The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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Is it justifiable? What are the arguments adduced to support the decision by Truman.

Was it necessary to avert Operation Downfall? Or the Japanese population would have surrendered because their logistics had been destroyed by a naval blockade and B-29 raids. Furthermore, the Soviets invaded Manchuria.

This seems fun.. This too.
 
Latias said:
Is it justifiable? What are the arguments adduced to support the decision by Truman.

Was it necessary to avert Operation Downfall? Or the Japanese population would have surrendered because their logistics had been destroyed by a naval blockade and B-29 raids. Furthermore, the Soviets invaded Manchuria.

This seems fun.. This too.
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I’ve heard it argued that we could have forced Japan’s surrender by dropping the bombs off shore instead of inland.
 
A very difficult question. The mass murder and genocide of the Japanese and Nazis made it a simple matter at the time. There was no question of doing anything and everything to defeat them.

Objectively speaking, the destruction of entire cities seems unjustifiable. There is a good argument that the possession of atomic weapons has largely deterred major wars since 1945.
 
This has been argued to death previously. Scientists at the time urged the President that high Japanese officials should view a demonstration of one of the bombs in a relatively barren area before dropping it on a populated one. That idea was rejected. I have read about the detailed plans to invade, but it was clear that military commanders in the field did not understand atomic bombs fully. To them, they were just very powerful bombs. One scenario involved dropping more than one bomb in the enemy’s rear area, destroying reinforcements and equipment and making it less likely the invasion beaches could be resupplied or reinforced. However, every member of the population that could carry even pointed sticks would attempt to repel the invaders, including women and children. Pamphlets were issued showing which parts of the body would be most vulnerable.

The Emperor was regarded as a god. In the meantime, two meetings took place involving the major Allied leaders, including one in Cairo with Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, who were also, according to recent scholarship, at the meeting in Tehran. The Russians were highly suspect since mid-1944 among the other Allies. Their taking of Japan would have been unacceptable.

Ed
 
Already, in 1953, the US military realized that the H-Bomb and other thermonuclear weapons were useless but necessary in a scheme dubbed MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. If they launched, we would launch and “the living would envy the dead.”

In 1964, a newspaper headline read: “Red Chinese Fire A-Bomb” - their first. The Vietnam War started in March of 1965. Coincidence? Definitely not. In 1949, the Russians detonated their first atom bomb. The Korean War started in 1950.

Ed
 
edwest2 said:
This has been argued to death previously. Scientists at the time urged the President that high Japanese officials should view a demonstration of one of the bombs in a relatively barren area before dropping it on a populated one. That idea was rejected. I have read about the detailed plans to invade, but it was clear that military commanders in the field did not understand atomic bombs fully. To them, they were just very powerful bombs. One scenario involved dropping more than one bomb in the enemy’s rear area, destroying reinforcements and equipment and making it less likely the invasion beaches could be resupplied or reinforced. However, every member of the population that could carry even pointed sticks would attempt to repel the invaders, including women and children. Pamphlets were issued showing which parts of the body would be most vulnerable.
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A military commander would likely not appreciate the power of nuclear weapons, especially if they lack basic understanding of nuclear physics or the theoretical potential of such devices, and especially if the information regarding the weapons are classified. What does “very powerful bombs” mean? The Allies certainly had some “very powerful bombs” such as the “Grand Slam” and “Tall Boy” to use against hardened targets, such as bunkers, battleships, and U-boat pens. Perhaps telling the commanders that a nuclear weapon has thousand times more power than the aforementioned bombs would help them understand its power.
 
Here we go again. This comes up every few weeks.

I’ll say now, what I’ve said in the past: Yes, the A-bomb’s use was justified.

Some points:

If ever a nation can be said to have collectively worshipped the Devil, WWII Japan was it. At Pearl Harbor; Bataan; Nanking; and a dozen other places, the depravity of the Japanese was loosed on civilians and military alike. Read “the Rape of Nanking,” and its accounts of Japanese soldiers forcing Chinese sons to rape their own mothers, or forcing Buddhist priests to rape nuns, and you get the idea.

Regardless of atrocities committed by the Nazi SS, the German army (the Wehrmacht) by and large “fought fair:” If you were a US serviceman captured by the Germans in WWII, your likelihood of dying in enemy captivity was 1 in 100. In Japanese captivity, your likelihood of dying while a prisoner was 1 in 2.

That’s the enemy we were facing. We needed the war to end, as quickly as possible. More in a minute.
 
Tomstone, ALL your anti-violence posts are 100% suspect, for the same reason: You are the same person who, a while back, said you would not use violence to stop a terrorist from raping your own virgin daughter.

Seriously, anyone with that view cannot be taken seriously.
 
Now, more about Japan.

Japanese society was so heavily controlled that, when surrender happened, the vast majority of civilians simply could not believe it. The same military control would and could have simply disbelieved any “test of a superweapon,” or simply not allowed word of its use to reach the population. Further, why would Japanese leadership willingly walk into allied hands to view such a test? They expected death would befall them in such a scenario.
 
If the A-bombs were not used, the US was prepared to invade, and plans were well along. It was one, or the other: The cancerous Japanese grip on the far east had to be eradicated.

