The history of wars is written by the victor. When it is written by the military ,it gets even farther from the truth.
I just watched “White Light,Black Rain” on HBO. It was about the survivors .It was horrible . The survivors were discriminated against for their whole lives. The disfigurement ,cancers and radiation poisoning weren’t enough. They pretty much said they are living reminders of what must never happen again.
At the end they said the occupying Americans wrote a constitution for them. Article 9 says no army, no navy, no air force and no building of weapons. They said this should never change,
I recently read Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking, and she goes into why it’s so little-known. Interesting stuff.
As for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I’m sure it was a tough call, but I think we did the right thing.
Well, elucidator is pretty firm on his “no nukes” stance, but I’m just picturing the alternative; a decade-long blockade with the occasional infrastructure-destroying conventional bombing run, leading to mass starvation. The Japanese military and government wouldn’t miss many meals, I’ll bet, though the civilians would eventually come to resemble, well, modern North Koreans. I’d hazard a guess that the resultant deaths and suffering would make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like toe-stubs. Since the Japanese at the time had no democratic system in which the civilians could express their discontent by voting the bums out, I figure the U.S. would back down first when its population got sick of the whole mess. Then the Soviets try to roll in, slaughtering and getting slaughtered, or they don’t bother and Japan rebuilds and re-arms and the whole starts over again in the mid-sixties.
Yay.
Not only was the bombing logical, it was quite fortunate that the technology came along at the end of the war, and thus was inextricably attached to the idea that nukes were the things you used last. A few years earlier or later and I’m sure the temptation to use nukes more casually would be irresistible.
:dubious: Sort of like always finding something in the last place you look, isn’t it?
I wonder if elucidator would have such a strong no nukes stance if they had never been used. I suspect, though, that whenever they would have been used would have been the end of the war. It’s hard to justify fighting on if a single plane can take out an entire city, and you have no way of striking back.
There is another point. The military had been going full tilt for over 3 years, and I doubt that many on the home front would have voted for their sons and husbands staying in uniform to keep from bombing the country that attacked Pearl Harbor. My father was on occupation duty in Germany, but his division was assigned to go to Japan, and I know my mother had no problems with the bomb that let him come home.
I’m not sure if that was known, but they had no trouble making stuff up. That was a problem with the early reports of the Holocaust - people thought that it was propaganda, not believing the Nazis were worse than any propagandist could imagine.
I don’t know if you’re being facetious, but let’s say the war ended through conventional means and the Manhattan Project, though sharply cut back, carried on and the trinity test was in 1950, as the Korean War was underway. China marches south in October and Truman decides to deploy nukes. Trouble is, China isn’t as crushed as Japan was in 1945. The small number of nukes the U.S. has isn’t enough to finish them off, and they go all-out, perhaps with support from the Soviets, who’ve been quietly working the problem all this time, and soon they have the bomb as well, with no hesitation about using it. A slow-motion World War 3 plays out, each side constructing and delivering a new and improved nuke maybe once a month as more and more industrial resources are thrown at the problem, with more and more effort into discovering and using long-range delivery systems…
They way it played out for real was better in that by the time real continent-destroying power was in hand, it was clear that nobody would get away with using it. Of course, this is all just speculative hindsight wargaming. The demand to justify the nuking doesn’t respect that in 1945, they didn’t have any idea how things were going to work out. They could only do the best they could and hope it worked out. As it stands, Japan got nuked and was never in a position to start a cycle of retaliation for it. That isn’t true of China or the USSR, the two most likely targets of a brand-new 1950 U.S. bomb.
Apologies for not weighing in sooner, I need my beauty sleep 
I’ve read through all of the answers, some sensible and some not so, Der Trihs makes sense actually, something that he quite often does despite his dislike of the USA.
Now then, what if, after Hiroshima, the Japanese were told “Look, this is what we’ve got and this is what we’re quite prepared to use, again and again and again”
“We have a next target in mind, make up your minds, you have 24 hours to do so”
Isn’t that more-or-less what did happen? If an ultimatum wasn’t actually delivered with that warning, one was certainly implied.
