[Jihsan]

The REAL Reason America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan

from Washingtonsblog.com, 10/16/2012
Atomic Weapons Were Not Needed to End the War or Save Lives

Like all Americans, I was taught that the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end WWII and save both American and Japanese lives.

But most of the top American military officials at the time said otherwise.

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that concluded (52-56):

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

General (and later president) Dwight Eisenhower – then Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces, and the officer who created most of America’s WWII military plans for Europe and Japan – said:

The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.
Newsweek, 11/11/63, Ike on Ike

Eisenhower also noted (pg. 380):

In [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude….

Admiral William Leahy – the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American military decisions in World War II – wrote (pg. 441):

It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.
General Douglas MacArthur agreed (pg. 65, 70-71):

MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed …. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.

Moreover (pg. 512):

The Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face ‘prompt and utter destruction.’ MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General’s advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary.

Similarly, Assistant Secretary of War John McLoy noted (pg. 500):

I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs.

Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bird said:

I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted.

***

In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn’t have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb.

War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.

He also noted (pg. 144-145, 324):

It definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn’t get any imports and they couldn’t export anything. Naturally, as time went on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would then be in a position to make peace, which would have made it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had to bring Russia in.

General Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force “hawk,” stated publicly shortly before the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan:

The war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.
The Vice Chairman of the U.S. Bombing Survey Paul Nitze wrote (pg. 36-37, 44-45):

[I] concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945.

***

Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for November 1, 1945] would have been necessary.

Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence Ellis Zacharias wrote:

Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia.
Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.
I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.

Ellis Zacharias, How We Bungled the Japanese Surrender, Look, 6/6/50, pg. 19-21.

Brigadier General Carter Clarke – the military intelligence officer in charge of preparing summaries of intercepted
Japanese cables for President Truman and his advisors – said (pg. 359):

When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.

Many other high-level military officers concurred. For example:

The commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was reported to have said in a press conference on September 22, 1945, that “The Admiral took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russia’s entry into the war.” In a subsequent speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.” It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s assessment was “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.” Eisenhower also stated that it wasn’t necessary for Truman to “succumb” to [the tiny handful of people putting pressure on the president to drop atom bombs on Japan.]
British officers were of the same mind. For example, General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, said to Prime Minister Churchill that “when Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.”
On hearing that the atomic test was successful, Ismay’s private reaction was one of “revulsion.”

Why Were Bombs Dropped on Populated Cities Without Military Value?

Even military officers who favored use of nuclear weapons mainly favored using them on unpopulated areas or Japanese military targets … not cities.

For example, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss proposed to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal that a non-lethal demonstration of atomic weapons would be enough to convince the Japanese to surrender … and the Navy Secretary agreed (pg. 145, 325):

I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. Primarily it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate… My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest… would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will… Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation…

It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world…

General George Marshall agreed:

Contemporary documents show that Marshall felt “these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave–telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers….”

As the document concerning Marshall’s views suggests, the question of whether the use of the atomic bomb was justified turns … on whether the bombs had to be used against a largely civilian target rather than a strictly military target—which, in fact, was the explicit choice since although there were Japanese troops in the cities, neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki was deemed militarily vital by U.S. planners. (This is one of the reasons neither had been heavily bombed up to this point in the war.) Moreover, targeting [at Hiroshima and Nagasaki] was aimed explicitly on non-military facilities surrounded by workers’ homes.

Historians Agree that the Bomb Wasn’t Needed

Historians agree that nuclear weapons did not need to be used to stop the war or save lives.
As historian Doug Long notes:

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission historian J. Samuel Walker has studied the history of research on the decision to use nuclear weapons on Japan. In his conclusion he writes, “The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisors knew it.” (J. Samuel Walker, The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update, Diplomatic History, Winter 1990, pg. 110).

Politicians Agreed

Many high-level politicians agreed. For example, Herbert Hoover said (pg. 142):

The Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945…up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; …if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs.

Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew noted (pg. 29-32):

In the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the [retention of the] dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the [Japanese] Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision.

If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer.

Why Then Were Atom Bombs Dropped on Japan?

