Hiroshima was Sixty Years Ago Today

[Tages]

Given this anniversary, I thought I may share this alternative (some would call it "revisionist") point of view. I am interested to hear peoples' thoughts on it.

(Note that it is better to read the original page for a clearer understanding of the footnotes, as well as additional links)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Ralph Raico (http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico22.html)


Hiroshima and Nagasaki
by Ralph Raico

This excerpt from Ralph Raico's "Harry S. Truman: Advancing the Revolution in John V. Denson, ed., Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom (Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2001), is reprinted with permission. (The notes are numbered as they are because this is an excerpt. Read the whole article.)


The most spectacular episode of Truman’s presidency will never be forgotten, but will be forever linked to his name: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and of Nagasaki three days later. Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast majority were civilians, including several thousand Korean workers. Twelve U.S. Navy fliers incarcerated in a Hiroshima jail were also among the dead.87

Great controversy has always surrounded the bombings. One thing Truman insisted on from the start: The decision to use the bombs, and the responsibility it entailed, was his. Over the years, he gave different, and contradictory, grounds for his decision. Sometimes he implied that he had acted simply out of revenge. To a clergyman who criticized him, Truman responded, testily:

Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.88

Such reasoning will not impress anyone who fails to see how the brutality of the Japanese military could justify deadly retaliation against innocent men, women, and children. Truman doubtless was aware of this, so from time to time he advanced other pretexts. On August 9, 1945, he stated: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."89

This, however, is absurd. Pearl Harbor was a military base. Hiroshima was a city, inhabited by some three hundred thousand people, which contained military elements. In any case, since the harbor was mined and the U.S. Navy and Air Force were in control of the waters around Japan, whatever troops were stationed in Hiroshima had been effectively neutralized.

On other occasions, Truman claimed that Hiroshima was bombed because it was an industrial center. But, as noted in the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, "all major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the city – and escaped serious damage."90 The target was the center of the city. That Truman realized the kind of victims the bombs consumed is evident from his comment to his cabinet on August 10, explaining his reluctance to drop a third bomb: "The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible," he said; he didn’t like the idea of killing "all those kids."91 Wiping out another one hundred thousand people . . . all those kids.

Moreover, the notion that Hiroshima was a major military or industrial center is implausible on the face of it. The city had remained untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home islands, and never figured in Bomber Command’s list of the 33 primary targets.92

Thus, the rationale for the atomic bombings has come to rest on a single colossal fabrication, which has gained surprising currency: that they were necessary in order to save a half-million or more American lives. These, supposedly, are the lives that would have been lost in the planned invasion of Kyushu in December, then in the all-out invasion of Honshu the next year, if that was needed. But the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost.93 The ridiculously inflated figure of a half-million for the potential death toll – nearly twice the total of U.S. dead in all theaters in the Second World War – is now routinely repeated in high-school and college textbooks and bandied about by ignorant commentators. Unsurprisingly, the prize for sheer fatuousness on this score goes to President George W. Bush, who claimed in 1991 that dropping the bomb "spared millions of American lives."94

Still, Truman’s multiple deceptions and self-deceptions are understandable, considering the horror he unleashed. It is equally understandable that the U.S. occupation authorities censored reports from the shattered cities and did not permit films and photographs of the thousands of corpses and the frightfully mutilated survivors to reach the public.95 Otherwise, Americans – and the rest of the world – might have drawn disturbing comparisons to scenes then coming to light from the Nazi concentration camps.

The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.96 The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s own chief of staff, was typical:

the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.97

The political elite implicated in the atomic bombings feared a backlash that would aid and abet the rebirth of horrid prewar "isolationism." Apologias were rushed into print, lest public disgust at the sickening war crime result in erosion of enthusiasm for the globalist project.98 No need to worry. A sea-change had taken place in the attitudes of the American people. Then and ever after, all surveys have shown that the great majority supported Truman, believing that the bombs were required to end the war and save hundreds of thousands of American lives, or more likely, not really caring one way or the other.

Those who may still be troubled by such a grisly exercise in cost-benefit analysis – innocent Japanese lives balanced against the lives of Allied servicemen – might reflect on the judgment of the Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, who insisted on the supremacy of moral rules.99 When, in June 1956, Truman was awarded an honorary degree by her university, Oxford, Anscombe protested.100 Truman was a war criminal, she contended, for what is the difference between the U.S. government massacring civilians from the air, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Nazis wiping out the inhabitants of some Czech or Polish village?

Anscombe’s point is worth following up. Suppose that, when we invaded Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of thousands of German civilians, including women and children? Yet how is that different from the atomic bombings?

By early summer 1945, the Japanese fully realized that they were beaten. Why did they nonetheless fight on? As Anscombe wrote: "It was the insistence on unconditional surrender that was the root of all evil."101

to be cont.

[Tages]

cont. from above



That mad formula was coined by Roosevelt at the Casablanca conference, and, with Churchill’s enthusiastic concurrence, it became the Allied shibboleth. After prolonging the war in Europe, it did its work in the Pacific. At the Potsdam conference, in July 1945, Truman issued a proclamation to the Japanese, threatening them with the "utter devastation" of their homeland unless they surrendered unconditionally. Among the Allied terms, to which "there are no alternatives," was that there be "eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest [sic]." "Stern justice," the proclamation warned, "would be meted out to all war criminals."102

To the Japanese, this meant that the emperor – regarded by them to be divine, the direct descendent of the goddess of the sun – would certainly be dethroned and probably put on trial as a war criminal and hanged, perhaps in front of his palace.103 It was not, in fact, the U.S. intention to dethrone or punish the emperor. But this implicit modification of unconditional surrender was never communicated to the Japanese. In the end, after Nagasaki, Washington acceded to the Japanese desire to keep the dynasty and even to retain Hirohito as emperor.

For months before, Truman had been pressed to clarify the U.S. position by many high officials within the administration, and outside of it, as well. In May 1945, at the president’s request, Herbert Hoover prepared a memorandum stressing the urgent need to end the war as soon as possible. The Japanese should be informed that we would in no way interfere with the emperor or their chosen form of government. He even raised the possibility that, as part of the terms, Japan might be allowed to hold on to Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea. After meeting with Truman, Hoover dined with Taft and other Republican leaders, and outlined his proposals.104

Establishment writers on World War II often like to deal in lurid speculations. For instance: if the United States had not entered the war, then Hitler would have "conquered the world" (a sad undervaluation of the Red Army, it would appear; moreover, wasn’t it Japan that was trying to "conquer the world"?) and killed untold millions. Now, applying conjectural history in this case: assume that the Pacific war had ended in the way wars customarily do – through negotiation of the terms of surrender. And assume the worst – that the Japanese had adamantly insisted on preserving part of their empire, say, Korea and Formosa, even Manchuria. In that event, it is quite possible that Japan would have been in a position to prevent the Communists from coming to power in China. And that could have meant that the thirty or forty million deaths now attributed to the Maoist regime would not have occurred.

But even remaining within the limits of feasible diplomacy in 1945, it is clear that Truman in no way exhausted the possibilities of ending the war without recourse to the atomic bomb. The Japanese were not informed that they would be the victims of by far the most lethal weapon ever invented (one with "more than two thousand times the blast power of the British ‘Grand Slam,’ which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare," as Truman boasted in his announcement of the Hiroshima attack). Nor were they told that the Soviet Union was set to declare war on Japan, an event that shocked some in Tokyo more than the bombings.105 Pleas by some of the scientists involved in the project to demonstrate the power of the bomb in some uninhabited or evacuated area were rebuffed. All that mattered was to formally preserve the unconditional surrender formula and save the servicemen’s lives that might have been lost in the effort to enforce it. Yet, as Major General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the century’s great military historians, wrote in connection with the atomic bombings:

Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified.106

Isn’t this obviously true? And isn’t this the reason that rational and humane men, over generations, developed rules of warfare in the first place?

While the mass media parroted the government line in praising the atomic incinerations, prominent conservatives denounced them as unspeakable war crimes. Felix Morley, constitutional scholar and one of the founders of Human Events, drew attention to the horror of Hiroshima, including the "thousands of children trapped in the thirty-three schools that were destroyed." He called on his compatriots to atone for what had been done in their name, and proposed that groups of Americans be sent to Hiroshima, as Germans were sent to witness what had been done in the Nazi camps. The Paulist priest, Father James Gillis, editor of The Catholic World and another stalwart of the Old Right, castigated the bombings as "the most powerful blow ever delivered against Christian civilization and the moral law." David Lawrence, conservative owner of U.S. News and World Report, continued to denounce them for years.107 The distinguished conservative philosopher Richard Weaver was revolted by

the spectacle of young boys fresh out of Kansas and Texas turning nonmilitary Dresden into a holocaust . . . pulverizing ancient shrines like Monte Cassino and Nuremberg, and bringing atomic annihilation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Weaver considered such atrocities as deeply "inimical to the foundations on which civilization is built."108

Today, self-styled conservatives slander as "anti-American" anyone who is in the least troubled by Truman’s massacre of so many tens of thousands of Japanese innocents from the air. This shows as well as anything the difference between today’s "conservatives" and those who once deserved the name.

Leo Szilard was the world-renowned physicist who drafted the original letter to Roosevelt that Einstein signed, instigating the Manhattan Project. In 1960, shortly before his death, Szilard stated another obvious truth:

If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.109

The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. If Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was.

[Tages]

Notes

87. On the atomic bombings, see Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Knopf, 1995); and idem, "Was Harry Truman a Revisionist on Hiroshima?" Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter 29, no. 2 (June 1998); also Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York: Vintage, 1977); and Dennis D. Wainstock, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996).

88. Alperovitz, Decision, p. 563. Truman added: "When you deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true." For similar statements by Truman, see ibid., p. 564. Alperovitz’s monumental work is the end-product of four decades of study of the atomic bombings and is indispensable for comprehending the often complex argumentation on the issue.

