# It's 1945 and you're Harry Truman **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 28, 2016, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486 "2016-03-28T21:14:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/21 "2016-03-29T00:38:11Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > Did they even understand what had happened at Hiroshima, before we hit them again, just three days later? Yes, we told them. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/22 "2016-03-29T01:12:36Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > If “drop the bomb” means “drop it on a major metropolitan area,” no. If “drop the bomb” means “drop it two miles offshore, and tell the Emperor that the next one lands on Tokyo,” probably. Tokyo was already pretty much destroyed. Waste of time to bomb it. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/23 "2016-03-29T01:20:00Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > Yes, we told them. We not only [told them (and the rest of the world)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN_UJJ9ObDs), we warned them we would do it again. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/24 "2016-03-29T01:32:40Z")
Instantly and repeatedly. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/25 "2016-03-29T01:41:50Z")
Yep. I would have done it then, and if I was sent back in time from today, I’d still do it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/26 "2016-03-29T01:47:33Z")
The decision was already made, for all practical purposes, long before. We had already decided that flattening cities was an acceptable tactic of war. Whether a city is flattened by one bomb or a thousand is largely immaterial, and what differences there are are all in favor of the one bomb. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/27 "2016-03-29T02:11:57Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > Why would an offshore bomb have done so? > > ETA: An immediate and unconditional surrender was absolutely called for. Not at the cost of tens of thousands of civilians it wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/28 "2016-03-29T02:20:35Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > Yes, we told them. But if they _understood_ Hiroshima immediately, what difference did Nagasaki make? ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/29 "2016-03-29T02:29:03Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Not at the cost of tens of thousands of civilians it wasn’t. A U.S. invasion of Japan would not have cost the lives of tens of thousand of civilians? I mean, the U.S. invades Japan, or the U.S. drops the bombs. You can’t realistically tell me that you see another option. What conditions do you think Japan should have been allowed? Should they have been allowed to keep the conquered territory in China, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc.? ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/30 "2016-03-29T02:31:31Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > But if they _understood_ Hiroshima immediately, what difference did Nagasaki make? They didn’t surrender after Hiroshima; they did surrender after Nagasaki. This is a question? This is a failure to understand. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/31 "2016-03-29T02:38:08Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > They didn’t surrender after Hiroshima; they did surrender after Nagasaki. This is a question? This is a failure to understand. To be fair, The Soviets also invaded Manchuria the same day as Nagasaki, which was a large contributing factor in the surrender. I still voted to bomb though. Both cities would have been firebombed if not nuked. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/32 "2016-03-29T02:56:26Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > A U.S. invasion of Japan would not have cost the lives of tens of thousand of civilians? I mean, the U.S. invades Japan, or the U.S. drops the bombs. You can’t realistically tell me that you see another option. Maybe I can’t, but can [Eisenhower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Opposition)? > [@Eisenhower](#): > > I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. Or Fleet Admiral Leahy? > [@Leahy](#): > > The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/33 "2016-03-29T03:02:54Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The decision was already made, for all practical purposes, long before. We had already decided that flattening cities was an acceptable tactic of war. Whether a city is flattened by one bomb or a thousand is largely immaterial, and what differences there are are all in favor of the one bomb. This. The Japanese cities were tinder boxes. The invasion would have included heavy bombing on a regular basis. It would be a repeat of Dresden over and over and over again. ---
**Author:** ![Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrogance_ex_machina/32/192_2.png) [@Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrogance_Ex_Machina)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/34 "2016-03-29T03:09:00Z")
One thing I’ve always wondered about - if the bomb hadn’t been used in 1945, would it been used later on in some other war? There’s a large anti-nuke sentiment these days partly because of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a world where those events never happened, the history of how we think of nuclear weapons would’ve been different. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/35 "2016-03-29T03:11:23Z")
