We didn’t need to drop the bomb — and even our WW II military icons knew it

[polly7]

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2016 04:59 PM CCST

President Obama will finally visit Hiroshima. Moral leadership suggests both sides apologize for unspeakable acts

GAR ALPEROVITZ


A huge expanse of ruins left by the explosion of the atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945 in Hiroshima.(Credit: AP)

When President Obama visits Hiroshima later this month, he might do well to reflect on the views of another President who was also the five-star general who oversaw America’s military victory in World War II. In a 1963 interview on the use of the atomic bomb against Hiroshima, President Dwight D. Eisenhower bluntly declared that “…it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

Eisenhower was even more specific in his memoirs, writing that when he was informed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson the bomb was about to be used against Japan “…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…”

Eisenhower was not alone. Many of the top military leaders, mostly conservatives, went public after World War II with similar judgments. The President’s chief of staff, William D. Leahy–the five-star admiral who presided over meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff–noted in his diary seven weeks before the bombing of Hiroshima: “It is my opinion that at the present time a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provision for America’s defense against future trans-Pacific aggression.”

After the war Leahy declared in his 1950 memoir: “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 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…”

Full article: http://www.salon.com/2016/05/11/we_didnt_need_to_drop_the_bomb_and_even_our_ww_ii_military_icons_knew_it/

[Hoyt]

1. I agree. I think we could have dropped it on some deserted Island and said you are next, and gotten

the same results. However, at that time -- after so many had been killed/wounded in WWII -- people weren't thinking rationally.

The only "good" to come out of it was that the bomb was so devastating that countries have not used it again. Will we have to be reminded again at some point?

[SCantiGOP]

28. small problem with your scenario

We only had 2 bombs. Had the demonstration not been compelling enough to force a surrender I'm not sure how long it would have been to produce another working weapon, which prevented us from having to consider an invasion of the island of Japan which most estimates have said could have cost a million American lives and up to 10 million Japanese.

It was a terrible decision for Truman to have to make, but it did end the war in a week and may have saved millions of lives on both sides.

[AtheistCrusader]

50. Don't forget that Japan was still fighting, and people dying every day.

The Cruiser that delivered the 'pit' for the warhead in little boy, did not survive the war.

[deathrind]

2. No, it did not need to be.

LeMay's fire bombing was working and would have eventually brought about surrender without ever having to put one soldier on the Japanese main land.

[packman]

34. Those fire bombings killed 10's of thousands with each mission

and exposed a great number of our airmen/planes to attack. War is not neat, not logical.

[AtheistCrusader]

53. The Tokyo raid killed far more people than either atomic warhead. Short and long term.

The great Tokyo raid killed between 103,000, and 200,000, and injured upwards of 1 million people.


Almost all civilians.

Hiroshima, about 75,000 died, with about 20k of those being active, garrisoned military. The blast injured another 70-80k.

That's a fucking night and day contrast between the atomic bomb (as used) and the firebombing campaigns.

[RufusTFirefly]

3. But, but millions of American lives were saved by avoiding a ground invasion!

It's appalling and frightening to me how many people cling to the narrative that dropping those bombs was necessary to end the war.

As Alperovitz (also Robert Lifton and Greg Mitchell) have shown without a shadow of a doubt, there was absolutely no need for such an unprecedented act of barbarity.

Luckily, we're the Good Guys, and we believe in looking forward, so any discussion of our war crimes should be "off the table."

[Scruffy1]

35. The brainwashing was successful.

If you bring up this discussion all you get is incredulous looks from those that bought 'saved countless lives" argument.What Admiral Leahy knew was that Japan was completely isolated and had no petroleum for its ships and planes or any other imported necessities. It was just a question of time. This was the work of the US Navy submarine fleet. Militarily they were done.
My grandfather was on the general staff and was a lifelong friend of Ike (they grew up together). He never talked about the war, but one time I asked him if there ever was any plan to invade Japan. The answer was "NO". Even my father bought the common rational of it saved lives because to think otherwise leads down questioning the whole narrative of the myth of America exceptional-ism.
In my mind the only rational that makes any sense was the bombing was done as a demonstration of American brutality to scare the Russians, but I have no evidence of this. Merely having the bomb was not enough. It had to be demonstrated that we were willing to drop it at will.

[RufusTFirefly]

55. It's a fascinating and scary phenomenon

Try convincing someone who unwittingly recites a notorious urban legend as something that "really happened to a friend of a friend" and watch the response you get. It's worse than waking a sleepwalker.

[Igel]

75. There were several.

They were confidential.

They lacked details because they were months away from their tentative dates of implementation.

My wife has plans to visit her family this summer. She's going to visit in very late July and early August, and fly.

My wife has no plans to visit her family this summer. The precise dates aren't determined, she has no tickets. If you ask our son, he'd have to say there are no plans because he'll object to flying, and at this point it's need to know.


Note that the first bomb did not produce anything. The closest any of the hopes for a negotiated settlement was a tentative ouverture to Russia to be go-between. That went nowhere that we know of.

The rest of the quotes are opinion and hope, a repugnance at a heinous weapon used. But while they may have been squeamish about fighting that killed women and children, Dresden and Tokyo did precisely that. Repugnance at war =/= war was unnecessary.

This repugnance, sadly, was not shared. Otherwise the war would not have happened. We like to say that we had basically surrounded Japan with blockades and embargoes, so that their attack on us was justified. However, our actions were rooted in knowledge of prior atrocities done by Japan in Korea and China, unrelated to us and due entirely to Japanese nationalism. We seek root causes, but another version of American exceptionalism is that America is exceptionally bad, has an exceptional moral obligation, and is exceptionally guilty, so when we dig down to find a root cause that digging stops when it hits US.

