A (perhaps dumb) question about dropping the bomb on Hiroshima

[cali]

and Nagasaki. Ok, DUers knowledgable about the Pacific Theatre and the dropping of the atom bomb, help me out here.

I've always wondered why the U.S. couldn't have done a "demonstration", or whatever you want to call it, off the coast of Japan, and then said, if you don't surrender we'll use it on one of your cities. Is that a ridiculous thought? Also, after they detonated "Little Boy" over Hiroshima, what was the rationale for dropping "Fat Man" on Nagasaki, a few days later?

Thanks for your responses.

[Az]

1. Its what I would have done

I have mixed feelings regarding the dropping of the bombs. I honestly don't think it was the right thing to do but I understand why they thought it may have been. Negotiations were not really an option when you are dealing with someone that believes they are the embodiement of the people (kami sometimes refered to as god but not quite the same thing).

But it would definately have been humane to have demonstrated to the world just what we could do on some dirt rather than on people. The point of dropping the bombs was to demoralize the people. You can't demoralize dead people.

[Kelly Rupert]

2. We destroyed Nagasaki because

they hadn't unconditionally surrendered yet. The Potsdam declaration stated that we would "utterly destroy" the Japanese homeland until we received an unconditional surrender. Hiroshima is bombed. No unconditional surrender is offered. Nagasaki is bombed. An unconditional surrender is forthcoming.

The rationale for not simply doing a demonstration is that the Japanese with their samurai mentality would have just stuck their chin up and said "bring it on." We needed to make it immediately, shockingly, unconditionally, impossibly clear that their choices were immediate unconditional surrender or utter annihilation. After the Hiroshima bombing, the lack of an unconditional surrender indicated they still believed they had a chance to negotiate some kind of surrender agreement. Nagasaki was a rather forceful denial of this proposition.

[Az]

4. That is the rationalization used

But I have to agree with the OP. No one had ever seen anything like the bomb. It was literally earth shattering in its scale. I am very familiar with Japanese culture and I do not think the samurai mentality would mistake the detonation of a nuke as something to stick their chin up at.

But of course all such considerations have the benefit of hindsight.

[Kelly Rupert]

7. Tell the truth, if I were Truman I wouldn't have risked a demonstration.

Because while I'd think they'd probably surrender, I'd also think it would probably be a conditional surrender, which would have been completely unacceptable--and then where would we be, since we had no more left? I think the only way to assure an unconditional surrender was to demonstrate on Japanese cities, as horrific and appalling as those actions were.

[Bassic]

48. I think hindsight is the key word.

The battle to take over the island o Iwo Jima clearly showed to the Americans that the Japanese simply do not give up and to what extents they were prepared to take the fight. And that was in an uninhabited island. They used the bomb in a desperate effort to avoid something like that. Whether that was a good choice or not is still being debated, but I should think that it did save a lot of lives in the long run, even though it was a horrendous tragedy.

I still think the Nagasaki one was unnecessary though.

[Zhade]

30. "Japanese with their samurai mentality would have just stuck their chin up and said "bring it on"

Of course, there's no way to KNOW that's what would have happened. I hope you are intellectually honest enough to recognize that.

[Bassic]

49. The behaviour of Japanese soldiers is quite well documented and the battle of Iwo Jima

confirmed that they were not ones to give up or surrender. Even though we don't specifically know what they would have done had they fought in the country itself, it is more than reasonable to assume that they would have adopted a "bring it on" attitude right up until they saw exactly what that bomb could do.

There's no way to know for sure, you're right, but knowing what we know about Japanese soldier's resolve, the Americans had to make a very hard decision. As I said up-thread, it was a horrible tragedy, but it did end the war without turning all of Japan into one big blood bath.

[rinsd]

58. I think the fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa gives some credence to it (nt)

[Kelly Rupert]

65. Of course there's no way to absolutely know,

but given the way the Japanese had fought the war so far--considering Okinawa, Iwo Jima, and kamikaze attacks--it was a pretty damn good guess.

[slor]

3. I have often wondered about that too...

and I do not think anyone knows how the Japanese would have responded to a demonstration. What I do know is that Operation Downfall, the name of the planned invasion of Japan, was projected to result in the deaths of millions.

[Kelly Rupert]

5. Certainly so.

Another important point to remember with the "demonstration" theory is that we only had two bombs at the moment. If the demonstration didn't get us a complete unconditional surrender, we would have been in a rather awkward position, being completely spent.

[Zhade]

31. Well, one dropped as a demonstration would have left one in reserve.

(Of course, at this point conscience dictates that I point out that nuking civilians was a form of collective punishment, which is a form of terrorism itself.)

[One_Life_To_Give]

81. Compared to firebombing Tokyo?

It's shocking yes. But compared to the results of a single nightsd massed B-29 raid. Dead is Dead and destroying buildings at a few thousand degrees or a few tens of thousand degrees in hours or seconds is kind of academic.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

6. I'm not sure how I feel about man made karma.. n/t

[DaveinMD]

8. we only had two bombs

and they didn't know it would work.