If dropping nuclear bombs was unnecessary to end the war or to save lives, why was the decision to drop them made? Especially over the objections of so many top military and political figures?
One theory is that scientists like to play with their toys:

On September 9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, was publicly quoted extensively as stating that the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a “toy and they wanted to try it out . . . .” He further stated, “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment . . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it.”
However, most of the Manhattan Project scientists who developed the atom bomb were opposed to using it on Japan.

Albert Einstein – an important catalyst for the development of the atom bomb (but not directly connected with the Manhattan Project) – said differently:

“A great majority of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of the atom bomb.” In Einstein’s judgment, the dropping of the bomb was a political – diplomatic decision rather than a military or scientific decision.
Indeed, some of the Manhattan Project scientists wrote directly to the secretary of defense in 1945 to try to dissuade him from dropping the bomb:

We believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for an early, unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable. If the United States would be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race of armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.

Political and Social Problems, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 76, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 323-333).

The scientists questioned the ability of destroying Japanese cities with atomic bombs to bring surrender when destroying Japanese cities with conventional bombs had not done so, and – like some of the military officers quoted above – recommended a demonstration of the atomic bomb for Japan in an unpopulated area.

The Real Explanation?

History.com notes:
In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective …. It has been suggested that the second objective was to demonstrate the new weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union. By August 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had deteriorated badly. The Potsdam Conference between U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill (before being replaced by Clement Attlee) ended just four days before the bombing of Hiroshima. The meeting was marked by recriminations and suspicion between the Americans and Soviets. Russian armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe. Truman and many of his advisers hoped that the U.S. atomic monopoly might offer diplomatic leverage with the Soviets. In this fashion, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan can be seen as the first shot of the Cold War.

New Scientist reported in 2005:
The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.

Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.

“He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species,” says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, US. “It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity.”

***

[The conventional explanation of using the bombs to end the war and save lives] is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US.

***

New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman’s main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was “looking for peace”. Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

“Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan,” says Selden.

John Pilger points out:

The US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.

We’ll give the last word to University of Maryland professor of political economy – and former Legislative Director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and Special Assistant in the Department of State – Gar Alperovitz:

Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.

***

Instead [of allowing other options to end the war, such as letting the Soviets attack Japan with ground forces], the United States rushed to use two atomic bombs at almost exactly the time that an August 8 Soviet attack had originally been scheduled: Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. The timing itself has obviously raised questions among many historians. The available evidence, though not conclusive, strongly suggests that the atomic bombs may well have been used in part because American leaders “preferred”—as Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Martin Sherwin has put it—to end the war with the bombs rather than the Soviet attack. Impressing the Soviets during the early diplomatic sparring that ultimately became the Cold War also appears likely to have been a significant factor.

***

The most illuminating perspective, however, comes from top World War II American military leaders. The conventional wisdom that the atomic bomb saved a million lives is so widespread that … most Americans haven’t paused to ponder something rather striking to anyone seriously concerned with the issue: Not only did most top U.S. military leaders think the bombings were unnecessary and unjustified, many were morally offended by what they regarded as the unnecessary destruction of Japanese cities and what were essentially noncombat populations. Moreover, they spoke about it quite openly and publicly.

***

Shortly before his death General George C. Marshall quietly defended the decision, but for the most part he is on record as repeatedly saying that it was not a military decision, but rather a political one.

Source

===============

Wow! this should turn out to be a big thread? Unless I'm too late for the party? (I haven't been reading much into WWII on this forum)
Is there any credibility in this story?

[Rei Murasame]

You are very late to the party. This topic has been up and about for years now.

[Jihsan]

You are very late to the party. This topic has been up and about for years now.

I was taught that the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end WWII and save both American and Japanese lives.

Oh, I'm sad I always wondered how one could "save lives" by nuking them?

[Malatant of Shadow]

You are very late to the party. This topic has been up and about for years now.

Late is definitely better than never.

[Rei Murasame]

Oh, I'm sad I always wondered how one could "save lives" by nuking them?

It's an American liberal post-hoc justification, since liberals are never able to just straight-out admit that they need to slaughter their opponents in order to get what they want. It's similar to how in Vietnam they did the Mai Lai incident and then absurdly said, "we had to destroy the village in order to save it".