[denbot]

49. Not millions of American's, but millions of Japanese civilians.

The Japanese command knew the war was lost by the end of '44. Millions of old and young Japanese were digging trenches, and drilling with bamboo staffs, all ready to die in defense of their home land.

For twenty years, the Japanese people had been conditioned to prefer death to capture, or surrender. If you don't believe me, look up the ratio of killed Japanese to captured;
120 KIA, to one single captured soldier or civilian on the islands we took.

On August 22 all Allied prisoners of war were to be exterminated, rather then to be given up. The Japanese were the cruelest SOB's of WW II to the populace of the territories they captured, and their treatment of enemy soldiers was beyond the pale.

Anyone who thinks that not dropping at least one of the two A-bombs save countless Japanese as well as American lives are clueless as to the realities of that time period.

My grandfather was on the first combat ship hit by kamakazi attack (U.S. Kalinin Bay), and his brother was a Marine who island hopped across the Pacific Theater. The results of Japanese occupations are part of my family history.

[BillZBubb]

4. The whole thing hinges on whether Japan actually was "ready to surrender".

Our stated goal was unconditional surrender and we would accept nothing else. Japan's peace feelers were well short of that requirement. The Japanese high command was ready to fight to the death rather than accept unconditional surrender.

It was absolutely imperative that the Emperor be forced to tell the people that Japan had lost and to lay down their arms. Otherwise the horrors of Iwo Jima and Saipan would be repeated on a massive scale--huge numbers of civilian deaths were inevitable. Then there was also the inevitability of mass starvation in Japan the longer the war dragged on.

I sympathize with those who thought using nuclear weapons was awful. But, they weren't opposed to continued massive conventional bombing of Japan's cities and infrastructure. Those were horrible too.

As inhumane and regrettable as those atomic bombings were, they did at least bring an almost immediate end to the war. That probably saved many more lives than it cost.

[RufusTFirefly]

13. Did you even read the article?

If so, I find it interesting that you seem to know more than Eisenhower, Leahy, Nimitz, and even that notorious hawk, General Curtis "bomb them back into the Stone Age" LeMay.

That's quite impressive.

[BillZBubb]

44. And you know more than Harry S. Truman--even more impressive!

[RufusTFirefly]

54. Haha! I'm afraid you're confusing politics with facts

Last edited Thu May 12, 2016, 01:43 PM - Edit history (1)

Truman had every incentive, both political and psychological, to justify his decision.
As do many Americans. The alternative is just too horrendous to confront.

That's how cognitive dissonance works.



"You're soaking in it."

[BillZBubb]

58. I'm not confusing anything. Truman's decision was based on facts he knew.

Your attempt to make some sort of dissonance argument is presumptive, condescending, and laughable.

Was Truman a monster? A war criminal?

[RufusTFirefly]

63. Rest easy. Only the Bad Guys are war criminals. n/t

[BillZBubb]

65. Well, duh, good guys aren't war criminals by definition.

Truman was a good guy. To call him a war criminal is preposterous.

[newthinking]

14. It wasn't the bombings.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/

Excerpt:

Strategic Significance

If the Japanese were not concerned with city bombing in general or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in particular, what were they concerned with? The answer
is simple: the Soviet Union.

The Japanese were in a relatively difficult strategic situation. They were nearing the end of a war they were losing. Conditions were bad. The Army, however, was still strong and well-supplied. Nearly 4 million men were under arms and 1.2 million of those were guarding Japan’s home islands.

Even the most hardline leaders in Japan’s government knew that the war could not go on. The question was not whether to continue, but how to bring the war to a close under the best terms possible. The Allies (the United States, Great Britain, and others — the Soviet Union, remember, was still neutral) were demanding “unconditional surrender.” Japan’s leaders hoped that they might be able to figure out a way to avoid war crimes trials, keep their form of government, and keep some of the territories they’d conquered: Korea, Vietnam, Burma, parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, a large portion of eastern China, and numerous islands in the Pacific.

They had two plans for getting better surrender terms; they had, in other words, two strategic options. The first was diplomatic. Japan had signed a five-year neutrality pact with the Soviets in April of 1941, which would expire in 1946. A group consisting mostly of civilian leaders and led by Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori hoped that Stalin might be convinced to mediate a settlement between the United States and its allies on the one hand, and Japan on the other. Even though this plan was a long shot, it reflected sound strategic thinking. After all, it would be in the Soviet Union’s interest to make sure that the terms of the settlement were not too favorable to the United States: any increase in U.S. influence and power in Asia would mean a decrease in Russian power and influence.

The second plan was military, and most of its proponents, led by the Army Minister Anami Korechika, were military men. They hoped to use Imperial Army ground troops to inflict high casualties on U.S. forces when they invaded. If they succeeded, they felt, they might be able to get the United States to offer better terms. This strategy was also a long shot. The United States seemed deeply committed to unconditional surrender. But since there was, in fact, concern in U.S. military circles that the casualties in an invasion would be prohibitive, the Japanese high command’s strategy was not entirely off the mark.

