Why Truman Dropped the Bomb

[john_doran]

vern humphrey:

You’re the one asserting the positive. By the rules of logic, the burden of proof is on you.

look, man - in my experience, anyone and everyone asking if someone is “certain” about something is actually asking a rhetorical question that amounts to the statement: i won’t believe your claim without evidence of deductive certainty.

and i don’t play that game. you’re welcome to do a quick google of hiroshima and nuclear bombs, which will yield a plethora of material which will provide you ample grist for the mill. your call.
vern humphrey:

So why were there plots and attempts to kill pro-surrender politicians?

same reason soccer players are occasionally shot for scoring on their own nets: there are crazy people everywhere.

i hope you’re not seriously suggesting that the existence of such plots (if there were any) is necessarily indicative of a nation’s general political climate…
vern humphrey:

Now there’s a nonsensical claim. A single firebomb raid killed more people than either atomic bomb. The raids created fire-storms, which by their nature are uncontrolable and unpredictable.

you are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but it strikes me as almost self-evident that the impact of an instantaneous, apocalyptic explosion is more terrifying by many orders of magnitude than conventional bombs and a lot of fire.

my dad was around for the german bombing of london, and you know what? people just adapt. not so for the A-bomb.
vern humphrey:

This is the flip side of the belief that leaders are telepathically connected to their followers.http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon12.gif

The decision-makers knew it.

sure. but it would still have been far more impactful if they actually ***saw ***the bomb go off. like, say, in a demonstration over an unpopulated area…
vern humphrey:

Your disagreement doesn’t amount to proof, nor even probabilty.

right back atcha, fella.

howabout we call it quits? ok? this is starting on the downward slope to what is for me a familiar and invariably unrewarding silliness.

besides - why would you want to engage anyone who makes nonsensical claims?

 

[john_doran]

qmvsimp:

But that is one of the main points here. None of us knows for certain. To claim immoral based on the assertion that they would have surrendered anyway, requires a high burden to show that they would have.

again: i am not making claims about anyone’s immorality. my use of particular names is only to rebut certain claims made by those such as yourself. i have absolutely no idea if any of those involved in the attacks on nagasaki and hiroshima are personally culpable for anything. none at all.

qmvsimp:

There was a lot more to it than that. I understood that they wanted more than just a figurehead position for the Emporer.

of course there was more to it. the point is that there were at least some conditions which, if granted, may well have incited the japanese to surrender.

qmvsimp:

What’s important is that the top echelons of the military brass (the decision makers) did know about it, and they still did not surrender.

knowing what happened isn’t the same thing as seeing it happen.

and their intractability cannot be accurately understood in isolation from their demands for certain conditions on their surrender - was an unconditional surrender so critical that a bomb had to be dropped on a second civilian center in order to get it?

 

[qmvsimp]

john doran:

please provide evidence for the claim that they did not express this opinion prior to the fact.

sure. but my point is only that you cannot rely on “most of the military thought it was ok, so it was probably ok for them”, which is what you originally posted.

here - this is what you actually said:

which is obviously incompatible with “I can come up with a list of military who thought it was necessary. But this wouldn’t prove it was.”. and that’s all i was trying to demonstrate.

Ok, let’s delve into the facts here. According to Henry Stimson, the secretary of War during WWII, in 1947 he said: “At no time from 1941 to 1945,” declared Mr. Stimson, “did I ever hear it suggested by the President, or by another responsible member of the Government, that atomic energy should not be used in that war.” And Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer recalled in 1954 that “we always assumed if they [atomic bombs] were needed, they would be used.”

Truman formed a committee of military and laypeople to advise him on using the bomb:

The work of the Interim Committee was completed 1 June 1945, when it submitted its report to the President, recommending unanimously that:

1. The bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible.
2. It should be used against a military target surrounded by other buildings. 3. It should be used without prior warning of the nature of the weapon. (One member, Ralph A. Bard, later dissented from this portion of the committee’s recommendation.)

See link: army.mil/cmh-pg/books/70-7_23.htm
john doran:

i am only considering the justifiability of the use of nuclear arms in the abstract.