They are always like that. They basically did the same thing in Iraq as well, destroyed half the country and then called that 'saving' it. They would always try to find a way to spin it.

It's good that someone is exposing this in a newspaper now, though.

Late is definitely better than never.

True, it may be a good thing that they've run this story now, since it is so often overlooked.

[Kman]

I already knew about this, still a disgusting act of realpolitik or pragmatic politics with no respect whatsoever for the people you are murdering, to these loons in the political system they are just chess pieces being knocked off the table.

[Xbow]

It's an American liberal post-hoc justification, since liberals are never able to just straight-out admit that they need to slaughter their opponents in order to get what they want. It's similar to how in Vietnam they did the Mai Lai incident and then absurdly said, "we had to destroy the village in order to save it".

They are always like that. They basically did the same thing in Iraq as well, destroyed half the country and then called that 'saving' it. They would always try to find a way to spin it.

It's good that someone is exposing this in a newspaper now, though.

But we did save the North Vietnamese from thinking they could walk out of the Paris peace talks with 1200 B52 sorties over Hanoi and Haiphong that delivered 24 thousand tons of High Explosive Peace Proposals on those two cities from 18–29 December 1972. In any case the North Vietnamese did come back to the Pace talks with a whole new attitude. Those were the kind of raids the USA should have started against the North Vietnamese in 1965 if indeed we were serious...which we were not. It seems clear to me that Vietnam was essentially a feeding program for the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

Remember this Rei, "The war is never meant to be won Winston it is only meant to be continuous."

But let us not forget the North Vietnamese & VietCong Massacre at Hue But that's just one. In truth the NVA & VC were far better at the murder of innocents and civilians in that war than the USA. The NVA/VC forces murdered between 106,000 and 227,000 civilians between 1954 and 1975 in South Vietnam. VC/NVA use of terror

I don't like it when the other kids on the playground don't get the credit they deserve...its just not fair!

[skeptic-1]

Regarles of reasons Japan did a sneak attack on the U.S. and prior to that invaded China committing all sorts of war crimes.

We had just contained Okinawa with some of the most devastating losses of any invasion and sat massed waiting for orders for the invasion of Japan that promised even greater losses. he Japanese were still active attacking our fleet via torpedos and what Kamikazes still remained. Had it not been for the absence of our sleeping crew due to the hour except those on watch(myself and a buddy) and the pilots decision about 50-100 feet away we two were not worth his life, to pick another target killing 200-300 hundred on that ship or we would have perished.

I don't know if I could have dropped the bomb and be responsible for the devastation but how many more american lives should be "gambled" on when hostilities would cease. We gave them what they also dished out except ours (In spades) I was lucky ! :-)

[Sithsaber]

That and the fact that Japan had a hard time surrendering even after the first nuking due to the crazy bushido code in play there. Will pull up the glory days history channel documentary on the failed cou against the emperor before he surrendered. (yes there was a time that history channel was respectable, right before they started the apocrypha 2 special)

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

That and the fact that Japan had a hard time surrendering even after the first nuking due to the crazy bushido code in play there. Will pull up the glory days history channel documentary on the failed cou against the emperor before he surrendered. (yes there was a time that history channel was respectable, right before they started the apocrypha 2 special)

Exactly that concerning the surrender. According to documentaries and books I've read concerning the end of the war in Japan, the consensus is that the Japanese were internally considering the possibility of surrender, but not unconditional surrender. To my knowledge, the historical record stands that the Japanese refused to accept the Allies' ultimatum for an unconditional surrender. As far as I know, they refused via a refusal to even acknowledge the demand, simply ignoring it.

The facts are that the battles in the Pacific were very bloody and the Japanese often fought to the last man. The civilians were told to commit suicide and to murder their own children because the Americans would rape and slaughter them all. The Western Allies were planning for an invasion of Japan in November as planned in Operation Olympic. This would be in tandem with a Soviet invasion of northern Japan. We were projecting Western Allied fatalities in excess of 1 million dead, on our side. Anyone naive enough to think this wouldn't have meant millions, or even over ten million Japanese fatalities, is just stupid. Japan would've been in far greater ruin than it was after 2 atomic bombings and conventional bombings of the home islands.

