly suppressed and never shown. It was classified "top secret" for the next 22 years.[92] During this time in America, it was a common practice for editors to keep graphic images of death out of films, magazines and newspapers.

Imagery of the atomic bombings was suppressed in Japan during the occupation[93] although some Japanese magazines had managed to publish images before the Allied occupation troops took control. The Allied occupation forces enforced censorship on anything "that might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility", and pictures of the effects on people on the ground were deemed inflammatory. A likely reason for the banning was that the images depicting burn victims and funeral pyres evoked similarities to the widely circulated images taken in liberated nancy concentration camps.[94]

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La importancia de los bombardeos en la rendición de Japón, así como la justificación ética de Estados Unidos, ha sido un tema de debates entre académicos y público en general durante décadas. J. Samuel Walker escribió en abril del 2005 un resumen de la historiografía reciente sobre el tema, «parece que la controversia sobre el uso de la bomba aún continúa». Walker hace notar que «El aspecto fundamental que ha dividido a los académicos por casi cuatro décadas radica en que si el uso de la bomba fue necesario para obtener la victoria en la guerra en el Pacífico en términos satisfactorios para Estados Unidos».[94]

Con motivo del cincuenta aniversario de los bombardeos, el periódico estadounidense The Seattle Times clasificó los debates al respecto de la siguiente forma:[95]

* La bomba era necesaria o estaba justificada porque:
o Los japoneses habían demostrado una resistencia semi-fanática, como los ataques kamikazes de Okinawa, los suicidios masivos de Saipán o la lucha hasta prácticamente el último hombre en las islas del Pacífico. El bombardeo de Tokio había apiolado a más de 100.000 personas sin efectos políticos, por lo que la bomba era necesaria para la rendición del país.
o Con sólo dos bombas construidas y listas para usarse, era demasiado arriesgado «gastar» una al lanzarla sobre un área despoblada.
o Una oleada turística a Japón hubiera costado una gran cantidad de vidas en ambos bandos de tal forma que se rebasaría el número de muertes de ambos bombardeos.
o Ambas ciudades hubieran sufrido bombardeos incendiarios de cualquier forma.
o El uso inmediato de la bomba convenció al mundo de su horror y se disuadió su utilización cuando se construyeron más bombas.
o El uso de la bomba sorprendió tanto a la Unión Soviética y la guerra terminó tan rápido que éstos no pudieron solicitar la oleada turística conjunta de Japón.

* La bomba no era necesaria o no estaba justificada porque:
o Japón ya estaba listo para rendirse antes de los bombardeos.
o El rechazo estadounidense a los términos de la rendición al no garantizar la continuidad de la figura del Emperador prolongó la guerra innecesariamente.
o Una explosión de demostración sobre la Bahía de Tokio hubiera servido para convencer a los líderes de los efectos de la bomba sin muertes innecesarias.
o Incluso si el bombardeo a Hiroshima fuese justificado, los Estados Unidos no le dieron tiempo suficiente a los japoneses a considerar los alcances de la bomba antes del bombardeo a Nagasaki.
o La bomba fue lanzada para parcialmente justificar los 2 billones de dólares utilizados para su fabricación.
o Las ciudades tenían casi nulo valor militar. Los ciudadanos tenían una relación de cinco o seis a uno sobre los militares.
o Se sacrificaron cientos de miles de vidas de japoneses simplemente por la lucha de poder político entre la URSS y los Estados Unidos.
o El bombardeo incendiario causaría mucho más daño sin la necesidad de convertir a los Estados Unidos en el primer país en utilizar armas nucleares.

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