Did We Need to Nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

crescent said:
I think we might be in violent agreement, because otherwise your posts bear no relation to mine.

I agree that the Japanese government would not have surrendered without the use of the atomic bombs, at least not for a long time and after even greater bloodshed. I never stated otherwise.

ETA: I did propose a hypothetical scenario, but I never made any implications as the likelihood of that scenario being plausible. It was only intended to demonstrate that even in the most rose-tinted-glasses type scenario of what could have happened if the nukes were not used, the death toll might still have been higher than what actually happened. I made no claim that the scenario I laid out was even remotely plausible.
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This post was not yours?
crescent said:
The argument being made is that the war was going to end anyway, so that the millions of additional casualties would not have occurred, and that this non-nuclear surrender would have made the atomic bomb drops unnecessary, so that the people who died there didn't need to die.

It is not an argument I am in agree with, but your post is a very inaccurate straw-man of what the OP is proposing.
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abaddon said:
I think you wildly underestimate the will of the Japanese to fight on to the death if necessary. The last Japanese soldier surrendered in 1974.
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I remember that. He'd been on duty in the Philippines all those years. They had to round-up an old superior officer to order him to surrender.
 
John Jones said:
I remember that. He'd been on duty in the Philippines all those years. They had to round-up an old superior officer to order him to surrender.
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IIRC, he had a few compadres also, half a dozenish from memory and his cell was not the only one. Memory is a bitch. Now you are going to make me look it up.
 
abaddon said:
This post was not yours?
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Yes, and in that post i made it very clear that i disagreed with the OP.

ETA: Admittedly the second paragraph has a typo, instead of "not in agree with" it should have read "not in agreement with", but I don't think that changes the meaning. The first paragraph states a common argument, the and paragraph states that I don't agree with that argument.
 
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John Jones said:
I remember that. He'd been on duty in the Philippines all those years. They had to round-up an old superior officer to order him to surrender.
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Bells are ringing. Was it not that he had to be relieved of his post without surrender or some such malarkey? ISTR that there was some odd legalistic gymnastics involved.

Dammit, you have once again invoked my inner research fairy. Have you no shame?
 
crescent said:
Yes, and in that post i made it very clear that i disagreed with the OP.
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Nope. you frankly got caught in an abject error and are now attempting to save face.

That may seem harsh. It is not. Everyone who ever walked in shoe leather makes mistakes. You do, I do, every member here does. What of it? So long as one is willing to own one's errors, then that's OK.

Make no mistake, it is not unknown that I have personally doubled down on egregious error from time to time. I have 13.5K posts thereabouts. Statistically speaking, there must be wild errors in that lot. How could there not? Post count does not speak to verisimilitude or truth. I am flat out certain that I have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick and run a marathon with it.

Olive branch thusly extended, do as you will with it.
 
smartcooky said:
Any way you slice it, no amount of claims by some generals that the war was going to end or that they didn't want to use the bomb or that the Russians might invade, will affect three key facts about this issue...
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In particular, the mention of Eisenhower is disingenuous.

Ike had been been posted all war on the European theater. At the time the bombs were dropped, Germany had surrendered, but Ike still had his hands full to keep order and bring food to a devastated country on the brink of starvation. He simply had no more knowledge of the Pacific theater and the stance of the Japanese government than the average GI.
 
abaddon said:
Nope. you frankly got caught in an abject error and are now attempting to save face.

That may seem harsh. It is not. Everyone who ever walked in shoe leather makes mistakes. You do, I do, every member here does. What of it? So long as one is willing to own one's errors, then that's OK.
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You are very condescending, but "not in agreement" means what means, typo or not.
 
No, but in my opinion, it saved Japan's sovereignty.

It was better for Japan to surrender to the US only, rather than to US and USSR.
 
I think that this question only comes in hindsight, with people assuming emotionally that since the Japanese did surrender they would have surrendered.

However, the Japanese Imperial army had a long history of excellent moral, even in the face of defeat, and showed a willingness to fight to the death.