Are you claiming that the use nuclear arms can never be morally justified? If not, then this thread is discussing Truman’s decision in 1945.

I’m working on info on the fliers.

 

[qmvsimp]

Correction: The Soviets entered the war after Hiroshima, but before Nagasaki.

 

[vern_humphrey]

john doran:

look, man - in my experience, anyone and everyone asking if someone is “certain” about something is actually asking a rhetorical question that amounts to the statement: i won’t believe your claim without evidence of deductive certainty.

In my experience, people who take that tone are losing the argument. When they also abandon the basic rules of logical debate and demand others disprove their assertions, they have definitely lost the debate.
john doran:

and i don’t play that game. you’re welcome to do a quick google of hiroshima and nuclear bombs, which will yield a plethora of material which will provide you ample grist for the mill. your call.

The game is called logical debate. Your unwillingness to play by the rules is noted.
john doran:

same reason soccer players are occasionally shot for scoring on their own nets: there are crazy people everywhere.

Non sequitor. The Japanese military had successfully changed the direction of the government through assassination before and were prepared to do it again.
john doran:

i hope you’re not seriously suggesting that the existence of such plots (if there were any) is necessarily indicative of a nation’s general political climate…

I hope you’re not seriously suggesting Japan in WWII was a democracy, and that the nation’s “general political climate” extended beyond a relatively small group of key decision makers.
john doran:

you are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but it strikes me as almost self-evident that the impact of an instantaneous, apocalyptic explosion is more terrifying by many orders of magnitude than conventional bombs and a lot of fire.

This is the old “my imagination is better than anyone else’s experience” ploy.
john doran:

my dad was around for the german bombing of london, and you know what? people just adapt. not so for the A-bomb.

I was around for the bombing of Alexandria when the French and British tried to take the Suez canal.

Trust me, dead people don’t adapt. And the firebombing of Tokyo killed more people than the atomic bombs.
john doran:

sure. but it would still have been far more impactful if they actually ***saw ***the bomb go off. like, say, in a demonstration over an unpopulated area…

Since they didn’t surrender when they saw it go off over a populated area, but had to be bombed again, that’s highly unlikely.
john doran:

right back atcha, fella.

howabout we call it quits? ok? this is starting on the downward slope to what is for me a familiar and invariably unrewarding silliness.

besides - why would you want to engage anyone who makes nonsensical claims?

I really don’t – especially when they substitute attitude for facts and logic.

 

[qmvsimp]

Military targets. According to wikipedia:

Hiroshima during World War II

At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of considerable industrial and military significance. Some military camps were located nearby such as the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Hata’s 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. Hiroshima was a major supply and logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. It was chosen as a target because it had not suffered damage from previous bombing raids, allowing an ideal environment to measure the damage caused by the atomic bomb. The city was mobilized for “all-out” war, with thousands of conscripted women, children and Koreans working in military offices, military factories and building demolition and with women and children training to resist any invading force.

Nagasaki during World War II

The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials.

In contrast to many modern aspects of Nagasaki, the residences almost without exception were of old-fashioned Japanese construction, consisting of wood or wood-frame buildings, with wood walls (with or without plaster), and tile roofs. Many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also housed in buildings of wood or other materials not strong enough to withstand explosions. Nagasaki had been permitted to grow for many years without conforming to any definite city zoning plan; residences were erected adjacent to factory buildings and to each other almost as closely as possible throughout the entire industrial valley.

See link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Prelude_to_the_bombings

 

[john_doran]

vern humphrey:

I really don’t – especially when they substitute attitude for facts and logic.

and that’s that.