89. Ibid., p. 521.

90. Ibid., p. 523.

91. Barton J. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 257. General Carl Spaatz, commander of U.S. strategic bombing operations in the Pacific, was so shaken by the destruction at Hiroshima that he telephoned his superiors in Washington, proposing that the next bomb be dropped on a less populated area, so that it "would not be as devastating to the city and the people." His suggestion was rejected. Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 147–48.

92. This is true also of Nagasaki.

93. See Barton J. Bernstein, "A Post-War Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42, no. 6 (June–July 1986): 38–40; and idem, "Wrong Numbers," The Independent Monthly (July 1995): 41–44.

94. J. Samuel Walker, "History, Collective Memory, and the Decision to Use the Bomb," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 320, 323–25. Walker details the frantic evasions of Truman’s biographer, David McCullough, when confronted with the unambiguous record.

95. Paul Boyer, "Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 299. On the fate of the bombings’ victims and the public’s restricted knowledge of them, see John W. Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory," in ibid., pp. 275–95.

96. Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 320–65. On MacArthur and Eisenhower, see ibid., pp. 352 and 355–56.

97. William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950), p. 441. Leahy compared the use of the atomic bomb to the treatment of civilians by Genghis Khan, and termed it "not worthy of Christian man." Ibid., p. 442. Curiously, Truman himself supplied the foreword to Leahy’s book. In a private letter written just before he left the White House, Truman referred to the use of the atomic bomb as "murder," stating that the bomb "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them wholesale." Barton J. Bernstein, "Origins of the U.S. Biological Warfare Program," Preventing a Biological Arms Race, Susan Wright, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 9.

98. Barton J. Bernstein, "Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Bomb," Diplomatic History 17, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 35–72.

99. One writer in no way troubled by the sacrifice of innocent Japanese to save Allied servicemen – indeed, just to save him – is Paul Fussell; see his Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New York: Summit, 1988). The reason for Fussell’s little Te Deum is, as he states, that he was among those scheduled to take part in the invasion of Japan, and might very well have been killed. It is a mystery why Fussell takes out his easily understandable terror, rather unchivalrously, on Japanese women and children instead of on the men in Washington who conscripted him to fight in the Pacific in the first place.

100. G.E.M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman’s Degree," in idem, Collected Philosophical Papers, vol. 3, Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 62–71.

101. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman’s Degree," p. 62.

102. Hans Adolf Jacobsen and Arthur S. Smith, Jr., eds., World War II: Policy and Strategy. Selected Documents with Commentary (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1979), pp. 345–46.

103. For some Japanese leaders, another reason for keeping the emperor was as a bulwark against a possible postwar communist takeover. See also Sherwin, A World Destroyed, p. 236: "the [Potsdam] proclamation offered the military die-hards in the Japanese government more ammunition to continue the war than it offered their opponents to end it."

104. Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 44–45.

105. Cf. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 254: "it does seem very likely, though certainly not definite, that a synergistic combination of guaranteeing the emperor, awaiting Soviet entry, and continuing the siege strategy would have ended the war in time to avoid the November invasion." Bernstein, an excellent and scrupulously objective scholar, nonetheless disagrees with Alperovitz and the revisionist school on several key points.

106. J.F.C. Fuller, The Second World War, 1939–45: A Strategical and Tactical History (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1948), p. 392. Fuller, who was similarly scathing on the terror-bombing of the German cities, characterized the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "a type of war that would have disgraced Tamerlane." Cf. Barton J. Bernstein, who concludes, in "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 235:

In 1945, American leaders were not seeking to avoid the use of the A-bomb. Its use did not create ethical or political problems for them. Thus, they easily rejected or never considered most of the so-called alternatives to the bomb.

107. Felix Morley, "The Return to Nothingness," Human Events (August 29, 1945) reprinted in Hiroshima’s Shadow, Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds. (Stony Creek, Conn.: Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), pp. 272–74; James Martin Gillis, "Nothing But Nihilism," The Catholic World, September 1945, reprinted in ibid., pp. 278–80; Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 438–40.

108. Richard M. Weaver, "A Dialectic on Total War," in idem, Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), pp. 98–99.

109. Wainstock, Decision, p. 122.

[warspite1805]

People get too emotional about this subject, some of the conventional bombing raids killed more people and the expected death toll of Allied and Japanese casualties were far higher.
It was total war and the truth ouf it Hiroshima and Nagasaki were producing war material making them fair game.
THe other alternative was to maintain the bloakde until most of the Japanese civilians had starved to death. If you want some one to blame for the Japanese casualties blame the Japanese Government and their military, theuy started the war, they carried out the attrocities and they refused to surrender when they were beaten.

[Tages]

Now, to grant some hearing to the other side, the last time I posted this essay I was derided by one poster for being "in love with the revisionist crap of Barton J. Bernstein," and pointed to this (http://tigger.cc.uic.edu/~rjensen/invade.htm) page arguing in favor of the 500,000-1,000,000 casualty predictions batted about over the decades as estimates for the results of an invasion of Japan in 1945. It is, of course, true that it is all speculation, as such an event (thankfully, I hope we can all agree) never occurred. It is also true that, counterfactually speaking (channeling Niall Ferguson here), such numbers would certainly have been possible. The question, however, is whether or not they were probable.

The essay linked to above itself undermines considerably the case for the higher casualty projections. Quoting from the second paragraph:

While misconceptions of how casualty projections are formulated are addressed directly at several points in the text and footnotes, the four things I wish to do--- other than establishing the existence and complete acceptance by the War Department and Army of estimates that battle casualties could surpass one million men--- are: (1) explain how highly tentative estimates were, and still are, created; (2) outline the deep historical roots of casualty projections in the U.S. Army (which form the underpinnings of how planners actually look at and interpret the analyses); (3) describe the impact of the non-battle casualties on the formulations; and (4) explain why non-battle casualties specifically go unstated in strategic-level studies even though they are understood by all involved to be a fundamental part of manpower requirements--- the other side of the casualty projections coin.
The first statement implies that the casualty projections, though they did exist (as disputed by Bernstein), were highly tentative in nature. The second states the intention of explaining how the history of casualty projections have evolved through the ages. The third mentions non-battle casualties and perhaps implies that they typically go underestimated. The final statement elaborates further on the one preceding it, stating the intention to explain why non-battle casualties would go unstated, though tacitly understood, in the analysis.

Further along the article, it specifically mentions WWII, and again seems to undermine the case for the greater estimates:

Early in the Pacific war, medical and campaign planners built their casualty estimates as best they could using tables constructed from the U.S. Army's World War I experience when factored with projected troop strength, operational plans, and intelligence estimates of Japanese capabilities, terrain, and relative firepower. By the invasion of the Philippines, planners at various echelons in MacArthur's headquarters were able to realistically replace the World War I baseline figures with data compiled from the hard-won battles on and around New Guinea. In general, several sets of figures would emerge that might or might not be completely synchronized, depending on the individual interpretations of intelligence data and the level of coordination between the different staffs within a command:
Here, it admits that in the Pacific theater, it was standard practice to use quarter-century-old data for the formulation of casualty estimates up until the war was already nearing its dusk, when it was updated, though different attempts at the same estimations came with different results.

Later in the article it begins to more effectively state the case for the higher casualty estimates.

These losses had a sobering effect on the JCS's Joint Strategic Survey Committee presiding over the refinements made to "Operations Against Japan Subsequent to Formosa," which through the spring of 1945 (long after its name, but not content, was rendered obsolete by the rush of events), was used as the primary outline for the series of campaigns culminating on Japan's soil. In its 30 August 1944 annex, the planners noted the number of Japanese troops which could be made available to defend the Home Islands-3,500,000-and extrapolated that number against a not yet complete count of the destroyed Japanese garrison. The JPS committee concluded:

"In our Saipan operation, it cost approximately one American killed and several wounded to exterminate seven Japanese soldiers. On this basis it might cost us half a million American lives and many times that number wounded . . . in the home islands."

This "Saipan ratio" set the standard for strategic-level casualty projections in the Pacific. Together with the experience of combat attrition of line infantry units in Europe, plus the assumption that fighting in Japan could stretch nearly as far as 1947, it provided the basis for the Army and War Department manpower policy for 1945, and, thus, the pace for the big jump in Selective Service inductions and expansion of the training base even as the war in Europe was winding down.^48
Here we're getting somewhere, but still, the logic, if the article is accurate (and sources suggest it is), is flawed.

First, the Saipan operation, however bloody, did not necessarily encompass the whole sweep of Pacific operations against the Japanese. The article states that the estimates used this logic, but it does not evaluate its purported accuracy. Saipan was, proportionally speaking, one of the bloodier battles of the war.

And even within the Saipan example, the logic involved weakens. The article itself noted the mass suicides that took place amongst soldiers unwilling to face certain defeat at the hands of the Americans. Assuming that the model would have held to an invasion of Japan, well, suicides are hardly mortal threats to American soldiers, unless somehow the bodies are boobytrapped.

In the first half of June, Stimson twice asked the Army planners to comment on outside estimates that the number of Americans killed could extend from 500,000 to 1,000,000, figures that imply total casualties running in the area of 2,000,000 to 4,000,000. While these numbers were not, in themselves, unimaginable if the intent had been to conquer all Japanese <page 542> forces on the Home Islands by force of arms, such had never been the intent or desire of planners who firmly believed that effective "military control" of all Japan could be "obtained by the securing of a relatively few vital coastal areas" on Honshu,^73 and that the opening invasion of Kyushu would only entail seizing enough land to serve as a base to launch the Honshu invasion toward Tokyo. Military leaders and planners believed that the Japanese, isolated and without allies, would surrender after their capital was taken and their cities destroyed, thus rendering a bloody mop-up of the mountainous, California-sized nation unnecessary.
Here, the casualty estimates seem to be resting on another precarious assumption that was not, in fact, true.

to be cont.

[Tages]

cont. from above


And therein lies the problem with the mythical half a million to a million figures. Too many assumptions.