The Kyujo incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident) is a clear indication to me that many in the Imperial Army did not want to surrender, even after the USA dropped both atomic bombs on Japan, and the decision to surrender had already been made by their government.
 
The USA did not need nuclear weapons to bomb Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki since the USA could have bombed these cities in the same way that the USA bombed several other Japanese cities.
 
bobtaftfan said:
Did We Need to Nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
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Ugh. This again. Look, my wife's Japanese so it's not as if I wouldn't have reason to speak out against the bombings, but it's just a fact that a lot of American troops would have died that didn't because they didn't need to invade the Japanese home islands. In fact, more Japanese would've died too, given that they probably would've armed the civilians to fight. This way, they broke their morale, which is probably the "cleanest" way to win a war.

So, no, they didn't need to. But it was the best possible outcome.
 
crescent said:
You are very condescending, but "not in agreement" means what means, typo or not.
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Sorry. but you are wrong. It is not condescension. We know the Japanese would have put up a stolid fight to the death. We have evidence to this fact. Hiroo Onada died in 2014, but not before he unleashed an autobiography of his 30 year non-war saga. The Japanese government had to locate his former commanding officer and fly him to the Phillipines to officially relieve Onada from his post before he would finally surrender IN WRITING. Japan was about to surrender? No they weren't.
 
abaddon said:
Nope. you frankly got caught in an abject error and are now attempting to save face.
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What are you talking about, man? Crescent said very clearly right off the bat that he didn't agree with the OP, but that your post misrepresented the OP because said OP claimed that the war would be over and that those millions of Japanese and Americans wouldn't die at all.

That's all he said. Can we get back to bashing the OP now?
 
Alrighty then. Could be I misconstrued a post or three. If so, I'll own it and apologise for wandering down the wrong trouser leg.

And I agree. Perhaps we should move right along with the meat of the topic.

ETA: Upon re-reading this reply, I suspect it might not appear as intended, but I chose to leave the original as is. I trust you understand my intent and not my fumble fingered words.
 
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May sound callous here, but if we didn't use them when we did, someone would have used more powerful ones later.

I think seeing the power in action may have sobered up the world.

Who knows what this turd in the office now will do though.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
General Anami was sure they could only have produced one bomb. They didn't know about plutonium.
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I think the point is that the argument is that they were ready to surrender. But they were given an ultimatum, and rejected it. Hiroshima was bombed, and they had a second opportunity to surrender, but they still didn't even after that horror.

All those facts undermine the initial argument because if the government were really "ready to surrender" they would have done so. The only reason to call the "bluff" of more such bombs, is if you planned to continue to fight.

Now that is what I think the point of the question you were responding to was. My own personal opinion is that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrible, and there are to many conflicting accounts of who knew what when for me to make any rational judgement as to whether they were in any way morally justifiable given the times. Projecting my own modern morality back, it was certainly a horrible war crime, made even more so by the after-effects on the survivors.
 
Fizil said:
I think the point is that the argument is that they were ready to surrender. But they were given an ultimatum, and rejected it. Hiroshima was bombed, and they had a second opportunity to surrender, but they still didn't even after that horror.

All those facts undermine the initial argument because if the government were really "ready to surrender" they would have done so. The only reason to call the "bluff" of more such bombs, is if you planned to continue to fight.

Now that is what I think the point of the question you were responding to was. My own personal opinion is that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrible, and there are to many conflicting accounts of who knew what when for me to make any rational judgement as to whether they were in any way morally justifiable given the times. Projecting my own modern morality back, it was certainly a horrible war crime, made even more so by the after-effects on the survivors.
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There were two factions within the Japanese War Cabinet.

The first faction favoured surrender, but wanted a mediated settlement (with USSR leader Stalin to be the mediator). They also wanted want to place conditions on that surrender, e.g. a they wanted the Emperor of Japan to remain a position of real power, in effect they wanted no change in Japan's system of government. Another condition they wanted, insisted on by General Anami, was that there was to be no occupation of Japan. Both of these conditions were rejected outright by the Allies... unconditional surrender was the bottom line, nothing else was acceptable

The second faction were the military hardliners, led by General Anami, who wanted to fight on with the intent of inflicting so many casualties on the Allies that they might offer more lenient terms.
 