 

[oat_soda]

the question boils down to weather the bombing in hiroshima and nagasaki would be considered indiscriminate or not. lets see what “experts” think on the issue.

from ewtn:

Now the dropping of the atomic bomb on whole cities is an obvious attack on innocent civilians and so is absolutely immoral. … The problem is that the Allied made it their policy to demand unconditional surrender of its enemies. Now laying down such terms makes a modern war a war to the death. An enemy who is losing has no way out.

from bishops in the USCCB:

“Hiroshima and Nagasaki are permanent reminders to the entire human family of the grave consequences of total war,” said USCCB president Bishop William Skylstad yesterday in a letter to Bishop Augustinus Jun-ichi Nomura, president of the bishops’ conference of Japan… the threat of terrorism has increased. Terrorist attacks, like the “total war” exemplified by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, result in “indiscriminate destruction and death to civilians and soldiers alike,” he said.

JPII says this:

Weighing on humanity’s conscience like a nightmare, the memory of those deadly blasts of fire have become the eloquent symbol of all suffering and destruction…Let us pray intensely that no one will resign himself to this situation. May honest and persevering dialogue not be stifled by violence! Every effort must be made to avoid new human tragedies!

so we have the expert moral theologian at ewtn calling it indiscriminate and bishops in the USCCB also calling it indiscriminate and compared it to terrorism. finally, and most importantly, we have JPII calling it a nightmare on humanity’s conscience.

1777 Moral conscience,48 present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. **It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil.**49 It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.

so if our conscience judges particular choices, namely the atomic bombing of japan, how can a justified choice weigh on humanities conscience like a nightmare? it could’nt, hence it wasn’t just.

so there you have it. JPII thinks it was an indiscriminate bombing. i think those here who adovcate that it was justified need to be honest and acknowledge that the church doesn’t support this view.

 

[john_doran]

here are some interesting links:

doug-long.com/hiroshim.htm

tamilnation.org/humanrights/hiroshima.htm

 

[john_doran]

qmvsimp:

Are you claiming that the use nuclear arms can never be morally justified?

yes.

 

[qmvsimp]

Leaflets dropped. Leaflets were dropped over a month before the bombing of Hiroshima:

On August 8, 1945 leaflets were dropped and warnings were given to Japan by Radio Saipan. (The area of Nagasaki did not receive warning leaflets until August 10, though the leaflet campaign covering the whole country was over a month into its operations.

The ones on and after August 8 said:

TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE: America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet. We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate. We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one atomic bomb fell on that city. Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the Emperor to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better and peace-loving Japan. You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war. link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#endnote_www.pbs.org.335

 

[qmvsimp]

Here is some good points for the bomb:

Support for use of atomic bombs

Although supporters of the bombing concede that the civilian leadership in Japan was cautiously and discreetly sending out diplomatic communiques as far back as January of 1945, following the Allied invasion of Luzon in the Philippines, they point out that Japanese military officials were unanimously opposed to any negotiations before the use of the atomic bomb.
While some members of the civilian leadership did use covert diplomatic channels to begin negotiation for peace, on their own it could not negotiate surrender or even a cease-fire. Japan, as a Constitutional Monarchy, could only enter into a peace agreement with the unanimous support of the Japanese cabinet, and this cabinet was dominated by militarists from the Japanese Imperial Army and the Japanese Imperial Navy, all of whom were initially opposed to any peace deal. A political stalemate developed between the military and civilian leaders of Japan with the military increasingly determined to fight despite the costs and odds.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson points to the increased Japanese resistance, futile as it was in retrospect, as the war came to its inevitable conclusion. The Battle of Okinawa showed this determination to fight on at all costs. More than 110,000 Japanese and 12,000 American troops were killed in the bloodiest battle of the Pacific theater, just 8 weeks before Japan’s final surrender. When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945 and carried out Operation August Storm, the Japanese Imperial Army ordered its ill-supplied and weakened forces in Manchuria to fight to the last man, an order which it carried out. Major General Masakazu Amanu, chief of the operations section at Japanese Imperial Headquarters, stated that he was absolutely convinced his defensive preparations, begun in early 1944, could repel any Allied invasion of the home islands with minimum losses. The Japanese would not give up easily because of their strong tradition of pride and honor: Many followed the Samurai code and would fight until the very last man was dead.