First off is the idea that the atomic bombs, themselves, were the cause of the Japanese surrender. This is not a certain thing. For while most note that the Japanese Imperial government refused to surrender after Hiroshima, few also note the fail to surrender after the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Because between the bombing of Nagasaki and the official call of surrender, another important event would take place. The Soviet invasion of Japanese-held Korea.

It is not so implausible that fear of the Soviets could have been a primary motivator in the Japanese surrender. The prospect of occupation by the United States was tough to stomach, but the idea of being occupied by the USSR was blood-curdling. The Japanese Army had encountered the Red Army in Mongolia years before. As fearlessly and fanatically as it faced the United States military and the Chinese guerillas, from that point on, Soviet Russia was regarded with fear. The Imperial court could hardly have been ignorant of Joseph Stalin's genocide against Ukrainians, Kulaks, political dissidents, Katyn Forest, and opponents feared and imagined years earlier. The idea of a Soviet invasion, and thus being occupied by the armies of the Breaker of Nations, wasn't just undesirable. It was unthinkable.

Thus, though we know that moderate elements in the Imperial government had sent out peace feelers in the months leading up to Hiroshima, that the atomic bombs alone shocked the Empire into surrendering is uncertain. Uncertain too is that the Americans would have conducted the invasion without allied support from the Soviet Union or elsewhere.

Of course, we could also go into detail about the supposed Japanese fanaticism that only atomic fire could squelch. Tales are to this day told of Japanese militarism and its almost mythical stalwartness, immovable by any foe (except Moscow, and apparently, Little Boy), of millions of Japanese willing to die before accepting the dishonor of surrender, and the elevation of the Emperor to literal godhood.

However, much of this had to owe to the Potsdam Declaration, and President Franklin Roosevelt's resolutely stupid "unconditional surrender" doctrine. To dispensers of Japanese propaganda, this meant the deposition of the Emperor, which was tantamount to national disgrace. As the Allies ended up allowing the Emperor to stay on the throne anyway, amending this doctrine similarly at the time may have opened up Tokyo to a more negotiation-prone mindset. It would have made peace seem a less ghastly notion, not to mention allowing a powerful counterbalance against communism in the Orient. To publically leave open the option of deposing Hirohito when the cult of Japanese militarism centered so strongly on the Emperor's personage made no strategic sense whatsoever.

So, this, I will concede: if the American invasion had occurred, and if American forces had been alone, and if they insisted on fighting a costly battle over the whole of the islands that High Command had already ruled out instead of the quick seizure of key coastal areas, and if the Japanese civilian population, bereft of food, medical supplies, finance or industry had fought to the death as consistently as anticipated, assuming all these things are accurate, then the 500,000-1,000,000 casualty projections would have been a possibility.

However, the following I will not concede:

1. That the "Either we drop the bombs or we invade" options were either/or. Japanese industry had been ruined, its war effort shattered, and Japanese forces could no longer project their strength off the home islands. Those were not the only two options available.
2. That the Potsdam Declaration was anything but insane considering the circumstances involved.
3. That the instant incineration of over a hundred thousand lives, most of them civilians and noncombatants, was ever justifiable. It is not morally right to attack those who are no threat to you, no matter the purely hypothetical benefits. "Just War" doctrine exists for a reason.

And that, my friends, is my response to that assertion.


EXTRA NOTE: To those who look at my suggestions and say "But wouldn't that have meant letting Japanese war criminals escape justice?" I have two responses. The first is that Hirohito was not the architect of Japanese barbarism. Hideki Tojo and various post-holders in the military and Imperial court were. They could have been handed over to Allied forces (or compelled to kill themselves, as most did anyway) and the Emperor could have maintained his position.

My second response is that, sadly, that largely ended up occurring anyway. The case of Shiro Ishii was unfortunately typical. Ishii, the head of Japan's infamous Unit 731 and the monstrous Japanese equivalent of Germany's Joseph Mengele, was pardoned by U.S. authorities in exchange for the date he and his unit extracted from experiments on humans, and died a natural death in 1959 without ever being tried for his crimes.

[M203]

Would you say that if, during the pullouts in Vietnam, the Vietnamese dropped MOABs on the US bases?

[Tages]

I will conclude this series of posts with the following quotes (http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm), from certain American figures who opposed the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


~~~DWIGHT EISENHOWER
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63


~~~GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
Of course, it doesn't end with them. Herbert Hoover, Albert Einstein, Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy, Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew and many others opposed the dropping of the bombs.

[Wesley Dodds]

In general, I agree with the revisionist stance -- but with two caveats. First, Truman got some bad information about the number of lives he was saving, which partially mitigates his act. Second, although the Japanese were on the cusp of surrendering, it is unlikely many would have accepted that surrender without the psychoogical blow of forfeiting the Emperor's divinity.

The crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should also not be used to obscure the hideous slaughter by the Japanese in the decades up to the bombing.

[Tages]

The crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should also not be used to obscure the hideous slaughter by the Japanese in the decades up to the bombing.
Oh, agreed wholeheartedly. A fitting death for a monster like Tojo would be impossible for humans to devise. However, to justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki by pointing out Japanese atrocities would, similarly, be unjustifiable.

[MushMouth]

Oh, agreed wholeheartedly. A fitting death for a monster like Tojo would be impossible for humans to devise. However, to justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki by pointing out Japanese atrocities would, similarly, be unjustifiable.

That's the rub of war that so many people miss in their patriotic zeal. Its nearly impossible to get at the bad guys without trampling over innocent people in the process.

[JLarson]

I'm just sad so many people died.

It's funny - we've invaded (conquered, really) two countries already because of two towers. And 60 years ago, we vaporized two CITIES.

I'm only comparing the actual destruction, of course. But still...

Relativism, and all that.

[Adam Crocker]

It was total war and the truth ouf it Hiroshima and Nagasaki were producing war material making them fair game.

On the other hand why was the bomb dropped in the centre of the city where all the civilians were as opposed to its industrial areas on the periphery which were left untouched by the bomb?

(And Tages, yes I am reading your thread, and will have a response.)

And while Latuff's work tends to be iffy for me I actually liked this piece quite a bit.

[Wesley Dodds]

It just means that the public in America is much more aware of and involved in what their government is doing and much more able to enforce an acceptable standard of conduct on it. Thank you liberal reforms!

[Wesley Dodds]

Total war? I thought that was more of a Hitler/Clausewitz thing.

[Adam Crocker]

Establishment writers on World War II often like to deal in lurid speculations. For instance: [...] Now, applying conjectural history in this case: assume that the Pacific war had ended in the way wars customarily do – through negotiation of the terms of surrender. And assume the worst – that the Japanese had adamantly insisted on preserving part of their empire, say, Korea and Formosa, even Manchuria. In that event, it is quite possible that Japan would have been in a position to prevent the Communists from coming to power in China. And that could have meant that the thirty or forty million deaths now attributed to the Maoist regime would not have occurred.

I'd actually have to say that this is my biggest problem with the excerpt so far. Not because of the conclusions or logic used, but because Mr. Raico is so adamant in his piece on honestly following through with the moral implications of the actions in Hiroshima. As such, in the spirit of moral honesty, I feel he should also mention that such a course of action would have also have left these areas under a detestable and unpopular foreign occupation that by all accounts was quite brutal (on the other hand apparently the Japanese actually economically and industrially built up the areas they colonized whereas the Europeans mostly robbed them), unless of course such a negotiated peace included Japan reigning in the treatment of its colonies.

Of course that piece is, by admission of the author, speculatory history based on conjecture so its not exactly a huge objection, especially since it was a smaller point in the context of the rest of work which I thought was pretty damn good and cogent.

I actually believed that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tragic necessities in themselves until my third year of university when I was taking twentieth century European history. I don't know if this affected how the course was taught, but the course's regular professor was on sabbatical so we had a military history professor working at the school handle the second term. During the discussion of the end of World War II (which included a lot of stuff on the military features of the war) he pretty much torpedoed that idea when he mentioned that Japan had been sending out peace-feelers and were pretty much rebuffed by Allies due to the decision to demand unconditional surrender. I was felt a good bit horrified for a few seconds which was promptly replaced by my usual cynical outrage and disgust for such things, since by that point I already knew about the history of U.S. policy in Latin America.

Funny thing was that in elementary school I read a book on Hiroshima written in the style of novel that was supposedly based on eye-witness testimony (can't remember the name) that described the effects bombings. To this day I look back on it and for the life of me I can't figure out why it didn't chill me to the bone.

Of course I also found Nineteen Eighty-Four more chilling when I read it again in university than I did in High School. Maybe such things just scare me a lot easier as I get older because I have a better understanding of how such things happen and thus how much more plausible their occurence is.

A fitting death for a monster like Tojo would be impossible for humans to devise.

I dunno, I think Warren Ellis had a good start on devising such punishments when he had Spider Jerusalem suggest that the Beast should be, "peeled, salted, driven through the streets by mental peatients with spiked planks, and then used as a tiolet and jizz-catcher by baboons in heat.

"At best."

[cactusmaac]

On the other hand why was the bomb dropped in the centre of the city where all the civilians were as opposed to its industrial areas on the periphery which were left untouched by the bomb?

(And Tages, yes I am reading your thread, and will have a response.)

And while Latuff's work tends to be iffy for me I actually liked this piece quite a bit.

The same reason Tokyo, London, Coventry and Berlin were bombed.

Bombing civilians was by then an accepted tactic by both sides.

And if you've got one bomb, how exactly do you hit the periphery?

[Adam Crocker]

The same reason Tokyo, London, Coventry and Berlin were bombed.

Bombing civilians was by then an accepted tactic by both sides.

That it certainly was, though I was responding to Warspite's claim that Hiroshima was bombed for producing war material. It was a terror bombing in effect.

And if you've got one bomb, how exactly do you hit the periphery?

You mean besides actually dropping the bomb on said industrial areas rather than the centre of the city?