At the time, there were 400,000 allied POWs in Japan - Americans; British; Australians; Dutch; etc. The Japanese government had a standing order: The moment the allies landed in Japan proper, all allied POWs were to be immediately executed. The A-bombs saved every one of those allied lives.
 
Latias said:
A military commander would likely not appreciate the power of nuclear weapons, especially if they lack basic understanding of nuclear physics or the theoretical potential of such devices, and especially if the information regarding the weapons are classified. What does “very powerful bombs” mean? The Allies certainly had some “very powerful bombs” such as the “Grand Slam” and “Tall Boy” to use against hardened targets, such as bunkers, battleships, and U-boat pens. Perhaps telling the commanders that a nuclear weapon has thousand times more power than the aforementioned bombs would help them understand its power.
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Not really. They would not understand the radiation and radioactive fallout. Would they have been told, in square miles, what kind of destruction they were looking at? Aerial photos of selected targets would have allowed them to determine the amount of damage if they had been told one atomic bomb could totally destroy a circular area as far as a certain distance from its detonation point. Then they could have drawn circles on those aerial photos and know, in advance, how much damage one could do.

Grand Slam and Tall Boy bombs were effective only in certain cases and due to their weight, meant the bombers carrying them needed protective cover. German flak was improving as German ground radar was improving. The Americans filled a B-17 with explosives and sent it against a German submarine pen in France. After the pilot set the controls to automatic, he bailed out. The plane crashed a mile before its target.

The British were having a hard time destroying V-1 sites which were small targets and surrounded by flak. Valiant efforts were made by fighter-bombers but the weight of the bombs they carried slowed them down, making them more vulnerable.

Ed
 
PolarGuy said:
Regardless of atrocities committed by the Nazi SS, the German army (the Wehrmacht) by and large “fought fair:” If you were a US serviceman captured by the Germans in WWII, your likelihood of dying in enemy captivity was 1 in 100. In Japanese captivity, your likelihood of dying while a prisoner was 1 in 2.
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What about Operation Buffalo and the Commissar Order? What about the German POWs of the Red Army. Do not say that the German Army “fought fair” unless you are willing to disregard most events of WWII East of the Oder River. Every Wehrmacht general did not conduct themselves in the manner that Erwin Rommel did.
agnes_therese said:
Fun? Really?
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They are good documentaries. (Fun to watch and learn about a forgotten and underappreciated facet of WWII.) I like the Soviet Storm series.
 
US casualty estimates for an invasion of Japan in 1945-1946 (and WWII would have lasted until 1946 at earliest) ran to over 1 million allied casualties, to say nothing of the carnage to be inflicted on the Japanese.

It would have been the worst carnage ever seen in the history of the earth.

This true example sums it up: All allied soldiers killed or wounded in battle were and still are awarded the “purple heart” medal. Before the A-bomb’s use, the US authorities placed a huge order for “purple heart” medals with the anticipation of a huge need to award them to all those injured in battle, or awarded posthumously in the event of death, for an invasion of Japan. This order was delivered.

Now, 65 years later, all US purple hearts awarded since then: In Korea; Vietnam; Iraq; and a dozen other places – are still being awarded from the supply of medals delivered in 1945 to the US government, and never used then (since the invasion didn’t occur). If you are a US soldier wounded in Iraq, your purple heart will be circa 1945. That gives you some idea of the expected casualties.

Was the A-bomb use justified? Yes; absolutely.

To anyone who disagrees, please advise if you would have volunteered to be in first wave of landing craft heading toward Japan’s beaches on the morning of November 1, 1945…

(I didn’t think so!)
 
Yes, Latias, I stand behind my comment about the Wehrmacht largely fighting fair 100%.

Did the SS commit atrocities? Yes. They had nothing on the atrocities the red army committed when they rolled into Germany in 1945 and raped any woman who could walk.

But I stand behind the Wehrmacht largely fighting fair. By example, when Field Marshall Kesselring was brought up on war crimes charges, his chief opponent in Italy gave testimony in Kesselring’s defense, saying that Kesselring’s men “fought [the allies] hard but fought [them] fair.” If you look up Kesselring on Wikipedia you will see it with your own 2 eyes.
 
PolarGuy said:
US casualty estimates for an invasion of Japan in 1945-1946 (and WWII would have lasted until 1946 at earliest) ran to over 1 million allied casualties, to say nothing of the carnage to be inflicted on the Japanese.

It would have been the worst carnage ever seen in the history of the earth.

(I didn’t think so!)
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Sigh… hyperbole or ignorance? Look up “Operation Mars” (and the prior battles in the Rzhev sector) and the Battle of Stalingrad before using a superlative.
 
Latias, you keep wanting to talk about the Eastern Front…

…which is not what you started the thread about.

And BTW: Would you volunteer for the first wave? Please advise. I didn’t see an answer in there. I also didn’t see any response about 400,000 allied prisoners scheduled to be murdered; a million purple heart medals; Japanese soldiers forcing sons to rape their mothers; or anything else I said, so I’d be careful about accusing anyone else of ignorance…
 
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