Even if it were technically possible to have detonated the bomb high enough over Japan to both scare the shit out of them AND cause no real damage or destruction I don’t think it would have caused the Japanese to surrender unconditionally…which was the stated US position wrt Japan at the time. We know that in fact they DIDN’T surrender right away despite the fact we used the first bomb on a major Japanese city. So, extrapolating from that we would have still been forced to destroy at least one Japanese city in any event. BTW, IIRC we only had 2 bombs at the time…so if Japan had called our bluff or still waffled after we actually destroyed one of their cities (using the first bomb as a show of force) then it would have become fairly clear to the Japanese that no more bombs were on the way…at least for several months. I’m not sure what effect this might have had on the Japanese, but its likely they would have deduced that these things weren’t exactly easy or quick to make…and its quite possible we would have eventually had to destroy even more cities to convince them that once the pipeline started we could produce enough bombs (eventually) to essentially turn Japan hell on earth.
I think that people want to look back on WWII and use the standards of today to try and second guess the people who were dealing with the problems of their own day…and who had a whole other set of standards of conduct than our own. In addition I don’t think many people can really wrap their minds around just how bad an actual invasion of Japan would have been…not just to the allied militaries (I recall an estimate of something over a million casualties predicted…and then I remember how shocked some of the generals were at the hidden defenses the Japanese had put into place exactly where the allies would have been invading, which leads me to believe that its possible those estimates were low), but for the Japanese civilians. One has but to look at how desparately they defended Okinawa and consider the lengths they would have gone too if we invaded the other home islands. It could have (and IMHO WOULD have) been a complete blood bath with civilan casualties (not to mention Japanese military and paramilitary casualties) being huge.
As for the lack of American interest during the war, did the American public know exactly what was going on in the camps. Were photographs published in American newspapers, did the politicians talk about it and so on and so forth.
I’m not old enough to remember what was known in the UK but I imagine you knew just about the same as we did, and from what I can gather we were a bit sceptical at the time.
We did/could not believe that a civilized nation like Germany could stoop to such atrocities.
The internment of Japanese citizens living in the US at wars outbreak was, IMO, quite a logical thing to do AT THE TIME
In the best book to come out on the subject in recent years, Richard Frank’s Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, this is given some weight. He goes into quite a lot of detail regarding the makeup and deployment of the Japanese forces intended to meet the US invasion, and how they were far, far larger than what we had expected while first planning the invasion. We had planned to have 3:1 superiority at the landings but in truth there would have been a 1:1 ratio. By summer of 1945, we knew this. As best as I recall, Frank’s theory was that without the atomic bombs that naval opposition in Washington to the planned invasion as well as the political ramifications of the invasion casualties meant that we would have scrapped the invasion plans in favor of a blockade.
I think that the bomb being used over real cities illustrated to the Japanese that the bomb exists, that it works, and that we had the means to deliver it.
The use of the bomb(s) was sufficient to goad the moderates in the Japanese power structure to wrest political control of the war away from the hard liners. It took a few days for this to happen, though, as early reports of the devastation were probably confused.
If the USA had merely invited the Japanese to watch some barren islet get heated up, the military would have been able to stay in power longer, IMO. They would have been able to control access to the demo, to a great extent, they would have downplayed the efects, and they would have assured the civilians that the Americans could not get the weapon through, otherwise why blow up some place not covered by defences?
This report gets brought up quite a lot, but it needs to be taken with a lot of salt. It was written in the post-war period when the future of the Air Force (not yet a separate, independent branch) was in flux as part of a campaign to justify the retention of strategic bombing forces in the atomic era. So they had a lot of incentive to make strategic bombing sound important.
In any case, it shouldn’t surprise anyone when a report from the people in charge of strategic bombing argue that it was strategic bombing that won us the war.
The message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not “we have a new bomb”. The message was "if you don’t surrender, your cities will cease to exist, one by one, and you will not be able to kill even a single Allied soldier in return. This is not going to be a glorious defeat, demonstrating the selfless devotion of the Japanese to the emperor. It is going to be a turkey shoot.
Hiroshima was first. Nagasaki was second. Tokyo is next.
I haven’t read the book but I’m highly skeptical of this claim. For one thing, I seriously doubt the Russians would have played along with simply a naval blockade. In addtion, the expense of maintaining such a blockade would have been huge…I doubt we could have maintained it for long enough to force the Japanese to capitulate. Just because the Navy said so, well…they would, wouldn’t they? The Air Force maintained that they could force Japan (and Germany) to surrender simply by using strategic (conventional) bombing, while the Army was sure that only a force entry invasion would work.
Finally, we were already moving the logistics into place for such an invasion…and so were the rest of our allies. I seriously doubt that the Navy would have convinced the politicians to keep the war going for another couple of years using a blockade…because I doubt that the American people (or those of any of the other allies) would have been keen to keep spending the kinds of money it would take to do it. By this point everyone wanted resolution…not years of blockade. And the only way to get resolution (without using atomic weapons) would have been a forced entry invasion and the complete conquest of Japan.