One way to gauge whether it was the bombing of Hiroshima or the invasion and declaration of war by the Soviet Union that caused Japan’s surrender is to compare the way in which these two events affected the strategic situation. After Hiroshima was bombed on August 8, both options were still alive. It would still have been possible to ask Stalin to mediate (and Takagi’s diary entries from August 8 show that at least some of Japan’s leaders were still thinking about the effort to get Stalin involved). It would also still have been possible to try to fight one last decisive battle and inflict heavy casualties. The destruction of Hiroshima had done nothing to reduce the preparedness of the troops dug in on the beaches of Japan’s home islands. There was now one fewer city behind them, but they were still dug in, they still had ammunition, and their military strength had not been diminished in any important way. Bombing Hiroshima did not foreclose either of Japan’s strategic options.

The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator — he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally dramatic. Most of Japan’s best troops had been shifted to the southern part of the home islands. Japan’s military had correctly guessed that the likely first target of an American invasion would be the southernmost island of Kyushu. The once proud Kwangtung army in Manchuria, for example, was a shell of its former self because its best units had been shifted away to defend Japan itself. When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas. The Soviet 16th Army — 100,000 strong — launched an invasion of the southern half of Sakhalin Island. Their orders were to mop up Japanese resistance there, and then — within 10 to 14 days — be prepared to invade Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s home islands. The Japanese force tasked with defending Hokkaido, the 5th Area Army, was under strength at two divisions and two brigades, and was in fortified positions on the east side of the island. The Soviet plan of attack called for an invasion of Hokkaido from the west.

[FairWinds]

16. You are mistaken . .

as Ike, Leahy and others make clear.

You are clinging to the post-war myths and lies.

When Americans justify the roasting of innocent children,
they are being as inhumane as the worst of the Daesh
murderers.

[BillZBubb]

38. So, Truman was a war criminal? He just wanted to incinerate Japanese?

Ike and Leahy had their opinions. Others had a different opinion.

[FairWinds]

61. Yes, Truman was a war criminal . .

and so was I, but for different reasons.

"All opinions are equal" is a pretty lame argument.

[BillZBubb]

64. Well, you are wrong. Truman was no war criminal.

That charge is disgusting.

[FairWinds]

69. Jeez Bill, you got the name calling thing down pat . .

but how about some evidence?

People who incinerate the innocent, or tolerate those who do,
are war criminals.

I'm a Vietnam Vet, and don't need any lectures on
international law or the laws of land warfare

from the likes of you . .

Veterans For Peace

[FairWinds]

70. Ohhhhh, the "disgusting" card!!

I'm just so intimidated and will shut the hell up
any century now.

[zentrum]

40. You can demonstrate...

…the evil power of the bomb in lots of ways without destroying a civilian population.

It was to announce the birth of the cold war, to avenge America, to announce to the world that we were now the global powers and to be our usual racist selves.

America is piling up a s#$t-load of stuff it's going to have to atone for. We behave like sociopaths in our foreign affairs and towards non-white races in our own country.

[Helen Borg]

5. They had to test it, no?

[longship]

52. Little Boy was simple, the knew it would work.

Fat Man was already tested, during the Trinity test at Alamogordo.

There was no question that they worked.

[TheBlackAdder]

6. I was taught this in middle school (1975). I'm surprised it's a revelation and not common knowledge!

[polly7]

8. I've always been heartbroken over this and never for one second believed it was necessary.

I'm just posting this article they wrote apparently to coincide with Obama's visit.

[Igel]

77. I've always been heartbroken over this and do think it was necessary.

This, sadly, is something that people wedded to extremes cannot easily fit into their thinking.

Now, we may disagree that it was necessary. There were undoubtedly hopes, projections, expectations that things would fold. People probably wanted those to be true. A blockade would cause surrender. At the last minute sanity would prevail. There's be an uprising. The Japanese were like us.

But there were plans for invasions of Kyushu and Honshu, and the loss of life was projected to be phenomenal in the typical case--not the best case, the most hoped for case. These were projections based on the assumption that the Japanese military would continue as they had in other cases when Japanese forces were surrounded with no hope of victory.

Because the Japanese were *not* like us. I look at teens in my classes, and they're often culturally distinct from me. Some kids are like me. It's when I assume they're all *like* me that things can go wrong.

[LiberalArkie]

7. We had to show the world that there was a new king of the world.

[closeupready]

9. Disagree. They were monsters, and they picked a fight with Goliath.

They could have ended hostilities at any point, simply by surrendering. That's war, it sucks, and I hope it never happens again.

[MadDAsHell]

10. The Japanese had shown no propensity for surrender in WWII prior to the bomb; why assume they would?

Kamikaze pilots, wounded soldiers blowing up grenades while being helped by American soldiers, etc. There are contested islands where Japanese soldiers remained holed up FOR DECADES after the war because they STILL refused to give up.

It's possible this article is correct, but I think it's a little foolish to automatically assume it is when historical context says otherwise...

That's pretty typical of DU these days though; read a headline, confirm that it supports your already existing assumptions, K&R, rinse/repeat...

[TomVilmer]

57. Hiroshima was just one more city totally annihilated...

Any explanation of the actions of Japan’s leaders that relies on the “shock” of the bombing of Hiroshima has to account for the fact that they considered a meeting to discuss the bombing on August 8, made a judgment that it was too unimportant ...
From our perspective, Hiroshima seems singular, extraordinary. But if you put yourself in the shoes of Japan’s leaders in the three weeks leading up to the attack on Hiroshima, the picture is considerably different. ... In the three weeks prior to Hiroshima, 26 cities were attacked by the U.S. Army Air Force. Of these, eight — or almost a third — were as completely or more completely destroyed than Hiroshima. ... The fact that Japan had 68 cities destroyed in the summer of 1945 poses a serious challenge for people who want to make the bombing of Hiroshima the cause of Japan’s surrender. ...
The story we have been telling ourselves seems pretty far removed from the facts. What are we to think about nuclear weapons if this enormous first accomplishment — the miracle of Japan’s sudden surrender — turns out to be a myth?

