I think the level of U.S. casualties compared to Allies like Britain and France, let alone Russia, was relatively low on per capita basis by 1945. A casualty level of +/- a million to defeat Japan would have been seen as acceptable to win WWII by 1945-47ish America & the political/Military leadership. Operation Downfall the Invasion of Japan was a go – the only thing that would have stopped it, besides a theoretical Japanese collapse or surrender under conventional pressure, would be if the U.S. thought (& knew) that 900K JIA troops were waiting & a consensus emerged that an invasion at that point would actually fail.
The true bottom line is I don’t know if it would have been politically acceptable to do anything but force Japan to surrender unless the human cost of the war increased much beyond a million casualties. I can’t imagine an acceptable cease fire or armistice of any kind by the American people.
No its not illogical to say that. It is almost certainly true, the only real argument against it is the Japanese would have surrendered anyway argument which Tomndeb points out is shaky (& I don’t buy either).
Sorry, but that biography is totally out of whack with historical analysis.
Bull. The Emporer had to hide his surrender address tape so the military could not stop him from delivering it. The military was in TOTAL control over japan at this point. The Emporer was and remained a figurehead, albeit with some slight power. The mere fact the Emporer did something like surrender was stunning to the Japanese.
he claime to be a man of peace. However, he was a “divinity” - he was above mere mortal concerns like war. And his real power was virtually nil, so long s he didn’t excercise it. We will never know what his personal feelings were, but by the same token that biograpy has no legs to stand upon.
This is quite possibly true, in that it did make him look sypathetic.
Werent the Japanese working themselves on an atomic bomb?
Werent the japanese also working on germ and biological warfare?
If we had not stopped the war when we did, and if the war continued until japan had developed its own atomic and germ bombs, then millions of americans could have died by japanese atomic bombs.
Yes, they were, however they were nowhere near completing one. The simply didn’t have the resources and capability available to create the amount of weapons grade fissionable material necessary for an atomic bomb. Keep in mind that it cost many hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the atomic bomb in the U.S. and Japan simply didn’t have that level of resources. The Germans, in fact, were much closer to the atomic bomb then were the Japanese but even they were a long ways behind the U.S.
Jeff, I am sorry , but that idea of an offered surrender “if we just get to keep the Emperor” does not match with any fact I have seen. I had heard that there were some splinter groups that were NOT incontrol of the Government floating that as a concept, but since they had no power to make that offer, it doesn’t matter. The Togog govt was still in charge, AFAIK, and they had no intentions of any real “surrender” (they were basicly suggesting a cease-fire, and a return to most pre-war boundaries, AFAIK).
However, Nemo & lemur make a good point- how about the Japanese themselves? Don’t we care about how many other options woudl have keilled? LeMay was in favour of a “bomb & starve them out” campaign- which was estimated to kill up to 10 million Japanese, not to mention certain doom for our POW’s. (Death by starvation, at least). Or, say an invasion would only have killed 100000 US forces- it also would have killed a million Japanese- at least. Thus, the nuking saved FAR more lives (on both sides) than any other option. Anyone who thinks that any other option would have cost under 100,000 lives in total is simply living in a fantsay world. The figure is at least ten times that, by conservative estimates.
Japan was hopelessly far away from an atomic bomb. Biological weapons were pretty advanced. Thousands died as test subjects, and there was use on a limited scale against the Chinese. Nobody was prosecuted for this, though, as a deal was cut to exchange the data for immunity from prosecution for war crimes.
But it’s all right. They Japanese were only killing Chinese with those weapons, so it wasn’t like they were killing anyone important… :rolleyes: They would have likely used more of them against the chinese, and in that venue, they might have killed millions & millions. This is for those dudes who claim it was “inhumane” for us to use a nuke vs Hiroshima.
The fact that the japanese were themselves working on weapons of mass destruction, excuses them from any sympathy just because japan’s enemies happened to develop them before japan itself could.
There is no harm in beating a bad guy to the draw.
Just what does anyone think japan would have done had it developed and had plenty of atomic and germ bombs built?
How many lives were saved by dropping atomic bombs on japan?
the answer is clearly: not enough!
The only thing we should/could have changed is to have dropped them on Japan/Tokyo sooner.
