I'm a Baby of the Atomic Bomb — and So Are You

Great Debates
1

(That head comes with a subhead: “If you are American.”)

I’m not into starting flame wars, but it just occurred to me, after watching Ken Burns’s The War — the part in which the war is finally over and everyone is coming home — that what was planned in an alternate scenario was far different.

In that scenario, America would be invading the main islands of Japan starting November 1st of that year.

My father was going to be part of that. Having survived 25+ missions bombing the Nazis, despite a ⅓ chance of not making it out (that is to say, after three missions his odds were pretty much 100 to one that he would not come back on the fourth) — they had him all lined up for Japan.

And if he had had to go invade Japan, it’s much more probable that he would not have survived, and I wouldn’t be here typing this, and if you are an American under 70 and reading this, you probably wouldn’t be here either.

So to the railers against the dropping of the bombs, and there are many — I just say, tell that to someone who was alive and thinking in America in 1945, and you will get a universal answer.

The acclaimed WWII writer Paul Fussell wrote a very cogent piece about the whole thing that should silence the throngs of the ignorant. Which brings me, as someone who lived in Japan for five years, has been to Hiroshima three times, was married to a Japanese and has a half-Japanese son, now teaches Japanese, to answer the question: do I feel bad for the Japanese who had to suffer the bombings?

The question is the same as when I think about feeling bad for the Germans who were killed at Dresden and Hamburg and countless other places.

Indeed, the majority were probably women and children. But wars are not fought by women and children; nonetheless, the men who fight them are supported by the women and children, and by extension of responsibility, the men fight for causes that they must necessarily agree with, or they simply wouldn’t fight. I know that is a somewhat simplistic statement, but the core implication is correct.

So no, I don’t feel bad for a single Japanese or German death that occurred during WWII, except perhaps for those dissidents such as Sophie Scholl or Claus von Stauffenberg who gave their lives for defying Hitler, and in Japan, well . . . uh, whoops. No one that I am aware of.

If you are not American, no doubt you’re going to bring up all the tired old counter-theories: The Japanese were close to surrendering anyway (patently false — please read the excellent biography of Hirohito to banish this impression) or a demonstration of the bomb would have convinced them of the futility of continuing (a ludicrous idea, especially having personally experienced the Japanese psychological and socio-cultural mindset close-hand).

So if you’re like me and had a relative, especially a grandfather, father or even uncle — who fought in World War II, you can thank Robert Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves, Leo Szilardand even Albert Einstein, that you’re sitting here reading this. (Dare I say it? You can even thank so-called “war criminal” Curtis Lemay. Yep, you can thank him too, while you’re at it.)

And you shouldn’t feel sorry for the victims. The alternative is you probably wouldn’t be around to feel sorry for anything.

2

Lots of Japanese politicos were killed for opposing the military.

3

While I agree with most of what you say. I’m going to disagree that Dresden was necessary or that Hirohito had anything to do with continuing the war.

4

Is there a question here?

5

Where or What is the question?

6

The point to make - but by the time of the Japanese Island invasion, the air defence would probably be nil. So your dad would be safe, you’d just be a little younger.

As for Dresden - the problem with all-out industrial war is that everyone is a contributor. the people who make ball bearings or ammunition are a fair target, but then aren’t the people who make trucks and trains, spikes for railroads, or make lunch for the workers who make this?

Gratuitous killing should not be an option in any war - but if you are in or near a legitimate target (the ball bearing factory, or the Dresden rail yards) that could legitimately be targeted. should you be surprised that you risk being a casualty of war?

the problem with Dresden or London or Tokyo back then is that bomb aiming technology until recently has been very inaccurate. the psychological effect from carpet bombing probably didn’t hurt the decision to use it.

7

That is not at all how probability works.

If in fact a bomber crewman had a 1/3 chance of dying in the course of performing 25 missions, then assuming the chances of dying on a given mission were always the same (which obviously isn’t true, but works for this example) your father’s odds of surviving Mission #4 were, in fact, better than 98%.

Having a 98.6% chance of surviving one mission gives you about a 67% chance of surviving 25. But for every mission you survive, it becomes likelier you will survive your tour, because you have fewer missions remaining.

8

I don’t see a question here. Since the OP is mainly about the justification for using atomic bombs on Japan, this is probably best suited to Great Debates.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

9

Furthermore, that’s assuming that the probabilities are independent, which they probably aren’t. Some people are better at surviving to begin with (better at dodging, better at recovering from wounds, better at shooting the other guy first, whatever), and they’ll be overrepresented in every mission after the first. And how good you are at surviving probably even increases with missions, as you gain more practice at it.

10

Just as a data point, I’m a baby of “in spite of the Atomic Bomb.”

My mother is Japanese. She lived in the vicinity of Kokura during the war.

If the crew of the Enola Gay had been forced to attack their secondary target (rather than Hiroshima), or the crew of the Bockscar had been able to attack their primary target instead being forced to move onto their secondary target (Nagasaki), she would have been among the casualties:

11

I can’t read your link- it comes up as unreachable.

