40 years ago was Vietnam. But what’s a quarter of a century between friends. 
:smack:
I have to agree with you here. The Japanese strategic plan was to knock out the US Pacific fleet and basically use the time the US would need to rebuild our fleet to capture and then fortify a defensive perimeter around Japan that the US would (according to their estimate) be unwilling to take the losses necessary to penetrate. Of course, this perimeter would ALSO have give Japan access to all the valuable raw materials they needed…and time to consolidate their conquests in China and SE Asia. This was their short and medium term goals. I think that, had they accomplished their goals and had it worked out the way they envisioned it would have been the Soviet Union that Japan eventually went after in a big way…not an invasion of the US (assuming we did as they predicted and rolled over).
Realistically a full on invasion of the continential US was never in the cards. However, I’d say that Japan could very well have taken possessions in Alaska and North Western Canada, as well as most if not all of our Pacific Island territories, including (possibly, had things worked out for them as they planned) the HI. THAT and an attack on the Panama Canal (which was something else they planned) would have put the Japanese in a VERY strong position.
Of course, we can debate on how realistic these goals ever were wrt reality.
Sure, except that you can change out ‘Americans’ in your paragraph to include every other nation at war during this period…including most especially the Japanese. They were far more racist than the American’s, were also well on board with the philosopy of ‘total war’, and were completely driven by their own war machine to conquest (by far much more so that America).
I know you have a hard on about America and how evil we are, but the reality is that all the other nations at war at the time had pretty much the same outlook…and their peoples had pretty much the same prejudices.
-XT
I’m not sure who “they” are. The general public had no idea such a thing was possible, outside of those sf fans with propeller beanies, of course. Knowledge of the bomb within the government was strictly limited. Now, if you’re saying that those who knew of the bomb thought of it as just a big bomb, I might agree with you. (I’m not sure what they thought.) I doubt that nonscientists could conceive of the effects. Radiation then was something you heard about in the movie about Madame Curie. MIT disguised the lab working on radar as the Radiation Lab, since radiation clearly wasn’t important to the war effort.
I’m saying that seeing the impact of the bomb changed people’s minds. Without an actual use, most people might indeed feel the bomb was just like a big conventional bomb.
The bombs were fairly small. People understood dying from fire, but they didn’t understand dying from radiation poisoning visibly and over a long period of time. They also didn’t understand people being disintegrated, with only a shadow on the wall left of them.
Do people read Hiroshima in schools anymore?
I never said otherwise. But chowder was talking about the Americans he ( ? ) knew; not Japanese, Russian, British, or Ugandans.
I think the bomb would have been used on Germany based on the firebombing of Dresden. If Germany would have surrendered from this, it’s probably a good thing that it didn’t happen. I can see Germany having this as an excuse for losing the war and us eventually having World War III with Germany. By invading Germany and destroying their war machine completely, Germany was pacified. If they had surrendered with the military and Nazi party intact, maybe we would have had a situation similar to the end of World War I, masses of pissed off people and a military claiming to be stabbed in the back.
Useless. Suppose the demonstration was announced and it was arranged for members of the Japanese military and government to witness the detonation (assuming there were sufficient “feelers” in place to let this be arranged)… and the detonation failed? That was certainly a distinct possibility, since atomic weapons were a brand-new technology. In fact, suppose it failed and the bomb simply landed with a big harmless “thud”. Then what? Send a regiment of marines to secure the island before the Japanese can get there and pick apart the debris for ideas? A failure would have forced an invasion, since no further “wait a sec, wait a sec, okay, this time for real!” would have encouraged a surrender. The bomb’s impact is enhanced by the suddenness of its appearance, dropped during what might have seemed an otherwise conventional air attack. In fact, conventional air attacks had already caused far greater damage elsewhere. The significance of these new attacks was that they could be carried out by a single plane, so any American bomber overhead could be capable of destroying a city all by itself.
It played out exactly as it should have and the results were the best anyone could reasonably hope for.