[doublethink]

9. "The Fog Of War"

Rent it sometime on DVD. Among certain points ..... 50% of Japans city's were already in flames, firebombed. And also some people 'reason' that the Atom bombs were dropped on Japan to send a warning to the Soviets .... Anyway I woulda tried a 'demonstration' yea that's what I would of done. May those things never be dropped on ANYONE again, ever. Peace.

[Mojorabbit]

19. Looks like one came close to exploding in texas last year

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2940062&mesg_id=2940129

[Minnesota_Lib]

24. deleted - replied to wrong post

[sweetheart]

46. Yes indeed, given the circumstances

... i can understand the hiroshima detonation, as 'enemy' might believe that
unless dropped in anger, something about the new weapon was not ready.

But the nagasaki detonation... that one is inexcusable.

The president now think's he's truman, oh dear!

[5X]

10. Some pertinent quotes:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

Admiral William D. Leahy
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)

"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."

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE
(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)

"...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."

Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.

[jbonkowski]

11. There were two types of bombs

I won't get technical on the types, but they wanted to test both bomb designs.

I don't buy that the Japanese only surrendered after the second bomb, and that a second one was necessary to get the unconditional surrender. We turned a deaf ear to any surrender until we field tested the second bomb design.

jim

[stansnark]

33. the second bomb had already been tested

at the trinity site in new mexico. the first bomb was not tested because they knew it would work.

[aka-chmeee]

12. I just don't see it.

Yeah, the Japanese demonstrated throughout the Asian and Pacific theatres by their enlightened and civilized administration of conquered civilians and military that they were worthy of all the handwringing and lamentations over the use of atomic weapons.:sarcasm:

[Kelly Rupert]

14. Hey, if Nanjing didn't want it

she shouldn't have tarted herself up like that.

[Rabrrrrrr]

28. Bullshit.

One of the dumbest fucking things I've ever heard on DU.

Enjoy your (hate-based asinine) stay, unless you are willing to use your same fucked-up toddler-mentality "reasoning" on the CURRENT US, Britain, France, Germany, and many other countries.

:eyes:

Ass.

[TomInTib]

13. A direct kick to the crotch will get the enemy's attention a lot quicker

than sending him a video of you kicking a dummy.

The Bigger Hammer Theory

[Az]

15. People survive a kick to the crotch

They don't tend to survive having the air around them being raised to the temp of the sun.

[Cleita]

16. USA had a problem with negotiating back then IMHO as long

as they could present a strong and undefeatable image. Also, they could have dropped the bomb on Germany, but those were European people like us and I guess they decided not to. I think a lot of it was very racist. I know. I lived back then, even though I was a little kid. The word jap was widely used and the slant-eyed jokes very prevalent.

Yet, we were able to bring the Marshall plan to both enemies and help them recover from the war. It seems we don't have the same humanity this time.

[stansnark]

34. germany surrendered before the bomb was ready

[Cleita]

37. Germany surrendered before Japan did, but not because

the bomb wasn't ready. The bomb was ready before then, however, the allies decided to conquer Germany the old fashioned way. They didn't care to do so with Japan. There is some mixed up intelligence that Japan had surrendered before we dropped the bomb, but we did so anyway. Historians I guess have yet to come to a conclusion about this.

[Oeditpus Rex]

42. Uh... what?

The world's first nuclear weapon was detonated on July 16, 1945 in the "Trinity" test, more than two months after Germany surrendered to the Allies.

[rinsd]

60. Yup

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_site

[TheWraith]

76. All that is completely untrue.

For starters, the A-bomb wasn't finished until two months after Germany surrendered. Second, it's completely untrue that Japan surrendered before the bomb was used. They didn't even offer an unconditional surrender until after the second bombing, and even then, there was an attempted military coup to prevent the surrender order from being broadcast.

[tritsofme]

35. I think that was part of it

But part of it also has to be the logistics of dropping a nuclear weapon in continental Europe. Fallout would spread much more easily to Allied and neutral countries if a bomb was dropped in Germany.

[melm00se]

79. In Europe,

the US has significant help, militarily from the Soviets, British and French. There was a second front actively pressing Germany and steady land campaign was feasible, With the Pacific theatre, while the USA had help in the form of the Aussies and NZ, the USA was pretty much on it's own.

Now, couple that with the estimated 1,000,000+ casualties (american only, I have seen Japanese casualty estimates running in the 10-14 million range, both civilian and military), destroying 2 cities and killing 200,000 - 300,000 (immediate deaths) seems like a "good" choice (in reality the best choice from a range of shitty options).

[Javaman]

82. Bluto: Over? Did you say "over"?

Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

Otter: Germans?

Boon: Forget it, he's rolling.

[pitohui]

95. whoa, got your timing wrong, germany had already surrendered

the bombs were dropped in august, the war in europe had been over for months

[Warpy]

17. The military "thinkers" wanted to see what the bomb would do

to a city, so they picked two pristine targets, cities that hadn't been bombed with conventional weapons because they were NOT MILITARY TARGETS.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the two such cities.

Most people know we needed some sort of demonstration to convince Tojo he was toast. It's the choice of the targets that has stuck in our craws all these years.

The men who unleashed that horror on a purely civilian population just to see what it would do to them are beneath contempt.

