Nagasaki and Hiroshima

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
21

It’s an extremely common and persistent myth that Nagasaki essentially exhausted the US’s supply of the bombs, but it’s not true.

Components for the next weapon were being readied to be flown to Tinian and George C. Marschall was told by Groves on the 10th, the day after Nagasaki, that he expected the next bombing to be on the 17th or 18th.
Groves’s basis for this estimate was a telegram from Oppenheimer the day before (i.e. the 9th) stating when the components would leave Los Alamos for Kirtland and thence to Tinian. The high explosive lenses would leave on the morning of the 11th and the plutonium core would leave on the evening of the 12th. There was already a stockpile of the other components, like the casing, on Tinian.
The timing of the two previous attacks had been left to the military, but events were beginning to move rather fast by this stage. Truman removed that existing freedom on the 10th, allowing the military to continue with preparations for another bombing but requiring that the use of this next weapon depend on his explicit approval. Probably independently, Groves and Oppenheimer agreed to proceed cautiously when it came to shipping stuff. Robert Bacher, who had become Los Alamos’s specialist in handling completed plutonium cores, apparently had this core in the car ready to be driven to Kirtland when Groves cancelled the transfer.
Groves’s memo to Marshall is reproduced in John Coster-Mullen’s Atom Bombs (p294 in the 2006 edition I have). It’s discussed in Racing for the Bomb (Steerforth, 2002, p424) by Robert Norris and the exchanges with Oppenheimer are summarised in Critical Assembly (Cambridge, 1993) by Hoddeson et al.

As for bombs thereafter, Stimson was told in a cable from George Harrison on 24th July to expect three more in September, with rate rising to seven in December (Norris, p415). There were overwhelmingly plutonium ones. In the event, this was never achieved, but that was because the Japanese surrender removed all urgency.

However, the notion that there had been only two available does go back a long way - and to a somewhat surprising source. It’s already unambiguously present in Stimson’s famous February 1947 Harper’s magazine article justifying the bombing. This was, understandably, taken as authoritative about such details and the claim repeated on that basis.
(Since the article was heavily drafted by Harvey and McGeorge Bundy, one can always question its reliability on the details. It’s possible that Stimson had completely forgotten asking Harrison about the production schedule at the time.)

22

(post shortened)

Stalin’s reasons of when to declare war against Imperial Japan would also include his knowledge, obtained from spies and not from official channels, that the Americans had a working model of an atomic bomb. I find it interesting that Stalin didn’t declare war until after the atomic bomb was proved to be a working, and effective, weapon.

As far as the timing of the Americans use of the atomic bomb, there is no evidence that the atomic bomb’s first deployment as a weapon was delayed, or accelerated, to coincide with Stalin’s possible entry into the war with Imperial Japan. After the trinity test to prove that the plutonium detonation of Fat Man was workable, both bombs were delivered to Tinian island ASAP. Little Boy was ready for delivery by July 31. The target cities were decided by Aug 2 and the first mission was scheduled for Aug 6.

23

I suppose it depends on what your definition of “exhausted” or “available” is.

We exploded all three bombs that had been put together and were usable. That is a perfectly good definition of “exhausted.” More bombs could soon be produced, as Fat Man and Little Boy had been. But they did not exist in working form. As you note, the core had not yet been shipped to Tinian. A bomb could be ready by August 18, but its components were thousands of miles apart. That could be construed as “available” but is not the common definition. Any of a thousand issues could have prevented the bomb from being completed in the short period required.

In short, one can make an argument on either side to support a point. No firm answer exists.

24

(post shortened)

It’s a minor point and it depends on your point of view. As you rightly point out, a supply of plutonium 239 implosion bombs (Fat Man-type) were being assembled. However, none of them had yet reached a forward base (Tinian island) where they could have been deployed. It was still possible for enemy submarines, warships, aircraft, and saboteurs to disrupt/delay the delivery of more bombs.

