Pope condemns possession of nuclear weapons

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I have the first. Not impressed. Try Frank. Try Kort/THE COLUMBIA GUIDE TO HIROSHIMA AND THE BOMB. A structured guide to the history, with a ton of original documents.

The other two will be searched. The titles are not impressive. Survivors/hubakusha books are in the collection already.

Do, indeed, pay attention to his Holiness. For history, try books. I don’t recommend bloggers, either.

Added: Both 2 and 3 are readily available. They will be added to the list to be acquired. Already a couple there ahead of them.
 
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There was no suggestion that Hirohito would be done anything to. What was affirmed that the Allies would be in control and the form and structure of the country would be determined by the Japanese people. The give and take was accepted by the Emperor as satisfactory.

Allowing the Russians to place a western curtain to their eastern empire/holdings was not. The Russian invasion of Manchuko, China and Korea (August Storm), lasting for a couple of weeks past the Japanese surrender, to allow them to get their boots where they wanted them, cost over 90K casualties. More than either bomb. But I know you do like you some Russians.
 
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Even if true, these suppositions do not prove that it was the A-bombs that persuaded Hirohito to order Japan’s surrender. Other important factors were present. Japanese leaders did not themselves witness the A-bomb, but they had seen many of Japan’s cities leveled to an equal extent by B-29 raids and had been supposing that the USSR would mediate Japan’s surrender rather than invading.
 
Later. I got a house guest. Not everyone understand that obsessive /compulsives have to react when someone is wrong on the internet.
 
It was the bombs. And the final realization that not only would the USSR not mediate a soft landing, as Sato, from Moscow had been telling Togo, all along, but, as revealed at the 9-10 August rigged gozen kaigan, the Soviets would not honor the remaining neutrality period, for the year past when they had declined to renew it, as was mandated/anticipated. They had attacked. As I’ve told you before, the decision was not a reductionist one. It was both. But the plan was for what happened to have happened anyway. The Emperor, against all custom, was asked by Togo to express his desires. It was known that he would direct that the Potsdam Declaration be accepted. Before the Soviet attack or the second bomb.

More books. A pair to be read together: THE DAY MAN LOST and JAPAN’S LONGEST DAY, both by The Pacific War Research Society. Japanese folk. IMPERIAL TRAGEDY/Coffey. BEHIND JAPAN’S SURRENDER/Brooks. JAPAN’S DECISION TO SURRENDER/Butow. THE FALL OF JAPAN/Craig. Lots of stuff. Kort/THE COLUMBIA GUIDE TO HIROSHIMA AND THE BOMB has a lot of original message traffic between Sato and Togo. Other books are on the shelf. Go thou and read, a lot.

Japan’s leaders knew full well what had struck Hiroshima. Nishima, the premier nuclear physicist in Japan, who had headed one of the two Japanese atomic bomb development programs, was on the 2nd plane into Hiroshima. Nailed it as an atomic bomb. The hardliners response was how might this be countered, and a conviction that we couldn’t have any more. Followed,during the gozen kaigan, by the 2nd. Which resulted in a panic by one hardliner: they may have a hundred of them. Nice of them to think so.

The bombs obviated what the Japanese were counting on. The Soviets would have a difficult time invading the Home Islands. The US, invaders from the sea, par excellence, would not now have to get their feet wet on Kyushu, where the Japanese, far more numerous than the Americans had planned on, were waiting for them on the correct beaches. Drea/MACARTHUR’S ULTRA). Which mean that the Japanese plan to run up a staggering bloodbath (ketsugo plan) to obtain from the US a moderated form of terminating the war, was gone. There would be no invasion, by anybody. They might have a hundred of those things. They certainly had a hundred B-sans. One bomb, one plane, one city. And the two were only 4 days apart. Surrender.

It is now time to go and be a host. Enjoy your books.
 
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otjm said:
the Japanese culture and mindset
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Thank you for your very comprehensive reply. I think you have answered my question, which was essentially a very simple one. I think it would be fair to summarise your position by saying that due to “the Japanese culture and mindset”, it is reasonable to consider every Japanese citizen as either a combatant or potential combatant. Hence your original point that the bombings did not result in the deaths of civilians but in the deaths of combatants (meaning actual and potential combatants).
 
Indeed. After the bombs and after the mirage of Soviet assistance had vanished.

I have not read Ham through. I didn’t find enough unique info in the 510 pages of text to keep me in it. Though it is written in an accessible style.

Have you a favorite part to recommend?

Have you read through Frank?
 
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GKMotley said:
Anyone wanting a suggested reading list, raise hands. I’ll include the best, and some wrong (more or less) titles.
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OK. Frank’s book is one of the best. But will the book by Gar Alperovitz ( The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb) be on your list? I suspect that otjm did not like it, (assuming he had read it).
 
Alperovitz is the doyen of revisionists. Of course he would be on the list.
 
GKMotley said:
The Soviets would have a difficult time invading the Home Islands.
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That assumption is not proven. The USA is 6000 miles away, and it still planned to mount a sea-borne invasion whereas Soviet forces only had to cross the narrow straits from ports in southern Korea. If the USSR’s armies lacked landing craft, the US Navy could have supplied them.
The whole idea that the A-bombing of Japan necessarily saved many US lives is bogus and itself revisionist.

 
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This beginning of the “cold-war” that you speak of was Truman’s doing. There was no law or religious principle besides his own political prejudices that prevented the president from supporting a Soviet invasion of Japan.
 
Not from what I’ve seen from the dust jacket. I bought it a couple of months ago, haven’t read it. I buy far faster than I can read. This subject being only one of many obsessions.
 
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The bombs saved many lives, of many nationalities, dying across the Pacific Theater. Ending a war tends to do that. HELL TO PAY/Giangreco is a good intro.
 
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Londoner said:
Thank you for your very comprehensive reply. I think you have answered my question, which was essentially a very simple one. I think it would be fair to summarise your position by saying that due to “the Japanese culture and mindset”, it is reasonable to consider every Japanese citizen as either a combatant or potential combatant. Hence your original point that the bombings did not result in the deaths of civilians but in the deaths of combatants (meaning actual and potential combatants).
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To be candid, I find that approach a post facto rationalization. Bombing cities was already the standard practice in the European theater and I don’t think the rationalization applies there. At most you can say the Axis powers started it (the tactic)
 
GKMotley said:
The bombs saved many lives, of many nationalities, dying across the Pacific Theater. Ending a war tends to do that. HELL TO PAY/Giangreco is a good intro.
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As I have said before, it is not proven that Hirohito would not have ordered the surrender in the absence of the A-bombings. The Soviet declaration of war coupled with Truman’s specification that the next Japanese government might include an emperor (subject to the will of the Japanese people) might have been enough. We will never know for sure, but the repeated statements that the A-bombs by themselves induced the surrender are not correct.

The postulation that Japan’s surrender was indeed conditional is proven by the fact that the war criminal Hirohito was never either indicted, arrested, or put on trial.
 
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That is exactly what I meant. The possibility of an invasion of Japan by the USSR with the help of the US Navy did exist, but it was Truman’s decision to forgo that option and hope that the A-bomb would do the trick. And when those attacks failed to produce an immediate surrender, he offered conditions.
 
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