You mean the Hiroshima that was the headquarters for the Japanese Second Army, the Army Marine Headquarters, the Chugoku regional army, and a communications and manufacturing hub?
Really, gonzomax, your argument that using a nuclear weapon was immoral - period - is much better than your deliberate denial of facts.
Side question on assassinating the emperor: I’ve been told he was believed to be at least somewhat pro-West, and they wanted him around for after the war. I believe Kyoto was not bombed as a result, is this correct? The old imperial capital. At least, this is what I have been told, and there are still plenty of wooden temples there that are hundreds of years old. I’ve seen them myself. How true is this?
You realize that they talked about re-arming and carving up Asia with the Russians didn’t you? The same people who carved up Europe were looking at the Pacific Rim. A lot was in play during this period in history. The failed negotiations (which were nothing but a cessation of hostilities) were followed by Russia declaring war on Japan. By not buying into this nonsence Truman probably put off a Pacific Rim WW-III.
Did you realize that Truman resumed conventional bombing after the 2nd nuclear weapon and he weighed the number of civilians in his decision?
Did you consider the 40,000 American POW’s that would have been used as pawns in a land-war? What do you think the Japanese would have done if the camps were about to be overrun?
The tale is that Secretary of War Henry Stimson spent time there before the war and was somewhat enamoured with the place, so spared it destruction. Realistically it’s probably because there was no heavy industry there, the bombs were more economically used bombing factories than temples.
Thanks. Makes sense.
It was one of the proposed targets for the bomb, though (along with Kokura, Hiroshima and Niigata). Stimson vetoed it, so perhaps there’s some truth in the old tale after all;
Well, Kyoto has some beautiful sights. I’m glad they passed it over.
The entire REGIME was the equal to that of the Nazis – and NOT just in Manchuria. That’s exactly the reason we would not accept their terms for a surrender. It would have been like agreeing to a conditional surrender with Germany.
Just for the record, Hiroshima was the location of the headquarters of the Japanese Second Army, the Chugoku Regional Army, and the Army Marines. It also was a major industrial center and supply depot.
Nagasaki contained a naval base and had a bunch of important war industries.
Kokura, the original site for the second bomb, was the location of the Kokura Arsenal, a major producer of munitions and poison gas.
The Stimson story has a well-established basis in the historical record, but only explains why Kyoto was spared from the atomic bombing. I’m not sure if I buy the “no factories” explanation either since as a major Japanese city it almost certainly had enough decentralized industry to make it a worthwhile target, especially by 1945 when we were bombing minor population centers simply because they were really all that was left.
I think it was left alone for the same reason that we didn’t target the Imperial Palace: we thought it would enflame greater resistance among the Japanese population and it would look bad abroad.
I disagree. The Nazis engaged in systematic, industrialized genocide for its own sake. The Japanese were evil, but nothing they did reached the pinnacle of the Nazis.
Well, after you kill your first million, what difference does it make?
The one is deliberate genocide for the sake of genocide, the other is just good old fashioned imperialist conquest and exploitation? I mean, you’re just as dead either way, but things like the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March, as horrible as they are, are as old as time themselves. The Assyrians, the Romans, the Mongols, all sacked captured cities, raping and murdering the inhabitants, and they all abused and killed prisoners. None of them ever decided to wipe out an entire race of people for ideological reasons.
It doesn’t make a difference to the dead, but the Japanese crimes just don’t strike me as unique enough to warrant the comparison.
The scale of Japanese crimes was perhaps unprecedented, but the crimes themselves weren’t all that different from that of brutal colonizers/conquerors throughout history.
Not that I’m going to make excuses for our European brethren and sistren, but I think the medical experiments and such that the Japanese were doing on the native population in China and Korea constitutes a slight difference between them and the colonial period. As for scale, the Rape of Nanking alone was pretty much off the scale, even by European standards. And while the Japanese were, perhaps, less systematic about their mass killing than the Germans, this doesn’t mean that they didn’t weren’t fairly enthusiastic in their arbitrary mass murders (something on the order of 15-20 million Chinese died during WWII…a large percentage of them killed by the Japanese).
I agree that the way they treated prisoners of war, while brutal and cruel, isn’t really that different than abuses of the past, especially during the colonial period, but I think you guys are underestimating the atrocities that the Japanese perpetrated on the Chinese people. Granted, Hitler et al win the top prize, and for sheer numbers it’s hard to beat Stalin and his merry men, but I’d have to say that the Japanese were definitely in the running for runner up.
(Wiki article on Japanese war crimes, for anyone interested…haven’t read through it myself, as yet)
-XT
Well, I’ll acknowledge a difference existed on paper, but not especially so in practice, and not at all in body count. Truth be told, what does it matter how a dictatorial fascist regime comes to the conclusion that you’re better off dead? Heck, the Japanese probably reached the one-million mark well before Germans, anyway, and by that time, any such regime is long past deserving of being smashed and its leaders hanged.
When Timur defeated the Dehli Sultanate in battle outside of the city of Dehli, he first killed about a hundred thousand prisoners, then sacked the city itself, destroying it and killing almost all the inhabitants.
When the Mongols captured Baghdad in 1258, they destroyed the city and killed all the inhabitants, killing anywhere from 200,000 to a million. When the Mongols destroyed Herat in what’s now Afghanistan, some estimates say they killed up to 1.6 million people.
People are still pissing into the wind responding to gonzo? Oh well, I’ll add to the futility again myself.
What color is the sky in your world? There are about 850,000 casualties from house to house fighting in Berlin in the bitter end of Nazi Germany who might take issue with you. Oh wait, I forgot, in your world once the Allies reached Germany it was nothing but a mop up operation.:rolleyes:
Minor aside, but ‘street fighting’ is a bit of a misnomer. The last place you’ll find anyone with the tiniest shred of a self-preservation instinct spending any appreciable amount of time is on the streets.
Went to Japan for the first time at 18, ended up graduating from a Japanese university; lived and worked in Japan on-and-off for the better part of 25 years. Lots and lots of exposure to old Japanese men that fought in the war for Japan and for the US, including the grandparents and friends/relatives of my (Japanese) wife’s parents. I’m probably more fluent in Japanese now than English.
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.
Gonzo is correct in saying that the ‘invasion’ of Japan’s main islands would not have been much of an invasion. Every remaining healthy Japanese boy above the age of 14 was -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.
So 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.
Anyway, back on topic: the question I come down to is, just 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 indeed, and both of my grandfather-in-laws not only say this, they say everyone at the time knew it for fact. In fact, 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…).
Three days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki 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; what makes you think people in Tokyo knew? It’s not like US intelligence at the time was completely flawless, and it was still far, far better than Japan’s was. One has to wonder if, for example, five or six days had elapsed instead of three.
I believe 100% (but have no proof) that the second bomb was 90% because the military wanted to test out another new bomb.
I also believe (but of have no proof) that there is a 90% chance that the US would NOT have dropped an atomic bomb on Germany, if the war had been going on.
So - in hindsight? The bomb was probably the lesser evil of other alternatives. I honestly believe that Japan as a country may well 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 better off than it would have been if it had been invaded (or, for that matter, if it had even won the war).
The worrisome thing to me is that the same factors that led to Japan being a simplistic, easily manipulated culture/population haven’t really changed all that much in the last 60 years…
Other odds/ends: Mt Fuji is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Its about 2-3 hours by bus from downtown Tokyo. Wouldn’t have been heavily populated 60 years ago.
What, you’ve never heard of Unit 731?
Be sure to read the “Activities” section.