[FBHthelizardmage]

Historical evidence (Such as the minutes of heated discussions of the Japanese government at the time) show that the main cause of the Japanese surrender was not the bombs, but rather a wish to end the war before Russia could invade. This followed the annihilation of the 700,000 man Kwangtung Army in Manchuria in a weeks fighting by a lightning soviet armoured attack. (An attack which is a perhaps the textbook model for soviet battle planning, they suffered only around 20,000 casualties in the entire operation).

While the bombs probably did feature in the decision to surrender, they were by no means the main cause.

[Wesley Dodds]

Also, a desire on the part of the Truman Administration to end the war before the Russians got involved so they alone would accept the Japanese surrender.

By the way, according to George Bush, the decision to drop the atomic bombs saved millions of lives. Hmm, I guess indoctrination really does stem from the falsification of history.

[Magneto_X]

On CNN they have this story about this old lady who gives speeches about surviving Hiroshima to school kids. But she doesn't allow any questions. WTF?

It's shocking that the Japanese authorities *still* haven't admitted to or aplogized for what the Black Dragon Society did (like the rape of Nanking IIRC) and even the "confort women" for their troops during WWII.

[Wesley Dodds]

Ever since one of the brats came up behind her and gave her kancho.

[Winslow]

I always thought the casualty projections were based on American losses at Guadacanal and Okinawa, which were horrendous.

It is somewhat comforting that both MacArthur and Eisnhower opposed dropping the thing.

It's amazing and shocking to me that both sides opposed the bombing of civilians early in the war, and how quickly that ethic was tossed to the wayside.

[Adam Crocker]

It's amazing and shocking to me that both sides opposed the bombing of civilians early in the war, and how quickly that ethic was tossed to the wayside.

Not to me, then again I don't really find governments tossing aside ethics in war time when its convenient to be shocking anymore. In fact I envy you in that you're not cynical enough that you are still shocked by it.

[Wesley Dodds]

Worse, the Nazis who bombed civilian concentrations got off because they were able to produce Americans who'd done the same thing. Not a shining moment in human rights.

[Kiriyama]

There are about 270,000 "hibakusha" (people with cancer or mutations due to the atomic bomb) still living in Japan and the death toll is still rising.

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/838/13hw.th.jpg

[Wesley Dodds]

Hibakusha is "sick explosion person".

[Winslow]

Not to me, then again I don't really find governments tossing aside ethics in war time when its convenient to be shocking anymore. In fact I envy you in that you're not cynical enough that you are still shocked by it.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I think I'm shocked because of the way I was taught history.

Also, as a military academy graduate - I was taught war time ethics. It's interesting to note that the generals (Eisenhower and MacArthur) opposed the use of the atomic bomb, while the civilian (Truman) used it. An ironic outcome of a Constitution that was designed for abuses by the military to be checked by civilian rule.

[Paul McEnery]

Well, to be perfectly honest, I think I'm shocked because of the way I was taught history.

Also, as a military academy graduate - I was taught war time ethics. It's interesting to note that the generals (Eisenhower and MacArthur) opposed the use of the atomic bomb, while the civilian (Truman) used it. An ironic outcome of a Constitution that was designed for abuses by the military to be checked by civilian rule.
Not in the least.

It's an inevitable outcome of a Constitution that hands over far too much power to a substitute king.

You'd think that after Nixon, we'd have rethought the role of the presidency in a constitutional democracy.

Perhaps, after Bush, we can.

[cactusmaac]

1) Actually it was a military target in that it was the Army headquarters for the defence of southern Japan. Which meant bombing the centre was militarily justifiable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Hiroshim a_during_World_War_II

At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of considerable industrial and military significance. Some military camps were located nearby such as the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Hata's 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. Hiroshima was as a major supply and logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. It was chosen as a target because it had not suffered damage from previous bombing raids, allowing an ideal environment to measure the damage caused by the atomic bomb. The city was mobilized for "all-out" war, with thousands of conscripted women, children and Koreans working in military offices, military factories and building demolition and with women and children training to resist any invading force.[3] [4] [5] [6]

2) ?

You do know what a periphery is right?

One bomb strong enough to wipe out all the edges around a circle would destrpy everything inside a circle too.

[Wesley Dodds]

No, Cactus, the military reason you give does not justify dropping a nuclear weapon on innocent people. If there was a legitimate target in or near Hiroshima it could easily have been bombed with conventional weapons. The act of nuking civilians has only tarnished America's conduct in that war and made a nation responsible for atrocities that defy description a victim. Truman had many strengths but he deserved to be executed as a war criminal for his action, just as Hirohito deserved to be executed for his own wartime conduct.

[cactusmaac]

Well, to be perfectly honest, I think I'm shocked because of the way I was taught history.

Also, as a military academy graduate - I was taught war time ethics. It's interesting to note that the generals (Eisenhower and MacArthur) opposed the use of the atomic bomb, while the civilian (Truman) used it. An ironic outcome of a Constitution that was designed for abuses by the military to be checked by civilian rule.

Well, even if the atomic bombings hadn't occurred, Curtis LeMay was likely to have built bases at Okinawa so he could bomb Tokyo back to the Stone Age anyway.

I am somewhat bemused by the treatment of Hiroshima though.

The body count was far dwarfed by the firebombing of Tokyo by conventional ordnance causing 150,000 deaths.

[Nightcrawler]

Would you rather be speaking Japanese right now? The war was not over, Japan had not surrendered.

[cactusmaac]

You're just as dead from a conventional weapon as you are from an atomic one.

Why is one immoral and the other not?

[Wesley Dodds]

Would you rather be speaking Japanese right now? The war was not over, Japan had not surrendered.


Nihongo shaberu? Bakashi koto ibanaide!

[Wesley Dodds]

Yes, like when Nazis set off a nuclear bomb in --

Wait, that was the Tom Clancy novel.

[Mike Smash!]

Would you rather be speaking Japanese right now? The war was not over, Japan had not surrendered.Japan was defeated U.S. Generals said so. Eisenhower said so.

They just wanted to back out in a way that allowed them to save face.

And it disgusts me, cactus, that you're taking a "well, they did it too!" stance on killing civilians in war, much less specifically targeting them.

Germany bombed London. The U.S. and Britain firebombed Dresden. The U.S. dropped nuclear weapons on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

All of these acts should be considered war crimes and at the very least completely counterproductive from even a ammoral point of view.

Does this mean we have the right to torture Iraqi insurrgents or videotape us beheading them because it's "what they did first"?

And there is a huge difference between dropping conventional weapons and dropping those nuclear weapons. One being that despite all their knowledge, they weren't exactly certain what those bombs would do. Some worried that they destroy our planet's atmosphere and kill us all or destroy God knows how much of Japan, the water around them. And we know now that we killed millions of innocent people in seconds and millions more through radiation poision and whatever birth defects we caused.

We should be ashamed of what we did at the end of the war and no amount of "it was war, shit happens" will change that.

You're also just as dead after being raped to death with a broom rather than with an assault rifle, but I don't want our troops going to town on anyone.

This sort of "well, they were worse!" rhetoric is the worst kind of moral relativism. That we can get away with atrocities, provided that our enemies are worse than we are.

No. We have to determine our own moral compass instead of letting tyrants drag us down to just shy of their level.

[Noah Johnson]

Would you rather be speaking Japanese right now?

Look me in the eye and tell me that was EVER a realistic scenario. I dare you.

New rule: Justifications for slaughtering thousands of people cannot be based on complete fantasies. We've had waaaay too many problems with that lately.

[cactusmaac]

It was war Mike.

A war the Allies could have quite easily lost with terrible consequences for all of mankind.

Do you think those who ordered and carried out the bombings sixty years ago didn't have moral qualms?

It's very easy to sit in you armchair sixty years in the future and make judgements against those who faced the prospect of Hitler and Japan carving out the world between them.

If anyone deserves condemnation, it's those who started the war not those who ended it.

Germany bombed London. The U.S. and Britain firebombed Dresden. The U.S. dropped nuclear weapons on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

As opposed to rolling out the Third Reich and Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere?

[Nightcrawler]

Remember that we did not start the war. Japan bombed us, a country not at war. We did not start it, but we did end it.

[Noah Johnson]

Remember that we did not start the war. Japan bombed us, a country not at war. We did not start it, but we did end it.

Who are you talking to here?

No, seriously, who claimed we started that war? Yes, the Japanese government attacked us, an act that was almost as evil as it was stupid, as their *&$#head military government at the time was decidedly both. Their government were utter bastards, there's no argument on that point.

None of which has ANY bearing on the fact that, from many angles, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki looks like a crime against humanity.

[warspite1805]

Yeah you have won me other the Allies shoukd not have resisting Axis aggression and perhaps offered them a hug instead of fighting back. :p

War is not nice people did, Japan and Germany needed to be bought down and the Allied Governments had a responsibility to keep their casualties to a minimum. The fact is the nukes saved the Allied soldiers, the Allied commanders would have been criminal to sacrifuce the lives of their own troops to protect the lives of the enemy.

The Allied Commanders might have known that Japan was beat but the Japanese Military command had not reaklised that by the time the nukes were dropped.

The Allied commanders did not have the benefit of hindsite, unlike the people on this board.

Why no stamps for the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March or the suffering of the 130,000 Allied troops taken proisoner in Malaya.

[Noah Johnson]

Yeah you have won me other the Allies shoukd not have resisting Axis aggression and perhaps offered them a hug instead of fighting back. :p


Who said that either?

Is it even POSSIBLE to defend this without lying? I mean, I'm pretty sure it is, there are some decent defenses of the bombings I've heard, but all this lying is not lending credibility.

[Nightcrawler]

The point is, at that time, Japan had not surrendered, and who knows what they could have accomplished had we tried a ground offensive against them. For one, we would have lost many, many more troops.

[Wesley Dodds]

America ran over his dog, and then got out of its car and kicked it until it stopped moving.

[Tages]

Not in the least.

It's an inevitable outcome of a Constitution that hands over far too much power to a substitute king.

You'd think that after Nixon, we'd have rethought the role of the presidency in a constitutional democracy.

Perhaps, after Bush, we can.
...marry me.