I still find it amazing that there are some people who think the roughly 300,000-400,000 Japanese killed in two atomic bombings would have been worse than all the Japanese military and civilian casualties and Allied/Soviet casualties in the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, and who think that a ground invasion of Japan would have somehow been less bloody and somehow not led to Japan being turned into ruins on the scale of post-war Berlin.

Even after 1 atom bomb being dropped on Japan, the Japanese leadership still refused to accept unconditional surrender. How the fuck would a ground invasion involving millions of troops, civilian population centers, entire cities flatted and then a post-war split between a Northern Japan backed by the Soviets and a Southern Japan backed by the Allies, leading to yet another Cold War split, been better than 2 bombs? Being rhetorical there but some people really amaze me.

[Rainbow Crow]

A blog as a source that cites another blog and colors text without any links is not very convincing.

I think Bulaba has put it well.

[fuser]

I don't know if I could have dropped the bomb and be responsible for the devastation but how many more american lives should be "gambled"

How about soviet lives? Also Japan was ready to surrender (specially after August Storm), their only wish was to keep their King, but allies were hell bent on getting an "unconditional surrender" not to mention that later Japan was allowed to keep their "emperor" anyway.

[layman]

Aww Boo hoo

'They had it comming' doesnt quite cut it here.

[feihua]

There is much more to consider.

The US Armed Forces were at odds against each other during the last part of the war. Where to place bases regarding the invasion of Japan created division within the forces and the planned invasion through Kyushu would have been bogged down to tremendous length in addition to the split between the US Navy and Army.

Despite the losses, the Japanese found the kamikaze program to allow a satisfactory kill rate of 2 to 1 for the expenditure. There was intent to follow this numbers game on the ground, gaining time on the Japanese side during the fighting on Kyushu, to increase forces which could return to a reasonable acceptable level at the point it was predicted for Allied forces to finally reach open field on the northern portion of Kyushu. Provided the time predicted for the assault on Kyushu to be completed, Japan felt the 2 to 1 ratio in remaining forces could be achieved to give them a reasonable chance at final victory, even if it was only close to a relative stalemate.

Although Japan had dwindling numbers, once the fighting could be introduced upon their main four islands, they had their POW camps at their disposal for increased labor regarding the defense. While the conscription of the civilians, down to the age of 12 for males, and not much higher for females, would intensify in training, the POWs would build bunkers and other defense positions along the middle ridge of the mountains covering the valleys the Allied forces would enter. This maneuver would cause even greater casualties than had been experienced in Okinawa and hopefully cause greater division between the US Navy and Army.

As Marshall correctly points out, the decision was political rather than military. What was in agreement with the US was that it was not necessary to air their own dirty laundry to the public regarding the division between the Navy and the Army.

Had the US forces been able to achieve an honest unified decision regarding the placement of bases, they could have made a better choice of where to land on the islands besides Kyushu which would have created a swifter invasion. As it was, they were going to be bogged down in the valleys. To this day, ground transportation in that area is laborious compared not only to what is common for us worldwide but what is common to the rest of Japan.

[Thunderhawk]

If Japan didn't get defeated by overwhelming force, be it nuclear weapons or ground invasion, could their culture have developed an indignant and revanchist attitude like Germany did after WW1 ?
Might the use of Nuclear weapons have been about not saving lives per se, but about hitting Japan so hard that the whole people knew they were defeated militarily and no claims of 'if only.. we were betrayed.. etc..' could be levied by later generations?

[Jihsan]

I still find it amazing that there are some people who think the roughly 300,000-400,000 Japanese killed in two atomic bombings would have been worse than all the Japanese military and civilian casualties and Allied/Soviet casualties in the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, and who think that a ground invasion of Japan would have somehow been less bloody and somehow not led to Japan being turned into ruins on the scale of post-war Berlin.

I thought this thread had died...