[Oeditpus Rex]

43. A slight edit:

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were two of the selected target cities. Nagasaki was not one of the original targets (Hiroshima, Kokura, Kyoto and Yokohama). Secretary of War Henry Stimson ordered Kyoto stricken from the list as it was Japan's cultural and spiritual center; a historian said bombing it would've been the equivalent of the Germans bombing Bethlehem. Nagasaki replaced Kyoto.

After Hiroshima was destroyed, the crew of the B-29 "Bockscar" was assigned to bomb one of the three remaining targets, weather depending. Kokura and Yokohama were under heavy cloud cover, so Nagasaki was the default target. (It was cloudy there as well, and the target was sighted and the bomb aimed by radar, which was buggy in those days. The bomb missed by some three miles, probably saving thousands of lives.)

[Warpy]

51. Thanks for the clarification

and I'm glad they weren't heartless enough to bomb Kyoto. I know it by pictures, at least, and it would have been a crime against humanity to destroy such a beautiful city (well, parts of it).

I knew the death toll at Nagasaki was far less than at Hiroshima, but was unaware they'd missed the target by three miles.

That's what happens when you read about your pop's war in Europe and forget to bone up on the war in the Pacific. Forty lashes with the strand of overcooked spaghetti for me.

Thanks again for the corrections. They were important ones.

[PsN2Wind]

18. I never heard the morality of dropping those weapons

questioned by my brother-in-law. He fought on Guadalcanal, Fiji, New Guinea and other islands in the Solomons.
Those troops were in for "the duration" and only went home in a box or if they were too infirm to storm the next beach. The island campaign would only have been a tune-up fight for an invasion of Japan. That invasion would have taken hundreds of thousands to mount and tremendous casualties. It's easy in hindsight to question whether it was the right thing but if you ask the troops that were there I doubt you would find many that feel it was wrong.
Edit to add that another B-I-L had an uncle that survived the Bataan Death March, doubt if he was haunted by what we did to the Japanese either.

[Bigmack]

22. You want to start making ...

life and death foreign policy decisions on the bitter feelings of soldiers?

That's why we're supposed to have brilliant minds with years of education and experience making policy. (The Bush administration not an example.)

Some of the grunts I served with wanted to nuke the Vietnamese.... and the Laosians... and the Chinese... and anybody else who pissed them off.

Is that the kind of shit you want?

The Japanese were defeated... no Navy... no Air Force... what was left of their Army was marooned on the Asian mainland. They were trying to surrender.

The US nuked those cities to scare the Russians and test the bombs.

If there is any such thing as karma, the US is fucked!

[PsN2Wind]

26. I've reread my post and don't find

where I've stated that I would make decisions based on some bitter feelings of soldiers. But I doubt in your service that you had anything to compare to the Bataan Death March. It will make you bitter, I suppose, seeing your friends shot or bayoneted for being unable to continue marching after having been starved, Then surviving to end up in a work camp in Japan under the most inhumane conditions.
I don't know how long you were in Nam but at least you knew there would be an end to your tour. In WWII there was no tour, it was for the duration. Anything that ended the war was welcomed by those that were there.
So that isn't"the kind of shit I want" as you so eloquently put it. It's a statement of how two individuals I knew would feel about the topic at hand.

[Bigmack]

38. Then what were you trying to say?

Simply sharing the feelings of vets who were bound to be bitter?

The original post was about the rationale for the use of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All the posts prior to yours related to rationale rather than morality.

You said some veterans wouldn't have questioned the morality of using the bombs. You certainly implied that the bitterness of those veterans should be important in evaluating the use of the bombs... "It's easy in hindsight to question whether it was the right thing but if you ask the troops that were there I doubt you would find many that feel it was wrong."

Using those weapons was unnecessary to defeat the Japanese. The feelings of war survivors are, while important to them, not relevant to policy-making, or evaluating such a world-changing event as the first use of nuclear weapons.

Perhaps this is slightly off-topic, but if the Japanese were so committed to Bushido and death before surrender, why was there no insurgency after the surrender? Perhaps all that shit about them fighting to the last person if we had invaded was wartime hype.

[PsN2Wind]

39. As much as I would like to spend the rest of the night

trying to explain simple and straight forward language to you, I think I'll pass.

[Zhade]

32. Thank you for that sane response.

Some people seem to think it's okay to punish civilians for their government's actions.

I guess, in that regard, they think it would be okay for the Iraqis to nuke us. If they don't, they're utter hypocrites.

(I mean, they can't POSSIBLY be racist enough to think every single Japanese person thought alike and thus supported Hiro, right?)

[LynnTheDem]

63. WOW.

A progressive who knows the facts, and isn't held captive by the Great American Myths, and would rather know & face & deal with the truth & reality

:wow:

I think I'm in love :loveya:

[Kelly Rupert]

86. There's no such thing as "trying to surrender."

We had declared that only an unconditional surrender was acceptable. You know how you go about making one of those? You telegraph to Washington, "we surrender unconditionally," and order all soldiers to lay down their arms. Takes five minutes.

[Bigmack]

90. Sorry to use the term “tried to surrender”....

.... but I keep running into that term in the history books. Would “verge of surrender” be better?