The military had only exhausted the existing supply of working bombs.

25

Yes, Gar, thanks. I always want to call him “Guy,” then I remember his name is like that, but not quite.

26

I didn’t mean to imply it was. The agreement between Truman and Stalin (or was it FDR and Stalin, in Tehran?) was that the Soviets would attack the Japanese three months after VE Day. I suppose this was mainly based on Stalin’s estimate on how long it would take to prepare things and redirect troops.

For Truman, of course, the timing was tricky: until the Trinity test, he wasn’t sure if he would need the Soviets to invade or not – but even if he did, he didn’t want them to gain much territory.

So, in the end, it was a coincidence that the A-bombs were ready exactly three months after VE Day…and that we’ll never know for sure if the A-bombs alone would have led Japan to surrender, nor will we know if the Soviet invasion alone would have done so.

27

Exapno and doorhinge, as you acknowledge, you’re both quibbling over language. In the common form of the myth - and stated in exactly this form by Chronos in the post I was commenting on - the belief is that there’d be a significant hiatus, probably of months, before the next possible attack. That does badly misunderstand the realities.

The Manhattan project had created a production line that, now it was up and running, was delivering a bomb at the rate of just under one a week. That’s better thought of as an ongoing supply.

28

When the Three Powers agreed to the timing in February, 1945 there wasn’t a working model.

As far as the date for the Soviet declaration of war, it was simply three months after VE. The Soviets attacked with 1.6 million men on three fronts over an area the size of Europe. The timing of that and the bombs was strictly coincidence. Stalin’s armies had beaten a much stronger Germany, there was no need for them to wait to see if the bombs worked or not, and they would not have known the exact dates of the bombings.

29

The general timing of the two events, the dropping of the bombs and the Soviet declaration of war and invasion, was coincidence but the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb does appear to have impacted on the exact timing of Soviet actions.

As** TokyoBayer** say the Soviets always planned to declare war on Japan - no way was Stalin going to miss out on the spoils in the east - and he had said, before Yalta, that it would be “three months after victory in Europe” but that was not a formal commitment to invading Manchuria on 9 August (VE Day was 9 May in Russia rather than the 8th as it is in the West). Stavka’s original orders, following the extraordinary movement of Soviet armies from Europe to the Far East, were for the invasion to be launched on the morning of 11 August but on 7 August, following the explosion of the Hiroshima bomb, this was brought forward by 48 hours to the 9th. Stalin quite clearly wanted to make sure the Soviet Union got in on the act as quickly as possible. He feared that if Japan surrendered before the Soviet Union declared war and his forces were in place in Manchuria, southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles, the promises of Soviet territorial gains made at Yalta would be quickly forgotten.

30

This issue should be added to Monty Hall’s curtains and 1 =.999… as an example of a question with a wrong answer that persists despite being debunked over and over and over and over again.

In the Battle of Okinawa, there were 100,000 Japanese soldier deaths and about as many Japanese civilian deaths (along with 100,000 American casualties if PTSD is included). Yet somehow people think casualties would have been less during an invasion of Honshu, with hundreds of times the population of Okinawa? Bizarre thinking.

Moreover, during whatever months it would take to bring about Japanese surrender, parts of mainland Asia conquered by Japan would have continued to suffer. The Japanese occupation was not overly pleasant for the conquered.

Finally, a point usually overlooked: If A-bombs had not been dropped on Japan, they would have been used in the Korean War. Seeing is believing and only a live demonstration could ever fully convince the world of these weapons’ horror.

31

I’m going to have to ask for a cite for this as this scenario goes against everything I’ve ever read on the end of the war.

I’ll add more once I get your cites, because it goes against any dozens of cites which I can product.

Specifically, please produce cites which support the following claims:

  1. That the Japanese decided among themselves to negotiate for peace an year before the war ended. I have very specific cites which claim otherwise.

  2. That the Japanese were offering actual terms and conveying those to the Soviets. I have very specific cites which claim otherwise.