[BlairH]

America ran over his dog, and then got out of its car and kicked it until it stopped moving.

Sure as hell sounds like it.
"America killed my father! And raped my mother!"

[Tages]

Would you rather be speaking Japanese right now? The war was not over, Japan had not surrendered.
The United States would have had as much of a chance of being conquered by Mars as it did Japan in 1945.

Your example is worthless.

[BlairH]

The United States would have had as much of a chance of being conquered by Mars as it did Japan in 1945.

Your example is worthless.

They did invade an island chain that was/is soverign US territory if I'm not mistaken (Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but weren't the Solomon Islands US owned?)

All Japanese citizens were ready to fight and die for their God Emperror. An invasion would have been CATASTROPHIC for both sides.

[Tages]

It was war Mike.

A war the Allies could have quite easily lost with terrible consequences for all of mankind.
Two things, cactus. First, the Allies had won by August 1945. Italy and Germany were gone and Japan was exhausted and ready for peace. There was no possibility, repeat, NONE, for an Axis victory at the time the bombs were dropped.

Second, as if things didn't end up terribly already? More people lived under dictatorship in 1945 than had in 1939. Stalin controlled half a continent and Mao was only four years away from rule over a billion Chinese. Indonesia, the Philippines etc. were returned to their respective colonial powers. The only people who turned out well at the end of the war were in Western Europe, and they were only a few years away from facing the prospect of nuclear annihilation in the Cold War.

The Allied victory wasn't all peaches and rose petals.

Do you think those who ordered and carried out the bombings sixty years ago didn't have moral qualms?
No one said that. I'm sure some in the Axis had moral qualms, too.

It's very easy to sit in you armchair sixty years in the future and make judgements against those who faced the prospect of Hitler and Japan carving out the world between them.
Which was an impossibility by the time the bombs were dropped, particularly seeing as Hitler was dead.

This is pure sophistry.

As opposed to rolling out the Third Reich and Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere?
Which would have been in ashes whether the bombs were dropped or not.

[Tages]

They did invade an island chain that was/is soverign US territory if I'm not mistaken (Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but weren't the Solomon Islands US owned?)
Not the American mainland and not 1945.

The prospect of Japanese invasion of the continental US was negligible through most of the war. At the time of Hiroshima, it was impossible.

All Japanese citizens were ready to fight and die for their God Emperror. An invasion would have been CATASTROPHIC for both sides.
See the thread I linked to above.

[BlairH]

Two things, cactus. First, the Allies had won by August 1945. Italy and Germany were gone and Japan was exhausted and ready for peace. There was no possibility, repeat, NONE, for an Axis victory at the time the bombs were dropped.


The Japanese were ready for peace eh? Then why didn't they surrender after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima? Why were they issuing girls with razor blades? It was only after Nagasaki that they capitulated, and even then, a lot of the generals wanted to continue the war.

[Tages]

The point is, at that time, Japan had not surrendered, and who knows what they could have accomplished had we tried a ground offensive against them. For one, we would have lost many, many more troops.
This is assuming that invasion/atomic bombing was an either-or. That is one big assumption.

[howyadoin]

Which was an impossibility by the time the bombs were dropped, particularly seeing as Hitler was dead.I gotta admit, I can't wait to see the response to that.

[Tages]

The Japanese were ready for peace eh? Then why didn't they surrender after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima? Why were they issuing girls with razor blades? It was only after Nagasaki that they capitulated, and even then, a lot of the generals wanted to continue the war.

The Imperial government was sending out covert peace feelers, which the Allies ignored.

[BlairH]

This is assuming that invasion/atomic bombing was an either-or. That is one big assumption.

I think an invasion and occupation of Japan would have become a Vietnam type scenario. Lots of defendable terrain, highly devoted indeginous fighters willing to die for their God Emperror, etc.

It was an extreme time, it was a world war. Extreme times call for extreme measures.

[BlairH]

The Imperial government was sending out covert peace feelers, which the Allies ignored.

If you want peace with your enemy, being covert about it isn't the best way to go about achieving the aim of peace. The best way is to get your leaders right down to the negotiating table. It was only after 2 atomic bombs that this was achieved.

[Tages]

I think an invasion and occupation of Japan would have become a Vietnam type scenario. Lots of defendable terrain, highly devoted indeginous fighters willing to die for their God Emperror, etc.

It was an extreme time, it was a world war. Extreme times call for extreme measures.
And in spite of what you may believe, history is complicated, and cannot be reduced to simplistic platitudes and bumper stickers.

You have yet to answer a single one of the other side's contentions.

[Tages]

If you want peace with your enemy, being covert about it isn't the best way to go about achieving the aim of peace. The best way is to get your leaders right down to the negotiating table. It was only after 2 atomic bombs that this was achieved.
Bombs that were dropped only after the US turned them away, and insisted on adhering to the Unconditional Surrender doctrine.

Honestly, beyond the usual high school history textbook outline of the situation, have you done any research on the topic at all?

[FBHthelizardmage]

On CNN they have this story about this old lady who gives speeches about surviving Hiroshima to school kids. But she doesn't allow any questions. WTF?

It's shocking that the Japanese authorities *still* haven't admitted to or aplogized for what the Black Dragon Society did (like the rape of Nanking IIRC) and even the "confort women" for their troops during WWII.

Not really. All nations to some extent gloss over the bad bits of their history. We just notice the Japanese more because their glossing is more rescent, and less targeted at us.

(notable examples of our glossing would be the crimes commited by britain during the colonial period, Strategic bombing campaigns of WW2, the spanish american war etc. etc.)

[Tages]

Well, even if the atomic bombings hadn't occurred, Curtis LeMay was likely to have built bases at Okinawa so he could bomb Tokyo back to the Stone Age anyway.

I am somewhat bemused by the treatment of Hiroshima though.

The body count was far dwarfed by the firebombing of Tokyo by conventional ordnance causing 150,000 deaths.
Oh, Allied atrocities did not stop at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not by a long shot.

[BlairH]

And in spite of what you may believe, history is complicated, and cannot be reduced to simplistic platitudes and bumper stickers.

You have yet to answer a single one of the other side's contentions.

Ok, you are the President of the United States of America. 2/3ds of the USMC, 1/3rd of the Army are poised to invade the Japanese home islands. Do you send out your boys to the wolves (they WILL get killed...Fanaticism is a powerful weapon). You will win eventually but your army will be in tatters, the Japanese populace all but spent, and those that are left wish to continue the fight against your troops.

Or

You glass 2 of their cities in the biggest event of history. The most horrific terror is unleashed. Thousands die. Japan becomes a world superpower and prospers and maintains a good friendship with the US.

What are a few thousand deaths in the sea of millions. It was war. It was total war.

[howyadoin]

Japan... maintains a good friendship with the US.I'd say that's a bit of an oversimplification.

[FBHthelizardmage]

The Japanese were ready for peace eh? Then why didn't they surrender after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima? Why were they issuing girls with razor blades? It was only after Nagasaki that they capitulated, and even then, a lot of the generals wanted to continue the war.

They didn't surrender then because the russians weren't about to invade. That was the main reason they surrendered, not the bombing.

[Justin Davis]

Ok, you are the President of the United States of America. 2/3ds of the USMC, 1/3rd of the Army are poised to invade the Japanese home islands. Do you send out your boys to the wolves (they WILL get killed...Fanaticism is a powerful weapon). You will win eventually but your army will be in tatters, the Japanese populace all but spent, and those that are left wish to continue the fight against your troops.

Or

You glass 2 of their cities in the biggest event of history. The most horrific terror is unleashed. Thousands die. Japan becomes a world superpower and prospers and maintains a good friendship with the US.

What are a few thousand deaths in the sea of millions. It was war. It was total war.

Yes, because as the president, you are given a crystal ball to the future and can see both of those scenarios perfectly. Oh, wait... no, you can't. We actually have to rely on facts that we know. We can imagine how leaders of the time would think things would play out, but I doubt seriously anyone thought "Japan becomes a world superpower and prospers and maintains a good friendship with the US" would be a result of dropping the bomb back then.

[Tages]

Ok, you are the President of the United States of America. 2/3ds of the USMC, 1/3rd of the Army are poised to invade the Japanese home islands. Do you send out your boys to the wolves (they WILL get killed...Fanaticism is a powerful weapon). You will win eventually but your army will be in tatters, the Japanese populace all but spent, and those that are left wish to continue the fight against your troops.

Or

You glass 2 of their cities in the biggest event of history. The most horrific terror is unleashed. Thousands die. Japan becomes a world superpower and prospers and maintains a good friendship with the US.

What are a few thousand deaths in the sea of millions. It was war. It was total war.
And how many times do I have to tell you before you actually listen, IT WAS NOT AN EITHER/OR CHOICE. There were other options.

Like, say, telling the Japanese "You can keep Hirohito on the throne, just withdraw from the conquered territories and hand us Tojo and co."

Which is an option we never gave them.

[Wesley Dodds]

What are you saying, Tages? That the Americans could have achieved as good an outcome without the mass murder of civilians? Huh? Huh? Is that what you're saying?

For my part, I'd have dropped one of the bombs somewhere in Japan that was uninhabited and then asked them to surrender.

[Dennis K]

Does anybody have any links to documents from the Japanese High Command? It would seem to me this would be the best way to determine whether on not the Japanese military considered itself beaten. An invasion of Japan would/could have dragged on for years at the cost of unknown lives, you know, kind of like Iraq. It would also be interesting to know what the general mindset of the American public was like at the time of the bomibings. Was there a general mood of 'let's end this at the negotiating table' or was there a belief that the Japanese military would fight to the very last man, and the conflict could be dragged out almost indefinitely. I'm not an expert on World War II, but what I can recall is that the Japanese military did indeed have a track record of almost fanatical devotion to their cause, and to not surrendering (anybody else remember the kamikazees?). Can or should the morality of what happened be debated? Of course it should, but the rush to easy condemnation from the view of 2005 seems somehow simplistic.