"From a number of sources, however, it has been known for a long time that Japan was actually on the verge of surrender when the atomic bombings were ordered.
This fact has now been confirmed by a man in a good position to know -- former CIA chief Allen Dulles.
"DULLES: ‘I had been in touch with certain Japanese in Switzerland who in turn were in touch with high quarters in Japan - I imagine the Emperor. They came to me and said the Japanese were ready to surrender provided the Emperor could be saved so as to have unity in Japan.

http://www.greenwych.ca/dulles.htm

The US Strategic Bombing Survey reveals that the Japanese began peace feelers shortly after their defeat at Midway in April, '42.  The Japanese figured they had 16 months from Pearl Harbor to beat the US, without one setback.  Midway was the setback that guaranteed their eventual surrender. 

http://www.rense.com/general72/jee.htm

The Japanese wanted assurance they could keep the emperor. The US may have demanded unconditional surrender, but saw that Japan would be easier to administrate with the Emperor in place. Tokyo's goals included keeping Emperor Hirohito from being tried for instigating a war of aggression, and diverting Western attention away from the many Japanese atrocities committed since the start of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, and the war against the US. Marshall and Stimson insisted on unconditional surrender even though their military advisors told them the war would get more and more bloody.

Were all the US... and Japanese ... deaths after Midway (June 1942) worth a phrase that turned out to be meaningless? Midway is universally seen as the turning point in the Pacific War. Japan - especially Yamamoto - knew they could not win.

My problem is that Bush’s “Victory” sounds like “Unconditional Surrender” “Victory” in Iraq is unrealistic and deadly the same as “Unconditional Surrender” was unrealistic and deadly in the Pacific War.

[lumberjack_jeff]

64. Dad was shot in Belgium (Infrantry, battle of the bulge)

His belief was that dropping the bomb on the top of mount fuji would have been a better demonstration of might.

I dunno.

[roamer65]

20. The bombs were dropped to end the war before the Soviets...

could get heavily involved. There were many diplomatic back channel discussions going on before the atomic bombings. Most involved conditions. They were dropped mainly to stop the Soviets from invading Japan first. Political expedience, basically. Remember that just before the bombings, the Soviets had declared war on Japan and already taken the Kuril Islands in the north of Japan.

[ConsAreLiars]

21. The target was the Soviet Union.

It was a first strike in the Cold War, and was intended to demonstrate the will and ability to take out whole cities with a single bomb. "Shock and Awe" tactics. See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/filmmore/reference/interview/holloway05.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. Two issues

1.- The demonstration was meant for both the Japanese Empire, in particular the Japanese Military, and of course the USSR.

2.- The code of bushido. I have done extensive research on this subject for the fiction I am writing and it struck me that the Military Cadre was not going to surrender unless the damage was so horrific that it would demoralize the civilian population... and as trigger happy as MacArthur was with Nukes later on in his life, he understood the Empire and its ways of thinking very well. Remember, the night before the surrender on the USS Missouri there was an attempted coup by a mid grade Japanese Military Officer in order to prevent the surrender.

For some more info on this here you go

http://www.mbe.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/surrender.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Mission-Secret-History-Battle/dp/0767907787

[Minnesota_Lib]

25. I think I read somewhere that they did briefly consider blowing the top off of Mt. Fuji...

...or something else just as spectacular as a demonstration, but I could be wrong.

[Buck Rabbit]

45. You beat me too this. Yes Mt Fuji was considered but not by

the targeting committee.

Frankly this would have been my choice if the target was the Japanese not the Russians.

The atomic bomb on the Tokyo facing slopes of Fuji would have been a terrifically horrifying and visual experience for the Emperor and military leaders. Much more so than reports of a minor city of little military value being destroyed with no more casualties than a good firebombing. They really had no opportunity to really see the horror of the mushroom cloud and knew nothing about radiation by the time the second bomb was field tested on Nagasaki.

Not only would this demonstration been more horrifying and thoroughly witnessed than the bombing of Hiroshima, you would have still had another bomb left for a real military target like the Kokura Arsenal. (an "A" target for the committee, and the purest military target on the list.)

[rinsd]

72. To be fair, the Kokura was the primary target on the Nagasaki run (nt)

[Buck Rabbit]

73. Agreed, but to be fair they didn't have to bomb a city when

Kokura was scratched. The Japanese weren't going anywhere, Kokura still would have been there the next day or the next.

[rinsd]

74. Very true. Cloud cover is a lame excuse.

Then again, weren't there issues simply loading Fat Man on the plane?

Or was it simply a case of military (and in this case political) protocol of something had to be bombed on a bombing run?

[Rabrrrrrr]

27. Purely for punishment. Same reason with Dresden.

Yeah, lots of bullshit about saving troops from a land war or keeping Japan from falling into the hands of Russia blah blah blather bullshit blah bullshit blah blather blather blah bullshit.

No, it was done purely for punishment - it was the US saying to the world, "No one fucks with us without getting seriously fucked back".

And it was a beautiful prelude for forcing much of the world to fall in line with our will.

But the bombings, official word notwithstanding, had nothing to do with making Japan surrender - and had everything to do with merely punishing them, and flexing our penis in their faces.

[Zhade]

29. Ridiculous? It's brilliant!

And it's a perfect question to ask when people erroneously assume that only nuking civilians would have ended the war (erroneous, because there's absolutely no way for them to KNOW that).