  3. That the Soviets ever told the Japanese that the US had rejected those terms. I have very specific cites which claim otherwise.

  4. That the Japanese believed they were actually negotiating with the US. I have very specific cites which claim otherwise.

  5. That the reason which the Japanese kept fighting was that they believed in they were negotiating with the US. I have very specific cites which claim otherwise.

One the face of this, this is one of the most absurd claims I’ve heard about the end of the war, and I look forward to your response.

Yes, I should have elaborated more. I was arguing against the notion that Stalin was waiting for the actual bomb when in fact he was well aware of the success of the Trinity test.

Here is an interesting read (PDF) by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, one of the eminent scholars on the subject of the Japanese surrender. Hasegawa, a Japanese native and a professor at UC Santa Barbara, reads Japanese, English (obviously) and Russian, which makes his research interesting. Some historians disagree with his conclusions but no one can claim that he hadn’t added a lot to our understanding.

This article outlines the Soviet Factor in Ending the war and discusses the chess moves which Truman and Stalin were playing around Potsdam.

Hasegawa points out that there was not only the 48 hour advancement in the attack at the last minute, as MarcuF stated, which was prompted by frantic attempts by the Japanese to intervene, but also the entire plan was brought forward by a couple of weeks after Stalin become suspicious of Truman’s behavior at Potsdam and was afraid that the US was trying to get the Japanese to surrender before the Soviets could join.

As I laid out in my post, which is admittedly long, the real bloody battle would have been in Kyushu, had they gone ahead with that plan.

32

How is July to September not “months”?

33

Feel free to post whatever you wish. But I’m not interesting in participating in the argument you appear to be seeking.

34

I’m not as well-versed on the end of the war as TB but I was thinking the same thing: I’ve never seen any indication that the Soviets were appreciably involved in negotiations between the US and Japan.

35

Everyone can make up their own minds as to whether the use of two atom bombs, or the invasion of Manchuria, or both had ended WWII. I consider Stalin to be a liar and mass murderer. Stalin entered WWII on the side of the Nazi when he chose to invade Poland. Stalin only changed sides when the other liar and mass murderer, Hitler, invaded Soviet Russia. (Hey, what’s this world coming to if one lying mass murderer can’t trust another lying mass murderer?)

A German-Soviet nonaggression pact was signed on August 23, 1939.

Nazi Germany and Slovakia invaded Poland from the east on Sep 01, 1939.

Britain and France declare war against Nazi Germany on Sep 3, 1939.

Stalin invaded Poland from the west on Sep 17, 1939.

(Personally, I’ve often wondered why Britain and France hadn’t declared war against Stalin’s Russia for the same reason they had declared war against Hitler’s Germany?)

Poland ceases to exist as a country on October 6, 1939.

Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Their non-aggression pact was officially over.

Imperial Japan attacks Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941.

At some point in time, Stalin became aware that the U.S. had developed a working model of an atomic bomb. It’s effects would have been explained to Stalin by Soviet scientists.

At the Yalta Conference, February 4–11, 1945, Stalin agreed to enter the war against Imperial Japan three months after the war with Nazi Germany ends.

Nazi Germany surrenders May 7, 1945.

The Trinity test of Fat Man’s atomic implosion detonator took place on Jul 16, 1945.

Also on Jul 16, 1945, the USS Indianapolis, carrying atomic weapon components and enriched uranium, departed San Francisco.

The USS Indianapolis delivered the components to Tinian on Jul 26, 1945.

The U.S.A. drops a one-of-a-kind, gun-type-detonated, uranium U-235 nuclear weapon (Little Boy) on Hiroshima on Aug 6, 1945.

Stalin declares war on Imperial Japan on Aug 8, 1945.

The U.S.A. drops an implosion-detonated, plutonium U-239 nuclear weapon (Fat Man) on Nagasaki on Aug 9, 1945.

Also on Aug 9, 1945, Stalin invaded Manchuria.