Quote is by Ward Wilson, a senior fellow at the British American Security Information Council, and the author of the book Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons.

[perdita9]

11. I wasn't there and neither were you

WWII was an ugly war that involved the entire planet, ending millions of lives and devastating far more.

It's easy to sit in your air conditioned office and make judgments on people but you weren't there in the trenches. It wasn't your family in a refugee camp. You didn't have to watch your best friend get shot and die.

Did we do the right thing, dropping 2 H bombs on Japan? I don't know, but I'm not going to judge the people who did.

[bernie_is_truth]

12. I know it sounds great to say you are/were against the A-bomb drops but...

It saved lives, bottom line. The estimated number of deaths in BOTH cities is between 140k and 230K people. That sounds like a lot, but in WWII numbers, sad to say, it is not. Conventional bombing of Japan is estimated to have caused between 240k and 900k people. If the war hadn't ended after Nagasaki that number would have kept climbing, even more dramatically.

And those are just Japanese civilian deaths.

Let's look at it from the American citizen perspective.

If you have the choice of having tens of thousands of American sons/fathers/brothers/husbands dying in an invasion or ending the war with no further American casualties, FDR really had only one choice.

It was a horrible choice, to be sure, but you can't blame him, it saved both Japanese and American lives without a doubt.

[FairWinds]

19. Again, plainly wrong . .

as Ike makes clear.

I'm a Vietnam Vet and get nauseated at the callous
disregard for innocent life displayed by my countrymen and women.

The dehumanization of the "other" (American Indian, German, Arab, African American, etc.)
is what makes war and genocide possible . . indeed inevitable.

Veterans For Peace

[bernie_is_truth]

36. Maybe you could explain your 'plainly' word

All my stats are 'plainly' right.

And where's my 'dehuminization'?

And genocide?

You plainly have no facts to back your post, just hyperbole and wishful thinking.

It was the HIGH regard for saving lives that partly motivated the dropping of the bombs, it saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives.

[FairWinds]

60. "Stats" ? You have no stats.

Ike, Leahy and many others PLAINLY show that the
nuking of innocents was not necessary.

Ike and Leahy were there. You were not.

"'Dehumanization" is arguing that, contrary to law, custom and
basic decency, the killing of innocents is a good thing.

Your "they had in coming" or "it saved lives" arguments are
the SAME ONES made by Daesh - only difference is that it is
our lives being labeled as worthless in their case?

Do you even grasp that the "saving lives" argument was not even
invented until a year after WWII ended?

Please do some reading. Start with the Alperowitz book - he spent years on it trying
to educate folks like you.

http://www.amazon.com/Decision-Use-Atomic-Bomb/dp/067976285X

Are you a vet? Have you seen war? You sure don't seem like it.

[bernie_is_truth]

91. I listed several stats

Ike, Leahy and others had their opinions, so did many others in the decision making process. IF you were in the military as you claim to be then you would know that military planning is not democratic. The leader weighs the options and opinions and then makes the decisions, with the only opinion that matters being his.

Your definition of 'dehumanization' is one you just made up to suit your complaint. The actual definition is: "Dehumanization is the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment."

Labeling my argument as being the same as Daesh is simply you trying to dehumanize me so you don't have to deal with uncomfortable facts.

Do know that the saving lives argument was made at the time? Probably not since I imagine you only read books that reinforce your own world view.

Please do some reading by authors that think differently than you do.

Six years 0351.

[FairWinds]

92. See Barton Bernstein, bulletin of the atomic scientists . .

for a good review of the "lives saved" numbers game.

[longship]

29. Here's a good read on the topic.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.

BTW, FDR was dead months before the A Bomb was finished, let alone tested, let alone dropped on Japan. It was Harry Truman who decided to use it, not FDR.

And again, BTW, many of the scientists who worked on the bomb were against its use, including Leo Szilard (who had the fucking patent on nuclear chain reaction). They petitioned the US government to use the bomb as a demonstration (which Japan would witness) before using it on Japan proper.

Unfortunately, we only had two completed bombs in summer, 1945, both hand made (ignoring the one used for the Trinity test). We dropped both of them on Japan. Interestingly, Rhodes reports that after Hiroshima, Japan doubted that we had this new bomb, or we had maybe just one. After Nagasaki they thought we had many of them. In reality we only had the two, but more in process.

The Rhodes book won the Pulitzer. It holds up very well. Highly recommended.

My best to you.

[PADemD]

73. It likely saved my father's life.

Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, He was sent to PT school in FL to prepare for the invasion of Japan.

[TexasTowelie]

82. It also likely save my father's life.

My father was in the Navy and saw action at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

[PADemD]

83. My father was a supply ship gunner.

He joined the Navy at age 17; and, according to my Mom, he made 13 trans Atlantic trips.

I didn't get to ask him about his war experiences because he died when I was young.

[Omaha Steve]

15. The army tried to overthrow the emperor to avoid surrender after Hiroshima

Easy to say 70 years later. Japan had plenty of chances to surrender and didn't even after Hiroshima!

It saved 1 million US casualties.

I get so tired of this crap from youngsters with a pen in hand.

OS

[polly7]

17. Crap, Steve? Really???

I lost family fighting in Germany, one 18 years old captured, tortured and later finally killed in his prison camp. As well as others who came back destroyed men. I get tired of anyone claiming fucking 'youngsters' know nothing about these evils.