I’ve been in this argument many times over the years, and I end up pretty much in the same place. The only telling point for the “bomb good!” side is their insistence that lives were saved because the invasion became unnecessary.
Why would an invasion have been necessary? Even if Japan scraped up every bit of scrap iron in the country and built airplanes, they could not fuel them. Their navy was sunk, they had a million men under arms, but located in China. If your enemy is unable to harm you, in what way is he still an “enemy”? A threat must be met, of course, but an empty threat is nothing more than air and bluster.
Can anyone offer me a rationale that makes an invasion of a helpless enemy unavoidable?
Well, I could offer a couple. For one, the Japanese were far from helpless. Even if we assume the blockade was 100% successful and that they couldn’t figure out any way to smuggle in oil, they have coal. Enough for military use if nothing else. Another reason is that a blockade wasn’t going to force the Japanese to surrender any more than sanctions were going to eventually force Saddam out of power in Iraq. Therefore you would be forced to attempt to blockade an entire island nation for some indefinite period of time…and if you let up then they would rebuild, eventually, and become a threat again. Another reason was that while the home islands may have been blockaded Japan still had large forces in SE Asia and China. It would have been difficult and costly to dig those forces out of those areas if we had gone the blockade route.
Another reason was simply that the citizens of the US wouldn’t have put up with a blockade and a continuation of the war for some indefinite period of time. The citizens wanted a resolution of the conflict…and a definite resolution that saw Japan completely defeated. Rational? Not sure…but reality none the less. I seriously doubt that the American people would have been happy with any proposal that kept the conflict going, with all that implies both in economic and other terms. And if the citizens wouldn’t have wanted it, you can bet that the politicians would have been even less keen.
Also the Russians were a factor. They had finally decided to make a move wrt Japan and they would have moved forward with or without us. They eventually captured several of the northern islands (Kuriles) and I seriously doubt that they would have just sat on their hands if the US decided we were just going to blockade.
Finally, I don’t see Truman agreeing to such a course…or the Congress.
-XT
The marines I’ve talked to would disagree with that statement.
Short of the development of a steam powered Zero, I don’t quite take your point.
I have no idea why you thought this analogy would be useful. Would you mind terribly if I ignore it?
So? We were forced to wage war against an entire island for an indefinite period.
With what? Bamboo submarines?
If those units were dependent upon the central government for supplies, they weren’t getting any anyway. And if they weren’t dependent on the central government for supplies, your point evaporates.
Maybe, maybe not. I have no such authority. Have you? If the American people were satisfied that Japan were, for all practical purposes, defeated would this not satisfy some generalized urge for closure? And might they not prefer to accept such a postponement if it might save thousands of American lives?
I asked why it was necessary, you tell me it was inevitable. Not quite the same thing, as I’m sure you see…
Of all your conjectures, this is the most astounding. With what were the Russians going to invade Japan? Did the Russians ever, at any time, launch a major sea-borne invasion?
Mores the pity, but again, you are offering inevitable as an answer to unnecessary.
Not to take sides in this debate, but just to let you know, there’s a way, called the Fischer-Tropsch process, to make synthetic petroleum out of coal. Japan used this in World War II, although not always very efficiently. Japan also engaged in other synthetic fuel programs during the war, like biogas and ethanol/alcohol fuel production.
Y’know guys, fire-bombing has ladting effects. It doesn’t just end with the firebombs. Victims can live, sometimes for months, before they go, and if they die will usually die in a horrific screaming agony. Frankly, I think I’d probably prefer radiation poisoning.
And they were rightly demonized too. It seems like some people are forgetting that the Japanese people were just plain evil. Just read any history on POWs or The Rape of Nanking.
Keeping mind that I am refering to your post exclusively, and by no means reflects upon your character or intelligence…no, never mind. Words fail.