[Noah Johnson]

I don't necessarily condemn it, but there is, of course, the tricky subject of those surrender feelers, and a mistranslation that may have altered the course of history.

http://www.njahs.org/nh/nhvxvn1.html

Oh, but just to toss a bone to the guys saying the wholesale slaughter of civilians was morally in the clear, I notice nobody's tried the argument that the bomb needed to be demonstrated on live targets to begin setting up the balance of power with the USSR. As in, if we hadn't shown them what we could now do, the Soviet Army would have marched into Iowa and we'd all be speaking Russian right now? Also, we'd have a cooler-sounding national anthem (http://img.km.ru/sovmusic/mp3/intern.mp3)?

Anyway, try that one, might be fun. Also, might make Tages shoot sparks and explode like a computer on Star Trek. :)

[BlairH]

morally in the clear,

Morally in the clear? Who said morally in the clear?
It's war. War is never morally clear, it's all about shades of grey. It's all about balance. It's all about the ends justifying the means, said means and even the intention is largely irrelevant. Tell me, have you read "The Art of War"?

[Noah Johnson]

Morally in the clear? Who said morally in the clear?

Fair point. I was somewhat misrepresenting your argument there, and I apologize.

I will say, however, that the tone of the posts from the pro-nuking-civilians side sounds less like "This was a horrible but regrettably necessary atrocity" and more like "Oh, come on, what could possibly be wrong with killing a couple hundred thousand people at once?" Maybe it's my own prejudice coloring your words, but I'm really not getting the impression you guys think that it's at all a shame that all those innocent people were turned to dust in an instant.

[warspite1805]

Any death in war is a tragedy, but the aim of war should be to not only to win it but to keep your sides casualties and losses to the minimum.
The worst part of this tragedy is that the Japnese need never have been nuked, they could never of started that war or they could have surrendered.
I regard the ropping of the bmbs as the lesser of two evils, as BlairH said war is about shades of Grey. The Allies had two options, wthe first maintaining the blockade that as far as as I recall was causing vast numbers of Japanese deaths through starvation (the Japanese Government decided as food was so scarce that only those who could fight deserved to eat) coastal bombardment and bombing, followed by a costly Allied invasion. Option 2 drop the nuclear bombs, feel free to think me evil for chosing the option that resuted in the fewest number of allied deaths (along with the fewest Japanese deaths in the bargain).

The odds are that dropping the nkes in 1945 saved future lives as the world witnessed how horric nukes are and that has most likely been the reason why nomne since 1945 has been used in aggression. They also helped maintain the peace in the cold war due to the fear of mutual destruction.

[BlairH]

Fair point. I was somewhat misrepresenting your argument there, and I apologize.

I will say, however, that the tone of the posts from the pro-nuking-civilians side sounds less like "This was a horrible but regrettably necessary atrocity" and more like "Oh, come on, what could possibly be wrong with killing a couple hundred thousand people at once?" Maybe it's my own prejudice coloring your words, but I'm really not getting the impression you guys think that it's at all a shame that all those innocent people were turned to dust in an instant.

ok...I think it was a fucking terrible event. Being incinerated in a nuclear fire is NOT a nice way to go. Heck even SURVIVING said nuclear fire isn't very pleasant, it has been said that in nuclear war the living envy the dead. It is the most deplorable form of warfare in existance. Have I made myself clear?

Necessary evil? Yes

I'm sorry if I haven't made myself clear on this before. Alas I tried (I believe I used the word "horrible" to describe the bombing? Maybe in another thread? Perhaps this one?)

To conclude: In favour of the descision to bomb the two cities I am. Regret the deaths I do. In fact "regret" somehow just feels empty, a stronger word is needed I feel.

[Tru Dat]

Ah, revisionist history.

A quaint pharse which means I'm throwing together this bunch of absolute bullshit and outright lies and half-truths and one sided, utterly unfounded opinions and patching it all together with a lot of big impressive words and employing the old bait and switch in the hopes that people won't see what a load of shit it is.

Uh, uh.

Not going to get away with it.

While I'm not going to destroy the bullshit line by line, as that is way too tedious, I will touch on a few high points.

1) Who gives a fuck what Eisenhower said? His opinion on the matter is of absolutely no concern and it matters not a single bit. He had absolutely nothing to do with The Manhattan Project and indeed didn't even know of it's existence until well after the first bomb had been dropped at Trinity Site in New Mexico, by which time the European War had been over for several months. More importantly Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of the European Theatre, not the Asian Theater of War, and he should have known better and kept his damn mouth shut as he was just showing his ignorance.

2) The Allies/America had been planning for an invasion of the Japanese home island almost immediately after Pearl Harbor.

The problem was that unlike the European theater where as the Allies closed the circle around the Nazis tighter and tighter, resistance dropped off and the Nazi's surrendered by the 100,000's, in the Asian theater the exact opposite was happening. The Japanese resistance was growing more and more fierce and there were absolutely no indications that the Japanese resolve was weakening.

Those who claim that Japan was ready to surrender are full of shit.

Yes, there were peace offerings and offers of conditional surrender snet out by certain Japanese officials, but those officials held absolutely no postions of power within the Japanese governement. It was the equivilent of the Under-Secretary of Labor sending out a Declaration of War against Iraq.

It meant nothing and quite rightly was utterly ignored by the Allies who would accept nothing less then unconditional surrender.

Why unconditional surrender?

Well, because that was what the Nazis had to do and if there had been a conditional surrender the terms would have been outrageously and unfairly favorable to the Japanese. A big one was that the Japanese insisted that not only would no soldiers be held accountable for their actions, but that no war crimes trials could be held and that all military personnel would retain their present positions and the military would remain at it's present wartime strength.

And half sane and semi-logical person would have told the Japanese to go fuck themselves which is exactly what the Allies did even though it did turn out to be a conditional surrender.

3) Casualty figures.

The Allies had determined that an invasion of Japan's home islands with the numbers needed to secure the beaches could only take place at one place, and the Japanese also knew this and had planned accordingly. At the invasion site the Japanese had stored 10,000 kamakazi planes.

10,000.

They had also built a series of concrete blockhouses, minefields, machine gun nests, caves, etc.

Japanese casualty estimates for just the first day of the invasion were between 40-200,000 with the majority view settling on around 100,000.

Allied casualties, again, just for the first day ranged from 5,000 which was laughably low and utterly inaccurate to 100,000, but the majority view seteled on 50,000.

And by casualties I mean killed.

Not wounded, killed.

Total Japanese casualty estimates for the home island invasion ranged from 2-90,000,000 but the majority view settled on 20,000,000.

Allied total casualties settled on a little over 1,000,000.

Again, that is killed, not wounded.

If you want to add wounded, add another 10,000,000 to the Allied Side and 2,000,000 top the Japanese.

Why so few Japanese wounded?

Because to be wounded and surrender was to be a coward and a violation of their Bushido Code.

Better to kill yourself.

Also, that 20,000,000 Japanese dead includes around 15,000,000 civilians who were quite ready and willing to fight to the death.

As for the Black Dragon Society, they had nothing to do with the Rape of Nanking. That was soley and completely the responsibility of the Japanese military.

Quite interesting how quick y'all are to bleat and squeal about how vile Truman and the US was for using the atomic bomb as if it was somehow unfair or inhuman, but you say nothing and issue no condemnation of Hitler and the Nazis for their use of the V-1 and V-2 bombs which were only used on civilian targets.

Oh, and please inform us of these other Allied atrocities.

The Japanese internment camps don't count 'cause I don't recall thousands of Japanese dying while in the camps.

[Magneto_X]

As for the Black Dragon Society, they had nothing to do with the Rape of Nanking. That was soley and completely the responsibility of the Japanese military.

My mistake. I meant Manchuria.

Edit: Weren't the Death Marches happening during WWII as well?

[Adam Crocker]

1) Actually it was a military target in that it was the Army headquarters for the defence of southern Japan. Which meant bombing the centre was militarily justifiable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Hiroshim a_during_World_War_II

Fair enough. I didn't know about the military bases so bombing the centre of the city to target those bases would make sense from a military standpoint. (Though I think dropping an atomic bomb to destroy them would be unnecessary, but it doesn't seem that the bomb was dropped only for the purpose of destroying military targets.)

And jesus why didn't I do the obvious when this discussion started and read up about the matter on Wikipedia first? (Of course that's a point for Tages' other thread, but thanks for posting it.)

You do know what a periphery is right?

One bomb strong enough to wipe out all the edges around a circle would destrpy everything inside a circle too.

Yes it would be. However, my point wasn't that they should bomb the periphery with the atomic bomb. My statement was a response to Warspite's claim that Hiroshima was bombed because it was producing war material when the manufacturing infrastructure of the city was located on its peripheries (which essentially remained untouched) while the bomb was dropped on the centre of the city. My point was that if they were targetting it for its industrial capacity as Warspite claimed then it would more sense to drop the bomb on the industrial areas themselves rather than the city centre.

[Tages]

Ah, revisionist history.

A quaint pharse which means I'm throwing together this bunch of absolute bullshit and outright lies and half-truths and one sided, utterly unfounded opinions and patching it all together with a lot of big impressive words and employing the old bait and switch in the hopes that people won't see what a load of shit it is.
Funny that you refer to the article as "absolute bullshit," "outright lies," and "unfounded," seeing as the article carefully cites and sources to support its claims, while you cite and source...nothing.

I can tell we're getting off to a great start.


Uh, uh.

Not going to get away with it.

While I'm not going to destroy the bullshit line by line, as that is way too tedious, I will touch on a few high points.

1) Who gives a fuck what Eisenhower said? His opinion on the matter is of absolutely no concern and it matters not a single bit. He had absolutely nothing to do with The Manhattan Project and indeed didn't even know of it's existence until well after the first bomb had been dropped at Trinity Site in New Mexico, by which time the European War had been over for several months. More importantly Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of the European Theatre, not the Asian Theater of War, and he should have known better and kept his damn mouth shut as he was just showing his ignorance.
So Eisenhower was wrong about the dropping of the bombs, as is evidenced by...his opinion on the dropping of the bombs.