INCLUDING the barbaric use of nuclear bombs against hundreds of thousands of civilians. Just as I did with the use of agent orange in Vietnam, white phosphorous in Fallujah, cluster bombs all over the fucking world.

[Omaha Steve]

22. Yes really

First there were civilian casualties across Asia by the Japanese including germ WMDs like infected fleas. To get their research we turned our head on many war crimes.

Those Japanese civilians including children were training to resist an invasion to the death.

Why didn't they surrender after the first bomb then to avoid a second. The second was dropped by radar and missed ground zero. That reduced casualties BTW.

My dad was a decorated PFC from Guadalcanal until he rotated home on points just before the bombs fell. He was drafted BEFORE Pearl Harbor. Had there been no Pearl Harbor, would we have entered a war with Japan? We barely did anything to help China etc. before that.

[polly7]

23. I disagree. Period. And, I get tired of being insulted for thinking differently. nt.

[Omaha Steve]

27. It wan't meant as an insult

It was aimed at the writer of the article. I truly apologize for the misunderstanding.

Your entitled to your opinion too.

OS

[polly7]

31. No, It's ok and I'm sorry. Just a bit tired and grumpy, not your fault!

[bernie_is_truth]

43. war is by definition barbaric, no matter the weapons used

Are you equally against the barbaric use of conventional bombs against millions of civilians?

I'm guessing you are.

So you're President and your choice is 1) maybe ending the war by dropping a single nuclear weapon and killing 100k Japanese and zero Americans or 2) continue the conventional bombing/invasion of Japan, which had already killed near a million people, and would certainly kill hundreds of thousands more?

Pick one.

Oh, and after Hiroshima they were offered the chance to surrender, they declined. You think any form of conventional warfare would have forced them to surrender short of total invasion and subjugation, causing, according to some estimates, a million or more deaths?

War = no easy choices, and it was a war the Japanese started and did not want to end.

[polly7]

47. War is barbaric. No shit. nt.

[bernie_is_truth]

51. i notice you didn't make a choice

Platitudes and sarcasm are nice on forums, unfortunately they don't end wars that others started.

[polly7]

59. We didn’t need to drop the bomb — and even our WW II military icons knew it

It is possible to go down the line and find similar views among most of the top World War II military figures. Many of those who had access to secret intelligence showing Japan’s desperate attempts to end the war were deeply disturbed by the bombing. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet stated publicly two months after Hiroshima: “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.” “The atomic bomb,” he stated “played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan….”

A contemporaneous May 29, 1945 memorandum by Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy also shows that America’s top military leader, General George C. Marshall, “thought 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 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima approached in 1985, former President Richard Nixon reported that “[General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants…MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off…”

Modern debates over the decision to use the atomic bomb without warning against a predominantly civilian target would also do well to include reminders that President Truman was advised well before Hiroshima that a Red Army declaration of War against Japan, planned at U.S. request for the first week of August, together with assurances for the Japanese Emperor, would bring an end to the war long before even the first stage landing of an invasion might occur three months later on the Island of Kyushu (and long before any possible general invasion in the spring of 1946.) There was plenty of time to use the bombs if the recommended strategy failed (and it had already been decided in any case to keep the Emperor to help control Japan after the war.)

[bernie_is_truth]

62. so many opinions, so many what if's

Yeah, of course there were a ton of different opinions over what we should do. There were multiple options. Military leaders debated, political leaders debated, the pros and cons were weighed, the what-if's contemplated and in the end the A-bomb option was chosen as the best option at the time.

Your opinion would have sided with the those who didn't want to drop it, but there were just as many others, who had just as valid reasons, who thought dropping it was the best option.

And this whole idea that Japan was close to surrendering is pure poppycock. The military almost attempted a coup to keep the war going. For god's sake, the first one didn't force them to surrender, and we're all supposed to believe they were ***that*** close to surrendering? lol

[NoMoreRepugs]

21. I'm not a youngster OmahaSteve

Best estimates put total number of US Military deaths during WW2 at 420,000...

the 1 million estimate if Japan had to be invaded is based on fairy dust I'm afraid...

correct you are that the Japanese did not surrender immediately after Hiroshima - Truman's insistence on UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER was a huge stumbling block in the negotiations with the Imperial government of Japan - more than anything else Truman wanted to show Stalin what we had developed ... plain and simple

[polly7]

26. Exactly. nt.

[Omaha Steve]

39. Operation Downfall

Have you looked at US casualty lists just from taking islands in the Pacific from the Japanese?

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-two/the-pacific-war-1941-to-1945/operation-downfall/

Citation: C N Trueman "Operation Downfall"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 19 May 2015. 3 Mar 2016.

Snip: American military commanders were given the task of planning for the invasion – Douglas MacArthur,Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, William Leahy, Hap Arnold and George Marshall. Inter-service rivalry did occur as both army and navy wanted one of ‘their men’ to be supreme commander of planning. Eventually the navy accepted that MacArthur was to have total control if the invasion was to take place. The planning proceeded without taking the atomic bomb into consideration as so few knew about its existence.

The Americans faced one very serious problem. They knew for sure that the Japanese would defend their territory with zeal and that American casualties would be high – probably too high for the American public to accept. The fanaticism that had been shown by the kamikazes, would almost certainly be encountered in Japan and the Americans had to plan for this.