I think the reason why this question comes up again and again is because it’s very easy for we armchair generals to think ourselves into a nearly intractable situation and begin to consider the use of nukes as some sort of acceptable alternative. MacArthur apparently fell into the same trap in Korea, as well as Senator Paul H. Stevens and Curtis LeMay, among many other notables.
It is not an acceptable alternative, ever again.
One of the most important points–one which I see repeatedly missed in these discussions–is the context of the times in which it was used. Truman reached his decision to use the bomb without evidence that is available to us today. Radiation, fallout, and their attendant health and environmental ramifications were so dimly understood in 1945 that there is some evidence that George C. Marshall was contemplating the tactical use of future a-bombs to clear the way for invading American troops in Olympic and Coronet. American troops would have marched right through the hot zones with all the disastrous results we later learned the hard way in Operations Crossroads and Buster-Jangle.
We now know better. In 1945 we had a weapon of such shocking devastation that it was capable of delivering the final demoralizing blow to Japan. But we had little idea how shocking and how devastating it actually was. That’s a crucial point, and leads to yet another “what if” question which cannot be satisfactorily answered: if Truman knew in 1945 what we know today about nuclear weapons, would he still have decided to use the atomic bomb on civilians?
An exccellent point. One that few people realize, which is that they lived in a different time, with different set of rules and consequences.
Their intellegence on the enemy or the effects of their weapons was less than what we know today. They had to make life and death decsions in realtively short time frames over whatr was then vast distances, most of the time blind.
The results of that war and how it was carried out changed how we fought after.
There is a general distaste by westerners today for tactics which seemed proper at that time such as fire bombing residential areas and inflicting as much damage on the civilain population as possible to “demoralize” them.
There are also the issues of racism that existed then. The Average US citizen, politician, soldier and Officer did not see Japanese as equals. Instead they were inferior and inhuman. If you watch the propaganda of the time you can see that there is a nastier, baser portrayal of the Japanese enemy compared to the Germans or Italians. It may have (as unthinkable as it is today) been an easier decision to drop The bomb on them then say Germany.
Finally Truman didn’t know any more about Japan’s intentions than we do now. Were they ready to surrender? Would they fight to the last man as they had on the island campaigns? He could not know and made a decision that (right or wrong) was deemed to be absolutley necessary to end the war quickly and save American lives.
As much as it seems nice in retrospect to believe they had the interests of the Japanese civilians in mind, the actions of the entire Pacific campaign point to this being false. It’s not pretty but that war was a vile and dirty war for all combatants.
Did it save lives? Possibly… we’ll never really know but the important thing at the time was that they believed it was a necessary action to save US troops.
I’ll grant you’re right about the racism, kingpengvin, but I think you’re wrong about nuking Germany. Read about the bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, and other German cities. It was as horrific as the bombings of Japanese cities. I’ve also read that Einstein and others who worked on development of the bomb would have insisted strongly that it be used in Germany, had it been ready in time, and I think there is little reason to doubt that HST’s administration would have used it. Since Germany surrendered before the Bomb was ready, the point is moot.
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As much as it seems nice in retrospect to believe they had the interests of the Japanese civilians in mind.
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While I think it is absurd to argue that our generals and admirals were overly concerned with Japanese civilians’ lives, every estimate made by the American military leaders that I have seen estimated that Japanese casualties would have been much greater than American casualties.
I’m going to say that 250 million (give or take) American lives were saved by the dropping of the two bombs. It was only a matter of time until the Soviets developed the bomb. Maybe having the knowledge in the back of their minds that we actually used our nuclear weapons helped kept us from a real nuclear war?
I believe the real reason, the real motivation for us to invent the atomic bomb in the first place, was to deliver it on Germany, not japan.
The fact that the war with germany was over before we could drop it, was why we dropped it on japan first, and not because we considered the japanese less than the germans.
About biological warfare:
Not only did they experiment with plague on the Chinese, they did live vivisection’s on the victims with no anesthesia. There intent was to launch plague balloons from submarines off the West Coast. The Japanese were every bit as cruel as the Germans.
Japanese soldiers were told they would be executed if caught. It was a great motivator for a soldier. Many of them committed suicide rather than surrender.