[On the Road]

36. My Grandfather, Who Was Born in 1901

owned a fencing business in Cincinnati. He was a Rotary member, didn't like unions, and although he was a wonderful man in many ways, as far as I know voted Republican.

I remember that on his office wall, he had a two-page illustrated editorial questioning the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, and insinuating that it would never have been dropped on Germany. Only thing like thata I ever saw him display.

So even at the time, it was controversial with a wide variety of people.

[GreenZoneLT]

40. That was considered.

1) They only had two bombs, and wanted to be sure the Japanese REALLY knew how devastating one was. Also, we were killing Japanese civilians at comparable rates with conventional high-explosives and incendiary bombs. The fire-bomb raids on Tokyo killed considerably more people than the two atomic bombs combined.

2) The Japanese were still fighting internally over how to respond when we dropped the second one. Again, nobody knew very much about the effects of an atomic bomb other than the blast; it was just a much bigger version of the firebombs we were using on a daily basis all over Japan, so far as the U.S. leadership knew. They didn't know much about radiation poisoning from a nuclear explosion in 1945.

Even after TWO bombs, there was an attempted coup in Tokyo to try to continue the war, after Hirohito had recorded his address to the nation. There was a school of thought among the Japanese military command who thought it would be better for the entire country to commit suicide than surrender. In the context of Bushido culture, this was a serious option.

My take on the atomic bombs is that they were a logical extension of the policy of bombing civilian populations, a very morally iffy tactic even in retaliation (the Japanese had been doing it since the early '30s to China; the Germans since the Spanish Civil War). But far, far more Japanese (and Americans, of course) would have died in an invasion than died in the air campaign, so it's also arguable that it was justified.

[Buck Rabbit]

47. I agree with much of your post except....

You quite correctly point out that even after the bomb was dropped Tokyo really didn't have a grasp of the magnitude of what hit them. Just another firebombing as far as they knew in Tokyo. That is why using one of the bombs in view of Tokyo, Mt Fuji or at sea would have better conveyed the power of the bomb.

Another option not considered was to bring a Japanese diplomatic detainee to the desert test explosion, without telling him what he was to witness. If the bomb went off you have a witness to send to Japan to explain what happened simultaneously to using one of your two bombs on a real military target, the Kokura Arsenal. You still have one in reserve. If the test bomb had been a dud, you take the detainee back to detention without ever telling him what he was taken out to witness.

My real point of contention though, is an American invasion was not the only alternative to the use of the bombs on civilian targets anyway. Blockade and/or strategic bombing or the advance of the Russian army. Frankly, I think the case is stronger that Hirohito's main reason for surrender was the Russian annihilation of the Japanese army in Manchuria not the A-Bombs.

[rinsd]

62. You have some good points

"My real point of contention though, is an American invasion was not the only alternative to the use of the bombs on civilian targets anyway. Blockade and/or strategic bombing or the advance of the Russian army. Frankly, I think the case is stronger that Hirohito's main reason for surrender was the Russian annihilation of the Japanese army in Manchuria not the A-Bombs."

There were indeed a variety of scenarios and I think this combination of factors(blockade+conventionalbombing+russians+a-bombs) was what finally broke the Japanese.

[Virginian]

41. My history professor brought that up

way back when I was in school.
He said we only had two bombs and we didn't know for sure that they would work.

[Oeditpus Rex]

44. Parts of the rationale have been outlined here

Forcing a Japanese surrender, eh; flexing muscle for Russia, definitely. But let's remember the Manhattan Project was in response to the knowledge that Germany had a similar program (which failed, but that's another story), and it cost $2 billion, which in the 1940s was a tremendous amount of money. So, another part of the rationale was, "We spent all this money and, goddammit, we're gonna use it."

If Japan hadn't held to the surrender condition of Hirohito being allowed to remain its leader and a surrender had been negotiated before the bombs could be dropped, America would've been in all dressed up with nowhere to go — rather like a line by Dr. Strangelove: "The point of (a 'doomsday weapon') is lost if you keep it a secret."

[maine_raptor]

50. A demonstration was considered, briefly.

Posting this from memory:

In June of 1945, a group of high level officials met in Washington. Among those there was Oppenheimer, Byrnes, Groves, Condon, and others. The purpose of the group was to advise Truman on how to use the bomb. During that meeting, the idea of a demonstration was broached, but quickly shot down. The main arguments against it were that a) once the site of the demonstration was announced, the Japanese would move Allied POWs into the target area, b) the bomb might be a "dud" ( the first A-Bomb was a U-235 "gun type" that was never tested), and c) that even if the Japanese didn't move POWs into the area and the bomb did work, the Japanese might not be impressed enough or might just dismiss the explosion as propaganda.

The person who brought up these points at that meeting was Oppenheimer himself (who later opposed development of the H-Bomb).

This info comes via The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. A VERY well documented book on the history of the project.