The justifications by some are just mind-boggling. Justifying a mass murder of people "A" on the presumption that a "lot worse" atrocity could have occurred by people "B", entirely based on teachings of biased and misleading history. This is simply conjecture. Using this type of logic.... all family members and the children of mass murderers and rapists serving life sentence in prison should be rounded up and killed because, obviously the criminals dangerous genetics could have passed on to his off-springs and if they also become criminals a lot more people will die.

Analogy:

It is very likely the United States or Israel will be the ones in future to use Weapons of Mass Destruction's on a country that is defenseless or a country that has much weaker military power then them. Therefore from this we can conclude that Millions of innocent people will have died. Based on this likely scenario, should the world not unite and destroy all US and/or Israels nuclear bases? only a few millions Americans will have died but look on the bright side; we'd have saved many millions of other people in very near future?

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

I thought this thread had died...

I think you're confused: I posted that a week ago after the thread was necromanced. You're just late to the party.

The justifications by some are just mind-boggling. Justifying a mass murder of people "A" on the presumption that a "lot worse" atrocity could have occurred by people "B", entirely based on teachings of biased and misleading history. This is simply conjecture. Using this type of logic.... all family members and the children of mass murderers and rapists serving life sentence in prison should be rounded up and killed because, obviously the criminals dangerous genetics could have passed on to his off-springs and if they also become criminals a lot more people will die.

We were at war. The Japanese had tried to create an empire throughout Asia. Over the years they lost most of it. They ended up being isolated to Manchuria/Korea/the Home Islands. In November of 1945 we were planning on carrying out an invasion of Japan in tandem with Soviet forces. We projected casualties into the millions, including fatalities in excess of one million non-Soviet Allied soldiers. This figure didn't include Soviets who would die in their invasion of northern Japan, and it didn't include the civilians who would be killed in Japan as urban combat would leave Japan in absolute ruin and desolation. Their infrastructure would have been completely wiped out in a conventional ground war on their home soil. Mass starvation and homelessness would have been the norm. Japan would have been completely in ruins and separated between the US and the USSR. The loss of life in a ground invasion of Japan, on all sides, would have been staggering.

The decision was made, for many reasons, in light of Japan's refusal to accept an unconditional surrender, to drop the first bomb. The Japanese leadership still refused to accept the ultimatum agreed upon by all the Allies, including the Soviets. It took a second bomb to force it.

If it took two atomic bombings to force an unconditional surrender, does it not make sense that it would have taken massive destruction all across Japan as the result of a conventional ground war to force the same thing?

The war ended in August of 1945 rather than some date in 1946 and with most of Japan's cities in complete ruins, with millions upon millions dead, and the entire infrastructure of the country, and means to feed the people, left in ruins.

War sucks, Jihsan. I completely agree with you on that. But in light of the destruction and casualties a ground invasion of Japan would have entailed, 300,000 dead to millions, even tens of millions on both sides dead, was the lesser of two evils. Don't get me wrong: war is hell. Unlike some posters on this forum I don't think war is cool and I don't think killing scores of people is acceptable. In war though, sometimes hard decisions have to be made to end the war quickly and even to take into account the civilian casualties on the enemy side, and to try and minimize that loss. I would much rather have seen a WWII where the atomic bombings weren't necessary, where Japan accepted unconditional surrender when it was offered, and where other things like the Nazi-led Holocaust and the unspeakable atrocities against people throughout Asia the Japanese were guilty of were far less systematic or simply never happened.

So please don't misinterpret me saying that the atom bombs being the right decision is a result of me having a hardon for war and death and explosions. It's simply that when I weigh the available choices and alternatives, one seems infinitely better than the other, ironically more humane. The thing about WWII is that both sides are guilty of atrocities, but it is the Axis as well as the Soviets who institutionalized war crimes rather than war crimes being an exception to the rule. Bombing and killing civilians became normal practice on both sides, and people hardly shed tears when German civilians or Japanese civilians were being killed indiscriminately as we targeted populated civilian areas, no more or less so than people in both of those countries felt when they knew about their country causing the death of their fellow European and Asian brothers.

Ultimately, war sucks and war is hell, and I don't like any of it. I just try to make sense of what happened and I don't feel that the decision to use atomic bombs was evil.

