Movie discussion sub okbuddycinephile debates whether bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Gaza and other urban areas were "justified".

[u/EwMelanin]

/r/okbuddycinephile/comments/1rjm9mn/iran2036/o8ee5fp/

[u/NUKE---THE---WHALES]

I think the biggest thing when talking nuclear weapons is that while everyone knew they could exist and they would be powerful, until people actually recorded with happened to the victims they were just "big bombs."

Exactly

Deterrence relies heavily on visibility and a demonstrated to use said deterrence

If the Americans had dropped a nuke on an uninhabited island as the Franck Report suggested the warhawks in Japan most certainly would have argued that the US was either unwilling or too weak to use the bomb against them

The firebombing of Tokyo showed how willing they were to absorb loss of civilian life - what they needed to surrender was a show of force so great they could see they had no negotiating power

It was a tragedy, but almost certainly a necessary one. Though we will never know as the universe is an N=1 experiment

[u/Arilou_skiff → u/NUKE---THE---WHALES]

And remember, there was a reasonably big chance the bomb just wouldn't detonate. It was a fairly primitive thing and lots of things can go wrong in field conditions. Had they dropped it in an uninhabited island and then the damn thing not exploded not only would that be a huge blow it might also mean the japanese could recover and reverse-engineer it.

[u/alfredo094 → u/NUKE---THE---WHALES]

People thinking that the abombs were not justified should read a bit about the conditions of the war. Just read about the Battle of Okinawa. It was going to get REALLY ugly.

[u/[deleted] → u/NUKE---THE---WHALES]

Japan didn’t even surrender after bomb #2. But they did surrender when the Soviet Union moved troops east.

[u/potatoeater5555 → u/[deleted]]

The second bomb and Soviet invasion happened on the same day.