# What if we had nuked Iwo Jima? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 4, 2014, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620 "2014-05-04T04:36:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/1 "2014-05-04T04:36:21Z")
Let’s say that we had successfully run the Los Alamos test a couple of years prior and now we’re going drop an atomic weapon on Iwo Jima. Would it work, or would all those underground bunkers survive? ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/2 "2014-05-04T04:58:46Z")
We needed the island to base B29s to bomb the homeland. Even if we had an atom bomb at the time it would have been a waste. But yeah, it would have worked, the people stumbling out of those bunkers would be walking around in radioactive hell. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/3 "2014-05-04T07:42:26Z")
You probably would have gotten a firestorm effect, which would have sucked all the air out of the tunnels. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/4 "2014-05-04T10:29:46Z")
Seeing that it was an island with few structures to burn I cannot see it really destroying much. Plus how winds sweep across an island I dont the effects lingering. Now throw in the fact that neither atomic bomb actually blew up to the total effect AND since it was a small target its possible that a near miss a few thousand yards off to one side or the other could have caused most of the explosion to be more over the ocean so its possible that the effect on the dug in defenders might and I say MIGHT have been negligible. Granted it would have scared the living hell out of the Japanese. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/5 "2014-05-04T11:00:30Z")
The rate of bomb production was pretty slow for the first year and the cost per bomb very high. Given an american victory on the island was never in doubt, I doubt it would’ve made strategic or economic sense to waste a bomb there even if it was capable of clearing the island of Japanese. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/6 "2014-05-04T11:05:51Z")
Also we had several battleships lying just offshore shooting the heaviest shells of their era at that island at near point blank and we still failed to dislodge the Japanese. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/7 "2014-05-04T12:51:55Z")
Is it true that the trams were running in Hiroshima two days after the bomb? ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/8 "2014-05-04T14:03:17Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Is it true that the trams were running in Hiroshima two days after the bomb? Kind of. If you look at the map on [this page](http://www1.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/04abom/04hiroshima_miraidengon/050501_02.html), service was restored between the two stations furthest to the left on the 9th (three days after the bomb). The red dot is the epicenter of the explosion. The page also says that service to the center of the city was resumed in September, but it took until December 1948 for everything to be restored. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/9 "2014-05-04T17:59:42Z")
AIUI, the whole point of taking Iwo Jima was to use it as an airbase for bombing the Home Islands. So we would **not** have nuked it. Makes the island useless. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/10 "2014-05-04T18:03:04Z")
Had the island now been necessary as an air base they would have done nothing to it at all. Like a lot of other islands, they just would have bypassed it and let it die on the vine. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2014, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/11 "2014-05-04T22:51:58Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > AIUI, the whole point of taking Iwo Jima was to use it as an airbase for bombing the Home Islands. > > So we would **not** have nuked it. Makes the island useless. Nitpick: the B-29 bombers sent against Japan were based in the Marianas. Iwo Jima was wanted as an emergency landing site for damaged bombers that couldn’t make it all the way back. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/12 "2014-05-05T04:19:02Z")
Sad thing is in the 80’s we gave Iwo Jima back to the Japanese. Although its only used as radar and weather monitoring station. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/13 "2014-05-05T05:09:03Z")
How is that sad? Did the Americans have any further need of it? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/14 "2014-05-05T05:12:36Z")
Well, if we ever need to base B29s to bomb them again, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/15 "2014-05-05T05:18:23Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > AIUI, the whole point of taking Iwo Jima was to use it as an airbase for bombing the Home Islands. > > So we would **not** have nuked it. Makes the island useless. > [@Lumpy](#): > > Nitpick: the B-29 bombers sent against Japan were based in the Marianas. Iwo Jima was wanted as an emergency landing site for damaged bombers that couldn’t make it all the way back. It hadn’t been needed as a bomber base. The bombers had a long range and could fly to Japan from the Marianas. The Air Corps wanted a fighter base established in the Bonin Islands so that shorter-ranged fighters could escort the bombers to Japan. But as it turned out, once Iwo Jima had been secured and the fighters were stationed there it was found that they could not provide adequate