Necessity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

[Randy]

Getting back to the original topic, this will be quick and simple. But considering the resistance put up by Japanese troops fighting in Okinawa, their resolve would have been much stiffer fighting for the Home Islands. They would be fighting on their own soil that they knew and loved. Besides the military there were also home defense forces being trained for guerrilla warfare. This would have been a tough nut to crack. Also considering the propaganda put out by
IJHQ about what American troops would do to prisoners, you know they would fight to the death.
All you have to see are the pictures of women throwing their babies off of cliffs for fear of being captured. The bombs save many lives on both sides.

[Vincent Prochelo]

Originally posted by Penetrator:
One can speculate back and forth on the casualties in the case of invasion, but all that is irrelevant. No such invasion would ever have taken place. There was no option left to the japanese but surrender. The japanese leadership knew this. The US leadership knew this. And the US leadership knew the japanese leadership knew this. They only had to come to terms with this (to them) monstrous fact, which they would have in due course.

---

But the same could have been said for Germany. Asking the United States to sit back and let Japan lick its wounds while we waited for them to realize what they had to do would be just like expecting the Soviets to sit 50 miles outside of Berlin and wait for Hitler to figure out he was done.

Think about, could have saved the many Soviet and German casualties which resulted from the battle of Berlin. But you can't expect the Allies, especially the angered Russians, to wait it out. The same can be said for the Americans. We had developed a weapon, which we were not 100% positive would even work, which could allow us to instantly liquidate a city, with very minimal human risk on our side.

The question should be, if you are the United States, how can you NOT use it?

Anyway, since they were willing to surrender when faced with atomic destruction, why would they not have surrendered when faced with certain destruction by other means?

---

Surrender is not an easy thing for the Japanese. It took 2 a-bombs to do it. nothing else.

But I agree that some of the other reasons to drop the bomb (show the Soviets, get as much land in Asia as possible from the Soviets0 was a factor, but the only one which we need to be concerned with is the status of Japan. Since they had not surrendered, the US had every right to use whatever means neccessary to force that surrender.

-V

[ February 16, 2002: Message edited by: Vincent Prochelo ]</p>

[Gump]

When you are fully engaged in the business of killing people.... whether by nuclear bomb or starvation by blockade, I find nothing unusual or improper about the decision to use it. Indeed it would have been unusual to not use it.

How many people did we kill by starvation ??? Is that any more moral than dropping the bomb ?

Listening to the opinions here regarding the decision to use it or not really makes me wonder if anyone can really imagine what went into that decision.....

I bet Truman thought about for about 2 minutes... hmmmmm... a new bomb that will really scare em... and kill a big ol bunch of em..... lets do it... and when can I get more ?

[rickh]

Originally posted by Raverdave:


I think that this is the true reason for the A-bombs being used....more so as a signal to the soviets than to further pressure the Japanese. The US had seen the half of Europe swallowed up by the Soviets who were busy installing pupet governments and now with the USSR declaring war on Japan, they had the nightmare of the soviets gaining control of large areas of Asia.

I just don't see how the A-bombs alone could have convinced the Japanese....lets face it....by mid June most of Japan's industry and cities were a fire-bombed wasteland....Kobe, Kawasaki,Yokohama,Osaka,Nagoya and of course Tokyo. There was no military need to drop the bombs. In fact "Hap" Arnold was so convinced that the USAAF could wipe out the rest of Japan that he sent LeMay to Washington to try to convince the JCS that there would be no need for an invasion of the home land.

And as for the timing? Well the first bomb was droped on the 6th of August....the same day that the Soviets declared war.

---

[Supervisor]

Actually, to his credit, he thought about it a lot more than that. That's the problem with us liberals, we like to think before we kill a hundred thousand people.

[rickh]

Originally posted by Raverdave:


I think that this is the true reason for the A-bombs being used....more so as a signal to the soviets than to further pressure the Japanese. The US had seen the half of Europe swallowed up by the Soviets who were busy installing pupet governments and now with the USSR declaring war on Japan, they had the nightmare of the soviets gaining control of large areas of Asia.