[Buck Rabbit]

52. They used poor reasoning to reject the demo concept.

"a) once the site of the demonstration was announced, the Japanese would move Allied POWs into the target area"

Don't announce the demo site at all. Atomic bombs are self announcers. Or Announce the site within hours of the drop at a location they could not transfer prisoners to quickly. Just off-shore or the mountain slope. The pre-announcement could be just "watch for something important to the East of Tokyo bay in the next four hours."
-----------------------
"b) the bomb might be a "dud" ( the first A-Bomb was a U-235 "gun type" that was never tested)"

Again don't pre-announce what they are to look for, if it is a dud but no one knows it is what is the harm. Also it would be safer to have a dud drop into the sea than onto land where they could recover it and study it.
----------------------------
"c) that even if the Japanese didn't move POWs into the area and the bomb did work, the Japanese might not be impressed enough or might just dismiss the explosion as propaganda".

This could apply to a successful drop on a city too. In deed, the fact that it was dropped without notice or official observers made it very difficult for Tokyo to grasp the magnitude of the bombs as opposed to normal fire bombings anyway.

[LynnTheDem]

53. The US military brass wanted to do exactly that.

[cali]

54. Wow.

Thank you all so much for the array of information, educated opinion and references. I really appreciate it.

[LynnTheDem]

55. I'm amazed at most the responses.

Never realized so many progressives have no or very little grasp of the facts and yet blindly defend the totally unnecessary slaughtering of civilian men, women & children. That most don't even know that the entire US military brass opposed Truman's dropping the bombs, that even Truman's own Staff opposed it, citing there was no need to as Japan was "already defeated"...

Wow.

It isn't just a rightwingnut problem; it's an uneducated America problem.

[cali]

56. I can't agree with you

or disagree with you , but I think you're wrong about it being an "uneducated" problem. Lots of these posters are clearly not uneducated. And I don't know that I buy your interpretation. It's not like you provided citations for your assertions. Granted I'm uneducated about the war in the Pacific Theatre. I think the only thing I've read on it, aside from general stuff is Toland's 2 volumes- and that was probably 15 years ago. But having carefully read many of the above posts, I don't see how you can claim those posters are uneducated.

[LynnTheDem]

57. "uneducated" as in ignorant of the facts

I can provide you with citations from virtually every top military brass of the time. But then I'd just be accused of "quote mining" :rofl:

The military and Truman's Staff opposed his dropping those bombs on Japan, because Japan was already a defeated nation.

Truman's "millions of lives saved" was a total lie that Truman knew was a total lie. History revisionism and catapulting the propaganda was no stranger to Truman.

Truman also made the whopper of a jaw-dropping lie that the bombs were only dropped on military targets to minimize civilian deaths. That's a lie that tops most of bush's lies. (bush wins though for sheer quantity of lies.)

A poll recently was cheering though; half of America now think dropping those bombs was the wrong thing to do and they no longer believe the "saved millions of lives" myth.

It's a start. Took 60 years, though.

[rinsd]

70. So Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren;t military targets?

One could argue that there were better military targets but to argue that Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't at the very least minor military targets is incorrect.

Hiroshima was the HQ and staging ground for the Japanese army group that was in charge of the Southern defense of Japan. It also was without POW camps.

Nagasaki was an industrial center producing wartime goods and was one of the largest ports in southern Japan. It also wasn't the primary target that day.

[Oeditpus Rex]

78. It wasn't a lie, but it *was* propaganda based on projections

Japan had prepared to engage its civilians should the homeland be invaded. Knowing this, the U.S. placed casualty figures as high as 20 million for Japan and one million for itself during Operation Olympic (the invasion of Kyushu, planned for November, 1945) and Operation Coronet (the invasion of the Kanto plain around Tokyo, planned for March, 1946).

While it's feasible that the numbers were exaggerated to make the atomic bombs seem necessary, there's no arguing that the additional casualties would've been unacceptable to an American public that had grown quite sick of the war. Truman was quite aware of this, and he wanted to be elected in 1948.

[rinsd]

59. BS. Its revisionist US is evil problem vs. looking at the actual circumstances

"That most don't even know that the entire US military brass opposed Truman's dropping the bombs"

Most don't know that because its not true. And you can leave LeMay out of it, he was just fine firebombing the shit out of population centers.

[LynnTheDem]

61. Actually it is true.

General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander Europe during World War II:

“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, attempting to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. . . .”

In a post-war interview, Eisenhower told a journalist, “…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

Eisenhower, Dwight D (1999) The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-56. Doubleday & Co., Inc., 312-313. ASIN: B000DZAL8I.

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

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

General Henry “Hap” Arnold, Commanding General of the US Army Air Forces during World War II;

“It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”

Truman’s own Chief of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy;

“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…. 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….”
-William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441

John McCloy, asst Sec. of War

"I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs."
-McCloy quoted in James Reston, Deadline, pg. 500.

Ralph A. Bard, Undersecretary of the Navy

"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." He continued, "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

Lewis Strauss, Special Asst to Sec. of the Navy

"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... "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...".
-The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 145, 325.

Ellis Zacharias, Deputy Director of the Office of Navy Intelligence
-Ellis Zacharias, The A-Bomb Was Not Needed, United Nations World, Aug. 1949, pg. 29

General Carl Spaatz, commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific
-Herbert Feis Papers, Box 103, N.B.C. Interviews, Carl Spaatz interview by Len Giovannitti, Library of Congress

Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials)

"...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."
-The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359

Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include;

Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet

General Douglas MacArthur, the highest-ranking officer in the Pacific Theater

And they were found to have been correct;

Paul Nitz, Vice Chairman, US Strategic Bombing Survey

"While I was working on the new plan of air attack... 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 would have been necessary."