After the realization that the destruction of Hiroshima was from a nuclear weapon, the civilian leadership gained more and more traction in its argument that Japan had to concede defeat and accept the terms of the Yalta Proclamation. However, even after the destruction of Nagasaki, the Emperor himself needed to intervene to end a deadlock in the cabinet.

According to some Japanese historians, Japanese civilian leaders who favored surrender saw their salvation in the atomic bombing. The Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up, so the peace faction seized on the bombing as a new argument to force surrender. Koichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito’s closest advisors, stated: “We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war.” Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief Cabinet secretary in 1945, called the bombing “a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war.” According to these historians and others, the pro-peace civilian leadership was able to use the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to convince the military that no amount of courage, skill and fearless combat could help Japan against the power of atomic weapons. Akio Morita, founder of Sony and Japanese Naval officer during the war, also concludes that it was the atomic bomb and not conventional bombings from B-29s that convinced the Japanese military to agree to peace.

 

[qmvsimp]

Supporters of the bombing also point out that waiting for the Japanese to surrender was not a cost-free option. The conventional bombardment was killing tens of thousands each week in Japan, directly and indirectly. The submarine blockade and the U.S. Army Air Force’s mining operation, Operation Starvation, had effectively cut off Japan’s imports. A complementary operation against Japan’s railways was about to begin, isolating the cities of southern Honshu from the food grown elsewhere in the Home Islands. This, combined with the delay in relief supplies from the Allies, could have resulted in a far greater death toll, due to famine and malnutrition, than actually occurred. “Immediately after the defeat, some estimated that 10 million people were likely to starve to death”, noted historian Daikichi Irokawa. Meanwhile, in addition to the Soviet attacks, offensives were scheduled in southern China, and Malaysia. As a result of the war, noncombatants were dying throughout Asia at a rate of about 200,000 per month.

The Americans anticipated losing many soldiers in the planned invasion of Japan, although the actual number of expected fatalities and wounded is subject to some debate and depends on the persistence and reliability of Japanese resistance and whether the Americans would have invaded only Kyushu in November 1945 or if a follow up landing near Tokyo, projected for March of 1946, would have been needed. Years after the war, Secretary of State James Byrnes claimed that 500,000 American lives would have been lost - and that number has since been repeated “authoritatively”, but in the summer of 1945 US military planners projected 20,000-110,000 combat deaths from the initial November 1945 invasion, with about three to four times that number wounded. Many military advisors held that a worst-case scenario could involve up to 1,000,000 American casualties.

In addition to that, the atomic bomb hastened the end of the Second World War in Asia liberating hundreds of thousands of Western citizens (including about 200,000 Dutch) and 400,000 Indonesians (“Romushas”) from Japanese concentration camps. In addition, Japanese atrocities against millions of Chinese were ended.

Supporters also point to an order given by the Japanese War Ministry on August 1, 1944. The order dealt with the disposal and execution of all Allied POW’s, numbering over 100,000, if an invasion of the Japanese mainland took place. (It is also likely that, considering Japan’s previous treatment of POWs, were the Allies to wait out Japan and starve it, the Japanese would have killed all Allied POWs, and Chinese prisoners.)

In response to the argument that the large-scale killing of civilians was immoral and a war crime, supporters of the bombings have argued that the Japanese government waged total war, ordering many civilians (including women and children) to work in factories and military offices and to fight against any invading force. Father John A. Siemes, professor of modern philosophy at Tokyo’s Catholic University, and an eyewitness to the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima wrote:

“We have discussed among ourselves the ethics of the use of the bomb. Some consider it in the same category as poison gas and were against its use on a civil population. Others were of the view that in total war, as carried on in Japan, there was no difference between civilians and soldiers, and that the bomb itself was an effective force tending to end the bloodshed, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction. It seems logical to me that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of war against civilians.” [11] Some historians have claimed that U.S. planners wanted to end the war quickly, to minimize potential Soviet acquisition of Japanese-held territory.

link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Support_for_use_of_atomic_bombs

 

[qmvsimp]

Opposition to use of atomic bombs

The Manhattan Project had originally been conceived as a counter to Nazi Germany’s atomic bomb program, and with the defeat of Germany, several scientists working on the project felt that the United States should not be the first to use such weapons. One of the prominent critics of the bombings was Albert Einstein. Leo Szilard, a scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued:
“If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.” Their use has been called barbaric as several hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, and the choice of areas heavily populated by civilians. In the days just before their use, many scientists (including American nuclear physicist Edward Teller) argued that the destructive power of the bomb could have been demonstrated without the taking of lives.