Uh huh.

Well, if Eisenhower's opinion can be treated as thus, what about MacArthur's? He, after all, was in the Pacific Theater, and was willing to use nuclear weapons against the Chinese mainland in Korea. Even he said that the bombs weren't necessary. Care to explain that?

2) The Allies/America had been planning for an invasion of the Japanese home island almost immediately after Pearl Harbor.
So?

The problem was that unlike the European theater where as the Allies closed the circle around the Nazis tighter and tighter, resistance dropped off and the Nazi's surrendered by the 100,000's, in the Asian theater the exact opposite was happening. The Japanese resistance was growing more and more fierce and there were absolutely no indications that the Japanese resolve was weakening.

Those who claim that Japan was ready to surrender are full of shit.
I think the peace feelers say otherwise. Though I've acually researched to get my opinions, what do I know?

Yes, there were peace offerings and offers of conditional surrender snet out by certain Japanese officials, but those officials held absolutely no postions of power within the Japanese governement. It was the equivilent of the Under-Secretary of Labor sending out a Declaration of War against Iraq.

It meant nothing and quite rightly was utterly ignored by the Allies who would accept nothing less then unconditional surrender.
Source?

Why unconditional surrender?

Well, because that was what the Nazis had to do and if there had been a conditional surrender the terms would have been outrageously and unfairly favorable to the Japanese. A big one was that the Japanese insisted that not only would no soldiers be held accountable for their actions, but that no war crimes trials could be held and that all military personnel would retain their present positions and the military would remain at it's present wartime strength.
I'd love to see this. Any of this.

And half sane and semi-logical person would have told the Japanese to go fuck themselves which is exactly what the Allies did even though it did turn out to be a conditional surrender.
Then why leave open the possibility of deposing and, in the minds of the people of Japan, imprisoning or possibly executing the Emperor? Any logical analysis of the situation would have concluded that the only effect that would have would be to stiffen Japanese resistance. It made no sense.

3) Casualty figures.

The Allies had determined that an invasion of Japan's home islands with the numbers needed to secure the beaches could only take place at one place, and the Japanese also knew this and had planned accordingly. At the invasion site the Japanese had stored 10,000 kamakazi planes.

10,000.

They had also built a series of concrete blockhouses, minefields, machine gun nests, caves, etc.

Japanese casualty estimates for just the first day of the invasion were between 40-200,000 with the majority view settling on around 100,000.

Allied casualties, again, just for the first day ranged from 5,000 which was laughably low and utterly inaccurate to 100,000, but the majority view seteled on 50,000.

And by casualties I mean killed.

Not wounded, killed.

Total Japanese casualty estimates for the home island invasion ranged from 2-90,000,000 but the majority view settled on 20,000,000.

Allied total casualties settled on a little over 1,000,000.

Again, that is killed, not wounded.

If you want to add wounded, add another 10,000,000 to the Allied Side and 2,000,000 top the Japanese.

Why so few Japanese wounded?

Because to be wounded and surrender was to be a coward and a violation of their Bushido Code.

Better to kill yourself.

Also, that 20,000,000 Japanese dead includes around 15,000,000 civilians who were quite ready and willing to fight to the death.

No evidence. Nada.

I addressed the casualty claims already. Either refute what I've pointed out already or don't even bother.

Quite interesting how quick y'all are to bleat and squeal about how vile Truman and the US was for using the atomic bomb as if it was somehow unfair or inhuman, but you say nothing and issue no condemnation of Hitler and the Nazis for their use of the V-1 and V-2 bombs which were only used on civilian targets.
Uh, maybe because "the Nazis were assholes" is an implicit assumption, something everyone feels goes without saying, ya' think? Or maybe because this thread isn't discussing the Nazis' actions, and what you've just said is a blatant red herring?

This is pointless.

Oh, and please inform us of these other Allied atrocities.
Dresden. Hamburg. Tokyo. Biscari Massacre. Canicatti slaughter. Dachau Massacre. And, the mother of them all, Operation Keelhaul.

Obviously, Axis atrocities were worse. That is no excuse.

The Japanese internment camps don't count 'cause I don't recall thousands of Japanese dying while in the camps.
So it's not an atrocity without death? Even when hundreds of thousands of people are forcibly uprooted and relocated to open prison camps merely because of their ethnicity?

And FYI, plenty of people died while in the internment camps.

[Royal]

Hiroshima & Nagasaki were examples. We not only flexed muscle we shouldn't have (and could have saved us an irritating arms race), there were better, aggressive ways to shut them down with less casualties. Our jingoism got the better & made us monsters at that time.

[warspite1805]

I have copied this from a poster ca;led GarethBull on another message board that I frequent, bassically shows that the Japanese should be thankful that the bombs were used instead of the invasion approach, plus on top of that there was the Allied Blocakde that did to Japan what Germany could of only dreamed of doing to Great Britain.


The book Operation Downfall by James Davis lists the following weapons slated for use by the Allies in an all out invasion (a summary, not a direct quote from the book).

"CW weapons

Stockpiles 1945…
5,500,000 shells, 1,000,000+ bombs, 100,000+ spray tanks, 43,000 land mines

7,500 tons of gas bombs on Luzon, 16,000 on Okinawa, 8,500 tons afloat.

Plans to spray jap crops in 1946 with 2-4-D using 1,500 aircraft on 25 sorties… and destroy 60% of jap rice production

Napalm… 'many' millions of gallons available…

BW weapons

Anthrax plant with a capacity of filling 4lb bombs at the rate of 500,000 PER MONTH!

1,000,000 Anthrax bomblets availablle for use on Kyushu in November and 2 -3,000,000 Anthrax bomblets for Honshu in March 1946

Nuclear Weapons

15 Bombs to support the initial invasion in November 1945, with a production rate of 7 per month another 28 could have been ready for Honshu in March 1946.

Attack plans for Honshu May 1946…

For a period of 180 days the beachheads would be bombarded with air and naval units and JB-2's (V1's built in the US) and the beacheads to a distance of 5,000 yds inland sprayed with chemical defoliants.

216 specially designed T-92 240mm self propelled howitzers were to be landed in the initial assault to blast away defences with 360lb HE shells.

Aircraft available from late 1945…

@ 2,000 heavy bombers, B-29's and RAF Lancasters…
300-400 medium bombers, B-24's
MANY thousands of fighters and light bombers

Bomb loads on TACTICAL targets…

September 1945 100,000 tons
January 1946 170,000 tons
March 1946 220,000 tons

JB-2 flying bombs (German V1's built in the US)

Monthly production of 5,000 per month by fall 1945. General Arnold planned to bombard Japan with 500 JB-2 missiles PER DAY by the start of 1946! Missiles to be ground launched and from specially modified LST and jeep carriers"

[Wesley Dodds]

Talk of how thankful the Japanese should be that the Americans did not behave like Nazis dodges the issue at hand -- that is, was it necessary to drop two atom bombs on civilians to end the war?

The answer is no. Far from having to choose between mass murder and mass murder, the two bombs could have been dropped on a purely military targets with the same effect. That would have had the additional novelty of not staining America's conduct in WW2 with nuclear mass murder and not giving the Japanese a victim status they now use to evade responsibility for their ghastly crimes.

[Wesley Dodds]

I also do not see why the mass murder was a "necessary evil" when nuclear bombs could have been dropped on non-civilian targets to show the Japanese what they could do and then dropped on civilian targets if that didn't work.

[Johnny Morningstar]

Yes, because as the president, you are given a crystal ball to the future and can see both of those scenarios perfectly. Oh, wait... no, you can't. We actually have to rely on facts that we know. We can imagine how leaders of the time would think things would play out, but I doubt seriously anyone thought "Japan becomes a world superpower and prospers and maintains a good friendship with the US" would be a result of dropping the bomb back then.

It wasn't a crystal ball but a weayr time traveller from the year 2372.

[warspite1805]

The problem is with nukes is that they do not discriminate against just purely targets and before smart bombs even the socalled "Precision bombings" carried out by the US was not very accurate.
WW2 was horrendous, in the fall of Berlin alone Russian caualties are estimated at 1000,000 dead and estimated that 100,000 German civilians died, with 136,000 prisoners taken, the full German casualties are unknown. WW2 was one of the darkest times in history for the human race. War is evil it does not have a nice side to it, that is why as soon as the last shot has been fiered you have to try and make sure it was fought over something worthwhile.
Sadly the Japanese military were willing to sacrifice their nation to save their honour, they possessed different cultutral values than we do. One final things the Allied commanders did not have the benefit of hindsite that we possess.

[Samurai]

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson080505.html


Victor Hanson is great, as always... read it. He brings up 1 very interesting point that I hadn't heard before... instead of the atomic bombs being used to soon/too quickly, were they instead used too late?

We'd just gotten done with the horrific battles to take Okinawa. Taking that small island had cost 50,000 American lives and 200,000 Japanese lives. If they'd held off the invasion of Okinawa (because the scientists in Los Alamos NM had been fairly confident that they were successful in the month before), perhaps the invasion of Okinawa wouldn't have been needed. Not invading Okinawa would have saved many more lives...

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

instead of the atomic bombs being used to soon/too quickly, were they instead used too late?


No.

No they weren't.

Using them at all means they were used too soon.

Maybe, MAYBE if the japanese were winning the war and one step away from victory using the bomb could have been justified (maybe), but not a second before that moment.

