Their logistics problems were also seriously compounded by the senseless policy of dividing up their merchant marine between the IJA and IJN, who jealously guarded their resources and didn’t cooperate sufficiently.
All points which are part of Japan’s basic premise that it was going to be a short war. Wishful thinking. This was only matched by the US and Britain’s serious underestimation of Japan’s capabilities and tenacity prior to the war. Had the US started its preparations several months earlier, and taken Japan as seriously as they were forced to later, it would have been much less costly for them.
I do get into more trouble when I stray off the Pacific theater, and especially on the Eastern front. However, I do wonder if they couldn’t have cooped some of the other Slovic people until after they punished Stalin a bit more. Of course, dictators on world conquest *have *to be recklessly overly optimistic, or they remain unsuccessful painters their whole lives.
And “nine times smaller” was at the most favorable point of comparison. John Keegan wrote that the overall “index of war production” (a measure of militarily-useful output) favored the United States 20:1.
For oil, the “index of war production” was 100:1 (presumably counting what Japan was able to extract from her conquests). Since panic over the oil embargo was a large part of the decision that triggered the Pearl Harbor attack, it’s really telling…start a war for oil and get outproduced 100:1? Ouch.
Who do you think would have died of starvation first? The poor and the working class or the folks who decide to ‘stick it out’ until it got hard on them.
You see, that’s the problem with aristocracy the poor and the workers die first while the upper class can continue to fight (with their well fed bellies)
If starvation would’ve run it’s course in the way you’re talking about, then yes, more people may have died.
Truth be told: The US had, prior to dropping the bombs, run pretty much out of strategic targets. Thus, the Japanese had no capability to make war. At that point, our options would be to blockade, and bomb food production - causing starvation. Invade - at the cost of huge amounts of American and Japanese lives. Or drop the bombs, ending the war very quickly, at the immediate cost of about 250k lives. Of course, many, many thousands more died from radiation poisoning as a direct result of the bombs, so the real death total is much higher than 250k. Probably somewhere in the 700+k range.
I would think that a country that has no hope of winning, and facing starvation, would make the best choice and simply surrender before people started starving to death.
They no longer wanted war. Why would they? It was hopeless.
I think they would have done so before widescale starvation would’ve happened.
IMO, dropping the bombs was unnecessary, and there were other motives to do so, other than what history books tell us.
What would have happened if demonstration bombing was performed using conventional weaponry? If Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed by fire-bombing in the same time-frame, would that have served the same purpose?
Could a “bells and whistles” conventional weapon – something that stood out, the way the V1 and V2 stood out, with psychological leverage – have been devised. e.g., dropping lots and lots of “flash” bombs ahead of the fire bombs?
It seems that the Japanese government was close to the edge of making the decision, and the A-Bombs tipped that balance. Could something else have done it?
I am not saying “should.” I’m only asking “could?” Alternate history without judgement. My judgement is that the U.S. did the “least wrong” thing known at the time. But with hindsight, can we envision them having come up with something else?
That’s pretty much what did happen. Japan didn’t suddenly face a starvation threat in August of 1945. They had already been facing starvation for months. If they were going to surrender due to imminent starvation they would have already done so.
But they hadn’t surrendered. The Japanese military, which was effectively running the country at this point, had already decided to keep fighting on. They had made plans for who would have their food cut off so the troops could get eating and fighting. They were going to allow people to die of starvation.
It was a cold-blooded self-interest issue for the generals and admirals. They figured they’d be killed by the Americans after the surrender. So they were willing to keep fighting because another year of war was another year of life for them. And they were willing to have millions of Japanese people die so they could stay alive a little longer.
It was the same thing that happened in Germany. Rationally, Germany should have surrendered in 1944. But people like Hitler and Himmler and Goering kept the war going as long as possible to protect themselves without caring about the cost to ordinary Germans.
Japan had enough to fight a war over the time frame which they believed it would occur. I’m reading a book by Louis Morton, written while he worked in the navy historical office, and he argues that as the Japanese military believed the West was trying to destroy them anyway, their choice wasn’t as crazy as most people feel.
What’s interesting is that this provides insight not only into the reason for starting the war, but also into the reason why some were opposed to ending the war short of complete defeat. The fanatics believed in a concept of yamato deshi, the unique spirit of the Japanese, and kokutai, the fundamental character of the state, which depended on having an emperor. Without getting too far off into that, enough people within the military, especially the army, held this to be the fundamental truth.
Prince Higashikuni’s comments were made in 1949, so right after the war, and right in the middle of the Great Regret period. While more leaders in the IJN certainly had “a tragic determination and in desperate self-abandonment” there is less evidence that this was common in higher officer ranks of the army.