Crossbow said:
The USA did not need nuclear weapons to bomb Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki since the USA could have bombed these cities in the same way that the USA bombed several other Japanese cities.
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Effectively destroying high-value military targets, such as headquarters of the Second General Army at Hiroshima, communication centers, etc. by means of conventional area bombing would have required a huge number of planes and bombs. It would have necessarily caused similar widespread destruction.

Once the allies were resolved to bomb Japanese cities as part of their strategy to defeat Japan, it made sense to do it as efficiently as possible. One plane, with one bomb, made a lot more sense than hundreds upon hundreds of planes, and tens of thousands of bombs.
 
bobtaftfan said:
In The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, Gar Alperovitz, a former research fellow at Harvard and King's College and a research scientist at the University of Maryland, makes a powerful case that the U.S. did not need to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that Truman and other senior officials knew that the Japanese were prepared to surrender weeks before Hiroshima.
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, in part, fueled by racism and the absolute failure to understand the Japanese people. At the same time, Japanese desire to take over the Pacific was fueled by their own racist views.

Had either side bothered to better understand the other, all sorts of terrible things might have been avoided.

Historically, the fact that some of the younger Japanese military leaders were ready to surrender doesn't change the fact that the hard-liners weren't. There was no way of knowing (absent a spy in the Japanese war room) which side would win out. American soldiers had actually witnessed Japanese women jumping to their deaths rather than surrender and the ferocity with which Japan defended the Pacific islands didn't exactly give anyone the opinion that an attack on Japan proper would be at all easy.

We still haven't learned these lessons. W. and his neo-cons had this blind belief that Iraqi people wanted American-style democracy despite the fact that they knew there were 3 major Iraqi sects who just hated each other.
 
theprestige said:
One plane, with one bomb, made a lot more sense than hundreds upon hundreds of planes, and tens of thousands of bombs.
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Not to mention the psychological impact that one plane, one bomb, city gone would have had on the Japanese.

If Japan had not surrendered by the 16th of August, there was a third bomb ready to be shipped out to Tinian Island to be dropped, probably on Kokura, Niigata or Tokyo, on the 19th of August, as this memo shows...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/20etvium2l7emm3/3rdBomb.pdf?dl=0

The US were able to produce a bomb about every 10 days if necessary.
 
The use of the atomic bombs was a means to a simple end: bring the war to an end as quickly as possible.

Had it gone on, it would have been another 250,000 American lives, at least a million Japanese lives, and the Russians sitting on more prime Japanese real estate than they already claim.

The claim that it was racism is an utter lie.
 
Personally I feel we should nuke them again in retaliation for Fukushima turning California into a lifeless wasteland.
 
smartcooky said:
Not to mention the psychological impact that one plane, one bomb, city gone would have had on the Japanese.

If Japan had not surrendered by the 16th of August, there was a third bomb ready to be shipped out to Tinian Island to be dropped, probably on Kokura, Niigata or Tokyo, on the 19th of August, as this memo shows...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/20etvium2l7emm3/3rdBomb.pdf?dl=0

The US were able to produce a bomb about every 10 days if necessary.
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What I find interesting about that memo is the attitude toward the possibility of a 3rd bomb being used to encourage surrender was considered unlikely and rather useless. If they weren't going to surrender after two bombs, they were considering that it would be preferable to stockpile for tactical usage instead of the strategic use the first two were put to.

Honestly I'm glad it never came to that. The long term collateral damage on both sides if the then ill-understood nuclear weapons were used in tactical operations would have been horrific.
 