But B-17 and B-24 crew members were reassigned as instructors after their 25th missions, not recycled into B-29 combat crews. My grandfather (25 B-17 missions between 9/1943-12/1943, including the second Schweinfurt raid), was reassigned as a gunnery instructor on B-29s after he finished up- he spent all of 1944 and the first half of 1945 as an aerial gunnery instructor. Interestingly enough, he was actually one of LeMay’s men in the 3rd Bomb Division- his DFC citation was actually signed by Colonel (at that time) Curtis LeMay.

I’m pretty sure they didn’t then recycle them into B-29 crews; they already had enough of those already, and the experienced crews were more valuable as instructors anyway.

My other grandfather was in the crosshairs though; he was a tank crewman, and had spent most of the war as an instructor, but was shifted in early 1945 to Ft. Ord in California, where he was trained as an amphibious tractor commander for the invasion of Japan. So he’d literally have been one of the very first on the beach. He had no qualms or doubts about the use of atomic weapons to end the war, as you might imagine.

12

Why do you think only non-Americans will say these things ?

Were the Japanese justified in killing Chinese civilians in the same way ?

And the London blitz which my dad had to shelter from ?

13

Well, I deliberately left this out to simplify the math involved. The idea that “you had a 1/3 chance of surviving for your odds of coming back from mission #4 was one in a hundred” is really silly, on a few levels. Only having a 1/100 chance of surviving four missions is kind of consistent with having a 1/3 chance of dying on any one mission, I guess. But your odds on Mission 4 if you survived Missions 1-3 are still 2 in 3, and if the USAF’s/RAF’s/RCAF’s bomber crews’ odds were that bad then hardly a single man would have survived the war.

Of course a 2/3 chance per mission is silly. A bombing raid that suffered 10% losses was considered a catastrophic failure, because of the simple math noted above; any consistent loss rate above a few percent per mission meant the inevitable destruction of the entire air force. At ten percent, much less 33 percent, it would not have been possible for the Allies to build enough bombers to have a strategic bomber force for longer than a few months.

Of course, you are correct in assuming the even if the 1/3 fatality statistic is generally accurate the events are not independent. I have no stats before me now, but common sense and statistics that have been compiled in other areas of combat demonstrate that soldiers are likelier to survive combat engagements the more combat engagements they are in. Bomber crews that survived a number of missions were likely to be more skilled than crews that did not, and of course learned techniques for survival as they went. A crew that had survived 15 missions was far likelier to survive the next one than a green crew.

It is worth noting that in World War II a great many airmen died not by virtue of enemy action but simply crashing their own planes, which I guess is what you would expect when you’re taking thousands upon thousands of young men and turning them into pilots and asking them to fly all over hell’s half acre in planes designed in the 1930s when engineers did things with slide rules and abacuses or whatever. In that regard experience was REALLY a big difference between coming home or not. The biggest hazard aircrew faced was probably an inexperienced pilot.

Furthermore, the fatality rate for bomber crews was not consistent across the length of the war. If our OP’s father served in the Eighth Air Force or Bomber Command in 1943, he was very lucky indeed to survive, as the loss rate was so high that the Allies periodically abandoned strategic bombing because it wasn’t statistically possible for a person to survive their tour or for the aircraft industry to replace losses. If the OP’s father served in late 1944 or 1945, then his chances were pretty good, as the Allies had achieved air supremacy over most of Europe.

14

…and then there’s terrorism, attacking the supporting structures of military adventureers. Bit of a can of worms this total war theory.

15

The claim that the father had almost no chance of surviving the fourth mission makes me think there was a 1/3 chance of dying on each mission, not after 25. That means the chance of surviving four is 16/ 81 or under 20%. Not exactly 100 - 1, but way worse than 98%.
And there is indeed a learning curve, but who know what it is. There was also a lot of luck involved.

16

1/3 chance is clearly way too high; even the most bloody raids of the war (Ploesti, 2nd Schweinfurt) were in the 26-32% losses range, which approaches 1 in 3 bombers downed, but isn’t quite there. Bloody, but less so ones like Schweinfurt-Regensburg had about a 16% loss rate.

17

Well, even more directly my grandfather was a prisoner of the Japanese and near death from starvation when he was liberated soon after the surrender of Japan, so it could be argued that even if the dropping of the atomic bombs shortened the war even by a small amount of time, it allowed my grandfather to survive which allowed my father to be conceived and born, which in turn allowed me to be born. And I am not even American!

However, as glorious as my existence is, you can only argue the merits of a decision on what could’ve been foreseeable at the time, plus my brother can be really annoying at times.

18

Sorry! I guess the question should have been “Was it justified to drop the bomb,” but it could have been “Why do people today think it was a war crime to drop the atomic bomb when a majority of Americans didn’t feel that way in 1945?” or something similar. Sorry, wasn’t aware they there was a Great Debates section, or I would have posted there.

19

Actually its quite possible that without the bombing of Japan in WW2 practically no one (American or otherwise) born after 1946 or so would be alive today. That even had such wide ranging effects that it is doubtful that anyone at or around that time didn’t have their life to some extent affected either directly or secondarily. For example pausing on their way to work to pick up a news paper on August 7th. Given the extreme improbability of a given egg meeting a particular sperm there is a near certainty that with this large alteration to the time line (coitus 5 seconds later , or after an extra bounce could make all the difference) none of us would be around today.

20

I grew up tall and proud.

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud.