I remember reading that Nagasaki was a secondary target on that fateful A-Bomb run. The plane got to it’s primary target but it was too cloud-covered, so it went off to it’s secondary target, Nagasaki. They still could’ve dropped the bomb, mind you, but they wouldn’t have been able to take any pretty pictures. In any case, Nagasaki was bombed because of clouds and the military’s unfortunate predilection for videos of cities blowing up. Always seemed like rotten luck to me.
Anyway, I read this once and have never seen it again, nor can I remember what the primary target was. Some help, people? Anyone else ever hear of this? What was the primary target? Is this complete b*llshit? Thanks.
Actually, it was a third city (whose name I don’t recall) that was the primary target each time. However, it was overcast there, so the planes when to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
August 6 (Monday)
00:25
Air raid warning sounded.
00:37
Three reconnaissance planes leave Tinian Island in the Mariana Islands heading for Hiroshima, Kokura and Nagasaki to verify weather conditions over target cities. (Japan time)
01:45
B-29 Bomber Enola Gay, carrying A-bomb, leaves Tinian Island. (Japan time) Enola Gay was accompanied by a plane for dropping equipment for measuring the A-bomb’s destructive power and another plane for photographing the event.
I would speculate from this info that I found, that Kokura is the third city in question.
There were four targets originally selected: Hiroshima (an important army headquarters), Kokura (an important arsenal), Niigata (an important industrial port with metal and oil refineries) and Nagasaki (a ship-building center).
Hiroshima was the primary target for the first bomb, with Kokura and Nagasai secondary and tertiary. After Hiroshima was bombed, the targets for the second bomb were Kokura (primary) and Nagasaki (secondary). Niigata was not a tertiary target because of distance. The weather at Kokura was too poor for bombing although a plane sent earlier reported that the weather was good enough.
See Now it Can be Told by Lt. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, USA, ret.
I don’t have the book in front of me so I don’t have the target lists, but Richard Rhodes’ “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” is an excellent read on the subject and describes the bombing flights in detail. IIRC, they needed a visual target on the ground in order to drop the bomb.
This is a little off the subject, but what the hell. An interesting novel on the subject of the atomic bombings is “The Jesus Factor” by Edwin Corly (I don’t guarantee I have the name spelled right), written in the early 1970s. The premise is that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not destroyed by A-bombs…because atomic bombs don’t actually work. It makes an interesting read if you come across it.
Does anyone, off hand, know the estimated number of lifes (allied and/or japanesse) that would have been lost if there would have been an ground invasion into japan?
I word in the libary for a community college in central ohio. Out of the 5000 books sitting not 30 yards away from me i could not find a single book on this subject. The computer said we had two book and the subject of the droping of the atomic bombs on japan, but i couldnt find either one of them…
I had an discussion with a friend about whether it was neccesary to drop the atomic bombs in the first place, and knowing this would have really helped my arguement.
If I recall correctly, the Pacific Command forecast that an invasion and occupation of Japan would require something like two million Allied troops with about 500,000 casualties.
Since casualties include serious injuries (i.e., severe enough to take a soldier out of combat) it’s obviously a much higher number than deaths, but the estimated deaths must still have been a staggering number.
Yeah, I came across some planning figures a few months ago but cannot immediately recall the source but will try to locate and post. If my memory is correct the figures for Allied military forces was in the region of 500,000 - although that was totally casualties, dead missing and wounded. I think these figures were from Supreme Allied Headquarters South East Asia and may differ from Pacific command numbers.
BTW from a selfish first person angle, my father was on a troopship destined for the invasion of (I think) Malaya when the war ended - so he was personally pretty relieved and if things had been different I might not have been here to mail this.
Hmmm . . . I dunno. I’ve seen lots of different estimates, up to 1 million; the 500,000 estimate is probably the most common. Still, a professor of mine insists that it would’ve been closer to 50,000 because Japan would’ve surrendered before we had to conquer much of the island. Of course, this professor is more than a little leftist, so you never can tell. Personally, I’m not sure that invasion wouldn’t have simply pissed the Japanese off something awful, necessitating massive, massive casualties. On the other hand, I’ve read several credible accounts that claim the Japanese were in the process of surrendering anyway. In any case, it was in U.S. interests to end the war quickly so as to stop the U.S.S.R.'s advance in to Japanese occupied territory in Asia (they got about half-way down Korea, for example). The cold war’s a bitch, ain’t it?