escort cover. Mustangs could in theory fly the distances needed but in actual mission conditions pilots found flying a nine hour escort mission over the ocean difficult. A Mustang, for example, didn’t have the equipment for navigating over the ocean. The escorts had to link up with their bombers and be guided to and from Japan. If the fighter got separated from the bombers it was lost. This need to stay in contact limited the ability of both the fighters and bombers to perform their primary missions. Another factor was that the fighters couldn’t fly as high as the bombers. So they were more exposed to inclement weather. Some bomber missions would encounter a storm they could fly over but the fighters were unable to fly through. So the bombers would have to fly around the storm in order for the fighters to stay with them. Or the fighters would have to abort their mission and fly back and a bomber would have to be detached to guide them back to their base. And this was the summer of 1945. By now the Japanese air force was only offering minimal resistance to American bombing missions. It was realized these difficult escort missions weren’t really needed. The post-war official Air Force history concedes “the total P-51 effort was not very fruitful.” But capturing Iwo Jima had taken five weeks and almost seven thousand American lives. Nobody wanted to come out and say that the island hadn’t been needed for its intended purpose as a fighter base after all. So the idea that Iwo Jima was vital as an emergency landing strip for bombers got promoted. It was used for that purpose and over two thousand bombers landed there. But most of the emergencies were not critical - the bombers could have flown back to the Marianas if they had needed to. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/16 "2014-05-05T14:30:29Z")
[From wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_for_the_Battle_of_Iwo_Jima): > [@](#): > > The origins of the battle lie in the complex politics of the Pacific theater, in which operational control was divided between the South West Pacific Area (command) of General Douglas MacArthur and the Pacific Ocean Areas (command) led by Admiral Chester Nimitz. The potential for interservice rivalry between the Army and Navy created by this partition of responsibility was exacerbated by similar divisions within the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in Washington. By September 1944, the two services could not come to an agreement about the main direction of advance towards the Japanese home islands in the coming year. The Army was pressing for the chief effort to be an invasion of Formosa (Taiwan), in which MacArthur would be in overall command and in which it would predominate. > > The Navy however preferred the idea of an operation against Okinawa, which would be a mainly seaborne effort. Seeking to gain leverage and so break the impasse, on September 29 Nimitz suggested to Admiral Ernest King that as a preliminary to the Okinawa offensive the island of Iwo Jima could be taken.[1] The tiny island lacked harbors and so was of no direct interest to the Navy, but for some time General Henry Harley Arnold of the U.S. Army Air Forces had been lobbying to take Iwo Jima. He argued that an airbase there would provide useful fighter escort cover for the B-29 Superfortresses of his XX Bomber Command, then beginning its strategic bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands (the later role of Iwo Jima as a refueling station for B-29s played no part in the original decision-making process). Arnold’s support in the JCS enabled the Navy to get Okinawa rather than Formosa approved as the main target on October 2.[2] At this time the Iwo Jima invasion was expected to be a brief prologue to the main campaign, with relatively light casualties; King assumed that Nimitz would be able to reuse three of the Marine Corps divisions assigned to Iwo Jima for the attack on Okinawa, which was originally scheduled to take place just forty days later. > > (snip) > > It was not accidental that these men were selected to command an operation of such vital importance that it has since become known as “the most classical amphibious assault of recorded history.” All of them had shown their mettle in previous engagements. One chronicler of the Iwo Jima operation put it in the following words: > > ``` > "The team assigned to Iwo Jima was superb: the very men who had perfected the amphibious techniques from the Battle of Guadalcanal to the Battle of Guam. Nearly every problem, it was believed, had been met and mastered along the way, from the jungles of Guadalcanal up through the Solomons, and across the Central Pacific from the bloody reefs of Battle of Tarawa to the mountains of the Marianas." > > ``` The Japanese had dug in very well, miles and miles of tunnels and used large amounts of concrete. The constant bombardments and bombing raids didn’t cause much damage. An atomic bomb would not have done much. Not really understanding the risks of radiation, the US was planning on using atomic bombs in the invasion of Japan and having US troops go through those areas. ---