"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."

In other words, the virtually unanimous and combined judgment of the most informed, senior, officers of the U.S. military is unequivocal: there was no pressing military necessity for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0806-25.htm

[rinsd]

68. No, your assertion was the entire brass was against it

That is simply not true. There were certainly elements that were against the bombing and not all because they had a sweet spot for civilian.

LeMay believed in the supremacy of aerial bombardment. Paul Nitz's quote isn't a for or against. Its an assessment that the Japanese would have surrendered due to aerial bombardment excluding other factors I think were a large part of the surrender. That includes the Russians, potential invasion etc.

Also many of these quotes are post-hoc after the devastation of radiation became more clear.

And fuck Robert Freeman and his praise of Stalin.

[Sapere aude]

75. Are you sure this hasn't been cherry picked to support a conclusion?

I am always leary of a list of quotes like that because they are all out of context.

Some of them may be Monday morning quarterbacking which in my opinion should be left out since they were after the fact.

What I have read is that there was a great many people who were against dropping the bomb. These included military people and scientists working on the bomb. The decision to drop the bomb was made by a committee and not just by Truman. He didn't even know about the existence of the development of the bomb until after he became president.

Oppenheimer himself said that a demonstration could fail. It may not convince the Japanese to surrender and that there was a shortage of plutonium and they could waste it on a demonstration. He said that it was implicant in the beginning that dropping the bomb was always the goal.

[Kelly Rupert]

84. The fact that most of the quotes came from after the war was over

is telling. Most of them read like people saying "You know, we didn't have to do that after all. Wish we had known."

And for the record, quite a few of the people listed as being against it at the time--the Navy admirals--were against it because they thought it wouldn't work (that is, wouldn't kill anyone) and wanted a full-scale invasion.

[Raskolnik]

67. You're moving away from the realm of mischaracterization and into the realm of dishonesty

the entire US military brass opposed Truman's dropping the bombs, that even Truman's own Staff opposed it, citing there was no need to as Japan was "already defeated"...

If you want to argue that you support the reasoning of those that counseled against dropping the bomb, by all means do so. To make bald-face assertions that are simply incorrect is rather, um, "undeducated".

[Zhade]

91. It sure is - a HUGE problem.

It's embarassing, how uninformed some even very good liberal people in the U.S. are compared to the rest of the world.

[LynnTheDem]

92. Yes it is.

And it's very unfortunate and sad. :(

[TheWraith]

66. For one thing, we only could produce three bombs a month.

Despite the common misconception, we did have more than two. But we didn't have a lot of them, and it's possible that if the use of the bomb hadn't intimidated the Japanese high command, we might have needed to use all of them against major targets.

Another theory is that with the Cold War already looming, Truman wanted the Soviets to know that we had the bomb, and that we weren't afraid to use it, even if it meant killing civilians.

As for Nagasaki, the initial bombing hadn't produced an unconditional surrender, and it was generally felt that we had to seem capable of pressing the attack. Much of the senior military leadership was very hard nosed, and even after Hiroshima they were only willing to accept a surrender on certain conditions, including no occupation of Japan, self-policed disarmament, and that they would be the ones to investigate any Japanese war crimes. It wasn't until after Nagasaki that the emperor decided to fully overrule the War Council and offer an unconditional surrender, which is what the Allies had demanded. Even so, there was an attempted military coup to prevent the surrender from being broadcast.

[TheWraith]

77. Clarification

"Much of the senior military leadership was very hard nosed, and even after Hiroshima they were only willing to accept a surrender on certain conditions, including no occupation of Japan, self-policed disarmament, and that they would be the ones to investigate any Japanese war crimes."

I meant to say, much of the Japanese military leadership. Not that ours wasn't hard nosed, but that's not what we're talking about.

[Oeditpus Rex]

80. If I remember the history correctly

as of the time of the Trinity test, the U.S. had the resources to make seven atomic bombs. "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" were all we had, but another bomb, "Tall Boy," had been scrapped because of its size. It was a plutonium bomb, like "Fat Man," but developed before implosion was considered a viable method of producing a chain reaction. A "gun bomb" like "Little Boy," it was something like 23 feet long, and the U.S. had no aircraft at the time capable of carrying it.

The rationale for bombing Nagasaki was, "If we drop only one, they might think we've got only one." This was also one argument against a demonstration bomb.

[kentuck]

69. And Truman left office at about the same approval ratings as Bush at present

..perhaps lower? I'm sure the dropping of the bomb had something to do with his unfavorable ratings. Only in hindsight did history tell us how great was his deed and how many lives he "saved" by destroying those two cities. Ironically, considered one of the great Democrats of our time...

[rinsd]

71. That would be incorrect.

Truman's low approval ratings are more related to labor strife and the Korean War.

His approval ratings were in the 80's for months after the end of the war

[LSK]

83. i'd say we used the 2nd one to prove that we had more and could do it again

Just my guess. Im sure theres lots of facts that I dont know about.

