I find Kristof’s conclusion that the US’s desicion to use a WMD to force Japan to surrender may have been morally incorrect “but that in a complex and brutal world, the alternatives were worse” quite disturbing. He extensively quotes Japanese historians and officals who state that if it were not for the bomb, the war would have continued at the expense of many Japanese and American lives. My questions are:
Is there any evidence that the would the war have lasted longer if the US had decided not to drop the bomb?
Did the US have any other alternatives to ending the war rather than nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Even if the war would have dragged out longer or the US had no other alternatives, do you think either situation justifies the US’s decision use a WMD against Japan?
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know if there is a memorial to the Japanese victims of the bomb anywhere in the US?
The people who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about as innocent as any victims of war can be. No one should be happy about what happened there, and the destruction of those cities is no cause for celebration.
But do I understand whay the decision was made to drop the bomb? Definitely.
The “evidence” we had that the war would go on a lot longer was in the resistance the Japanese put up on every island the U.S. invaded. On Iwo Jima, on Guadalcanal, on Okinawa, at EVERY encounter between U.S. and Japanese forces, the Japanese went down fighting to the last man. Even when the Japanese knew there was no hope for victory, they invariably chose to fight to the death, in the hope of taking as many Americans with them as possible.
I’ve seen no compelling evidence that suggests the Japanese wanted to make peace. A few sources suggest they were putting out tentative feelers through the Soviet Union about a possible truce (one that would leave the Japanese military and its conquests intact)… but somehow, those half-measures are always given the best possible interpretation by historians hostile to the U.S. (“See? They were trying to make peace! Truman didn’t have to bomb them!”).
Postcript: my Uncle, who’d been through the worst of the fighting in Europe and who WOULD have been shipped off to fight in Japan, if not for the Hiroshima bomb, didn’t view things the same way I did.
Oddly enough (I say “oddly” because he was a man with strong racist attitudes, the type you’d expect to relish the idea of nuking non-white foreigners), my Uncle was always deeply saddened by the bombing of Hiroshima, even though it may well have saved his life. In his words, “We were soldiers. It was our job to fight. It was our job to get killed, if it came to that. But those people in Hiroshima… they were women, babies, old men. It wasn’t fair what happened to them. They weren’t soldiers.”
You have to put the decision in the context of the times.
At the time of that bombing, waves of bombers had been clouding the skies over numerous civilian areas, carpet-bombing them into oblivion. Nagasaki and Hiroshima didn’t even represent the largest loss of civilian life in a bombing - the bombings of Dresden and Tokyo killed more people. The difference with the A-bomb is that it showed the U.S. could unleash the same amount of destructive force with a single aircraft. That changed the balance of power so drastically that it brought an almost immediate end to the war.
A recent documentary (the History Channel?) suggested that if it hadn’t been for American intransigence over the idea of allowing the Japanese to surrender conditionally (i.e. the major condition being the retention of the Emperor), surrender could have been achieved without dropping the bomb. It did not offer conclusive evidence that the Japanese military (which strongly resisted surrender even after Japan had become an atomic target) would have permitted surrender under those terms.
Nevertheless, using hindsight, I wish the first bomb had been destined for a purely military target, giving the Japanese a bit more time to recognize the inevitable and a chance to give up without unleashing a new flood of civilian casualties (if the firebombing of Tokyo (which cost more lives than Hiroshima) did not sway them, would atom bombing a military target have done so?).
Interesting comment reflecting the attitudes of the time (post-Pearl Harbor, pre-bomb) from Admiral Halsey: “By the time we’re through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.”
They’re past behavior observed during our island hopping campaign. Keep in mind that we have the benefit of hindsight while our grandparents were facing the immediate prospect of losing more American lives.
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There are always alternatives. A combination of a naval blockade, an invasion, and continued carpet bombing probably would have resulted in victory for the allies. Some people might consider allowing Japan a conditional surrender was another option but at the time it was unacceptable to the US government.
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Based on the knowledge they had at the time I think the decision to drop the bomb was completely justified.
Generally we don’t set up memorials to vanquished foes.
i think the bombing ended up saving more civilian lives than would have been lost in a full scale invasion. Sure it is not fair that civilians were killed, but war sucks. Also, no nuclear drop might mean there would be no living monument to the horrors of nuclear weapons and there would be less deterent to using them in the cold war.
This whole question would have made no sense in the context of that war. I think maybe you don’t understand exactly what happened during that war. 40 million people were killed. The skies were thick with bombers on a daily basis. They flattened entire cities. It was total war. If those bombs hadn’t have been dropped, they would have been replaced by waves of conventional bombers doing equivalent destruction, and yet no one would be wringing their hands over it today.
Trying to judge actions during that conflict based on our heightened sensitivies of today is just wrong.