**Author:** ![Oliveritaly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oliveritaly/32/15233_2.png) [@Oliveritaly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oliveritaly)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/17 "2014-05-05T15:59:35Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It hadn’t been needed as a bomber base. The bombers had a long range and could fly to Japan from the Marianas. The Air Corps wanted a fighter base established in the Bonin Islands so that shorter-ranged fighters could escort the bombers to Japan. > > But as it turned out, once Iwo Jima had been secured and the fighters were stationed there it was found that they could not provide adequate escort cover. Mustangs could in theory fly the distances needed but in actual mission conditions pilots found flying a nine hour escort mission over the ocean difficult. A Mustang, for example, didn’t have the equipment for navigating over the ocean. The escorts had to link up with their bombers and be guided to and from Japan. If the fighter got separated from the bombers it was lost. This need to stay in contact limited the ability of both the fighters and bombers to perform their primary missions. > > Another factor was that the fighters couldn’t fly as high as the bombers. So they were more exposed to inclement weather. Some bomber missions would encounter a storm they could fly over but the fighters were unable to fly through. So the bombers would have to fly around the storm in order for the fighters to stay with them. Or the fighters would have to abort their mission and fly back and a bomber would have to be detached to guide them back to their base. > > And this was the summer of 1945. By now the Japanese air force was only offering minimal resistance to American bombing missions. It was realized these difficult escort missions weren’t really needed. The post-war official Air Force history concedes “the total P-51 effort was not very fruitful.” > > But capturing Iwo Jima had taken five weeks and almost seven thousand American lives. Nobody wanted to come out and say that the island hadn’t been needed for its intended purpose as a fighter base after all. So the idea that Iwo Jima was vital as an emergency landing strip for bombers got promoted. It was used for that purpose and over two thousand bombers landed there. But most of the emergencies were not critical - the bombers could have flown back to the Marianas if they had needed to. Thank you Little Nemo that was an interesting read. I’m asking this out of ignorance but why not launch fighter support from carriers as needed? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/18 "2014-05-05T16:08:46Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > Not really understanding the risks of radiation, the US was planning on using atomic bombs in the invasion of Japan and having US troops go through those areas. Right, if we had the bombs in sufficient quantity and early enough in the war, given thinking of the time we’d be bombing place in Germany for example and soldiers would be following in shortly after to capture the territory. The exposure to radiation a day or so later isn’t incapacitating at all, as the Japanese had people investigating the damage pretty quickly afterward. Would the exposure cause long term health problems? Of course, but since it wouldn’t have actually stopped an offensive and such long term concerns weren’t fully understood we’d just have a population of veterans of WWII with much higher cancer rates than the norm. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/19 "2014-05-05T16:15:50Z")
And yes, dirt actually absorbs the heat and radiation of a nuclear blast very well. Assuming an air burst detonation as we used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is unlikely the heat or radiation would penetrate through the dirt, rock, and concrete to the Japanese soldiers in the tunnels. The guys on the surface or perhaps near a tunnel surface entrance would be killed, and maybe if there was some effect which “sucked the oxygen” out of the tunnels that might kill people too (I’m not sure that would actually happen.) In Hiroshima the persons closest to ground zero who survived were the ones underground, for all the force of a nuclear weapon it doesn’t actually penetrate through the Earth’s crust very effectively particularly when it is detonated at altitude. Eizo Nomura was only 170 meters away from ground zero and survived the Hiroshima bombing because he just happened to be in the basement of a prefecture building at the time, looking for some documents. Since it was a concrete basement and positioned well he survived. He came very close to dying several times while trying to get out of the ruins of downtown Hiroshima because there were massive fires everywhere. It’s likely that others who may have been lucky enough to survive the initial blast due to being in a basement may have succumbed to the raging fires afterward. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620/20 "2014-05-05T16:36:53Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > The exposure to radiation a day or so later isn’t incapacitating at all, as the Japanese had people investigating the damage pretty quickly afterward. Would the exposure cause long term health problems? Of course, but since it wouldn’t have actually stopped an offensive and such long term concerns weren’t fully understood we’d just have a population of veterans of WWII with much higher cancer rates than the norm. Exactly. It would have also done a lot more damage for the assault on the Kanto plan where they hadn’t have dig in as much and they would have had more troops concentrated. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-nuked-iwo-jima/687620.md?page=2)