There was plenty of evidence to indicate that any invasion of the Japanese mainland would be very bloody for all concerned. The complexity of such an attack also led to both sides of the US military developing different ideas as to what the best plan should be. The navy believed that a blockade supported by an air campaign would suffice. They wanted to use air bases in China and Korea to launch bombing raids against key cities in Japan. The army believed that such a campaign would take too long and that the morale of the American public might suffer as a result. They supported the use of an invasion that would go to the heart of Japan – Tokyo. The army got its way.

It quickly became apparent that any invasion of Japan would present huge difficulties. There were very few beaches that could be used as a landing place and the Japanese knew this. Both sides knew that only the beaches in Kyushu and the beaches at Kanto, near Tokyo, could support a huge amphibious landing. The Japanese took the appropriate measures in both areas.

FULL story at link.

[gladium et scutum]

79. Why should we have treated Japan any different than Nazi Germany

Japan attacked the United States. Germany did not. We would have never considered any terms offered by Adolf Hitler, why should we have considered any terms offered by Hirohito. Our allies, early in the war, determined that the only acceptable way to end WWII was when Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan accept unconditional surrender. Once that happened, we could reshape these countries back into nations that were no longer a threat to the world community.

[Travis_0004]

81. I'll agree that 1 million was very unlikely

Would it have been at least 40,000 US deaths, and 60,000 Japanese deaths.

Almost certainly. I don't think 200k (between both sides) is unrealistic at all.

Either way, 100k people were going to die. Dropping the bombs just meant that no Americans died. And thats the job the US president and general. To save american lives.

[yallerdawg]

18. I think our relationship today says it all.

A lot of historians have suggested "communist aggression" was the real target of the atomic bombs!

It wasn't just Japan we were putting on notice of our capabilities!

[JohnnyRingo]

20. Indeed, there is some evidence that it was a test on human targets.

It's well known that prejudice against the Japanese people in those days was to the point that many considered them a sub-human race. The theory that Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a test of the effects of nuclear weapons on humans was somewhat confirmed to me when I learned that the two bombs dropped were different in nature.

The Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a Uranium fueled explosion, while Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki was a Plutonium bomb. That and the fact that several photographic B-29s flew along to document the explosions seems to confirm that it was as much a test on which type would cause more destruction to "soft" targets as it was a military strategy.

We don't know what would have happened if the Emperor accepted the terms of unconditional surrender after the uranium bomb however. The Fat Man plutonium bomb was dropped only after he rejected many of the items listed in the surrender document. It probably would have pleased the War Dept if Hirohito had surrendered after the first bombing, but the scientists were probably glad he didn't

I believe that while ending the war was likely a primary goal for the generals, testing the two types of nuclear bombs against what was considered expendable human targets at the time held a secondary scientific function to the missions.

[polly7]

24. Thank you, excellent points!! nt.

[arcane1]

32. Exactly. A pre-bomb surrender was never an option, for US.

[bernie_is_truth]

48. you're right

because a pre-bomb surrender was never an option for the Japanese.

Also, a post-bomb surrender wasn't an option for them either.

It took two, and there was still a debate in Japanese leadership circles *after* the second one over whether or not to surrender.

[JohnnyRingo]

66. I don't know if I'd go that far.

The terms of surrender were unconditional, the same that was offered to and refused by the Germans. In Germany the government was dismantled by a joint ground force invasion, an option that wouldn't work for months to come on the Japanese island, if ever. Hirohito knew this.

Unconditional surrender, where the country accepts occupation, is not an easy pill to accept for any belligerent nation as it involves dismantling the government and prosecution of those in power.

What would have happened if the Japanese had accepted the terms as written before the bombing is unknown, but it's likely the US knew they had no compelling reason to do so. Hirohito was given the same choice after Hiroshima at Potsdam, but balked at some of the terms, especially about him stepping down. The blast at Nagasaki with the threat of three more missions through the summer changed his mind.

I still believe the scientists wanted a test on humans, but I think the generals may have declared victory if Hirohito had surrendered. That's their respective jobs.

[longship]

45. Absolute rubbish!

It is true that many of the scientists who worked on "the gadget" were against using it on Japan. They petitioned the government to stop its use, led by Leo Szilard who fucking patented the nuclear chain reaction!

But there is no historic evidence that it was dropped on Japan in order to observe its effects on humans. It was used because, in Truman's and the military's minds, an invasion of Japan would result in much more death. Any other argument is utter tosh. Your's is from let's make shit up land.

Sorry.

[JohnnyRingo]

67. I used to believe that

But the big question is why did they drop two different bombs? Certainly the blast at Hiroshima, with the threat of four more planned bombings through the summer would have sufficed in making the point, but the effects of uranium vs plutonium on a mass human population was unknown.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but the two different bombings would be a convenient study. Thank goodness we didn't test the hydrogen bomb on human targets. At least not directly.

[longship]

68. Read the fucking history.

Bomb Hiroshima. Japan, if you don't surrender, we will bomb you into the Stone Age. (or something more diplomatic along those lines.)

Japan: No.

Bomb Nagasaki. Japan, if you don't surrender, we will bomb you into the Stone Age. (or something more diplomatic along those lines.)

Japan: Okay.

And who decided that was Harry Truman.

[JohnnyRingo]

71. Believe me, I have studied the history of WWII all my life.

Your literary shorthand lacks the nuances of the actual events, but Truman didn't make decisions unilaterally. He worked closely with advisers, all in the military, diplomatic, and scientific communities. Truman didn't know atoms from marbles.

I'm not sure what your point even is, unless it's to paint Truman as a president drunk with power who made weighty decisions without consent.

[longship]

95. It was not used to test it on humans!!!

Full stop!