The Empire of Japan surrendered on August 15.
AFAIK, Stalin’s timing of his declaration of war against Japan and the subsequent invasion of Manchuria was not a coincidence. I believe Stalin’s decision to invade Imperial Japan was based on his understanding of the destruction that an atomic bomb was capable of, assumed that Imperial Japan would finally realize that the war truly unwinnable, and he rushed to declare war before Imperial Japan surrendered.

36

To make my earlier point clear: the Soviet Union was not involved in any negotiations between the United States and Japan. And the United States did not seek a negotiated end to the war with Japan. What I said was that the Soviets misled the Japanese into believing the Americans were open to the possibility of a negotiated peace.

37

Right, but I’ve never heard that, either.

38

Sure, because you know that you can’t defend something which is simply not based on facts.

As you wish, you don’t want to be engaged in reality, so for others interested in the subject:

First, three minutes reading wiki demonstrate that Nemo’s fantasy is without merit.

There is no way to reconcile this with the scenario which Nemo creates. Had they been conducting what they thought were negotiations, it would have been an entirely different conversation.

Nemo’s post betrays his ignorance of history as Japan could not have engaged in such negotiations, real or otherwise.

While some of the leadership had realized the hopelessness from a year prior to the war, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) never wavered from their belief that they could make the battle so costly that the US would agree to much easier terms. Like losing gamblers who hope to win back losses and then walk away, the Japanese strategy was to start negotiations after a victory. One that never happened.

The military controlled the cabinet and simply would not have accepted (what they would have believed to be) peace negotiations in 1944 or early 1945. It wasn’t until after Okinawa had been lost and faced with the Allies on their doorstep that the Emperor was able to push the Supreme War Council to agree to look to the Soviets for help. This was in June of 1945.

No one is contesting that he wasn’t either of these.

Stalin was very interested in obtaining territory in Asia and would have declared war even hadn’t the US developed the bombs. The Japanese were never the same strength as the Germans whom Stalin never had any qualms about throwing men and tanks against.

The initial agreement that the Soviets join the war was made well before the atomic bomb was a certainty. It was the US and Britain which were pushing them to enter within three months back at Yalta when the US didn’t know if the bomb was going to work and in which they agreed to enter within three months of VE.

You forgot to add that the Japanese were working on space weapons which would vaporize only non-Japanese combatants so it could be used on battlefields.

Don’t ask me for cites: I’m not going to get into an argument with you.

39

Chronos,
more than 80 million people lost their lives during W.W.2 and death due to fire-bombings and other types of bombs, including chemical weapons, killed many more lives than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and death is death, no matter how it had been achieved.
The Japanese were mass-murderers and even used tens of thousands of captured women as “comfort women”, which mean “sex-slaves”.
As I mentioned before, billions of people rejoiced the end of W.W. 2 in the Asia/Pacific region after we had suffered terribly under the Japanese occupation.
Thus, Cecil’s reply was a typical way of Left Wingers using the infamous “Texas Side Step” to avoild telling the truth. They just can not help themselves.
They made false doomsday predictions of both cities being unable to be inhabitated between 150 and thousands of years, but just 27 years (in 1972) those were cleaned up, re-built and re-populated and the fanatics had nothing to demonstrate for anymore, but never admitted that they were totally wrong. It is not in their character to do so.
Have you ever lived in concentration-camps? I bet, not.
Noslap.

40

There were a number of feelers which some Japanese sent out, the earliest of which was in Sept., '44.

The problem was that none of them were official and none of them could have succeeded with the hardliners in army.

Here’s one account (pdf) of some of the activities. Needless to say, the imagined scenario isn’t there.

It must be stressed that the US had cracked the Japanese diplomatic codes and we were reading their mail in real time. We were very aware when Japan actually did approach the Soviets and what they were saying.

It’s simply impossible for Neno’s story to be true. Had the Japanese been talking to the Soviets since 1944, we would have known about it, in detail.