How should the war in the Pacific c. 1945 have ended?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

Poll question: How should the war in the Pacific c. 1945 have ended?

I see lots of debate about what was wrong with this or that moment in the war (or any war for that matter) but I'm curious about what the right thing to do would have been.

Obviously Germany never got nuked but the devastation there was just as horrific if not more so.

Ditto Russia who was invaded but still on the "winning" side.

Britain was never invaded by land but was still reeling from the air attack.

The common denominator appears to be - war sux! Even if we never dropped the A-bombs it seems there never was a good ending.

I'm not trying to excuse the A-bombs. I can't excuse them. I could never see myself approving the use of such dreadful devices (not that there is any danger of me ever becoming president of any nation).

War is one of those alien things to me. The word "victory" seems exalted but its very essence is based on the absolute degradation of fellow human beings.

Still, I've heard some debate on whether the Japanese were about to surrender prior to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima but then I've also heard intercepted cables indicated the US decoders had messages by the the Japanese saying they were fortifying islands.

Personally, it seems like a nightmare time to have lived through. It's incomprehensible to me the scale of devastation and yet, there it was. Japan wasn't blameless but neither was any other party. It seems as if nowadays we spend our time asking who sinned the least but that is a discussion for a different thread.

What was the best way to end the war?

[Phoonzang]

1. The way we did it. nt

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Detonate an A-bomb in an unpopulated area visible from Tokyo

IIRC that was the initial plan.

--d!

[Nuclear Unicorn]

6. Interesting

Any insights as to why that was not followed through?

[Llewlladdwr]

10. Perhaps because we only had a very limited number of atomic bombs?

And why in the world would you want to waste one on a demonstration?

[hatrack]

15. Fat Man #3 was ready for deployment around August 20th . . .

Hanford was fully online at that point, and there would have been enough material for about a bomb a month in the production pipeline.

The only real bottleneck for Pu bombs was that they pretty much had to be hand-crafted by the assembly teams at Los Alamos. Oak Ridge was producing U-235 steadily (hence Little Boy), but at a slower rate than the big Pu production piles in Washington.

[Igel]

17. I'd note that using it on an inhabited area had little immediate effect.

The devastation was immense. The death toll, huge. There were refugees. Material damage.

And yet, it wasn't believed. There was no surrender. So Nagasaki was next up. Repeating the immense devastation, huge death toll, refugees, and material damage seemed to have a bracing effect.

What effect would using it on an uninhabited area have had that the destruction of Hiroshima failed to have?

(Yes, there is the possibility that honor was affronted by the Hiroshima blast and so stiffened the backbone instead of producing clear thinking, but I have to say that I don't see how a blast in an uninhabited area would have obviously led to a different result.)

[Statistical]

29. They were concerned that Japan wouldn't respond to a remote unpopulated test.

Remember that we DID bomb an inhabited city and they still didn't surrender.

Then we bombed a second city and the council didn't want to surrender but the Emperor overruled them.
Then members of the council staged a coup and kidnapped the Emperor to prevent a surrender.

At this point 2 cities had been bombed. Tokyo was the third target. Thankfully the coup was defeated, the Emperor message sent to the people and the US SIGINT teams heard the message.

[MineralMan]

3. Other: Hindsight is easy.

We're not in that war any longer. Talk to my father. He's 86, and was in that war. He piloted B-17s. He can tell you what it was like then.

Second-guessing the decisions made at the time seems like a waste of time.

[RKP5637]

4. Agree!!! n/t

[MineralMan]

7. Thanks.

[catbyte]

12. Amen to that, MineralMan. The hardships dad suffered at

Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Bougainville, etc. was unspeakable.

Diane
Anishnabe in MI

[northoftheborder]

5. Other: Above suggestion - A-bomb only unoccupied territory.

[PufPuf23]

8. Other - Drop nuke where there would be no casualties

and tell about the potential for horrors without surrender.

[JVS]

9. The Japanese should have surrendered earlier.

In fact, they should have realized that starting the war was a bad idea in the first place.

[catbyte]

11. Selfishly, I gotta go with The Bomb

My dad was literally on the dock in San Diego waiting to ship out to Japan when the news came. He probably would have been killed and I wouldn't be typing this now. Chii megwetch for your sacrifices, Dad. I love you and miss you every day. You were a warrior for good your whole life.

Diane
Anishnabe in MI

[Codeine]

13. The Japanese should have pulled their heads out of their asses and

admitted inevitable defeat and given up. They refused. They paid a terrible price for their folly.

[OutNow]

14. The Russians

There is a theory that makes a lot of sense: that the Russians were about to declare war on Japan and push down from the north. After VE day many thought the Russians (up till now not involved in the Pacific theater) would declare war on Japan and quickly move to capture some Japanese territory with the goal of splitting Japan into two postwar zones like Korea and Germany and then move to capture the rest as they actually did in Eastern Europe and almost did in Germany that caused the Berlin Airlift.

With FDR gone. Truman was in charge and was not as conciliatory towards the Russians. Rather than repeat the sharing of power like in Europe, he decided he had to end the war with Japan as soon as possible to limit the Russian land grab. He did it by dropping the bombs. A horrible way to both end WW II, and also to show the Russians what the US could do and they could not do. Hence the drive by the Russians to develop the bomb and the nuclear proliferation that has slowed but never stopped since 1945.