I just don't see how the A-bombs alone could have convinced the Japanese....lets face it....by mid June most of Japan's industry and cities were a fire-bombed wasteland....Kobe, Kawasaki,Yokohama,Osaka,Nagoya and of course Tokyo. There was no military need to drop the bombs. In fact "Hap" Arnold was so convinced that the USAAF could wipe out the rest of Japan that he sent LeMay to Washington to try to convince the JCS that there would be no need for an invasion of the home land.

And as for the timing? Well the first bomb was droped on the 6th of August....the same day that the Soviets declared war.

---

Just my newbie 2cents worth, but IIRC the Soviets had an agreement with the States whereby they would declare war on Japan 3 months after the defeat of Germany. This seems reasonable logistically and accounts for the timing of the soviet attack.

[asgrrr]

There have been a few slices coming my way across this table. I will perhaps respond in more detail later, but I do have a semblance of a life in the real world too.

To sidetrack slightly, what is really the question?
a) Was this decision based on the desire to save human life, or some other (perhaps sinister) consideration? Or more generally, did whoever made the decision (Truman) expect that this decision would cost fewer human lives than the alternative, whether or not that was a primary consideration?
b) With the benefit of hindsight, did the use of the bomb indeed result in the "net" saving of human life compared to what would most probably have happened otherwise?

To me, a) is the much more relevant question. Being "right for the wrong reason" (not implying anything about any actual righteousness) is in my view not a credit to anyone. The winner of the lottery is not the smartest ticket holder.

[Gump]

Is anyone here familiar with the recently released details of how the US had stockpiled thousands of tons of chemical agents around Japan for the obvious purpose of exterminating everything on the islands in lieu of an invasion ??

Is this true ??? ( Saw it on the history channel )

If so how does this figure in the equation ?

[pauk]

uh, im not sure that i'm gonna this way...
was nuke nessesary? on civilian target?? im afraid that for such altrocity there is no excuse...
just imagine, what would be that germany nuked, for example, london... well i sure that in Nurenberg, allys charged nazis for this... but, history belongs to winners...

[Randy]

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both chosen because they were the only major cities that had not yet
been bombed (you can't show the effects of the bomb on a city that was already destroyed). Kyoto was taken off the target list due to its religious significance to the nation. The city of Kokura was chosen for the second bomb, but weather canceled that out so the aircraft were sent to Nagasaki. The city of Hiroshima was not a total civilian city. Hiroshima was the HQ's for the Second General Army (eqivalent to an American army group) which had control of western Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. Info from Downfall, and the
Oxford Companion to WWII. Hope this helps.

[Culiacan Mexico]

Originally posted by Penetrator:
If you believe that the bombings were necessary and/or justified, the contemporary US military leaders seem to have disagreed with you, then and later.

It seems at least clear that there was no conscious decision on behalf of militarily informed persons, that the use of the bomb would save lives.

---

I disagree. There is always dissenting opinions within the military, some agreed and some disagreed. President Truman believed it could save lives.

Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945
We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark...

This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children...

He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance...

GENERAL GEORGE C. MARSHALL and the ATOMIC BOMBING OF JAPAN

"There is one point that was missed...That was the effect the bomb would have in so shocking the Japanese that they could surrender without losing face...we didn't realize its value to give the Japanese such a shock that they could surrender without complete loss of face."

[Culiacan Mexico]

Originally posted by Blackhorse:
Was it necessary to drop the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima in order to win the war? No. There were four other ways that the war could have been won.

1. Continued conventional bombing and blockade: This was the approach favored by the Sky Kings (Air Force Generals). According to the Strategic Bombing Survey, from April through August conventional bombing had destroyed 40% of 16 cities in Japan. Beginning in September, the USBS estimated that strategic bombers could deliver a daily payload ten-times greater than the April-September daily average. What does that mean? By the end of 1945 over 100 Japanese cities would have been burnt-out shells, and the death toll from air raids and starvation would have topped 1,000,000 lives.

