65th Anniversary of bombing Hiroshima

Great Debates
1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bh5iKNH1WY (7 min, 42 sec video. Listen to the last 2 minutes at least.)

So bearing in mind, the firestorms we unleashed upon Japan actually killed far more than what our A bombs did,
esp the firestorm we unleashed upon Tokyo, just prior,

were our use of the A bombs even necessary?
Some say our use of the a-Bombs were merely a deterrent against Russia, who apparently was getting ready to invade Japan from the North.
Vladivostok, and their most Northern naval port…

We used Nukes, against Japan, as a clear message, to Russia, you invaded Europe to nullify the Nazis, OK, we will accept that, but come no further?
Japan is ours, we did all the hard work in the Pacific…
and we got Von Braun… a Nazi supported hero,
to build rockets for us.
we win???

2

The firestorm bit is highly disingenous, the Tokyo Metro area is far far far larger in population than Hiroshima was, 1 in 4 IIRC citizens died in the attack.

Answer; was it necessary to end the war

  1. As the US Strategic bombing survey concluded after the war that Japan would have surrendered anyway, I would say no.

  2. Was it the right decision.

From the information available at the time, yup.
And incidentally, today ie 9th August is the day the bomb was dropped Nagasaki. Hirsoshima was on the 6th.

I wonder if their is a party in Kokura on the 9th.

3

and yet many ppl who know say otherwise.
to whit

“…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” - Dwight Eisenhower - Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

"…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

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. " - “The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. 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.” - William Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman - I Was There, pg. 441.

there are many other such sources.
Did we use Nukes against Japan to deter the Russians.
Should Von Braun have been excused his Nazi sympathies, just cos it helped us to pardon him, so we could face up to Russia,
begin the Cold war.
Simple questions really.

Zan

4

If they were simple, we wouldn’t be discussing them 65 years later. I lean toward saying the bombing wasn’t necessary but I think the choice always comes down to one form of inhumanity or another: atomic bombings or firebombings or invasions or something else.

5

and ppl are saying, the use of Nukes was merely to deter Russia. it was in the OP. firebombing had already achieved their abject helplessness.
ie, the use of Nukes was a show for Russia, do not even think about invading.
Japan is ours.

6

I know people say it was a deterrent to the USSR. I’m sure that’s true. Now who says Japan was abject and helpless at that point?

7

This has been discussed here quite a few times, I think most recently in this thread.

In hindsight, the bomb was probably the lesser of other evils. However, it doesn’t completely disguise some other unpleasant factors about the mindset of the US at the time.

The ‘invasion’ of Japan’s main islands would not have been much of an invasion. Almost all the remaining healthy Japanese men above the age of 14 or so were already in the army. The ones not already actually fighting were either old, wounded, crippled, women, or children.

Japan’s military was in shambles. Its airforce was no longer a real threat. As far back as 1942 Japan’s airforce was unable to train enough cadets to replace those lost (at the Battle of Midway Japan lost as many aircrewmen in a single day as their pre-war training program had produced in a year).

Japan had no more resources with which to make weapons, bullets, etc. My grandmother-in-law recalls the government confiscating pots and pans, apparently so the metal could be melted down.

A grandfather-in-law was one of only three people to survive from his company following a battle in the Philippines. He lived in constant shame at being one of the survivors. Up until his death a few years ago he refused to look at the TV if the Emperor or any member of the royal family was on it. The rest of the family looked upon his as a bit kooky, but everyone says that’s how everyone was back then.

I have no doubt believing that Japan would have indeed fought to the very end. Japan’s mindset is such that they find it much easier to take their own life than Westerners. Even today - although it is never spoken out loud - there is still an unspoken agreement among Japanese that someone that committed suicide to atone for a hideous deed has managed to recover a bit of respect and dignity.

So how much resistance would a bunch of women, children, and old men, armed with nothing more than bamboo spears and awls, actually put up? The idea that the US would have faced ‘massive causalties’ in an invasion is just flat-out silly - the US military would have steamrolled the island; I suspect their guns would give a bit of a reach advantage compared to that guy holding the shovel.