They had plans for kamikaze planes just for tanks in the event of a land war. They already had a rocket powered kamikaze plane. It was a drop-to-glide unit and the rocket was to increase the impact speed. I’ve seen one of these and they’re no bigger than a cruise missile. They would be virtually invisible with the sun behind them.
Side note about Germany. Dresden was not considered a strategic location. It was deliberately, and repeatedly fire-bombed into ashes. A much more horrific event then the Atomic bomb (if that’s possible).
I agree with kingpengvin, assuming I’m correctly reading it in a nuanced fashion. While I have no doubt that if the bomb was ready in time for use in Europe that it would have been used on a German city, it would have been an easier decision to use on Japan than Germany.
The Japanese were considered to be less human than the Germans. It’s hard to imagine the Germans being portrayed as a race to be ‘monkeys,’ but that was how the Japanese were frequently referred to and portrayed as in wartime propaganda. Racism in the Pacific war was intensively rampant on both sides, both on and off the battlefield. Aside from the well known atrocities committed by the Japanese (Bataan Death March, Railroad of Death, etc.), Allied prisoners were routinely abused, tortured or mutilated in the most horrible manners; and there are documented cases of vivisections being performed. Japanese prisoners, when taken, fared no better. The collection of gold teeth from the dying, the dead, and prisoners was common practice among American soldiers and Marines. Skulls of dead Japanese were prized trophies, a practice that grew so bad that Nimitz had to issue an order expressly forbidding it. John Dower’s War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War is a particularly good read on the subject.
[On preview] - Since Magiver has mentioned vivisections being performed in the context of Japan’s biological program, I wanted to note that the cases I am referring to were in addition to these. There are at least 8 cases of this being done to Allied pilots in Japanese universites and there are mentions in memoirs of it having been done on the battlefield to prisoners.
True, nobody can know the answers to these with certainty. To judge you need to look at what they did know.
[ul]
[li]They knew a Japan that fanatically fought to the last man. not just once but over and over and for otherwise (besides strategic) worthless rocks in the ocean.[/li]
[li]They knew a Japan that brutalized China (ala the rape of Nanking).[/li]
[li]I’m pretty sure they knew of the treatment of prisoners of war and such gems as the Bataan Death March.[/li]
[li]They knew civilians would commit suicide before being captured (I’ve seen film of people, some holding children, throwing themselves from cliffs rather than be captured).[/li]
[li]They knew that civilians (the old, women and children) were being rallied to fight any invasion of the home islands.[/li]
[li]They knew it was in the Japanese psyche that to die for the Emperor and Japan was an honor and a duty.[/li][/ul]
How can anyone looking at that list (and I have no doubt it could be longer) think maybe everything would have ended all nice and peachy in short order? Even if you didn’t drop the a-bomb and waited them out for another two or three months you likely would have seen higher casualties among Japanese from starvation. How ould the world view the US if we allowed 500,000, a million, 10 million to starve to death?
I know this sounds glib but under the circumstances the dropping the a-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was probably the best thing that could have happened to Japan at that moment. As hideous as they were the alternatives were worse. Even with hindsight people have to stretch to offer a better alternative. At the time it was no stretch and the best option available.
Of course, with hindsight it was probably best for the world that they were dropped to avoid even bigger nuclear showdowns in the future after WWII but nobody could know that at that time.
The United States always gave priority to the war against Germany, and the use of atomic weapons was no exception. All the wartime planning was that Germany would be atom bombed first and would remain the target of all available atomic weapons until it surrendered.
Japan had lost the naval war and could not defend its convoys of oil from other countries. Japan had no domestic oil supplies, and it was just a matter of time before it ran out of fuel. Without the bomb, the Allies would be reluctant to invade until an embargo had depleted Japan’s ability to use aircraft and vehicles. In this way, Japan could have been contained for a long time, but with many Japanese deaths due to deprivation. However, the OP asked about American deaths.
Given this scenario, I don’t see any need for invasion. Americans would die in aircraft that were shot down, or by the occasional suicide mission, but the numbers would be relatively small.
In Germany there was a race with the Soviets for control of Europe which necessitated an invasion and occupation of Germany. But the US could contain Japan without risk of losing it to Russia, China, or anyone else. Military planners would have stalled on invading Japan, perhaps permanently. Therefore, I doubt that the US would have taken the huge losses proposed by others.