Previously sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, I was very disturbed to see on broadcast news tape of Palestinians celebrating the attack on the US, dancing, singing, cheering. . .Even if they were anti-US, I can hardly believe that people would actually celebrate the mass murder of civilians.
When the US dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, what was the reaction of the US public? Was it horror at this apparently necessary step that nonetheless killed huge numbers of innocent civilians?
From the memories of my parents, who were teens at the time, they describe a mood of both shock and relief – we’re going to win the way, but the same “our lives have changed forever” feeling we’re experiencing today. Certainly no joy at the loss of life – a few idiots proclaiming “bomb 'em back into the stone age,” but that’s about it. No newsreels with a nasal, snappy voice proclaiming “tose sneaky, slanty-eyed Japs got a taste of their own medicine,” no dancing in the streets. Really, it was a collective “oh shit!”
First off, the U.S. was in the middle of a war and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were seen as just another in a series of battles, and certainly not as important as the battles of Okinawa or Iwo Jima.
Second, there was no television news and no photographers so the images of destruction weren’t seen immediately. And when they did come out, it was in still photos and newsreel-type movies that have much less impact than full-color video.
Finally, there was virtually no public understanding of what a nuclear bomb was. Other cities (Dresden, Tokyo) had suffered massive destruction as a result of fire-bombing, so a single bomb that could cause that kind of destruction would have been viewed as a logical next step.
I don’t think there would have been any reason for dancing in the street until V-J day.
There as a surprising amount of public knowledge of how devastating the atomic bomb was, and there was considerable dissent among Americans as to its use. In a previous thread I posted letters written to Harry S Truman protesting its use. You can do a search for “Hiroshima” or “japan atomic”, but try to do them at 3 in the morning.
It is simply not true, contrary to popular belief, that the bombing of civilians during World War II was universally accepted by Allied populations. A lot of Americans, Britons, and Canadians found carpet bombing, fire bombing and the atomic bombs very troublesome indeed.
I don’t think anybody really was dying to use the atomic bombs. The reason I have always heard for the final decision to drop it was that Japanese soldiers were very brave and fierce. They weren’t afraid to die, so it would take a lot more than traditional military tactics to defeat them. They decided that while the atomic bombs would cause a tremendous loss of life, in the long run it would save the lives of many Japanese soldiers and citizens. I think the general feeling in the United States was fear, because atomic bombs had actually been used for the first time in combat, and the world now saw how powerful they were. There were also feelings of hope, they hoped this would finally bring an end to a brutal war. The Japanese were more cruel to prisoners-of-war than the Germans were. Their view of captives were that they had shamed themselves, and they had no reason to live. Japanese soldiers would rather have died than be captured. They treated their prisoners the same way. The Allies had all ready won the war in Europe, and wanted to end the war in the Pacific. I think most Americans weren’t happy when we dropped the bomb, but I think most understood the circumstances surrounding the decision.
The Germans treated the US and British POWs more or less according to the Geneva Convention. Most Russian and Polish POWs were sent to death camps. I don’t have the figures but IIRC, millions perished there.
My father is a WW2 Pacific Theater Vetern. He visited me when I lived in Japan in the early 90’s and went to Hiroshima. This isn’t strictly to the OP but here you go.
His reaction was one I, a child of the 60’s, didn’t expect. He simply said that Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved his life. He was slated for the invasion of Japan, which would have required an unbelieveable toll in life of both the attackers and the defenders.
The military brass were practically creaming their pants, they wanted to use the bombs so bad. ‘Wow, Nellie, we got a good one this time!’. Proof? They waited all of three days after Hiroshima to drop another one – a different type they wanted to test – on Nagasaki. Three days! The military was well aware that it would probably be at least a week before Japan itself was aware of the totality of the damage to Hiroshima. So they had to hurry to drop the other test bomb before Japan realized what they were up against and surrendered.
Now, I personally happen to agree that the military figured they shortened the war considerably, and probably saved some American lives as well. But the ‘fight to the last’ thing, the theory that ‘millions’ of Japanese and Americans would have died in a land invasion are, in my view, way way overstated. My grand-dad on my wife’s side (she is Japanese) said as much: ‘we would have fought to the death - but we had no bullets. We were sharpening our chopsticks, or tree branches. Some lucky guys had forks and knives, or even metal spoons. The Americans were worried because they lost so many soldiers on the outlying islands, but by the end of the war, and well before any land invasion would have taken place, we were simply out of any sort of ammunition. Losses on the American side would have been extremely light’.
So: the bombings probably saved thousands of Japanese lives - but that was almost by accident The military wanted to drop the bombs, and they thought by doing so that would save American lives. Given the time, and the thinking at the time, I have a hard time not defending that decision. I do have a problem with what I belive was the military’s fetish with using the new weapon without considering the impact, both short- and long-term. The attitude was far too casual - and I don’t think it would have been so casual had the plan been to drop the bomb on Europe.
I wasn’t alive then (& sometimes don’t feel alive now), but I found the little book, “Hiroshima,” by John Hersey, to be very disturbing.
There is a newer book that I have not yet read, “Hiroshima in America : A Half Century of Denial,” by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell. Apparently there was an effort to mold public opinion.
Did you know that even after the second bomb, the Imperial War Council deadlocked 3-3 in their vote on surrendering. Hirohito broke the tie.
Based on that, it’s unlikely in the extreme that Japanese reaction to only one bomb would have been a quick “realizing what they were up against and surrender[ing].” They almost didn’t surrender after two.
And this surprises you? There is always an effort to mold opinion. When I want to implement a new procedure, or way of thinking, or strategy or whatever, I try to mold the opinion(s) of my team and co-workers as well. Nothing particularly wrong about this, except when it involves disinformation or only partial disclosure.
Well, duh. Because they still didn’t fully realize the damage to Hiroshima! Remember, there was no internet back then. Phone lines were minimal. The bomb wiped out any radio contacts from the city proper. The survivers of the bomb thought for days that only their surrounding blocks had been fire bombed.
Surpised to see so much ignorance on this topic, but can’t address it here without hijacking the original post.
As to the question of dancing in the streets after the bomb, that may not have happened, but the official reports from our government certainly were geared to give a sense that it was a real good thing they done. No mention of radiation poisoning, melted eyeballs or anything like that – just the implication that Hiroshima was some kind of really big military target.
The general populace reacted to the news of the bombs with a sense of restrained hope: “Could this mean the end?”
Interstingly, the most explicit reactions were from the intellectuals on the Right and Left, with most of the support coming from the American Communist Party and many of the serious reservations being expressed by the conservative political leaders of the day (who were, of course, out of power at the time). The reservations, however, tended to be just that: concern, not condemnations.
Sorry this also take the discussion away from the OP… but I recall reading a Soviet history of WWII, and their opinion was that the bombs were dropped because the Americans were afraid that if things didn’t end quickly, the Soviets would move into that theatre of operations to too large an extent, causing the same problems that were being faced in Europe at the time.
This is not the thread for debating whether or not we should have used the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this thread we are discussing whether Americans celebrated at the news. The other topic has been the subject of innumerable GD threads. Do a search.