I’ve never been convinced that a simple demonstration of the bomb to Japanese government and military officials wouldn’t have sufficed. Those are the only people that had to be impressed with the threat of the bomb. Since the average Japanese citizen played very little part in deciding whether or not to continue the war, there was very little need to “impress” them.
get a copy of Downfall, I believe the author is Frank. He does a great job of describing what was going on when the decision to drop the bomb was made, including the various and different estimates of casualities that alternatives would have involved. Lump sum - the bomb probably cost the fewest lives, civilian and military, of all the realistic alternatives. He also clears up a lot of the misunderstanding and just plain propaganda about the end of the war. While history is usually written by the victors, sometimes the losers do a little creative re-writing to make themselves look good.
This ranges into the category of Great Debates (in fact, I think it WAS a Great Debate) but a) I’m not convinced that a demonstration of the bomb would have convinced the Japanese to surrender (they didn’t surrender after hiroshima. It took Nagasaki, the declaration by the Soviet Union and a threat by the U.S. to drop a third bomb) and b) the U.S. command wasn’t exactly 100% sure the bomb would reliably detonate, which would’ve made for a most unimpressive demonstration.
In WWII, my father drove one of those boats that drives up to a beach, the front door drops down, and invading troops storm out of. He was involved in the US invasion of several Pacific islands, and they were working their way toward the Japanese mainland. Their experience with fighting the Japanese soldiers on the other islands, seeing how they would fight to the death, made my dad and his buddies dread the big invasion. They were very happy and relieved when they heard about the big bombs.
In looking back and weighing whether we should have dropped the bombs, one thing that’s lost is the mindset of Americans at the time. The perception was that there was a war going on in Europe which we were reluctantly starting to get involved in, when the evil Japan launched a sneak attack on us. In the ensuing years, the war in the Pacific took a heavy toll on our troops, and Japan was seen as a formidable and ruthless enemy. I think most Americans would not have weighed 200000 American lives against 200000 Japanese lives. Most would have said that if it cost the lives of even ten US men, we would still need to drop the bombs - hell, they started the f*$^ing war, they need to simply surrender or take the consequences.
Anyway, that’s the impression I get from talking to someone who lived through it.
The surrender the Japanese wanted would not have satisfied the American government. They weren’t offering an unconditional surrender until Nagasaki was hit. Pre-Nagasaki they demanded to keep their emperor. Not an option. Anyway, it had been decided at Yalta that the Allies would only accept an unconditional surrender from Japan. I think the terrible losses of MacArthur’s island-hopping campaign (1,000 Americans killed invading an island that only had 500 Japanese on it) proved that the Japanese would gladly strap grenades to themselves and run towards a group of Americans, detonating like kamikazies as soon as they got close. The most humane way to end the war was the bombing.
Everything I read and seen on WWI tells me this: Using the bombs were a good idea. The Japanese weren’t exactly the type of folks who liked to surrender. I had once heard, that no organized unit of Japanese forces had ever surrendered. And of the ones who did, some only did so because they had no means of suicide. After Japans’ Navy was all but defeated, the Allies were moving west, and the invasion plans of Japan were being drawn up, the military of Japan was in the process of preparing and training Japanese civilians to defend their soil, against the inevitable U.S. led invasion. The Emperor had considered surrender, but the Emperor wasn’t exactly calling the shots at the time. The Japanese had fought war with a ferociousness and savagery that the Western Allies were not used to. The casualties would have been staggering. Also, the most often missed point of this decades old debate, was brought up by kunilou, and that is about a week prior to the U.S. bombings, the Soviet Union had finally declared war on Japan. The pressure to surrender at that point was growing, however most claim that Japan would have defended herself against a two pronged conventional attack. Those bombs most likely saved countless lives, perhaps even countless Japanese lives. They really didn’t like the concept of surrendering.