I do agree that the Japanese defenses were quite a bit better than we thought they were…but I disagree that we knew this so early on. Oh, we knew it was going to be bad (anyone looking at Okinawa would know that), but we didn’t know just how bad it would be until Japan surrendered and we got a first hand look at the hidden defenses right where we were planning the first invasion for.
Wasn’t Tokyo already pretty much a ruin by this point in the war? I thought that was why we didn’t pick it to be one of the cities we did bomb (that and the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had more military value, at least from a logistics perspective).
Japan didn’t ally with the Germans as part of any grand strategy for world domination. They did it in the misguided belief that doing so would scare the US and reduce American pressure on Japan to pull out of China.
In The People’s Almanac or one of its sequels there was a map that showed the Axis plan for how they were going divide up America. Japan would get the west coast states, Italy would get the area around Florida and Germany would get the rest.
In addition Japan did attempt an invasion of Alaska (which, last time I checked was in North America). Had they been more successful I could very well see Japan occupying parts of Alaska (certainly some of the Allusion’s), as well as parts of North Western Canada if they could.
Honestly, if you have even a slight amount of interest in this topic you really should read the book. It is perhaps the most thoroughly documented book I have ever read, and is having quite an impact on Hiroshima scholarship.
Unfortunately my copy is on the wrong side of the Pacific, so I can’t really specifically address most of your points well. I can, however, flatly state that we knew by July of 1945 the general makeup, disposition, and strategy of the Japanese forces defending against invasion. Glancing around the book using Amazon excerpts, for example, Frank quotes US military reports showing that by mid-July we were estimating 600,000 troops in Kyushu (the actual number was actually around 900,000) as opposed to the 350,000 we had based our plans around. We also knew that those forces were concentrated where we planned to land rather than split between the north and south as we had thought.
I’ll have to check the book out sometime. However, from what I’ve read in the past I’m still skeptical that the US generals had such detailed knowledge of the Japanese defenses. I recall seeing a documentary that talked specifically about how stunned some of the generals were when they actually inspected the invasion beaches we had planned to invade in the first tier landings. The defenses were totally masked and we had no idea of how extensive they were.
We might have had a good handle on the possible number of troops Japan was planning to use, and probably had a good idea how they would deploy them in the event of an invasion…but then the Japanese pretty much had pegged exactly where we were going to invade and had plans of their own.
One of the reasons the book is having such a big impact is that it was the first book to make full use of the full declassification of our Japanese military code intercepts in the mid-90s. What you describe used to be the conventional wisdom… but it’s not so much anymore. Another book you might want to consider looking at is Edward Drea’s In the Service of the Emperor, specifically his chapter “Intelligence Forecasting for the Invasion of Japan: Previews of Hell”.
BTW, Wikipedia’s page on Operation Downfall has been heavily influenced by Frank, so checking that out should give you a better idea of the argument.
Another reason not to nuke Tokyo was that it would have made the Occupation much more difficult. Our plans relied on us using the Japanese government to carry out our policies (we didn’t have the necessary resources or expertise to run the country directly).
I’m aware of that, but during the wartime era, that wasn’t so and whether or not anyone believed it doesn’t mean they should believe it.
Yeah, you must be right. Because Hiroshima and Nagasaki are wiped off the map and no one lives there anymore, and how death by radiation poisoning is so obviously worse than being burned to death by a hellstorm of flaming annihilation. (That was sarcasm)
…lets pretend that the US had developed the bomb a year or so earlier: lets say before D-Day, or soon afterwards. What are your guys feelings on using the bomb on locations in Germany? Would taking out Dresden or Berlin have stopped the war and saved Allied lives?
Well, personally I’m as horrified at the prospect of using them in Germany as I am about having used them in Japan…so I think its kind of a loaded question. I’d say a better way to put it is, would the US have used the bomb on Germany if we had developed it sooner? The answer to that is obviously ‘yes’, since thats the primary reason it WAS developed…we felt that Germany was also on the road to producing a bomb and considered it a race. Had we gotten the bomb earlier I’d say it certainly would have been used. Had it been used I’m pretty sure Germany would have sued for peace unconditionally. This would probably have prevented the Soviet occupation of much of Eastern Europe (though maybe not), and would have saved quite a few lives (mainly Russian and German, but also US and the other allies). I have no idea what would have happened in France (still under German occupation), or any of the other occupied territories…but I guess if Germany had surrendered unconditionally (which I’m pretty sure they would have) those details would have been worked out.
So…what do YOU think would have happened BB? I’m curious as to your thoughts on this.
Let’s be realistic. We were far larger and more powerful than Japan. They never had a chance against us, except to convince us that fighting them would be too expensive and bloody. That would never work if they were trying to occupy part of the continental US. You could have transplanted all of Japan onto American soil and they would still have lost, much less if they were using whatever they could ship here.
So, it doesn’t much matter if they planned an invasion and conquest, which it seems they didn’t; they couldn’t have pulled it off.
The Americans of the time were far more racist, and at war as well. AND the philosophy of the time was one of “total war”, meaning everyone and everything is part of the war machine, and a legitimate target. I doubt most Americans would have cared all that much if the entire population was killed.
What the Americans you know, now, in peacetime are like doesn’t have much to do with what the at-war, vengeance minded Americans of forty years ago would have done.
