I don’t think that Hiroshima can be considered a “win-win” solution for the Japanese. There was no “win-win” solutions for the Japanese after 1943 or so. And I do think that the dropping of the atomic bombs was just about the quickest and least deadly (for everyone) means of ending the war. Though that’s a discussion for another thread. (I wonder why wee’ve never debated that one before)
The Japanese government at the time was delusional. That is why the best outcome (from the point of view of the Japanese public’s well being) - surrender on the allies terms - was never considered until after the figleaf of two, two atomic bombs gave them an ass-covering excuse to throw in the towel. Fire bombing, devastating loss after devastating loss, ridiculous attrition strategy all did nothing to lead them towards a realistic consideration of their options. It wasn’t until June 1944 that the privy council even suggested what might be necessary to bring an early end to the war.
The peace feelers being put out were by unauthorized personnel and had terms that the allies (or rather the Americans) wouldn’t to agree to anyways.
There were no good options for Japan barring surrender, immediately, on whatever terms could be had. There were no win-win solutions. No win-lose options. Just a metric shitload of unpalatable choices. The most rational/only reality-based choice being rejected on political grounds, they were stuck with whatever coup de grace the US chose.
Plus, just on principle one shouldn’t be flippant about such things.
African-Americans may be better off than the average Congolese or Nigerien. That doesn’t make slavery a win-win.
The only thing I “what if” about is if we would have taken the time to get some of the Japanese dignitaries (under a truce) to a deserted Pacific island and display the capability of the atomic bomb and then give them 72 hours to unconditionally surrender. I wonder if that would have been “more civil” before we actually started bombing. Granted, that would have cut our two choices of cities down to one city and possibly hinder our chances at making the Japanese surrender, but I do wonder if that was even considered by our leaders as a possible choice to end the war…
Japanese dignitaries
The Americans have a bomb that just turned an island into an ash pit. They say they’ll use it on us if we don’t surrender.
Japanese militarist 1
They’ve demanded unconditional surrender. That will leave us with nothing.
Japanese militarist 2 They’re bluffing because they don’t want to invade us.
Japanese militarist 3 The reason they demonstrated it is because they only have one bomb. They want to scare us, but they have nothing to follow it with.
Surely the debate over whether this was a “win-win” situation hinges on whether killing hundreds of thousands of civilians was the only option to prevent the deaths of more innocent civilians. At that point, its entirely relevant to argue about whether an invasion would have happened, whether the Japanese would have surrendered after more time to consider the first bomb, etc. If we dropped the bomb in order to prevent Soviet hegemony, that doesn’t strike me as a valid reason to incinerate thousands of innocent people. YMMV.
Well, the cites quoted on Wikipedia disagree with those numbers. In 1945, military planners expected the invasion to kill 20,000 - 100,000 US soldiers. But then, I wouldn’t give much credence to military planners myself. I think the better argument here is that an invasion would have killed more willing participants and fewer innocent civilians.
Like I said above, I think the scope of the thread has to include whether or not dropping the bombs was the best possible alternative. If it wasn’t, then the opportunity cost alone seems to negate the “win-win” rhetoric. But I definitely see where you’re coming from. Mostly I didn’t want any lurkers to think that the jingoistic history being offered was the only interpretation.
In a war in which the vast majority of troops in all the armies were conscripts, I find the phrase “willing participants” to be completely inappropriate.
Well, first off, this isn’t really a debate…its a pit thread. If a debate is warrented (and maybe its time to have this one again) then it should be in GD. Just MHO here but I doubt anyone is going to strain themselves overly with cites and research in a pit thread.
As to your point about the Soviets, I suppose one can gage ‘win/win’ on whether or not you think Japan and the Japanese would have been better under the Soviet boot for several decades a la East Germany, and whether said occupation would have been preferable to losing two major cities. And of course this doesn’t even take into account just how brutal a Soviet invasion would have been…check out some time exactly what invading Germany cost both the Soviets and the Germans both in military and civilian terms, especially the final assault on Berlin…then multiply that several times as Japan would have been a much tougher nut to crack.
The 20,000-100,000 figures are extremely low, even if we are only counting US figures…though you are only talking killed there not total casualties so maybe the high end there is close. And I notice you aren’t giving the expected Japanese killed figure. That number should be fairly easy to extrapolate by simply looking at the numbers killed at such places as Okinawa and Saipan…unless you figure the Japanese would have fought less hard for their home islands than they did for those places? IIRC the Japanese lost something like 110,000 soldiers killed and about that same number of civilians killed on Okinawa. The US forces killed were something like 12,000 killed, another 40,000 wounded. And that was for a relatively small island without the expected defenses that the Japanese had planned on Kyushu (i.e. elaborate beach defenses, sighted artillary, thousands of suicide planes, boats, even subs, etc).
If you want a debate on this, and you are truely interested in debating it, then I’d say start a GD thread on it…or simply do a search on past threads. In the Pit you aren’t going to get much of a factual debate IMHO, more just folks skimming information in or making bald assertions (like my figures above from memory of the casualties of Japanese and US forces on Okinawa and Saipan). As to ‘jingoistic history’, thats a ridiculous claim since afaik the consensus among serious historians is that the dropping of the bombs definitely brought the war to a more rapid conclusion and saved some number of lives. Sure, there is decent on that point, even decent from serious historians, but overall I think I’m safe in saying that there is a general consensus that the Japanese weren’t in fact ready to surrender (certainly those who actually wielded the power in Japan were not ready to call it a day), and that invasion of the home islands would have cost more Japanese lives (and certainly allied since we lost none in dropping the bombs) than were lost by dropping the bombs. YMMV but I think you are way off calling that view ‘jingoistic history’.