[JohnnyRingo]

97. I guess you misunderstood

You must have thought I was saying the only reason for the bombings were to test them on humans. I believe it was a convenient benefit to a strategic battle plan to end the war.

How else would one explain why we used a uranium bomb on one city and a plutonium bomb on the next? I pointed out that if the Japanese surrendered after Hiroshima the generals would have declared victory and proceeded to occupation. As it was, we got to examine the differences between the two methods of fission on live targets.

[longship]

98. We used the two different bombs because they were the only two we had.

Last edited Fri May 13, 2016, 11:09 PM - Edit history (1)

That, plus there were two different, independent projects at Los Alamos, one the Uranium bomb (which was long known would work -- simplicity) and the Pu bomb (which was riskier and much more complex but showed the way to more, and more powerful, bombs).

That is why Little Boy was never tested and Fat Man was. They knew that the U bomb would work. They had already solved the rapid assembly problem and the all important initiator which only needed to provide a couple of neutrons during the critical microseconds when the super critical mass was assembled -- otherwise the bomb fizzles. And when all you are doing is making a gun, Little Boy was really, really simple. We know a lot about guns, which is basically all the Hiroshima bomb was.

Fat Man needed to be tested because the dynamics of explosive lenses and Uranium tampers under rather extreme pressures are really, really complex. One can model them all one wants, but the proof is in the pudding. Does the gadget work when all the parts are assembled? Thus, the Trinity test. Then, Nagasaki.

Read all about it.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb, the Pulitzer Prize winning history of what happened. This is the definitive authority on the topic, universally praised. A really great read!

I recommend it, since you seem interested in the topic. You just seem to be somewhat ignorant on what really happened. (No crime there. I am ignorant about many things. )

My best to you.

[LS_Editor]

25. The Japanese did not immediately surrender after the first bomb was dropped.

Last edited Thu May 12, 2016, 08:56 PM - Edit history (1)

So the "imminent surrender" argument is weakened right away.

An invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been extremely costly, and Japan was vowing to resist with every man, woman, and child. Hundreds of thousands of American casualties would occur. And what do you think would have happened if Americans learned President Truman had the atomic bomb and did not use it, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Americans killed and maimed?

Additionally, the Soviet Union was also preparing to strike Japan, which would have resulted in another Cold War theater.

Despite all of this, I believe the indiscriminate targeting of population centers (by bombers) led to horrendous acts of crimes against humanity

[arcane1]

30. I love the lie that the only time it's ever OK to use a nuke was the two times we happened to do it.

Never again will there ever be a justifiable occasion to use them. How "convenient" for us.

[johnp3907]

33. "Bombs save lives."

"War is peace."

Repeat. Endlessly.

[rlpincus]

37. The Bomb

I'm sorry but Leahy's excuses are laughable. We had been fire-bombing Japan's civilian population for over a year and really picked up the pace when we took the Marianas in November of 1944. btw, Japan had moved much of its manufacturing into neighborhoods prompting their targeting. Japan's leadership didn't care a whit for its people even though it knew it couldn't prevent the bombing runs. It stood by while close to a million of its citizens died in the raids and instead concentrated on psychologically steeling its soldiers to fight to the end.

Eisenhower OK'd the same fire-bombing tactics in Germany. His opinions were based on fighting a land war against a dispirited enemy who was surrendering faster than we could capture them. Fighting the Japanese in a succession of brutal island-hopping campaigns gave the Pacific leadership an entirely different take on what would end the war. Read a description of Okinawa and the effect this type of warfare was having on our GI's. Read about the Japanese use of children and civilians as front line troops. Read about the mass civilian suicides triggered by Japanese propaganda about Western brutality. 50,000 American cases of what they called "battle fatigue".

I admire the president for visiting Hiroshima. I think it's a good move. But I'm not going to sugarcoat the Japanese military's culpability in their own destruction.

[struggle4progress]

41. It's easy to look back and second guess what should have been done

WWII cost somewhere between 50 million and 80 million lives, maybe 2% or maybe 3.5% of the world population

Even before Germany invaded Poland in the fall of 1939, the prospects for the war were sufficiently terrifying that several other physicists convinced Einstein -- himself a committed pacifist who had been appalled at the role his German colleagues played in weapons-design in WWI -- to sign a letter to Roosevelt warning that Germany might be working on atomic weapons and encouraging the US to secure uranium supplies and begin related nuclear research

While early attacks on civilian populations -- such as the 1937 German attack on Guernica -- shocked many, general attacks on cities later became common: because high altitude bomb drops were simply too inaccurate to have effect if limited to military and industrial targets, area bombing became popular; and most of the high-density parts of Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Dresden, Dortmund, Frankfurt and many other cities were destroyed. We can, of course, quite legitimately refer to such attacks as war crimes; but there seems to have been wide agreement among the Allies at the time that this was necessary and therefore appropriate

Similarly, on any objective view, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes: the targets were chosen, not for immediate military reasons, but because they had escaped much damage during the war so their destruction by single bombs would be convincingly demonstrative. The actual effect was the immediate end of the war. There is no doubt Japan would have been defeated without the atomic deployment, but that might have been much later, and the human costs could have been quite high

Seventy years later, the best we can do is to attempt to understand the circumstances of the time and how matters then appeared to those involved

[Kablooie]

42. One unknown ...

I also believe the atomic bombs were unnecessary and probably immoral but …

If the bombs had not been dropped and there was no physical evidence of the horrific consequences, would it have been more likely that a bomb would have been used during the cold war between the US and the Soviet Union?