It has been argued that the use of atomic weapons against civilian populations on a large scale is a crime against humanity and a war crime. The use of poisonous weapons (due to the effects of the radiation) were defined as war crimes by international law of the time. Some have argued that Americans should have done more research into the effects of the bomb, including radiation sickness and the terrible burns that followed the explosion.

 

[john_doran]

qmvsimp:

Ok, let’s delve into the facts here. According to Henry Stimson, the secretary of War during WWII, in 1947 he said: “At no time from 1941 to 1945,” declared Mr. Stimson, “did I ever hear it suggested by the President, or by another responsible member of the Government, that atomic energy should not be used in that war.” And Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer recalled in 1954 that “we always assumed if they [atomic bombs] were needed, they would be used.”

interesting. eisenhower has a different recollection:

"…in [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

“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, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude…” - Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

herbert hoover:

On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: “I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you’ll get a peace in Japan - you’ll have both wars over.”

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O’Laughlin, “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.” quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

ralph bard, undersecretary of the navy:

On June 28, 1945, a memorandum written by Bard the previous day was given to Sec. of War Henry Stimson. It stated, in part:

"Following the three-power [July 1945 Potsdam] conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia’s position [they were about to declare war on Japan] and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the [retention of the] Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for.

“I don’t see that we have anything in particular to lose in following such a program.” He concluded the memorandum by noting, “The only way to find out is to try it out.” Memorandum on the Use of S-1 Bomb, Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder # 77, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 1987 edition, pg. 307-308).

 

[qmvsimp]

Some have claimed that the Japanese were already essentially defeated, and therefore use of the bombs was unnecessary. General Dwight D. Eisenhower so advised the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, in July of 1945. [12] The highest-ranking officer in the Pacific Theater, General Douglas MacArthur, was not consulted beforehand, but said afterward that there was no military justification for the bombings. The same opinion was expressed by Fleet Admiral William Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), General Carl Spaatz (commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific), and Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials) [13]; Major General Curtis LeMay [14]; and Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet [15].

Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years: “In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act? 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.[16] (pg. 312-313)” MacArthur believed the dropping of the bombs to be “completely unnecessary from a military point of view. [17](pg. 775)” The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after interviewing hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, reported:

 

[john_doran]

lewis strauss, special assistant to the secretary of the navy:

Strauss recalled a recommendation he gave to Sec. of the Navy James Forrestal before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima:

“I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. 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… My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest… would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will… Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation…”

Strauss added, “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…”. quoted in Len Giovannitti and Fred Freed, The Decision To Drop the Bomb, pg. 145, 325

paul nitze, vice chairman, US strategic bombing survey:

In 1950 Nitze would recommend a massive military buildup, and in the 1980s he was an arms control negotiator in the Reagan administration. In July of 1945 he was assigned the task of writing a strategy for the air attack on Japan. Nitze later wrote:

"The plan I devised was essentially this: Japan was already isolated from the standpoint of ocean shipping. The only remaining means of transportation were the rail network and intercoastal shipping, though our submarines and mines were rapidly eliminating the latter as well. A concentrated air attack on the essential lines of transportation, including railroads and (through the use of the earliest accurately targetable glide bombs, then emerging from development) the Kammon tunnels which connected Honshu with Kyushu, would isolate the Japanese home islands from one another and fragment the enemy’s base of operations. I believed that interdiction of the lines of transportation would be sufficiently effective so that additional bombing of urban industrial areas would not be necessary.