Many Japanese soldiers *were *willing participants in battle. Many of the innocent civilians that died were not. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, you’d find the Japanese anti-war movement a very interesting object of study.
But I take your point. In “total war,” the distinction between civilians and soldiers is blurred. I just don’t think that means there is no longer a distinction.
Fair enough. I’ll defer to your interpretation of the parameters of the Pit. It just looked to me like there was something of a debate occurring in this thread, and that one solid historical interpretation was being mostly ignored in favor of a considerably more nationalist one.
That dropping the bombs brought the war to a more rapid conclusion is not in doubt (by me, at least). That it saved lives is in doubt. My undergraduate degree is in this field, and I can confidently say that it is not the consensus among serious historians that dropping the bombs was the best policy for all parties concerned. At best, there is no consensus – but to the extent that there is, it is on the side of the US choosing the atomic option more for geo-strategic reasons than because of a desire to save Japanese and American lives.
Calling your position jingoistic may be over-the-top (hey, it’s the Pit!); but it is certainly the conservative nationalist position. I acknowledge that it’s a complicated debate, with good arguments on both sides, but to call the intentional killing of thousands of innocent civilians a “win-win” situation strikes me as entirely inappropriate and very one-sided.
Please, feel free to debate in the Pit. I find that often a more usefull discussion takes place here (depending on the subject and the participants). Cites are freely asked and offered, though there is not the same level of rigor as in GD. Plus you can call people names.
Japan has its own jingoistic version of WWII. As I stated earlier, “win-win” sounds flippant to me. The thought behind “win-win” is entirely appropriate, though admittedly debatable.
Close- but more like: Japanese militarist 1, 2 & 3 “You are being a defeatist! Long live the Emperor!” Bang, bang bang…
They assasinated those who proposed peace. jrfranchi Hardly. The Japanese had already invaded China. True, in retaliation, the USA had stopped exporting “war materials” to Japan, but they could have bought them elsewhere or do with less… which if they had stopped their Imperialist aggression, they could have done easily. Of course, if they had stopped their Imperialist warmongering, the USA would start exporting to them again. This is one of the excuses the Japanese give, but no one really believes it, except USA haters and Imperialist Japan apologists.
The US was blocking Japan from getting scrap metal and oil (resources which constituted her main interest in Indochina). Japan offered to cease any military action against US interests if the US ended the embargo and gave Japan 1 million gallons of fuel. The US declined and Japan attacked.
I assume it goes without saying that this was ethical and wise foreign policy on the US part. But it is fundamentally true that the US forced Japan into war by cutting them off from natural resources.
That should have read, “forced them into war with the United States.” Japan was, of course, already at war in a number of other places (and, actually, indirectly at war with us since we were supporting Ho Chi Minh.)
I was saying I heard Japan was teaching this not that I believed this excrement.
I am pro dropping bombs and was just wondering if anyone else heard they were teaching their kids this BS.
I probably picked it up out of a Clancy book, if so it is suspect.
BTW everyone was doing things to China, well not really, but Brits had already did a number on them, just not the stupidy brutish stuff the Japanese did.
**I can’t believe how wrongheaded your statement is. **
To say we forced Japan to attack us? You even admit they where already at war.
Perhaps they had some other option? You no like not warring on other nations.
How can you keep slamming US in the one war we were clearly on the right side?
We fought 2 crazed aggressor nations!!!
It’s not true. The USA was NOT blocking Japan from getting metal or oil- both were freely available in the world market- what the USA did was say we woudln’t sell Japan any. They were free to buy it from any other nation.
And- note those two clauses “against US interests”- which didn’t include Manchuria. And “gave Japan 1 million gallons of fuel”. Why on earth our failure to buy Japan off with a huge bribe is “US forcing Japan into war” I don’t know. :dubious: It’s a bit like the kidnapper saying “well, you didn’t pay the ransom, so you have forced me into killing my hostage”! :rolleyes:
The Japanese did not need US resources in order to survive. They wanted US resources in order to continue a policy of Imperialism in China and elsewhere.
No kidding. Is there an insurgent leader that we’ve fought that the CIA didn’t train? To be fair, Ho seemed like a nice enough guy – big fan of Thomas Jefferson.
Was this message created by some sort of right-wing nutjob script?
I can see we’ll need to start at a very basic level with you. So, for starters, how about pointing to where I slammed the US?
Was it this?
Seriously, am I being whoosed? Are you actually a liberal and you’re just parodying some of the more mindless righty posters?
Since this is the Pit, and apparently we’re not supposed to debate for real here, I’ll just say this: you’re wrong. I mean, it’s just glaringly obvious that you’re not familiar with the history here. A good place to start would be any history textbook, perhaps even wikipedia.
And as far as the last paragraph goes, I didn’t say they needed US resources to survive. In fact, your post is the first time that phrase has appeared. It was implicit in my post that Japan wanted the resources (which I indicated were mostly in Indochina) in order to continue imperialist actions, which the US was right to oppose. But it is simultaneously true that Japan would likely not have gone to war with us if we hadn’t blocked their access to resources.
I think perhaps you’re failing to understand me because we using different definitions of the word “force.” When I say “force,” I mean, we made it so that Japan’s options were to give up her power grab and forego massive industrialization or go to war with the US. Incidentally, this is the way many Japanese textbooks portray it.
I am not claiming, and neither are the Japanese, that Japan was a peaceful nation until the evil US came along and forced them into war with us. That much should have been obvious when I claimed explicitly in my first post that this was a wise and ethical policy on the part of the US.
Ok, fair. I should have read the disclaimer as not condoning the teachings, but I still don’t like the forced phrase.
I could say Japan’s failure to surrender forced US to drop the bombs but that would be false as we had other possible means to end the war. I don’t feel your disclaimer alone explains away the use of the phrase “forced”.