[Samurai]

Does anybody have any links to documents from the Japanese High Command? It would seem to me this would be the best way to determine whether on not the Japanese military considered itself beaten. An invasion of Japan would/could have dragged on for years at the cost of unknown lives, you know, kind of like Iraq. It would also be interesting to know what the general mindset of the American public was like at the time of the bomibings. Was there a general mood of 'let's end this at the negotiating table' or was there a belief that the Japanese military would fight to the very last man, and the conflict could be dragged out almost indefinitely. I'm not an expert on World War II, but what I can recall is that the Japanese military did indeed have a track record of almost fanatical devotion to their cause, and to not surrendering (anybody else remember the kamikazees?). Can or should the morality of what happened be debated? Of course it should, but the rush to easy condemnation from the view of 2005 seems somehow simplistic.
Mostly they are in books. This topic ("were the atomic bombs necessary") was my honors thesis in university, so I studied it quite well for my 32 page paper. The Japanese high command was entirely in favor of continuing the war. They felt they could outlast the Americans, who they believed had no stomach for the massive casualities the Japanese were inflicting. They were confident that they could negotiate a cease fire rather than a surrender, with Japan keeping most of the territory it still held, keeping its Emperor and other leaders, etc.

After the 1st Atomic bomb was dropped, the Japanese high command met to discuss the issue. Most didn't really know what to make of it... they felt that the US probably had very few such bombs, and perhaps no more at all. They voted unanimously to continue to hold out.

After the 2nd bomb, they met again, more worried this time. Ironically, the US was now out of atomic bombs, but the Japanese now worried they might have quite a few more. They again took a vote, and it was a perfect tie. Exactly half wanted to still hold out, and half wanted to surrender. In such a case, the Emperor gets to make the tie-breaking vote (it was the only way he actually got a vote... he was more a spiritual leader than politician). He voted to surrender. Had even 1 more of the Japanese leadership voted for war, he would not have been able to cast his vote, and the war would have continued. It was a much closer decision than most people know.

[Samurai]

No.

No they weren't.

Using them at all means they were used too soon.

Maybe, MAYBE if the japanese were winning the war and one step away from victory using the bomb could have been justified (maybe), but not a second before that moment.
I disagree... we had to end the war as quickly as possible with the fewest casualties possible. That meant changing the entire mindset of the Japanese leadership, and the only way to do that was something big, like the atom bombs. The invasion of Okinawa and the death of 200,000 Japanese there wasn't enough. The firebombing of Tokyo which killed over 150,000 wasn't enough. Not even Hiroshima alone was enough. It took everything to just barely change enough minds, including the Emperor himself.

[warspite1805]

Below is a letter written by Harry Truman on January 12, 1953 to Prof. James L. Cate which seems to clearly present his understanding of the necessity of using the atomic bombs to end World War II.

THE WHITE HOUSE
Washington
January 12, 1953

My Dear Professor Cate;
Your letter of December 6, 1952 has just been delivered to me. When the message came to Potsdam that a successful atomic explosion had taken place in New Mexico, there was much excitement and conversation about the effect on the war then in progress with Japan. The next day I told the Prime Minsiter of Great Britain and Generalissimo Stalin that the explosion had been a success. The British Prime Minister understood and appreciated what I'd told him. Premier Stalin smiled and thanked me for reporting the explosion to him, but I'm sure he did not understand its significance. I called a meeting of the Secretary of State, Mr. Byrnes, the Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, Admiral Leahy, General Marshall, General Eisenhower, Admiral King and some others, to discuss what should be done with this awful weapon.

I asked General Marshall what it would cost in lives to land on the Tokyo plain and other places in Japan. It was his opinion that such an invasion would cost at a minimum one quarter of a million casualties, and might cost as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy. The other military and naval men present agreed. I asked Secretary Stimson which sites in Japan were devoted to war production. He promptly named Hiroshima and Nagasaki, among others. We sent an ultimatum to Japan. It was rejected.

I ordered atomic bombs dropped on the two cities named on the way back from Potsdam, when we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. In your letter, you raise the fact that the directive to General Spaatz to prepare for delivering the bomb is dated July twenty-fifth. It was, of course, necessary to set the military wheels in motion, as these orders did, but the final decision was in my hands, and was not made until we were returning from Potsdam. Dropping the bombs ended the war, saved lives, and gave the free nations a chance to face the facts. When it looked as if Japan would quit, Russia hurried into the fray less than a week before the surrender, so as to be in at the settlement. No military contribution was made by the Russians toward victory over Japan. Prisoners were surrendered and Manchuria occupied by the Soviets, as was Korea, North of the 38th parallel.

Sincerely,
(The letter was signed by Harry Truman)

[JerrBear81]

(necessary IMO) evil

Keyword here being EVIL. We're supposed to be better than that.

Screw winning, as long as we didn't sink to their level!

[BlairH]

Keyword here being EVIL. We're supposed to be better than that.

Screw winning, as long as we didn't sink to their level!

Are we as human beings better than that? As human beings we can only take the best possible course of action. We are neither Superman nor God.

It was deemed that using the bomb to shock Japan into surrender was the best course of action. I agree.

[JerrBear81]

Are we as human beings better than that? As human beings we can only take the best possible course of action. We are neither Superman nor God.

It was deemed that using the bomb to shock Japan into surrender was the best course of action. I agree.

The "we're only human" argument doesn't fly for me. We're supposed to be better than the "evil we're trying to stop". Evil begets more evil.

If we must win we don't win like they do.

Edit: If you're going with the God angle at some point, didn't he command not to kill? Hell He'd have expected us to take the better route!

[BlairH]

The "we're only human" argument doesn't fly for me. We're supposed to be better than the "evil we're trying to stop". Evil begets more evil.

If we must win we don't win like they do.

Edit: If you're going with the God angle at some point, didn't he command not to kill? Hell He'd have expected us to take the better route!

"You shall not murder"?
There is a difference between cold blooded murder and killing in the name of war.

The "as long as we don't stoop to their level" argument doesn't fly with me. If "they" use warlike methods against "us", then "they" can expect the full response from "us".

[JerrBear81]

"You shall not murder"?
There is a difference between cold blooded murder and killing in the name of war.

The "as long as we don't stoop to their level" argument doesn't fly with me. If "they" use warlike methods against "us", then "they" can expect the full response from "us".

I don't think war is stooping to their level. But I think trying to win no matter the cost is!

And where does God say it's ok to kill in cold blood (dropping a bomb)?

[Johnny_Storm]

Killing and murder are both un pleasant actions involving the taking of life. However killing is done out of neccesity and is justifiable while murder is unprovoked and unneccesarry.

[BlairH]

I don't think war is stooping to their level. But I think trying to win no matter the cost is!

And where does God say it's ok to kill in cold blood (dropping a bomb)?

Well, a couple of things. Murdering is wrong. Killing in cold blood is wrong. However, a soldier is not a murderer, he is only a soldier.

[JerrBear81]

Well, a couple of things. Murdering is wrong. Killing in cold blood is wrong. However, a soldier is not a murderer, he is only a soldier.

Actually, that doesn't change the fact he killed someone. I can claim self-defense, but the fact of the matter is, whoever I defended myself against I still killed them. That still makes me a killer.

[BlairH]

Actually, that doesn't change the fact he killed someone. I can claim self-defense, but the fact of the matter is, whoever I defended myself against I still killed them. That still makes me a killer.

Sir, yes a killer sir!
Albeit you wouldn't be a murderer. There IS a difference.

[JerrBear81]

Sir, yes a killer sir!
Albeit you wouldn't be a murderer. There IS a difference.

True.

But, my original question involved cold blood.

[BlairH]

True.

But, my original question involved cold blood.

A cold blooded murderer is someone who kills because they want to kill in my book. Ie, killing out of greed, jealousy or hate.

A warrior is very different.

[JerrBear81]

A cold blooded murderer is someone who kills because they want to kill in my book. Ie, killing out of greed, jealousy or hate.

A warrior is very different.

And a person can still kill out of cold blood when they're killing innocents. And war doesn't change that definition of innocence.

[BlairH]

And a person can still kill out of cold blood when they're killing innocents. And war doesn't change that definition of innocence.

Depends on the justification of the cause. From the US point of view, the Japanese War machine was evil. They had to be stopped whatever the cause.

[JerrBear81]

Depends on the justification of the cause. From the US point of view, the Japanese War machine was evil. They had to be stopped whatever the cause.

And there were other ways. Would you feel it was neccesary if it had been your home bombed?

[BlairH]

And there were other ways. Would you feel it was neccesary if it had been your home bombed?

It depends on what cause it would be bombed in the name of.
There were other ways. The other ways were worse. A navy blockade would have starved the country to death. Operation Downfall (I reccomend the book mentioned earlier) was downright apocalyptic.

[Boldido]

And there were other ways. Would you feel it was neccesary if it had been your home bombed?

Psst...they did bomb our home.

http://www.kerstinullrich.de/USA-Oahu/Arizona.jpg

[JerrBear81]

Psst...they did bomb our home.

http://www.kerstinullrich.de/USA-Oahu/Arizona.jpg

I mean if they had nuked it (Not just bombed).

The point I'm trying to make anyway is that the other side views us as evil, so why prove them right? I agree a fight should be fought, just don't go for "neccesary evil".

[BlairH]

I mean if they had nuked it (Not just bombed).

The point I'm trying to make anyway is that the other side views us as evil, so why prove them right? I agree a fight should be fought, just don't go for "neccesary evil".

The other side didn't think of us as evil tbh. Many of their Generals viewed us as being cunning foes, skilled in war. They didn't see the US as being evil. They only saw the US as standing in the way of Japanese greatness.

[Boldido]

Our war with Japan began on December 7, 1941 when they bombed Pearl Harbor.

We dropped the bomb on August 6, 1945, almost four years of battles and bloodshed. Three days later, we dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.

The war was over five days afterward. Four years versus five days.

Does anyone honestly believe that Japan would have surrendered in five days without the bombs? How about ten days, or five hundred days?

[BlairH]

Our war with Japan began on December 7, 1941 when they bombed Pearl Harbor.

We dropped the bomb on August 6, 1945, almost four years of battles and bloodshed. Three days later, we dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.

The war was over five days afterward. Four years versus five days.

Does anyone honestly believe that Japan would have surrendered in five days without the bombs? How about ten days, or five hundred days?

Agreed. They were still willing to fight even after the first bomb was dropped.

[Roquefort Raider]

For my part, I'd have dropped one of the bombs somewhere in Japan that was uninhabited and then asked them to surrender.

I always wondered