We'll never know, of course, but I feel the nuclear weapon deterrent effect might have been less if the consequences were only theoretical and we might have a different example today to illustrate the resultant horrors.

[chknltl]

46. Which begs the question:

If not used and kept secret for as long as possible, would there have even been a Cold War? The same question could be applied to the Space Race as well. Color me an optimist but I like to think that we would have been so far ahead of Russia and China in weapons developement it may have made them reluctant to be adversarial. Without a Cold War, perhaps it would have taken us a bit longer to reach the moon but without the burden of military spending we might be on Mars by now.

Just speculating....

[Martin Eden]

56. If US decision-makers believed The Bomb was not necessary, then they had a different motive

I'm speculating here, but demonstrating to the world we had a weapon orders of magnitude greater than anything in human experience would have profound geostrategic implications. Wiping out cities and inflicting horrific human carnage has a greater effect than a test in a remote uninhabited area.

I will further speculate that the horrific devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have raised the threshold for ever using these weapons again and that this may have precluded a first use under different circumstances, perhaps a different world power. The Soviets tested their first atomic bomb just 4 years later, and for half a century we were bitterly hostile rivals in the Cold War. Mutually Assured Destruction forestalled direct large scale combat between us and them.

I am not justifying the use of atomic bombs against the Japanese people at the end of WWII. It is, perhaps, among the greatest war crimes of all time.

I am speculating as to what the ulterior motives (other than ending the war with fewer US casualties) may have been, and what the future might have been like otherwise.

[LS_Editor]

84. Where was the surrender of the Japanese after the first bomb?

That inflicts a mortal blow to this "imminent surrender" argument.

Massive casualties were projected for an invasion of the Japanese home islands. Americans would be outraged, to say the least, if tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans were killed and maimed when they learned President Truman could have used the ultimate weapon of the atomic bomb.

Further, the Soviet Union was mobilizing to join the war against Japan, potentially setting up a new arena for the cold war to come.

War crimes? Absolutely. The war was devastating, most especially to civilians. And the firebombing of German cities by American and British bombers killed more people than both atomic bombs. The Germans, Russians, and Japanese all have the blood of millions on their hands through their own well-documented war crimes.

[Martin Eden]

85. I wasn't making the argument you are apparently responding to

I don't know if US leaders believed The Bomb was not necessary as the OP asserts. Personally, I lean towards the likelihood it saved the lives of American soldiers.

What I did was speculate on the "if" scenario -- what were the motives if the The Bomb was not necessary to hasten the end of the war, and what might the alternate history have been if it hadn't been used against Japan?

Useless speculation perhaps, but history hinges on such decisions.

[FairWinds]

72. About half the posts here must be from Neo-cons . .

who were trying to get to Townhall,
but got lost.

They show a real disregard for the humanity of
non-gringos.

Suggest they do some traveling.

[yurbud]

74. Japan's only condition for surrender was keeping the emperor

We said no, nuked them, then let them keep the emperor.

[FairWinds]

88. Even after the nukings, the Japanese Government . .

still stated that, "We surrender, but would request that you
respect the office and person of the emperor" (quote is approximate)

US response, "well, OK"

[Gomez163]

76. The Russians were getting ready to invade Japan.

The bomb kept Japan from being split in two like Korea.

[LS_Editor]

86. Truth.

And Americans would have crucified President Truman if tens or hundreds or thousands of Americans were killed and maimed trying to invade the Japanese home islands when he had the atomic bomb. Every man, woman, and child in Japan was being told to resist in such an eventuality.

And where was the surrender after the first bomb? That inflicts a mortal wound on this "imminent surrender" argument. Everyone forgets how brutal World War II really was. The vast majority of its victims were civilians. Not an excuse for any of the war crimes committed by all sides, but some historical perspective.

[guillaumeb]

78. But dropping two, not one, but two nuclear devices showed the word that...

1) the devices worked, and
2) that the US was willing to use them, and
3) that civilians were a legitimate target for this horror.

So much for US exceptionalism. Unless you mean exceptionally violent.

[YOHABLO]

80. People are missing the point: Should Obama on behalf of the U.S. apologize for using the bomb twice?

[hack89]

93. He has nothing to apologize for. So no. nt

[MisterP]

87. heck, atomic histories have found it was used mostly because Groves didn't want to get the

Howard Hughes treatment after taking over the entire war-production operation

it's like civilian reactors: they needed to find a justification post facto beyond the Arms Race, to show it face for peace

Hiroshima-Nagasaki is America's Alsace-Lorraine

[FairWinds]

89. So from Omaha Steve we get that Japanese children . .

" . . civilians including children were training to resist an invasion to the death"

and deserved to get nuked - kinda like all those Iraqi kids we killed, they had it coming.

reminds me too of resisting invasion in the 1950's as a kid - "Duck and Cover!"

Steve, you really don't have your facts straight, partly because your values are messed
up. It's hard to be rational when one is marinated in fear and hate.

Do some traveling Steve - to Japan and elsewhere; read the Alperowitz book. Hug someone. May you find peace.

But don't expect us to buy into your hate . .

Veterans For Peace

[Judi Lynn]

90. Damned right. Unbearable. n/t

[CTyankee]

96. This will not be resolved until way after it happened and the historians weigh the evidence

on both sides is considered.

I can see both sides here and am torn. We had just won the war in Europe and we were weary and worn down at that point in the war in the Pacific. But this horrible weapon haunted the scientists who developed it and also many Americans.

It's a mystery to me that we knew Japan was close to surrender but decided to use the bomb, but I suspect racism played a big part in it.

What a tragedy for those people and their families who were incinerated...