This isn’t firsthand — I was born almost exactly two years after the war — but I remember poring through my parents’ collection of wartime newspapers (my father, on whom be peace, was an incurable packrat) on many a rainy afternoon; and from my recollection, the American public had essentially two attitudes toward the Japanese: the more charitable wanted them humiliated, the rest wanted them exterminated. Both sides wanted it done Right Now. Patience was decidedly not a virtue.
The populace could smell the end of the war from mid-1945 on. I very much doubt that they would have tolerated a war of attrition. Despite the overwhelming discrepancy in force, maintaining a blockade would entail casualties from operational accidents and such “unconventional” weapons as human torpedoes; the probability that a significant number of such casualties would be tolerated approaches zero.
The only we could avoided massive casualties short of the bombs would have been to endure ourselves a ludicrously expensive blockade which would have been accomplishing little. It would have been huge, and to what end? To avoid dropping a few bombs? We would have caused far worse to the Japanese. Fun idea though.
Well Captain Amazing already basically answered this.
Sort of like the coal thingy I suppose…sure, ignore it if you like.
Well…no. We were forced to wage war until we could win. Thats different than being on (what the public perceives as) the cusp of victory and then just blockading Japan until some mythical surrender occurs…or until we either run out of money or everyone in the fleet dies of old age I suppose.
There is a distinct difference in how the public perceives both things.
Well, Japan actually had cargo submarines that they used to transfer technology from Germany, as well as to resupply their fleet. AFAIK they weren’t made of bamboo however…primitive as I’m sure you feel those damn Japs were.
The point however is that as vast as the US Navy was, they couldn’t exactly stand shoulder to shoulder completely around (and under) Japan…some things would get smuggled in no matter what you did.
I don’t see how my point evaporates if they weren’t dependent on a central government to supply them (they weren’t btw…at least they weren’t completely dependent). Maybe you could expand a bit on why the point evaporates. Is this like the coal thingy again?
Why should it? What do you propose would appeal to the American people (let alone the politicians) to continue on a war footing indefinitely with a blockade that could and probably would run years?
As to the saving of American lives, I’d say that this is your best point so far. I’m unsure however that even if a good case could be made to the American people that the cost of maintaining the war for a long period of time with a blockade would save hundreds of thousands of American lives, that they would have gone for it at the time. I think (my own impressions here, I’m no authority either) that they would not have wanted to stretch things out any more, would not have wanted to continue to pay for the war, continued to sacrifice for it here at home, and most importantly I think they wanted it resolved once and for all…not hanging over their collective heads for more years. YMMV of course, but thats my opinion.
Nope, I don’t see. I see it as reality. It becomes necessary when people perceive it as necessary. Its sort of how democracy works however
They managed to invade those northern islands without our help, yes. If Japan had no real fleet then yes, the Russians could and I’m pretty sure would have managed to get troops across despite the massive losses they were likely to take both getting there and taking Japan. The Russians weren’t exactly shy about taking massive losses to achieve their goals…especially with Unca Joe Stalin at the helm.
The sun will rise tomorrow too. Pity really, but thats the nature of reality. Wishful thinking is all well and good of course…maybe tomorrow Bush will be rousted out of bed and taken at gun point to an awaiting jet plane, tarred and feathered by the Congress and then sent for war trials in Europe. Perhaps. Probably not though. Inevitably we are probably in for another year of the odious man before we shake the dust of this presidency off our collective boots…thats the reality. The necessity comes in when you consider the fact that, despite his unpopularity, despite a very vocal movement to Impeach Bush™!! the Congress has made no real moves to actually DO that. Necessity. Reality. I’m rather surprised you don’t see the connection in politics.
-XT
Agreed. And, at the time, the prevailing sentiment was that they just plain deserved it.
How the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese on civilians and POWs go so under-reported has always mystified me. They did stuff that would have given Dr. Mengele a hard-on.
It is interesting how little-known things like the Rape of Nanking are. But I wonder if I might trouble you for a cite for the statement that the prevailing sentiment among Americans was that the innocent civilians killed deserved it as retribution. My impression was that people merely accepted the horrible calculus that had to be made.