Might have taken a while, no doubt, And there would have been some casualties - but this wasn’t going to be a Normandy invasion. Overall, any actual invasion would have been a massive mop-up operation, and both of my grandfather-in-laws not only say this, they say everyone at the time in Japan knew it as well. They fully expected it, and were preparing for what they assumed was inevitable death defending Japan.

Did the US military at the time know this? I suspect they only suspected it; I’m not convinced they were that aware of what was happening on the ground in Japan at the time. And even if they did - I’m not sure it would have mattered. Germany was Europe - it was the former homeland for many Americans. What Japanese Americans went through in WWII was never an issue for German Americans, for example. A lot of people forget that many people (including Charles Lindburgh) were pro-Germany early on. Asia, however, was unknown to most, and the unknown tends to bring out the worst in people. Check out the political cartoons by Dr. Seuss, for cryin’ out loud, at the height of the war. I’ve seen anti-German propaganda from the era as well, but honestly none of it makes me cringe like the anti-Japanese propaganda does (although how much that is because I’ve lived in Japan for so long, I don’t know…).

There were just three days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’ve always thought that three days simply wasn’t enough time for Japan to do anything. Heck, after three days even people in Hiroshima weren’t fully aware of what had happened.

I believe 100% (but have no proof) that the second bomb was 90% because the military wanted to test out another new type of bomb.

I honestly believe that Japan as a country would probably not exist today if the allies had actually invaded. A Japanese politician had to resign not too long ago for admitting what everyone actually thinks - the Japan of today is far, far better off than it would have been if it had been invaded. The downside for me is that Japan is able to use the ‘only country to have nuclear weapons used on it’ card, and it plays the victim a bit too easily. But that’s neither here nor there.

8

I wish to respectfully disagree:

(Emphasis mine.)

Reading about this battle, which occured only a month and a half before the atomic bombings, showed what the potential result of fighting on the Japanese home islands themselves, IMO.

If this level of fighting became necessary to take and hold Japan, I think the civilian casualties would have far outstripped the number of those who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

9

You’re still talking about slaughtering 70-odd million Japanese people. Snapping them out of it with the shock and awe of the bombs was far kinder than letting them march blindly to extinction.

10

This may or may not be true: it’s actually very unclear. In fact, suicide, despite being lauded ad nauseum in Japanese literature, is not clearly more common there than elsewhere. In the aftermath of WW2, a similar proportion of Japanese leaders committed suicide as Germans.

That’s true, although the early invasion might have been terrible, terribly hurt.

Untrue. The people of Hiroshima may not have known what was going on, but the Japanese High Command had a very good idea. They simply didn’t want to admit it was over. They were unilling to end it even after the second bomb, which is why the Emperor did an end-run around them. But they knew what had happened roughly and had the capability to stop if they chose.

The difference between the two bombs was marginal, and we were sure enough they would work. We had, and have, nuclear testing grounds for that sort of thing. And if not, who would care? We could always bust out the incendiaries if neccessary.

11

I just finished reading Hell to Pay by D.M. Giangreco. He sets out to show that Japan was not as close to collapse as the Americans and British thought. Briefly summarizing his arguments:

  1. While Japan was sending out peace overtures through the Soviet Union, other diplomatic channels were just as vigorously rejecting them – there was no way to tell whether peace overtures was legitimate. Officially, of course, the Japanese stated many times they would not surrender.

  2. The Japanese had, in fact, much greater strategic reserves than the Allied planners projected. They had always believed the final battle would be an invasion, and had stockpiled material accordingly, even though it meant short-changing the ongoing battles.

  3. Japan had much greater agricultural self-sufficiency than the Allies had thought, and in case of a blockade, would simply try to wait it out.

  4. Japanese military strategists had correctly deduced wheere and when an invasion would take place, and were fortifying the island of Kyushu.

  5. Truman was acutely aware of the racial implications of dropping a weapon of mass destruction on Japan. Ultimately, he decided to go ahead, but he was aware of the consequences.

  6. American strategists underestimated the number of casualties resulting from an invasion, to make the invasion option more palatable. While most U.S. estimates centered around approximately 2 million combined Allied and Japanese casualties from the invasions of Kyushu and Honshu, Japanese estimates were more like 4 million. The Japanese believed the U.S. couldn’t resupply that level of troops and equipment indefinitely.