By the bitter end, it was down to the ultranationalists left believing it was better that they all die than to abandon the kokutai.
Dissonance points out that they were producing enough oil from the Dutch East Indies, the problem was they couldn’t get it through to the mainlands.
Utter nonsense, belied by the briefest examination of the war. In absolutely no way did Japan have ‘no capability to make war.’
Again, nonsense. These options were not either/or, they were all already being used simultaneously- aside from bombing food production, which isn’t really possible to do directly. Japan was already under blockade; they began the war with 6,384,000 tons of merchant shipping and even with the additions of new construction only had 1,466,900 tons available at the end of the war, only 23% of the tonnage they began the war with.
Your numbers are entirely incorrect; the figure of 250,000 already includes deaths from radiation sickness and associated complications in addition to immediate loss of life.
You might want to read the thread, these are already topics that have been addressed.
A lot of cogent evidence to the contrary has been presented above.
It’s also worth noting that essentially no one in the US had the slightest reason to believe this at the time. To the contrary, they saw the consistent Japanese “die to the last man” attitude in various island conquests and quite naturally reckoned - almost certainly correctly - that this would be found in Japan as well.
This is no doubt correct in the sense that Japan could not have won the war even had the bombs never been developed. But the case that many lives were saved by the decision to use them is strong.
A point that has not received a lot of emphasis is that, politically, there was absolutely no choice: People were weary of the war and its cost in lives and treasure. Truman is presented with a weapon, developed at enormous cost, that looks as if it has strong potential to hasten the end of the war, saving untold lives and expense. No trace of revulsion against nuclear weapons yet exists. What possible state of mind could have led him to shelve such a weapon?
Yes, both really good reasons for covering up the truth of the bombs.
I’m torn between including the Lincoln assassination and Washington’s cherry tree or just go with the more provable connection to the Triladderists – the cherry tree.
The truth about the incident, that it was a walnut true and not a cherry, was disclosed in a report that all 746 copies were destroyed when the British burned the White House. Coincidence? Why is that that the British were involved in WWII as well and also fighting the Japanese? Why was the first British fighting unit scheduled to land on the beaches called the 746th? Why were the bombs dropped on August, the 8th month (one more than 7), Hiroshima on the 6th and there were two bombs, exactly two less than 4?
Truman was born on July 4th, 1896. Why was he picked as the VP?
True, but that estimate was a seat-of-the-pants guess. No studies were done, there is zero paper trail behind it.
Furthermore, that estimate was for “unconditional surrender”, which we didn’t get anyway. The only condition was a face-saving one for the Emperor – important to the Japanese and not to us, so maybe not a huge difference.
I have little doubt I’d have made the same decision at the time, but it’s silly to give much merit to this “million lives” estimate. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised by a careful study to show that dropping the bomb saved lives (American or Japanese).
Agreed. However, “non-total war” is an even bigger atrocity.
Regarding the Nagasaki bomb … there wasn’t a specific reason to drop the 2nd bomb. The program was on auto-pilot at that time, and it was pure chance that the bomb (a different design, built by a different team) was ready only 3 days later. A Colonel made the decision to go ahead (based on his standing orders, not based on communications with the top after Hiroshima).
However, research shows that after the first bomb, internal high level Japanese comms were filled with “What are we going to do about this? Can we build one?” and not “We must surrender.” After the Nagasaki bomb, it was all over; there was no more will to resist at the highest levels. So, in retrospect, it seems that if dropping #1 was right, then so was dropping #2.
I think that’s the real answer: we did because we could, and our goal was to defeat the enemy. Period. I hate the fact that the US used an A bomb – the only nation to do so. But as I said above, I bet I’d have made the same decision at the time.
I presume you are aware of the differences between “casualties” and “lives.” The former refers includes the wounded.
The Japanese had plans on killing the Allied POWs before the invasion, a number to that killed within the first four months by the two bombs. There were tens of thousands of Japanese civilians dying from conventional firebombing. The number of Japanese civilians killed had the atomic bombs not been dropped would have been much greater than the number from the two bombs.
No, not even close. See post 91. There are a number of accounts on the web which discuss the surrender of Japan.
I must have overlooked this the first time round, it’s not an unpopular position that total war is an atrocity at all. I think not only that total war is an atrocity, but that war itself is. To quote Gen. William T. Sherman
Or in an alternate version from his speech to the Michigan Military Academy
To add to what you wrote in said post, there was an attempted palace coup 3 days after Nagasaki on Aug 12, 1945 with the intention of placing the Emperor under house arrest and preventing the broadcast of the Imperial Rescript on surrender.