“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.” Paul Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pg. 36-37 (my emphasis)

there’s a bunch of other good ones here:

doug-long.com/quotes.htm*

 

[qmvsimp]

“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.[18]” Others contend that Japan had been trying to surrender for at least two months, but the US refused by insisting on an unconditional surrender. In fact, while several diplomats favored surrender, the leaders of the Japanese military were committed to fighting a ‘Decisive Battle’ on Kyushu, hoping that they could negotiate better terms for an armistice afterward — all of which the Americans knew from reading decrypted Japanese communications. The Japanese government never did decide what terms, beyond preservation of an imperial system, they would have accepted to end the war; as late as August 9, the Supreme Council was still split, with the hardliners insisting Japan should demobilize its own forces, no war crimes trials, and no occupation. Only the direct intervention of the Emperor ended the dispute, and even after that a military coup was attempted to prevent the surrender (although it was easily suppressed).

Another criticism is that the U.S. should have waited a short time to gauge the effect of the Soviet Union’s entry into the war. The U.S. knew, as Japan did not, that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan three months after V-E Day, on August 8, 1945. The loss of any possibility that the Soviet Union would serve as a neutral mediator for a negotiated peace, coupled with the entry into combat of the Red Army (the largest active army in the world), might have been enough to convince the Japanese military of the need to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (plus some provision for the emperor). Because no U.S. invasion was imminent, it is argued that the U.S. had nothing to lose by waiting several days to see whether the war could be ended without use of the atom bomb. As it happened, Japan’s decision to surrender was made before the scale of the Soviet attack on Manchuria, Sakhalin Island, and the Kuril Islands was known, but had the war continued, the Soviets would have been able to invade Hokkaido well before the Allied invasion of Kyushu.

 

[qmvsimp]

Other Japanese sources have stated that the atomic bombings themselves were not the principal reason for capitulation. Instead, they contend, it was not the American atomic attacks on August 6 and August 9, but the swift and devastating Soviet victories on the mainland in the week following Stalin’s August 8 declaration of war that forced the Japanese message of surrender on August 15, 1945. Certainly the fact of both enemies weighed into the decision, but it was more the fear of Soviet occupation that hastened imperialistic Japan’s acceptance of defeat.
Many critics believe that the U.S. had ulterior motives in dropping the bombs, including justifying the $2 billion investment in the Manhattan Project, testing the effects of nuclear weapons, exacting revenge for the attacks on Pearl Harbor, and demonstrating U.S. capabilities to the Soviet Union. Scientists who had worked on the project later noted that they were pressured to finish the bomb by a set schedule, one which was timed to coincide with the Russian entrance into the Pacific theater, and one which additionally implied that the war would be potentially over very soon.

Some believe that more effort to reduce casualties should have been made. Further, some claim this could have been done without affecting the stated purposes of the bombing. “No evidence has ever been uncovered that leaflets warning of atomic attack were dropped on Hiroshima. Indeed, the decision of the Interim Committee was that we could not give the Japanese any warning.” [19] However, after the Hiroshima bombing, Truman announced “If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.” On August 8, 1945 leaflets were dropped and warnings were given to Japan by Radio Saipan. (The area of Nagasaki did not receive warning leaflets until August 10, though the leaflet campaign covering the whole country was over a month into its operations.[20]) ) On August 9, 1945 at 11:02 (Nagasaki time) Fat Man exploded at 1950 feet near the perimeter of the city, exploding directly over the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works with a yield of 19-23 kt. [21] (An English translation of that leaflet is available at PBS[22]and below.)

The decision to bomb Nagasaki only a few days after Hiroshima raises separate issues. Some people hold that most of the arguments for the use of the atomic bomb do not justify dropping the second one on Nagasaki. In his semi-autobiographical novel Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut said that while the Hiroshima bomb may have saved the lives of his friends in the U.S. armed forces, Nagasaki still proved that the United States was capable of senseless cruelty.

link: same as above.

 

[oat_soda]

qmvsimp,

easy with the copy and paste. can you find any catholic theologians or popes who agree with your opinion? there is plenty of evidence if not proof that they don’t.

this is a morality issue, which the church ultimately decides, not historians.