[Scruffy1]

16. Japan had already lost the war

Her naval fleet had no fuel and the Island was surrounded. There was no reason to invade at all when a naval blockade would have done the job. Japan simply could not fight back and depended on imports for basics. After a hell of a lot of research, I came to the conclusion that the main point of using the A-Bomb was to establish world hegemony. The standard bull crap handed out to schoolchildren that it avoided a million invasion casualties ( the numbers vary) was not based on any analysis just political crap to sell a weapon testing program. Americans were fooled then and will be fooled again. Why else would we maintain over 850 military bases around the world. Just like the British Empire the people of America receive no benefit from the hegemony, but the masters wax fat.

[catbyte]

18. I disagree, Scruffy. My dad was on the dock waiting to ship out.

The Allies wouldn't have "waited Japan out". They were going to go full bore. You may be right about the reasons, but the reality is that it would have been an ungodly bloodbath. The Japanese would not have gone quietly. Look at what happened on Okinawa.

[Ganja Ninja]

21. Yup, I saw something on TV the other day that said the Japanese had

over 5000 planes ready to use as Kamikaze's in the event of an invasion. A blockade would not have been a bloodless exercise. Meanwhile the people of Europe were starving and the Japanese were still in brutal control of large areas in the far east and still abusing American POWs. The fact is that the leadership of Japan was as much responsible for the use of the bomb as anyone.

[Scruffy1]

23. I don't get my information from a television

but through a lot of study and research. The blockade was already in place by submarines, and the claim that the Japanese had anything like five thousand aircraft available is laughable. Although intelligence was quite muddled at the time the decision to bomb probably didn't have much to do with the surrender anyhow as the cabinet was approaching the surrender decision before the bombs were dropped. Of course, the hardliners didn't want to quit and there was some violent dissension even after the bombs were dropped. I think Harry Truman was pretty much led into this decision by State and the military. I would not even make the claim that the dropping of the bomb was avoidable for several reasons. First once a war starts the psychology almost requires annihilation of the other by any and all means. Secondly, once you have a weapon you are going to use it. And probably just as important is that we just wanted it over and fast. Lastly we wanted a dramatic victory, not a boring siege which might have lasted six months to a year. Imagine what the Republicans would have made of that.

What I am saying is that the myth of an invasion was just that. No planning had been done to any great degree and the casualty estimates were just wild stabs in the dark, if one did occur. Out of this we developed from an isolationist to country to a hegemonic empire. Were still there. My grandfather fought in the South Pacific my father in Europe and Korea, me in Viet Nam, nephews in Iraq and were still engaged in Afghanistan. The sorrows of Empire are endless.

[Statistical]

30. A naval blockade would have killed millions of civilians via starvation and disease.

Sure you would avoid an A-BOMB but it is naive to think it would have prevented casualties.

Japan was up to the end still committing horrible atrocities in China. Allied troops estimated that Japan couldn't win but it would take 12-18 months to push them out of the country. Meanwhile Chinese civilians would continue to die by millions each month.

Prolonging the war via blockade would increase civilian casualty count by millions. Of all the options it would be the most horrific.

Japan knew it lost it was simply trying to "wait out" the Allies. If it could convince Allies that continuing the war was pointless it could keep some or all of its occupied territory (and continue exterminating subhuman Chinese to make room for Japanese colonies).

[MilesColtrane]

19. Truman made the right call.

[Le Taz Hot]

20. The more COMMON alternative was:

tell them we had a terrible weapon and to give them the opportunity to surrender. If they didn't surrender, we could have chosen any number of UNINHABITED ISLANDS upon which to release the nuke. Then give them another chance to surrender. The alternatives you provided, in hindsight, were debunked a LONG time ago.

[Iggo]

22. Other.

Shoulda let the Germans bomb Tokyo. They got us into it.

[cowcommander]

24. Everyone here really needs to learn about the Battle of Okinawa and the casualties

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

12,513 US soldiers killed
About 110,000 Japanese soldiers killed
Estimated 42,000–150,000 civilians killed

The japanese were never planning to surrender without a mountain of corpses.

[social_critic]

27. That's a little misleading, cowcommander

The Japanese were willing to discuss surrender, but only if the Emperor kept his job. We were asking for unconditional surrender. And in the end we agreed to what they wanted anyway. The bombs were dropped, as far as I can tell, because we were curious as to what they would do to a city. They were experiments. I think a little bit of "lets kill a bunch of japs for Iwo and Okinawa" feelings may have factored in.

If you look at the way it was working out, once Okinawa fell our bombers had the ability to come in and do their thing at will, and they only had kamikaze as a response - and they were running out of planes, pilots, and gasoline. So it is my opinion we have historically been fed a self serving story to justify a war crime, and the boms weren't needed.

[Sabriel]

25. We should have tried to compromise...bridge the gap...allow concessions

And then sat back as the other party screwed us over once again.

[Ginto]

26. Without resorting to nuclear weapons. nt

[superduperfarleft]

28. Is it August already?

I thought we already did this so far this year.

[Iggo]

31. December 7th.

They got the wrong argument going.

Oops!