It is very likely the United States or Israel will be the ones in future to use Weapons of Mass Destruction's on a country that is defenseless or a country that has much weaker military power then them. Therefore from this we can conclude that Millions of innocent people will have died. Based on this likely scenario, should the world not unite and destroy all US and/or Israels nuclear bases? only a few millions Americans will have died but look on the bright side; we'd have saved many millions of other people in very near future?

We already do use weapons of mass destruction on people. We used chemical weapons in Vietnam and I'm vaguely familiar with reports of possible chemical weapons used in Korea by us during the Korean War. Israel has been using that white phosphorus stuff against Palestinian civilians because technically it's not considered a chemical weapon although its weaponization and effects clearly make it a chemical weapon. About Vietnam, I think one of the most famous widespread cases of the use of chemical weapons in human history has been Agent Orange. The reason it's so notorious and famous is partly because of the politicization of knowledge of Agent Orange, and also American apathy towards us using it on civilian targets.

I just wanted to clear that up because I got the impression that you think because I think the atomic bombings of Japan was a better choice than a ground war that I'm an apologist for everything America does and that couldn't be more wrong. Whether that's what you're implying, I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not blind to what America has been doing to the rest of the world nor what the Israelis are doing in the name of security.

[feihua]

Jihsan, attitudes were much different 70 years ago as attitudes were much different than 70 years before that.

Had there been some bizarre ability to use an atomic weapon in 1875, it would be unlikely one would have been used in 1945. As well, it would be unlikely even World War I would have taken place.

The justifications and arguments pertain to what was happening in 1945. They do not pertain to what exists in 2013.

Japan did not care how many died. Japan cared about winning. The numbers of dead would have been greater.

Conscription of 12 year old males, armed with sharpened bamboo sticks, was a fact. That was going to be tested. Female teenagers were not given much leeway.

If those millions were innocent before the bombings, they were not going to be innocent without the bombings and a ground war: Japan was intent on them being part of the fighting.

The sad part is that something as stupid as weather conditions decided the target. Chaos sucks.

If the USA or other countries still kept the same attitudes, technology like FLIR would be completely unnecessary. The US would not have bombed only the Chinese Embassy in the 1990s, it would have bombed the entire city.

Yes, the atomic bombings suck. Yes, a lot of innocent people died. It taught the world more about containment than the world previously knew.

Japan was not interested in keeping people innocent, not at that time. One had to be below the age of 12 to be innocent, or the war had to be kept from reaching the four islands. The war wasn't kept from reaching the four islands. It reached Kyushu and Honshu with a massive force and one that was over, quickly.

Had Honshu not been reached with such force, the numbers of those lost with just the bottom half of Kyushu would have dwarfed the numbers lost in reality.

There were POW bases on Kyushu full of prisoners which were going to build bunkers midway up the mountainside and once completed, those prisoners were going to be exterminated. That Is A Fact. I can provide pictures of bunkers that exist to this day, bunkers that were thankfully never used.

I lived ten minutes from one of those locations. I have listened to stories from geriatric students of the mountains being lit up with fire to get rid of the brush for the creation of those bunkers. They were children. They were instructed to gather bamboo poles to create as sharpened spears. It was not their want but they were instructed. They were scared shitless of not only the US but their own government.

Those Japanese on Kyushu who were in the way of the coming invasion have varying views of whether the bombings were justified. They split rather evenly on the justification.

Life sucks. It isn't 1945 and there are those of us thankful it is not. Life does not suck as bad as it used to. Accountability and containment command a great more deal of respect.






EDIOT:

More civilians were killed in the Battle of Okinawa than the bombing of Hiroshima.

Hiroshima losses have been stated in the area of 140,000.

Okinawa prefecture states civilian losses over 100,000. US figures claim 142,058 civilian casualties.

Operation Downfall shows the attack map as it was intended.



Click on this link, you can get a better view: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _-_Map.jpg

Today, there is a major highway that goes from the insertion point to Fukuoka. Despite the size of the island being little more than the size of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex, today it takes five hours to get from Kagoshima to Fukuoka driving top speed on the tollway. That is how mountainous the terrain can be.