@OP: I suggest getting hold of, say, copies of the International Herald Tribune from 1990-1995. You can then follow the little paragraph summary provided therein for news from 50 years earlier. Just by reading that blurb, a concentrated day-by-day-by-bloody-day account, one gets a much better feel for the real fatigue and numbing horror of that war, plus the attitudes and policies of the players. Much better than a history book that lacks this blow-by-blow feel. My take is that in that context, and with what was known at the time, yes, the bombs were the correct decision.
 
smartcooky said:
If Japan had not surrendered by the 16th of August, there was a third bomb ready to be shipped out to Tinian Island to be dropped, probably on Kokura, Niigata or Tokyo, on the 19th of August, as this memo shows...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/20etvium2l7emm3/3rdBomb.pdf?dl=0

The US were able to produce a bomb about every 10 days if necessary.
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Whatever the memo says, there is no way the US had the nuclear material to drop a bomb every ten days. Half of the stockpile we used for Fat Man and Little Boy were stolen from the Germans.
 
Loss Leader said:
Whatever the memo says, there is no way the US had the nuclear material to drop a bomb every ten days. Half of the stockpile we used for Fat Man and Little Boy were stolen from the Germans.
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What if the memo says that between the time work began and the time the first two bombs were used, production rates had ramped up to the point where additional bombs could be produced at the rate of one every ten days?
 
Loss Leader said:
Whatever the memo says, there is no way the US had the nuclear material to drop a bomb every ten days. Half of the stockpile we used for Fat Man and Little Boy were stolen from the Germans.
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Stolen from Germans ? Where you got that ? AFAIK Fat man was 100% US produced uranium, all there ever was produced by very low-yield enriching process.
Little boy was 100% US produced plutonium made in reactors, same plutonium was used in Trinity test and more was ready for new bombs. Not sure about 10 days per bomb, I heard something like 1 month for the next bomb, but the production capacity was increasing.
 
Loss Leader said:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, in part, fueled by racism and the absolute failure to understand the Japanese people.
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I'm sorry but could you expand on that? I have no idea what you mean by this.


Seems to me like they understood the Japanese pretty well, since their strategy worked. And I don't see what you mean by "racism" in this case.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Stolen from Germans ? Where you got that ? AFAIK Fat man was 100% US produced uranium, all there ever was produced by very low-yield enriching process.
Little boy was 100% US produced plutonium made in reactors, same plutonium was used in Trinity test and more was ready for new bombs. Not sure about 10 days per bomb, I heard something like 1 month for the next bomb, but the production capacity was increasing.
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German submarine U-234WP
 
Hlafordlaes said:
@OP: I suggest getting hold of, say, copies of the International Herald Tribune from 1990-1995. You can then follow the little paragraph summary provided therein for news from 50 years earlier. Just by reading that blurb, a concentrated day-by-day-by-bloody-day account, one gets a much better feel for the real fatigue and numbing horror of that war, plus the attitudes and policies of the players. Much better than a history book that lacks this blow-by-blow feel. My take is that in that context, and with what was known at the time, yes, the bombs were the correct decision.
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The OP hasn't been back since the original post. You might as well argue with your refrigerator.
 
Loss Leader said:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, in part, fueled by racism and the absolute failure to understand the Japanese people. At the same time, Japanese desire to take over the Pacific was fueled by their own racist views.

Had either side bothered to better understand the other, all sorts of terrible things might have been avoided.

Historically, the fact that some of the younger Japanese military leaders were ready to surrender doesn't change the fact that the hard-liners weren't. There was no way of knowing (absent a spy in the Japanese war room) which side would win out. American soldiers had actually witnessed Japanese women jumping to their deaths rather than surrender and the ferocity with which Japan defended the Pacific islands didn't exactly give anyone the opinion that an attack on Japan proper would be at all easy.

We still haven't learned these lessons. W. and his neo-cons had this blind belief that Iraqi people wanted American-style democracy despite the fact that they knew there were 3 major Iraqi sects who just hated each other.
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The bombing was necessary because we DID understand them
 
Given the OP's political views, I suspect if a Republican had won in 1944 and had given the order to drop the bomb,the OP would be posting how necessary and right it was.
 
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