The war had to end, and every day it went longer thousands more died. One can rather sympathize with the position of a man handed a super weapon that might finally end a war so bloody it really cannot be fully comprehended. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/36 "2016-03-29T04:16:41Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > They didn’t surrender after Hiroshima; they did surrender after Nagasaki. This is a question? This is a failure to understand. Yes, there is a failure to understand here. I asked if they had immediately grasped the enormity of Hiroshima. It seems to me that any people that _did_, would have surrendered on that basis. How could they not? That they did not, in those first few days, suggests that they did not grasp it. Maybe another week or two after Hiroshima was all it would have taken in any case, without Nagasaki. > [@RickJay](#): > > The war had to end, and every day it went longer thousands more died. Allied forces were dying by daily thousands in August 1945? Where? ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/37 "2016-03-29T04:19:28Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The war had to end, and every day it went longer thousands more died. Why can’t you use the same argument for nuking Vietnam, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, etc., all of which went on longer than WWII? Can we have a cite that, at the time of Hiroshima, “thousands per day” were dying? ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/38 "2016-03-29T06:18:25Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > If “drop the bomb” means “drop it on a major metropolitan area,” no. If “drop the bomb” means “drop it two miles offshore, and tell the Emperor that the next one lands on Tokyo,” probably. I agree. Now frankly I dont think it would have made Japan surrender but at least we can go down in history as saying we tried. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/39 "2016-03-29T07:48:56Z")
I’ve posted extensively on this, so I’ll see if I can get some time to dig up some of the things I’ll quickly post about here. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > If “drop the bomb” means “drop it on a major metropolitan area,” no. If “drop the bomb” means “drop it two miles offshore, and tell the Emperor that the next one lands on Tokyo,” probably. I really respect your opinions on many if not most things,\* but you are horribly misinformed on this one. Of all of the possible actions, this would have been the absolutely worst option. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) which was almost completely turned into fanatical militants by this stage of the war, was plotting to introduce direct military rule in Japan. They had created an elaborate bunker complex in the Southern Japanese Alps in Nagano, and had a place for Hirohito. He refused to leave Tokyo because he knew that if he left, it would have resulted in martial law. Quite possibly, they would have replaced the Emperor with another, more hawkish member of the Imperial family and the war would have continued into 1946, no matter how many bombs they dropped. For reasons I’ll post later, a demonstration would not have worked. No serious historian makes that argument today. > [@doorhinge](#): > > It’s 1945. > > Two planned invasions of Imperial Japan are being prepared. The D-day of the first invasion is rapidly approaching. More U.S. soldiers may have to be called up for military service. > > Estimates suggest that more than a million people will die before Imperial Japan surrenders. > > I’m the POTUS and I’m assured that these new atom bombs will end WWII. > > I’m ordering that these new weapons be deployed as secretly (no warnings) and as destructively (military targets in populated cities) as possible. Completely agree, except that the fig leaf of a “military target in a populated city” is simply fiction. > [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Japan is just about my favorite place in the entire world, but really, they were asking for it, and I see no need for any qualifications like “based on what we knew at the time.” The only answer is a good, hearty yes. Agreed. Based on what we know now, the use of the atomic bombs on the two cities was necessary. There is one or two historian who argue the the Soviet entrance into the war was more critical, but I’ll present an argument as to why I disagree. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Not at the cost of tens of thousands of civilians it wasn’t. Quick math: They save the lives of over 100,000 Allied POWs as well as over a million others: Japanese soldiers, Allied servicemen, Japanese civilians and Allied civilians. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Maybe I can’t, but can [Eisenhower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Opposition)? > > Or Fleet Admiral Leahy? Terribly poor use of the fallacy of an appeal to authority. Eisenhower was in Europe when he made that comment. Leahy didn’t know the whole story, especially was was happening in the Big Six, the key members of the Supreme War Council and their deliberations. We know that now and we know that it took the bombs. I’ll post more later. > [@Peremensoe](#): > > Maybe another week or two after Hiroshima was all it would have taken in any case, without Nagasaki. Nope. We know the deliberations of the Japanese internal politics and one point that the Minister of War, [General Anami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korechika_Anami), the single most powerful person in Japan, save the emperor believed that the US only had one bomb. > [@](#): > > Allied forces were dying by daily thousands in August 1945? Where? _Civilians_, Allied and Japanese, were dying daily by the thousands in August 1945. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486/40 "2016-03-29T07:58:09Z")
Missed the edit window. Notes: \*Last I checked there are rules against insults but not against compliments. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-1945-and-youre-harry-truman/750486.md?page=3)