Kagoshima would have been a hell hole for ALL involved. Nagasaki would have been a hell hole for ALL involved. Miyazaki would have been a hell hole for ALL involved. Kumamoto would have been a hell hole for ALL involved. And then the real fighting would get underway in Kurume (my current Japanese residence and the home of the Bridgestone factories) and then really escalate in Fukuoka and Kokura (the first intended atomic target, now known as Kita-Kyushu) before progressing to Honshu and Shimogaseki and Hiroshima before it could proceed to Okayama where it would finally meet up with forces from across Shikoku with Kyoto and Osaka as the next targets.

The Japanese Navy was no longer needed. The delay would be enough to create more planes on the eastern parts of Honshu.

US armed forces did not have a plan for the invasion of the Kanto plain outside of Tokyo until Spring 1946 with Operation Coronet.

Operation Downfall was the codename for the Allied plan for the invasion of Japan near the end of World War II. The planned operation was abandoned when Japan surrendered following the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The operation had two parts: Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet. Set to begin in October 1945, Operation Olympic was intended to capture the southern third of the southernmost main Japanese island, Kyūshū, with the recently captured island of Okinawa to be used as a staging area. Later, in spring 1946, Operation Coronet was the planned invasion of the Kantō Plain, near Tokyo, on the Japanese island of Honshū. Airbases on Kyūshū captured in Operation Olympic would allow land-based air support for Operation Coronet.

Japan's geography made this invasion plan quite obvious to the Japanese as well; they were able to predict the Allied invasion plans accurately and thus adjust their defensive plan, Operation Ketsugō, accordingly. The Japanese planned an all-out defense of Kyūshū, with little left in reserve for any subsequent defense operations. Casualty predictions varied widely but were extremely high for both sides: depending on the degree to which Japanese civilians resisted the invasion, estimates ran into the millions for Allied casualties[1] and several times that number for total Japanese casualties.[citation needed]

If Downfall had taken place, it would have been the largest amphibious operation in human history.[2]

On the above map, I lived in the Sixteenth Area. Bunkers for the invasion already existed. You can see the limit of advance is very short and the date of the invasion is November 1945. The POWs in the Sixteenth Area were already being worked to the bone in the summer of 1945.

[Jihsan]

We were at war. The Japanese had tried to create an empire throughout Asia.
They ended up being isolated to Manchuria/Korea/the Home Islands. In November of 1945 we were planning on carrying out an invasion of Japan in tandem with Soviet forces. We projected casualties into the millions, including fatalities in excess of one million non-Soviet Allied soldiers. This figure didn't include Soviets who would die in their invasion of northern Japan, and it didn't include the civilians who would be killed in Japan as urban combat would leave Japan in absolute ruin and desolation. Their infrastructure would have been completely wiped out in a conventional ground war on their home soil. Mass starvation and homelessness would have been the norm. Japan would have been completely in ruins and separated between the US and the USSR. The loss of life in a ground invasion of Japan, on all sides, would have been staggering.

In my opinion this still does not in any way justify using Atomic Bombings on Japan. Worrying about the staggering loss of life (sympathy) of their enemy would have been the last thing on the minds of U.S leaders/service men. Hence, U.S soldiers use of rape as a weapon.

The decision was made, for many reasons, in light of Japan's refusal to accept an unconditional surrender, to drop the first bomb. The Japanese leadership still refused to accept the ultimatum agreed upon by all the Allies, including the Soviets. It took a second bomb to force it.

Everyone seem to have ignored sources in O.P clearly stating reasons why Japan would have surrendered. We should not ignore relevant facts from credible sources. Please re-read the post.

If it took two atomic bombings to force an unconditional surrender, does it not make sense that it would have taken massive destruction all across Japan as the result of a conventional ground war to force the same thing?

No the main reason which comes to most peoples mind is to save American lives, which again helps support my assertion that U.S would not have cared about how many Japanese die.

The war ended in August of 1945 rather than some date in 1946 and with most of Japan's cities in complete ruins, with millions upon millions dead, and the entire infrastructure of the country, and means to feed the people, left in ruins.

A devastating result as you've agreed... so what makes you think the lives of Japanese you original wanted to "save" would have enjoyed living in such horrible conditions?