[Kelly Rupert]

85. Correct.

To prove that it was not a one-time-only, the-entire-wealth-of-the-nation-in-one-bomb affair, but rather a weapon we would deploy over and over until we got an unconditional surrender. You'll note that the Japanese only offered their unconditional surrender after the second bomb, not the first.

[Parche]

87. pacific study

I have 'studied' the Pacific War for years, the powers that be didnt want to drop it on an
uninhabited island because they didnt want it to either fail and be taken for granted, or wasted
on that island, after all, they only had 2 in July/August and would not have another 'bomb' for
some time.
Truman meant what he said, prompt and utter destruction of Japan, never before seen......

It was a necessary evil, as I was for the dropping of the bomb

[LynnTheDem]

88. There's hope for Americans...

Six in 10 Americans 65 and older approve of the use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, while six in 10 from 18 to 29 disapprove.

Overall, 47 percent of those surveyed approved of dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki while 46 percent disapproved...
http://www.lasg.org/PressAdvisory3-31-05.htm

And recently 70% of Americans thought Saddam did 911. There's definitely hope.

[hayu_lol]

89. How history gets distorted over time...

Everyone has forgotten that we flew over Japan and dropped leaflets notifying the Japanese of our intentions. The object was unconditional surrender without a necessary invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.

Frankly, I don't remember the Japanese dropping leaflets over and prior to Pearl Harbor. Or, over Singapore, or Malayasia, or Manila, or Nanking. Does anyone?

I do remember the rejoicing in Los Angeles when the Japanese unconditionally surrendered and our troops could quit fighting. I do remember the number of gold star flags in the windows of my neighborhood. I do remember the celebrating on the radio and in the newspapers. I do remember the joy of the adults who were in my life at the time. I do remember relatives, who were vets, who returned alive because they did not have to make the invasion.

It is nice sometimes to be politically correct. But, not in this case. The Japanese army of occupation throughout Asia was one of the most terrible in history. The Bataan Death march, a worst case event.

The Japanese were notified in advance. The military leaders of Japan with the cooperation of the Emperor of Japan refused to surrender. We fulfilled the promise of the leaflets. They did, at that point, finally capitulate and the war was over.

Whether it was good or bad or indifferent, a bad war was over. Because of the bombs, many American and Japanese lives were saved.

The bombs made peace.

[LynnTheDem]

96. Like the 70% of Americans

who thought Iraq did 911?

The rest of the world knows the reality; even US mainstream "media" now & then prints the reality. And now the majority in America under 59 years old knows the reality.

That any DUer doesn't, is shocking.

[JacksonWest]

93. IN war, you must show a willingness and capacity to kill people that shouldn't be killed.

Ask the people in Dresden, Germany about it.

Fighting a war is not a logical, rationale exercise. It's a commitment to atrocity. We did a demonstration-Hiroshima.

Right or wrong, it was the logical move and the war ended. It's hard to argue with 160,000 dead civilians in a matter of days. And we killed another 100,000 after that.

The best move is to avoid wars when possible.

[pitohui]

94. there were two different types of bombs to test

if you ever visit the national atomic museum you will notice that fat man and little boy are quite different bombs, hence, i'm afraid in the interests of sciences our fearless leaders made the executive decision to test both of them on cities

[LynnTheDem]

97. And it doesn't matter how many links you provide to prove it

(including Truman's personal diary)...some Americans, including supposed progressives, will simply refuse to believe you, refuse to face the documented facts, and will continue to blindly chant the "necessary...millions of lives saved" myth.

But the good news is, Americans are waking up to the realities, and not just regarding bushCabal & Iraq.

Sure is taking a bloody long time tho for Americans to learn the facts of their own history when meantime the rest of the world has known for decades. ARRRRRRRGH!

[ItNerd4life]

98. Total and complete surrender, it was considered the only way

There have been many documentaries on the History channel regarding this. Also, many books have been written. However, I will try to summarize:

Japanese were deathly loyal to the emperor. The military and the emperor both new about the bomb but didn't believe it.
Once the first bomb was dropped, the emporer was willing to surrender completely and totally, whereas many in the military weren't. The military and the emperor were on opposite sides of the argument.

The allies were trying to force the situation of complete surrender and since the Emperor hadn't agreed to surrender they dropped the 2nd bomb.

What the allies didn't know, is that after the first bomb was dropped the emperor had signed a surrender document, but was being hunted by rogue military umits and wasn't able to deliver the letter.

Other things to consider:
The allies insisted upon complete and total surrender from the emperor, which meant the people would follow. If it wasn't a complete and total surrender, the Japanese people would have continued fighting during the allies occupation. (Kind of what is happening in Iraq, no complete surrender and the population is fighting our troops. Mind you, I don't agree with the war in Iraq, I'm just using it as a comparison.)

Saving face was critical to Japanese culture and a complete and total surrender meant a complete loss of face. After the surrender, many top military brass committed suicide.

During WWII there was very little distinction between military and civilian targets. If a target had any type of military use (factories, dams, etc) then it was considered a military target. Both towns had factories and produced weapons, thus they were military targets.

In summary, I don't think people should question if it was right or wrong. I think what people should instead focus on is preventing these situations from occurring again. If Japan hadn't started the war, we wouldn't have dropped the bomb. So let's work with countries and try to prevent wars.