In other words, the Japanese not only had no intention of surrendering, they were expecting an even greater bloodbath than the U.S.

12

As has been said in countless other threads on this tired old subject, it was necessary because the Japanese were preparing to fight pretty much to the death. An invasion of the home island would have been a nightmare, especially in retrospect when we really got a good look at their defenses and realized that pretty much everywhere we planned to invade they had already figured it out and had very well masked defenses in place. It would have been a blood bath, not just for the US and the allies but mostly for the Japanese. I’ve seen estimated causality tolls in excess of 500k for the US alone, and they run into the millions for the Japanese.

The best indication of the Japanese mentality and willingness to do whatever it took to fight for the home islands is (IMHO) the fact that even after we dropped the atomic bombs and their Emperor was preparing to surrender, the military almost pulled off a coup to keep the war going…and, in fact, if the US hadn’t made concessions about unconditional surrender I think it might have taken MORE bombs before they finally surrendered. Without an atomic bomb, it would have taken a brutal forced entry assault, and based on how things went in Okinawa, not to mention in the various island fighting we went through, we would have ended up making Japan a desert and calling it peace.

These have all been addressed in other threads and I don’t feel like going into them. Basically, a lot of those quotes (used endlessly in this type of thread) are either taken out of context or don’t include the fact that the people making them had other agendas (such as WANTING a forced entry assault, or thinking that the best way to wipe out the Japanese was using convention strategic bombing, or having some other motivation which didn’t entail peace, but instead entailed wiping out Japan in some other way that would make THEM look good).

-XT

13

I don’t think you fully understood my post. You’re agreeing with me.

14

Twice you cite von Braun; the first time, you seem to imply that we dropped the bombs on Japan as part of saying “we got von Braun” to the Russians.

So the first question is, when did we have von Braun?

According to his Wikipedia page, he surrendered to the Americans on May 2, 1945. On June 20, 1945, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to America. However, von Braun did not arrive in America until September 1945, after the bombs were dropped.

From what I’ve read, it seems von Braun was probably a Nazi mostly because it enabled him to get funding for his rocket work and to work undisturbed. There are some claims otherwise, but he doesn’t seem to have been an enthusiastic Nazi, and the ease with which he transitioned to working for the Nazis’ enemies tends to support the contention that he was an amoral technology dweeb who mostly wanted to build rockets and was indifferent to politics except when it impinged on his work.

I’ll close with the famous summation of Professor Lehrer:

“‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department’, says Wernher von Braun.”

15

The US had been engaged in a total war for several years in which the destruction of cities was a common practice. They had just spent massive amounts of money on developing a super weapon which they hoped to use to end the war. At this time concepts such as fallout and residual radiation were not clearly understood, basically the A-bomb was thought to be just like any other bomb except much much bigger. Sure they could have continued the firebomb raids, but the single high altitude bomber was easier, safer, and more effective.

To say at this point, “Well, we could end the war today using the weapon designed specifically for that purpose that we spent massive capital to develop, but have decided instead to let the war drag on a another few months because we feel sorry for the poor Japanese” would be politically insane. It is only in retrospect with MADD that we view use nuclear weapons as an unthinkable act.

16

I don’t think you fully read my post either. I agree with you that Japan would likely have been completely wiped out in any land invasion.

The fact that the air force was resorting to mass kamikaze attacks should tell you how desperate things were. Forget the Battle of Okinawa, go back to the Battle of the Midway, which was in mid-1942:

17

You’re joking, right? Suicide has been an almost spiritual ritual in Japan for centuries. And according to this list, Japan has the fourth-highest suicide rate in the world, and it’s by far the highest of any of the industrialized nations. Given the general level of wealth, low crime, and generally high level of living standards, the very high suicide rate is unexplainable except for a culture that attaches zero stigmatism to suicide.

18

It might have been a good thing, in the long run, that the world had an actual example of what happens when you detonate an atomic bomb in a population center. Otherwise, maybe the Cold War would not have stayed cold.

19

Well, that seems a bit nasty, doesn’t it? ‘Better the Japanese suffered the atomic bomb, saved it from being used on us’?

20

Were you under the impression war was otherwise?

It was a reasonable decision and I support it.