:smack: I really, really must have that lobotomy :smack:
Post rendered moot
Well, yes, but only on a technicality (Wiki).
(You didn’t specify “mainland”.)
Richard
I’m not sure where someone would find an authoritative cite on the feelings of the American (and British and Russian and Chinese etc.) people. Where would something like that come from?
FWIW. My father was in the First Marine Division on Guadalcanal and his mother was a very straightlaced Babtist-type old lady, but to the end of her days in 1985, the phrase “Damn Jap” was a hyphenated word for her. The Japanese were extremely lucky that old lady wasn’t in charge of nuclear weapons or Japan would have been burned down to bedrock. AFAICT, her attitude was far from unique among the people in her age group.
My father’s few friends were in no doubt at all that the bombs should have been dropped. Again, FWIW, but I have never detected an iota of pity for any Japanese from people in that age group.
Regards
Testy
On further reading, xtisme beat me to the punch. 
That said, the Battle of the Aleutians was a Japanese attempt to protect the north of Japan, not a step toward invading North America.
I’ll admit I haven’t read all the posts. But I assume it was mostly the same points that have been made the other times we’ve discussed this issue.
Yes but their proposals were unrealistic. It was 1945 and they were trying to get us to call it a draw. They insisted Japan would not be occupied, there would be no change in the Japanese government, no disarmament, and an amnesty for all Japanese leaders. They were apparently willing to consider a partial withdrawal from some conquered territory.
I don’t see how it’s possible to argue that. The destruction of Hiroshima didn’t convince the Japanese government to surrender. Why would anyone assume a demonstration bombing would have had a bigger effect than the actual bombing did?
As for the post-war military figures who questioned the need for the atomic bombing, keep in mind their positions were not unbiased. In the immediate post-war years, there were many people who were arguing that the atom bomb had won the war and that we no longer needed a large conventional military force. Obviously, the generals and admirals felt otherwise and so they were arguing that the atom bomb was either ineffective or unnecessary or immoral.
The best source I know of for this is John Dower’s book War Without Mercy, which covers the perceptions that both sides had towards the other, in part by analyzing the imagery used in the popular media of both countries. One of the basic points of the book is that while Americans of the time could differentiate between “good Germans” and “bad Germans” that there was no such distinction when it came to the Japanese. Here’s a bit about public opinion towards the end of the war:
Look up “Unit 731” some time. We could have nuked Japan twenty times, and it would still have been justified.
So to sum up then.
The general consensus of opinion of board members is that the demo of the destructive power of an Atomic Bomb would have served no useful purpose, the Japanese would have still fought on.
All of this beggars the questions:
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WTF were the Japanese doing in thinking that they could win a war against the USA, the greatest, biggest and most industrialised nation on earth.
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Surely even the most diehard of Japanese military men must have seen the writing on the wall after Midway, why didn’t they throw in the towel instead of inviting the inevitable destruction that they must have known would befall them and their homeland even without the use of atomic bombs. They were on a hiding to nothing
I’m sure much hinged on the discovery and available utility of nuclear weapons. As such, they changed everything.
cckerberos
After I posted I was thinking about this. For some reason, Japan was seen as a monolithic entity where there was no difference between the armed forces and the ordinary civilian and I was wondering why that was.
Some of it may have been due to the whole “every man, woman, and child will fight on the beaches until they’re all dead” kind of statements from the Japanese military. A lot of politicians on both sides said that kind of thing though. I believe Winston Churchill did in a famous speech. The problem with the Japanese is that their unwillingness to surrender seemed to indicate that they might actually do something like this.
Another part of it may have been due to the tales of Japanese atrocities that began coming out toward the end of the war. If this kind of thing were true, it would be very easy to think that they deserved being nuked.
A third cause may have been due to Japanese tactics like suicide attacks, mass charges, and a refusal to surrender. That kind of thing was (and is) pretty alien to the average Westerner and instills a lot of fear, making the troops much less likely to be merciful. (Not any kind of study here, just thinking about how it would affect me.)
Thanks for the book reference, I’ll try and pick that up.
Regards
testy