War sucks, Jihsan. I completely agree with you on that.

Great, we agree on something

But in light of the destruction and casualties a ground invasion of Japan would have entailed, 300,000 dead to millions, even tens of millions on both sides dead, was the lesser of two evils. Don't get me wrong: war is hell. Unlike some posters on this forum I don't think war is cool and I don't think killing scores of people is acceptable. In war though, sometimes hard decisions have to be made to end the war quickly and even to take into account the civilian casualties on the enemy side, and to try and minimize that loss. I would much rather have seen a WWII where the atomic bombings weren't necessary, where Japan accepted unconditional surrender when it was offered, and where other things like the Nazi-led Holocaust and the unspeakable atrocities against people throughout Asia the Japanese were guilty of were far less systematic or simply never happened.

I would have partly agreed if WWII itself was not avoidable. Hitler could have been stopped in the early 1930's and even in 1940's most "civilized" nations turned a blind eye. U.S was solely in it to show their Might and secure their Word Power Status. That in itself is a wicked, self righteous ideology.

So please don't misinterpret me saying that the atom bombs being the right decision is a result of me having a hardon for war and death and explosions. It's simply that when I weigh the available choices and alternatives, one seems infinitely better than the other, ironically more humane. The thing about WWII is that both sides are guilty of atrocities, but it is the Axis as well as the Soviets who institutionalized war crimes rather than war crimes being an exception to the rule. Bombing and killing civilians became normal practice on both sides, and people hardly shed tears when German civilians or Japanese civilians were being killed indiscriminately as we targeted populated civilian areas, no more or less so than people in both of those countries felt when they knew about their country causing the death of their fellow European and Asian brothers.

Can't disagree here, all sounds very reasonable.

Ultimately, war sucks and war is hell, and I don't like any of it. I just try to make sense of what happened and I don't feel that the decision to use atomic bombs was evil.

I believe it was evil and set a precedent for future U.S war President to act it out without retribution. They may even justify the use of biological weapons which can specifically target a people of ethnic genome. Atrocities in future can only get worse, if good people try to justify atrocities of past.

We already do use weapons of mass destruction on people. We used chemical weapons in Vietnam and I'm vaguely familiar with reports of possible chemical weapons used in Korea by us during the Korean War. Israel has been using that white phosphorus stuff against Palestinian civilians because technically it's not considered a chemical weapon although its weaponization and effects clearly make it a chemical weapon. About Vietnam, I think one of the most famous widespread cases of the use of chemical weapons in human history has been Agent Orange. The reason it's so notorious and famous is partly because of the politicization of knowledge of Agent Orange, and also American apathy towards us using it on civilian targets.

Yeah I know this, as I said it will only get worse.

I just wanted to clear that up because I got the impression that you think because I think the atomic bombings of Japan was a better choice than a ground war that I'm an apologist for everything America does and that couldn't be more wrong. Whether that's what you're implying, I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not blind to what America has been doing to the rest of the world nor what the Israelis are doing in the name of security.

No, you do seem like a very reasonable person but I suppose peoples views will always differ. At the end of the day, opinion is always biased to support claims of people with similar culture and society. All people are different and would ideally wish to further their own cause, regardless of it being viewed right or wrong.

[feihua]

Everyone seem to have ignored sources in O.P clearly stating reasons why Japan would have surrendered. We should not ignore relevant facts from credible sources. Please re-read the post.

The OP [redacted - SD] who cannot see the pitfalls in their own agenda before typing.

http://femalefaust.blogspot.co.uk/2012/ ... clear.html is the OP.

It wasn't ignored. It just wasn't worth taking seriously.

She does highlight the conflicts and the bitching between the branches of the US Armed Forces. Yet, it does not appear you have taken the resulting post's information and balanced it against the OP.

Here's another headline from the same author of the OP:

Japanese Police, Coast Guard, Hold "Drill" At Fukushima "To Prepare For A Possible Terrorist Attack" DON'T YOU FEEL SAFER NOW?

[youtube]JvQf0oHFMFg[/youtube]
It is fiction but it is representative. The OP is the one who ignores this.