Why the Atom Bomb wasn’t necessary…
and, for more in-depth coverage: The Decision to Use the Atom Bomb
On the other hand, there are those on this board who seem to have great difficulty understanding the idea that conflicts can be resolved without the use of large, air-borne explosives…
So what if we had dropped the first A-bomb on a deserted tropical island, or something similar? Publically tell the leaders of Japan, “We have a new weapon that can wipe out one of your cities with one aircraft, and we will demonstrate it this Saturday.”
Then put on the show. If the Japanese aren’t convinced, drop the second one on Hiroshima. If they are convinced, however, and surrender, the war could have ended without nuking civilians…
I think the atomic bombings in WWII get taken way out of context. Cities were destroyed REGULARLY in that war. Look at Dresden, they killed far more people than either atom bomb with conventional bombs. Or look at Stalingrad, where untold numbers of people died in street fighting. Or Nanking for that matter.
It’s the context of the time we should be disturbed by, not the fact we figured out how to do it with a single bomb. The Holocaust, all the civilian deaths, the massive destruction, and all deemed acceptable by leaders at the time. That’s the bizarre, insidious part.
newcrasher cesium anniversary - not in the best of taste there - but nonetheless funny LOL
Others have mentioned about the almost fanatical fighting spirit of the Japanese. When we were island-hopping they fought to the death. Then again, what about Kamikaze (sp?) fighters? Also it took TWO a-bombs to get Japan to surrender. Basically, what I am saying is - yes, it took that kind of force to end the war - and probably saved more lives than it took.
Why would the US have done such a thing? Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were being burned to death on a monthly basis in conventional area bombings of all major Japanese cities, and Japan was slowly starving to death. The wholesale slaughter of civilians was accepted practice for both the Axis and the Allies prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs. World War II was a total war, and in a total war civilians aren’t viewed as innocents by the powers that be. They are running the factories that produce the armaments, or growing the grain that feeds the factory workers and soldiers. I worry about the next total war, when both sides have nuclear weapons.
Well, at the allied conference in Potstam one day after the first atomic bomb explosion, they gave an ultimatum to Japan, “surrender or be destroyed!” The Japanese didn’t respond until July 29, with a rejection. The Americanskis didn’t demonstrated the bomb to the whole world, but they did warn them.
Powel, Daniel and William M. McCarthy and Pearl J. Slaton and Earl Scheneck Miers, Jerry Wolfert. Global War for a Free World, Pictorial Encyclopedia of American History. Chicago, Illinois: Davco Publishing Company, 1962.
Hope I got the bibliography right :). It’s an old set of American Hist. encyclopedias my pops had/still has when he was younger.
Too much is made of the concept “surrender”. Whether Japan surrendered or not, as an effective force, they were done. True, they had a huge army extant, but it was located in Manchuria, might as well have been on the moon. No train, no truck, nothing could move in Japan without becoming a pot shot target for American airplane. No ships could enter or leave Japan.
All this talk about the necessity of an invasion is, in my estimation, self-justifying. Why? Why would an invasion be necessary against an enemy lying flat on its back? America could simply have twiddled its thumbs for however long it took for Japan to collapse and risked nothing whatsoever.
The madness of war, resulting in wholesale viciousness, resulting in the needless slaughter of innocents. Maybe the concept of a “war crime” has no real meaning, but if it does, the nuking of Nagasaki qualifies. If our humanity can be canceled by something so mundane as a declaration of war, then it sure don’t count for much.
If you drop a frog into a pot of hot water, it will jump out, but if you place a frog in a pot of warm water and heat it up slowly, the frog will not notice the rise in temperature and will boil to death.
The point of the atomic bombs wasn’t that they killed people, it was that they did so with such shocking ease. Gradually turning up the heat under the Japanese leadership would not have resulted in a decision to surrender as quickly.
If you can persuade somebody by shocking their consciousness rather than killing extra thousands of people, shocking is preferable.
It is as futile to argue that alternatives to dropping the Bomb should have been tried as to argue that the West should have stopped Germany and Japan in 1933. The leaders in 1933 and in 1945 did not know what we know today. If the leaders had known, then the leaders of Germany and Japan would also have known how futile was their attempt at world conquest.:smack:
I don’t agree with Sam very often but he makes an important point.
The choice wasn’t between killing civilians in cities with the A-Bomb or not killing them at all. It was between killing civilians the same old retail way with high explosives, napalm and other incendiary devices or doing it all at once, with the possiblity that the “all at once” way would end the war quickly, which it did.
A friend of mine was in the 1st Marine Division and said that on their journey from Yokohama up to Tokyo right after the war ended they traveled through a wasteland that was every bit as devastated as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Without the residual radiation, of course, which was an relatively unknown quantity at the time.
The Black Knight out of Monty/Holy Grail (“Come back here, I’ll bite yer legs off!”) was a more effective and credible enemy. The Japanese were preparing to resist an invasion with sharpened bamboo, fer Chrissake!
The idea that the nuclear strikes were necessary in order to avoid mounting an invasion is ridiculous.