2. Blockade only: (With continued bombing of transportation facilities). I don't know that anyone "in the loop" advocated this during the war. Afterwards, this became the favorite option of those who felt we shouldn't have dropped the bomb. I suppose it has the moral advantage of shifting the burden of deciding how many people have to die before the war ends from the U.S. to Japan. However, the Allied leaders had every reason to believe that Japan would hold out for months, or years, based on the willingness of Japan's leaders to sacrifice soldiers and civilians (on Okinawa, only 7,000 out of 115,000 soldiers survived, and between one-quarter and one-half of the civilian population perished as well). Herbert Bix' Pulitizer Prize winning biography Hirohito concludes that the Japanese ruling clique would have accepted months of mass starvation in the civilian population while hoping to lure the U.S. into a "decisive battle" on the Japanese mainland.

3. Invasion: Obviously, the least attractive alternative for American political leaders. Japanese casualties would be measured in the millions. Most importantly for American leaders, American casualties, even in the best case scenarios, would be counted in the hundreds of thousands.

4. A Negotiated Peace: The policy of the Allies was "unconditional surrender." This made sense for two reasons: 1. It reassured an awkward coalition of suspicious partners that no country would 'bail out' and sign a separate peace with Germany or Japan. 2. It erased the fear that WWII could end the way WWI did -- with a negotiated armistice, and with the defeated country's military cliques and infrastructure still in place so they could plot a war of revenge. If the U.S. was willing to abandon those two principles, we probably could have negotiated a peace with Japan. On the other hand, we would have pissed off our allies, absolutely infuriated the Russians, and left a dangerous militarist regime in charge of Japan. As WWI and the Gulf War demonstrated, if you have to go to war with another country, its best to finish the job.

What I find interesting is that each of the three "military" alternatives to dropping the Atomic Bomb would have almost certainly resulted in far more Japanese deaths.

I disagree with arguments advanced that the A-bomb was dropped "for revenge" or to keep the Russians out of the war. The American approach to WWII was fairly straightforward -- we wanted to win the war as quickly as we could. In Truman's words, "we found [the bomb] so we used it." As for the Russians -- the Americans had been pressing the Russians to declare war against Japan. We wanted to bring as much power to bear against Japan as fast as possible. Many American leaders were suspicious of the Russians, but our national policy was still to cooperate with them -- the mutual hostility of the Cold War would not form until several years later.

One factual correction of a previous post: The United States did not drop the Atomic Bomb in response to Russia's Declaration of War against Japan. Quite the reverse. The Hiroshima bomb was dropped on August 6th. The Russians declared war on August 8th -- and by many accounts, the Russians hastily declared war after the bomb was dropped in order to get into the war before Japan surrendered.

---

Good post.

[Randy]

Something else that many have forgotten is that Americans were weary of fighting and wanted a quick end to the war. There were plans in motion that if there was to be an invasion of Japan some units from Germany would be sent to the States, retrained in jungle warfare and sent to the Pacific. There was also a point system for the troops to determine who would be released from active duty, and who would go on to Japan. I think this only applied to the those from Europe.

[asgrrr]

Originally posted by Culiacan Mexico:


Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945

This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children...

He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance...

---

A most interesting passage. I may have overstepped myself in making the declaration in question, but if I remember correctly (it was a few days ago) I was primarily referring to members of the military when I said "militarily informed persons".

Anyway, does Truman's diary explain this discrepancy: He refers to "military objectives" both here and in public broadcasts after the event, when in fact the targets were of almost no military value?

[Gump]

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold."
("Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S Truman, 1945", pg. 197).

On Aug. 9, after Nagasaki was a-bombed, Truman made another public statement on why the atomic bombs were used:

"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans."
("Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S Truman, 1945", pg. 212).

We found it ... we used it ..... Sounds like it was a pretty "normal" thing to do.

Only in the calm of peace 50 years later does it seem like something somebody should have agonized over.

You need to remember that the potential horror of global nuclear war was not even dreamed of at that time..... The US was the only one that had it, we only had 2..... It just cannot be judged by people now that have so much more knowledge and experience with the subject.

For us to say that it was a callous act, or a crime is just plain wrong..... Was it a callous act to insist the Soviets start killing them also ?

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: Gump ]</p>

[Randy]

Gump, good post. As is often the case it is easy to "monday morning quarterback." It is easy to judge an event with the knowledge known after 50
years, instead of making the descision with the lives of your troops pressing on your mind!